Breaking Joseph (5 page)

We stayed
locked that way for a long moment. He breathed over me slowly, his
fingers stroking through my hair and tugging gently at my scalp.
His cock sat at the entrance, now–my lips wet him with a swollen
kiss. I closed my eye as we rocked together, as his head made
sticky trails back over my clit. When he broke the embrace, his
mouth trailing down my belly and his wide hands squeezing my
breasts, my resolve withered.

No, no, he
would. Not. Win.

A very
deliberate lick over my clit made me shudder. I brushed the hair
from his eyes as his tongue curved, harder now. My hips rose up to
meet him, but the rest of me was tied to the bed with invisible
rope.

“You won’t…you
won’t break me,” I said.

He caressed my
calf as he brought it to rest on his shoulder. Again with the
tongue. “I love these wet orgasms you have.” His groan warmed the
inside of my thigh. “I want to be able to taste you all through the
meeting.”

Give in,
give in, give in,
said Charlotte. Then I remembered his
boasting the night before.
You have the weirdest way of talking
to women. It works.
Nature said I ought to submit to him, to my
body, to my thoughtless desires.

But I could be
insolent too.

As I rose from
my elbows, I tore pink flesh from his mouth. His bemused expression
implied he measured my distance in disappointment. Up on my hands
and knees–like the animal I’d accused him of being–I crawled over,
knelt and pressed his hand between my thighs. He drew a thick
finger across my slit and I tugged it, now soaked and glossy, up to
my mouth to smear. When I was painted, I sucked off the remainder
while he rubbed it over my tongue.

Then came the
kiss.

He ate at me
like I was supple melon, fruit to be reshaped to his appetite,
juices enough to stain his skin. His hands spanned my jaw, holding
me tightly in place, and he kissed the same way he fucked: sharp,
thorough and intricate. The rhythm that governed was entirely his
own.

“There,” I
whispered. “That will have to do.”

“You’re really
going to make me wait, aren’t you?” He bit my shoulder and paused
to inspect the mark. “Little villain.”

“I think you
exhausted your quota yesterday as it was,” I teased.

He hauled
himself up and began to flick through shirts in the wardrobe. “I
didn’t know I had a quota.”

“Oh yes. You
evidently haven’t used enough whores, Mr Merchant. You get three
shots at anal, six point four blowjobs and if you’re lucky, a
massage.”

“I might take
you up on the massage later.” He shot an amused look over his
shoulder. “Though I’ve had my share of whores three times over, and
I think you’re talking shite.”

I perched on
the end of the bed, swinging my pretty heels and watching him
dress. “How many?”

“What, call
girls?”

Crunch. Crunch.
The heels crushed the carpet as I walked over and began to do up
his buttons. “Yep.”

“I must’ve
hired forty or fifty, thinking about it. Maybe more. Though I
didn’t fuck all of them.”

My eyebrow shot
up, rigid with cynicism, and his snort of derision was comical.

“You must know
what it’s like, Leila. Some girls turn up looking more interested
in the wallpaper. Or they’re wired. Or they don’t even speak
English, for fuck’s sake–they’ve been shipped in from
God-knows-where and they’re terrified. My own hand was more likely
to get wet…I wasn’t about to fuck them.” He tapped my nose. “So I
handed them the envelope for their troubles, and graciously told
them to sod off.”

“If you wanted
a girl who wanted
you
, why not just take one out for
dinner?”

He shrugged.
“For the same reason as all your clients, I imagine.”

I brushed a
hair from his shirt–my particular brand of auburn against his white
cotton, coiled as if it belonged there. “Not all my clients looked
like you,” I said, “and very few would have sent a girl home.”

“Yeah,
well…when I take women out, they’re either not subtly slutty enough
or they end up like Isobel. I seem to attract the
desperate-for-Daddy type.”

My cheeks
roared with the sudden flush and he stifled a laugh.

“
You
,
Leila?”

“Only with one
guy,” I mumbled.

“Not me?”

“No.” I toyed
with his belt buckle as he fastened it. “You’re all different.”

“Good. Because
if you ask me to put a collar on you, I won’t be able to do it with
a straight face.”

“Saves me
having to check your wardrobe for leather trousers.” I grinned.

“If I wanted a
girl who wouldn’t shut up and wouldn’t fuck me, I could’ve had any
old succubus from the lounge last night.”

I giggled.
“Instead, you have suck-you-boss.”

“Stop being so
bloody clever and put some clothes on.”

The preceding
spank was sharp and fizzy, and I darted away only to topple off my
heels. The bed caught me and I struggled onto it before reaching
back to undo the shoe straps.

Joseph watched
me from the mirror as his tie flew in loops. “If you keep bending
over like that, no won’t make a jot of difference.”

When I emerged
from the shower ten minutes later, he sat sprawled over the bed,
surrounded by newspapers. Even with my back turned, I knew he
watched as I patted myself down, slathered on too-cold lotion,
selected a close-fitting shirt and smart skirt. If I was going to
Elise’s office, I wanted to impress.

“Joe?”

His coffee cup
shook as it landed on the saucer. “Mmm?”

“You know
later, when I go out with Elise…do they know about us? If she asks,
what do I say?”

“The truth, if
you want.”

I gawped at
him.

“What?” he
said. “Kenji knows what I’m like.”

“I can’t tell
Elise that! How’s she meant to take me seriously?”

“Why would you
want her to do that?”

“What happened
to Bach and Dagier being stuffed to the arse end with bright young
things?” I mimicked, scowling.

“Leila. I’m
teasing you.” He beckoned. I sank down beside him, twisting my damp
ringlets into a slide. He tugged a few strands loose and then
smiled as he smoothed them behind my ears. “What would you like to
tell her?”

“I…I don’t
know. You were hardly inconspicuous last night.”

“Didn’t know I
was meant to be. You liked it well enough.” His closed fist brushed
my chin. “What would you do with another client?”

“Pretend we
were dating.” The words felt an odd shape as I said them.

“Well then.” He
patted my knee. “Not exactly a lie, in a manner of speaking.”

“But what if
she says something to Yves or Sadie or Poppy?”

“I think she’s
a bit more professional than that.”

“If you say
so.” The paper was clammy beneath my fingers, and I set it back
down before the ink spread. “What will you be up to this afternoon,
then?”

“Family,
mostly. My parents and my sister’s lot live over here.”

“That’ll be
nice for you.”

He finished his
coffee. “Why, did you want to come?”

Erm. First, I
blinked far more than was attractive, and then a scowl pulled my
nose up in an aching wrinkle. Joseph shook with laugher.

“Thank fuck for
that,” he said.

“Mom, Dad…this
is Leila, my whore,” I said drily. “She’s not a bad lawyer either
but mostly, I like her girl parts.”

“I don’t know
what’s worse.” He sighed. “That I’d actually say it, or that they
wouldn’t be surprised.”

* * * *

Our seduction
of Redfish complete, we entered what Joseph called the Peacock
Phase. Now that our feathers were spread and shining, our
territories mapped and our competitors reduced to hissing from
afar, we stopped beating around the proverbial bush. We got raw. We
got bloody. We were hashing out contracts, and that meant going to
war.

I didn’t expect
an easy ride purely due to personal connection, but neither did I
foresee such scrutiny. With no friendly greeting or warning of
wounds, Elise and her colleagues launched straight into their
queries, and it was all I could do not to duck.

“This point,”
she said curtly, holding up page fourteen, “we’re not happy
with–”

“It’s British
tax law. Are you well versed?” Joseph cut in. “And then, of course,
you won’t need us at all.”

“Much cheaper,”
said Yves.

Elise put a
nail-bitten hand up to stifle a laugh. It seemed she enjoyed being
a
madam.
“Not that part, Mr Merchant. Regarding billable
hours for the negotiations when we will, in effect, be producing
much of the text ourselves–”

“I think what
Elise is trying to say,” Deacon said as he removed the pen from his
mouth, “is that compared to our other quote, this sounds
particularly steep.”

Joseph nodded.
“When you consider that other houses are quoting you based on
theory, though–when they have never performed an acquisition for a
pharmaceutical outfit, where the regulations are crucial–you never
know what might take them longer. Much longer. They can’t give you
specifics for their billable hours.” He gave a passive little
shrug. “We can do that. We have.”

“It
seems…excessive.” Elise pursed her lips.

“Again, we can
only go as fast as local regulations allow. Things will be slower
in Britain than over here, but not massively. We can smooth the
way.”

Poppy and Sadie
sat together again. How well did they know each other, exactly? How
much did Sadie share? They watched Joseph as awed spectators at a
tennis match, their eyes darting between verbal blows. Matt smiled
faintly every time I found myself glancing in his direction and I
returned it ungrudgingly. At the bottom corner of the table, Kenji
manned three iPhones, nodding and murmuring between tapping
away.

When we took it
in turns to reread bits of the contract, Joseph caught my eye and
flicked his tongue lightly over his lips. Hours after our sticky
kiss, he tasted me. It writhed in the image of his spread legs
beneath the table, those boxy, squared shoulders–he was rapt with
the lingering flavour and tense at the iron tease. A wolf with
little regard for clothing, sheep or no.

The credit card
he’d insisted on giving me this morning sat in my purse. I had
refused it with vigour, but he took none of it, offering only
instructions to buy an outfit to match the shoes. We had
reservations for dinner, he said. I blushed beneath my stray curls
whenever I remembered. Such plain words shouldn’t have caught me
with that kind of heat…but I hadn’t been exaggerating when I’d said
he was different. He held a similar role to Charlie and yet Master,
Sir, he was not.

He was just
Joe: sparse yet intimate, and startlingly unfamiliar in the face of
our time spent.

We were there
for three hours in all and my stomach squealed at the deluge of
coffee. I wished I’d eaten a better breakfast. I wished I wasn’t so
fascinated by the jargon and the playful, sharp comebacks that were
flying around–the game was beautiful, but keeping up exhausted
me.

I blamed last
night’s wine. I blamed Joseph. Sometimes, watching him work like
this, I realized I didn’t want to fuck him half as much as I just
wanted to
be
him.

Chapter 3

“This is
classed as lunch?” I shook sugar from my fingers.

“Only in
secret. You can’t tell anyone we did this, okay?” Elise pulled
another doughnut from the box and pushed it across her desk with
one finger. It was like dangling a stationery catalogue in front of
an accountant. I could practically smell it.

“If I asked
anyone here if they wanted to get baked goods for lunch, they’d
think I was on crazy pills,” she said glumly. “But half of them
will have vodka for lunch with no complaints, of course.”

More fat slag
food. I would need to run a marathon at this rate.

“I love your
office,” I said, swallowing. “The lighting is like something from
film noir.”

“You like the
glass, huh? You should be here in the winter. It’s like being
inside a snow globe.” She tore off a pink-frosted chunk and rolled
it around her mouth.

“Sounds
gorgeous. Our offices back in London are period, so they’re all old
arches and beams.”

“What are they
like in winter?”

I scowled.
“Cold.”

“Bummer.” She
laughed. “Quaint though, I bet.”

“Yeah, they’re
pretty. It could be worse.” My hand hovered over the box: double
chocolate or just chocolate sprinkles? “These were cooked in
vegetable oil, right?”

“It’s
possible.”

“Obviously one
of our five a day.” Sprinkles. I went in for the kill. “I could
never do this at home either. Our office is pretty communal.”

“You hit
partner and you’ll get square footage all of your own.”

“I’ll be the
size of a small country.”

Her eyes
widened in amusement. “Then you need to start spinning before
work.”

“I go running.
Sometimes.”

Elise wrinkled
her nose. “In British weather?”

“Yeah.
It’s…refreshing.” Slipping on my arse and hurtling toward a bunch
of students on the walk of shame was utterly cleansing of my mental
palate. “Really.”

Also, I
couldn’t afford an overpriced London gym.

“Well, you look
good to me.” She crumpled a bakery napkin. “Now. We have a lot to
do and only a few hours to do it–we need a game plan. What do you
want from this session, Miss Vaughn?” Her accent caught on all the
vowels in a manner that was almost seductive.

“Are we billing
these hours?”

“Hell yes,
madam.” Her shoulders rose in delight and triumph. “Now, what is it
you wish to acquire?”

If her voice
didn’t make me weak, her skill in shopping did. I know, I’m a
disappointing female stereotype in these matters. Elise sketched a
map of all the stores we would try for a dress–because we had, on
consideration of venue, ascertained that it must be a dress–and
scheduled breaks for coffee. She said it was entirely possible that
ice cream would be consumed and I told her I appreciated the
warning.