Empire of Desire by Rina Kent

“I wasn’t flirting.”

I stand up and stride toward her. She visibly shudders, her cheeks turning a deep shade of red.

“What did I say yesterday?”

“W-what?”

“After you came all over my fingers, what did I say?” I extend a hand and she closes her eyes, her lips shaking before they press together, but I reach around her and click the door shut.

At that, she startles, her eyes opening and moving up to look at me. There’s an expectation etched on her delicate features mixed with polar opposite uncertainty. She’s always been a spectrum of wild, uncontained emotions.

“What did I say, Gwyneth?”

“That you will…take care of my sexual urges.”

“And do you know what that means?”

She shakes her head slowly.

“It means you’ll break up with that boyfriend, effective immediately. You’ll stop flirting with him or getting on his bike.”

Her lips tremble, but there’s a fire in her eyes, the blue trying to overthrow the green and smother the gray. “No.”

I grab her by the chin and use it to lift her head. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

“I like the back of Chris’s Harley and you’re not going to take that away from me.”

“You will end it and that’s final.”

“No.”

“You don’t want me to fucking make you, Gwyneth.”

I can tell she’s equal part scared and excited by the way she flinches a little.

“Do you want me to make you? Is that it?” My voice lowers as I rake my gaze over her modest curves and those legs that have been over my shoulder not twenty-four hours ago.

She watches me intently but doesn’t say anything, so I continue, “Do you want me to pound my fingers into that tight pussy of yours again until you scream? Or maybe I will use my cock this time and fuck you so thoroughly, you won’t have the space of mind to think about any kid.”

Her lips part open and she sucks in a sharp breath before she says, “If you want me to stop, then you stop as well.”

“Stop what?”

“Picking up Aspen.” She clinks her nails hard, the sound escalating with every second. “Stop smiling at her, flirting with her, all of it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I saw you yesterday. You went out together for lunch and never came back.”

“Because we had meetings with judges.”

She scrunches her nose like she used to do whenever Martha made the mistake of not including her favorite drink with her meal. “I still don’t like it—her in your car, I mean. So if you don’t want me on the Harley, don’t let her in your Mercedes.”

I can’t resist smiling at how she negotiates. She’s all uptight and serious, too, making a mountain out of a molehill. All her assumptions about me and Aspen are unfounded, but I don’t correct her, because she looks weirdly adorable right now.

“And then what?”

That catches her off guard, causing a frown to crease her forehead. “Then?”

“What happens after Aspen isn’t in my car and you’re not on the back of the bike?”

“I…don’t know.”

“Are you going to behave?”

I hear the sound of gulping as she stares up at me with wild eyes. “Should I?”

“Good girls do.”

“But I’m not.”

“You’re not?”

“Yeah, I’m a bit crazy. You know, like when I kissed you that day. So I don’t think I can be a good girl.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I’m a bad girl, though.”

Fuck me, the way she talks in that aroused tone makes my dick so hard, it’s painful.

“You are?”

“Yeah.”

“We have to do something about that. I can’t have my wife and intern be a bad girl.”

“I agree. You should do something.”

I let go of her and her shoulders hunch, in disappointment, I believe, but she has no fucking idea what I have planned for her.

Because I crushed the last log of guilt I have and I’m going to swallow her, consume her until she realizes she shouldn’t have messed with me in the first fucking place.

Until she regrets not choosing safe and boring.

I stride back to behind my desk, not missing the way her eyes follow me, then sit down and beckon her over. “Come here.”

She approaches me slowly, like a scared kitten, but she isn’t. Scared, that is. Not in the least.

Her eyes have brightened and her clinking has stopped.

I open my legs and tip my chin at the space between them and she complies, her cheeks hollowing with how she sucks on their insides. “What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m going to teach you to behave.”





18





Gwyneth





He’ll teach me how to behave.

That’s what he said. That’s what I heard, and yet I still can’t believe it.

I can’t believe a lot of things since last night.

When I woke up this morning, I thought maybe, just maybe, it was all a dream and I was still stuck in it, but then I smelled him. Those notes of spice and woods lingered on my sheets and on me long after he left my bedroom.