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CHAPTER SIX: OPEN YOUR EYES
“I want my file!”
He looked up from his monitor when Max stormed through his office’s main door, Elin trailing behind her.
“I’m sorry, sir.” His harried assistant was trying to get ahead of Max’s long, determined strides. “I told her you were very busy today and that she’d need to make an appointment, but—”
“It’s all right.” He checked his calendar. “Call Werther and push our meeting until three, and reschedule the office meeting for tomorrow. Thank you, Elin.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, leaving quickly.
After the doors shut, he turned to face Max’s sneering face. “I must be reading my datebook wrong.” He crossed his arms over his chest expectantly. “I thought we’d agreed to meet after work tonight.”
“That was until I found out who my third reference was.” She growled. “My ex, Rob Temple, is a member here; that’s how you found out so much about my past.”
He shrugged. “When Kat mentioned you were petitioning but were short a third reference, I did some digging.” He grinned. “Rob had quite a bit to say about you.” Most of it very flattering, he remembered. Intriguing really. But, yes, Rob was also all too familiar with Max’s stance on kink. It had killed their relationship in the end. It was hard to feel really intimate with someone when it felt like they were judging you when you were most vulnerable.
“You had no right to involve yourself in my life like that!” She threw her hands out in frustration. “For God’s sake, the man does my taxes; we send each other Christmas cards.”
“Are you more upset, I wonder,” he said, scratching his chin, “that I found one of your kinky exes or that you found out that your ex is still kinky?” He could understand her shock. Especially since Rob was happily married. It was harder to think of kink as a phase or a fad or a failing when you knew perfectly normal people were practicing it.
She gave a dismissive snort before walking away from him. “It must be an enormous ego-stroke for you to have an assistant who calls you sir.”
He accepted the swift subject change. “It’s just a word.” He gave a shrug, knowing that for a woman like Max it was much more. “I don’t require or demand it from Elin. It’s her choice to address me that way.”
“At least you gave her a choice, Mr. Hayato.” She glared at him. “Now, I want my file—the digital copy and any other copies you might have made. I want all history of me wiped from your records. And,” she added with a spitfire swish of her head, “if you can manage it, Mr. Hayato, I’d love it if you and your little club disappeared completely, if not from the face of the Earth then at least from my life. Think you can manage that?”
She'd Googled him; how sweet was that? He smiled, admiring the gleam in her eyes and the glow of her skin all that fury lent her. It was an unforgivable cliché, but she was stunning when she was angry. “Max,” he chided, knowing he was tempting more of her ire, “you needn’t be so formal.” He smiled as she ground her teeth. “After what we’ve done together,” —and all the things we’ll do, he added to himself— “you don’t have to call me Mister.”
“Well,” she shot back, planting meticulously manicured fists against her full, sensual hips, “I don’t know what to call you, since you won’t tell me your full name.”
His grin widened while he let his gaze travel down the tailored length of her skirt, down shapely legs, and all the way up again to her gloriously furious face. “I told you what you could call me.”
She gave a derisive, unladylike snort and stepped back, altering her defensive stance into something more aggressive, her arms crossed under her buttoned-down breasts, held down and held captive by a pretty, professional jacket. “If I understand BDSM guidelines,” she said, her voice taking on the icy chill of logic and tempered tone of debate, “the title Sir is reserved for tops or Doms used by their bottoms.” It was wrong that her tense voice, that strove to conceal all her fire, made him so hot. “It’s not a label tossed out lightly. You have to earn that title.” Her cold eyes flashed fierce and hard. “I have to agree to it.”
His lips twitched as he fought the urge to grin. Instead, he sat back in his chair, leaning against the soft, cushioned back. “I hesitate to point out,” he drawled, “that you did indeed say that you belonged to me. That you were mine.”
He’d wanted so much to take her right then and there at those words.
He wanted to again, just at their memory.
“I didn’t mean it.” Max huffed testily and glared at him from across his desk, much of her cool reserve melting. “And you know it. It was a completely irrelevant statement, made under duress. It was either you or deal with Rand.” She sniffed. “If I’d known how difficult you were going to be, I would have made a different decision.” She made a small, almost inaudible sound of female impatience. “I swear, anything Rand might have done would have been easier than dealing with you.”
He gave a short, thoroughly amused laugh. “I’m sure a night with Rand would have been many things,” he said, as he studied her body and all the secret possibilities it held, “but—or so I’ve been told—easy would not have been one of them.”
She huffed, her nostrils flaring, while she glared at him. “I plugged your name into a search engine too. You have a notorious track record for settling cases out of court, and a nasty reputation for pissing off opposing counsel and competing firms, but I couldn’t find anything personal about you. I couldn’t even find out your full name. You’re like Cher or Madonna or something. What is your name?”
A normal man would have just complied.
But he wasn’t a normal man. And his name wasn’t a simple request.
Like with his appearance, he used his name with exacting purpose. His given name wasn’t something he gave out to just anybody. Wasn’t really something he gave out to anybody anymore.
He knew that a forthright, brashly blunt woman like her would find the secrecy and pageantry ridiculous and unnecessary. After all, for a woman whose business was fiction, Max had built a reputation on honesty and candor.
He, on the other hand, made it his business to protect other people’s privacy. To safeguard other people’s secrets. Was it really a surprise that he fiercely did so with his own?
It served him well, in his life and profession, to hide his past. To navigate his narrative away from a time in his life that felt irrelevant to a future and identity of his own invention.
Growing up, he’d always been on the outside looking in. He’d never quite fit in with the rest of the world. He didn't belong to the world his family came from, with their more conservative values and strict, constricting expectations. But he never felt fully part of the world they'd dropped him in either. It was full of silent social cues and unspoken rules that had never really made sense to him and always seemed like ways to keep him on the outside. It'd taken a lot of effort, every day, to make his way through it and, while he'd learned to navigate it well enough, he still didn't feel at home in it.
It wasn’t until he was older that he’d realized that was a virtue. An asset. A means of power. The minute he’d accepted that he didn’t fit in—had never and would never—he no longer had to try.
He could be whatever, whomever, he wanted to be. He—not where he came from or who the world expected him to be—controlled who he was, what he looked like, what he went by, how he lived. He was a man who decided for himself how he walked through the world.
He tilted his head thoughtfully and smiled, still remembering their first encounter. “I like the way Sir sounds from your lips.” Loved the way the word tumbled from her mouth like instinct, unwilling but ingrained.
He saw her fight the urge to growl. He wished she wouldn’t hold back. Her fists flexed tightly. “There must be something else I can call you other than Sir.”
“Master?”
It was slight, and he almost didn’t see it, but the briefest blink of amusement flickered across her face. She tilted her head at a mocking angle and said, before dropping into a scathing curtsy, “How about milord or your excellency?”
“If you prefer.” He laughed and offered a matching bow of his head before he shrugged off her disdain. “It’s just a title, Max. Just a name. A relatively harmless one at that. We use it every day in polite parlance. Is it really worth all this trouble? All this fight?”
———
Fine! Max thought, ready to tear out her hair.
What does it matter anyway? she thought before calmly running her hands over her carefully coiffed hair. It wasn’t as if she was going to see him ever again after this.
And he was right. She called strangers sir and ma’am all the time. And, narrowing her gaze at the man, she knew this guy was certainly stranger than most.
Besides, she thought, maybe it would put a nice distance between them. Maybe if she started treating him like the stranger, the anonymous no one, he was, being with him would feel less intimate.
So, fine. If he wanted to act the arrogant ape-man, that was just ducky with her. “I want my file now,” she repeated through gritted teeth, “sir.”
He smiled, tapping a thoughtful finger over his thin, smirking lips. An unease rolled over her. She did not like that look. Didn’t like the tickled, lilting laughter that accompanied it. She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew it couldn’t be good.
“I’ll tell you what,” he finally said. “For that, I’ll give you a page of the file.”
“A page?” She balked. “No, I want my file. The whole thing. And I want it now.”
“We’ve been through this. The file is about you,” he repeated with a shake of his head, “but it’s not yours.”
Oh, he wanted to play, did he? Well then, she thought, let’s play. “If you don’t give it to me right now, lawyer-boy,” she scolded, using her most imperious tone—the one that made her interns quake, “I’m going to bring in my own attorney and—”
“And what?” he asked, interrupting her. “Make a case out of this? Making your file not just my property but evidence as well? Is that really what you want?” He settled back, steepling his fingers thoughtfully. “As you said, I’m fairly well-established as an unscrupulous member of the seedy underbelly, a dirty-pool defender of the less than sterling sect of society. My reputation won’t be affected should this become public.” His hard, almost gleeful gaze bore into hers. “Can you say the same?”
She growled, the sound strangled and choked in her tight throat.
They both knew the answer to that.
No.
If that file, or the fact that she belonged to a club like Donovan’s, however momentarily and unwillingly, became public knowledge, she’d not only be deeply embarrassed, she’d be ruined. How could she expect anyone to take her seriously as an advocate and editor of feminist erotica if she had ties to a club like Donovan’s?
Even if, as she was beginning to discover, kink was more than what the media had led her to believe, the appearance was damning enough.
God, she wouldn’t just be fired, she’d be laughed out of her career for being a hypocrite.
No, legal recourse was an empty threat and they both knew it. Her hands were judicially tied. She couldn’t force him to give her anything without attracting unwanted attention she couldn’t afford. Max pressed a finger to her throbbing temple.
Well, shit.
She closed her eyes, squeezing them shut. “This is blackmail.”
She jumped when she heard his voice right behind her. “No, this is a compromise.”
Still trying to swallow her surprise, she said, “What kind of compromise?”
“A fairly simple one,” he stated in a brisk, business-like tone that she knew he adopted for her sake. She softened a bit, appreciating his effort. “There are twenty-six pages in your original file, plus a digital copy kept in the system. I’m offering an even trade, a favor for a page.”
“And the digital copy?” Max wanted to fully understand his deal before countering.
“The same?”
“Not a chance,” she said. “I don’t want to do one favor for you, and you think I’m going to agree to fifty-two?”
“I like a woman with quick math wits; too many people need calculators for simple addition.” He smirked. “What if the digital file counts as half?” he asked. “Thirteen favors. Plus the original twenty-six makes thirty-nine.”
“No deal,” she argued. “The digital file takes a right click of the mouse to delete. It shouldn’t count as a favor at all.”
“And the whole file is a shredder-feed away from non-existence.”
“Exactly.” She gave a decisive sweep of her hand. “It’s such an easy fix for you; why make this difficult? Why prolong it when it’d be easy for you to just end it?” Then he’d be out of her way, she’d be out of his, and the world could go back to the way it’d been before.
“Because this isn’t about effort,” he told her sagely, “it’s about worth. And you’ve made it very clear that you value this file very much.” Folding his own arms across his chest, he looked at her with a cocky tilt of his head. “So, Max, how much do you want it?”
Deliberately ignoring the innuendo liberally laced in his words, she sniffed. Focus on making the deal. “The digital file is worth one favor,” she said. “One click, one favor. Fair?”
He shifted in his chair, excitement—and something hotter—sparking in his eyes while he watched her. “Strictly speaking, it takes three clicks—a right, a left, and an okay—to delete the file. Three clicks, three favors. Fair?”
She sighed. “Done.” She could accept that.
“Good,” he said. “The digital file will count as three additional requests on top of the original twenty-six.”
Not an easy task, but not nearly the worst undertaking she’d ever tackled. A good deal, she thought. “But nothing illegal,” she added quickly. “And nothing that could jeopardize my career.”
“Of course.” He bent his head in a swift nod. “But, in return, I want a time limit on these requests. If you refuse a request or take longer than three minutes to begin complying, you forfeit that page.” He tossed her a challenging glance. “Agreed?”
Max bit her lip. She didn’t like even the possibility that he could keep any of those pages in his possession.
“I promise not to compromise you physically, professionally, or personally,” he told her softly. “I have no desire to harm you in that way, or any other. You are safe with me.”
She scoffed. Safe with a blackmailer in an all but blind deal?
But what choice did she have? She couldn’t leave here empty-handed. Besides, she thought as she studied him, I can handle anything—even him. She took a deep breath. “Agreed.”
“Excellent,” he said almost cheerfully. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to seal our deal with a kiss, would you?”
“Sure.” She lifted her shoulder in a hard, mocking shrug. “Why don’t you kiss my ass and we’ll call it a deal?”
He laughed. “Bend over,” he said with an obvious leer to her behind. “It’d be my pleasure.”
Her face wrinkled. She was sure it would be his pleasure—all his. Perv. “How about a handshake?”
“How about our first trade?” he countered.
Fine. She shrugged and then nodded.
“My first request,” he told her, moving to lean against his desk, “is your panties.”
Max stuttered. “Excuse me?”
“Your panties,” he repeated, sounding impatient, “give them to me.”
Oh no. That was crossing a line. “I’m not sleeping with you,” she said automatically, her voice breathy with offense and something else—like shame with a sliver of excitement. She was not taking her clothes off for this man, much less her underwear. That was not part of the deal.
“Again,” he pointed out, “I haven’t asked you to.”
Not yet, anyway, she read in the wolfish gleam of his eyes as clearly as if he’d said it. Her knees quivered, then clenched tight. “Then my panties aren’t any business of yours.” She stepped back when he pushed up from his perch to stand straight.
“I disagree.” He moved away from his desk with a lithe, languid lope. “While removing your panties isn’t necessary, there are a great many ways I can give and gain pleasure that have nothing to do with sex—in its strictest definition—but are better accomplished without barriers in the way.”
“I’m not having sex with you,” Max repeated stubbornly, “not by any definition.” So her panties were staying on. And that was that. End of discussion.
“So you’ve said.” He came closer and closer, forcing her to step back further and further. “Many times.”
Max inhaled sharply and her eyes widened as he stalked toward her. She felt foolish, stumbling backward like some horror-movie trope, but she couldn’t stop. Stopping meant he’d move close to her—much too close. She needed distance, needed a wall of space separating them. So, though she knew it was irrational, useless and tritely weak, she continued to back away.
“It occurs to me,” he said, continuing his slow but unwavering pursuit, “that we haven’t discussed the terms of our deal in detail.”
Max winced when she hit the corner of some piece of furniture with her elbow. She knew that she should turn around—should look where she was going. But, if she did, she’d have to take her eyes off of him, and she couldn’t. She just couldn’t do that.
“Let me do so now.” His voice was a low, rumbling sound in the tense silence of the room.
Max felt trapped in that silence, in the charged air of his office. His eyes—the intensity in the unnaturally cove-colored depths—made her heart pound wildly, even as they entranced her. Though she wanted to, she couldn’t break that hot, hungry contact, couldn’t stop that wildness within him from calling to something deep inside her.
No! she thought as her back slammed up against a wall. She shut her eyes and wrenched her face to the side, breaking the gaze. She wouldn’t give into him, wouldn’t give him that part of herself.
She would not submit.
Even with her eyes closed, she knew the moment he stepped toward her. She could feel, in that innately animal way, the moment he was no more than a breath away. His heat, his scent, his presence surrounded her—drowned her—making the simple act of breathing a challenge.
“Look at me.” The command was quiet but compelling.
She opened her eyes.
Inhaling sharply, she felt his piercing gaze hit her, penetrating her defenses more thoroughly than a touch. “I will never exchange any part of this file for any kind of sexual touch.” It sounded less like a promise and more of an accusation. “This isn’t about paying for sex, not with any currency. You’re not a sex worker and I’m not a john,” he told her in an unquestionable tone, “and that isn’t what this is about.”
“What is this about then?” she said.
“Opening your eyes,” he replied, his voice softening. He bent his head as if to kiss her. She shut her eyes, waiting. “Letting you see without prejudice or bias.”
But he didn’t kiss her. She blinked back up at him, feeling ruffled and ridiculous. “How selfless of you,” she snapped.
He smiled. “Don’t misunderstand me.” His breath was warm and musky against her lips, the earthy scent and heat making her lightheaded. “I like to look too. And, believe me,” he said, as his gaze roamed her face and his voice gained a husky timbre, “you’re a pleasure to watch, Max.” His gaze dipped lower. “Generous curves. Great legs. Firm ass. Weighty hips.” He grinned. “Miraculous breasts.” He looked up again. “Silky hair. Strong will.”
His hand lifted to hover over her cheek. And though he stopped just short of touching her, she could feel him. Felt the phantom stroke his fingers would make along her sensitive skin. “The fine, light lines around your eyes and mouth that speak to your determination, your devotion, and your deep sense of joy.” She felt her heart drop when he lowered his hand and stepped back. “You are a study.”
She blinked blankly at him, feeling disoriented and muddled. He found her laugh lines—her wrinkles—sexy?
“Take off your panties.”
She looked at him as he moved to lean against his desk, his long, powerful arms stretched back to lazily lounge against the strong, wood piece. She stared at his clear confidence, as if he knew he had her just where he wanted her, as if he knew how primed—how hungry—she was. Because of him.
And he did have her where he wanted her. He did affect her. Arouse her. Make her wet.
And he knew it.
She knew it too.
And it pissed her the fuck off.
He had her where he wanted. He’d had her, melting and swooning, in the palm of his hand. He was playing her! Moving and manipulating her like a goddamned chess piece. Making her feel unsettled, out of control.
Not anymore.
That ended now.
She wasn’t a woman to be toyed with. She was Max freakin’ Wells. Straightening her shoulders and setting her suit right again with a determined tug, she stepped away from the blindingly blue wall. She lifted her chin defiantly. “What if I’m not wearing any?”
“You are,” he said simply.
“So sure, are you?” she said just as simply.
“Yes.”
“How?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “You’re not the type to go bare-assed into work.”
“I could.”
“You could,” he granted, “but you won’t.” He reconsidered. “Wouldn’t,” he amended.
But, before she could so much as wonder what he’d meant by that, he crossed his arms over his chest in deliberate challenge. “I’d be willing to wager the entire file—every page, digital and printed—on the fact that you’re wearing panties.” His gaze dropped and centered on her hips—or more pointedly, on their apex—making her want to squirm under such scrutiny.
His eyes glazed a bit, as if he were imagining her naked beneath her skirt. Or perhaps just naked all together. “Prove it to me,” he said, his voice gratingly sweet with absolute surety, “and you can have the whole file right now.”
She panted, her breath short and shallow, while her gaze hit hard against the dare emitting from his. Unconsciously, her right foot slipped back, squaring her stance, and her fists clenched tight.
“You can’t,” he taunted, the corners of his smug, tilted eyes crinkling, “can you?”
The smirking, mocking, egomaniacal chuckler!
He’d painted her into a corner. He was giving her the perfect way to end this ridiculous mess all in one, if not simple, then certainly quick sweep. There was only one problem.
Damn it, she was wearing panties.
She wasn’t the type of girl to go without. The whole idea of going commando had always reeked of messy, unsanitary male fantasy—another way to reduce her down to just her pussy. Just another ready hole.
Panties, like her business suit and shoes and makeup, were a part of her armor against the world. Without them, she wouldn’t be just naked. She’d be exposed.
And, the fact that the idea didn’t immediately disgust and horrify her around this man—the fact that, in conjunction with him, it titillated her in a small, infinitesimal way—only worried and angered her more.
She shook her head.
No, she would not let him get to her like this.
Wouldn’t let him make more out of this than it was.
It was a basic business deal.
A simple transaction.
Tit for tat.
So the guy got his rocks off by thinking of her panty-less. So what? It was just a scrap of cloth, relatively worthless and easily replaceable. If he wanted to attach more meaning to them than that, what did she care as long as she got what she wanted?
“Fine,” Max said as nonchalantly as she could manage. Bending at the waist a bit, she reached behind her, beneath her skirt. Grabbing the back of the elastic waistband, she pulled the bit of cloth down. The plain cotton slid silkily down her behind and along the length of her thighs, leaving a shiver in its wake. She paused when the elastic got caught on her stockings’ garters. Fumbling a bit as she imagined him silently smirking, she disentangled herself, unsnapping her garters angrily. Raising first one leg and then the other, she pulled them off completely, careful not to catch them on the pointed stilettos of her kitten heels.
“There.” She cleared her throat before she straightened her skirt and garters again, sure that he’d caught no more than a brief flash of her thighs. There. That was simple enough.
She balled them up in her fist before throwing them at him. “Happy now?”
The panties flew toward him, the light, sky-colored cloth blooming and blossoming in the air before striking him in the chest. He caught it against his dark suit, fingers splayed across the flimsy fabric, his stark stare still stuck—centered—somewhere near the hem of her skirt.
Strangely satisfied, she straightened her shoulders, her thighs quivering with a sudden, reckless, naked feeling. “May I have my page now, please?” Her tone was soft with a saccharine slice and her smirk spread. “Sir.”
Looking much like she imagined she had only a few moments before—disoriented and disconcerted—he shook his head, trying to collect himself. The interesting sapphiric shade disappeared behind sensuously long lashes as he shut his eyes, bowed his head and plucked the cloth off his suit.
Taking a long moment, he neatly folded the delicate triangle before tucking it into his suit jacket like a pocket square, the point peeking out just above the tight woolen weave, bringing her attention back to the hot, slick bareness between her legs.
Without looking up at her, he sniffed. “You lied to me,” he said. “Tried to renege on our agreed-upon deal. Why would I reward such behavior?” He tugged at the sleeves of his jacket fastidiously. “If anything, I deserve some kind of recompense.” He raised his eyes, the heat of his gaze scalding like an uncontrolled fire left to burn. “Lift your skirt.”
Another shudder shot through her, stiffening her spine and stealing her breath. “Nice try, counselor,” she said through a casual smile. “But I didn’t lie. I simply posed a hypothetical.” She forced her body to relax, deliberately dropping her shoulders and unclenching her hands. She twitched her hips audaciously. “I don’t owe you shit. Sir.”
Her heart pounded when she saw his eyes widen, flames burning in the blue. “But you’ll lift your skirt anyway.” Certainty sharpened that songlike sound.
“I will?” She let laughter lilt her tone. “Why would I do that?”
“Because I want to see you,” he said, swallowing hard as his hands gripped the edge of his desk and his gaze zeroed south, “and you want me to see you too.”
“Do I?” The coy phrase sounded throaty and hoarse.
“Yes.”
She studied him. His tanned face was flushed, a ruddy, ready slash of color staining his angled cheeks, making his expression dark, needy.
She watched his nostrils flare with each deep breath, and her gut clenched and thighs tensed as she wondered if he could scent a scene like a bloodhound. She inhaled sharply when the tip of his tongue slipped out to slide along his thin lips as if imagining a taste, honeyed and thick, sticking to his skin.
His posture—usually so straight and superior—was slumped, hunched over while his hands fisted over the desk’s rigid edge. His weight was grounded over his toes, like a sprinter or swimmer or some shifting, sinuous beast set to strike. She felt his hungry gaze like a sensual stroke against her skin.
She fancied she could almost see the shade of a societal leash, holding him back, tethering him to that office desk. She imagined wispy ties of proprietorial control restraining his heaving body. “Lift it,” he said, his musical voice suddenly staccato. “Show me.”
It made her feel—perhaps foolishly, certainly recklessly—daring. Brave.
“You know you want to.”
He was right. She did.
She grinned, feeling so very unwise.
Knowing she was going to provoke the beast, she turned on her heels and flipped up her skirt, flashing her now bare ass at him as she swaggered out of his office, her hips swaying with sass.
It was a long, silent walk but, as she threw open the door, letting her skirt once again fall demurely into place, she heard him laugh. “Don’t you want your pages?” he called after her.
Max paused. She did, but it would ruin her exit. She bit her lip before turning her head and letting her gaze traverse his tense form. “My lunch break is almost over and I have phone calls to make back at the office.” She sniffed snootily and stepped through the doorway. “I’ll be back for them after work. I know you’re good for it.” Without giving him a chance to respond, Max stepped through to the reception area and shut the door behind her with a definitive click.
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