Ashley Vs. Boss: A Steamy Office Romance Read online

  With a grumble, the crowds disperse and everyone heads to their desks. I want info as much as anyone else, so I’ll admit it, my voice is added to the chorus. Fuck ‘em. They need to be upfront with us.

  Even Apollo.

  I push the thought away. I do have shit to do, and it’s about time I do it.

  It’s afternoon and I’m drearily working my way through my third article on lipstick colors in the past two months—sometimes, even I get sick of talking about how to pick out lipstick—when Natalie pops her head over my cubicle divider. “Ready for a break?” she asks.

  I spring up so quickly, my heel catches and I crash to the ground, my chair spinning away and crashing into Fredrick. Just what he needs—encouragement. I awkwardly pull myself to my feet, Natalie absolutely no help to me whatsoever as she laughs so hard, she’s doubled over, and retrieve my chair, giving Fredrick a brief grimace as an apology as I go.

  “Coffee?” Natalie says perkily. I glare. She grins.

  I grin.

  I can’t help myself.

  “Alright,” I grumble, trying to hide my grin but it doesn’t do me any good. Natalie sees it.

  We head down to the staff break room, when I see Apollo head toward me. Well, not toward me, per se, just down the hallway that I’m in, heading the opposite direction as me. He’s probably not heading right at me, right?

  I try to quell my internal blathering and instead shoot Natalie an oversized smile. “So how’s your article on skirt lengths going?” I ask with way too much enthusiasm. She doesn’t even attempt to hide the roll of her eyes but she answers my banal question anyway as Apollo passes me so closely, I can smell his cologne and despite myself, I inhale deeply, even as I’m staring straight at Natalie. My skin is crackling with sexual energy and I can’t breathe but I don’t care. I'm not looking at Apollo.

  Not.

  Looking.

  He’s finally passed me and I can breathe normally again. Natalie, god bless her soul, continues her blathering until we make it to the staff break room, and then shuts the door behind us.

  “Tell me all. Now,” she demands. “If I have to wait one more minute to hear what happened, I just might explode.”

  As she starts the coffee pot with our special blend of shade-grown, organic coffee that we hide in the back of the freezer, away from the editorial department’s prying eyes, I wander around the break room, picking up old copies of Blush and putting them back down again without seeing any of it.

  “Sex,” I finally blurt out. “Lots and lots and lots and oh god amazing sex. Never, in the history of sex, has anyone had better sex than the sex I had last night.”

  Natalie shoves my favorite mug into my hand, filled with dark, rich coffee, and demands, “More. Tell me more. Tell me all. Speak, oh sex goddess of Manhattan. I need something to imagine while fucking myself with my dildo tonight.” At my look, she shrugs. “What? You know I do it. You know you do it. It’s human nature, girlfriend.”

  True dat.

  So I tell her all the gory deets. I mean, all of them. No, I don’t hold back even on that part. What are best friends for, if not to brag about the absolute best night of sex known to humanity? As I’m telling her, I begin squirming with excitement, my panties growing wetter by the moment. God, I really want to replay that scene in the hallway with Apollo, except this time, I tackle him to the ground and fuck him right there.

  Okay, maybe drag him into a broom closet and fuck him there. I don’t want all the girls to know how big his dick is or I’ll have to start using the brooms to beat them all off.

  His dick is mine. And his tongue. And his pecs. And his glorious thighs.

  But most especially his dick.

  Finally, I can’t think of another amazeballs detail to add, and my coffee has grown cold and I don’t even care because I’m high on sex and fucking and Apollo’s magic 12-inch cock and so I dump it down the drain and we head back to our cubicles. Natalie’s telling me in great detail about everything that she was going to have to do with a cucumber that night when we realize that the open work area is quiet.

  Way, way, way quiet.

  I look up and everyone is staring, although thank god not at me.

  John and Vicky are walking out of the conference—yes, the conference room—and there’s tears streaming down their faces as they go.

  It hits me like a ton of bricks and all happiness is gone. My bubble has popped, again, and the soapy residue covering me is starting to get fucking old.

  As they head to their desks to pack up their knickknacks and shit, Apollo walks out of the conference room, along with some other suits, and they head down the hall and he never looks over at me. He never looks at me and he’s walking away and my heart is breaking into a million little pieces.

  12

  Apollo

  It’s Friday night and we’re at Nobu57, in the back at a private table. I’d hoped that after a week of stress and anger between us, I could wine and dine Ashley into fucking me again. My 12-inch cock hasn’t craved pussy like this in a long time, and hell, who am I to tell my cock no?

  But Ashley is quiet and that just isn’t like her. I mean, this is a woman who’d talk to the toilet paper dispenser if there was no one else to talk to. She talks and laughs and fucks with abandon, and I’d say that it's one of her best qualities, but have you seen her ass?

  It’s a close second though.

  Tonight, I can’t get her to say shit, which is a good sign like my lawyer calling me at three in the morning is a good sign. She’s pushing her sushi around her plate, eating little and talking less, and I know it’s not the amazing food of Nobu57 that is causing the problem.

  No, it’s me.

  Well, me and the layoffs I’ve been implementing all week.

  Doesn’t she know I have to? These were employees who’d been getting shit reviews for years, but no one at Blush seems to have a backbone and so despite the fact that they never showed up to work on time and their work was subpar, no one would fire them.

  I’d looked up Ashley’s employee record on Monday morning. If I was going to have to fire her, I wanted to know right away.

  And yeah, she’s not perfect. She seems to think that the start time for work is more of a suggestion, not a rule, and some of her articles are downright inane. But there’s flashes of real talent in some of them, and…well hell, her boss, Mr. Henningford, practically begs the women in his department to break the rules so he has a justification to pull them into his office and give them a tongue-lashing, all while drooling over their tits. From what I’ve been able to get out of the employees, he’s just the kind of guy who deserves to get fired. He’s gonna get his ass booted on Monday.

  But Ashley doesn’t know. I mean, I can’t tell her everything; she’s not HR. I could get my ass sued if I tell her the reason behind every decision I make.

  I can’t stand it anymore. I don’t deal well with being in the fucking doghouse.

  “Ashley, listen—”

  “Why?” she fires back defiantly and she has put down her fork to stare at me, eyes flashing. I know that this is cliché as fuck, but I can’t help thinking it anyway; she’s sexy as fuck when she’s pissed.

  My cock tightens more.

  “Because I might know something that you don’t.” As soon as the words escape my mouth, I know that they were a mistake. Her lips round into a perfect “O” and then she just launches.

  “You bastard,” she breathes. “Here I am, stupid me, and you’re just going to share your knowledge with me, you magnanimous…bastard, you!”

  “You repeated yourself,” I say sarcastically and I know I shouldn’t be feeding the fire but really, her pissy attitude is more than I can take. If she won’t even listen to me, fuck her.

  She shoves back from the table, hands trembling as she goes.

  “Fuck you,” she says, enunciating both words between gritted teeth. Her eyes are drilling into me and her tits are heaving and I have the strongest desire to reach out and p
ull her across the table and kiss the fuck out of her and teach her who is boss, but before I can move, she’s storming off, every movement jerky with anger.

  I stand up and pull my wallet out. I’ll give the waiter my black card, pay for this godforsaken meal, and get the hell out of here. Maybe I’ll call Tiffani after all. I hadn’t called her last week when I’d first met Ashley because I’d been stupidly enamored with her but that ended now. I am going to fuck Tiffani and a busload of her closest stripper friends.

  Ashley slides back into her seat and I stop awkwardly, my credit card halfway out of my wallet.

  “They won’t do doggie bags here,” she said with a shrug, “and I’m hungry.” She reaches over and grabs a bite of my porterhouse steak off my plate. “Do you mind?” she asks and pops it into her mouth before I can answer.

  She exaggerates every movement as she chews her way through the bite, smirking at me as I stare at her.

  “Goodbye, Ashley,” I tell her. “Look me up if you ever choose not to be a bitch.”

  And I walk away, just like I should’ve done from the beginning.

  And I don’t look back, because that would show her that she won, and she hasn’t. She fucking hasn’t.

  No one beats the Wolf of New York.

  13

  Ashley

  This weekend has sucked ass. I spent two hours at the gym, running and trying to pretend that I could lift more than fifteen pounds at a time with the dumbbells (which I can’t, but I’m not going to admit that), and then I went to an art class down at All Hands on Deck studio and pretended that I could paint with watercolors (which I can’t do that either and thus am now the proud owner of a blobby looking mess that I hung up on my fridge. I paid $20 to paint that fucker. I’m not throwing it away now.).

  And now, to top it all off, I’m on a date with Fredrick.

  I know, I know, I made fun of him for being a groveling, panty-waisted wimp, but c’mon, it’s Saturday night. Any guy worth actually going on a date with is already taken. I can’t just sit at home and watch Sleepless in Seattle for the seven-hundredth time and cry. Again. I gotta put myself out there in order to find Mr. Right, right?

  Except, I’m damn sure Fredrick isn’t it.

  “So last night,” he says after he takes an oversized bite of his oversized burger and then chews noisily, a chunk falling out, “I actually put my Star Wars figurine collection in the order that I think it’s going to stay in. It’s so hard to know how to arrange them all, you know? I could do them by height or by movie or by age, but I deci—”

  “Hold on,” I interrupt, and I don’t even care that I’m being rude by interrupting him. Anyone who chews with his mouth open isn’t worth worrying about whether or not I’m being rude. “How can you organize them by age?” Even I know that the Star Wars series is six movies long and covers, like, a lot of time. In the first ones, Darth Vader isn’t even Darth Vader, for hell’s sake.

  Not that I’m sitting around memorizing Star Wars info, but you’d have to be dead to not know at least that much.

  “By calculating their birth dates, duh,” he says. “I put each character onto a timeline and then hung the timeline around my—”

  So, he finishes that sentence, and I don’t even interrupt him. But I can’t tell you what he’s saying ‘cause if I spare any more brain cells for inane blathering, I’m afraid I’m going to lose IQ points.

  Note to self: The next time I’m so desperate for a date, and I think Fredrick is a good idea, remind me to take the evening and wash my hair. Twice.

  Fina-fuckingly, we stand up from the table at Five Guys and head out the door. I want to cry, Nobu57 one night, Five Guys the next…

  How did I fall this far this fast? What did I do to deserve this?

  I wave down a passing yellow cab and start to climb in. “Hey, hold on, let me come with,” Freddie says and slides in next to me. I shrug. Whatever. He can pay for my cab ride home; I’ll let ‘im. My bank account could use the help.

  Except, after I give the cabbie my address and settle back into my seat, Fredrick isn’t settling back into his. He seems to be inching his way toward me, instead.

  “Ashley, I just have to tell you that—”

  “Fredrick, you need to put your seat belt on,” I say, cutting him off. I’m not about to let him finish a sentence that starts out with that ominous wording.

  He huffs out a breath and buckles himself in. Suddenly, the back seat of the cab doesn’t seem nearly wide enough. Despite the fact that he’s strapped in over there and I’m strapped in over here, he’s still way too close for comfort. As if proving that fact, he reaches over and pats my knee and then leaves his hand there. “It’s really sweet of you to care about my safety like that,” he says softly, staring at me.

  So I tend to have a pretty bitchy mouth, but even I can’t tell him that I could not care less if he lived or died. I finally settle on a non-committal, “Hmmm.”

  Undeterred, he blunders on. “Look Ashley, when you fell on me the other day at work, I thought at first that you were just klutzy but then you finally said yes to a date with me, and so now I know that you were trying to show how much you li—”

  The cab pulls to a stop and before he can say another word, I quickly unbuckle my seat belt and slide out of the cab, leaving Fredrick with the tab. After all, I let him feel me up for a whole two city blocks. Surely he can pay a cab bill.

  I’m heading up the sidewalk to my apartment, fumbling through my purse for my keys; where are my goddamn keys? And then I hear him behind me.

  “Ashley, wait, I wasn’t done!” he calls out. My hand closes around my keys just as his hand closes around my arm. “I really think we have something special between us,” he says, sliding up toward my tits.

  Oh hell no.

  “Fredrick, you’re wrong,” I say, my hand firmly wrapped around my keys…and the miniature can of mace that is attached to them. “I’m sorry, I just don’t feel anything for you.”

  “Now come on,” he says in a patronizing tone of voice. “I think we both know what’s happening here. You’re just scared of what you’re feeling for me.” His hand is now on my breast and I’m pulling my can of mace out of purse and aiming it straight at his…

  He’s gone, thrashing through the yew brushes lining the sidewalk, howling as he goes, and in his stead is…Apollo?

  14

  Apollo

  “Ashley,” I say, my palms facing toward her. “I—”

  “Don’t step any closer,” she says, waving the mace can in the air menacingly. Or, at least, what I assume is supposed to be menacing. She mostly just looks like she’s doing an interpretive dance with a spray can in her hand.

  “Do you really think you’re going to spray me with that thing?” I ask, a smile flirting around the edge of my lips. She really is adorable. I can hear the guy who’d attacked her yelling threats in the background but, not sparing him a glance, I simply flip him the bird. I’ll deal with him later. For now, I need to get Ashley to calm down.

  And put the damn mace away.

  I couldn’t believe my luck; I had come over to talk to Ash, to make her understand that I have to make these decisions, when I saw that asshat attack her. If I’d been 30 minutes later…

  “You’re okay now,” I tell her, my voice calm, level, soothing. “He’s gone. You can put it away.”

  “I know he’s gone!” Ashley yells at me. “Maybe I’m pointing it at you!”

  I smile. “You don’t want to point it at me,” I tell her. “You’re actually excited to see me.”

  “Oh, you’re so sure of that, Mister?” she asks me.

  “You want my cock, Ash,” I tell her self-confidently.

  What?

  It’s true.

  “What?” Ashley asks, completely taken aback.

  “You know how big it is,” I say with a shrug. “All the way back in Chapter 9 where I had all 12 inches inside of you.”

  Now she’s looking at me funny.

&nb
sp; But I don’t mind. I take a step closer to her and I can see the stress and panic slowly collapse, leaving a vulnerable Ashley in its place. I pull her against me and pull her up against my mouth, eager for the taste of her on my lips. She's so fucking hot…

  I run my tongue along the seam of her lips until she gives in and lets me slip inside. I pull her up against me, pressing my aching cock against her. I need her, now. Slowly, desperately, I pull away. She’s like a drug. I can’t think around her.

  Except that I want to fuck her. I can think that thought.

  With trembling hands, she puts the key into the lock and pushes inside of the apartment building, leaving the world and everything else behind, except for her, me, and my cock that needs her.

  Maybe other parts of me need her too, but I don’t care about that. Not right now.

  15

  Ashley

  I’m still shaking, but Apollo’s presence has managed to calm me down. If he hadn’t showed up when he did… I don’t even want to think about it. No, it’s not that. To be honest, I can’t think about it. Right now, my brain is busy with something else: desire.

  Adrenaline still coursing through my veins, I grab Apollo’s hand and guide him down the hallway and into my bedroom. I push the door open and, as we step inside, I know I’m doomed. He embraces me, and I surrender completely. I missed him so much that his mere presence is enough to make me dizzy.

  He pushes me back until the back of my knees are against the bed, and then he lays me down on the mattress. Looking up at his towering figure, I feel myself growing wetter by the second, lust and desire making the adrenaline inside of my body serve another purpose than the old fight-or-flight response.

  Something stirs inside of him as well, all the fire that inflames his thoughts flooding his cock as if it were a coiled spring. It hardens, warm blood turning his flesh into unbreakable marble. His cock fights against his clothing, thick and pulsing, yearning to tear itself free from binding.