The words were out before she could swallow them down, her internal monologue bubbling to the surface and tumbling from her mouth with no way to snatch it back; the boldest, stupidest words she’d ever uttered.
She had just celebrated her second anniversary at the firm two months earlier, but the previous four months — having him right there, separated by a mere glass wall, in constant sight — had been nothing short of torturous.
“Unless you have a better solution for this shit mood you’re in,” she went on. In for a penny, in for
a pound. “Because I’m all out of ideas, and I’m tired of being yelled at for giving you exactly what you’re asking for.”
It wasn’t even his office. The senior associate Vanessa reported to had called the glass-walled office home, until the day she’d come in and the woman was gone, relocated, Grayson there in her place. She was vain enough to convince herself it was because of her and the proximity to her desk, at least at first, but by the end of the workday, she’d heard that he’d informed the managing partner that he would walk out that day and not come back if he had to spend one more afternoon working under harsh fluorescent lights. He’d been hastily relocated to the makeshift office, and the entire upper suite was now scheduled for a renovation. By the end of the day, the glass fishbowl-like walls had been fitted with black curtains that were kept closed over the following weeks. Closed, except for the wall that faced her desk.
The track lights were almost always off, even when he had the curtain facing her open, and the sight of him there in the darkened room — suit jacket draped over the chair in the corner, shirt sleeves rolled up, his mouth and hands in perpetual motion as he took phone call after phone call — was driving her crazy. She’d watched him on more than one occasion with his head tipped back, eyes closed, fingers circling over his right temple. She imagined herself slipping into the cube-like room, closing the curtains securely and locking the door before dropping to her knees in the darkness before him, drawing down the zipper at the front of his pants, and swallowing his cock whole.
He had been snappish with her for the last several weeks, in a way that felt oddly personal, even though his words were icily professional. He still acted like an entitled asshole in general, looking down his nose at everyone, but Vanessa didn’t know what she had done to have been singled out in such a way, and she was tired of his unexplained ire.
. . . And now she had just offered to fuck him, had made the suggestion here, at work, in his office, in the middle of the day, with no martini lunch in sight on which she could blame it.
Grayson cocked his head, considering her words as if she had just offered a solution to a problem they were running into with the case and not something horrifically inappropriate over which she might be fired. He rolled his pen between his thumb and forefinger — a Montblanc in black ink, the only ones he would use.
She had watched a month earlier when he had risen from his desk, carrying the brand-new, unopened box of office supply store pens that had been left for him, tipping it into the trash. When she’d tapped on the glass a short while later, struggling to find the opening in the curtains and flailing like a ghost for several seconds as he snickered, she’d made a point of looking into the waste basket.
“You’re too good for the office pens?” she’d observed as he looked over the paperwork she’d placed on the desk, crossing her arms, waiting for a sputtering denial.
“Yes.”
He didn’t bother denying it, and she couldn’t help grinning at his brazen arrogance. Such a prick.
Such an unmitigated asshole. So entirely fuckable.
“So are you, rabbit,” he went on, glancing up at her beneath a long fringe of lashes and his thick, dark brows.
“How do you know that?” she shot back. “You’ve never asked me a single question. You don’t know where I come from or what kind of family I have. Maybe I grew up in the system or came from a pack. You don’t know anything about me.”
Her words had no effect on him, never looking up from his own signature as the stupidly expensive pen flowed across the paper.
“Aside from the fact that you already mentioned your childhood in a human neighborhood, none of that matters. People remake themselves all the time. You’re never better or worse than the person you are each day. You wouldn’t be sitting in this room if you weren’t. And don’t presume to tell me what I know.”
Her stomach had flip-flopped, her insides seeming to liquefy when he went on seriously, looking up, at last, trapping her in the intensity of his bittersweet chocolate gaze.
“You are your most valuable asset. Your time is your most valuable commodity. Your name, whatever you want to call yourself, is the outward label of all you are. So don’t denigrate it with garbage.”
When he’d handed her back the folder of paperwork, one of his overpriced pens had been inside, and she’d floated out of the glass office with a small smile and her heart thumping, putting a newly-acquired dildo to work as soon as she got home that night, clenching around its knot and thinking of him, nearly sobbing as she came.
And now you’ve offered to fuck him for real.
“It’s interesting to me,” he mused, his voice never losing its disaffected tone, “that you always seem to be under the impression that you’re a step ahead, Ms. Blevin, when the reality is you’re three steps behind.”
She sucked in a shaky breath, hating him. You have this place on your resume now. You should start looking for something else. The thought of seeing him again after this was too mortifying to
contemplate, and she was furious with herself for her ill-spoken words, the desire that had spurned them, and her crush on this self-aggrandizing dick.
“I want to see the lab findings again. Leave the deposition. You have the audacity to come stomping in here and say that to me as if not only were it just occurring to you but that you’re laboring under the mistaken impression I hadn’t already concluded that.”
Her mouth dropped open, and fire ripped through her veins, heating her core until her legs could barely hold her, but the look he leveled on her was nothing short of disdainful.
“Lab findings. We go to trial in a week, rabbit. I need you upright for that.” He leaned forward, and almost as if she were being pulled on a string, she did as well. “And if I fuck you now,” he went on in a low scrape, a vibration she felt between her thighs, “you won’t be. So until then, let’s start having faster conversations.”
There was a note beneath her door when she finally arrived home that night, building management notifying her that her mailbox in the apartment lobby was full to bursting. She kept a PO Box for that very reason, stomping down the hallway to the elevator, mumbling to herself about Grayson Hemming until she reached the lobby. Her panties were drenched. She was furious with herself, furious with him, and she still didn’t know what she had done to earn his ire over the past several weeks.
The small mailbox was packed so tightly with junk mail that she needed to yank it out at an angle, several store flyers fluttering to the floor. It was primarily circulars and credit card applications, all garbage she had no use for, but the presence of a gilt-edge caught her eye as she walked back to the elevator, her stomach flip-flopping in trepidation the entire ride up to her apartment. Your company is cordially requested . . . Lupercalia . . . ancient celebration . . . brotherhood of the wolf.
There was no one else she knew who would have celebrated a werewolf holiday in such lavish fashion, no one else who’d ever asked her about her holiday plans. He invited you to a party for a holiday that’s literally about fucking, and you never even opened the godsdamned invitation.
