than you might assume. That's the part I want to capitalize on because it eliminates your father's issue of his clients seeing their accounts shipped out of town. I have to imagine there's some big city resentment, even if it's misplaced. Right?" I nodded while I pressed my lips to her palm. "Right, okay. So, instead of leaning into the big city accountant who doesn't care about your smaller city meat market drama, we embed staff in New Bedford and train them to use your systems."
"I've attempted that move," I said gently. "It was interpreted as a criticism of his methods and management."
"Then adapt the move, don't abandon it."
I kissed her palm again as I considered this. All I knew was my father and I couldn't get on the same page. I didn't see how I'd be able to change that with the same dance set to a different song.
"I hear you though I've tried all the adaptations I can think up. I have actually tried to solve this on my own, Zelda. I haven't been ramming it through."
"That's right because you reserve ramming for the evenings I visit bridal boutiques."
I groaned into her hand. "Don't bring that up. Not unless you're asking for a repeat."
Pleasure danced in her eyes as she asked, "Would you like that, Ashville?"
More than anything in the world.
The waitress returned at that moment with our plates, forcing me to release Zelda's hands and withhold the response burning on my tongue. But I didn't take my eyes off her.
When we were left with pancakes, eggs, bacon, and everything else she'd ordered, I said, "I am not accepting your resignation."
She lifted both hands as if weighing my words. "Is it up to you?"
I inclined my head. "I'd like to think so."
"What about me? Don't I get a say?"
I snagged a piece of bacon from her plate, chewed it thoughtfully. "Of course you do. I'd send you on your way with a glowing recommendation if you actually wanted to go but you don't. You want me to be better. You want me to get my shit together and you want to stay."
She doused her pancakes in syrup and licked a drop off her finger, effectively converting my blood to lava. "There you go, Ash. That's how you fight fair."
21
Zelda
I was halfway through folding the load of laundry I'd abandoned earlier when I felt Ash watching me from the guest room doorway. He'd changed into a t-shirt and gym shorts when we'd arrived home from the diner though in the past hour—or his way down the hall—he'd lost the shirt. Not that I was complaining.
His stare was constant and thorough, as if he could see through my clothes, through my skin, all the way down to the aggregate pieces of me. He saw it all and if he'd noticed I was in disarray, he didn't care.
Part of the fun came from ignoring him. Shaking out shirts and snapping towels, pressing them into precisely folded piles, pretending a bossy, growly man wasn't watching the whole thing.
The other part of the fun was waiting for the moment he'd push away from the threshold, saunter across the room, and tell me what he wanted. It didn't matter whether I'd laid into him this afternoon or issued a very real threat about leaving his employ. He was still going to fuck me like he owned me tonight and I was still going to ask for more because being owned just like this was the best, most liberating experience of my life.
I was preoccupied with a fraying t-shirt hem when Ash brought his hands to my hips, an undercurrent of urgent insistence in his touch.
"You're so hot when you're mad. So fucking hot," he said, flipping open my jeans. "Stay right here and let me watch you work it out of your system."
In direct defiance of his request, I swished my backside over his cock and dropped my head back against his chest as he dipped his fingers inside my panties.
"Just for that," he rumbled, "it's going to be so much worse."
I didn't respond because in the calculus of this, worse didn't mean worse and begging wasn't going to make it better—or lessen the degree of worse.
"Ignoring me, are you?" he asked.
"Just letting you slip into sex monster mode uninterrupted."
"Fair enough, Miss Besh." He nudged my feet apart and slicked up two fingers in my arousal, then pressed them to either side of my clit. "Though don't say I didn't offer adequate warning."