Forbidden Desires Box Set Page 12

  I breathed in through my nose then pushed that air out of my mouth. “Are you saying that you think you require a legal document that threatens me with monetary consequences for me not to tell anyone about our… whatever we’re doing?”

  “Hey, it’s there to protect you too.”

  No. I couldn’t do this. It was too weird.

  I set the papers down and pushed Mr. Fitzgerald out from between my legs before hopping down to the ground.

  “I need to go.” I may have only just recently lost my virginity, but I hadn’t been born yesterday. I knew that I was being insulted even if Fitz didn’t. The gall of him, to throw a contract towards me like I was some pawn that he could buy off. Like he could own my words and my story with his legalese and flock of lawyers.

  “Wait, what’s wrong?” he tried to catch me, still laughing lightly like he thought I was joking, but I batted his hands away. That seemed to be when he got that it wasn’t a joke anymore and his tone turned serious. “Wait, Bev, what’s going on? What happened?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I snapped, heading straight out the door.

  “Bev, you can’t go out there barefoot and practically naked!”

  I reached his doorknob, grabbing my purse then throwing the entrance open, giving him only a single glance over my shoulder. “Watch me,” I spat and then I was out and walking.

  It was still so early in the morning that not even the sun was out. I wasn’t worried about anyone spotting me in my walk of fury, just as I wasn’t really worried about being late to work -if I even went. If I could even stomach looking at his face so soon. But even with my anger warming me, I knew I needed to plan ahead at least a little bit.

  I could call a cab or an uber later, my phone was safely tucked in the waistband of his underwear. Yeah, that was practical enough to soothe the matter of fact part of my mind. I would be responsible, I would make sure I got home safely, but for now, I just needed to walk and let my anger burn off.

  I had known that it was stupid to sleep with my boss, that I was only going to get hurt. I guessed that I just hadn’t expected for it to happen so soon.

  Oh well, lesson learned. Maybe I didn’t know a lot, but I did know that letting him try to bind me with that contract went against everything I stood for.

  And if I didn’t stay standing for something, then I was going to fall for everything, and I had survived far too much to sink into that trap.

  I couldn’t take my virginity back, but I could take back my trust, and it seemed like that was just what I was going to have to do.

  Pity.

  Fitz

  “Jessica!” I bellowed, not even getting up from my desk. One of my secretaries quickly skittered in, looking more stressed than she had in weeks.

  “You want to tell me why none of my reports are on my desk like they’re supposed to be?”

  “Apologies,” she said quickly. “With Beverly having called out we’re struggling a bit with covering all of the bases she usually covers.”

  “She’s only been here a month,” I snapped. “You survived when she wasn’t here; don’t be lazy.”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. We’ll get you those reports ASAP.”

  I knew that I was being a piece of shit, but I was angry. I’d been having the best night I’d had in years and then somehow, all of it had ended up on its head.

  Sleeping with Bev had been everything that I had wanted and more. Virgin though she may have been, it was like she had been made for me. Made for worship. Her skin had been so soft, and her womanhood had been perfectly warm and wet. Any tighter and I wouldn’t have been able to get in. She was everything that I had ever wanted and more.

  And then she’d stormed out of my house like I was evil incarnate.

  All because of a stupid stack of papers.

  I had thought that she would understand. Beverly had long since proven to me that she was both practical and driven. While I wished I didn’t have to have an NDA for anyone in the industry that I shared the night with, I’d long since learned my lesson.

  It’s happened about a dozen years earlier, when a woman I’d had a tryst with had tried to blackmail me. It had been such a PR nightmare because she had taken… er… photographic evidence of certain things and wanted quite a pretty penny for them.

  I remembered feeling stupid after. Tricked. Used. And I vowed to never put myself into that situation again. The contract protected me, made sure that my trust couldn’t be violated again. If Bev had just given me a chance to explain, I was certain she would have gotten it. She knew what it was like for people to break their word, to take advantage.

  Or would she?

  Maybe I was just far too hung up on her. Like she had said multiple times, she was just an assistant. A nobody. A recent graduate who hadn’t had a chance to amount to anything and would stand to benefit quite a bit by being involved with me.

  Perhaps that was why she was so angered by the contract. Maybe she’d had nefarious purposes in mind and was upset that he cut her off at the pass. Maybe her entire virginity story was fabricated to try to lure him in.

  No.

  I knew that wasn’t the case.

  Bev wasn’t the type to lie, and even if she did, I could tell that she had never had sex before. While people’s obsession with the hymen was so scientifically inaccurate it was often ridiculous, there were other ways to tell. The nervousness, the uncertainty, the way her body resisted his push like it had never been entered.

  The way she had looked at him with those green, green eyes.

  I sighed and let my head rest in my hands. What was I doing?

  “Mr. Fitzgerald?”

  The intercom at my door buzzed with my other secretary’s voice and I tried not to automatically bark out a response. I wasn’t a child, throwing a temper tantrum because I didn’t get what I wanted. I didn’t need to take my crankiness out on my employees.

  Even if they were grating on my last nerve.

  Maybe I was the one who’d gotten too reliant on Bev’s soothing presence.

  “Yes?”

  “Charlie’s here for you, sir.” I didn’t like her using the same honorific that Bev used for me. It sounded wrong. Grating.

  “What? I thought we were supposed to meet Thursday.”

  “He says he’s here for pleasure, sir. Not business. He’d like to take you out to lunch if you still have time for old friends like him. Those are his words, sir. Not mine.”

  “Yeah, I figured.” I rubbed my temples, wanting more than anything to send him away. But I couldn’t just sulk because my hookup was mad at me. I had a business to run, after all.

  “Fine. Tell him I’m on my way down.”

  There was a pause where I assumed, she was using her company phone to relay my agreement to Charlie. He had the number of both of them, of course, as well as several other high-level managers. “He says he’s out front in his town car. Try not to dawdle.”

  “Tell him to shove it,” I said, managing the slightest chuckle at the old goat’s chutzpah before getting out from behind my desk. If anyone could distract me, it was him.

  Our lunch ended up taking two hours and did help the afternoon go faster, but I still felt scraped like a raw nerve by the time I got home. I went straight to my bed and collapsed, hoping it would comfort me, but instead I still smelled Bev’s presence.

  It had to be mostly in my head considering that I had changed the sheets, but just like my desk she lingered there, marking me. I just wanted some peace, but my mind kept returning to her again and again.

  “This is ridiculous,” I told myself, groaning and holding my head in my hands. I’d had lots of great sex before. Why was I letting this young, orphan girl from nowhere affect me like she was Aphrodite herself?

  I didn’t know, and I didn’t like what that particular line of thought made me think. Life was always better when my work was my center and the rest of my life was only fun. Bev wasn’t fun. She was wonder and ecstasy and warmth but not f
un. She was far too intense for that.

  I groaned and draped an arm over my face, wondering if I had lost her forever. Because as much as I told myself that I shouldn’t care, that I was being stupid, I couldn’t help but feel a jagged sort of loss in my bed where she had just been not too long ago.

  Bev

  I laid in my bed, staring up at the ceiling like I had a personal vendetta against it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the roof that was taxing my nerves, but it was the only thing I had in front of me to aim all my eye-daggers at.

  I knew I shouldn’t have called off of work, but I was way too mad, too hurt to see Fitz’ face again.

  Stupid. I just felt so stupid. I should have waited longer, gotten to know Fitz better. If I hadn’t just jumped into bed with him the first chance I got, then I was sure that I would have known what was up. But I had been so blinded by my lust and his charm that I had just taken a swan dive into something I couldn’t take back.

  But as I remembered his gentle hands on me, and how good everything had felt, I couldn’t bring myself to regret it that much.

  “Aw, come on, Bev. Get over it!”

  Yeah right. Like someone ever got over a gorgeous sonofabitch like that turning their world inside out.

  Growling to myself, I rolled over and grabbed my laptop from where I had left it on my night stand. I’d never heard of an NDA for sex before, which was part of why I was so blindsided, but there had to have been someone else on the big ol’ web that had experience with it.

  Expecting nothing and not certain what to hope for, I went to a search engine and started typing. It took me a couple tries to find the right sort of keywords, but eventually I had several forums and news aggregate sites all on the topic.

  I clicked the first one, which was a forum post on an article about sexual NDAs and there were thousands of comments on it. Surprised that I had found it so easily for what I thought would be an obscure thing, I read the article first.

  Its title was ridiculous. Contracting NDAs, a New Precaution for the Rich and Famous, but as I read it, I found it was fairly competently and informatively written. Apparently, NDAs weren’t that uncommon. In fact, they were borderline popular amongst celebrities and other social influencers.

  Huh. That was not what I had expected.

  The article also neither condemned or encouraged the things, just gave information, which I appreciated. But when I finished, I found myself not knowing really how to feel, so I looked to the comments.

  Some were jokes that I rolled my eyes at. Some of them were condemnations of our sexual culture. But a few stood out to me. Made on what were called ‘throw away accounts’, a couple of users explained why they used them. One had been black mailed and ended up moving his entire business to get away from all of it. Another had her personal information and photo spread online as her ex-fling had bragged to everyone, he could about her. Another had the person contacting all of his exes to say that he had given her an STD.

  As far as I could tell from the handful of comments, the absolute dickery was from all genders, all sexualities, and all ages. These people told about how they had been tricked, and used, and I couldn’t help but feel so terrible for them.

  “Huh,” I murmured to myself, absently chewing on my thumb. “You don’t think… no…” I only talked to myself when I didn’t want to believe something my mind was supplying, but before I could argue further, my fingers were already typing.

  A moment later, hundreds of gossip sites came up. The first five just had articles from the current year about his growing empire and his singleness, but going a bit further, I found posts from slightly over a decade ago.

  Huh, that was kind of a blow to my mind. The internet was old enough for stupid celebrity gossip sites to be past their tenth birthday. Wild.

  I clicked on the first article, and sure enough I saw exactly what I had thought I’d see.

  Billionaire Blackmail! The Sordid Details of William Fitzgerald’s Bed.

  “Oh boy…”

  For a moment part of me felt guilty for looking at the article. Like I was violating some sort of trust. But Fitz didn’t know what I was doing, and I found myself needing to know, needing to understand why he had handed me those papers like it was just a matter of course.

  It was exactly what I had thought.

  He’d had a woman in his bed, some up and coming model who was trying to make a splash, and she’d tried to use him to propel herself into the public eye. When he wasn’t willing to use his influence and wanted to keep their relationship purely on the pleasure side of things, she’s used… uh…. some personal, private mementos that he had shared during their tryst to try to black mail him.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  I didn’t want to read more because I could tell there was a whole mess about it. Scrolling down and skimming, I saw several lawyer’s names and about six or so pages worth of text. Whatever had happened between them was long, drawn out, and far too many people had gotten intimately involved with Fitz’ business.

  I sat back, hugging myself as I tried to think. I knew how private Fitz was because I was the same way. Hell, he was the only one that I had told I was a virgin since freshmen year of college. I could only imagine how much he hated that entire period of his life. So of course, he would want to protect himself and make sure that it never happened again.

  He was just protecting himself.

  And me.

  That thought came to me as a belated epiphany as my mind repeated one of the other comments that had been on the forum post. It had been from an actress who was just a nobody when she slept with another woman who was pretty high up a business ladder. Everything was normal for a while and she forgot about the contract entirely, but then her star had really taken off and the business woman had tried to use that to her advantage. One trip to the lawyer’s later with the NDA in hand, and the business woman backed off while the starlet was able to land her second movie roll.

  “I…uh… I think I messed up,” I murmured to no one in particular. Because I was always alone. And I was always alone because I never really trusted anyone to get close enough. If I didn’t trust anyone enough to be a friend, how could I blame Fitz for not trusting anyone to leave his bed without proof that they wouldn’t try to hurt him?

  I groaned and flopped back on the bed, feeling silly for having assumed the worst. But how did I go about making up something like this? Had I ruined everything?

  I was too experienced to know, even though I felt like it was a yes, so I supposed that all I could do was try.

  “But how?” I asked myself and the ceiling above me.

  Unsurprisingly, the ceiling didn’t answer.

  Fitz

  I strode into work with a storm cloud over my head and I could feel everyone that I passed trying not to stare.

  I was late, which hadn’t happened unplanned in three years, but I just hadn’t wanted to come into work. I hadn’t wanted to see Bev’s empty desk. Hadn’t wanted to come to terms with the fact that I had chased her off without really trying. Hadn’t wanted to think about why her absence affected me so and why I was so upset.

  I could have gone on vacation. I was the CEO and owner, I could do whatever I want. But somehow the thought of galivanting off to where I would have nothing to occupy my thoughts was even worse, so instead I headed in.

  But not before dragging my feet about it.

  I was braced for another sour morning to bleed into another sour day, nearly throwing open the door to my office, but I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw a steaming cup of coffee from my favorite place sitting on my desk.

  I looked behind me. Neither of my secretaries were there.

  But if not them…who?

  “Morning, sir.”

  I looked over to see Bev dutifully filing the papers that I hadn’t bothered with during her absence, already so familiar with my filing system that she didn’t need instructions from me to do so.

  “You’re here,” I
breathed, so surprised that I wasn’t quite sure what to say beyond stating the obvious.

  “Yes, and just in time, it seems. You have a meeting in fifteen minutes with an investor, and then Charlie after that. Do you need me to fetch you some breakfast?”

  “Uh, no. I ate.” I said, still in a bit of shock as I went to sit behind my desk.

  “Ah, is that why you’re late?”

  Her tone was gently curious but… there was something else there. “I had things on my mind.”

  “I see.”

  She went about continuing her task, and I could see from her profile that she was concentrating fairly hard. I opened and closed my mouth several times to talk to her, but in the end, I had no idea what to say so I just didn’t say anything.

  Why was she here? What had happened? Had she decided that her job was worth more than caring about the horrible ending to our coupling? Were we both supposed to pretend that nothing had happened? Could I pretend that nothing had happened?

  I didn’t know.

  And I didn’t feel like I could ask.

  Time slipped by painfully slowly and yet I was still surprised when she looked up from your task. “It’s about time for your meeting sir. Will you need me to take notes?”

  The thought of her sitting behind me in the meeting room, so close that I could hear the scritch of her pen across her notebook or feel her gentle breathing, was far too much. “No, that should be fine. Finish what you need to up here.”

  “Of course, Sir. Shall I bring you your usual for lunch, or will you want me to order a whole spread for the investor?”

  “No, it’s too early for that. Just bring my usual order when Charlie’s here. Have the secretaries give you his usual as well.”

  “Yes sir, I can do that.”

  I nodded, mouth far too dry considering how polite and relaxed she was acting, then headed out. A million and one thoughts were going through my head, but I couldn’t concentrate on a single one of them, each one flying along the tracks of my mind for just a second before disappearing to make room for the next.