from shaking as I open my mouth to speak. “Mr. Bellamy… Carla asked me to prepare these documents for you, and she isn’t here to deliver them, so I brought them myself, and um…” I trail off like a fool.
Something catches in his eyes. He puts down his pen and glances up for the first time. As soon as he does, the mood changes.
It might be my mind playing tricks on me, but I could swear that the look in his eyes has gone from cruelly distant to … leering. Lecherous. Predatory. He stares me straight in the eyes, drinking me in.
I feel consumed.
His gaze leaks downward from my eyes and gyrates over every curve of my body. My hands are unclenching and clenching, waiting for some sign of release, but the pull of his stare is like a chain binding me to the point where I’m standing. He lingers on my breasts, the subtle bump of my nipple against the sheer fabric, and the valley of creases where my bulging thighs sweep together. His colorless eyes coast along my curves, savoring them.
“Bring that to me,” he says. His voice is muted, though still retains a callous edge, like he had ground it down with sandpaper. I obey unthinkingly, offering the stack of papers in my hand.
He reaches forward – slowly, so slowly, his hand takes years and years to cross the distance between us, I have enough time to analyze every sharp angle of the sinews stretched across his wrist – and grasps the file. He doesn’t take it right away, though. Instead, he extends one long finger, adorned with an obscenely gaudy ring, and strokes the thick bulge of my wrist, just once, before he pulls away. The touch feels like electricity and I can’t help but leap backwards, away from the desk. My sudden motion shatters the tension of the moment.
There is a long silence before he speaks again.
“Thank you,” he says.
The spell is lifted and I feel a sudden explosion of freedom. I practically sprint out of the office without waiting for another word. I run straight to the bathroom. Once inside, I slam the door of a stall shut and sink to a seated position on the sparkling tiled floor. My breath heaves in ragged stretches and I realize that I hadn’t breathed from the moment I first entered Bellamy’s office. I am sweating profusely and swimming in a feeling that I haven’t felt in a long time.
It is the same feeling I felt when that boy had undone my bra in the backseat of his car.
It felt like someone wanted to fuck me.
CHAPTER TWO
The cold is burning at my mouth and ears as I hurry down the sidewalk. My chin is tucked into my chest as I shiver to shake away the freezing air that stabs between every crevice and mislaid fold in my clothing.
Autumn has sluiced away quickly in the last few weeks, forcing the temperature to plummet into single digits. The streets are full of people, like me, hunched over and gasping as they bustle from place to place.
I turn the corner and my apartment building comes into view. Heaving a sigh of relief, I pick up my pace. A hundred yards until warmth.
Suddenly, as I stride across the icy street, my foot hits a patch of ice on top of a manhole cover. It slips out from under me. The entirety of my weight pitches forward, and because my mitten-encased hands are squeezed under my arms, there is nothing to break my fall. I try to twist in midair, but only get a quarter of the way turned before I smash into the ground.
My shoulder immediately erupts in pain, followed a millisecond later by my lip and the side of my face. Everything throbs agonizingly – boom, boom, every heartbeat sending daggers coursing through my skeleton.
Boom. Ow. Boom. Jesus.
I think I tore something, a ligament, maybe, in my shoulder. I can feel the ice cooling over the long scrape forming on my cheekbone where it struck the pavement. The blood from my lip is dripping onto the pavement, plink -ing in time with the pounding pain of my arm.
I
Something catches in his eyes. He puts down his pen and glances up for the first time. As soon as he does, the mood changes.
It might be my mind playing tricks on me, but I could swear that the look in his eyes has gone from cruelly distant to … leering. Lecherous. Predatory. He stares me straight in the eyes, drinking me in.
I feel consumed.
His gaze leaks downward from my eyes and gyrates over every curve of my body. My hands are unclenching and clenching, waiting for some sign of release, but the pull of his stare is like a chain binding me to the point where I’m standing. He lingers on my breasts, the subtle bump of my nipple against the sheer fabric, and the valley of creases where my bulging thighs sweep together. His colorless eyes coast along my curves, savoring them.
“Bring that to me,” he says. His voice is muted, though still retains a callous edge, like he had ground it down with sandpaper. I obey unthinkingly, offering the stack of papers in my hand.
He reaches forward – slowly, so slowly, his hand takes years and years to cross the distance between us, I have enough time to analyze every sharp angle of the sinews stretched across his wrist – and grasps the file. He doesn’t take it right away, though. Instead, he extends one long finger, adorned with an obscenely gaudy ring, and strokes the thick bulge of my wrist, just once, before he pulls away. The touch feels like electricity and I can’t help but leap backwards, away from the desk. My sudden motion shatters the tension of the moment.
There is a long silence before he speaks again.
“Thank you,” he says.
The spell is lifted and I feel a sudden explosion of freedom. I practically sprint out of the office without waiting for another word. I run straight to the bathroom. Once inside, I slam the door of a stall shut and sink to a seated position on the sparkling tiled floor. My breath heaves in ragged stretches and I realize that I hadn’t breathed from the moment I first entered Bellamy’s office. I am sweating profusely and swimming in a feeling that I haven’t felt in a long time.
It is the same feeling I felt when that boy had undone my bra in the backseat of his car.
It felt like someone wanted to fuck me.
CHAPTER TWO
The cold is burning at my mouth and ears as I hurry down the sidewalk. My chin is tucked into my chest as I shiver to shake away the freezing air that stabs between every crevice and mislaid fold in my clothing.
Autumn has sluiced away quickly in the last few weeks, forcing the temperature to plummet into single digits. The streets are full of people, like me, hunched over and gasping as they bustle from place to place.
I turn the corner and my apartment building comes into view. Heaving a sigh of relief, I pick up my pace. A hundred yards until warmth.
Suddenly, as I stride across the icy street, my foot hits a patch of ice on top of a manhole cover. It slips out from under me. The entirety of my weight pitches forward, and because my mitten-encased hands are squeezed under my arms, there is nothing to break my fall. I try to twist in midair, but only get a quarter of the way turned before I smash into the ground.
My shoulder immediately erupts in pain, followed a millisecond later by my lip and the side of my face. Everything throbs agonizingly – boom, boom, every heartbeat sending daggers coursing through my skeleton.
Boom. Ow. Boom. Jesus.
I think I tore something, a ligament, maybe, in my shoulder. I can feel the ice cooling over the long scrape forming on my cheekbone where it struck the pavement. The blood from my lip is dripping onto the pavement, plink -ing in time with the pounding pain of my arm.
I
Similar Books
Mammoth Books presents Merlin's Gun
Alastair Reynolds
Troubled range
John Thomas Edson
The Would-Begetter
Maggie Makepeace
Carpathian 18 - Dark Possesion
authors_sort
Romance: The Billionaire's Proposal
Emily Cooper
The Delaneys At Home
Anne Brooke
The Slynx
Tatyana Tolstaya
The Story Keeper
Lisa Wingate
Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables
Stephen L. Antczak, James C. Bassett
Deep Sound Channel
Joe Buff