Jared increased the pace, and soon Pam was sobbing, begging him for release. He rode her hard, giving her everything she wanted and all she needed. Gazing into her rapturous face, he knew nothing mattered more to him than expressing his utter devotion to her with his body.
As she approached the summit, her pussy clasped around him so tightly Jared almost flew over the precipice. But instead of yielding, he held back a little longer. Pam climaxed, crying out his name. He murmured soft endearments, but his words soon dissolved into a plaintive moan. Wild with unleashed passion, she raked her nails down his back, and Jared finally lost his tenuous control, pounding into her with abandon as her walls continued clenching him like a molten fist.
His orgasm tore through him with such ferocity he couldn’t hold back the roar that escaped his throat. Intense pleasure radiated from his pelvis, firing sparks up his spine and through his extremities. Yet rather than subsiding to afterglow, a second wave of lust gathered in his loins, and he continued thrusting blindly into her, his cock still hard as stone.
A dim realization that he’d just climaxed without ejaculating struck him moments before he entered the storm’s inner vortex. He dug into the soft flesh of her hips with desperate fingers, seeking purchase as he rushed deeper into the maelstrom.
He came again. His vision dimmed—and all strength, all will vanished. He collapsed on top of her, his mind emptying of all rational thought. This time, he made no sound in the wake of a rapture so glorious it lit up his entire being. He buried his face in her hair, his body jerking helplessly as hot jets of cum poured from him in powerful streams.
Sentience returned in slow increments. Soft breaths reached his ears and he shifted his weight to his forearms to avoid crushing her. He couldn’t bring himself to leave the sanctuary of her body, though, and so remained a few more moments in her embrace.
“I love you too, Jared,” Pam said in a gentle whisper.
Shock seized him and, for a split second, crippling fear. He’d never said the words to her before, knowing the irrevocable nature of such a statement. Once said, they couldn’t be taken back. Declaring his love would require action. It would involve risk, vulnerability.
But he did love her and had for months. Desperately. Now, in the throes of passion, he had finally confessed his feelings, driven not by an all-consuming, mindless lust as it would seem, but from a breakdown of the boundaries he set up to shield himself from her power over him. This temporary breach—more like obliteration—of these walls had taken place because of her submission to him.
In a sense, her surrender had triggered his own.
Jared looked up and beheld violet depths filled with love. For him.
His lips met hers in quiet acknowledgment. Yes, he was irrevocably lost. A goner.
Chapter Seven
Pam arrived at the offices of Danforth, Dobbs, and Shuttleworth well before the rest of the staff. After hanging up her coat and dropping her handbag on her desk, she headed toward the office kitchen. For her, coming in early was never a sacrifice but an opportunity to get a jump-start on her formidable workload and enjoy some peace before the attorneys arrived.
She fired up the coffeepot and began clearing away the prior week’s forgotten snacks and half-eaten lunches from the office fridge. Actually, there was two weeks’ worth of crap crammed in this time as she had forgotten to clean it last Monday. She reached all the way in the back and pulled out someone’s mystery meal—a sandwich or maybe a slice of quiche—wrapped loosely in aluminum foil. A suspicious looking growth poked through the foil, reminding her of a science project she’d done in middle school.
Ewww.
It wasn’t part of her job description to clean up the mess left by her coworkers. However, the cleaning service seldom touched the contents of the fridge, and Pam couldn’t abide the thought of her lunches coexisting with rotting leftovers, especially when a tight budget required her to brown-bag it on a daily basis. When she’d started fourteen months earlier, the refrigerator had been a veritable Vesuvius, seething with untold debris and looking ready to blow out its moldy contents. So she sucked it up, suppressing her gag reflex while excavating four-day-old sushi and liquefied chopped salad.
Finished with the odious task, she carried a mug of coffee to her desk, thinking of Jared and his resurrected espresso machine. Settling back in her chair, she reflected on the weekend that had passed. Sunday had been an all-day fuckfest, culminating with a primitive coupling in Jared’s foyer before they headed back to her place. Impatient, he’d reached under her skirt and torn off her panties with one quick yank. Then, lifting her, he had propped her against the wall and screwed her senseless.
When Jared dropped Pam off at her apartment, he told her to forgo showering until the next morning. When she asked why, he replied,
“Because I want my scent on you all night, sugar,”
as if stating the obvious. He then kissed her good night and told her how much he loved her.
Pam smiled to herself. He’d felt guilty about professing his love during sex, declaring she deserved a more traditional setting when first hearing those words. He said it several times in the course of that day—always outside the bedroom—to reassure her his feelings were real and not just said in the heat of the moment.
Pam had arrived at her apartment flustered and aroused all over again. Later that night, she considered disregarding his dictate about showering but had followed instructions. She drifted asleep a marked woman, her dreams filled with Jared making love to her, spanking her, laughing at one of her sarcastic comments.
When morning arrived, so did hard reality, and she realized she needed time to process what had transpired. Her submission, his dominance. The emergence of Jared’s sterner aspect—the side of him that proved he remained in many ways an enigma.
She paused in her musings to take a sip of coffee.
“Good morning, Ms. Abernathy,” growled a familiar voice.
Pam sprang out of her chair and choked on the brew, covering her mouth in time to avoid spewing the contents on a pair of five-hundred-dollar shoes. She raised watery eyes to the bespectacled visage that had materialized in front of her desk without the slightest sound.
“Mr. Danforth,” she wheezed in greeting. Recovering her composure, she straightened. “Good morning, sir.”
His reptilian eyes glittered. With amusement? Fat chance. The man had no sense of humor whatsoever. “My, my…aren’t we here bright and early this morning?” he inquired.
“W-well, yes,” Pam stammered. Mentally shaking herself, she answered his unspoken question. “I often come in early to…” How did one tell the boss she arrived early to enjoy her first cup of coffee without some blowhard hogging her attention for some trifling nonsense? She cleared her throat. “To get a head start so I can improve my performance. I find the office runs more efficiently if at least one of us…” True enough, but now she sounded like a tail-wagging, brownnosing control freak. She tried again. “Er…it gets things moving along,” she finished lamely.
His smile was more like a grimace. “I’m well aware of your reasons for arriving before anyone else. That’s why I had security issue you a key.”
Oh. Danforth’s assistant, Stacey, had handed over the key months before without comment. At the time, Pam figured security had tattled on her after all those times she’d shown up at the locked office and, instead of going out for coffee or waiting like a normal person, hunted down building personnel to let her in.
Since the inner offices always remained locked, it hadn’t seemed like a big deal when she got an office key. And it probably wasn’t. Her mother often accused her of being an office slave, a willing hack for the corporate elite. And what better way of encouraging her free services and self-imposed overtime than giving her a key to the work pit?
Pam nodded her thanks. “I didn’t know it was you. I appreciate your confidence in me, Mr. Danforth.”
His eyes narrowed. Without acknowledging her comment, he spoke again. “I came here at this ungodly hour because I wanted to have a word with you alone. If you can spare me a moment, Ms. Abernathy?”
Pamela’s heart skipped a beat at the cryptic statement. Shit. The old man was up to something, and it couldn’t be good.
She racked her brains for possibilities. Then it hit her. Brian Shuttleworth. The son of a bitch had ratted her out to the big cheese. Old Danny was going to drop-kick her ass out of the firm for dating his partner and letting her boyfriend humiliate him. Not that Old Danny would give that particular reason; he’d probably make something up to save face. She’d messed with the big boys, so now it was bye-bye, Pammie. When she saw Brian, she was going to tear him to pieces.
As Pam began quietly falling apart, a sudden, icy calm settled over her. Screw it. If he was going to can her for whatever bullshit reason he made up, she’d survive. Find a job elsewhere. Wait tables while job hunting. Whatever it took to survive.
She loved it here, though. The workload was an outrage to be sure, but she enjoyed the fast pace, the excitement, the interesting people she met. This place, so structured and demanding, grounded her like nothing else.
Besides Jared. He’d support her through this crisis. Except for the recent glitch, he’d been a model friend, listening to her bitch about office politics, the elitism, the undercurrent of sexism in the male-dominated firm…well, he’d listened to just about everything.
“Ms. Abernathy?” Danforth’s voice now held a trace of annoyance.
If she was going to face the firing squad, she’d do it in style. No tears. No appeals for leniency. And for once, she wasn’t going to run her mouth.
Pam smoothed her conservative suit and shut down her racing thoughts. “Of course I have time to talk, Mr. Danforth.”
He let her precede him into his office, a cavernous leather, brass, and oak chamber reeking of power and privilege. She hesitated at the chairs placed before his desk.
“Please have a seat.” He left the office door wide open, an extraordinarily thoughtful gesture for a man who’d once grumbled about the deplorable effects of sexual harassment laws on office morale.
Pam sat and took a shuddering breath. Showtime.
Danforth settled into his chair and fixed her with an unblinking stare. “So, Ms. Abernathy…back to the key and the reasons I gave it to you. Why do you think?”
Let’s see.
Maybe he liked having an idiot willing to come in early to do the grunt work. Or perhaps he wanted to give said idiot some extra time to hoard paper clips because his miserly ass doled out supplies as if he were nearing bankruptcy. “Well, I suppose you trust me,” she ventured, then added, “And you want to encourage employees who are willing to go that extra mile.” She sneaked that one in. Couldn’t hurt to remind him of that fact, even if he was firing her.
Danforth issued a rusty laugh, and Pam started at the strange sound. “A stock response coming from such an imaginative person.” He sighed. “Let me preface this discussion with a few important observations. Not because I wish to disparage you.” He tapped his chin. “Never that. Just to explain the reason why it took me this long to reach my decision.”
Dear God. He was going to play with her a bit before tossing her out. Pam braced herself.
Danforth considered her for a moment. “Never in all my years in law have I seen such a peculiar mixture of fanciful abstraction and keen perception.”
Pam tried to hide her confusion behind a bland smile. What the hell was he talking about?
He held up a finger. “Let me clarify. That time Mr. Rhodes, the senior partner at Rhodes, Stanley, and Briggs—yes, I see you remember him—asked for your thoughts on the Macon case? You started out brilliantly, offering a truly insightful take on civil liberties and corporate law as it pertains to citizens on the peripheries of society. Somehow, you segued into a rather bizarre discussion that included anecdotes of your mother’s lesbian friend…what was her name? Uncle Eileen, wasn’t it? Yes, indeed. How could I forget? The name of her nonprofit, Shemales United, is burned in my brain for all eternity.”
“But Mr. Abernathy,” Pam protested. “Mr. Rhodes asked for personal examples of those affected by judicial law and a lack of corporate funding. I was only answering his question. I don’t think he minded at all.”
He held up a withered hand. “Please. Fortunately for the firm, Mr. Rhodes, who, might I add, is quite traditional in his views, has a son who dances with the ballet, if you catch my drift. He was feeling benevolent that day, I think, considering your youth and his son’s inclinations.” All said in a flat voice while peering down his beaky nose at her, his mouth turned down in displeasure.
She gritted her teeth. How nice to be tolerated. “I think Mr. Rhodes wanted a fresh perspective. Considering most of his rich cronies probably think just like him, perhaps my views gave him pause for thought.” Pam drew a square in the air. “He wanted someone to think outside the box. There are those in the legal field who believe exploring new ideas is a good thing. I think people who slavishly follow convention run the risk of becoming dogmatic and need the counterbalance of freethinkers, or even the occasional nonconformist. Such people realize there are no absolutes, even in our laws.”
Danforth stared at her, his brows nearly reaching his hairline. “Really. I suspect if I don’t change the course of this conversation posthaste, I’ll get a heartfelt speech on the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law. If we ran away with such sentiments, our legal system would implode overnight.” He spat out the words as if they had been too bitter to form.
Oops, now she’d riled him. Even so, she wouldn’t apologize for her beliefs. Pam folded her hands in her lap, at a loss for an appropriate response.
Before she could decide, Danforth switched topics again. “Let’s speak of the merits of using good judgment. I shudder to think of it, but the first thing that comes to mind is the firm’s first annual Halloween Ball…”
Pam leaped at the chance to redeem herself. “I swear I had no idea Simon was going to come to the ball as Hugh Hefner. He kept it top secret until just before the party. Once he arrived at my apartment, I didn’t have the heart to turn him away.”