Not Safe for Work(41)

I laughed. “Mission accomplished.”

“Uh-huh.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “Funny, sex like that feels even better after being tortured all day.”

“Does it?”

He nodded. “Spent all day uncomfortable as hell. Then the cage comes off, and suddenly I’m over your bed and you’re f*cking me. And it felt amazing.”

“Are you saying you want me to do it again?”

“I’d…rather…” He chewed his lip. “I’d rather not wear that thing very often, but I wouldn’t be opposed to it in the future.”

“Good to know.” I kissed his cheek. “Just means if I have to punish again, you know there’s going to be a reward at the end if you take your punishment gracefully.”

“How do I get the reward without the punishment?”

“Don’t misbehave.”

He flashed a wicked smile. “What fun is that?”

Goose bumps prickled my neck. “You are just bratty enough to be fun, you know that?”

“So you like your subs bratty?”

“To a point, yes.” I slid my hand up his chest, running my fingers through the thin, dark hair. “You happen to walk that line exactly the way I like it.”

“Apparently Leathr was right.” He took my hand and kissed my palm. “We are a good match.”

“We’re an incredible match. Where the hell have you been for the last twenty years?”

He laughed, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I could ask you the same thing, you know.” Dropping his arm to his side, he turned to me. “Bottom line, though, even if it took me this long to find a Dom like you, the wait was well worth it for this.”

“Likewise.” I pulled him closer and let him rest his head on my shoulder. “You were well worth the wait.”

And he definitely was. I still couldn’t believe my luck. I had the sexiest man who’d ever set foot in Mitchell & Forsythe. I had a sub who was just bratty enough to ensure I could have all kinds of fun with punishments. And I had a lover who could make me come so hard, my eyes watered.

No doubt about it—I’d hit the f*cking jackpot.





Chapter Fifteen


My line of work could be easily summarized using two words: feast or famine. Some weeks, I was bored off my ass, taking my sweet time on simple mock-ups for proposed renovations. In a matter of hours, though, I could go from boredom to sucking down coffee between catnaps while working on complex superstructures that had to be done yesterday.

For the first couple of weeks I was seeing Rick, things were quiet enough. I’d put in my eight hours, exchanging glances in meetings and in the halls, and then we’d go back to his place or mine. Evenings left us both bleary-eyed and aching the next day. Weekends were a blur of ropes and sex.

And then, like a tornado dropping from a clear blue sky, several major projects tumbled into my department’s lap. They were all impossibly urgent, of course. The higher they piled—and my God, they piled up fast—the deeper my heart sank. So much for those ridiculously hot nights.

But it had to be done. Teagan and I had been through this before, and we knew how it went—working upwards of twenty hours at a stretch until there wasn’t a legal substance on the planet that could keep us awake.

Takeout. Coffee. Catnaps. Coffee. Glue fumes. Coffee. Such was our existence when the firm demanded it. This time, I just tried to focus on the work, and not let myself get caught up in what I could have been doing during those late-night overtime hours and endless weekends.

Legally, the company was required to allow us to go home for at least eight hours at a time. And had we asked, they’d have let us. But there was an unspoken assumption that we would see this through, work our fingers to the bone and be rewarded with a few days off at the end. So we showered when we could, power-napped on a couple of cots in an empty office down the hall and subsisted on vending-machine food or offerings brought to us from the outside world by saintly coworkers. Contact with the outside world was reduced to e-mails and text messages, which wasn’t nearly enough contact with Rick.

It took its toll. By the ninth day, tempers flared. Between fatigue and additional demands sent down from on high, neither Teagan nor I were the most pleasant people to be around. The drafters wisely kept their distance and didn’t hassle us. No one spoke to us unless they absolutely had to, though she and I still spoke to each other. A little banter went a long way toward keeping us awake after umpteen hours, and we both knew how not to piss each other off.

The fact that our building had showers had become a double-edged sword; that was one less reason for us to leave the building. We both desperately wanted to go outdoors in daylight again, but we simply didn’t have time. At least we could shower. We just didn’t have an excuse to leave.

As we always did, Teagan and I muscled through, and by the twelfth day, we were down to one nearly completed model apiece. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, thank God.

“I need sleep,” she declared around eleven thirty on day twelve. “Any more of this, and I’m going to glue my own face to the platform.”

I laughed, something that took considerable effort. “Go home and get some sleep, then.”

“What about you?”

“I crashed for a bit a few hours ago.” I stood and rubbed my stiff neck. “If I can finish this sucker tomorrow, I can spend all day Sunday getting reacquainted with sleep.”