Tristan's Temptation (4 page)

Chapter Three

Shannon was already at her desk when Tristan arrived in the office the next morning, dressed demurely and sitting straight-backed in her task chair, shuffling through some papers.

“Good morning, Mr. Trillo.” She didn’t so much as glance up as he approached. He tried not to let it annoy him.

How could she look so reserved, so modest and detached, when last night a scene of her making had whipped him into a mindless frenzy? What depths bubbled beneath that cool British exterior? What would it be like to explore…

Harshly, he yanked his wandering mind from the question and strengthened his resolve to resist her allure. He’d castigated himself most of the night for his lapse, in between sessions of madly jerking off. He should never have opened her laptop. Once he’d realized the mistake, he should have driven back to her house and switched machines.

But he hadn’t and now he would burn for it. Every time he saw her, he would burn. Because now he knew the truth.

“Here,” he said without preamble, shoving her laptop into her hands. “I gave you mine by mistake.”

“Yes, Mr. Trillo.” She offered a small, impersonal smile. “I noticed. I put yours on your desk.”

“Oh. Um. Thanks.” He stood there, not sure what to say, not sure it would be wise to say anything, and then he blurted, “Were you able to finish the quarterlies?”

Their gazes met. Her eyes were wide and thickly fringed with dark lashes. He wanted to sink into them. She appeared slightly amused but her response was as prim and professional as usual. “Yes. I finished the edits and printed out copies for the staff meeting.”

“Okay. Good.” Still he lingered, loath to leave. For some reason. “Did you make the coffee?”

She dipped her head to hide it but her amusement was now utterly undeniable. “Yes, Mr. Trillo,” she said like a schoolgirl reciting a classroom welcome, and he cringed.

In five years, Shannon had never once failed to make coffee before a staff meeting. It had been a stupid question, a question designed to prolong this interaction. Which was, in itself, stupid. Stupid with a hint of desperate.

But he didn’t want to go into his office and stare at her through the blinds.

He wanted to stare at her from right here. The view was better.

“Can I get you some?”

Tristan blinked. “Huh? What?”

Shannon glanced at him from beneath those extraordinarily long, thick lashes. “Coffee.” The hint of a pink tongue dabbed at her lush lips. “Can I get you some coffee?”

Hell. If he didn’t know better, he would think she was flirting. But that was nuts. No. This impression was nothing but a delusional backlash from last night’s revelations. Now that he knew the truth about her steamy side, his horny subconscious would likely invest every casual word, each indifferent action, with lurid sexual underpinnings.

“No. Thanks.” He shifted from foot to foot. “I have to go into my office now,” he said. “And work.”

Her lips twitched, a tiny, knowing smile. “Of course.”

He knew he was acting like a doofus but he couldn’t help it. At the moment, he
was
a doofus. He stormed into his office and with a brutal twist of his wrist closed the blinds. The last thing he needed was to watch her sitting there all day long. Looking so damn sexy.

He watched her, sitting there next to him at the conference table, looking so damn sexy, and tried like hell to control his raging hard-on. Thank God Jack Maris was the one giving the bulk of today’s presentations. Tristan had only been responsible for the quarterly update and he hadn’t had to stand for that. Thank God. Not even a blind man could miss his hard-on if he stood right now. Hell, he’d probably knock the blind man over with it if he got too close.

So instead he sat there, ignoring Jack’s presentation, and fantasized about Shannon bending over the conference table wearing nothing but a dog collar and vinyl boots.

It was torture. Sheer torture.

But he couldn’t stop.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the scenario that had sent him to the moon last night, or the others he’d found once he’d recuperated from the most draining orgasm of his life. Visions of Shannon seducing him at a grocery store and fucking him silly on a tropical beach and giving him head as he piloted a spacecraft through the Crab Nebula danced through his head. And more.

What was worse, her fantasies had fired more of his. He would need a month online to create all the scenarios crowding his mind.

She
crowded his mind. He wondered if he would ever be able to concentrate on work again.

It dawned on him that Jack had finished talking and everyone was staring at Tristan, waiting. He cleared his throat and glanced around the room. Having no clue what had just transpired, he said what he always said at the end of one of Jack’s presentations. “Thank you, Jack. Adam, do you have anything to add?”

Adam frowned at him and cleared his throat. “Yes, Jack’s presentation was very thorough. We certainly appreciate all your support in beta testing the Virtual Life program. Sara, would you like to talk a little about the marketing plan?”

“Sure…Adam.” With a quick, curious look in Tristan’s direction, Sara stood and began to outline the sales points and release dates for the new program. Before long, people turned their attention to her and Tristan was left to the luxury of his private musings. Which returned, of course, to Shannon.

He could smell her, sitting next to him. Her perfume, her shampoo, her body oils, whatever. It was intoxicating. It was alluring. It was distracting. Every time she moved, he got a waft. Like a worm invading his nasal cavity, it burrowed in deep, became part of him.

She dropped a pencil between them and bent to retrieve it. When she bent over like that, he could see right down her blouse. He could see her dainty breasts cupped in her dainty bra. As she slowly righted herself, he could swear he caught a glimpse of nipple. He almost swallowed his tongue.

He’d made intricate mental notes about every aspect of her being today. He noticed her outfit—a modestly long tweed skirt and decorously buttoned blouse—the style of her hair, the prim set of her chin, her expressions, the words she uttered. All in an effort to come closer to reconciling the two Shannons. He’d failed miserably. He still couldn’t imagine her doing—or even wanting to do—some of the acts he’d seen on the screen last night, but he couldn’t quell his rampant imagination.

And as for reminding himself of the reasons why the two of them could never become tangled in an array of limbs on his office carpet with him thrusting into her hot wet canal—well, what a waste of time that had become.

He was now more fascinated than before.

The meeting, apparently adjourned by Adam, ended while Tristan was mooning over the woman he could never have. When he emerged from his dark ruminations, he was surprised to see everyone except Adam and Shannon had left the room.

“Tristan?” Adam said. “Can I see you for a sec?”

He wiped a hand over his face. He knew that tone. “Sure, Adam.”

“Shannon, can you give us a minute?”

“Absolutely.” She collected her papers. As she stood to leave, her arms filled with presentation packets, her pencil dropped to the floor once again. “Blast,” she muttered and bent to pick it up.

Two things occurred to Tristan at that moment. First of all, Shannon was certainly having a difficult pencil day. She’d dropped several of them in the space of an hour. And second, when she dipped to retrieve her pencil, the slit in the back of her very modest skirt parted until he could see practically all the way up.

He was still gawking, trying to get another delicious glimpse of bare thigh, when she stood and made her way from the room, closing the door in her wake. Still, after she disappeared from sight he stared…at nothing. He was frozen in place.

“Tristan?” Adam’s sharp tone wrested him out of his stupor. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Huh? What?”

Adam propped his hands on his hips and glared at him. “What. The. Hell. Is Wrong. With. You.”

“Nothing. Why?”

“What was with the quarterlies report? You were like a zombie through the whole thing. Thank God Shannon had handouts so we could understand what the hell you were babbling about. And during Jack’s report? Where were you then? You just stared off into space and didn’t even notice when he turned the meeting over to you.”

“He did?”

“Yes. He did.” Adam rubbed his temple with two fingers. “What the hell is up, dude? Are you sick or something? This isn’t like you.”

Tristan’s impatience flared. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sick.”
Sick of being horny.

But Adam wasn’t buying. He looked his brother up and down and frowned. “You’re not sick. You’re as healthy as a horse.”

“There’s just something on my mind.” Tristan crossed his arms over his chest.

“You’d better get it off your mind. We have an enormous launch coming up and you need to be on point for it. This is a huge leap for us.”

“I know.” Tristan didn’t mean to snap. But he didn’t need anyone telling him how important this program launch was.

“And that’s another thing…when did you become such a mean fuck?”

“What?”

“Yeah. Lately, everyone’s complaining that you’re just being a bastard, snarling and snapping and growling. And poor Shannon gets the brunt of it.”

“Has Shannon complained about the way I treat her?” The possibility horrified him.

Adam blinked. “Of course not. Shannon never would. But the others have noticed and mentioned it to Kat. And do you know what else they’ve mentioned to Kat?”

“What?” It was a petulant ejaculation.

“Shannon’s been working on her résumé.”

The bottom fell out of Tristan’s world with that one brief statement, that blinding revelation. “What?” Not so petulant now. Appalled was more like it.

Trillo–Maris without Shannon?

There would be no reason to come to work.

Tristan paled. When had that happened? When had his desire to see her superseded his desire to steer his business, craft his fortune? And then he realized the truth. His business was a success. His fortune had been made. But that was all he had in his life, and it was sadly lacking.

“Dude, you’ve got to be nicer to her.”

“She’s not leaving.”

“She’s working on her résumé.”

“She’s
not
leaving.”

“Okay. Okay. I’m just saying. People are talking. You need to fix whatever is wrong or we’re gonna have a full-scale rebellion on our hands. And if Shannon leaves, brother, I am not cleaning up that mess.”

“She’s not leaving.” But Tristan was talking to himself. Adam had already stormed from the room. For good measure, he poked his head back in and hissed, “Just fix it,” and then disappeared again.

Tristan slumped in his chair. Shannon was thinking about leaving. What a devastating possibility. Despondently, he gathered his papers and his coffee mug and trudged back to his office. Her desk was dismally empty and that only depressed him more. He never liked it when her desk was empty, especially when she could be off somewhere, even now, interviewing.

Interviewing
, for Christ’s sake! With a snarl, he slammed his door shut and then he winced, remembering he was supposed to be nicer.

Shit.

He didn’t feel very nice.

Not at the moment.

He yanked on the blinds, closing them with a violent snick, wishing it were that easy to shut out the world. He was going to have to talk to Shannon about this and he dreaded it.

He sat at his desk and fingered the lid of his laptop. Now, as always, he felt the overwhelming urge to open it and slip into his Virtual Life, into a place where everything was easy and controlled and ultimately satisfying.

But it was his obsession with Shannon that had caused this problem, had nudged its insistent nose into his work life. The reason he was so surly to her—to everyone—was because he was so damn sexually frustrated all the time. Every day. Pretty much all day.

He needed to figure out a way to let it go, to release the hunger for her—without breaking his rule, of course. There were other reasons he and Shannon couldn’t be together but he had to think a bit to remember what they were.

Oh yeah. Her boyfriend. Well, that one no longer applied, now that he’d met barfing Bosco. But there was one other critical hurdle…

His blood thickened in his veins as he recalled the third and final reason he’d decided he and Shannon could never be. He had, in his ignorance, decided she was way too prim and proper for his tastes. Too genteel and delicate to be fucked by a wild beast like him.

Hah! What a joke.

He knew better now. Now he knew she liked it rough. She liked a man to dominate and she liked to dominate in return. She liked giving blowjobs to enormous virtual cocks and she liked a little ass play. She even liked toys.

He shuddered and buried his head in his hands.

The only thing standing between Tristan and absolute bliss was his own stupid rule.