His Secret Desire (4 page)

"Well I hope I don’t have to resort to
threats." He said with a smile. "So how about it? We could combine
business with pleasure. I'll send a car over about 8 to pick you up
and then we can discuss the terms of business over dinner and
Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee."

Katy watched him. He was so calm, so
self-assured and so covered in quality and good taste. He was
obviously a successful man who dated regularly and was probably
surrounded by people all the time; employees who feared him, women
who desired him. She had met them before, looked after their
interests, made their secrets disappear, but none had ever been
quite so strikingly good looking or so threateningly sharp as
Clayton Hargrave.

"You still haven’t told me how you found me."
She said.

He picked up the business card he had given
her and that she had left on the counter top. He slid it over
towards her.

"This." He said. "It's a tracking
device."

Katy blanched.

Fucking asshole.

"That damn thing." She hissed and then
stopped herself. He didn’t need to see how unsettled she was. She
should have tossed the damn thing out the window. Technology and
gut instinct; that's how she survived and this is what happened
when she ignored those deep, wordless intuitions.

"I like to keep tabs on people that I have an
interest in." He said.

She slid it back to him.

"That's a pretty weird and creepy device if
you ask me."

"You would be surprised at the demand there
is for technology like that. We've sold millions of them
already."

Katy thought of the handful of business cards
she had in her possession from clients and from her tiny handful of
associates. She felt like a fool. It wasn't a feeling she was
accustomed to.

"You're an asshole." She said.

Clayton grinned playfully and asshole or not,
that was one gorgeous smile he had; perfect teeth, sun kissed skin,
the linen of his shirt packaging everything up just good enough to
eat.

It had been so, so long since she had been
with anyone…

"I'm sorry." He said. "I promise I won’t do
anything like that again. Not if you come and have dinner with me
tonight and at least hear me out. I'm not a threat to you Ms.
Maldon, in fact, I think I could use your help. That's the only
reason I'm here. You've made quite an impression on me and I don’t
like to let good people go, not easily anyway. Hargrave Robotics
wasn't built by one person, it's a team effort and I need someone
like you working with me. Privacy is key in today's business and I
need someone to safeguard all of my communications, both personal
and private and I have a feeling about you, an instinct if you will
and I always try to listen to my instincts."

"Is that why you kissed me earlier on in the
café?"

He never took his eyes off hers.

"I kissed you because I couldn't resist it."
He said with complete seriousness. "And I know that's a problem,
but it's one we can work around."

"I wouldn't be so sure."

When her battered old Bialetti Italian
kitchen style coffee pot began to hiss she found two cups and set
them down. They were all she had.

"It's just straight Indonesian Arabica." She
said. "How do like yours? Cream and sugar?"

"I like it straight." He said. "No
adulterates. I don’t like anything to get in way of the original
flavor."

She poured a cup and walked to the counter
top to hand it to him, but he stood up and walked around to meet
her.

"What are you doing?" She said.

He looked at her steadily and took another
step forward.

"This is bullshit." He said and pushed her
hand aside, sending the coffee cup crashing to the floor. He put
his other hand around her waist and drew her to him. Before she
could say a word her body was crushed against his and his lips were
devouring her neck. Katy felt herself come alive in a way that she
had forgotten existed. Forced to live a solitary existence she had
pushed every thought of relationships and desire out of her mind...
but she was only human.

His hands found their way down to the small
of her back and then to her tightening ass as she pushed her
abdomen willingly against him. It thrilled her to find that he was
already hard for her and the feeling of his rock hard member
pressing urgently into her was wildly exciting. All she had
expected from her evening were frustrating exchanges with her
irrational client followed by a cold shower, a simple meal and a
glass of wine before bedtime.

Getting fucked in her sweats on the kitchen
floor by a wealthy and smoking hot business tycoon had been as
remote a possibility as finding a unicorn in her bathtub.

But here she was.

Clayton picked her up so that his face was at
her chest, his mouth looking for access to her neck and breasts and
she had instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist. He laid
her out on the counter top smashing her only other coffee cup and
sending the pot to the tiles below. Then he began to work his way
down lower. He unzipped her top to reveal the tight t-shirt she was
wearing underneath and began to pull his own jacket off.

Katy watched in awe as he revealed his
tanned, rock hard, chiseled six pack, broad shoulders and massively
well developed chest. Her clit was already buzzing like a bee in
springtime as crazy thoughts surged through her mind.

"We can’t do this." She said
breathlessly.

"Yes we can." He dropped his shirt to the
ground and began pulling her sweats down. Her hands clutched to
keep them where they were.

"Stop this Hargrave. I don’t want this."

He watched her steadily, as though trying to
read her mind, her true thoughts, and then let go of her pants.

"I think we both know that you do want this
Ms. Maldon. I don't have to be an expert in human behavior and body
language to know what I felt just now and what I felt back in that
café. It's what I have already referred to as a problem, a very big
problem and I know of only one way to solve it."

"And what's that? By fucking me?"

"Would that be so bad?"

"You have no idea what you're getting into
Hargrave." She pushed back up onto her elbows and began zipping up
her running top again. Her breasts were swollen and tight under the
fabric and her heart was racing. "The best thing you can do is just
walk out of here right now and forget you ever met me. People have
a tendency to get hurt around me, even people as wealthy as
you."

"Maybe I don’t hurt as easily as you
imagine." He reached down for his shirt and began to put it back
on.

Katy watched him move. He was more like a pro
surfer than a business man under that clipped European cut suit he
was wearing. It was a shame she had to force him to cover it all up
again.

"Look, Hargrave, I'm not going to pretend I'm
not attracted to you--"

"Well that would be a total waste of time,
wouldn’t it." He smirked and the look he gave her was too sexy for
words.

"But it doesn’t matter. That's just sex."

"I never use those two words together Ms.
Maldon. I take sex very seriously and the attraction between a man
and a woman is something I treat with the utmost gravity."

"And staying alive is something I take very
seriously, so without any more of this flirtatious crap could we
just call it a day and say goodbye already?"

Clayton continued dressing himself and
somehow managed to look as though absolutely nothing at all had
taken place between them on the kitchen counter. Katy meanwhile,
felt like something the cat had dragged in backwards through the
bushes and then been stamped all over as if she were on fire. There
were a million and one reasons she wanted Clayton out of her house
but just getting cleaned up was the one that felt most urgent at
that particular moment.

"You look gorgeous." He said. "I bet almost
no-one ever gets to see you like this."

Her heart began to beat faster again and
incredibly, she could feel her color begin to rise.

"Is that a blush I see?" He said with every
intention of making it worse. "The greatest privacy consultant in
the country can't even hide her own emotions? I'm beginning to
doubt your story again."

"Will you please just get out of here?"

"You know you're forcing my hand by not being
reasonable."

"Is that a threat?"

"Of course not. I'm just saying that if we
are discussing business together, then my interests are your
interests, but if we aren’t then unfortunately you are a potential
threat to my organization and I need to take that into
account."

"Trust me, your secret is safe with me. It’s
not like glasses with cameras in them are exactly a new idea you
know. There might be a particular internet search engine giant you
may have heard of with a similar product that's already out on the
market."

"It's got nothing to do with that, but let's
say Ms. Maldon, that you've been working with people who don't have
Hargrave Robotics' best interests at heart and that therefore I
intend either convincing you to work for me, or to prevent you from
working for them."

Katy's mind raced through her short client
list. None of them seemed an obvious choice as a rival to Hargrave
and none of them had ever mentioned him so she couldn’t imagine who
the hell he was talking about.

"I don’t discuss my client list with anyone
and I don’t believe you even know who my client list includes."

Clayton watched her swing her legs off the
counter top and then hop to the ground.

"I think it's time for you to go." She
said.

"You’re definitely good at keeping secrets
Ms. Maldon, but I'm an expert at uncovering the truth, especially
when it comes to people I believe can add value to my company and
particularly when I feel as attracted to them as I do to you. I've
never come across any woman who was harder to dig up facts on than
you, but even that is a clue in itself. A clue to your true
nature."

His words were transfixing. She had to shake
herself loose from his gaze.

"Out. Now. Before I call the cops."

"Stop it Ms. Maldon, because we both know you
aren’t going to call anyone. Now I'm guessing that your life was
seriously threatened at some point because when I look into your
eyes I see a lot of fear there. I look around this house and I see
someone who is desperately afraid to reveal anything about
themselves."

"Stop it Hargrave, this is nonsense." She
felt a cold sweat break out, prickling the skin on her back as the
tall, imposing man continued staring at her, mentally peeling away
the layers of her concealment.

"I think there's only one way a girl could
get the kind of squeaky clean past that you have, am I right?"

Katy wanted to tell him to get the hell out
but she was experiencing the closest thing to a panic attack she
had ever felt in her life and chasing him out of there wouldn't
solve the problem anyway.

"Call me crazy," he continued, "call me a man
with a vivid imagination, but I'm guessing WITSEC."

Katy's heart almost stopped, her vision began
to narrow.

Clayton continued relentlessly.

"The Federal Witness Security Program or
Witness Protection Program as it's more popularly known."

He let the words hang.

It was four years since she had disappeared
off the radar of everyone she had ever known and three years since
she had fled the program itself to run solo. Now this damn fool
walks into her life and because he feels 'intrigued' about her,
decides he wants to bed her and control her, now all that work and
secrecy and sacrifice was set to unravel.

She glanced around her bare kitchen, her eyes
stopping on the woodblock that held a barely used set of steak
knives. She looked back at Clayton and their eyes met, locked,
narrowed and focused in on each other, striving to give nothing
away but speaking volumes.

You won't take me.
Her thoughts ran
feverishly through her mind.
You don’t know who you're dealing
with here, you don’t have any idea at all.

"Shall I go on?" He said, but when Katy didn’t reply
he continued on regardless. "I think you were already involved in
the privacy business in some way before you gave evidence."

He watched her intently, waiting for a crack
to appear. Sure she looked desperate and fuck if it wasn't as hot
as hell to see her cornered like this, still all hot from her run
and from their little skirmish together on the kitchen counter.
This was going to be the best lay of his life. Make her crack, the
unbreakable privacy specialist with her mysterious past and then
drill her into screaming submission on her own smooth household
kitchen surface.

He was getting close and he could feel it,
scent it, like a lion rounding on its prey.

This would be a day to remember.

"The program didn’t want you to go back to
your old business but you decided to do it anyway. You believed,
correctly I imagine, that you could do a better job than them and
of course you probably missed your old life. You missed the money
and you certainly missed the challenge."

He was close alright, so very close.

"Stop." Katy said. "Please just stop it now.
Look, Hargrave, what will it take to for you to just walk out that
door short of me calling the cops."

"I want you to reconsider my offer. That's
all."

She glared at him and up at the ceiling in
frustration.

"You just don’t give up, do you?"

"Never." He smiled.

"Okay. Give me until tomorrow--"

"Tonight. Eight pm. My car will pick you up.
I have cold water Maine lobster fresh from the bay, so I hope you
like seafood."

"I'm a vegetarian." She said, just to be
awkward.