Us
One
“For the last time, NO, I will not meet you in the supply closet,” I hissed into the phone as Lucah tried, once again, to convince me to sneak away from my desk for a mid-afternoon tryst. “You don’t seem to understand the fact that if either of us does something like that and gets caught, we’re both out on our asses. And I don’t have a back-up job as a corporate spy.”
“I’m not a corporate spy,” he said in his grumpy voice. I could just picture his face, even though his desk is no longer right across from mine. I glanced up at Lilia, my new assistant. She was staring at her computer but as soon as she felt my gaze on her, terror bloomed in her eyes. Yeah, she was a little afraid of me.
“Look, I’ll see you in a few hours. If there’s no one in the elevator, you can totally grope me.” I had to compromise.
He sighed heavily. “It’s not the same, but I guess I can live with it. See you later, Sunshine.”
“Bye, Mr. Blythe.” I hung up and couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. That man made me so damn happy, sometimes it was hard to breathe.
A timid knock at the door broke me out of my happy love haze and I looked up to find Lilia hovering just outside of the door. I took a deep breath and tried to remember that she was young and she was new, and I had to be patient.
Clarke Enterprises was embarking on an intense public relations campaign to rehab our image after several of our employees were caught embezzling money and using it to fund a drug business. So we cleaned house and hired on a bunch of college students as interns, including Lilia. Her résumé had been the best, but she’d sort of bombed the interview. Still, I wanted to give her a chance, so here we were.
“Miss Clarke? I have those new Codes of Conduct for you to sign off on.” Her voice was midway between a whisper and a squeak. In spite of being twenty-two, but she looked much younger, with large brown eyes and a nose that was too small for her face. But that girl knew how to dress, which was one of the things that made me hire her. She could give Sloane a run for her money in her navy jumper with a white shirt underneath and a little shrug on top. Her shoes were also fabulous, and I’d often found myself wondering if we were the same size so I could borrow them.
“Great, thank you Lilia. If you just want to put them here, I’ll get to them when I can.” Now that Lucah was no longer my assistant, I was quickly realizing how much he actually did for me, a lot of it without me even knowing. I’d been trying to train Lilia to do things the way I wanted, but it was slow going. I may also have lost my patience with her a few times, which helped to increase her abject terror when she was in my presence.
I gave her a smile, but that didn’t change the deer-in-the-headlights look she still had on her face. Maybe it was just that her eyes were so big. I should probably stop staring at her.
“Did you need something else?” I tried to make my voice as soft as I could. As if I was talking to a baby or a scared animal.
“No. Um, yes. I was just thinking that maybe I could start flagging your emails at three levels? Yellow, orange and red? Then you could deal with the absolute most important and work your way down.” I was stunned for a moment. Firstly, I remembered Lucah doing almost the exact same thing when he started working for me, and second, that was an excellent idea and I was ticked I hadn’t already thought of it.
“Oh. Yeah. That’s a great idea, Lilia. If you wouldn’t mind doing that it would help me out so much.”
“Oh. Great. Thank you, Miss Clarke.” She turned to go back to her desk.
“Lilia?” She almost cringed, as if I was going to smack her. Jesus Christ. “If you have any other ideas like that, please don’t hesitate to come to me with them. It’s a really good idea.” Miracle of miracles, she cracked the tiniest of smiles. There was hope for her yet.
My phone rang and she scuttled back to her desk. I looked at the caller ID before I picked up, and that caused me to roll my eyes.
“Can I help you Mr. Blythe?”
“Just hear me out . . .” I closed my eyes. He was relentless.
~*~*~
“Well hello, Mr. Blythe. Fancy meeting you here at the elevators.” I put on a mask of shock. As if I were surprised to see him on my floor.
“Why, Miss Clarke. It’s as much a shock to me as it is to you. Shall we ride down together?” He reached for the down button and I fought to keep a straight face. Only a few people knew Lucah and I were together and I wanted to keep it that way. There were definitely people who would use it to try to get rid of me.
“Why Mr. Blythe, what a splendid idea.” He pushed the button and we waited for the door to open. Touching or kissing was out of the question, no matter how much both of us wanted to. We kept a strict three-foot space between us. It was almost sexier that way. I could feel the desire building already and I knew that neither of us was going to get much sleep tonight. Both of us had been so stressed with work lately, and with the addition of Lucah’s disaster of a brother, Ryder, some nights we came home and just collapsed in bed. Like an old married couple. Maybe I should start putting my hair in rollers at night, and Lucah should start reading mysteries with bifocals.
The elevator opened and we both heaved a sigh of relief when it was empty.
“After you, Miss Clarke,” he said, gesturing to the blissfully empty elevator.
“Thank you, Mr. Blythe.” As soon as the doors clicked closed, that three feet of space was gone.
“Hello, Miss Clarke.” Lucah said into my mouth.
“Hello, Mr. Blythe.” His entire body pressed against me, and my skin ignited under my clothes. Clothes. Such pesky things. Always getting in the way.
Our mouths started a feverish dance of lips and tongues and sometimes clashing teeth and noses. I didn’t care, he didn’t care, it was all about getting close, close, closer.