Untamed (New York Unraveled #1) Page 2
I roughly pushed my tongue in her mouth as I slipped one finger inside her. Her quick responses to my touch were making me throb. I had to feel her now. And when she moaned my name in my mouth, I almost came undone. I pushed another finger inside her and pumped them in and out with an increasing fervor. Her tongue lapped at mine as she rocked her hips in rhythm to my fingers. When I felt her getting closer, I stopped, leaving her empty at the edge. She screamed in frustration.
"All you have to do," I whispered bewitchingly, "is ask nicely."
She sighed, her eyes squeezed shut as I began slowly moving my fingers in and out again. "Nathan..."
"Yes?" I said when she didn't reply and twisted my fingers. She felt so soft and warm.
"Nathan..." she said again, with a gasp this time.
Her soft vulnerable voice whispering my name was making my own eyes flutter shut.
"Nathan..." she whimpered. Her hands were unzipping my trousers urgently and slipping them down, freeing me.
"Tell me, baby doll," I said.
She took advantage of how I'd let my guard down and flipped us over so she was straddling my waist. Before I could retaliate or even realize what her plan had been all along, she angled herself on top of me so that I slipped inside her warm folds smoothly. "If you don't, then I will," she said, baring her teeth in a smug, lustful grin.
I wrapped her hair around my fingers and pulled her down to me painfully so that our faces were a mere breath away. Inch by inch, she took me and I lost myself in the wanton pleasure.
"You know what bad girls get?" I growled.
"You?" came from her smart mouth.
Oh god, this woman was going to be the death of me.
I held her hips so that she was hanging in the air above me and took charge of the speed and rhythm. I mercilessly reamed her, knowing I was hurting her but not slowing down. A primal instinct had taken me over. I needed to feel every inch of her. She didn't seem to mind me being rough either. In fact, as far as her heavy moans were any indication, it seemed like she liked it. She raked her fingers across my sides, digging her nails into my skin. Her eyes were closed and her lashes were falling across her cheeks.
"Karen, look at me," I said, my voice coming out raspy with ardor.
As soon as her gorgeous eyes opened into mine, I came undone inside her. I held her hand as we toppled over the edge and crashed and burnt in each other's carnal passion. She collapsed over me, beads of sweat from her face dripping down to my torso. "You're tiring, human," she said in a sleepy voice, still slurring her words a little, "You're very tiring."
I chuckled, gathering her in my arms and tucking us both in a blanket. She snuggled closer to me, tucking her head under my chin and curling up like a fetus next to me. She looked so beautiful with her wild hair splayed over the mattress and her lips swollen from my less than humane treatment of them. Her skin glowed in the golden light thrown by the chandelier overhead.
"Stop staring at me," she mumbled sleepily.
"Go to sleep," I told her, rolling my eyes and letting my head fall down on the pillows beneath me. With her soft body pressed against mine, I drifted off to sleep way quicker than I had in the past eight years.
I woke up to the sound of my phone beeping. I pushed myself up on my elbows and searched for the phone. A LED light was blinking through the cloth of my trousers that were folded at the foot of the bed. As I swung my legs off the bed and got up to retrieve it, last night started coming back to me. I looked around the room for a certain Karen who was nowhere to be seen. Her clothes, including her very self, had disappeared. Even the bed on her side had been made. There wasn't a sign that she had ever been there.
My clothes were folded neatly in a stack at the foot of the bed. I wore them quickly, washed my face, and it was only once I was in my car on the way home that I checked the text message I had received. It was from Karen. It said- The party from Washington has been waiting for you for over an hour now. Should I reschedule if you’re going to be late?
My jaw locked with uncontrolled rage. How could she up and leave, and then pretend like none of it ever happened? There was something called dealing with things in a mature way.
I hit the reply button- I’ll be there in an hour. Reschedule them for later.
Well, if she wanted to be a kid about it, then so could I.
As I took a hasty shower and put on some clean clothes, it occurred to me how stupid it would be to ignore it. We slept together so we slept together. What was the damn problem?
Okay, so my big male ego was hurt. I'd never been quit on like that ever before. Usually I was the one leaving before the chick woke up so I wouldn't have to deal with the awkward conversations. So I knew where she was coming from. But that didn't make it right.
What was wrong with this girl? Why wasn't she as affected by me as others seemed to be? It frustrated me to no ends. I wanted her to want me, to obsess about me, to stutter in my presence. And that made me a pathetic male chauvinist whose ideas came from the nineteenth century, but that's who I was. I wanted her to want me more than I wanted her.
I stalked into my office with barely suppressed anger, each cold step of mine reflecting my mood. All my employees gave me a wide berth, obviously able to sense they could turn into that night’s dinner if they came in the path even by mistake.
Karen was standing behind my desk, a cordless phone supported between her ear and shoulder as she furiously scribbled something in a black leather diary. She offered me a small smile when she saw me, not one single fleeting expression on her face that would betray any sense of attraction. She put the phone on hold for a second and said to me, "There's a presentation in five in Audi 2 about the new project Walter has been working on. You expressed explicit interest in witnessing it so he's been badgering me about whether you'll go or not. What should I tell him?"
"How long is my schedule clear?" I asked.
"I'll clear it for as long as you want. Except for the Washington party which is kind of pissed right now. I scheduled them for six in the evening. It would be good if you don't miss that," she said with wide eyes and I wondered what sort of shit they had been saying to her because I was late.
"Tell Walter I'm coming," I said and hurried out of there. Walter had been boasting about this great project he'd been working on since four months that would increase the sale of SUVs falling in the middle price range.
Before leaving, the last thing I said to her was, "Oh, and cancel the Washington party."
She lowered her eyebrows in confusion but conceded nonetheless. I was the boss. I decided who stayed and who went. Not her. Apparently she didn’t know that.
After sitting through an hour and a half of a boring, albeit smart, presentation, I finally got to get my ass out of there. I would've liked it if my mind hadn't been elsewhere. Hell, I would've appreciated Walter, which I seldom did to any employee, for the astounding job he'd done. Instead, I nodded my approval coldly and got out of the suffocating auditorium before my brain combusted. The poor man's excited face fell at receiving no response from me.
It was nice to not be receiving constant calls for a change. Since I'd fired my last assistant, I'd realized how much I needed one. My phone started irritating me so much that I actually broke it by throwing it on a wall. It gave me headaches. And now I'd gone on and passed on the headache to somebody else. But Karen didn't seem to be the least bit bothered about any of it.
I busted open the door to her office and casually threw myself in one of the chairs, checking her out as she finished her conversation. She was wearing a blue colored tunic that was reserved yet elegant and a white blazer on top of it. In one hand, she had a phone that she was talking on and the other held a file she was trying to sift through at the same time.
"Oh my God, human. He doesn't want to see you. Why's that so hard to get through your skull?" she grumbled. She held up a finger for my benefit to indicate that she would just take a minute more. "Okay. Listen up loud and clear because I'm gonna say
this only once: No." And with that note, she cut the phone. She really was feisty.
As she walked to her own chair behind the desk, she received another call on the Bluetooth device she was wearing in one ear but she told whoever it was that she would call back in two minutes. This woman didn't even wait for people to answer. She just cut the phone strictly. She was perfect for where I needed her in so many ways. But of course, I needed her to stay there, not turn tail and run when I wasn’t looking.
"Yes, sir?" she said, turning her precious attention to me.
"Funny thing happened today," I started off with a big sarcastic smile on my face. "So I went to bed with this girl last night."
She raised her eyebrows slightly, feigning polite interest. "Really? How was it?"
"Oh, amazing," I said in a duh kind of way, as if it was obviously bound to be amazing. "Here's the funny part- I woke up alone in the morning, though I distinctly remember holding her in my arms as I went to sleep. Then how is it that she vanished in the morning?"
She placed a hand on the phone in urgency. "That's shocking indeed. I'll call the FBI for you. Maybe they can help. Oh, and also NASA. You'll be surprised at the growing cases of alien abductions," she said in all seriousness.
"I think I'll try to find her on my own first. I have a few clues. For example, she looked kind of like you do. Except that she was cuter," I said, repeating her lines to her.
A deep blush appeared on her cheek. She closed her eyes and then looked heavenward, her throat moving as she visibly swallowed. Finally some expression of acknowledgment. The chauvinistic devil on my shoulder roared in triumph.
I leaned forward, talking in a low, conspiratorial voice now. "There's just this teeny tiny problem. I have a little crush on her, which is totally inappropriate but she's just so cute, I can't help it."
With her elbows on the table, she hid her face behind her hands. I liked seeing her that flustered. I was finally getting what I wanted. "It's okay, I get it. I made a big fool of my drunken self, threw myself at you, said some stupid shit. Can we move past it now?" she groaned.
"You see, I can't do that. Because I wanna find her and tell her about this whole deal but I don't think there's a point. I mean," I chuckled without humor, "why would she fall for me when she could have any superhero off of Marvel?"
"Maybe she's just stupid. Ever thought of that?" she said, masking her flustered self behind a facade of bewilderment.
"Stupid to walk in or stupid to walk out?" I asked.
She sighed. "Both." She gestured to her iPhone in fake surprise. "Jesus, look at that. Eighteen missed calls. I should get to work."
I snatched the phone out of her hand, dropping my humorous attitude, and asked in a firm voice, "Why did you leave, Karen?"
"Obviously because I didn't want to have this conversation," she exclaimed.
"What's wrong with this conversation?" I bit out.
She instantly turned serious. "I realize that I hit on you inappropriately and I'm sorry about that. I work under you and acknowledging last night took place would just make it awkward for both of us. I don't want there to be any...tension between us when we'll have to see so much of each other every day. So I thought it would just be easier to ignore it ever happened." She shrugged like all of it made sense. Maybe on some level it did. But this time, more than my male ego was hurt.
I got up without a word and went back to my office, leaving her blinking in confusion at what just happened. Let her do the thinking for a while.
KAREN.
I wish I could say I stopped thinking about Nathan Black but I can't even utter such a vociferous lie. When I told him I would prefer we ignored it ever happened, he took it way too seriously than I'd meant it. The thing is, I hadn't meant it at all. But what was I supposed to do? Have him throw me out with some lame excuse after he woke up "with" me? I'm sorry but I had a little more self-respect than that and I wasn't about to put it on sale just because a very handsome man wanted to buy it, exploit it and discard it in the nearest trashcan.
For the next couple of months, he practically ignored my existence as a human. That was his revenge. He treated me like I was his maid, not his PA. He dismissed me as quickly as he called me, talked to me in a brisk manner, didn't even bother to look my way twice and basically tried to make me feel like as much of a shithead as possible.
All of it would have affected me and made me cry, except for the fact that my infatuations were like a switch. I could switch my feelings off if I knew it was hurting me or making me feel low. The way people had pushed me down as I grew up, I had taught myself to run the other way from a person or situation that made me feel bad about myself. And even though I still over-thought about it on the bad days, it generally went on smoothly because I didn't care who Nathan Fucking Black was taking to bed at night as long as he wasn't rubbing it in my face.
Once or twice, I did get a glimpse of what a proficient playboy he was. Some women that came for a meeting with him would be drooling over him all over the place and that smooth motherfucker didn't even need to touch them to make them have an orgasm right there. They literally fawned over him, clearly hitting on him till they ran out of lines and neither did he lead them into thinking of anything more nor did he discourage such behavior. Even in those few situations, he would ignore the shit out of me but the women still managed to give me the stink eye even though he dismissed me with a flick of his wrist every time, not even sparing me a glance. However, all the men in the office who asked me out did suspiciously get demoted, fired or ended up in some legal problem. On my part, I ignored all of his shenanigans. Because that's how you deal with spoilt kids- by not giving them the attention they crave.
This cold war between us ended because of a full-fledged argument and the scene that took place afterwards. I was cleaning up the mess on his desk because somehow he managed to make it a pile of junk in three days straight. He was so disorganized that I was shocked how he had survived up until now without me. Because organizing his desk wasn't part of my job description but it irritated the clean freak in me so much that I started doing it anyway, and then it became a kind of an expected duty. For holding up his end, he was helping me out a little by taking the calls I was supposed to take as I cleaned. It was a fair quid pro quo.
"It's Shirley. Isn't she the representative of Volkswagen? I told you to cancel that," he said with a growl that seemed to have taken permanent residence in words directed towards me.
"Ignore it. She apparently doesn't understand the meaning of 'no'," I replied.
"Yeah. Ignore. That's what you do best," he muttered under his breath. He didn't mean for me to hear it but I did. And damn it, it pissed me off.
"That's nice coming from you," I said sweetly, standing up from my perch on the floor and dusting my skirt off.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he said with narrowed eyes. His angry look was intimidating but after being on the receiving end of it for so long, I'd become immune to it.
"It means what I said. Or are you having problems in verbal comprehension, sir?" I pouted haughtily.
"Not liking the taste of your own medicine, Ms. Miles? I thought you preached ignorance as the road to peace," he said, each word uttered with utmost menace.
I laughed unbelievingly. "Is it some kind of twisted revenge in your mind? What are you still stuck on?"
"People usually tend to get stuck when you leave them hanging in the middle. If you don't have the balls to face it in the morning, it's better to not lift your skirt for every guy around the block," he snapped coldly. His words were like a bucket full of ice thrown over my face.
I threw the file I had been holding down on his desk, turned on my heels and went back to my office calmly. It was only once I had sunk in my chair that I realized my eyes were starting to tear up. It was college all over again. The only difference was that this time, it wasn't a rumor that I'd slept with the stud.
How does that even matter? All humans are alike. They act nice until th
eir purposes are served, then turn around and call you a slut anyway, or some other derogatory term like that. I swear, all girls have to do is exist on this planet and that's it, they're street whores. It doesn't matter if she's a virgin or a ten year old. If she has pissed off a member of the great male species, she's a slut. Deal with it.
It was that year that my sister had left me alone to take care of my mother who was bedridden with cancer. It was that year that I lost all my friends because they'd rather believe the popular jock and his rumors than support me. It was that year that for the first time in life, I was truly lonely.
Now with Rayne working small jobs overtime to cover up for her underemployment and me working late hours, we hardly had time to even say hi to each other. It had been half a year since I'd been in the city and I didn't really get opportunities to make a lot of friends. The few that I had were temporary. My sister was still flocking from country to country and shooting lifestyle documentaries on different cultures. My mother was in institutional care. And my father... He'd left us when I was very young. I didn't even remember him.
There goes my life in a jiffy. And poof- now my boss wanted to humiliate me.
After a couple of minutes, he opened the door to my cabin and knocked for formality. I didn't even grace him with a reply. "Did I upset you?" he asked but his voice was small.
I glared at him with my eyes that were red because of the unshed tears. His mouth formed an 'O' when he noticed. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that," he said and he did sound sincere but I was pissed beyond hell. I wasn't that meek little eighteen year old anymore who would bow down to anybody.
I nodded, acknowledging his words.
"You know, you're supposed to say something like ‘it's okay’," he said.
"Well, it's not, so..." I shrugged.
He stood with his elbows braced on the doorframe. "Don't give me that attitude."