Wild Child

Once in there, I stare at myself in the mirror, wondering whether I’m really brave enough to do the thing that’s been racing round my mind since I realised I’d be forced to endure the whole meeting being patronised by Benedict and his fawning associates. They’re talking about company pensions and I have to take what must be entirely pointless notes.

It seems Benedict Chivers is following my father’s lead and trying to subdue my life force by subjecting me to endless spreadsheets and slide presentations.

I’ll be lucky if I even get to the point of setting up my own business at this point. There’s a good chance I’ll have died of boredom before then.

So hell, yes, I have got the guts to do this, I tell myself, reaching up under my skirt and sliding down my knickers, then stepping out of them and hiding them in the small utility cupboard under the sink. After smoothing my skirt down, I give myself one last daring smile in the mirror, then exit the bathroom.

I return to the meeting room, feeling the cool air from the air-con unit swirling around my pussy, which only adds to the thrum of arousal that started as soon as the idea shimmied into my head.

Let’s see how easy it is to ignore me now, Mr Chivers.

I go back to a different place at the table, right next to Benedict, and subtly shift my chair as I sit down so he’ll have a full view of me—but no one else will—when he looks directly my way. I cross my legs primly and try not to smile as I see his gaze dart quickly towards the movement I make, then away again, as if he’s training himself not to look.

I don’t do it straight away. I wait until one of the associates is droning on about hybrid schemes and then make a bit of a show of shifting in my chair. Then I sigh gently, so the others won’t be alerted to what I’m doing but Benedict will, and raise my foot, propping the heel of my shoe on the front bar of my chair so my knee is in the air, which forces my legs to open a little, parting my skirt.

In my peripheral vision I see Benedict’s head turn and hear his sharp intake of breath as he clearly spots my ‘accidental’ indiscretion. I’m full-on flashing him now, and as I turn my head to look at him our gazes finally lock and I see exactly what I’ve been waiting for since that moment when he couldn’t tear his eyes away from me in the bathroom.

Desire.

Hot, fierce need.

But before I can even smile he looks away again and asks his colleague a question, as if nothing has happened.

As if I don’t exist.

He’s ignoring me again.

A wave of burning frustration floods through me and I drop my foot from the chair and cross my legs again, determinedly keeping a blank expression on my face in case he looks at me again. No way will I ever show Benedict Chivers how much he’s hurting me with his disregard.

The meeting seems to go on for another couple of hours—though according to my watch, when I check it at the end, it’s only eighteen minutes. Eighteen pain-filled, life-sucking minutes.

The others get up from their chairs on Benedict’s say-so, and I gather my pad and pen together and make to stand up, smoothing my skirt down over my legs.

‘Maya, come with me. I want to see you in my office. Right now.’

The vehemence in Benedict’s last two words leaves me in no doubt that I’m in for it. It just remains to be seen exactly what he has in mind by way of punishment.

The thought of that breaks through my aggravation and wet heat floods between my thighs as I follow him to his office on trembling legs, hearing him call to his other PAs that he’s not to be disturbed.

I shut the door behind me with a shaky hand and turn to face him, my breath coming quickly but my head held high.

I am not going to let this guy get the better of me.

CHAPTER TWO

Benedict

MAYA DARLINGTON-HUME IS bad news. Everybody knows that.

Like everyone, I’ve seen the gossip articles showing her falling out of nightclubs on the arm of the latest It Boy and giving the finger to the camera, both of them clearly drunk or high, as well as those grainy long-lensed shots of her slouching around Primrose Hill in the late afternoon, wearing dark glasses and with a takeaway coffee clutched in her hand, after a reportedly wild party at her place the night before.

The whole thing churns my stomach. Not because women shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy themselves, but because I’ve had a lot of experience with spoilt, bored, rich girls throughout my life, so I know one when I see one.

In my teens I worked as a maintenance guy at Tinderly, the most famous and moneyed of all the private girls’ schools in the country. It was only a few miles away from where I grew up, in a rundown post-war prefab house on a rough estate on the edge of Oxford, but those girls’ lives were a million miles away from my own tough upbringing.

I worked at that school throughout my late teens, saving every penny I could so I’d finally be able escape the life I’d been desperate to leave behind since I was old enough to realise that I had a waste of space, sociopathic drunk for a father and that I needed to earn enough money to rescue and rehouse my mother so we’d never have to see that piece of shit again.

That’s how I was able to stick it out at Tinderly—carefully navigating my way through a dangerous minefield of adolescent girls’ boredom and lust. I swear to God, I never met a single pupil there I believed would go on to make any meaningful contribution to society. It was clear they’d all end up living off either their parents’ vast fortunes or their self-satisfied aristocratic future spouses’.

From my inferior position of servitude I experienced it all from those girls: abuse from the privileged, the occasional veiled but thankfully not acted upon threats to have me fired when I wouldn’t give in to their sexual demands—as if I was just some plaything put there for their entertainment—and their cruelty and scorn when I refused to engage with them on any kind of level.

That school was a terrifying microcosm of a pampered, obtuse and corrupt society that I’ve tried hard to avoid during my working life.

Unfortunately, in order to maintain my software company’s position as market leader, I now find myself having to associate with exactly those sorts of people. Including, it seems, Maya Darlington-Hume, who personifies everything I’ve come to hate about rich people: the petulant, entitled behaviour, the narcissism and, most of all, the goddamn self-indulgence.

She might be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, with a charisma that makes it virtually impossible to keep my eyes from being drawn to her, but I’m no fool. As hard as it is to ignore her after that intensely erotic moment we shared in her father’s bathroom the other week, I know I have to.

The trouble is I’ve not been able to stop thinking about her ever since I unashamedly watched her beautiful body writhing in the water as she brought herself to orgasm.

Fuck.

I’ve thought about it a thousand times since then, even though I’ve told myself not to.

The expression in her eyes as she came in front of me, seeming to see inside my mind and know that I couldn’t bring myself to look away, has haunted me ever since.

I’ve spent more time in the gym since she’s been working here than I normally would in a whole month, battling to drain the energy out of my sexual urges, trying not to picture what it would be like to have her lying writhing and needy beneath me as I thrust into her, teasing that beautiful, spirited face into the same expression of ecstasy I saw that day.

And now here she is in the flesh, looking at me with those defiant, perceptive eyes, waiting to see how I’m going to punish her for deliberately flashing me.

It’s as if she senses it in me—the urge to dominate her and to take pleasure in it that I’ve fought against since she first started working here.

But I can’t let myself do it. I can’t get involved with her.

I need to keep her father sweet if I’m going to use his influence to get what I want: his agreement to sit on my executive board and exert his not insubstantial influence over the money men, so that the business I’ve strived so hard to build from scratch has a real chance of survival in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

We’re getting our biggest product—a piece of Customer Relations Management software, or CRM as it’s more commonly known, which organises and logs client contacts—into a lot of key British companies, but there’s another supplier on our tail who’s starting to win some of the business we’ve pitched for recently. Trouble is, this competitor is run by a guy who comes from one of London’s most powerful society families, and he’s getting a lot of help from the Old Boy Network.

Which is where Maxim Darlington-Hume comes in. I may not have a rich and powerful family of my own to call on, but Maxim’s backing is as good as, if not better than, the next best thing. Word of mouth and personal recommendation are powerful beasts, and if Maxim will agree to play his part in convincing the majority of companies to go with us the rest will hopefully follow.

So, much as I hate it, Maxim Darlington-Hume has the ability to make or break the company I’ve built with my blood, sweat and tears over the last ten years, and I need to play the game in order to gain his benevolence.

That’s the only reason I agreed to let Maya work here for the next few weeks—not that I’ll be trusting her with anything important.

Unfortunately, it seems she’s determined to make it impossible for me to ignore her until her time’s up, and deciding how best to deal with her obvious cry for attention now puts me in a real quandary.

I know what I’d like to do—put her over my knee and give her a wake-up call she won’t forget in a hurry—but of course I’m not going to do that.

I scowl at the tall, willowy temptress standing before me in my office, who gazes back coolly, her full lips pursed and her bright blue eyes meeting mine with a fortitude I feel all the way down to my cock—which twitches disobediently. She’s clipped back her long, chocolate-brown hair today, and is wearing a sky-blue skirt, which skims the edge of decency with its mid-thigh hemline, and an almost see-through silk blouse under a figure-hugging jacket.

She’s the very picture of an executive’s wet dream.

I was acutely aware of the tense, sexually charged atmosphere between us in the room earlier—how could I not be?—and it had become glaringly apparent to me that she was going to be a real distraction whenever she was around. She has a palpable presence—a disrespectful, carelessly sexy confidence that I seem to be innately drawn to.

I’m going to have to use every reserve I have at my disposal if I’m going to keep this woman from causing me trouble I really don’t need.

‘Do you think that’s an appropriate way to behave in a business setting?’ I ask her calmly, folding my arms and frowning, determined not to let her deliberate ploy to get a rise out of me work as she backs slowly up against the desk in the middle of my office.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Chivers, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

She’s all innocence and big eyes, and the sheer bloody audacity of it makes my cock twitch again. She knows damn well I understand what she’s up to. The woman is clearly a pro at getting what she wants and has a lust for trouble.

An awe-inspiring combination, but also a dangerous one.

‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, Maya,’ I say quietly, imbuing my voice with terse authority.

She just blinks at me, but I sense the smile behind her mask of naivety.

‘You were sitting in an inappropriate way in that meeting,’ I say, keeping any expression in my voice to a minimum. I don’t want her to know how much this chemistry between us affects me.

‘You mean like this?’

Without a second’s pause she sits down on my desk and raises her right leg, propping her foot on the back of one of the visitor chairs in front of it. The movement forces her legs open and her skirt to ride up her thighs, exposing her pussy to me again.

I try not to look.

Really fucking hard.

‘You should wear underwear to the office.’ I force the words past my suddenly dry, constricted throat. A pulse beats hard in my head and my vision swims as she gives me a wide, secretive smile.

‘But I don’t like wearing underwear,’ she whispers huskily. ‘Is it an office rule, or something?’

‘No,’ I say, wishing at that moment that it was, so I’d know exactly how to deal with this brain-melting situation. ‘But it’s indecent,’ I add, which unfortunately sounds ridiculously inane when said out loud.

I silently curse myself for letting her see my obvious stumble from dispassion into prudishness.

Her eyebrows shoot up. ‘Indecent? Well, perhaps you should punish me for it, then,’ she suggests, with amusement in her voice.

She’s laughing at me—and the knowledge makes me drag in a ragged, incensed breath.

Something wicked flares in her eyes and I feel the control I’ve been determinedly clinging on to for the last week start to slip.

‘What are you expecting to happen here?’ I ask her, fighting for nonchalance.

She shrugs, completely unapologetic. ‘I have no idea. I just wondered what you’d do if I misbehaved. Perhaps you’ll just stare meaningfully at me again. You seemed to enjoy doing that the last time my pussy was on show.’

I swallow hard, but don’t rise to her teasing provocation. I just continue to look at her steadily. This woman has danger written all over her. I’m going to have to be firm here—let her know I’m not going to put up with her shit.

As if she’s read my mind she says, ‘Perhaps you should discipline me so I don’t do it again.’

I raise an eyebrow, determined not to give her the pleasure of an emotional response to that. ‘Discipline you how?’

Her chest is rising and falling rapidly now, as if the idea of it thrills her. Which, of course, thrills me right back.

‘I don’t know. How would you like to do it?’ she says, as if she’s asking me how I take my coffee.

Clearly she’s enjoying playing with me. Like a cat would play with a mouse.

I can imagine how sharp her claws might be if she got me cornered, though, so I say, ‘Perhaps I should send you home for the day. To think about the consequences of your actions.’

Surprise and disappointment flash in her eyes. She doesn’t like it that I’m not playing the game.

‘But I’ll just come back tomorrow and do it again.’ Her mouth lifts in a crooked smile, her bright, intelligent eyes boring into mine. ‘Perhaps you should take your frustration out on the thing that’s most disturbing you.’

She lifts her other leg, putting her foot onto the chair to her left, and her skirt rides further up her thighs, fully exposing her beautiful pussy, glistening with arousal. She has to brace both hands on the surface of my desk to keep upright.

‘Right here,’ she says roughly, narrowing her eyes.

Something dark and compelling takes over me, and before I can check myself I take two deliberate steps forward so I’m standing between her spread legs.

I could touch her right now if I let myself. My right hand is hovering only inches away, as if magnetically drawn. My heartbeat thuds in my ears as I breathe in the sweet, arousing scent of her. I wonder fleetingly how she’d taste and feel against my tongue, but push the idea away. I can’t go down on her here in my office.

I can’t.

‘You know I deserve to be taught a lesson. Otherwise it’s probably not going to stop.’ She smiles, her full, rosy-pink lips pulled tightly across her perfect white teeth. ‘And you don’t have to worry...nobody will hear anything about it from me,’ she murmurs. ‘It’ll be our sexy little secret.’

She flashes me such a provocative look my insides rush with heat.

I swallow past my parched throat. ‘I don’t get involved with people I work with.’

‘That’s a shame,’ she says, shaking her head sadly. ‘Because it would make my time here a lot more entertaining—for both of us.’

I can’t help but let out a snort of mirth at her audacity.

‘Anyway, we’re not getting involved,’ she says. ‘You’re just disciplining me for my terrible behaviour earlier—as any good boss would,’ she murmurs.

I open my mouth to tell her it’s not going to happen, but for some reason the words won’t come. They’re stuck at the back of my throat.

Seeming to sense my weakness, she slides forward on the desk, her eyes flashing with mischief, pushing herself against my hand. I feel the slickness of her arousal coat my fingertips and the heat of her on my palm. I drag in a frustrated breath, knowing I should pull my hand away, but finding I can’t do it. That I don’t want to.

All the reasons why I shouldn’t be letting this happen fly around my head at a dizzying rate—then completely vanish as she lets out a husky breath of satisfaction and rocks her hips a little, rubbing her slick folds against my fingers, groaning with pleasure as the tip of my middle finger slides over her clitoris.

‘I think you like naughty women,’ she rasps, lowering herself back onto her elbows, so she’s practically lying across my desk. ‘Women who like to touch themselves in front of you and who know how to make you come so hard your eyes roll back in your head.’

‘You’re enjoying taunting me, aren’t you?’ I growl back at her. ‘You’re getting off on it.’

I’m completely captivated by her determination to get what she wants. I’ve never met anyone with so much pluck.

‘Yessss,’ she hisses as I push my hand harder against her, my fingers pressing into her hot flesh.

‘I should punish you for that,’ I say, totally losing the last vestige of my control. But I don’t care. In fact I’m so far beyond caring it’s ridiculous. I seem to be on autopilot, my craving for her driving me on without my brain needing to engage.

‘Yes...’ she says again, her voice shaking as she nods her head.

She’s so wet it’s easy for my finger to slip inside her. I draw it back and forth, just inside the entrance to her vagina, and she gives me the response I’m looking for, dragging in a stuttering kind of breath as if I’ve hit a sensitive spot.

My cock, which is as hard as a rock now, presses distractingly against my trousers—as if it has a life of its own and is trying to escape its confines. But there’s no way I’m getting it out right now. I want to feel power over her, like she had over me that day at her father’s house, but I also need to see her come again so badly it’s blurring all other thoughts in my head.

I slip another finger inside her, pushing them both deep and feeling her slick arousal run down my hand. Finding the rough pad of her G-spot, I curl my fingers and make a beckoning motion against it, seeing her twitch and jerk in response to the pressure I put there.

‘Oh, fuck!’ she whispers, scratching her nails against the polished surface of my desk, her breasts heaving beneath the thin material of her blouse.

I brace my other hand on the edge of the desk and lean in towards her, taking care to keep my body from touching her. I sense if my cock gets any kind of friction against it right now I’m going to lose my mind.

‘More...give me more,’ she begs, writhing against my hand.

After taking a moment to tease her, pretending I’m deciding whether or not to give her what she needs, I thrust another finger inside her, feeling her stretch to take it.

‘Ungh!’ she moans, her beautiful face contracted in a concentrated frown.

But she obviously likes what I’m doing to her because she bucks her hips, pressing herself harder into my hand. Lifting her head, she looks me directly in the eyes, her expression intensely challenging and such a turn-on I nearly come without her even touching me.

‘Is that all you’ve got?’ she mutters in a voice broken with need.

So I add another finger and see a pleasure-pain-tinged frown flash across her face, quickly followed by an ecstatic widening of her eyes as she stretches more to take my intrusion. Her mouth drops open and a long, low sigh of pleasure whispers out of her throat as I push in deeper.

Sensing she’s close now, I bring my thumb into play, sliding it over her clit in tight circles, taking immense pleasure in seeing her legs tremble on either side of me.

‘Yes, I’m so close...make me come,’ she gasps, her spine arching away from the desk.

But I’m not going to let her call the shots. I’m in control here, and I need her to understand that. I didn’t get to the position I’m in today by letting other people dictate the play.

I still the motion of my hand, drawing my fingers out of her a little way.

She lets out a shout of distress. ‘No—no! Don’t stop now. Please! Keep going!’

I smile to myself, a sense of power surging through me. ‘Only if you promise not to act up at work again. And you have to wear underwear to the office from now on.’

She nods wildly, trying to push herself onto my hand again, seemingly desperate. ‘Okay, okay—I promise.’

‘And don’t make any noise when you come,’ I demand—partly because I don’t want the people on the other side of the door to hear her, but mostly because I want to own this orgasm. I want her to do as I fucking well say in order to get it.

She nods again, seemingly unable to form any words in her state of frantic need, and I begin the deep push-pull of my fingers inside her again, increasing the pressure on her clit with my thumb with each stroke.

I half expect her to defy me, and groan out loud when she orgasms, but I’m surprised and elated when I see her jerk beneath me, biting down hard on her bottom lip and screwing her eyes shut as she starts to come around my hand. I feel her internal muscles spasming, squeezing me hard, and I experience a sort of brain orgasm at the sight of her losing herself but obeying my command.

My whole body heats at the sight of it, sending a wave of profound satisfaction through me as she keeps on jerking against my fingers, as if the greedy sensations have her entirely in their grip and are refusing to let go.

It takes a long time for her to stop moving and sink heavily against the table, as though her bones have melted, and when she does I’m finally able to tear my eyes away from the most erotic sight I’ve ever experienced and breathe again.

And that’s when it hits me—what I’ve just done.

I withdraw my hand, hearing her drag in a breath of surprise as if we’ve become one and I’ve torn away a part of her. I want to get the hell out of there, away from her compelling presence, but I know I can’t do that. I won’t do that. So instead I lift her feet off the chairs and tug down her skirt to cover her.

She sits up, propping her hands on either side of her. ‘Thanks, I needed that,’ she murmurs.

I don’t look at her. I can’t. If I do I think I might say something I’ll regret later. Instead I nod, then walk away, skirting the desk, and sit down in my chair.

She slides off the table and turns to look at me, her head held high as if nothing untoward has happened. As if I haven’t just taken advantage of her in the most lewd way possible.

‘You can leave now. Remember what you promised me,’ I say to her, determinedly keeping my voice steady.

I fold my arms again, so she doesn’t see how much my hands are shaking. I’m sure she’s going to get angry, tell me I’m a monster to dismiss her so coldly after what has just happened between us, but she doesn’t. Instead she pushes back her shoulders and gives me an obedient nod.

‘Yes, sir, Mr Chivers,’ she breathes in that delicious husky voice of hers.

Turning gracefully on the spot, she heads for the door—but before she leaves she turns back and flashes me one last guileful smile, letting me know that this thing isn’t over between us, then lets herself out of my office, closing the door quietly behind her.