Filthy Headlines by Cassie Mint

Six

Grant

Ishouldn’t have kissed her. If the press knew I did that…

Well. It doesn’t matter what they’d write. I still shouldn’t have done it.

It’s easy to tell myself that when I’m alone in my office, or during the rare hours I spend in my penthouse apartment. With a safe distance between us, I can be rational. I can remind myself that Sasha is an employee, and far too young for me anyway. That she’s nosy, and infuriating, and she pushes my buttons more often than she calls the elevator.

With that space between us, I can’t believe how foolish I’ve been.

But the moment she’s near to me again, all my good sense evaporates into a fine mist. Suddenly, my heart thumps against my rib cage like it’s counting down until I kiss her again. My ears strain to hear her every soft breath, every rustle of her clothes, and I breathe the scent of her perfume in like I’m trying to imprint it on my lungs.

I still bring Sasha those ridiculous coffees. Wait like a starving man for her answering smile.

And when I lock myself in my en suite, a full length of corridor and two doors barricaded between us, I jerk my cock like I’m punishing myself. With every ounce of the self loathing boiling in my veins.

I come like a freight train, hissing between my teeth. And when my pulse slows, I want to slam my head against the wall.

There’s a simple solution, of course. To keep my distance. It’s not like I kept Tina fucking Belsham in my pocket, and that was only partly because she was so useless. It’s not necessary. I built my first business all alone, and that’s still my preferred mode of operation. An assistant is a formality, nothing more.

But I’ve grown used to having Sasha with me. Murmuring her sharp insights after business meetings, leaning close so her breath tickles my throat. Sensing my black moods when they descend, and lifting them with her teasing jokes. Handing over those goddamn painkillers when my skull begins to throb, like it’s a sixth sense.

So I don’t think twice before inviting her to a formal business dinner in the city.

She’ll be useful.

That’s all.

* * *

Sasha is not useful.

She’s a fucking goddess.

The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, dressed in a bottle green cocktail dress, her golden hair woven into some kind of intricate braid.

She always wears it like that. Fiddly and pretty and neat, those stray tendrils mocking me with how badly I want to wind one around my knuckle.

“Is this okay?” She smoothes nervous palms down her hips, and I want to howl at the night sky. I’m such a fool.

“Yes. You look—yes. Come on.”

I pretend not to see her flicker of disappointment, because what else can I say? I sure as hell can’t tell her how fucking badly I want her, how one glimpse of her in that dress makes me want to toss her over my shoulder, go straight back upstairs to my office, spread her out on my desk, and feast.

Her heels click against the marble lobby floor. I check my stride, walking slower.

“Where is this thing?”

“In the Emporium. A half hour drive away.”

And wow, I did not think this night through. If I’d been paying attention, if I had an ounce of sense, I would not have asked her to climb into a darkened car with me. Not ever, and certainly not dressed like that.

“Sorry.” Our knees brush as we settle against the leather seats. I slide further away, and try not to see the flash of hurt in her eyes.

The car coasts through the evening traffic, painfully slow. Sasha keeps up a brave attempt at conversation, flicking through the folders of notes I brought in preparation.

Each one has a photograph clipped to the first page. She still hasn’t asked me about it.

“So what’s the goal tonight? Scoping out your next project?”

“Something like that.”

Her mouth twists, but for once I’m not dodging her. I’ve barely thought tonight through. Since she started working for me, I’ve been distracted as hell. Coasting on autopilot, all my usual business fervor redirected.

Aimed at her.

Even though I’m being poor company, Sasha rallies like a champion. She makes polite, charming conversation over dinner with the elite business figures at our table, displaying a level of knowledge that makes something tickle at the back of my brain.

She’s no usual assistant. She’s a major player in her own right, steering the conversation effortlessly and digging up pearl after pearl of information.

The longer the night wears on, the heavier my chest weighs.

But it’s nothing. It’s nothing. She’s intelligent and curious, that’s all.

By the time dessert is over, I’m ready to leave. My head’s not in this, and I’m not getting anything useful here—better to retreat home, and get safely away from that bottle green dress. But something makes me pause as we stride across the Emporium ballroom together: the quiver of strings drifting through the air.

“Oh,” Sasha says softly.

Ohis right. The lights have dimmed, the ballroom lit with low-hanging lamps that look like stars, and all around us, couples sweep onto the dance floor. Normally, I wouldn’t even break stride, but Sasha’s eyes are so wide. Filled with yearning.

The words escape before I can stop them. “Dance with me.”

She stares at my offered palm like it’s a grenade.

“Grant…”

I shift my weight, determined now, and don’t drop my hand. What, would it be so terrible? I won’t step on her damn feet. I’m an asshole, not a klutz.

Sasha leans close. Her perfume wafts over me as she whispers.

“The press will be here. People will see.”

And suddenly, for the first time since I was fifteen years old, I don’t give a shit about the press. They can write what they like—take whatever photos they can steal of me.

Her fingers are cool in mine.

“Sasha. Listen to me. I don’t care.”

And maybe that was bravado, but when she steps into my arms, it becomes truth. She’s so graceful, bowing elegantly against me as we turn, and as she smiles up at me, she bites her red lower lip. We spin slowly, weaving between the other couples, and the soft, aching string music echoes down to my soul.

“I like this,” she murmurs. “I’ve never slow danced before.”

Fuck. I want to be all of her firsts.

Holding her like this—it’s agonizingly familiar. It brings those other times rushing back—cradling her against my chest in the broken elevator; feeling her melt into me when I kissed her by my desk. And it brings back all the times I’ve dreamed of kissing her, too: a heady whirlwind of images that has swirled around my brain for months.

Every morning chat over the coffees I bring her. Every short ride in the elevator together. Every time she’s stepped into my office, knocking softly on the door, her neck craning to make sure she can come in.

Sasha peering up at me, lips parted.

Her chest heaving beneath her thin blouse.

Her pulse tapping frantically in her throat—just begging for the scrape of my teeth.

“Sasha,” I grind out, and I don’t even know what I’m asking. Only that if she says no, something will fracture inside me.

Her hand tightens around mine. She leans close, lips brushing my earlobe.

“Let’s get out of here, Mr Keller.”

* * *

The car is hushed. Dark. Warmer than the frosty night outside, but still cool enough that goosebumps ripple over Sasha’s bare arms. I reach over, scowling at the partition between us and the driver, and take her wrist. Guide her across the leather seat and into my lap.

“Wow. Um.” Her thighs settle on either side of my hips, her fingertips sliding around my neck to play in the ends of my hair. “This is new. I’ve thought about this before, actually.”

“Tell me.” It’s an order, curt and low, and she shivers. Shuffles a fraction closer, her dress brushing my shirt.

“Well. Okay. It’s not so much one time in particular as every—every time we were in here together.”

Fuck.“Go on.”

My palms stroke up and down her thighs as she talks, soothing her nerves and hitching her dress higher. Bare skin meets my thumbs, feverish now, and I draw tiny circles. Relishing her softness.

“Well, mostly—mostly you were being an asshole. Usually. But sometimes, when you smiled at me or held the door or I caught a whiff of your cologne, I just wanted to reach over and knock those stupid folders out of your hands and… and…”

She trails off, her blush radioactive even in the darkness.

“Sasha.” I grip her thighs and squeeze. “I won’t ask you again. Tell me.”

Her breath shudders through the car. Raindrops streak across the tinted windows, glittering as we pass beneath streetlamps, and there’s only the purr of the engine and the steady thump of my heart.

Her nails scrape against the back of my neck. She chews her lip.

“Sasha.”

“Okay. Okay. It’s just—” She frowns at the base of my throat “—you have nice thighs. Sort of… strong-looking. So I wanted to sit on your lap, and feel you being all sturdy beneath me, or slide off the seat and kneel between them and—”

Her chin ducks. Like she’s considering doing it now. God, I’ve had the exact same thought, along with a hundred other things I’d like to do to her, in the back of this car and in every other location. But though her words have heated my blood like nothing else, have made me hard as stone in my pants, the first time I touch her will not be like that.

It won’t be about me.

After all these weeks together… I want to make her sigh.

“Good.” Slowly, I hitch her dress higher up her thighs. She’s warm and smooth and trembling. Practically panting already. “Good girl.”

Her scoff is half-hearted. And she chokes it back, swaying with hazy eyes when my thumbs skirt the edges of her panties.

“I’m going to touch you now.”

“O-okay.”

The fabric is damp. Burning hot.

“I’m going to make you come.”

A shaky inhale. “Yes.”

“Would you like that?”

For the first time since the ballroom, she meets my eyes. Sasha scowls at me, irritation mingling with glassy-eyed arousal.

“Grant. Don’t be an ass.”

“You have to say the words. Come on, Sasha Jones.” My thumbs slide the barest fraction beneath her panties. “Ask me to make you moan. Beg me for it.”

“Shit.” Her forehead drops to my shoulder, and now her hips are working. Rocking her core against my fingers. “You’re so cocky. I should not be into that.”

“But you are.” I hook her panties to the side. When my fingers meet her heat, she lets out a broken moan.

“But I am.”

I capture her mouth in a kiss. I can’t hold back anymore, not when her breath is hitching and she’s so hot and slick, rolling her hips against me with abandon. Each little moan and sigh that escapes her lips, I swallow it down, greedy for every noise she makes. And when I slide a finger inside her, rubbing against the vice grip of her pussy, I thrust my tongue past her lips and fuck her mouth too.

“G-Grant…”

A growl rumbles in my chest. She tastes so fucking good. Like champagne and honey and Sasha.

I’ve done this a thousand times in my head. And I knew, I fucking knew, that she’d be like nothing and no one else. That she would wreck me.

But knowing it and experiencing it are two different things, and I could never have imagined the way my heart would pound when she moans, nearly slamming clean out of my chest. I never pictured my throat growing tight, clogged with longing, and I didn’t realize that her fingernails would dig almost all the way through my jacket as she clings to me, clutching my shoulders.

I’m blind-sided.

There’s a smoking crater where I used to be.

“Grant, I think I’m going to—”

“Do it.” I thrum her clit, so turned on my teeth ache. “Give it to me, sweetheart. Show me how pretty you are when you come.”

It happens like a thunderstorm. Slowly at first, then building, building, until she’s locked in a maelstrom in my lap and I can’t tear my eyes away from her. Her mouth drops open; her thighs shake. The fucking sounds she makes.

I’ll never recover.

When the car pulls up outside her apartment a minute later, I’m startled. I thought we’d have longer. But Sasha glances out of the window, chuckles softly, then brushes her lips against mine before sliding off my lap. I’m gratified to see the tremble in her legs.

“I’ll see you in the office, Mr Keller. Thanks for the dance.”

The door slams shut, and I watch her shadow race across the rain-drenched sidewalk.