The girl recovers from her shock, somehow. “I’m new here. Bianca. I missed orientation. I’m sorry, the trains were running late. It won’t happen again, I swear. But they told me at the front desk that you’d still be in the room and I should just come in and introduce myself, so I—”
I hold up a hand. I don’t like excuses. They bore me. “It’s fine,” I tell her. “As long as it doesn’t happen again.” But I’m also not without compassion for a new girl on her first day. “Is there anything else?”
She hesitates. Glances down at my ring, yet again, like she can’t quite help herself. Like she’s double checking to see if she imagined things. “Uh, no, sir, except it’s just… I’m supposed to be one of your assistants, so if there’s anything you need, please let me know and I’m happy to help.”
I finger the ring that she won’t stop eying. Unlike my mother’s ring, which I gifted to Mara, this one Mara bought me herself, rather drunkenly, at a pawn shop on the Strip. I doubt very much that she remembers that point in the night. But she insisted on buying me a ring with her own money, in spite of my protests.
It resulted in the ring I’m wearing, which has already turned my left ring finger an unpleasant shade of green, thanks to the mostly brass core under its cheap gold plating.
I don’t care. I don’t intend to ever take the damn thing off, no matter if it turns my whole hand green in the end.
I narrow my eyes at Bianca, daring her to comment. But she just forces a bright, bubbly smile and keeps on chattering, about her skills in Excel and how her previous experience as a concierge will help with keeping my schedule in order.
I respond with a bland smile of my own, unable to stop wishing that she was gone, and Mara was back here in this room with me, alone once more.
5
Mara
I can’t believe this. This is an actual nightmare. A disaster.
I finally get my dream job. The position I’ve been working toward my entire life. And I wasn’t lying about what I said to John earlier—no amount of money could make me quit this job. But I can’t stop running over his words in my head.
You won’t be quitting this job for love or money.
Why did he put it that way? The word love keeps reverberating through my mind. Chased by his other words. We’d still be seeing each other every single day, for hours and hours…
God, I love watching you come.
And the way he backed me up against the wall, his hands drifting over my chest. I could hardly breathe. I knew I should have told him to stop; I should have pushed him away and told him we were ending this marriage, and any potential for a physical relationship between us along with it. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make my body move, because my damn traitorous body didn’t want to move.
I wanted his hands all over me.
I wanted him to kiss me until I couldn’t think of any reason not to keep kissing him.
I wanted him to pull my skirt up around my waist and fuck me right there in that board room, against the wall of the fancy offices he built from the ground up. I wanted to feel his hands all over my body again, the way they did that night in Vegas, exploring me, touching me, drawing me out until I was putty in his hands, gasping and screaming his name.
I wanted his cock inside me again. And it makes my clit feel heavy with want again now, just to think about it. I’m sure I’m wet, though I’m too nervous to check my panties and make sure.
I suck in a deep breath—then two and three more, trying to steady myself. I’m supposed to be modeling some deer antlers out of clay for the first set project. My direct manager set me up with the kind of workspace I could only dream about in the past, complete with every type of power tool and supply I could possibly dream of, in order to create sets out of my wildest daydreams.
I’ve got my gloves on, and I’m elbow deep in modeling clay, shaping the antlers, coaxing them out of the mold and into a shape that will be large enough to be seen from the audience, but still a realistic size and complexity for the animal I’m mimicking. But even as I work, I can feel the scrape of this ridiculously huge ring inside the oversized gloves I’m wearing. And all it does is keep dragging my mind away from the task at hand, back in time to the board room where John pinned me against the wall, and where I wish he’d done so much more.