Entry-Level Mistress - By Sabrina Darby Page 0,21

air struck my skin as he moved away. My weight my own again, I leaned heavily against the wall. Tugging down my skirt, straightening my sweater, I looked out toward the window and tried to gather my thoughts, to understand the wave of emotions now buffeting me. But in the wake of sex, my mind was a wasteland of sexual satisfaction. “So … ”

I listened to his footsteps as he crossed the carpet. He knelt down in front of me, holding my flimsy little panties, pink with a lacy trim. I stared down at the top of his head, at the beautiful waves of his hair, as I lifted my legs one at a time. He slid the fabric up, kissed the inside of my knee. What the hell were we doing?

“Is this going to be a habit?” I asked.

He kissed an inch further up my bare thigh. Was he buying time? Trying to formulate just the right response? I had questions I wanted to ask him. Bold, honest questions that would cut to the quick of our past and our present. But I held my tongue, terrified at the idea. What if he said something that made it impossible for me to stay?

“Yes,” he said softly, his lips moving against my skin.

He stood and leaned closer, slowly stroking my neck. I leaned into his hand.

“And if I text you? Will you come running?”

Again, he hesitated, studying my face, running a thumb along the line of my jaw. What did he see in my expression? His was like a mask.

“I doubt it,” he said finally.

“And?” I prodded.

“You’re coming home with me tonight.”

My stomach clenched at his tone, tight with desire. Yes, I wanted that, but could I continue to let him have his way so easily? Get away with his arrogant admissions? I lifted my chin, raised an eyebrow.

“So this, it’s going to happen your way, everything? You text. I run. You pick me up, drop me off … ”

“I like the way that sounds,” he agreed, a small smirk on his lips, as if he knew there was no way in hell I or any other woman would go for that.

“OK.”

He dropped his hand.

I amused myself. I really did. Of course I wasn’t fine with that sort of highhanded treatment, but agreeing was worth that look on his face.

“OK?”

“Sure. For now,” I said with a shrug, smiling inwardly. “But I’d better get back to work.”

And when he did text that afternoon, just as my workday was ending, I did exactly as he said. Took that long elevator ride to the top floor, nodded to Janine, who stared at me impassively, whatever judgments she might have hidden far behind her professional façade, and then entered Daniel’s office.

When I stepped inside, he was standing next to his desk, shuffling a stack of papers with no sign of stopping work for the day. He looked up, and that half smile of his struck me hard, just like it did every time I saw him. He met me halfway across the room, pulled me tight against him and I instinctively rose up on my toes to meet his kiss, breathed in the scent of his skin.

“I still smell of you,” I said softly as I broke away, lowered down to my heels. “All day.”

He touched my hair, stroked my neck, and my world became the place where his skin connected with mine. “Like I’ve marked you.”

“How territorial,” I managed to say lightly, teasingly. But he had marked me. Was marking me.

And after that, the week was one long game of hide and go sex. I started carrying condoms in my purse after all because I never knew when or where. Well, if it was during the workday, it was the thirtieth floor. But there was also the time in his Porsche and a rather quick encounter bent over the kitchen counter on the third floor during lunch hour. And three nights in a row I slept over at his house, read through Hemingway’s newspaper articles as Daniel worked, showered in his shower, and went straight to work from his bed.

My body craved his with a ridiculously increasing intensity, as if sex with him were meth and I’d become an addict. It felt good. It felt dangerous. I knew I had crossed the line ages ago but I didn’t know how to stop or how to go back to a time before.

I did all the work asked of me and if anyone noticed my