Bewitching the Boss by Jessa Kane

Three

Jane

I press my face to the smooth bamboo of the cabana wall, staring through the gap toward the Olympic-sized swimming pool in Byron’s backyard.

Why isn’t he swimming?

He always swims on weekday mornings. It’s his ritual.

Wake up. Down a cup of black coffee.

Drop his sleep boxers and tug a Speedo up those enormously thick thighs. Watching him through the windows of his house as he treks to the pool, still half sleepy, is usually the best part of my day. But he’s not here. He’s not even home. Did he go somewhere last night?

Is he with a woman?

“No,” I whisper. My legs give out at that possibility and I sink down to the floor of the cabana, hugging my knees to my chest and rocking. I’m an idiot. I’m such an idiot. Why did I come on so strong yesterday? Of course he thinks I’m a gold digger. Of course he suspects there is something wrong with me—because there is. I need help. I’m not only infatuated with Byron DeWitt to the point that I stalk him like it’s my job. I’m also keeping a terrible secret from him.

He probably senses the black rot inside of me.

He’s too intelligent not to know I’m wrong in so many ways.

Wrong for him. Wrong period.

The urge to go inside his house right now is almost excruciating. He’s not swimming his laps this morning, so I didn’t get my fix. My chance to feel close with him. And I’m craving some kind of compensation. I need to touch something he owns. I need to smell him. Or I’m going to go crazy. Crazier, I should say. I’ve lost any sense of right and wrong over this man.

If he’s with a woman, I’ll kill her.

My skin prickles with ice, with alarm at my own silent vow.

I’m bad for him. He knows it, doesn’t he?

Since the night of the accident that took his sister’s life, I’ve changed my life, but I’m still a dark stain compared to the pure, white light of Byron. A virgin. He’s a virgin who has completely sworn off pleasure, like a modern-day monk and any time I’m in his presence, I can’t help trying to tempt him from that noble path.

So maybe I haven’t changed that much. Maybe I’m still the selfish party girl passed out in the back seat while her friend drove us home drunk from a party…and ran a red light. Maybe I’m still the girl who wakes up to the sound of metal bending and glass shattering. Screaming.

Oh God, I need to be around him. I need the warmth he instills in me.

Where is he?

I can’t go inside his house, as much as I want to. Even from here, I can see the various mounted cameras. If he watched the footage, he would probably see someone stealing over his gate into the cabana every morning. A figure moving in the deepest shadows. That would be bad enough. But to break into his house? My secret would be out and he would look at me with fear and disgust. There would be a restraining order. Maybe an arrest. I can’t do it. I can’t lose this small connection I have to the brilliant man who I fell in love with one morning on a hillside cemetery while he buried his sister.

I wasn’t supposed to be there, either. But I went to the somber service to pay my respects. I went to say a quiet apology for being involved. For not trying harder to stop my friend from driving. And there he was. A strong, stoic man in black with anguish in his eyes. Anguish and resilience and beauty that runs so deep, it can’t be touched.

Now I’m in so deep with this obsession, there’s no way out.

With a hard sniff, I force myself to stand on numb legs, reminding myself that I have a job. A Halloween party to plan. An office downtown where I go and act normal at my desk, rewarding each solid hour of work with a trip to the Firestarter website where I can see Byron’s face on the CEO page. Unsmiling, serious, cleanly shaven Byron.

A memory of his body against mine yesterday hits me, potent and raw. I stumble forward into the cabana wall, running my hands down the front of my dress, teasing my nipples into peaks. Moaning. God, he was so hard for me. Maybe he didn’t want to be aroused, maybe he sensed the madness lurking inside of me, but he was erect and it was glorious. I knew his sex was large, because I watch him, but feeling it against my pussy really brought the size of him into focus. One more minute of rubbing against him and I would have come, right there in his kitchen. In the sunlight. On the bulging fly of his trousers.

I pull down the silk cups of my bra and finger my nipples, pinching them, warm liquid trickling down between my thighs. “I’ve stayed celibate for you,” I whisper. “I’ll never, ever let another man touch me as long as I live.” And I mean every word of what I’m saying. I belong to Byron. Period. Whether he ever claims me or not. I do an hour of Kegels every night so I’ll give him maximum pleasure if he ever needs me.

Right now, I’m imagining him on top of me, having his first sexual encounter. Trying not to come after one pump, my hands on his generous ass, yanking him deeper. Making him moan and sweat and urging him to become more aggressive. Driving him to hurt me. Hurt me. Choke me and slam me into the headboard, if he needs it.

“I’m yours. I’m just your little toy—“

The alarm on my phone begins to vibrate, letting me know I’m going to be late for work if I don’t leave now. Normally, by this time, Byron has finished his laps and he’s back inside the house showering and I’m driving to work, legs squeezed together with arousal from watching his back muscles flex. From seeing the water stream down his untouched body.

“Mine,” I whisper, fixing my bra and dress, then pushing out of the back exit of the cabana, my hands closing around the iron bars of his gate. “Mine.”

I take my usual route to work, stopping at my usual bakery for coffee. But it’s not a typical morning because I didn’t see him. I’m restless and everything is moving in a sluggish motion, voices and car engines ringing in my ears, like I’m trapped in a fun house. I’m going through Byron withdrawals, aren’t I? Yes, that’s what this is. And it’s twice as intense because I’ve touched him now. Spent time with him. I didn’t get my daily dose.

Didn’t—

I stop short when I walk into my office.

Byron is…here? Or more likely, my mind is playing tricks on me.

He can’t really be sitting in our client reception area, holding a bouquet of flowers, his mouth moving, as if he’s silently rehearing a speech. What is happening?

I try to fill my lungs with oxygen, but I can only manage a gasping half-breath. “Byron?”

He looks up at me abruptly, dropping the bouquet. And when he bends down to retrieve it, muttering under his breath, his knee bashes into the coffee table.

His wince of discomfort causes denial to tear through me, but I tamp it down.

Act normal. Act normal.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, my voice husky. Shaky.

Byron gestures awkwardly with the bouquet, redness riding up the sides of his face. “I came to apologize.” He takes a step in my direction. Another one. He seems almost transfixed by me, but that can’t be right. I’m projecting. “Jane, I was an awful moron yesterday. I am begging you to forgive me for what I said. You…” With a quick glance at our reception desk, he lowers his voice. “I’m just not used to being wanted like that. Especially by someone so…vibrant. And alive. It threw me and I went hunting for reasons you could possibly be attracted to someone like me—”

“Someone like you?” I let my guard slip a little. How could I not when he’s here? He’s brought me flowers and he’s calling me vibrant. Blushing his way through all of it. I could die happy, right this very second. “Someone like you, Byron? You mean incredible? Tech wizards are a dime a dozen in the Valley, but that’s all they are. Smart. They don’t have generosity with their employees. Empathy and emotional depth and humility.” My heart squeezes out the final sentence. “There’s no one in the world like you.”

He stares at me, looking winded. Bewildered. “Jane…”

Oh my God, I have to be terrifying him. He should be terrified. I was just in his cabana trying to catch sight of him shirtless. “Thank you for coming here and apologizing. I accept, of course. I’m sorry for leaving yesterday on such a dramatic note.” I step forward and accept the bouquet of flowers. Pink peonies wrapped in green tissue paper and cellophane, tied up in a white ribbon. Gorgeous. “These are the exact flowers I would have chosen for myself,” I say, truthfully, causing relief to dance across his face. “Well done, Mr. DeWitt.”

He ducks his head, battling a smile. “I’m glad you like them. Roses seems too obvious.” His gaze tracks down the front of my body and away, his chest rising and falling. “I hope you don’t mind me saying that you’re more complicated than roses.”

I knew it. He senses something about me.

Something twisted.

But…he’s here regardless?

Yes. He’s here. And I don’t want him to leave.

“I had a weird idea for the party,” I say, my mind flipping through an array of images. “Do you want to discuss it in my office?”

Is it my imagination that he looks relieved that I’ve given him a reason to stay?

“Weird, huh?” His lips tug at the corner. “I have to hear this.”

I have to restrain myself from rubbing my face on his big, brawny shoulder to get a whiff of his Tom Ford cologne. “Right this way,” I whisper, leading him to my office in the far corner of the floor.

As we pass by some of my co-workers, they gape at me, one of them mouthing the words hot nerd. But I’m too busy coming up with a weird idea on the fly to acknowledge them. Or stab them with a letter opener, as is my most pressing inclination.

When we reach my office, I close the door behind us. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thank you, I’m fine.” He’s looking around my office, analyzing every knickknack and office supply with his genius brain, brow furrowed. God, he’s so sexy. My thighs are in a permanent flex, the flesh throbbing wetly at their juncture. “I checked your employment history before I hired you to plan the party. You haven’t been working here long. Yet you have your own office.” He picks up my high heel-shaped paperweight, turning it over in his hands with an amused smile. “You must have worked very hard.”

“Yes,” I say, throat dry. Aching. I’m so overcome by the fact that we’re alone in my office—alone again after I thought he would never allow it to happen again—that some of my truth slips past the net. “I was a little lost in my late teens, early twenties. I needed to make up for lost time. I wanted to be…better.”

He zeroes in on my face. “What made you want to change?”

Seeing your pain.

Feeling responsible for it.

“I’m not sure. I had a moment of clarity. Sometimes that’s all it takes. You look at your life and see the crossroads. You put one foot in front of the other until you’re walking in a new direction and the other road grows smaller and smaller behind you. It’s shaky at first, but then…you’re running. I think that’s why I worked hard. Hard as I could. Because I saw what it could be like if I kept going the other direction.”

He’s silent for long moments, studying me. “That’s admirable, Jane. I’m happy for you.”

Guilt screams through my center.

You don’t deserve his pride or his congratulations.

I swallow hard. “Let’s talk weird ideas,” I say haltingly, shuffling papers on my desk even though nothing about my idea is written or detailed on any of them. “I was thinking…a lot of programmers have a dark sense of humor and true crime is on trend right now. What if we staged a fake crime scene at the party? Your guests could inspect it for clues and try to solve the mystery of what happened. That might be too macabre—”

“I love it,” he laughs. “They will love that. You’re right, they’re completely morbid.”

“We can partition it off, just in case it’s triggering—”

“Right. Good idea.” He blinks at me from behind his glasses, shakes his head. “You’re amazing, Jane. I’m ashamed to say I underestimated the power of a party. My team is already more upbeat just knowing there is one happening.” He tugs on the collar of his navy blue button-down shirt. “I should have been more aware that they needed a break.”

I’m not sure when I moved closer to him, but suddenly I’m on the other side of the desk and there’s only a foot of space separating us. Byron never sat down, so I have to tilt my head back to keep eye contact. And when he swallows, stepping closer to me, my butt presses to the edge of my desk. “It’s okay. You were a little busy trying to conquer Silicon Valley.”

“Something like that.” He looks down at my thighs and shudders, rasping, “Christ, Jane. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Those words strike me with lightning. He can’t know the effect of what he’s saying. His interest is almost worrying. It’s like throwing a match into a puddle of gasoline. I’m already obsessed with him. What comes next? “I can’t stop thinking about you, either.” I swallow hard. “You don’t want to…enjoy yourself too much. I get that. I don’t want you to regret me, you know?”

“Yeah. It’s just…” His hands slide over my hips, gripping. “What man could ever regret you? He’d have to be insane. And yet, I can’t stop the guilt. Goddammit.”

Byron starts to draw his hands back. Begins to pull his touch away, even though he’s hard against the front of his dress pants. Even though he’s clearly in need. And it’s definitely a morning for ideas on the fly, because I find myself blurting, “What if you didn’t take any pleasure? What if you only gave it to me?” I take hold of his belt buckle and tug him closer, widening my thighs to accommodate his hips. “You couldn’t feel guilty about that, right?”

He searches my face, starting to breathe faster. “No. I couldn’t. I could never be anything but grateful to satisfy you.”

God, this is like a dream.

My skin is fevered, sensitive, my core clenching painfully. Needy. I lean up and press our lips together, licking the seam of his mouth lightly. “Do you want to give me an orgasm, Byron?”

“Yes,” he chokes out. “Please.”

How is this real? This big, gorgeous genius is all but shaking with the need to please me, his erection like a torpedo in his pants. He has no idea how easy this is going to be. Getting me off. I’m already poised right on the edge just having his undivided attention.

I slip off the desk and slowly, slowly tug my skirt up to my waist.

Swaying my hips side to side, I peel down my panties, all the way to the floor. Then I straighten. I lean back against the desk and let him look at my bare sex. I’m dripping wet. Waxed. All for him. And he makes a hoarse noise, nostrils flaring, yanking hard on his collar.

“Do you know where to touch me?” I question quietly, taking hold of his tie and pulling, bringing his body closer. “Or do you want me to show you?”

“Show me,” he heaves thickly, palming my knees. “I-I should have researched it.”

I shake my head. “Every woman is different, Byron. But we all have one thing in common.” I take his right hand and guide it between my thighs. “We all have a clit. It’s small and sensitive. Hidden. And that’s where I want to be touched. By you.” I kiss his mouth gently. “Play with me. I’ll tell you when you find it.”

With a rough swallow, he parts my folds with his thumb—gently saws that digit once, twice—and finds my clit immediately. I gasp, seizing his wrist, petrified of the orgasm that’s already building, building. It’s monumental. “Th-that’s it. That’s it.”

His mouth smirks against mine. “That was fast.”

“You’re telling me,” I pant. “Don’t…d-don’t go too fast. I don’t want this to end so soon.”

“Jesus. Me either,” he mutters against my mouth, his thumb beginning to move again. Rubbing in slow circles, our breaths jagged, mingling between our pressed-together lips. And then we’re kissing. We’re kissing like the taste of each other will save us from certain death. He angles his head to the right and gives me his tongue, stroking it over mine reverently. Hungrily. And all the while, he fondles that little bud between my legs, faster and faster, increasing the pace of our kiss in the process. My head is spinning, not only because this is Byron, my Byron, my preoccupation, but because his touch is magical. Skilled in an inexperienced way that shreds my heart and whips my hormones into a fine frenzy at the same time.

“That’s so good, baby, so good,” I whine through my teeth.

He groans, sucks my tongue, rubs me harder. “I’m going to make you come?”

“Oh my God, yes. Yes.” Darkness rolls into my mind like a fog, swirling and creating a sticky layer over the top of everything. It takes over in a new way, spurred on by his mouth, his touch. “What kind of girl drops her panties in the middle of the day and lets you touch her? What kind of girl lets you look under her skirt during a first meeting?” I’m so close, so close. Desperate. But I…need something. Need something more. “Tell me what I am. Say it. Please.”

Byron blinks at me a moment, then becomes resolute. Determined. He surges forward, unexpectedly sinking his teeth into my neck. “What do you want to hear? That I’d love to put my big, fat cock in this pussy and ride you like a little slut?”

I have to slap a hand over my own mouth to trap the scream.

It comes from somewhere deep, deep inside of me.

Somewhere I didn’t even know existed until now.

Yes. Yes. I want to be his little slut. That’s what I was asking him to say, without realizing.

The orgasm is violent. Therapeutic. Revolutionary. I go blind, my flesh rippling and convulsing in ways it never has before. Relief escapes from me in a liquid deluge, dripping down the cheeks of my backside, onto my inner thighs and Byron’s hand. He is no longer stroking me, just pressing that thumb down on my swollen button, watching me come with a combination of triumph and ownership. I bask in it. I bask in his attention, open my legs wider and continue to field the full body pulsations that end right there. Right where he touches me.

“Byron,” I whimper, slumping against him when the calamity ends, my heart knocking against my eardrums, my ribcage. It’s everywhere at once and it’s so full. So heavy. Burning.

His arms tighten around me, crushing me close. “God, Jane. My God, I don’t know why I said that. I-I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“I asked for it. I loved it,” I say, raking my open mouth up his neck, taking his earlobe between my teeth and tugging. “I didn’t know I needed…that. And I just need it from you. Only you.”

I’m being too transparent. Too honest.

But I can’t seem to put my mask back in place when he’s just ripped it clean off.

“No.” He shakes his head. “No, I won’t say that to you ever again. I’m ashamed of myself. I don’t know what came over me.” His voice drops considerably. “I hate myself for still being so fucking hard after saying that vile word to you. For still wanting…”

“You can have it. Have me.” It’s so decadent to have such a frank, intimate conversation with Byron that I lose control of my neck, my head falling back. “I’m your little s—”

He stamps his mouth down over mine. “Don’t say it,” he growls. “Don’t you dare say it. You are not that. You are a fucking goddess and I’m a bastard, apparently. Jesus.”

We just breathe like that, against each other’s lips, for long moments, his erection stuffed up against my sated sex. Still hungry. I am compelled to slide off the desk and get on my knees, let him use my mouth. I would give my entire life for the chance to taste him there. But I’ve just kissed him, received pleasure from him. Not to mention, he’s stolen the veil off of some dark, deeply rooted need inside of me. The last thing I want to do is push too hard, shatter his resolve to feel no enjoyment and ruin everything. Ruin the best moments of my life.

“Byron,” I whisper, stroking my hands down the sides of his face. “Maybe it’s okay to be a little wrong sometimes? If we both like it?”

He’s already shaking his head.

In one quick movement, he pulls me off the desk and tugs my skirt back into place, stepping back and swiping a hand across his mouth. “I’m sorry, Jane.” He tries to sound formal, but the apology comes out ragged, instead. “I’ll see myself out.”

He’s gone before I can say another word or implore him to stay.

Just gone.

And I’m left shaken, moved, heartbroken, elated. A pummeling of emotions that I can’t stand, but can’t stand to live without, either. I have no idea what I’m going to do. But I know I’m addicted to Byron DeWitt. My obsession has just plunged to a new depth…

…and I’m powerless to do anything but explore it.