Taming the Bad Girl (9 page)

“I want you constantly,” Giles continued,
peppering kisses along my jaw. “I’ve tried to ignore it, but I can’t. You’re
mine, Lucy. We just have to accept that.
I
have to accept it, and then we’ll start again with a clean slate.”

The words thrilled me in a way I couldn’t have
imagined and I shivered. “Then why ignore me all these months?”

“Jealousy?
Anger?”
He shrugged and pressed a kiss on
my forehead. “It happened and I was so mad, and then before I knew it I had to
leave for
England
,
and then I came back and you were gone. Weeks passed and I pushed it all away,
tried to ignore it. It hasn’t worked though has it? It’s been four months and
this moment was long overdue.”

“Giles,” I sighed. “This is such a mess. It
started as something so freaking stupid. You’re right. I should have explained
it then.”

“Then explain it to me now,” he encouraged.
“Give us that clean slate.”

Part of me was tempted to. To put it all out
there, but I knew, I just knew that my words of earlier were right. If we had
any chance of anything between us, even if it was just a sexual relationship,
there had to be some trust. And Giles had to feel that, not be given it by me.
And so, hard as it was, I shook my head. “I can’t. It’s turned into this big
thing between us. If I tell you the truth you’ll trust me because I’ve had to
prove myself, not because you just do. And then
I’ll
never really trust your feelings for me.”

“Luce,” he breathed, picking me up and sitting
me on the desk. “You’re reasoning is completely flawed.”

He unzipped his flies and even though I
kinda
thought I shouldn’t I
lifted
my skirt. I couldn’t stop myself.

“Maybe.”

“So you want my trust,” he said, easing his cock
into me. I was slick and ready for him. “Based on nothing at all? Just because
you think I should. Despite the fact I’ve now witnessed you receiving calls
from some man you won’t explain to me. Despite the fact you’ve spent the last
few months bedding every man in sight.”

I gasped as he filled me to the brim. “Yes.”

“I can’t do that, Luce,” he said, easing back
out, reaching down and rubbing his cockhead on my clit.

I moaned.
Shivers of pleasure
running from my pussy across my stomach.
“It’s an impasse then.”

“An impasse,” he agreed.

Chapter Fourteen

Giles: Secrets always find a way out. Thinking otherwise is beyond
stupid.

The impasse was not working out at all. Not even
close. As I sat across from Gabe three weeks later, talking him through Lucy’s
new, approved budget, I knew it to be true.
Mainly because I
surely wouldn’t be feeling so tense and conflicted if it was.

“This all looks really good,” Gabe said once I’d
explained everything, and I nodded.

“It was smoother than I expected.”

“No problem with the forecasting for next year?”
he asked.

“No. Everything is worked across the quarters.”

“Job done then.”

That much was true at least. Now that Lucy and I
were in our ‘impasse’, we’d been able to work together to get the numbers
finalized. That work was illuminating to me in more ways than one. Lucy
struggled with her budget, with the actual numbers. To someone who understood
such things perfectly it was a shock to see it through another’s eyes. I’d
called her lazy, blamed her partying on the work fuck ups, but the more I’d
talked her through her spreadsheets I knew that wasn’t the case at all. She
just didn’t
get
the numbers, really
had to work to understand them. She was in the red because she didn’t know how
to make everything stack up, not because she hadn’t tried.

The only thing I couldn’t work out was why she
hadn’t asked for help sooner. As head of finance she could have come to me long
before now.
Before our night together.
It was
something I was determined to get out of her. One in the long list of secrets
the impasse was keeping from me.

Gabe turned off the projector and turned to me.
“Thanks for doing this, Giles. I really appreciate the effort you’ve put in.”

I shrugged. “It wasn’t a problem.” In fact it
could have been completed a lot sooner. But Lucy and I had spent pretty much
most evenings in either her office or mine fucking like rabbits, when really we
could have gotten more work done.

And the sex…it amazed me, it really did. The
things that woman could do with her tongue blew me away. I didn’t like to think
about where she’d picked such tricks up. Not thinking about the last four
months in that way was the only thing keeping me sane. I’d taken to pretending
those other men did not exist. It was only a matter of time though before I’d
have to confront it mentally. I was not looking forward to that moment. Considering
Lucy in that light only angered me.
 

Other things were more important now.
The fact that she hadn’t invited me to her home.
The fact I
hadn’t invited her to mine. Like it was a barrier neither of us would cross.
We’d simply worked, fucked, and then gone our separate ways. Tonight was the
first step though. It would be the first night we actually met outside the
office. I’d casually asked her to dinner. She’d agreed. Now we would see where
it led us.

“No troubles,” Gabe asked.
“Nothing
else that needs to be fixed?”

“In what way?”
I asked, unsure what he was getting at.

Gabe grinned and poured us both a coffee. “I
suppose I mean was everything okay with, Lucy? We…
erm
…Pam
and I heard your altercation on the first day you took charge.”

How different that all looked to me now.
With our relationship, if you could call it that, so drastically
changed.
Knowing she
did
want
me.
Knowing that the last four months were wrapped around a
misunderstanding that could have been settled immediately if she’d just opened
up, if maybe I hadn’t jumped off the deep end.

I ran a hand across my face. “No, she was fine
once she got it out of her system.”

Gabe nodded. “She does seem different.
Maybe because the stress of this has been taken off her shoulders?”

I tensed. “Different? How do you mean?”

“She was round for dinner last night at Pam’s.
She seemed less…of a bitch?” Gabe shrugged. “I’m not sure exactly but something
was definitely off about her. She was softer, I guess. And then this morning
she came in to tell me she’d won the Peterson bid, it’s only ten grand, but she
was really hyped about it and she even thanked me for going easy on her
department, for giving her your help. It was a turnaround alright. She even
smiled at me, and she hasn’t done that since I got here.
Not
in that way at least.”

I swallowed against the sudden dryness in my
throat.
 
“She is doing well. She just has
trouble with the budgets.”

Gabe nodded. “I know, and we need to do
something about that for the future.”

“I can teach her,” I began but Gabe shook his
head.

“She’s not a numbers person, not at all.
Realistically she shouldn’t even be head of marketing, she should be creative
director or something, and if I was being hardheaded I’d remove her and put
someone else in her place.”

“But you’re not going to, are you?”

Gabe grinned. “Pam convinced me not to. What can
I say? I’m putty in that woman’s hands.”

“Pam convinced you?”

“This is just between you and
I
,”
Gabe said. “But from what Pam has said Lucy can’t take a pay cut right now.
After years on this salary it would be unreasonable to expect her to. She has
some financial issues.”

I started at that and took a quick drink of my
coffee to hide my surprise. We were paid extremely generous salaries. I barely
made a dent in mine with my living expenses, so how anyone could struggle on
the money we made baffled me. Okay, sure I was paid a fair bit more than either
Lucy or Pam, but I knew what sort of money they made and it wasn’t negligible.

“Do you know what these issues are?” I asked
casually.

Gabe shook his head. “Just something Pam
mentioned to me a couple of days ago. Lucy was very worried a few weeks back.
Stressed beyond belief about losing her job.
The money
seemed to be the main factor.”

“Right….”

“She seems to be in a much better place now that
her job’s secure,” Gabe continued. “We’ll sort her out an accountant to take
some of the stress away. It’ll be her responsibility to cover that expense by
increasing her teams’ income. Win-win all round. We have another job to offer
to someone, and Lucy keeps her mind on the things she’s good at.”

I nodded.
“Win-win.”

But as I made my way back to my own office a
half hour later my thoughts were in turmoil. I’d attributed Lucy’s lack of
recent bitchy behavior to the change in our relationship. But maybe it was just
because her job was now secure? I wondered how the heck she could be in
financial difficulties and added it to my long list of things to find out.

“Lucy called,” my PA said as I passed. “Can you
ring her back?”

I pivoted back out the door. Far easier to just
go and see her in person.
Far more pleasurable too.
My
thoughts continued to race.
Alex.
The financial difficulties.
Why she hadn’t asked me for
help. Why she hadn’t confronted me long before now.

The impasse felt like it was strangling me and I
decided there and then that tonight I’d start chipping away at it. I had to if
we were ever going to move forward.

Chapter Fifteen

Lucy: Men can sleep with as many women as they like and they call
themselves studs. But when a woman does it she’s called a whore. But the whore
only works if she thinks that too, otherwise it’s just a word.

I took quite a bit of care over my outfit. In my
mind this was going to be our first date, take two, so I wanted to look good
for Giles.
For him to see me and want me, but also for him to
be proud enough to show me off.
That I was with him.
His.

So I called Pam around to help me out. We stood
in my closet—the walk-in kind, my one reason for buying this apartment—and
looked over the options.

“What are you
gonna
go
for?” Pam asked.
“Dirty and flirty or
glamazon
?”

I shrugged and eyed the rows of clothes. “I
dunno
.”

Pam eyed the blue area—yes, my clothes were
organized by color—and pulled out a long blue dress. “What about this?

I shook my head. “I don’t know why I bought that.
It’s not me at all.” And it wasn’t. Made of a soft, buttery type material, it
flowed in layers, each a different shade of blue, before falling on the floor
with a little train behind it

Pam sighed. “It’s beautiful. I’d so steal it,
but there’s no way I’m getting my bootie in this.”

“It’s a no-heel dress,” I said. “And I’m far too
small to get away with not wearing heels.”

Pam laid the dress across her arm and pulled out
a pair of flat ballet pumps, also blue.
“Some advice, Luce.
Now, so far I haven’t pressured for any details about you and Giles. I know
there’s some fucked up shit going on there and you’ll tell me in your own time.
But one thing I can say is that Giles would totally dig the delicate woman
look. He’s so broad and masculine I reckon a dinky little you would appeal to
that part of him. Give him feminine, girly, he’ll lap it up.”

“You think?”

“Totally.”

An hour later I wove across the room to the
table where Giles was sitting. I felt a little self-conscious because without
the heels I really was tiny. The dress was also wispy, and with my hair curled
loosely around my shoulders I looked like some sort of fairy. Pam had shadowed
my eyes in sparkly blue, added a little lip gloss and that was it. I looked
young, girly—just like she’d wanted.

Giles stood when I arrived and did a
double-take. My heart leapt and stuttered and I sent Pam a silent thank you.

“Lucy,” he breathed. “You look beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

He pulled out my chair and made sure I was
settled before sitting down
himself
.
“Wine?”

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

We ordered our meals and discussed work events.
The flow between us was smooth, easy and throughout I couldn’t help but bask in
the way Giles’ eyes seemed to eat me up. He gazed across my breasts, followed
the path of my hair whenever I shook it. He was intrigued and I loved it.