скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Spread yourself a little more for me.’
‘Yes, Mr Taureau.’ She could barely get the words around her thick, useless tongue. She gave up on it and pressed the tip to the roof of her mouth. Placing her feet wider apart, she lifted her ass and rubbed herself through her panties.
With every moment she grew wetter and hotter. Desperation was beginning to set in. The pressure against her clit wasn’t enough. Without waiting for his directive, Grace slipped her fingers beneath the band of fabric and delved into the wet heat she found.
All around was his heavy breathing and the unmistakable sound of shifting clothes. ‘Stop. Turn around.’
Her knees were weak as she pushed herself upright. She said a prayer in her head that he wouldn’t draw out her pleasure or, worse, deny it. Now that she was under his spell, she would do what he asked.
Facing the screen, Grace gritted her teeth at the sight of him now. He had moved the computer, the camera, whatever it was he used. In addition to his hard mouth and strong chin, she now discovered him shirtless with his pants bunched at his knees. His cock was delectably thick and long, the smooth underside meeting an inflamed crown, the tip shining with precome.
‘Tell me,’ she said, her voice cracking as she watched him tug the skin along the shaft, ‘tell me what you want me to do.’
‘Strip down to only the garters and stockings.’
Her hands shaking and her fingers almost useless, she fumbled to shuck off her blouse and skirt. It seemed like she’d never free herself of her bra. She sighed with relief as the garment finally gave way and the straps slid down her shoulders.
The sound of his breath came in hard, static spurts. That almost-smile was back on his mouth. His hand slowly worked the thick-veined column he held in his palm.
Finally, he spoke. ‘On the table. Lie back and spread for me.’
She obeyed and perched on the edge of the table, then leaned backwards and propped herself on her elbows. Dragging the soles of her shoes across the polished surface, she drew her knees close to her and spread them as far apart as she could.
‘Like this?’
He grunted, and the rhythm of his hand picked up pace. ‘Show me.’
Grace’s words came out as a whisper. ‘Yes, Mr Taureau.’
She ran her hand from the hollow of her throat, scraping her fingernails over her breastbone, between her breasts, and lower, lower, lower until the tips of her fingers met slick flesh.
Teasing herself, teasing him, she ran the pad of her middle finger back and forth over the soft hood covering her clit. It was a technique she had never used when performing for a lover. This was hers alone, and she joyfully gave it to him.
As her finger worked and her clit swelled from its sheath, Grace chewed her bottom lip and watched his performance. Her mouth watered as she watched that big hand squeezing his dark cock.
She longed to have it in her mouth at that moment, sliding back and forth between her lips and over her tongue while she touched herself.
‘Is this what you do?’ she asked, fingers slipping lower to tease at the wet mouth below. ‘I mean, do you prefer to watch rather than take part?’
‘It depends on my mood.’ His voice trembled in sync with the motions of his big hand. ‘Sometimes I pay people to come to me just to perform. Sometimes I pay them to fuck.’
‘Why pay them?’
‘It’s easier to keep them quiet that way.’
A stab of irritation went through her. She didn’t like the implication that she was anything like the people she paid. She lifted her head to glare at the screen, but he cut her to the quick.
‘The conversation is over, Miss Neely. You should be focused on what you can do for me, and right now you can show me how you finger-fuck yourself.’
Grace’s combativeness fizzled and was wholly replaced by the need to come for him. Her gaze still on the screen, where he jerked his cock with steady strokes, she matched his pace. She plunged her fingers deep into her pussy, then withdrew completely to slide up to her clit.
A damp fever formed on her cheeks, across her neck, under her arms, behind her knees and between her legs. The only way to expel the energy threatening to burn her up was in strangled whimpers that coincided with guttural moans from Taureau.
‘Come on, Miss Neely,’ he said in a growl. ‘Let me see you get off before I do.’
At this order she gave all, opening up as far as she could for him as she strummed her clit. Friction started an unstoppable fire that instantly enveloped her.
Though she hated to drag her gaze from him, she tilted her head back and gave in to splotches of coloured lights that accompanied the sudden tremor racing up and down her pussy that culminated in a glorious explosion.
Through the red cloud of need broken by white jolts of electricity, she was acutely aware that Taureau was attuned to everything. If he had been in the same room with her, she couldn’t have felt his presence more. As the last few throbs rendered her useless, she smiled and plunged her fingers into herself. Taureau made a choking sound, and Grace opened her eyes and lifted her head in time to see the first eruption rain down on his hand.
Licking her lips, she watched him to the finish, until his hand fell away and what she could see of his body went lifeless.
She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to rouse him, and in the end decided to simply flop back and try to catch her breath.
Worrisome reality nudged her but she shooed it away. She didn’t have it in her to think about her position with the company, or even the next few moments, in which Taureau could say anything.
The moment had to end, and it did with the sound of Taureau moving. Grace lifted her head and saw his bare ass fill the screen as he stood turned away from her and cleaned himself up.
She pushed herself to the edge of the table and hopped off. All was so silent as she wriggled back into her skirt that she feared he’d disconnected, but when she turned she found him in the same position as at the start, leaning back with his hand on his chin and watching her.
‘You won’t fuck any more strangers or co-workers in my building,’ he said. ‘If you open your legs in this room or any other room, it will be for me.’
Grace straightened, a sad attempt at composure considering how dishevelled she felt. Still, she smiled. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr Taureau?’
His chuckle was so wicked it transformed Grace’s smile into something naughty. ‘Miss Neely, there are many things you can do for me, and in time you will.’
Grace tingled with pleasure as she leaned against the table and crossed one foot over the other. ‘Yes, Mr Taureau.’
Chapter Two (#ulink_c04e5fbb-45d2-5fac-9555-042f964f8cf9)
Grace prided herself in excelling under pressure. Most of the biggest fuck-ups in the office landed at her desk, and without flinching she merely forged ahead, coming out on the other side of carnage victorious.
But, riding the elevator to the thirteenth floor the next morning, she was actually sweating.
After she’d disconnected with Taureau, after she’d gotten behind the wheel of her SUV and picked up supper, after she’d gone nose-deep into the bath, she’d been calm. She’d actually been proud of herself for performing so well at Taureau’s edicts, and grew unspeakably hot as she remembered how he’d told her to finger-fuck herself.
She crawled into bed and killed the light and replayed the entire evening for about an hour before pulling out her vibrator. That gravel voice was in her head as she rolled the tapered end around her clit, and she screamed through one climax before plunging the vibe deep and bringing forth another.
Daylight was a different matter. She opened her eyes and stared at the toy she’d left discarded on the rug by her bedside. It all came back to her in a wave, but she was far from in the mood to relive that illicit encounter in the boardroom.
I’m going to get fired today.
As she prepared her coffee, double her usual amount – she had slept deep, but not long – she found herself wondering about Taureau’s mental state. She had never believed that he was mad, like some said. Paranoid, yes, but she doubted anyone would be completely there upstairs if they’d been butchered in their own bed.
Though he had been the intruder and had instigated their pornographic game last night, by the time she hit the shower she had convinced herself that Taureau had set a trap for her, that he had eased her anxieties with that little spiel about solitude only to bully her into putting on a show, shame her with one last performance, and send the evidence to Caroway.
But he didn’t bully you into anything, did he?
And that was the worst of it. If she’d become the pawn of a crazy recluse for one night, there was no one to blame but herself. She’d put herself in this position. From the first quickie in the ladies’ room with that intern to the hard fuck with her Breton-Craig man the day before, she’d screwed around at the office and she had been caught.
Even if she had enjoyed herself immensely with him, this was all on her shoulders.
That it was Taureau who had done the catching was irrelevant. She had to accept responsibility and hope that Caroway was generous enough to give her a civil referral. After all, she had been one hell of an assistant when she wasn’t on her back or on her knees for someone else.
Still, she wasn’t relishing the humiliation that was coming. The thought of sitting across from Caroway, waiting for him to get through his gratitude for her years of service and waiting for the axe to fall on her career and reputation, made her sick.
Stepping off the elevator onto the thirteenth floor, Grace held her head high. She strode between the rows of cubicles and through the glass partition separating Caroway’s office from the rest of the floor. His door was closed and she could hear his voice as she booted up her computer.
Her insides were ice as she sank down. She imagined him talking to Taureau, shaking his head as he watched scene after scene of Grace’s hook-ups.
Ten minutes passed and stretched into twenty. She couldn’t concentrate beyond the murmur coming from behind that heavy door. She scrolled through every email and, when it became clear she hadn’t retained a damn word, marked them all as unread. Then she just sat there with her hands folded in front of her and waited.
At Caroway’s sudden bark of laughter she jumped, then sat back. The tension in her limbs eased a little. He wasn’t talking to Taureau. Caroway didn’t joke with Taureau. No one joked with Taureau, she’d been told.
And so what? Now you have to just keep sweating.
She dug into her bottom drawer and pulled out her Dictaphone. There was nothing on her plate now that the Breton-Craig deal was done, but she couldn’t stand not having something to concentrate on. Transcribing minutes was as mundane as you could get, but she could put all of her attention into following the conversation that flowed into her ear.
Caroway eventually emerged from his office and chirped his morning greeting. Grace tried her best to return it, but the words came out deflated. Once his back was to her, as he made his jolly morning jaunt to his scheduled meeting, she sagged in her seat and decided that she was doing sweet fuck all that day unless he dropped something urgent on her desk.
Resigned to playing the waiting game, she opened her browser and clicked in the search bar. Her fingers paused over the keyboard as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
As she pressed down on the ‘J’ and a list of suggestions popped up, a spark of rebellion went through her. She swept her gaze around the office.
Was he watching? If she typed in the name, would he see it? Was he monitoring her computer? Was her work area important enough to monitor? Caroway’s office, obviously, but her little nook? Was there a camera hidden in the smoke detector above her office? Was her webcam wired to secretly feed back to some command central Taureau had set up for himself?
It wasn’t a crazy notion. Big Brother had nothing on Taureau’s set-up.
‘JACQUES ALAIN TAUREAU,’ she typed, and peered at the rows and rows of results that appeared in her browser.
She clicked on the first web encyclopedia page. Nothing too salacious here, but she still read through the section of his early life with interest:
Jacques Alain Taureau was born in Ottawa, Ontario.
His father, Dominic, was the son of a lobster fisherman and a schoolteacher from Mont Carmel, New Brunswick, near Shediac. Dominic worked on the lobster boats from the time he was twelve to fifteen, at which time he left home for Moncton and then Montreal. He returned a decade later with an education and began work in Saint John for a politician, and eventually won his seat as a Liberal MP. During his time in Montreal, Dominic married socialite Theresa Werner. Dominic and Theresa had one child, Jacques.
Jacques grew up in Montreal and spent his summers in Mont Carmel, spoiled by his mother and groomed by his grandfather to take over the family airline, but when he was a teen his partying ways led him to drugs and alcohol. He barely made it through university and dropped out of grad school. Famously described by his father as a ‘disappointment’ during the 1997 Federal election, Taureau frequently made headlines due to his multiple arrests, outbursts of violence, and trips to rehab. In April 1997, Taureau was arrested in in Simcoe County, north of the Greater Toronto Area, when his vehicle was pulled over for speeding. Marijuana and heroin were discovered on his person. He was sentenced to probation and required to undergo compulsory drug testing.
There was a small photo inlaid with the text: Taureau’s mugshot.
Even wrecked, he wore a panty-creaming smirk and blue bedroom eyes. Grace conjured up what little of him she had seen the previous night, but couldn’t see that arrogant smirk on the man who had ordered her to come for him.
Throughout most of the strife, Taureau was involved with Bette (Elizabeth) Laurin, whom he met his last year of high school. She and Taureau had a toxic relationship, and her drug use reportedly eclipsed even Taureau’s. Those who knew Laurin described her as volatile when she was high, and during one of Taureau’s stays in rehab she was arrested for domestic assault on Jeffrey Brown, with whom she was having a sexual relationship in Taureau’s absence. These charges were later dropped at Brown’s request.
The next section dealt exclusively with what Taureau was most famous for: the night almost sixteen years ago when Taureau woke up to Bette Laurin sitting on his chest with a knife in her hand.
Another mug shot, this one of Bette Laurin. Grace had been a teenager when the attack happened, and she had seen photos on news shows of Laurin and Taureau together. They were Barbie and Ken on cocaine. In this picture, Bette was the aftermath of a horror movie. Mascara ran down her face and her lipstick was smeared. Her blonde hair was mussed and caked with something black that Grace guessed was dried blood. The woman wore such a look of anguish that Grace felt a pang of sympathy for her.
What would she have been if she had lived a different life? During the trial, accusations of sexual abuse as a child had been used to explain the bad turns she’d taken in her life. No one had believed her, until her mother came forward and confirmed that Bette’s father had brutalised her. It wasn’t enough to garner sympathy among the jury.
As the article confirmed, Elizabeth Laurin had been sentenced to ten years. She probably would have gotten less if it wasn’t for the furore Dominic Taureau and Shane Werner had created in the media.
With the death of Shane Werner in 2004, he inherited his grandfather’s multinational aerospace and transportation company, Werner Transport, and renamed it Taureau-Werner Inc., He operates as Chief Executive Officer from his rumored home outside of Saguenay, Quebec. In 2005, he named Hugh Caroway as Executive Vice President of Taureau-Werner. Caroway acts in Taureau’s absence when necessary.
Since the attack, Taureau has lived his life out of the public eye. It is rumored that he suffers from depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and extreme paranoia. Upon Laurin’s death in 2005 of breast cancer, Taureau refused comment (although Dominic Taureau claimed to speak for the entire family when he told a reporter, ‘good riddance’).
She next tried an image search. There weren’t even any photos of Taureau during the trial: apparently he had been let into the courtroom via a private entrance. The only thing she found was a sketch artist’s drawing, blurry and indistinct with only slashes of pink to represent his scars. Nothing after the trial, nothing in the last fifteen years. Nothing until he had showed himself to her the previous night.
Grace sat back and processed what she had read. Did this story really tell her anything about Taureau? That he’d been damaged by the attack? That he had preferred, and obviously still did prefer, his lovers with a streak of adventure?
She pulled open her top drawer and dug deep. She kept her emergency pack of cigarettes taped to the back panel, and for seven months she’d kept her hands off it, but what she wrapped her hand around wasn’t her cigarettes. It wasn’t a stapler or half a box of ballpoint pens.
She closed her fingers and electricity shot through her. She didn’t need to look to know her hand was wrapped around the smooth shaft of a vibrator.
Her temperature rising, she crooked her head and took a second sweep of the office.
An unfamiliar sound drew her attention to her computer screen where a small notification flashed before her eyes. No one in the office used the IM function of their email program any more. There had been too much abuse, and so it had been disabled.
She closed her drawer and moved her mouse to open the message from JAT.
OTHER DRAWER.
There it was, sitting in her tray on top of a mound of paper clips. It looked like a perfume roll-on, but the engraved writing on the cylinder read ‘Breathless Sensations Clitoral Gel.’ She’d read reviews of this stuff but had never taken it off her wish list.
Another line of text joined the first.
OFFICE.
She moved the cursor to the text area, but discovered that she couldn’t add her own message. It was symbolic of this whole thing: he could push her buttons from afar, but she was powerless to reciprocate.
Turning her screen off as she rose, Grace looked through the partition at the rest of the staff. Some bounced from cubicle to cubicle. Others typed furiously, earbuds drowning out the noise around them. No one paid her any attention as she took the vibrator and lube from her desk and slipped into Caroway’s office.
As soon as she had closed the door behind her, she heard the muffled ring of a telephone. She knew right where to look. There in the credenza, next to her emergency supplies, was an iPhone, face lit up with an incoming call from JAT.
She cradled the phone against her ear.
‘It’s not like you were going to do anything today, anyway,’ he murmured in that sinfully raspy voice.
Grace suppressed the shiver that danced along her spine. ‘You move fast. How did you get them into my desk so quickly? And this phone? You didn’t do it yourself.’
‘I have people who do that sort of thing for me. There’s a headset in with your stash. Put it on. I want your hands free.’
Digging into the credenza, she tingled as she thought of him the previous night, laid back in his chair looking at her like she was dinner. Her fingers trembled as she worked the earpiece in. She loathed wearing a headset, ever since her first job working at a call centre selling newspaper subscriptions, and preferred a crick in the neck over mobility, but, as soon as static crackled in her hear and she heard Taureau breathing, her heart beat faster at the thought of him giving those orders practically in her brain.
‘There, that’s better,’ he went on with laughter on his voice. ‘Now take your clothes off.’
She thought back to that mugshot she’d seen only moments ago, and couldn’t put that tweaked-out young man together with the voice in her head.
