I felt desolate and miserable. I even admit to crying in the shower the first morning I knew he’d be back at the office. Kim had to go to his office for something, so I knew he’d returned. I didn’t even blink when she said that’s where she was headed. I just wished her luck and went back to work. I would prove my mettle—productive and efficient and not letting my personal life affect my performance. That was the goal. No one wants to promote the girl who cries in the bathroom all the time about her horrible ex-boyfriend—even less so if the ex is everyone’s boss. So I was thankful for the secrecy, the fact that everyone didn’t know. I could pretend my dignity and my heart wasn’t smashed to bits.
I finished my Christmas shopping online at lunch. I listened to people chat about what they were wearing to the staff holiday party on Friday night. I said I probably wasn’t going. I didn’t have a good excuse prepared though. So the next thing I knew, I’d agreed to go shopping with a few of the girls. I could not imagine wanting to buy a festive cocktail dress to wear in front of Brent, but slowly I convinced myself that it would be the best revenge, showing off what he let go of. It needed to be red, I decided because subtlety was so last year.
I met up with Kim and her husband before the party so I didn’t have to go in alone. She hadn’t indicated that she knew I’d been with Brent and that it was over, but she was a smart woman who missed very little. As observant as she was, it was difficult to believe she didn’t know, but she was too discreet to mention it. Still, she was kind to me, and I didn’t have to show up by myself. Heather came in right after us with her new boyfriend and the exciting news that her brother Andy aka Blandy was engaged! I felt like I needed to lie down—because here at the holidays I was dumped, but Blandy the boring date had a lifetime commitment going on. I swilled some champagne to toast his future happiness and dull my present misery.
We mostly stayed in our little HR group at a round table eating the multitudes of good appetizers—the shrimp was fantastic—and drinking from the open bar and laughing too much. When the DJ started spinning Katy Perry and Ke$ha, the music of my high school years, I hit the floor with some of the HR girls. Kim and her husband danced and laughed. Heather and her boyfriend turned everything into a grind. We were having an amazing time.
I had seen Brent across the room at the beginning of the evening, and I’d spent a lot of energy ignoring him. Did I want him to see me in a hot red dress laughing and dancing and having fun without him? Absolutely, but I didn’t count on him coming to speak to me or asking me to dance.
I said yes. Why did I say yes? I was supposed to be partying and getting over him, not proving that I was at his beck and call. My brain was yelling at me, but my heart had already accepted, and we were on the dance floor. It was crowded, a slow Bruno Mars tune from years ago that everybody seemed to know the words to. I let him hold my waist with my arms around his neck. We danced, started out as far apart as middle schoolers at our first dance. By the first chorus, I was nestled against his chest and his hand was in my hair. I wanted to cry because everything clicked in place and felt right. Nothing had felt right since the minute he’d left. I peered up at him without a word. I knew it was a pleading look. I knew I’d hate myself. I didn’t care. I wanted him more than I cared about the consequences. Loving him made me reckless. And that’s the only excuse I had.
He drew me from the crowd all the way to the elevator. He backed me up to the wall as soon as the doors slid closed, “I hear this is your second favorite one,” he said huskily just before his mouth covered mine. I moaned when his tongue slipped into my mouth. My entire body rose to meet him, his hand sliding down to cup my ass while my fingers wove through his hair. On the dim, empty floor, he unlocked a board room.
We slipped inside, and in the silvery city light streaming between the window blinds, I saw that it was the same room where he’d scolded me for taking out my phone in a meeting. I felt a shiver of luscious anticipation when I realized that. I met his eyes.
“We had a meeting here,” I said slyly.
“We’re about to have a better one. I was going to resist and keep away. Until I saw you dancing in that dress and your laugh—God help me, I was undone. I had to get to you. I had to have you. If you don’t want this, tell me now,” he said.
Brent looked anguished, torn, in a way that wasn’t very flattering to me, but I didn’t care. I knew I could soothe him, remind him of what we shared together. That this was a language we spoke, a way I could reach him when he was too much inside his own head.
“I want this. I’m an idiot for wanting it,” I said, “But I’m not ashamed. I choose this, no matter how it turns out.”
Satisfied with my answer, Brent cupped my face in his hands and kissed me deeply, the strokes of his tongue stoking the fire in my body that already burned high. He kissed my bare shoulders as he unzipped my little red dress. It clung to my curves so that he had to push it down to the floor. He stopped for a moment, paused because he was stunned. I was naked beneath my new dress. It had built-in boning for chest support, and it curved close enough that I didn’t want a visible panty line. So I had worn that dress and nothing else. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t hoped he would find that out first hand.
Everything was steamy and silent, the way he lifted me onto the table, the way he sat down in the chairman of the board’s leather chair and took me by the hips, sliding me closer until my arms hooked over his shoulders. He feasted on me, my bare pussy quivering under the onslaught of his mouth. I came as he probed my lips with his fingers and lapped my clit with his wicked tongue. I rose up off the table as I came, my back arching. Suddenly, my body went off again unexpectedly because he pressed me down with a big hand on my belly, a hand whose thumb happened to start rubbing my clit furiously, mercilessly until I screamed and thrashed, weak from the relentless pleasure.
“You’re soaking wet for me now,” he murmured, standing up.
I levered myself up to a sitting position, my arms braced on his shoulders so I could watch. I wanted to see his cock pierce my body, watch him enter me and make that stretching fullness obliterate my mind again, releasing me into too-tender sensations and shocks of icy ecstasy. With one powerful thrust, he was buried inside my passage, my walls clamping down on him, trying to hold his immense size, trying to work up and down on him when I was so speared by his hard arousal that panting was the only thing that helped. I hung on to his shoulders. I’m sure I begged. I’m sure he gave me everything I asked for and more because there he was, holding my hips, pumping into me gently. I knew he was holding back, that it was exhausting him to restrain himself. I griped his face for a kiss, “Let go,” I said, “You can let go now.”
“Never, God, Cat, I’m never letting you go—“ he groaned brokenly. Then he came, shaking and saying my name again and again.
“Let me take you home,” he said into my hair as he held me. I sat on the edge of the table, leaning against him, resting in his arms as he stood, pants around his ankles, and stroked my back and hair.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“To my place,” he said, “I have a penthouse near here. I want you to spend the night with me. Please,” he said.