Bite Me (22 page)

Three weeks after the Claiming, I was happily installed in my new vice-president’s office at Savage Technology. The marketing department was a mess. I felt actual excitement at the idea of being involved with more than just the advertising. I would actually get to develop entire marketing plans. Well, if my new boss would let me. He wasn’t a complete asshole but I got the sense he was reserving judgment. Even though my resume showed me to be qualified, I sensed that he wondered exactly how I had gotten the job. Especially since Conner showed up on my first day to take me to lunch.

I was engrossed with familiarizing myself with past marketing plans and the previous vice-president’s computer files when there was a knock on my door.

“Come in,” I called.

The door opened to reveal Conner clad in the same dark gray pinstripe suit I watched him put on that very morning. Just the memory made my chest and face flush.

Most men were sexiest when they removed their clothing. However, watching Conner don snug black boxer briefs, pants, and then a teal shirt that made his blue eyes look almost green; it had been one of the hottest things I’d ever seen. Even watching him put on socks and shoes was erotic. I decided then and there to try and watch him get ready for work every morning. It wasn’t until he put on his tie that he realized I was staring.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off his hands as he knotted the silk and imagining those same fingers tying my wrists with the material currently around his neck. I had experimented with light bondage in the past with a boyfriend, but it had been more amusing than arousing. Picturing Conner doing those same things to me, and more, made me wet. I licked my suddenly dry lips.

I blinked and Conner’s face filled my vision. I gasped and tried to pull back. I hated it when he moved faster than I could see. His hands kept me in place as his eyes searched mine. I could see that he sensed the lust coursing through my veins. The blue of his eyes intensified until it was electric.

“What are you thinking about?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. It felt like the temperature of the room had shot up fifty degrees. “You and that tie.”

“What about my tie?” he prompted.

“I see you,” I paused to lick my lips again before I continued, “using that tie on my wrists. I’m at your mercy but…” I couldn’t finish.

Conner’s expression turned wicked. “But I don’t have any mercy.”

“Yes,” I whispered.

Deliberately, he set me away from him and went back to getting ready without a word. I stared at him in confusion. He didn’t seem angry. In fact, if the bulge in the front of his pants was anything to go by, he was ready to act out my dirty little fantasy. After he slipped into his jacket he turned back to me.

His fingers wrapped around my wrists as he backed me against the wall of the bedroom. After my spine touched wood, he slowly lifted my hands over my head and pinned them there. My confusion disappeared under a tide of arousal, and I panted when he used his body weight to pin me in place. I always thought of myself as completely vanilla, no matter the kink I read, but this dominant side of Conner flipped my switch.

“When we get home tonight,” he said, “I’ll show you how unmerciful I can be.” With those words he released me.

He walked casually toward the door of the bedroom, leaving me practically boneless against the wall. Just before he left the room, he looked back at me. “Be sure that Carter is with you at all times when you are not in your office or our home.”

That was the last I had seen of him before now.

As though he knew exactly where my brain wandered, Conner grinned and looked every inch the devil in a pinstripe suit.

“Are you ready to go to lunch?” he asked politely.

I wanted to throw my empty coffee cup at his head. Instead, I stood up from behind my desk and smoothed my dress. I had a weapon of my own to tease him with.

“That sounds great,” I said.

I grabbed my purse, stealthily pulling out my surprise for Conner. As I brushed by him in my doorway, I slid my hand into his pocket and left his present there. I kept walking even as he began to pull it out of his jacket.

“Fucking hell,” he said, his voice raspy.

I smiled as I continued down the hall toward the elevator. Within seconds he was by my side again.

“You will pay for that,” he whispered in my ear.

“Well you said you planned to show me no mercy later tonight. I thought I should do something to deserve a little punishment.” I couldn’t quite believe that I had the gumption to say that out loud but I was glad I did.

A dark flush crept up his neck as we entered the elevator car. I saw his hand creep into his pocket and knew he was touching the black lace of the panties I’d removed earlier after I had overheard the company receptionist mention that Conner was in the building.

He didn’t speak again as we rode down to the first floor and walked out to his car. The silence continued to stretch out as he drove us to a restaurant. Finally, after the waiter came by and took our drink orders, Conner seemed to snap out of his reverie.

“How is your first day going?” he asked.

I sipped my water, still feeling hot from the way he had looked at me earlier in the elevator. “It’s going well. I’m looking forward to doing more than designing an advertising campaign. I just hope that my new boss will be open to my ideas.”

“I could have a word with him,” Conner offered.

I shook my head vehemently. “Please don’t. It’s important to me that I do this on my own as much as possible. If you intervene after just one day, no one in that company will take me seriously. Since you placed me in a management position it’s important that they respect me or I’ll never be able to get anything done.”

He nodded. “I understand. I won’t speak to him.”

I smiled slightly. “Thank you.”

We began talking then, but lunch was still heavy with sexual tension. Every so often I would see his hand stray to his jacket, brushing the pocket that contained my panties. Each time he did it, I became acutely aware of the fact that I was naked beneath my dress. God, by the time we got home in the evening, I wouldn’t need any preparation. This was foreplay enough.

After we ate, Conner dropped me off back at the office with nothing more than a chaste kiss on my cheek but his eyes promised a hell of a lot more once we were alone. I practically floated up the elevator and into my office. I was so distracted that when my cell phone rang I didn’t check the caller ID.

My mind still on Conner, I answered, “Hello?”

“Donna! It’s Parker. How are you?”

I jerked the phone away from ear and stared at it like it had grown fangs. Holy fucking hell it was my ex-boss. More curious than anything, I put the receiver back to my ear.

“Parker? Why are you calling me?”

Sounding jovial as if he had never screwed me over, Parker continued, “Well, some things have come to light, and the higher ups have realized that the unfortunate incidents leading up to your termination were nothing more than a misunderstanding.”

What the fuck was he talking about? My
termination
, as he called it, was his damn fault.

“Get to the point.” My words were clipped.

“Well, the board discussed it and they would like to hire you back.”

This conversation was getting stranger and stranger. Why the hell would the board be discussing me? I had just been an executive. Sure I was on the track for a promotion, but it had still been a few years away.

“Hire me back?” I repeated.

“Yes. In the last few months it’s become very clear to the partners, and the rest of us at the firm, how important your work was to the company. They are offering you a promotion from your previous position and a twenty percent raise.” Parker rattled all this off as though it hadn’t been over three months since I had been unceremoniously fired from my job and escorted off the property.

“That’s a very tempting offer, Parker, but I just started another job. I’m the senior vice-president of marketing for Savage Technology, and my pay is a lot more than the twenty percent raise you’re offering me.” I took unholy glee in what I got to say next. “You have a nice day, fuckwad.” Then I hung up.

I tossed my phone on my desk and stared at it for a moment. Then I just shook my head and got to work. At least Parker’s call had distracted me from the insane sexual haze Conner had created in my mind during our lunch.

The next time I looked up from my computer it was almost five in the afternoon. When I realized how late it was, my heart started pounding in my chest. Time to go home. To Conner. I couldn’t decide if I hoped he would finish what he started, or if I was scared he would. It was time to find out.

I shut down my computer and collected my purse and laptop case. I said good-bye to my temporary assistant. I made a mental note to put out a company-wide memo that I was looking for a permanent executive assistant. If no one in the company applied for the position, I would have to take out an ad.

Distracted by my thoughts and mental to-do list, I didn’t hear the voice calling my name as I walked out of the building into the parking lot. When the hand came down on my shoulder, I couldn’t stifle the small scream that crawled up my throat. I whirled around and found myself face-to-face with my old boss, Parker Hanes.

Breathing hard, I put a hand to my chest. “You scared the shit out of me, Parker!”

He stood back, hands in air in mock surrender. “Sorry, Donna. I called your name several times but you kept walking.”

My heart rate was returning to normal. “I have a lot on my mind.” I stared at him for a moment. “What are you doing here?”

Parker’s expression settled into the amiable, good-ole-boy mask that he liked to wear around clients. It didn’t fool me for a second. The man was a weasel in a thousand dollar suit. I immediately knew he was buttering me up for something.

“I thought maybe if I came to ask you in person, you would reconsider coming back to work for the firm.”

“Are you serious?” I asked incredulously.

Parker nodded. “As a heart attack.”

More like desperate, I thought to myself. After the way I had spoken to him on the phone earlier, the man should have gotten the hint. Yet here he was, standing in the parking lot of my new workplace. I couldn’t believe he had the gall to act as though I should be interested in coming back to work for him after he threw me under the bus.

“I told you earlier, Parker. I’m not interested. My job here pays better, and I’m pretty sure my boss won’t embezzle money from the company and then fire me to cover it up.”

The friendly mask he wore remained in place but his eyes changed. They grew cold and distant. It was extremely disconcerting to see. It also gave me a very bad feeling that Parker wasn’t asking me to come back to my job because of pressure from the firm’s partners. More like he was hoping to screw me over again. For some reason, Parker was desperate to have me back at the firm and I was sure his reasons didn’t include a happy ending for me. I decided it was time to end the conversation.

“You don’t understand, Donna. You have to come back,” he said.

“I don’t have to do a fucking thing,” I shot back. I turned on my heel and started heading for my car.

His hand closed over my wrist, gripping me hard, and he pulled me to a stop. “Don’t make me do this,” he said, “I don’t want to.”

I had no clue what he was talking about. “I’m not making you do anything, Parker. And it seems to me you
do
want to, or you wouldn’t be holding my arm.” I stared him down, keeping my back straight and my gaze focused solely on his eyes. “Now let go of me. This conversation is over.”

The thought crossed my mind that Carter, my security, was absent. Surely if he saw what was happening, he would intervene. That’s what Conner hired him for. I looked around briefly and saw no sign of my bodyguard. My blood ran cold. There was no way he would abandon me without a good reason.

Carter was Conner’s friend, but he also said that my man threatened to castrate him if he let anything happen to me. I had laughed when he said it, but he hadn’t. He assured me that Conner knew what he was doing in that respect, and I realized he wasn’t joking.

Parker jerked my arm, bringing my attention back to him. “I don’t have a choice, Donna. You have to come with me.” He sounded desperate and scared.

I struggled, trying to yank my wrist out of his hand, but he merely tightened his grip until it was so painful that I cried out. I knew that things were taking a nasty turn. Because it had worked before and Parker was little more than a string bean in a suit, I maneuvered my keys so that they stuck out like spikes and struck out.

Surprisingly, he evaded my blows and started dragging me through the parking lot. Though I wasn’t wearing stilettos, my two inch heels provided no traction as I tried to pull away.

“What the fuck are you doing, Parker? Let me go now!”

He only shook his head and continued away from the building, nearly pulling my shoulder out of socket.

I kicked him in the knee, but the blow was weak because he had me so off balance. I realized that we were headed directly toward a black, windowless van and my heart almost stopped. Jesus, the fucker was going to kidnap me.

Suddenly, I remembered something my friend Shannon had told me. She taught a self-defense class once a month. She always said the best thing to do in the event of attack wasn’t just to fight back, but to bring attention to what was happening. So, I sucked in a huge breath and loosed the loudest scream I could muster.

Parker turned quickly, something square and black in his hand. I felt it touch my skin, a sizzle, then the world went dark.