Authors: Fiona Knightingale
“No,” she stated flatly.
“No? No sex? Because I’m pretty sure you want me,” he taunted.
“No, no disappearing criminal charges,” she declared, “and no sex.”
“What? What are you talking about?” The lack of blood flowing to his brain caused severe confusion since all of his thought processes were focused on his hard cock bobbing against his abs.
She ran her fingers lightly down the exposed underside of his shaft and he almost shuddered.
“You heard me,” she teased.
“I’m still pretty sure you wouldn’t mind being up against that wall or spread eagle on my bed,” he countered.
“Irrelevant at this moment.”
She let her fingers tickle and tease the sensitive ridges just behind the head of his cock and stroked him lightly and loosely.
“Irrelevant as you play with my cock? I don’t follow,” his brows knitted together in genuine confusion.
Taylor grinned up at the bulky billionaire and dropped to her knees in front of him. As her tongue traced the same path her fingers had been tormenting him with, he groaned and looked down at her with half closed eyes.
“I’ll only sleep with you on two conditions.”
“Seriously?” he asked, painful desire making his voice raspy and thick. “Like what?”
“One, you take me out on a proper date, not some invented excuse to get me in a bikini.”
Draco laughed despite himself, “Ok. And two?”
“Two, you call my boss and tell him you are pleading guilty to the charges.”
It was Draco’s turn for the cold shower effect. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m sick of these clients who buy their way out of trouble and refuse to take responsibility for their actions. You hit that guy in the bar and laid him out. You have to own that?”
“You’d rather sleep with a criminal?”
“In your case, I’d rather sleep with an honest criminal than a rich liar.”
She ran her tongue up the length of his cock and swirled it over the throbbing head.
He braced himself against the shower walls and groaned deeply.
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious about who I fuck.”
As she stood up from her kneeling position, she enclosed his cock with her breasts and slid them up and over until he bobbed loose again.
“I have to get going, but you let me know what you decide.”
Before he could even focus his eyes, she had stepped out of the shower and was nearly dried off. He ripped back the shower curtain and stared at her.
“You’ve lost your fucking mind. I can’t go to jail.”
“I didn’t say jail, I said plead guilty. Unless you have a criminal record we are unaware of, then you will most likely pay some fines and do some community service. It’s not about the punishment; it’s about taking ownership of yourself and your actions.”
Draco was still baffled by the sudden change of events, and had barely wrapped the towel around his waist before she had her hair coiled into a bun, was dressed back in her suit, and was at the elevator door bidding him goodbye.
Chapter Eleven
Taylor had barely walked through the door of her own apartment before her cell phone started jangling loudly from the depths of her purse. She looked at the number and knew she was about to get fired.
“Hello?” she tried to make her voice sound steady to her boss on the other end.
“You want to explain the phone call I just finished? Draco Morgan told me to enter a plea of not guilty for him.”
She grinned to herself; apparently his desire for sex was pretty strong.
“We had a long chat this afternoon about taking responsibility for his actions. I guess he was paying attention.”
“Ms. Skiles, we are not being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to create criminal records for these guys. We are paid to
stop
that.”
“I told him that a lot of people are more impressed with someone who owns up to his mistakes than someone who always comes out squeaky clean.”
She smirked at her own private pun, since she came out of that shower squeaky clean.
“That took balls,” the partner stated, “and I can admire that kind of courage and guts. Let’s have a chat about your future with the firm on Monday when I’m back in town.”
She clicked off the phone, but it only stayed silent for a moment before an unknown number jangled through.
“Hello?” she answered again.
“So I made the call,” his deep voice rumbled.
“I know, I was just informed, and I had to explain myself,” she laughed.
“So how about that date?”
She shook her head, “Still got a little ache, hmm?”
He huffed into the phone, “Something like that. I’ll text you a time for tomorrow night,” and he was gone.
She shook her head and slipped the phone back in her purse. It was about seven in the evening on Friday and she was tired. Taylor tossed her suit into the dry cleaning pile and collapsed into her tee shirt and yoga pants. Several hours later, Taylor woke up on the couch and staggered to her bed for the rest of the night.
The next morning she awoke around 9:00AM to her cell phone chirping the alert that a text message had been delivered. All it said was “1:00PM”.
Nice and cryptic
, she thought.
I’m a little afraid of what he has in mind. And 1:00PM? What kind of date starts in the middle of the day?
She decided that she would take the rare Saturday off, and sipped her second cup of coffee, curled back up on the couch still in her yoga pants. After about her fourth cup, she decided to take a nice long shower and get ready.
As the cool water soaked her long blonde hair and soothed her skin, she lathered and rinsed. She also carefully shaved everything below the neck, knowing that it would cost her dearly if she said no to Draco this time and wanting to make a good impression even for just one night.
With her hair wrapped in a towel, she stood in front of her closet, trying to pick an outfit for an unknown activity at an unknown destination. She finally chose a simple black shift dress and a light pink cardigan. It seemed casual enough just in case and dressy enough, also just in case. She also blew dry her hair smooth, and applied her makeup with a light but practiced hand.
Right at 1:00PM, she exited her apartment building as the town car pulled up. It was the same gentleman who had delivered her to the penthouse building the previous day, and he closed the door softly behind her.
As they drove off, she tried to interrogate him, “Where are we going? Do you know what Draco has in mind?”
The driver stayed devoted to his employer and simply declined to answer. The tinted windows were so dark that she could barely see where they were headed. After about thirty minutes, they came to a stop and the driver walked around to let her out. She gaped as she shouldered her purse and stepped out. Draco was waving down at her from the metal staircase that led up and into the private jet that sat idling on the tarmac.
“Right on time,” he yelled over the background engine noise.
As she climbed the stairs and stopped facing him, his face broke into a grin.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
She smirked at him, “Guess that’s up to you later…”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and ushered her inside, “I hope it will be the first of many.”
THE END
Annie hid around the corner of the plain brown brick building, and tapped the toe of her tennis shoe against the still surface of the puddle on the ground. When the ripples shuddered away from the contact, she waved her hands to disperse the swarm of mosquitoes that took flight into the muggy air. She took one last hard drag on her cigarette and listened closely to the sizzle of the cherry red end. As she exhaled slowly, she dropped the butt into the puddle and heard a satisfying hiss as it hit the water. She tapped the stagnant puddle one more time and watched the circular ripples spread and then fade.
It’s now or never
, she thought as she rounded the corner and pushed open the door to the dim, air-conditioned gym.
She still was not sure what made her sign up for such a class. She considered herself to be in good shape for a runner and yet here she was in her oversized tee shirt and baggy sweatpants, almost ready for her first session at the mixed martial arts facility. Although if she admitted the truth, she was not so much ready as she was resigned. In all of her twenty-six years, she had not done anything quite this spontaneous or this insane. Her sister thought she had lost her mind and her best friend had laughed at her. It was so nice to have that kind of support. She had showed up for the first session just to show both of them that she could handle it. The second one was to be determined.
The nights at home alone were particularly isolated since she was not single. Single would have almost been better because that circumstance at least did not come with any expectation of company or companionship. Not that she would have gone out of her way to find any, but at least as a single woman, she could have found temporary comfort in someone without the guilt.
But the years with Ken had done a number on her self-esteem, to the point where she could not even bring herself to leave him. Annie was certainly self-sufficient financially. In fact, she made more than he did so that was not what kept her tied to him. It was the comfort factor versus facing the unknown.
The unknown. She silently laughed to herself as she stood at the front desk waiting for instructions.
This is about as unknown as it gets
, she thought.
The young woman finally hung up the phone and looked at Annie disdainfully.
“Can I
help
you?” she asked scornfully.
“Yes, I have my first class tonight. I don’t remember the name of my instructor though. I’m Annie Michaels.” She tucked the loose strands of her long blonde hair behind her ears in a nervous gesture.
“Oh ok. You’re with Tony tonight. He’ll be out shortly. Have a seat over there.”
Annie nodded, and perched on the edge of the plastic chair to wait. She fiddled with the straps of her purse and looked around the small waiting area. The hard plastic chairs were far from comfortable but so was she. The magazines on the scratched and dented coffee table looked about as recent as those you would find in any doctor’s office. Of course, these subscriptions were not for “Better Homes and Gardens”. She had never heard of these before, but the once-glossy covers all held pictures of heavily muscled men and women in various threatening poses and glares.
She half-expected this Tony to look like Conan the Barbarian and to come bursting through the wooden door like a high school football player coming through the homecoming banner. She clenched her purse tighter as though it would protect her from the assault.
Instead, Tony came strutting through the door quietly but wearing his arrogance like a prize fighter would wear his trophy belt. He walked up to her and stared down at her. She felt overweight and frumpy under his gaze and tried not to fidget in her chair.
Dammit
, she thought.
Of course he had to be hot. Of course Tony couldn’t be a pudgy woman in her fifties.
She looked all the way up his 6’4” frame and into his calm brown eyes. He had that air about him that said he knew he was hot. She sighed as she stood up, realizing then that she only came up to his chest. She tried not to notice the intoxicating aroma of deodorant and masculinity. He ran his palm over his shaved scalp and sighed deeply.
“You have to be Annie. I’m Tony. Guess we better get started then. I have my work cut out for me.” He turned on his heel and headed back through the door with Annie scrambling to keep up.
He gestured to an open door on the right and let her pass through first. “Here we are.”
The cinderblock room looked pretty small, since it was filled with thick blue pads and a variety of equipment. She dropped her purse in the corner of the room where he pointed.
“Did you need to change clothes?”
“N-N-No.”
“You’re going to do this in those?”
“Y-Y-Yeah. I guess.”
“You may want something a little more form-fitting next time. The baggy clothes will hinder your movements.”
Annie nodded, unsure if she was comfortable showing up in less clothing.
Tony had been wearing an oversized hoodie with his basketball-type shorts but he shed it quickly and tossed it on top of her purse. She tried not to stare open-mouthed at the cut of his body underneath the trim tank top. He did not have a barbarian bulk, but instead he had the lean muscle that probably offered more agility than the bulk would have allowed him. His arms seemed perfectly defined as did his chest. And she strongly suspected she would find chiseled abs under the shirt. She could not study his legs without appearing obvious, but she was certain they were firm and fit as well.