The choice of being able to watch each other’s reactions also turned out to be a smart one. Sure, Alex’s glittering eyes often strayed to her breasts, but most of the time he was clearly gauging her responses, watching her expression to judge when to push her faster and when to slow it down.

  Soon, Indy had been able to forget that it was their first time and surrender to the pleasure he was giving her. When he’d reached forward to knead her tits—which she’d suspected he’d wanted to do from the start—she arched into it. He knew how to keep the pressure firm enough to add to her arousal without grasping her flesh too tightly or tugging too hard on her swollen nipples. She’d come as he squeezed them, her orgasm pulsing out from her pussy to touch every part of her sensitized body. She would even swear that she came again, hard on the heels of her first climax, when he leaned over to bite down softly on her breasts.

  It took Alex a lot longer to reach climax the second time, and he did it the way he’d fucked her throughout—sweetly and thoroughly. Soon after he filled the condom, she wanted him again—and again he was right there with her.

  His readiness had impressed her. But some look in his eyes starting around midnight had also unsettled her. It wasn’t just voracity she’d seen in those blue-gray depths, but something softer and deeper and thoroughly alien to her. She’d urged him to take her doggy-style so that she wouldn’t have to stare at those eyes, then later on their sides, spooned together, him pounding her pussy from behind.

  The last time, though, around five in the morning, with the city lights starting to flicker back on for the day, she’d caught that expression more intensely as he’d fucked her in lazy missionary sprawl. When he wasn’t kissing her with long, dragging kisses, he was staring into her eyes. It was disconcerting.

  What was stranger was that the best sex she’d ever had was coupled with such unease. Indy had known that fucking her boss wasn’t going to be completely smooth sailing, but she’d expected awkwardness and stilted conversation for a few weeks afterward, not this new awakening odd feeling in her chest while she was still with him.

  It was after that last session that she’d decided to leave. The idea of talking to Alex in bed that morning terrified her.

  She’d crawled out from under the covers with the sole goal of making her escape. That was when she saw the blinking light on his phone and had swept it up in her hand before scurrying into the washroom.

  For fear of waking him, she hadn’t played the several waiting voice messages. Like his emails, most were work-related…but many weren’t. Those were from women, their one-word onscreen names evocative—Harmony, Jasmine, Catriona. Sexy names, no doubt belonging to equally sexy women.

  After seeing those names, it was a short slip to reading the texts and emails. Women messaged Alex constantly, although he rarely seemed to respond to them with more than a polite greeting. A few exchanges, though, went beyond politeness. They became fairly explicit and very transparent. From what Indy could tell, he hooked up with a few of these women every month. The last hook-up was less than a week before, before Alex had burst right up close and personally into her life.

  She knew she had no business getting upset about the messages. Wendy had repeated as much to her before she’d given up and headed off to work. Indy knew it was true.

  But she was upset…deeply. So upset that she’d dressed hurriedly and fled to Wendy’s place, waking her up with a barrage of knocking. Being a good friend, Wendy had taken her in, given her a cup of tea and a lot of comfort, but Wendy hadn’t understood. She’d thought Indy was overreacting. But Wendy had never been cheated on. Wendy wasn’t in a precarious sexual liaison with a man who was oh-so-right in so many ways and so very wrong in every way that counted.

  Indy checked her phone. The screen lit up soundlessly. Alex again.

  This time she picked up, but at first she couldn’t say anything, not even hello.

  “Indy?” He sounded out of breath, perhaps because he was shouting. The noise around him was enormous. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Out,” she said, which was true. “I’m not feeling well.” Still true, but not in the way he would probably take it.

  “Then come home,” he shouted. “I’ll meet you there.”

  She shook her head vigorously, though, of course, he couldn’t see it. “No! I’m fine here.”

  The noises on his side grew and shrank as if he was moving around. “Are you at the hospital? What’s wrong? Tell me.”

  His tone was so concerned. So…believable. He would have to be, wouldn’t he, to juggle so many women? Did they all realize that they were being juggled? Did they even care?

  “I’m fine, Alex.” She put her fingers to the bridge of her nose, trying to quell the onset of fresh tears. She had to hold on, at least until she made it off the phone. “Please, just leave me alone.”

  The short silence that followed could have been interpreted in a dozen different ways. Hurt. Shock. Relief.

  “Why?” he asked, his voice hardening. “Tell me what’s the matter.”

  “I don’t owe you an explanation,” she said.

  This time the silence was a tense one.

  “True,” he finally said. “But I would nonetheless like one.”

  He sounded like her boss again—but not a sweet boss like Hank. He sounded like her boss’s boss, which was in fact what he was.

  Sucking in a breath, she uttered a rushed explanation. “Last night was a bad idea, and I’m sorry but I don’t want to repeat it.”

  Her voice didn’t sound convincing in her own ears, but she waited to see what Alex’s verdict would be.

  “All right,” he said crisply, then he was gone.

  It worked.

  Indy told herself it was relief that she heard in his voice. If there was any hint of disappointment, it was probably because he couldn’t add her to his usual roster of names.

  She was lucky to have gotten out of the situation undamaged.

  Lucky, lucky me.

  Chapter Five

  By Saturday, Indy had vacated Wendy’s apartment. She spent Sunday online, looking for a new job. She ended up buying a whole new wardrobe. On Monday, she slathered on too much makeup and went out to face the office. Within the first minute of setting foot in the building, she found herself alone in an elevator with Ray Mehta.

  After offering what was no doubt a very sickly smile to Dr. Mehta, Indy concentrated on the television screen in the corner of the elevator, which was showing an ad for a car she would never be able to afford.

  She could feel Ray scrutinizing her.

  “You look good, Indira.”

  She tried another smile which probably ended up being another spectacular failure. “Thanks.”

  What fresh hell is this? Would the elevator numbers never budge?

  “You know,” Ray was saying, “just because it didn’t work out between us doesn’t mean that we can’t still be friendly.”

  Or fuck occasionally in slow-moving elevators, his tone implied.

  Indy had imagined this day very clearly. She’d fantasized about the cutting remarks she would send his way if he ever tried to smooth things over between them. At least two of them came to mind.

  Instead, she asked, “Did Alex put you up to this?”

  What better way to deal with a possibly troublesome hook-up than to pawn her off on an underling?

  Ray looked down at her quizzically. “Alex who?”

  Oh, shit. “Nothing. Sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  But Ray Mehta wasn’t a man to give up on a puzzle. That was what made him such an effective scientist—his curiosity and his tenacity.

  “Alex Winters?”

  The mechanical elevator voice announced Indy’s floor, and she stepped out without answering.

  “Indira.” Ray’s voice was urgent. “I should tell you—”

  The doors eased closed on whatever he was about to say.

  * * * *

  Hank was so obviously tiptoeing around her that at first it amused her, then it irritated Indy. Thankfully, he mostly just left her alone.

  At eleven, Alex showed up. His long stride checked when he saw her behind her desk.

  Indy flashed a smile without meeting his eyes. “Oh, hello, Mr. Winters. Is Mr. Howard expecting you?”

  He leaned against her desk, and she could see his knuckles go white as he gripped the edge of it.

  Is he feeling awkward, too? Good.

  Her smile stretched, only to retract a moment later when he spoke.

  “Can we have lunch today?”

  That low, warm voice sent shivers through her.

  She tilted her head, pretending to think. “Today? I’m not sure—”

  His voice was clipped. “Dinner tonight then.”

  “Hm, tonight…”

  “Do you have another engagement?” He leaned closer, his tone showing frustration now. “Who with? That guy from the dating site? Mehta?”

  She looked up at him. It was a mistake. Lurking on the periphery of her vision, she’d been able to avoid remembering how forcefully attractive he was. In a somber dark suit, he looked incredibly suave, yet the flash of his eyes in that handsome face hinted that the smooth veneer covered a less civilized creature within.

  She was intimately acquainted with that wicked creature.

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” she managed to say coolly. “Do you?”

  A muscle worked briefly in his jaw before he got it under control. “Fine. You pick the day. We need to talk.”

  Indy shifted her gaze back to her computer screen. “About what, Mr. Winters?”

  He spoke now between gritted teeth. “Us.”

  Indy shook her head. “No, thanks. Not interested.”

  “So what was Thursday night?” he demanded. “Practice?”

  Indy sighed. She was starting to get used to parrying his questions, while he seemed to be getting more and more irritable. This was not the Alex Winters she’d known for years.

  “Let’s just call it recreational,” she told him. “Okay?”

  Alex stepped back. “You’re not even going to explain what happened to change things?”

  “I don’t owe you an explanation,” Indy reminded him.

  “No.” He was back to the gritted-teeth delivery. “But it would be the decent thing to do.”

  For a second she flashed on Ray Mehta’s break-up speech. He’d accused her of not being a proper Indian girl because she enjoyed sex too much. He’d pretty much said she was only good enough for fucking, never for a commitment.

  Maybe Ray was right.

  “I’m not decent, so why I should I bother doing the decent thing?” Indy asked. Summoning up a reserve of strength, she managed to wave her hand in a shooing gesture. “Please leave me alone. I have work to do.”

  * * * *

  By the end of the week, Alex had become a twice-daily visitor to Hank’s office. He was torturing himself, he knew, by arranging it so that he saw Indy so often—but it was a refined torture. The scent of her shampoo brought him back to that vision of her on the bed, clad in just her robe. Then he saw her dropping it, revealing those dangerous curves that had made his head swim and his other, lower head rampant.

  Hank had become his confidant. Alex didn’t share the details of exactly what had happened between him and Indy, but those private moments were pretty much all he kept back.

  “I’ve tried everything,” Alex told the man. “Messages. Flowers. Gifts. She sends them back unopened or just gives them away.”

  “That explains the desks around the office suddenly blooming with bouquets,” Hank said. “All except Indy’s.”

  “I’ve tried everything,” Alex said again. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Have you tried talking to her? You know, that’s her you pass several times a day, that woman at the desk in front of my office.”

  Alex groaned. Hank’s teasing usually got a smile out of him, but today he was beyond humor. He passed a hand over his jaw and felt the roughness there with surprise. He’d forgotten to shave.

  “She won’t talk to me,” he said. “No, that’s not quite right. She talks to me like I’m a goddamn stranger. I’d even be happy if she were angry with me. At least then I could ask her what she was angry about. But she’s just polite, no more, no less. At this point, I’d take less.”

  “She sounds angry,” Hank observed. “That’s the way my wife gets when she’s really upset over something I did. The question is, what did you do?”

  The man had been asking some variation on this question all week, and Alex still didn’t have an answer.

  “I don’t know. I woke up, and she was gone. I came in here and spoke to you to find out that she’d called in sick. I finally reached her on her phone, and she was, well, abrupt. That’s the entire story as I know it.”

  He’d wracked his brain to come up with an answer for Indy’s sudden defection. He was good in bed—her reaction told him that she thought the same. Just shortly before she’d apparently left him in her apartment, they’d been having extremely satisfying spoon-shaped sex.

  He shifted in the chair, remembering how he’d nuzzled her neck while fucking Indy from behind. At the same time, he’d plied her clit with his fingers, making her hot and creamy and more responsive than she’d been all night.

  The entire night had gone that way, with the sex getting better and better as they’d learned each other’s bodies and what the other liked. How could she not want to do that again?

  Alex had progressed past frustration and irritation, beyond bewilderment and anxiety. He was angry now—angry because he thought he deserved an excuse, even a poor one, angry because he didn’t know what he’d done wrong…or even if he had done anything at all.

  Yet a small inner part of his brain reminded him that he’d experienced this before, just on the other side. He’d dated women and cooled off after the first date, even when they had occasionally made it to bed during the date. He’d spoken platitudes in response to their questions, not wanting to make it explicit that he didn’t think they had any real connection or future. He’d been the Indy many times before. And all the while he’d been treating women that way, he’d told himself that he wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t a Ray Mehta. He didn’t toy with people’s emotions. He didn’t lie or cheat on women. He was being polite but distant…as Indy was being with him.

  Now that he knew what the other side felt like, it fucking hurt. He felt like calling up all the women he’d dated and apologizing to them, to try to put into words what was otherwise wordless—the lack of engagement, the distance that was never completely breached, the spark that lit once but did not burn.

  He’d felt that fire with Indy. Now he knew how that spark could catch flame on one side and fizzle out on the other.

  He’d pushed her when he should have stepped away, said nothing, kept his distance. Let her come to him, as she had done once before—if she ever chose to. Let her live her life undisturbed.

  He was her boss’s boss, for God’s sake. That fact was probably the one thing that kept Indy from going to the police and reporting him for stalking, because that was what he was doing.

  Surprise flower deliveries and unwanted gifts were only romantic in the movies. In real life, they were embarrassing at the least and very likely scary.

  He’d turned into that internet weirdo he’d warned her about, what seemed already like a long time ago.

  Alex rubbed his chin, raising the two-day growth of bristles. “I have to stop this. I can’t force her to talk to me. I can’t force her to explain.”

  Hank looked a bit alarmed. “No? What are you going to do?”

  Alex told him. “Not a damned thing.”

  Chapter Six

  Over the next few weeks, Indy lost those pesky ten pounds that had plagued her since her freshman year in college when she’d eaten every sugar- and fat-laden item in the school cafeteria in an attempt to fill the hole her parents had left.

  At her girlfriends’ urging, she bought new clothes and cut her hair into a shapely pixie cut that suited her newly defined cheekbones. Instead of hanging out in front of the television set, she started attending a local yoga studio and added some toning to her newly svelte body. She even started dating again, cautiously, meeting friends of friends who everyone swore would hit it off with her but who never actually made it to a second date. But, still, she was living life again. After Ray then Alex, it felt good to go a few hours without their faces swimming up before her eyes. Although, to be honest, it was only Alex’s face that seemed to do that at inopportune moments.

  It helped her new lifestyle that Alex had left off visiting her boss every few hours. At least it made her stop looking for a new job. Why should she, anyway? She liked Mavrell, and she liked Hank. She hadn’t even considered running away after Ray broke it off with her, so why should she because of Alex?

  Sure, she cringed when she saw an online piece about the ‘handsome and happily single CEO of Mavrell Pharmaceuticals’. That didn’t stop her from devouring every word.

  Nor did her disillusionment with Alex mean that she stopped thinking about him altogether. The weeks since their night together had been chaste ones—for her, though no doubt not for Alex. Her vibrator was what she liked to refer to as an ‘industrial model’, but it still didn’t take the place of an eager and inventive man.

  Still, she could have the man without the delusion, couldn’t she? If Alex could love ’em and leave ’em, why shouldn’t she?

  She thought about giving her contacts a whirl, seeing which one would be the first to answer the booty call. Or she could just close her eyes and stab at the list, taking the first one her finger landed on. It was just sex. It was just that meaningless for men like Alex, with women always panting after him. Why should it be any deeper or more meaningful for her?

 

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