Page 25 of For the Plot
Her heels don’t click too loudly. Her clothes are professional. Tasteful. She presents understated, if not for the sharpness of her mouth and the glint in her eye.
I shouldn’t be watching her. But I am.
I track every movement, the way she slides into her chair, the way she scans the screen like she’s already memorizing my schedule and mentally rearranging it. Her fingers hover over the keyboard for a moment, then she starts typing.
I have a conference call in four minutes I should be preparing for. Instead, I’m cataloging details I have no business noticing.
The way her lipstick is a soft rose, subtle but effective at making me wonder how close it matches the soft rose pink of her nipples.
How her blouse is tucked into high-waisted black pants that fit like they were tailored just perfectly to cinch her waist and hug her full hips. The material clings to her ass in the most subtle, tempting way.
The soft, almost messy way her hair is pinned atop her head. Loose strands frame her face. One of them brushes her cheek when she leans forward.
I watch intently as she pushes back from her desk, circling her head around as she reaches her hands up to press into her shoulders. She stretches then stands, lifting her arms overhead to stretch even further. My pulse quickens, my cock wanting her to keep going and she does. But then she stops, glancing around her desk like she’s looking for something. She spots her water bottle and plants one hand on the desk, leaning her weight forward until she’s able to reach it.
Her ass is on full display for me now and I tilt my head to get a better angle of the little speck of light I see peeking through the apex of her thighs, right where her cheeks come together to create the most perfect heart-shaped ass I have ever seen. And the first and only thought that comes to my mind is dropping to my knees behind her and running my tongue from her clit to her asshole in one single swipe followed by a bite.
Fuuuuuck.
I close my eyes for a second and exhale through my nose, doing everything I can to ignore the raging hard-on that’s pressed firmly against my thigh.
This is going to be a problem. A big fucking problem.
The first hour of today passes without incident… that is unless you count the number of times I’ve already had to remind myself to keep my eyes on my fucking work and not her.
She’s efficient, precise, and quicker than I expected. She picks up on my verbal shorthand within minutes and anticipates a schedule conflict I hadn’t even caught yet. Apart from a sarcastic comment here or there, she keeps her voice steady, her tone respectful, and her glances brief and purposeful.
But her laugh? That’s what cuts through everything.
It happens just after ten, when she’s responding to an absurd email from a PR rep who wants to pitch a campaign involving drones and rooftop yoga with goats. She mockingly reads the line aloud without asking and when I raise an eyebrow, she grins and makes a joking remark that I didn’t catch, and then… she laughs.
Full and unapologetic. Her eyes squint so hard they almost close, her head falling back slightly. It’s not a quiet laugh by any means and it ends with an adorable little snort.
It pulls at my heart and for a second I can’t remember why, but I do know why… It reminds me of Lauren, my late wife. She laughed like that. She loved to laugh. She’d let her head fall back and the sound would bounce off every surface. It didn’t matter if we were just relaxing at the beach as a family or attending a fancy dinner where I was trying to woo investors. Lauren was always Lauren—beautiful, open, and so unapologetically herself it’s what made me fall more in love with her every year that I knew her.
I turn my attention back to my computer, an uncomfortable ache that I’ve gotten great at avoiding starting to build in my chest.
By the time noon rolls around, I’ve made it almost five full hours without doing anything inappropriate—no lingering stares, no accidental compliments, no inviting thoughts that could get me sued or, worse, betray my own son.
But I’ve also skipped breakfast, ignored two calendar alerts to eat, and my head is beginning to ache in that familiar, low-throb way it always does when I try to survive on coffee and sheer willpower.
I glance up from my screen and find her standing near the long credenza by the wall, reading over a printout while holding a protein bar like it’s a negotiation she’s not ready to commit to.
“Take a break,” I say, surprising myself.
“I will in a few. I just want to finish getting the rest of these printouts together for the presentation.”
“They’ll be there in an hour.”
She looks over her shoulder. “That sounded dangerously close to a command.”
“It was.”
Her eyes widen, just a flicker, then narrow slightly like she’s trying to figure out the angle. “A power lunch in the break room?”
I lean back in my chair, lifting a brow. “I was thinking more… chicken Caesar salad in the corner of my office.”
Her mouth twitches. “Is that code for something?”
