Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 55860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
As soon as I sit down, Foz clocks my appearance and gives me a nod. Though my table is in Lisa’s section, she just winks and moves on, knowing Serena will bring my drink. Just one, not a double and never a refill.
Serena leans over a table under the neon Bud sign. She’s talking to a woman sitting with Craig Barger. A barstool regular, but tonight he has on a clean shirt and took a table with the lady, so I guess it’s a date.
After Serena points toward the bathroom, she turns back and her gaze falls on me. Recognition clicks in her face and the warm smile she had given the customers recedes leaving an expression not quite of resignation but not quite anything better either.
“Water?” she asks me when she reaches the table.
Three nights in a row now she’s greeted me the same way. I give her the same answer. “Whiskey neat.”
We don’t exchange pleasantries. I don’t ask her how her day has been. She doesn’t smile at me, at least not at first. She’s wearing jeans tonight. Night one was the red dress and heels. The next two nights she wore a billowy skirt and tank top. Tonight, it’s down to jeans and a Jets shirt with flip flops. Her hair is pulled back, and I miss seeing it loose, miss the way she tucks it behind her ear when it falls across her face.
I tense at the memory. Four nights in a row I’ve gone home dead tired at two in the morning, wanting to sleep. Unable to fight the restless urge, I had to take my cock in hand and tame it to thoughts of Serena riding me, her hair wrapped around my hand as I drive into her. I wish I’d taken her up on the offer of water, because the slow burn of whiskey does nothing to cool my body.
“I need to talk to you on my break,” she tells me.
She’s not asking for a few minutes of my time. She’s telling me. While I instinctively start to put her in her place, I stop the words. I hold back a chuckle because I’ve never had anyone, but my father issue orders to me, and it’s sort of cute how this feisty little nursing student thinks she can boss me around.
For a second, I recall my dream last night, one that left me in sweat-soaked sheets. A dream of Serena Mayfield breaking into my penthouse, tying me to the bed and saying she can get to me anytime she wants, security be damned, and she’s going to do whatever she wants with me until I agree to let her father go.
I take all the torment I can stand and more—her hair brushing my bare thighs, her hand, her mouth, until I’m begging, offering her anything. Her dad’s debt free and clear, a car, a diamond ring, half my kingdom, anything. In my dream, she laughs at me as I twist my wrists in the bindings that hold me, eyes squeezing shut against the delicious agony of teetering right on the edge. I grow harder at the shard of my dream coming back to me and have to clear my throat.
“About twenty minutes from now?” she says.
“I’ll be in the office,” I say and take my drink with me.
Once I’ve shut the door behind me, I take off my jacket and roll up my sleeves. It’s hot in here. A bead of sweat trickles down my spine as I flick on the fluorescents overhead. I’m sure she wants to formally work out a payment schedule to handle her dad’s debt.
My integrity about positions of power, harassment, ethics—now that I’m in a situation where the woman I want owes a large sum to my family, I don’t want to turn it to my advantage, but I won’t pretend it hasn’t crossed my mind. It’s an unworthy thought, one born of desperation and unvarnished lust.
Serena enters my office and shuts the door. She’s got her t-shirt tied up now, showing a sliver of her stomach. Even the scent of her sweat in the confines of the small office makes me want to growl. I don’t remember the last time I wanted a woman this much, and I know if I had, I wouldn’t have waited this long to let her know.
I force myself to stay there, to keep the desk between us. She’s looking at me so frankly that I’m not even sure what to say. If Ronnie had told me last week that while he was out for a medical procedure that I’d let some sassy girl order me around and I’d find myself at a loss for words, I’d have told him the doctor needed to examine his brain, not his balls. I never expected this, never encountered anyone like Serena Mayfield before.