Broken and Healed, page 8
Alex frowned. That didn’t sound good when he’d been pursuing her for weeks.
“It could be that she doesn’t recognize your good intentions,” Hank quickly added. “You do have good intentions, don’t you?”
Alex wasn’t given a chance to answer that because at that moment a knock sounded on Hank’s office door.
How would he have answered that question?
Indy’s face appeared through a small gap in the doorway as she pushed it open. “It’s Susana Perez from Inova Research, Mr. Howard. You told me to interrupt you whenever she called.”
She kept her eyes on her boss, but Alex was keenly conscious of her awareness of his presence. Even Hank must be able to feel that powerful electrical current.
“Oh, yes.” Hank started clicking away at his computer. “Thanks. Alex, if you’ll excuse me?”
Alex got to his feet. This was exactly the chance he was waiting for. “Of course. We’ll talk later.”
He followed Indy out of the door, taking the opportunity to check out her ass in the tight calf-length skirt she was wearing.
When she realized that he was following her, Indy turned to him with a look of polite inquiry. He hated that look. It was the impersonal glance of a stranger.
When he didn’t speak, she tilted her head at him. “Yes, Mr. Winters?”
Spoken in that way, he was starting to detest the sound of his own name.
“Dammit,” Alex said, approaching her swiftly and taking her by the upper arms. In contrast to her stiff tone, she was soft and yielding in his grasp. “Let’s go somewhere right now.”
As soon as he spoke the words, his mind was hectic with possibilities. His place was too far from the office. Hers was even farther. Maybe a hotel? He wasn’t sure he could wait even that long.
Indy smiled, her eyes downcast. “I have to work.”
“So do I,” Alex reminded himself. “But the place won’t collapse if we take off for an hour or two.”
Her smile dried up and blew away as she slipped out of his grasp. “I’m sorry, Mr. Winters. That would be against company rules.”
With effort, Alex refrained from pointing out that he ran the place and so he decided what rules governed the company.
“Screw company rules,” he said roughly. “I need you…now.”
He didn’t tell her that he’d spent the weekend savoring the memory of Friday night, replaying it again and again in his head. In his mind, he was no longer a participant but watching everything happen from some third perspective. It was the world’s best porno video.
“And I need to get back to work, Mr. Winters. Now.”
As she sat down behind her desk, the door to Hank’s office popped open, and her boss strode out, already talking.
“Indy, we’ll have to do some juggling today. Alex’s assistant is—”
Hank stopped talking when he saw Alex still standing there.
“What about Alex’s assistant?” Alex wanted to know.
Hank looked from Indy to Alex and back. “Mrs. Jermyn just called HR. Her youngest grandchild was hospitalized over the weekend, and they’re afraid it’s a recurrence of the leukemia. She won’t be in for the next week, at least. Human Resources wanted to know if we could send someone for an hour or two to cover her work today. If everyone covers for an hour, we can make it through today. They’ll try to get a temp for tomorrow and the rest of the week.”
Mrs. Jermyn had been with the company for thirty years and knew the position backward and forward. While she was there, Alex’s office ran like an efficient machine. When she was away, even for a week’s vacation, it swiftly and surely descended into chaos. He could manage to get himself to the meetings listed in his calendar, but that was about it. Everything else administrative, Mrs. Jermyn took care of, including making crucial deadlines.
Alex looked down at Indy, who was avoiding his eyes.
“Why bother with a temp when we have a suitable replacement right here?”
She spoke before Hank could respond. “Because I’m Mr. Howard’s assistant, not yours.”
“Now, Indy,” Hank remonstrated, “that’s not exactly the Mavrell team spirit.”
She stuck her small chin out stubbornly. It looked ridiculous and adorable.
“I can cover a few hours a day,” she said, “but not the whole week. Mrs. Jermyn’s way of doing things is hopelessly old-fashioned.”
“So you’re familiar with it,” Alex put in smoothly.
She tossed him an irritated glance. “I spent a few days in your office a year ago when Mrs. Jermyn’s grandson was first diagnosed.”
Had she? How hadn’t he noticed that siren call coming from right in front of his office doors? She must have done most of her work from under the desk—or perhaps wearing a disguise.
“You were seeing someone named Roxana,” Indy went on, her tone turning malicious. “She called all the time. I guess she’d never heard of text messages.”
Alex took it as a good sign that she remembered Roxana’s name after a year. Maybe she did care a little.
He turned to Hank. “Since Indy is well-versed in how my office runs, I think she would be the best replacement during Mrs. Jermyn’s absence.”
He had the pleasure of watching her pretty pink-tinted mouth fall open.
“For the whole time?” It was practically a wail of rebellion. Her big brown eyes appealed to her boss. “That’s too long, Hank. Tell him that you need me here.”
Hank was watching Alex’s face closely. “I do need you, Indy. But I believe Alex needs you more.”
Afterward, Hank diplomatically retreated into his office while Indy packed a few things from her desk. She was seemingly picking items at random and throwing each into a box with increasing force until the last one almost rebounded out again.
“I have staplers in my office,” Alex pointed out in a mild voice.
“Great,” Indy snarked. She shut the box’s flaps with the same excessive force, and when he went to take it from her, she held on and wrestled it away from him.
She marched down the hallway, staying one step ahead of him the entire time. At the elevators, he managed to dart in front of her, forcing her to look up at him.
He meant to say something soothing, but Indy’s fury seemed to boil out of her, urging her to speak first.
“Is this how it’s going to be?” she demanded. “You tell me where to go, and I hop around the chessboard to whatever spot you choose?”
Her anger stirred Alex’s. He considered himself a fairly mellow guy—as mellow as he could be, considering he ran a multi-billion-dollar company—but Indy had a way of getting right under his skin, in a very good and also a very bad way.
“I’m your boss,” he said. “Actually, your boss’s boss. You hop because you work for me.”
She held the box in front of her as if she wanted to whack him with it. She probably did.
“Is that all?” she asked. “Or is there some other reason you and Hank conspired to get me to work for you?”
“Let’s get this straight one last time,” Alex said. “You’re filling in in my office because you work for me. It has nothing to do with any other relationship we have.”
Two bright spots of color were riding high on her cheeks, making them infinitely kissable. He couldn’t resist noticing that she looked incredibly sexy when she was angry.
“What we have is not called a relationship,” she said. “It’s got a much shorter name.”
That was exactly what he’d been afraid of.
“It doesn’t have to be,” he told her.
“Really?” She rolled her eyes. “Really, Alex? Is this your MO? Promise the future and only dole out a little of the present? A precious little, too.”
He digested those words…the future. Did she want a future with him? Could it be her fear talking and only showing as anger?
“I’m not going to be an hour-long appointment you book in your calendar under ‘massage’,” she went on furiously. He saw with some alarm that there were tears in her eyes. “Oh wait! Now that I’m in your office, I guess I’ll be on call all day long for whatever kind of sexual favor you want.”
“Indy—”
He wanted to grab her and shake her. Did she really think he was like that? But mostly he wanted to wrap her in his arms and tell her how much cared for her.
“Let’s just go.” She stooped awkwardly to punch the elevator button with a pinky finger. “You must be ready for your first blow job of the day.”
Despite the shockingly sexy images that angry statement roused in him, Alex was far more concerned about her. There was no way they were going to spend any time together with this wrong idea of him she had burrowed into her brain.
He wanted to sit down and explain it all to her. He wanted to lay his past, present and future plans bare—including that those plans involved her.
But it was clear she wasn’t ready to listen.
Alex forced his hands into his pockets as he strove for a casual tone. “Does that include me getting to eat you out?” he asked. “Because that’s one of the things we haven’t repeated—a long, hungry ‘sixty-nine’.”
At first she gave him a look as if he’d lost his mind, and he thought he’d seriously miscalculated. Then her cheeks flushed, and she darted her eyes away. She was thinking about that sixty-nine…definitely.
“You’re disgusting,” she said, but her words lacked conviction. She glanced briefly back at him. “Is that what you use your office for?”
He knew what she was asking. “Not usually,” he replied. “Usually, I exercise some good sense and keep my personal life away from work. But lately this gorgeous woman has been creeping into every aspect of my life, including my work.”
Indy was silent for a moment.
“That must be difficult,” she said finally.
“It is,” Alex agreed, “but it’s also very rewarding. So I don’t mind taking the risk.”
She bit down on her lip. “You’re not the only one taking a risk.”
“I know that.”
“Alex—”
She dropped the box at the same instant he reached for her, cupping her face in his hands and kissing her mouth hard, with all the pent-up hunger that had driven him all weekend. In response, she made a tiny, startled sound in the back of her throat. It was such a feminine noise that he immediately pushed his hips against hers, needing her to feel how much he wanted her.
She opened her mouth to the thrust of his tongue. He thought he could taste her tears, salty-sweet, then he couldn’t think anymore as she started to suck his tongue. Oh God!
His cock hardened. He rubbed it against her, and she made that sound again. So sexy.
When he heard the ding, distant as the drone of an airplane flying overhead, he barely registered it.
The cough was a little more distracting, but he didn’t care. He was focused on Indy’s hot, sweet mouth.
“Look,” a loud, peeved voice said, “do you want the elevator or not?”
Alex finally wrenched his lips away from Indy’s and looked over. Ray Mehta was standing in the elevator, holding the doors open with one braced hand and scowling at them.
Alex looked at Indy. Indy stared back at him. Challengingly, he thought.
“Just a minute,” he said, bending down to retrieve the box and a few stray items that had fallen from it. He tucked it under one arm then reached for Indy’s hand with the other. “Thanks.”
Ray’s mouth tightened but he said nothing as he jabbed at the button for their floor.
It should have been an awkward trip. One of his top people had just caught him making out with another employee. But Alex didn’t have the brain space to worry about that now. Thoughts of Indy—and what he wanted to do with her—crowded out everything else.
Ray got off at his floor. They rode it up to the top, still holding hands. Their eyes met every few seconds, and it was no longer antagonistic. They understood each other now. They both knew that this wasn’t a game. This was real life, with all the rewards and consequences.
Alex should have felt terrified. Instead, he was looking forward to seeing where it would lead—almost as much as he was looking forward to his first day with his new assistant.
At his office, Alex dropped the box off behind Indy’s new desk and led her into his inner sanctum.
A great number of important deals had been cut in his private office, but nothing matched the excitement coursing through his body at that moment. He took Indy into his arms, and everything ratcheted up another degree. The anticipation made his head feel like it was going to blow off, not to mention his cock.
Indy wasn’t wasting time. She reached down to squeeze his dick through his trousers, and his whole body jerked. He was so hard that even her gentle caress was straddling the line between pleasure and pain.
“You said something about the sales figures,” she murmured.
Alex was only partly listening. Her fingers were speaking much louder than her lips, stroking and molding his throbbing member.
“Hm. What?”
“The figures,” she repeated in a slow syrupy voice he knew he was going to hear in his dreams. “I think they started with sixty-nine.”
Fuck, this was going to be his best assistant yet!
Chapter Eight
Working for Alex was the worst decision Indy had ever made…not that it required much choosing on her part. He’d made the decision for her and landed her in her current mess.
As one of the vice-presidents walked by, Indy clicked away from the job search website she’d been perusing to smile at the woman. She could search for a new position in her off hours after work, but she was usually far too exhausted to eat, much less to take on the effort it required to apply for jobs.
Alex kept her busy in more ways than one, starting from that very first day two weeks before.
She’d started her first hour as the CEO’s assistant crawling on top of him, her skirt hiked up around her waist and her naked ass waving in the air. Alex had been sprawled out on his office couch, his fly open, and she’d been trying to ease his cock through the opening—no small feat when it had swollen up big and hard in the meantime. Meanwhile, Alex had gripped her ass and steered her crotch down to his face, though he only managed to get in a few kisses before her wriggling disrupted his efforts.
“I pictured this going a lot more smoothly,” Alex had complained.
Indy had added her own gripe. “I can’t get your cock out. Maybe some lubrication will help.”
“Good idea,” Alex had agreed. He’d immediately gone to work with his fingers, rubbing her slit until it was good and wet.
His manipulations had gotten her back into the mood of things, despite the awkward positioning. Then she’d been able to give his dick a good lick through the opened zipper.
“There’s a button at the top,” Alex had helpfully reminded her.
Of course. That had been the problem. With the button taken care of, she could then slide his cock completely into her grasp then straight into her mouth. Yum.
She’d liked being on top of him, setting the pace, sucking him off at her own speed. He’d groaned and tried to move deeper into her mouth, but she’d resisted every time. He’d come when she was ready for him to and not a second before.
From the sounds he’d made, though, anyone might have thought she was killing him.
Soon Alex seemed to tire of being solely on the receiving end, and he’d hauled her ass closer to him, her knees splayed on either side of his chest. Then he’d had complete access to her warm, wet pussy, and he’d devoured it with all the hunger he’d promised. He’d licked her cunt dry then sucked her clit, making her cream again, before doing it all over. She’d even felt him using his finger to enter her hole and scoop up more cum into his mouth.
Alex had made it difficult for her to concentrate on what she was doing, but as soon as his cock sprang free of his pants, she was miraculously able to focus.
He had a gorgeous dick, long and thick but nicely proportioned, so that it wasn’t too long or too thick. Just the right size for a good blow job.
She’d given it another lick, right around the head of his cock, encircling it completely. Then she’d heard Alex urging her on.
“Suck me, baby. Make me come.”
He’d said those words before or words very similar to them, days ago, years ago. Time had lost all meaning around him. The two of them together formed a continuous loop of sucking, fucking and coming. The perfect circle.
Just like their last sixty-nine. They’d groaned and moaned their pleasure in each other’s bodies until Indy had come in his mouth in a drenching gush that left her shuddering. Alex had taken longer, making her work hard for his climax, employing lips and tongue and fingers. Finally, she had taken his balls into her mouth, stretching her jaw out to their widest to accommodate his taut flesh, and as she’d sucked them, he’d started to ejaculate. She’d had to move quickly to catch his hot jism on her tongue.
Afterward, there’d been none of the awkwardness that she’d so often experienced after sex. It was a comforting thought to imagine that no matter how wild and new their sexual encounters were, Alex would always look at her with those steady bluish-gray eyes and smile his easy smile, as if nothing she could say or do in bed would shock or embarrass him.
How could she tell that she would never get sick of it, of him, when he was the kind of man who got tired of women quickly and moved on soon afterward? How could she ever trust him with her heart?
* * * *
“You have a teleconference with the Australian branch in about an hour,” Indy reminded Alex as she quickly and efficiently sorted through his mail. It still amazed her how much mail he got in the age of electronic communications. In fact, it was pretty incredible that he still had teleconferences rather than meetings face-to-face, so to speak, over videoconference.
He’d paused by her desk on his way into his office, as he so often did during the day—waiting for a green light, she cynically told herself. Yet that was an unfair judgment. Alex stopped to listen to her because he had an aversion to walking by any employee with merely a passing acknowledgment. She knew he thought it was rude not to stop and respond to her frequent reminders, rather than just grunt and nod as Hank had tended to do.
