Bedded By The Boss: The Boss's Demand / Something about the Boss... / Beguiling the Boss
The sunset streaming through the wall of windows made her blink. As did the sight of Elan, his broad shoulders silhouetted in the doorway. His suit jacket was unbuttoned and his tie loosened, revealing a glimpse of dark throat that beckoned her eyes.
The harsh features of his face gleamed like rare metal in the copper rays of the lowering sun as he stared at her, dark brows lowered over narrowed eyes.
He looked down at the shining mahogany surface that had previously been covered by papers, then at her, and the can in her hand.
“What are you doing?”
She cleared her throat. “Your chair creaks.”
One black brow raised.
“Didn’t you notice? It’s been driving me crazy. Let’s see if I got it.” She jumped down into the seat of the enormous leather chair and was pleased to hear absolutely nothing. “I think I nailed it.”
He hadn’t moved a muscle. “What have you done to my desk?” He wrenched his eyes from hers to the newly uncluttered expanse of mahogany.
“I sorted your papers into relevant categories. I didn’t throw anything away, but the pile on the left can go, I think.”
He frowned at her. His face darkened and suspicion clouded his eyes. “How could you possibly know enough about my work to organize my papers on your first day?”
“Instinct.”
But all instinct fled as her skin began to sizzle under Elan’s searing gaze.
“Please rise from my chair.” He spoke slowly, as if attempting to communicate with someone with a poor command of the language.
She jolted to her feet. She’d been so transfixed by him she’d forgotten she was lounging in his personal throne.
His dark pupils tracked her with laser-beam intensity. “What made you think you could enter my office and handle my effects without permission?”
She struggled to regain her professional demeanor. “I consider keeping your desk organized to be one of my responsibilities.”
He lowered his head slightly, scrutinizing her. “How do I know you weren’t placing a bug there?”
“A bug?”
“To record my conversations.”
Indignation stung her. “Are you saying anything worth recording?”
She immediately regretted her childish pique.
Elan stared at her. His brow furrowed as he digested her insolence. But his reply was measured, calm.
“To my business rivals, yes.” He strode across the room and maneuvered around her. He quickly crouched down and reached a hand under the seat of the chair.
Sara found her eyes resting on his neck, on the strip of tan skin between the starched collar of his white shirt and the close-cropped black hair at the base of his skull. His small, delicate ear was at odds with the massive, powerful build of his body.
He knelt on the floor and reached an arm under his desk. The roping muscles of his back, visible even though the dark fabric of his suit, captured her attention. It took a few seconds before she realized he was feeling the underside of the desk, searching for electronic devices.
Anger at his suspicion pricked her. She’d never been accused of criminal activity before, and distrust didn’t sit well with her. She’d worked at one job or another since age fourteen, and the admiration and satisfaction of her boss had always been something she could count on.
Elan leaned further under the desk. His suit jacket lifted, revealing the curve of his rear. Good Lord, the man was built like a decathlete.
She took a step backward, trying to regain control as a sudden swell of heat made her body uncomfortable inside the stiff fabric of her suit.
He backed slowly out from under the desk while she tried to look anywhere except at his well-muscled backside. Elan avoided looking at her, too, as he pulled himself awkwardly back up to his feet.
“Still think I’m a mole?” She cocked her head, daring him to extend his accusation.
He ran a hand through his thick hair. “Your previous job was with an electronics firm, no?”
“Yes, Bates Electronics. I worked there for two years. They have no relationship to the oil industry that I know of and no reason to engage in industrial espionage. I am not a spy.”
“Couldn’t you have alerted building maintenance to the fact that my chair creaks?”
“Sure, but by the time I’d called them, explained the problem and demonstrated the squeak, I could have fixed it myself. There’s nothing highly specialized about spraying lubricant.”
He looked at her. The word lubricant hung in the air between them. An innocent word, related to the greasing of cogs, the oiling of hinges, the wetting of pistons. Images which sent Sara’s mind spinning in all sorts of forbidden directions.
She remembered his warnings against showing any prurient interest in him. The thought triggered a rash impulse to test Elan’s sense of humor by asking if she could be fired for saying the word lubricant in his presence.
Mercifully she held her tongue. She dug her fingernails into her palms, tried to control the craziness goading her. Why on earth would she want to provoke and irritate her new boss?
She had an almost irresistible urge to see what lay behind the highly polished granite facade Elan Al Mansur presented to the world.
He drew himself up, took off his suit jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. Unhooked his gold cuff links, dropped them on the desk and rolled up his sleeves. His forearms were muscled, brown and dusted with black hair.
The thought of those forearms closing around her waist, holding her tight, swept through her mind like a gale-force wind.
She stepped backward and smoothed the front of her suit with a hand, trying to brush away the bizarre physical sensation assailing her.
Elan pushed his shirtsleeves up above his elbows as he settled into his chair. Sara suspected her face was blazing as she struggled to keep her eyes off his arms. An arm, for crying out loud! What on earth was wrong with her?
The watch on that arm probably cost more than her mother’s last round of chemo treatments. It was gold, the white face covered with dials. Probably a Rolex. She suspected nothing but the best was good enough for Elan Al Mansur.
“You have no work to do, Sara?” He looked up from his papers, fixing her with a slit-eyed stare. She jumped inwardly.
“I wasn’t sure if you needed anything.”
“If I want something, I’ll let you know.” One broad finger rested on the page, marking his place. “In the meantime, I’ll expect you to provide your own entertainment.”
He’d been aware of her eyes on him, studying him, appraising him. Enjoying him. Humiliation clenched her gut. She turned swiftly away as she felt a renewed blush darken her cheeks.
“Would you like me to change the water in that vase of roses?” From one of his legions of tormented admirers, no doubt.
He looked at her for a moment.
“No.” He glanced back to his papers. “Perhaps you could take them home? I don’t like flowers.”
“I can’t take them home, I ride a bike to work. But I’ll put them on my desk. They’ll brighten the place up a bit. Thanks.”
She paused to bury her face in the yellow blooms. The soothing scent of rose petals filled her senses, relaxed her.
“They’re lovely.”
“Not to me. They’ll be dead in a day or two. I don’t wish to watch them die.”
“I’ll enjoy their swan song. If you don’t need anything else, I’ll take off for the day.”
He glanced quickly at his expensive watch. “Fine.” He went back to shuffling a concertina of papers between his powerful fingers. She lifted the vase and moved toward the door, opened it with her hip.
“Good night.” She turned to him.
Lowered in concentration, his face was hidden from her until he raised it. “You ride a bike to work?”
“Yes.” She paused, waiting for his disapproval.
“I see.” He looked at her for a moment, stony features unreadable. Then he turned back to his papers, opened his pen, and etched a dramatic signature into the crisp white document on his desk.
Sara slipped out through the door with a silent sigh of relief and heard it close softly behind her.
Elan placed the signed papers in his out-box and rose slowly from his chair. He stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window that looked over the parking lot toward the desert and the distant mountain range beyond.
The sun hung low in the sky, glinting off geometric rows of cars baking in the late-afternoon sun. Many employees had already left. The rest were striding across the parking lot, climbing into their cars and driving out through the gates in an orderly fashion like so many instinctive ants.
A lone figure broke from the orderly procession of cars, darting among them, zigzagging across the parking lot on a bicycle.
Sara.
He narrowed his eyes, straining to get a better look at her. She’d changed out of her beige suit. Of course, who would ride a bicycle in a tight skirt? Well, not tight, but fitted, hugging the curve of her hips gently, as he recalled rather too clearly.
She’d put on shorts. Bicycle shorts, the stretchy kind. He blinked. Swallowed. Her legs were lean, muscled, powerful. Her tawny hair was tied back in a ponytail. Shouldn’t she be wearing a helmet?
He tracked her movements across the parking lot as she made a diagonal path to the exit while the long line of cars wound patiently around the edge of the lot. She stood on her pedals as she went over a speed bump, lifted her backside into the air.
He coughed and turned away. Experienced a sudden rush of uncomfortable sensation. Something stirred inside him that surprised and annoyed him. His pulse pounded and he opened his mouth to breathe.
He moved away from the window and undid another button on his shirt to loosen it. The powerful visual of Sara’s raised hips taunted him.
A plain little thing? Not so. She merely plied her feminine charms in a more calculated fashion than the girls in miniskirts and high heels.
But already he could see she was no different from the others.
Two
“You may call me Elan.”
The rumble of his voice echoed in a previously undiscovered part of her anatomy. She swallowed hard.
“All right, Elan.”
His name, spoken in her voice, sounded strangely intimate. The intimacy was a gift to cherish, a reward for her successful first week on the job. She knew he was pleased with her performance. Twice he’d sent her to meetings in his place, and he’d even allowed her to negotiate a new contract with a pipe supplier.
She’d hoped the allure of his masculine charms would fade with time and overexposure. That, unfortunately, had not yet happened.
“Sara, here’s my speech for the conference next week. Please proof it and give me your opinion.”
He lifted a sheaf of handwritten papers. She noted with chagrin that even his writing was sexy. Bold, thick cursive flowed black from his solid-gold fountain pen.
“I’d be glad to.” She took the papers and forced herself not to linger on the seductive thickness of his muscled neck as he bent his head to the stack of contracts she’d handed him.
Elan threw himself into his job with the intensity of a competitive athlete. At the end of the day he looked so tense that she longed to move behind his chair and massage the hard ridges of his shoulders. Longed to hear him sigh with relief as her fingers eased the knots beneath his skin, soothing his tension. Longed to lose her fingertips in the snowy cotton of his shirt, the thick darkness of his hair.
She fought these urges like the beckoning calls to madness they were. A foolish schoolgirl crush that undermined her competence. No possible good could come from sighing over a man who’d made it clear he despised the attentions of female employees. This was the man who held the key to her future in his hands.
Broad, capable hands that haunted her imagination.
“You can read my speech in here if you wish. You won’t be disturbed by your ringing phone.” He indicated a plum-colored leather chair tucked in a corner of his vast office.
“Great, thanks.” Another honor she probably didn’t deserve. She settled herself in the soft leather and propped the papers up in front of her eyes, the better to block out any distracting view of her boss.
The more they worked together, the more she was bedeviled by the urge to touch him. Electricity crackled in the air when she came within inches of him, which was often as she worked closely with him throughout the day. But the tiny distance between them was an unbridgeable chasm whose howling depths threatened to engulf her if she were foolish enough to act.
Perhaps a little touch would be enough, a casual brush of the hand.
She couldn’t jump off that cliff. This job was too important. And not just for the badly needed money it provided; Elan was giving her a chance to prove herself in the business world, to build a career that would be the foundation for a secure life.
With a successful career she’d never be stuck depending on a man to support her. She’d never have to suffer the way her mother had, trapped in a loveless marriage because she had too many hungry mouths to feed.
But something about the ridge of Elan’s cheekbone made her long to bite it gently. Something about his ear called her to trace its delicate curve with a soft fingertip and suck the tender, unpierced lobe. Something about his mouth made her want to part his unsmiling lips with her tongue and plunge into the warm depths.
“What are you looking at?”
She jumped in her seat, totally busted as Elan stared at her, one eyebrow slightly lifted. She blinked, eyelids darting over her lust-dilated pupils. He’d seen her gawking at him over the top of his speech, desire written all over her face.
“I’m sorry, just thinking.”
“I can see that.” He settled back against the black leather of his chair. His eyes narrowed slightly and the barest shadow of a smile played over his lips.
He knew she wanted him. Just like all those other women had wanted him. She struggled to hold his black gaze, trying not to flinch as he stared, unblinking, taunting her with her own unspoken desires.
He raised one hand, extended a single long finger and brought it slowly to his lips. A thoughtful, deliberate, unbearably sensual gesture. A surge of warmth heated Sara’s body, pleasurable and uncomfortable at the same time.
Her suit felt tight, constricting, holding in a body that longed to break free, to give rein to all the crazy impulses jarring her nerves and sending suggestions to her muscles that made her strain to hold her limbs still.
A knock on the door startled her, and she leaped to her feet, dropping Elan’s speech unceremoniously in the chair.
“You’re jumpy,” he murmured.
“Come in,” she said sharply, trying to regain the air of prim efficiency she used to pride herself on.
“I’ve got the samples you requested from the Davis field.” Dora entered, her coral mouth pursed in a polite smile. The office gossip, she took far too much pleasure in regaling Sara with tales of her predecessors’ downfall.
Dora carried a rectangular metal basket filled with vials of a black substance.
“I’ll take them.” Sara, lifted the heavy basket by its handles. She looked at Elan for instructions.
“On the desk.”
She lowered the basket and put it right on top of the scattered papers as he’d indicated. He picked up one of the vials.
“Thank you, Dora.” Elan dismissed her with a nod. She exited with a slight smirk on her face that made Sara’s insides twist with affront. Could Dora see into her mind? Know she was tempted down the same path to self-destruction that had tripped up so many women before her?
“Do you know what this is?” He swirled it and the dark liquid clung to the sides of the glass, viscous, slightly metallic.
“Oil?”
“Yes. The reason we’re all here.” He watched the liquid settle back down into the bottom of the vial. “Black gold.”
He removed the lid and lifted the vial to his nostrils. He held it under his nose for a moment, then let out a little grunt of satisfaction. “I never grow tired of this smell.” He rose and moved around the desk toward her. “Have you ever handled crude oil?”
“Can’t say I have,” said Sara. Awareness of his physical presence made her palms tingle.
Elan dipped one of his long fingers into the neck of the jar, plunged it into the thin, black liquid and withdrew it. “Here.” He extended his finger under her nose, invited her to sample its bouquet. She wrinkled her nose and suppressed a sudden urge to laugh. The strong crude-oil smell assaulted her senses, a little intoxicating.
Elan lifted his finger to his own nose. On errant impulse, she reached up and pushed his finger gently, so the oil smudged on his upper lip. She’d touched him! She drew her hand back, horrified, her finger quivering. He looked at her in astonishment.
A roiling mass of emotions bubbled up into laughter. “You look like Charlie Chaplin.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied her face, and her stomach tightened.
“Perhaps I’m his famous character, the Great Dictator?”
A glint of humor sparked in his eyes and his mouth threatened to curve into a smile. The idea of Elan smiling caused a strange sensation deep in her belly, and she groped mentally for a quick comeback.
“You’re a benevolent dictator.” She gave him a mocking salute and, slowly, a grin lit his face like the sun bursting out above the horizon.
“I consider that a compliment.” The sensual curve of his lips revealed rows of perfectly straight white teeth. His eyes twinkled with amusement as he studied her. The warmth of his smile and the intensity of his gaze combined to seriously undermine her sanity.
“Let me get a tissue for you.”
She retrieved one from the box on his desk and raised it to wipe the black smudge from his upper lip. Her fingertips brushed against the skin of his cheek—not rough, yet not soft, either—as she pressed the tissue to his mouth. For a moment she thought she might close her eyes in shameful bliss at finally fulfilling her fantasies of touching Elan.
She bit her lip hard, tried to distract herself from the unsettling physical sensations coursing through her body.
He watched her curiously as she wiped the oil from his lip. It didn’t come off particularly easily and she managed to accidentally smudge more of it on his cheek with the dirty tissue.
“Hold on, let me get another.” Her heart pounded as she got to touch him again, cleaning the last trace from the crease of his smile.
Deliberate throat-clearing drew their attention as Dora reentered with a second tray of samples. Her face twisted into an expression of amusement concealed with considerable effort. Sara realized it might well look as if she was wiping her own lipstick from the lips and cheek of her boss.
What a thought.
She shoved the oily tissue into her pocket and snatched the second tray of samples. She half expected Elan to make it brusquely clear that nothing had happened. Nothing had happened. But he stood, languid in the center of the room, challenging his employee to make what she would of the scene.
Sara made a fuss of rearranging the papers on the desk to make room for the second basket. “Thank you, Dora.” The woman nodded and turned for the door, lips primly pressed together.
The door closed behind Dora. Sara turned to Elan and saw a smile glittering in his eyes.
“She believes we were kissing,” he said. The throaty rumble of his voice, and the suggestion in his words, made her body tremble slightly. She was perilously close to the edge of the cliff.
“No danger of that,” she replied quickly. “Would you like a tissue to clean your finger?”
“Thanks.”
She retrieved the tissue, but as she went to hand it to him he merely extended his finger. His gaze met hers and she read a challenge in it.
She wrapped the tissue around his finger, then took hold of his wrist in her other hand to hold it steady. Currents of dangerous energy snaked up her arm from where her fingers circled around his pulse point.
She wiped until his finger was clean, but she was reluctant to let go. Touching Elan was a sweet thrill she wanted to prolong. She dabbed at his skin again as the fingers of her other hand curved under his to support the firm flesh of his palm.
Stop it, Sara! You’re playing with fire. Flammable liquids and flammable emotions are not a good combination.
She pulled her hands away and threw the tissues into the wastebasket. Elan remained silent and she sneaked a glance at him. He watched her with an odd expression in his dark eyes.
“I’ll read your speech at my desk,” she said, gathering the scattered papers. He nodded. She hurried out of the room and closed the door softly behind her, her heart hammering and her mind whirling.
Wanting Elan was taboo. Touching him forbidden. He was unavailable, off-limits. They had a contract, clearly stated. So why was it so easy to imagine his warm breath on her throat, the pressure of his palms on the curve of her waist?
She had a career to build and she wanted to take on more responsibilities. She wanted more influence in the company, and she knew it was hers for the taking.
And she wanted Elan.
The two impulses were opposing, one canceled out the other. To act on her feelings for her boss would be to end her career at this company. That had been made perfectly plain to her on her first day at the job.
She was still on trial.
One week down, three to go.
“What on earth is this?” Elan looked at her, one eyebrow raised in astonishment as he surveyed the expensive new black leather bump on his chair.
“A lumbar support cushion. It helps to keep your back in a comfortable position. I notice you stretch your spine a lot and I thought this might help prevent it getting kinked up in the first place.”
Because frankly, I can’t watch you stretch and flex like that even one more time and keep the last shreds of my tattered sanity.
He reached out and prodded it with his long, powerful fingers as if it might have a life of its own. “Hmph.”
“It’s on trial. It goes back if you don’t like it. I didn’t file the expense report yet.” She turned and took the watering can to the row of shiny, dark green plants she’d bought to soften the austere atmosphere of his office.
She hadn’t expected him to be thrilled. Surprise and confusion were the emotions she seemed to conjure in Elan with her little extracurricular gestures, though he did a fair job of hiding it.
Maybe she was trying too hard. She’d spent half her Saturday at the gadget store looking at products designed to ease executive stress. She had other ideas for things he might like, but she didn’t want to overdo it.
She heard him settle into the leather chair and couldn’t resist turning around to catch his reaction. She was annoyed to find herself pathetically hoping to see him smile. He approached the day with grim determination that only tickled her irrational instinct to say or do something totally inappropriate—so she could watch his stony facade crack and catch a glimpse of what lay beneath.
Not so smart. That wasn’t what she was here for.
Turned, she saw him sitting uncomfortably in the newly altered chair, brows arched, eyes fixed on her feet.
Uh-oh, no shoes. “Sorry, my shoes were killing me. I’ll go put them on.”
Elan cleared his throat. “There’s no need. It’s the end of the day and only you and I are here. You may dress as you wish.”
She mentally spanked herself for finding even the most innocent words suggestive when they emerged from Elan’s wide, sensual mouth. “Thanks.” She forced a polite smile to her lips.
He shifted in the chair as if negotiating a large pea under his mattress.
“You hate it, don’t you?”
“I don’t hate it, I’m merely unaccustomed to it.” He sat up straight and squared his broad shoulders against the chair in a way that made Sara’s stomach quiver.