Chapter One
Ella
I couldn't take my eyes off her butt.
It was currently bare and resting atop the dark cherry wood desk. She was my fiancé's secretary. The cherry wood desk was my fiancé's desk in his office in Concord, New Hampshire.
It was Saturday morning, and I'd felt so bad for poor Derek, who had been working extra hard to get as much work out of the way before our wedding ceremony, which was only months away. He'd been putting in fourteen hour days six days a week. He even slept in the office a couple of times, because he was working late to get everything caught up at the office.
That Saturday morning, I decided to drive down from Dartmouth College where I was finishing my BA and pick up some bagels and coffee, bringing them to the office so we could at least have breakfast together. He was going out of town that night on a business trip and weekends were the only time we had together while I was finishing up my spring term. A week after I was done, I would graduate with my Bachelor's Degree in English with a concentration in creative writing. Then, we were getting married a month later.
He usually drove up to Hanover to stay with me Friday and Saturday night, but he was going out of town so I thought I'd surprise him with bagels and coffee, and maybe get in some hot sex before he flew to Washington.
That was when I realized the picture-perfect life I thought I had was a sham.
Wealthy family, great education, attentive best friend, and on top of it, engaged to a handsome, well-educated corporate lawyer working for my father. Square-jawed and firm abs -- the whole package. After graduating with a BA in English, I was planning on getting a job as a business editor in Concord where Derek and I would live and starting a family. We were the couple everyone else wished they were. We went to charity events and gala openings. We were invited to all the most important parties.
Even my father approved, and he was a stickler for credentials and breeding. My father, the Emmet Carlson, Governor of New Hampshire, was hard to please but Derek Marshall pleased him. The two of them couldn't wait to be Father- and Son-in-Law.
We were engaged to be married at a resort in July in Bermuda, with our closest friends and family in attendance. Then, I'd start my new life as Mrs. Derek Marshall, wife to the future Congressman and maybe even, one day, first lady to the President of the United States of America. Why not?
Everything was truly perfect.
Or so I thought.
Then I saw her naked butt on the cherry wood desk and was as much mesmerized as I was horrified while Derek pumped into her, her butt cheeks squishing and jerking in unison with each of his grunting thrusts.
Yes, I found Derek, who henceforth and forthwith shall be known as Jerkface, boinking his sexretary on the desk in his huge corner office.
Jerkface was in the last throes of passion and Bunni was all, "Oh, baby, baby, pound me, pound me harder..."
I dropped the bagels and coffee on the floor in the doorway to his office, interrupting him while he was ramming into her, her bare ass on the Johnston file. Then I turned on my heel and left the office, jamming my finger against the elevator button, my world collapsing around me.
I was too shocked to know how to respond. I only knew I had to get out of there and fast.
"Ella!" Jerkface grabbed his slacks and managed to slip them on, covering up his now limp dick, and caught up with me at the elevator just as the door opened. "Ellie, baby, I'm so sorry! Don't get the wrong idea about what you saw," he said, actual panic in his voice, practically tears in his eyes. "Oh, Ellie, sweetheart, don't look at me like that! I love you. She means nothing to me. It was just a one-time thing."
"I heard that," Bunni called out from the depths of the office.
"Ellie, it means nothing. I was anxious about the wedding and the work has been overwhelming and--."
He got to my side, the waistband of his slacks in his hands. "Ellie..."
"Fuck off, you fucking jerk." I stepped inside the car and pressed the down button, my vision blurred from my tears. He was still zipping up his slacks as the doors closed and I was finally alone.
"Ellie! Don't do this!" he called out as the elevator began its descent.
Luckily, his voice soon faded and before I knew it, I was out of the building, running down the street, wiping my cheeks and trying not to sob out loud.
I arrived at my car and opened the door, sliding into the driver's seat before locking the doors and letting my tears flow.