His Secret Desire (2 page)

“He’s probably some arrogant prick,” I blurted out loudly. “Inherited daddy’s company and thinks he’s better than the entire world that was handed to him on a silver plate.”

I looked up. At first, I thought Emily had completely lost interest in me. The phone slowly descended as Emily’s arm fell. Emily was ghost-white. Her mouth hung open every so slightly.

She made no sound. A rush of panic struck at my heart immediately. It began beating so fast that I feared it might explode in my chest. Emily’s eyes were looking at something behind me. Fighting every impulse to stand up and run away, the impulse that filled every inch of my being with the need to not turn around, I slowly looked behind me.

Mr. Strauss stood before me, a group of men silently waiting behind him. My mouth ran dry. Not a single word would come to my lips to save me. I could only stare, hoping that I at least looked composed. An amused expression adorned his face as he scanned me up and down. Slowly.

Standing so close, I could feel heat radiating from him as though he were the sun on a warm summer’s day. An impulse to stand up and grab him shot through my mind like a bullet tearing through its intended target. The photograph on the phone was nothing in comparison to the man in person. His tall stature loomed over me for what seemed like years. A perfectly tailored suit did not hide his perfectly proportioned physique that a tiny cell-phone could only hint at. If God had animated a Greek statue and covered it in a suit that cost more than I made in a month, it was standing before me now.

My heart skipped a beat painfully in my chest as I realized he was bending down towards my face. Oh my God, is he going to kiss me? I almost closed my eyes in anticipation. Every muscle in my body tensed. Every breath was a struggle to steal from the air. Time itself slowed down to a crawl.

His blue eyes grew larger in my own. With every closing inch I wished more and more that he would swallow me whole. Wash away the world with his eyes and drink me like the sea. Every beat of my heart rang out in the silence of the cafeteria. A steady beat of the moment before I knew he would embrace me.

At the last moment, he broke from the path towards my waiting mouth and his lips hung agonizingly close to my ear.

“Four p.m. My office,” he whispered. With that, he turned and lead the group out of the cafeteria in silence.

I turned back to Emily slowly. Her mouth still hung open. Neither of us spoke as we rose to leave the cafeteria.

***

Sitting back down at my desk, I tried to look at some spreadsheets before realizing that I had no idea what I had just read. The shock of what had just happened to me was wearing off, giving way to a piercing anxiety over my job. Why would the CEO want to see me if for no other reason than to fire me for the rude comments I said in the cafeteria? Couldn’t he have my boss fire me and save himself the trouble? Worse, what if he was so offended that he wished to tell me in person that I could now consider myself blacklisted from the corporate world altogether? Professionally destroyed. How far was Strauss’s reach?

My mind raced. There were so many questions with no reassuring answers. Yet through the fear, my mind returned to those blue eyes. The strength of his chin touching my soft skin. Every thought of my destroyed future was dominated by the thought of him.

My fingers caressing the taut skin on his arms, tracing the veins up the forearm to his rigid bicep. Warm breath on my neck as his hand slid down the small of my back. The smell of his skin with my eyes closed. Tasting his lips as I stifled a cry for something more, something indescribable yet so close to me.

Alexander Strauss. His torso shaped by hours of pain and sweat, leading up to a chest that breathed with mine. Moved with mine. Lead mine to feel that which it has never known it had yearned for. His skin would be soft, stretched over muscle forged into stone. My hands would slide up his legs, slowing as they reached the summit of him. I knew that as I wrapped my hands around him his expression would not alter. He would remain perfect in his composure.

An entire future wasted by a single, stupid comment that I had only said to save face with a friend.

I would stand before him naked, without restraint or inhibition. His arms would wrap around me, bringing me close to him. Letting him inside of me, my breath would become his. His breath mine. We would be one. In his perfection, I would know perfection, and we would lie under a sun that hung in a sky as blue as his eyes.

I sat at my desk, lost in thoughts of Alexander Strauss. More than anything, I wanted him. An uncomfortable longing nestled itself between my legs, crying out for my undivided attention. Thoughts of my destructive comment only furthered my lust for him. If not for my crass comments, would he have stopped in the cafeteria to acknowledge me? Would I have been so close to smell the faint hint of his cologne?

The clock on my desk sat before me like a hangman’s noose. As the minutes sped into hours, I tried to calm myself down. Yet as the hour of our meeting grew nearer, I could not decide just how I felt. I covetously looked up pictures of the CEO, drinking them like drops of water from an emptying canteen under a lethal desert sky. With every new picture I checked my surroundings to make sure my actions went unnoticed. My heartbeat steadied, but my longing only increased. With every picture I looked at, the sense that I was looking at something secret, something private, intensified.

An alarm cut through my silence. It was time.

Chapter Two

I silenced the alarm. The clock read three-thirty. I wanted to be right on time and I had no idea where Strauss’s office was, let alone what part of the building it was even in. Strauss hadn’t told me where to go. It would mean I would have to ask my boss.

When I stood up to leave my tiny cubicle, I noticed almost everyone in the office was staring at me. The looks on their faces were anything but reassuring. They were watching a woman on death row walk to the electric chair. I walked by them all, holding my head up high in defiance of the panic that flowed through my veins. I was a picture of perfect calm, as though I was completely at peace with what was going to happen to me.

In my boss’s office, his face was glued to a computer screen. I politely interrupted him.

“Mr. Grander, where may I find Mr. Strauss’s office,” I asked.

I could feel every pair of eyes trying to penetrate the walls of his office. Every pair of ears attuned to our discussion like a cat’s ears to the scurry of mice.

“His office is on the top floor. Actually, it is the top floor, but you’ll need a security escort just to reach his floor, Samantha. I’ll call them up for you,” he replied. My sweet boss, Brian Grander, trying to sound calm and collected. Consoling, even. He must know the death that awaited me on the top floor of the building.

A security guard came right away, as though he was waiting for me the entire time. I felt my face redden against my every wish as he walked me to the elevator. If I was imagining every person in the office staring at me before, I definitely wasn’t now. Even people unaware that I had been personally summoned by the CEO to his office were now very aware that a security guard was walking me to the elevator. It was an unusual sight. I tried to seem chipper, excited even. Really, I just felt sick to my stomach.

We entered the crowded elevator, once more stealing all the attention. The guard entered a number on a keypad below the buttons in the elevator that I had never really noticed before. As we climbed higher in the building, the elevator cleared out. We had reached the top floor, or so I thought, when the guard entered yet another number on the keypad and the doors closed. I felt the sensation of us climbing again. The elevator doors opened and I walked out.

I was in a relatively small office with a gorgeous wooden desk before me. A woman in her early fifties, a woman you could tell was once incredibly beautiful, and aged gracefully, looked up from behind the desk. Next to her desk, two doors loomed large. The main entrance to his office. I heard the elevator doors close behind me and when I turned around the security guard was gone.

“Samantha Dubois, I presume?” asked the receptionist.

“Yes, I’m Samantha. Alexander Strauss told me to come to his office at four p.m.” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady. A large metal clock, artfully tasteful, hung on the wall behind the receptionist’s desk. It was four p.m. exactly. I felt a little reprieve of relief. I was on time.

“He did indeed. He’s expecting you. You may go in.” And with that, her attention to me was severed completely. Her eyes lowered and it was though I ceased to be in the room.

I walked to the doors and stood before them. They opened for me as though I had mentally commanded them to do so. Alexander Strauss stood there, having opened the door. He ushered me in.

As I walked in, I brushed by his arm briefly. A surge of electricity moved through me and every hair on my body stood on end. Immediately that longing between my legs returned, demanding that the tension be released from my body. I was so close in that moment that I could turn and grab him. I pushed back the thought of embracing him and walked in the office.

I regained my composure, but only for a moment before I felt myself lost in wonder immediately. The office was massive. The floors were a sleek stone that I could only guess was some sort of marble. A panorama of windows showed the entire city landscape. A sun that had just begun to enter its descent hung above the other buildings in the city. We were looking down on almost every single other building. Before me was a sleek black conference desk that seemed to stretch for miles. Luxurious office chairs that each looked more expensive than my college tuition were tucked under the desk, waiting to be sit in by powerful executives, investors, and shareholders.

I looked around, taking in the office not by its singular furnishings but trying to let its entirety settle in my eyes. It was sparsely furnished, deliberately so. A few paintings, all abstract, hung against the walls. There were no plants. Everything was sleek and smooth. Clean, precise, without flare but with an edge that screamed authority and intelligence. Various leather chairs and a few couches were strewn about to give certain areas of the office a casual relaxed feeling, although too perfectly arranged to suggest that they were there by chance.

Every single thing had its place. The energy flowed between them magnificently. The entire office was art in and of itself. Yet the heart of the office was clearly the desk. Every arrangement in the office pointed towards the desk in some way. All things flowed to the desk. Wherever you were in the room, you were never the center. The center was the desk, and standing before the heart of the office was Alexander Strauss, leaning back against the desk casually, his legs crossed before him.

“Hello Samantha, thank you for coming,” he said, his voice neutral.

“You’re welcome. Your office is...it’s incredible,” I said, immediately regretting it. It was a stupid thing to say. I blushed and a pang of panic hit my chest.

“Please, sit.” He extended his arm to a chair that was only a few feet away from him. Almost too close for how huge the office is. I sat down, thanking him politely. I consciously kept my eyes on his face. They wanted to crawl down to where his legs meet. To where his legs are pushing up a bulge in his pants.

He pushed himself off the desk and in a brief moment a small scent of his cologne found its way to my nose delicately. It was a scent I’ve never smelled before. A scent that I could imagine drowning in with ecstasy.

He walked around his desk and sat behind it, his eyes never leaving mine.

“Samantha Dubois. Twenty-three years old. Employed by Strauss Engines as a clerical assistant for the past three months. Temporary status.” His voice slowed slightly when he said “temporary status”, the emphasis subtle but clear. Another slice of terror threatened my composure but I remained unshaken outwardly. “You’ve held numerous temp jobs. Why?”

“It was the only work that I could find. I’ve been hoping to work my way up the corporate ladder. Build my success over time with hard work.”

“A very noble idea indeed. The American Dream personified,” he said. I tried to detect whether I could hear sarcasm in his voice and I decided that he was being genuine. “It must have been hard, with your parents and all.”

I choked a little bit at the mention of my parents and tried to hide it. “Yes, I suppose it was,” I said. It was all I could think to say. There was no change on his face.

“Tell me, what do you know about me?” Strauss asked. Every word flowed out of his mouth like lyrics in a song, yet his voice never wavered or gave any sign of inflection. I watched his lips part in slow motion and wanted them on me. Everywhere on me.

“I really don’t know much about you, to be honest. Only some office rumors and what you can read on the internet. I hadn’t even seen a picture of you until today,” I said.

“Extrapolate on the rumors for me. Tell me what you think they really point to.”

I paused for a moment. I could try to ham up the good parts of the rumors, appeal to his ego.

One look at him and I could tell he was too smart for that. Anything but honesty would undo me. If I tried to lie or suck up to him, he would destroy me. And when I really thought about it, I would rather walk out of this building today with a destroyed career but an intact sense of integrity. I would not grovel or lie. I breathed in deep, slowly exhaling. A slight smile cut through Strauss’s unyielding stoicism.

“You have very high expectations, maybe even astronomical. You drive everyone around you so hard that you break people who can’t handle it. And when they do break, you get a personal satisfaction out of it,” I said. “Also, I’ve heard the way the women in the office talk about you. They all want you and they seem to think you could have whatever and whoever you want.”

“Do you think these rumors are true?” Strauss asked. He crossed his hands. I covetously drank in the sight of them, the pleasure of sight a poor substitute for the feeling  of those hands gripping me. Holding onto me until they had had their fill of my flesh.