On His Terms (2 page)

“You…”
She bit her tongue, and stood, staring at him as hard as he was staring at her.
He cocked a dark eyebrow, clearly waiting for her to finish.

“Something on your mind, Miss
Case?”

She
bit her tongue when she saw him smirk ever so slightly.

“Just
do your job, or I’ll find someone who can.” He turned from her before she could
respond, and slammed the doors shut behind him.

“You
asshole,” she said under her breath and sat back down. Thank God it was Friday,
because her friend Cora was taking her out for a good, hard drink.

****

Rian
had heard Sorcha call him an
asshole, and he couldn’t help but grin despite his anger. The woman infuriated
him, but not because she was incompetent. She was the opposite, and always had
everything in order. To be honest
Rian
had never found
a secretary that picked up as fast as Sorcha had. But he didn’t want to think
of Sorcha Case as anything more than what she was, because wanting her in his
bed, under him, and his cock buried in her curvy little body was not a line he
even wanted to cross.

What
annoyed him was this attraction he had toward her. He knew he was a difficult
man, but that was how he had gotten to where he was in life. A weak man
wouldn’t own and run what he did at only thirty-seven, and he wasn’t about to
change to appease anyone. He walked over to his floor to ceiling window and
stared at the bustling city of New York below. Sorcha had been working for him
for less than a year, and even though he had been romantically involved with a
few of his secretaries in the past, that had always led to disastrous
situations.

Clasping
his hands behind his back, he stared at the sight before him. There was an
overcast sky, and it matched his fucked-up mood. After some minor drama with
some news tabloids he was definitely in a
pissy
ass mood.
The buzzer on his intercom went off, but he didn’t turn around.

“Mr.
Hartford, Lawson
Trainfore
is on line one,” Sorcha
said, and when he didn’t respond the line clicked off. He turned and faced the
phone, knowing that if his PR rep was calling him this early then it was
because of the paper and the article he had read about himself this morning. He
sat at his desk and picked up his phone.

“Lawson, hello.”

“
Rian
, have you see the paper this morning?”

Rian
breathed out and rested his head
against the back of his chair.
“Yes, unfortunately.”

“Seems
like another one of your past lovers leaked incriminating information about
you.”

He
rubbed his eyes. “There were only a few that were disgruntled, Lawson, and that
wasn’t because I was an asshole to them. They knew what I wanted, and that a
relationship was not in the future for us. It is hardly my fault that they grew
attached after only a few nights of sex.”

“
Rian
, I’m not worried that Miss Virginia Harrison is
claiming that you made her ass so red she couldn’t even sit down for several
days after that…”

Rian
grinned.

Lawson
cleared his throat. “Well, I won’t get into the specifics, but having your name
splashed across the newspaper because you like spanking your sexual partners
with fervor is bad for your image.”So
Rian
liked a
little smack on the ass of the women he fucked here and there. It wasn’t like
he was a fiend for it, and he certainly didn’t do it every time he had sex.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have spanked the ass of Senator Harrison’s daughter, but she
was so prim and proper that I couldn’t help myself.”

Lawson
started speaking about technicalities, and
Rian
looked out his window again. “Anything I did with any of my sexual partners in
the past, present, or in the future, was and always will be consensual. I only
skimmed the front page, but is Miss Harrison claiming otherwise?” Maybe
Rian
should have cared more, or been more concerned that
yet another one of his past partners had gone to the media. But he wasn’t. This
wasn’t the first time someone he had fucked had come out and said what they had
done, and most likely wouldn’t be the last either.

“No,
she says everything you two did was consenting—”

“So
she did it to garner attention, like the rest of them, because they were pissed
I didn’t want anything more than a few hours of fucking.”

Lawson
cleared his throat, and
Rian
could picture the
elderly man adjusting on his seat from what was probably a very uncomfortable
conversation for him.
Rian
scrubbed a hand over his
face.

“It’ll
blow over like it always does.”

There
was a knock on the door, and then Sorcha was pushing it open and walking in.
She held his tablet that would have all of his pertinent information for the
day loaded on it. He enjoyed actually looking at hard copies of what he was to
do for the day, but it wasn’t because he was trying to make things harder for
her. There were a lot of things that could go wrong with technology, and he was
definitely old fashioned when it came to that aspect in his life.

“How
do you want to proceed? We can fire back with a public statement—”

“No,
let Miss Harrison have her day, and tell the media and public whatever the fuck
she wants.”

“
Rian
, I would suggest we not proceed that way. I think we
should make a formal announcement—”

“No.”
He cut off Lawson again and kept his gaze trained right on his secretary.
Sorcha set the table on the table in front of him, and they made eye contact
briefly. “She can’t do much harm. Besides, it isn’t like a few women I fucked
in the past haven’t told the public.” He stared right into Sorcha’s eyes as he
said the words. Although he knew being so blunt about the women he had screwed
right in front of her was a douche-bag thing to do, there was this side of him
that liked getting a rise out of her. Her eyes flared wide for a second, and
then narrowed. She turned around and headed to the doors, and he zeroed in on
her ass. Fucking hell, she wore that damn pencil skirt like it was a fucking
second skin. He could even see the slight crease between the mounds every time
she took a step. She wasn’t like the stick-thin socialites he associated with,
stuck his dick in, and dominated. No, Sorcha was a breed of woman all her own,
and damn her for making him want her the way he did. Her ass was two round, big
fleshy globes, and he curled his finger into his palms so he didn’t call her
back over and get slapped with a sexual harassment claim.

Her
hair was down today, and the onyx colored locks brushed her lower back. Her
light amber colored eyes had been more expressive today, and when she glanced
over her shoulder her gaze was filled with a hint of malice.
Rian
imagined her hair in his hand as he pulled her head
back and made her throat arch for him. He’d be behind her, and she’d be on her
hands and knees. His cock got hard. Fucking hell, did it get hard for
her.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had thought about
a woman and gotten so damn stiff that he had to shift in his seat and adjust
his dick just to relieve the fucking pressure.

She
left and shut the door behind her, and he heard Lawson trying to get his
attention.

“
Rian
, are you even listening to anything I’m saying?”

No.

“Of
course I am, Lawson.” He leaned back in his seat even more and reached between
his legs to adjust himself. His cock was like a fucking lead pipe between his
thighs, pressing against the material of his slacks, and all but roaring out to
be relived. “I don’t want to make an announcement, because in the end it really
doesn’t matter. She’ll get her fifteen seconds of attention, and then she’ll
have to move on like the rest.”

Lawson
exhaled loudly, and the sound of a chair squeaking in the came through the
receiver. “Okay, but do me a favor, and the next time you want to spank your
partners have them sign a damn contract,
Rian
. This
shit gives me a headache.”

Rian
disconnected the call and sat
there for a moment thinking over what Lawson had said. Of course Lawson hadn’t
been serious about a contract, but more busting
Rian’s
balls because this had happened before, but honestly it wasn’t a bad idea. He
turned in his seat and stared out the window. The only problem was he wanted a
woman that could give as good as she got, that didn’t just submit her body to
him because of who he was or how much he had in his bank account. He wanted a
woman that would hit him back when she was pissed and aroused, not because she
wanted to hurt him, but because she wanted him to give her more.

Fuck,
he was starting to get even harder, and his damn cock was digging into his
zipper. What he was thinking about would only end up in a shit storm like the
other times he’d screwed his secretaries. It wasn’t like he was this evil
bastard, not most of the time at least. He went for the women that wanted one
thing from him: to wine and dine them before he fucked them unconscious. Of
course there were the ones that thought they could have him giving them
everything: marriage, a family,
little
babies. That
wasn’t in
Rian’s
future and sure as hell wasn’t
something he dreamt about. He got pleasure in seeing them limp out of his home
because they could barely walk from what he had given them the night before.
But Sorcha was different from any woman he’d had. Fuck, she was different from
any woman he had ever associated with. The women that ran in his circles were
brought up to stay quiet unless spoken to, and to be submissive in all things.
They were bred to please the man above all else, because that was who took care
of them. Maybe it was screwed up to some, but to the people he knew that was
the only life they had ever lived, and that was the only kind of woman
Rian
allowed into his life.

He
didn’t wanted a clinger of a woman, didn’t want to marry them just because he
stuck his cock inside of their bodies. He wanted them for pleasure, and if they
were willing, and agreed nothing more would come from that, then he brought
them back to his place and showed them exactly what he liked.

But
Sorcha … fucking Sorcha would give him exactly what he
wanted,
because when she fully surrendered to him he would be victorious. Yeah, he was
a fucking douche-bag in a lot of ways, but that was how he had been all his
life. With a tough as nails father, a mother that was more interested in the
next party than in him, and isolation of being an only child,
Rian
had to rely on himself. Adapting to his surroundings
was key, and so he became hard, unforgiving, and because of that attitude rose
to the top.

He
turned back around and stared at his closed office doors. Hell, he doubted
Sorcha would even entertain what he wanted to do to her, let alone sign a
contract for it. She’d slap his face, or curse him out. That had him grinning.
She may have only been working for him for the last six months, but in that
time just seeing her carefully controlled resistance, the anger she had
simmering below the surface, and the way she narrowed her eyes at him, had his
blood pumping fiercely. People bowed down to him, kissed his feet, and treaded
lightly. She was a secretary,
his
secretary, and she infuriated him like no other.

He
wanted to fuck her, and if she was willing to play that game he was going to
show her exactly what it meant to be with him.
Rian
Hartford didn’t give up on something he wanted, and what he wanted, like a
fiend, was Sorcha Case.

Chapter
Two

The
workday was winding down, and for what felt like the hundredth time Sorcha
looked at the clock. She wrapped up her paperwork, closed out her programs, and
shut down her computer. Fortunately, Mr. Hartford had stayed in his office for
most of the day dealing with clients. The only time she really saw him aside
from this morning was when he had gone on a lunch meeting with a few attorneys
from the office below. The way he looked at her as he walked past her desk
though, like a cocky bastard that had something up his sleeve, had made her
unsettled in a purely aroused way all afternoon.

She
breathed out, grabbed her purse, and headed out from behind her desk. It was
already past five, but she always double-checked with Mr. Hartford before she
left to make sure he was settled with everything. More times than not all he
did was wave a hand to dismiss her without saying anything or looking at her,
and she prayed it was the same tonight. Bringing her knuckles down on the wood,
she called out softly, “Mr. Hartford?” She pushed the door open, saw him
sitting behind his desk with a stack of papers in front of him, and for a
moment lost her train of thought. His attitude might suck, and he may have
absolutely no compassion, or at least didn’t show any, but she couldn’t help
but appreciate the way he looked.

He
had his jacket off and slung over the back of his chair. The desk lamp was on
and a swatch of light covered his serious face. The sun was starting to descend
behind the skyscrapers, and this ominous atmosphere surrounded him. He glanced
up from his work, leaned back in his chair slowly, and rested his finger on his
mouth, as if he was concentrating. For a second all he did was
stare
at her, seeming to wait for her to speak, but Sorcha
couldn’t find the words. Right now, as he stared at her with those cold blue
eyes, he looked like the very devil himself.