Mutual Release (26 page)

Men. They were all the same. She shivered a little, then widened her grin. The power bloomed in her again, the same feeling that got her in so much trouble with the damn professor. But she opened herself to it… just a little. She’d learned her lesson. It was not about fucking her way to success but wielding what she held a little bit smarter each time.

“Uh, okay then, so Miss…”

“Julie, please.” She leaned back, letting her second-hand silk shirt gap, revealing the tops of her breasts.

“Yeah, um, Julie.” The man, James Dawson, cleared his throat. “This job seems a little beneath you. I mean, it is called personal assistant but you’d really be a gofer, a secretary, a runner of errands for me. You are within a few months of obtaining a degree in economics, according to this.” He tapped the paper with a long, slender finger.

Julie’s head pounded with terror that he would not hire her. She forced herself to sound casual. “Oh, yes, that. Well, you see, Mister…” She raised an eyebrow.

He smiled and leaned forward, his blue eyes darting into her cleavage then back up to her eyes. “James. Please.”

With that, she knew she had him.

Chapter Eight

“Damn it, Julie.” James tossed a stack of paper on her desk. “I can’t make heads or tails of this, can you?”

She glanced at it, then at her computer screen. Her bank account was pulled up, glowing on the screen, reminding her she needed to deposit her paycheck during lunch to avoid yet another overdraft. Sighing, she closed the window and picked up the sales reports.

James leaned on her desk. She tried not to stare. But the man was a vision, a chiseled, tall, blond, near-perfect specimen with bright blue eyes and a great sense of humor. They had been dancing around something for the last near ten months of her employment at his family’s beer and wine distribution company. Something Julie was choreographing to her exact specifications. She leaned back in her chair and let her eyes flicker down his suited frame, making sure he knew she was doing it. Her plan was in place. And she needed to pull the trigger soon before he lost interest, or worse. Stuffing down a flicker of guilt at her own craven manipulation, she reminded herself she was the one who’d been manipulated for too long. It was her turn to have the fucking upper hand.

Shoving the bag that contained her latest embarrassing shopping excess further under the desk with one expensively shod foot, she stretched, relishing the way his eyes widened at the sight of her breasts straining the fabric of the camisole under her unbuttoned suit jacket. There was not a single muscle, nerve, or sinew in her entire five-foot-eight-inch frame that was not working towards one thing – security. And the tall, handsome, wealthy man leering at her in what she knew was an essentially harmless way represented that plain and simple.

In the months since she’d been his assistant, James had proven himself to be a serious fish out of water as CEO of Dawson Associates. His bossy mother, a brittle, acerbic woman who would waltz in and out of the offices on a fairly regular basis, was under the mistaken assumption her son wanted this job. He would accept her little pats on the head and answer her questions, sometimes with Julie’s help, about sales, profit margins, any number of things. But when she would leave, James would slump back in his leather chair, breathing heavily as the panic left him. Julie had this whole scene figured out and she was ready to make her move.

The day after finding her lecherous and no longer useful professor’s empty office, she’d launched her job search, not giving two shits about her degree, the Ph.D., the professorship, none of it. She’d fucked that up royally as surely as she’d let that old man fuck her. Her fault. So she determined to let it go. No one would help her, not unless she let them use her, and that sort of activity was going to stop. Julie was through being used, disrespected, simply because she possessed a body that sent the wrong messages.

She’d studied the Dawson Associates story, including the rumors about the golden boy James, when she’d seen the ad looking for a personal assistant for the man. He’d been taken advantage of too and was hiding his true self, just like Julie. She swooped in and spent months convincing him she wanted him with subtle flirting, the type which she was not even aware she was capable of, friendly late dinners at the office, beer, wine, and pseudo-confessions. In the process, she’d developed something resembling tender feelings for him. He was really fun, nice, and sincere but hopelessly out of his league with this job that had been handed to him on a silver platter.

And now, it was time to move on. Shoving away her past, she looked hard to her future. One where she would have what she wanted, and so would James. She smiled at him and stood, leaving just a few centimeters between their bodies. “Shut the door, James, and I’ll explain it to you,” she said, letting her fingers trail along his jaw and slowly, surely, sliding his suit coat off.

He stared at her with a look in his eyes Julie understood. He turned the small lock and was back in her personal space in an eye blink. His hands cupped her breasts, his lips covered hers, and Julie kept her mind on her goal. Unbuckling his belt and sliding his zipper down, she gripped his cock as a small tickle of panic entered her consciousness. She knew how to do this, understood the mechanics of a blowjob. Her professor had taught her that, along with the principles of a market economy and the value of cap and trade legislation. James gasped when she shoved him down into her chair and dropped to her knees. His eyes were glassy as she leaned up into his lap, cradling his erection between her now-exposed breasts.

“Jesus Christ, Julie, what are you… ah…” She kept moving, and so did he, staring as his cock moved between her tits, mesmerized. At the last moment, knowing he was about to blow, she slipped her lips over the head and swallowed him, making him groan and grip her hair. It didn’t take long for him to shoot warm liquid down her throat. She made pleased noises, then released him with a flick of her tongue. He sat, gasping, gripping the chair arms and staring at her. “I… um… wow!”

She wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “I’ve been wanting to do that for so long, James.” She stood, keeping her breasts exposed to his stare. She knew he had a thing about them. But she also knew that she was not what he really wanted. She reached across him to touch a button on her keyboard, revealing her email inbox. He held onto her, pressing his face into her breasts as she pulled up the message that she had intercepted from James Dawson’s boyfriend. “I have a proposition for you,” she said, sitting astride him. Her body was on autopilot now, pleasuring another but receiving none in return, as usual.

But her goal was within her grasp. She grinned as he groaned and grabbed her hips. His cock was still hard, but that was no big surprise. After reading a few of the email exchanges he’d had with Grant, the director of sales for the company, she knew they were fucking with regularity and were trying to figure out how to be together. She also knew they both fantasized about her, about fucking her between them, about fucking each other while she watched, and about her breasts.

Her brain shut down while James Dawson, her future husband, licked and sucked her nipples and ground against her crotch. She felt a small, thrilling sensation at one point, but concentrated on what she was supposed to be doing and gave him an award-winning set of moans, sighs, and groans, as tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She hated herself so much at that moment she very nearly jumped up off him, apologized, and ran away before she made a perfectly nice man do something he did not want to do.

“Don’t cry, Julie,” he said after, as they sat, she still draped around him, both mostly dressed and contemplating what to do next. Luckily, she already knew what was next, already had it all planned out.

* * * *

“Okay, so she believes we are taking a break, re-aligning our priorities, whatever,” Julie said into the cell phone as she pointed to the spots she wanted the movers to place her new furniture in the giant loft downtown. James’ mother was actually thrilled her golden-boy son was running away from his unacceptable slutty secretary wife, which suited Julie just fine. Once the woman figured out that she, Julie, could run Dawson Associates the way it was meant to be run, she’d have a change of heart. James’ mother was greedy as hell and Julie knew how to feed that, to convince her mom-in-law she was worth keeping around, while distracting the woman from the fact that her beloved son was, in fact, in love with another man.

James sounded far away, which he was, geographically speaking, but also emotionally. She sighed, realizing that, were things different, had she not been the woman she turned out to be, they might actually love each other, make babies, and be happy. “I don’t know about this, Jules,” he said. She could hear airport sounds in the background. “It seems so…”

“What? Perfect? Well thought out? Ideal for all concerned? Jesus, James, you and Grant get a long vacation on the beach and can fuck each other silly for hours at a time. I get to run the company. Your mother gets her dividend check. Everyone is happy.”

“You are such a liar,” he said, making her wince. Damn if the man did not have her figured out. “But that’s part of your charm. Thanks for this, babe. I mean it.”

“Sure thing. Have fun. I’m gonna make some changes while you’re gone, though.”

“I know. Have at it. Be sure and use the toys I got you.”

She snorted. James and Grant had proven adept at showing her that her own body should be something she could enjoy, and they spent a ton of money and a fair bit of effort on sex toys and other somewhat satisfying activities to that end.

“Yeah, whatever. If I have time.”

But no matter what they did, how hard they both tried, she always felt like an object, something to toy with but nothing more, an empty shell no one would ever be able to truly fill. She knew she’d set herself up to fail. But at this point in her life she couldn’t give a fuck. She was finally in control of her own destiny.

“Make the time, Julie. You are a right bitch when you’re pent-up. I would know.”

“Yeah, yeah, go on, have fun with your boyfriend. I’ve got this.”

“Love you, Jules,” he said, making her smile.

“I know.”

She touched the end-call button and sat, watching workers place her newly purchased furniture around the large Detroit loft. James Dawson was the only person on the entire planet who got her, and she trusted him as much as she could trust a man. She had made a vow to never reveal him to his mother, to keep his secret as long as he wanted her to. She’d somehow sensed he would be the man who got her from point A to point Z – it really was too bad he couldn’t love her the way she sometimes craved when she let herself admit it. A tear slipped down her cheek, but she brushed it away. No time for emotion, only for forward motion.

She stood, already yelling at one of the inept moving company employees for putting a divot in the newly painted drywall.

Chapter Nine

Three Years Later

Julie stared at herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror for a solid two minutes until her arms started to quiver and her back ached. Noting the fine web of lines around her eyes and the deteriorating condition of her skin in general, she groaned when she heard the command.

“Okay, Dawson, rest, thirty seconds.” The woman’s staccato orders made her wince.

“Fuck you.” She flopped to the mat in relief. At the tail end of her twice-weekly personal training session, she still could not dispel the memory of Evan Adams. The damn man was stuck in her brain. And no matter how many mental toothpicks she used, he would not budge. She’d told Tanya, the evil trainer, to ramp it up, really push her. But even the physical exhaustion threatening to overwhelm her today didn’t help.

The whistle peeped, meaning she had another two-minute plank, then about a thousand sit-ups before she could collapse in the hot tub. It was late, nearly ten-thirty, but Julie knew herself well enough by now to accept that if she did not force this training, even at an ungodly hour, she would fall out of the habit and back into the “fat clothes” side of her closet.