IN BED WITH THE BOSS

She touched his eyelids with her fingertip. Then his nose and his lips, as if discovering his beautiful face, even while their bodies were joined so intimately, and she was filled with warmth and an unbearable longing.

“It’s yes,” she choked. “You know it’s yes!”

For how could it ever be anything else?

————-

A sound awoke Vivian as the quiet light of dawn was drifting in through the window. She continued to lie there for a few seconds, grappling to make sense of her unfamiliar surroundings, then she remembered and her heart gave a thump.

Twisting her head on the pillow she saw that the place beside her in the bed was empty, and she sat up with a jerk, a hand going up to push her tumbled hair from her face. The sound came again and she focused on Scott, who was standing with his back to her on the other side of the room.

He was already dressed in one of the dark business suits he favored, and was snapping his paper-thin watch to his wrist. He looked so breathtakingly handsome that tender muscles deep in her abdomen responded with a pulse of awareness at the same moment she picked up the clean male scents permeating the room which told her he had recently showered.

The sheer novel intimacy in their situation suddenly engulfed her in a rosy hue of shyness. Realizing she was also very naked beneath the thin sheet had her clutching at its fine linen edge and drawing it up to her chin before she could fight a drowning wash of self-consciousness to speak.

“What-what time is it?” she asked huskily.

The way his wide shoulders tensed at the sound of her voice sent her teeth biting down into her soft lower lip. Something was wrong. She could tell. Perhaps he was not quite comfortable with their new situation yet either, she allowed.

“Five o’clock,” he answered without turning. “Go back to sleep-it’s too early for you to get up.”

“You are up,” Vivian pointed out to him.

He said nothing, his long fingers reaching out to pick up his phone, which he placed in his jacket pocket, followed by some other bits and pieces Vivian followed without really registering what they were. Beginning to frown now, it was slowly dawning on her that he did not want to look at her. That the tension gripping his wide shoulders also repeated itself in the sharp movements of his fingers, and from the small amount of his profile she could see, the muscle that angled his strong jaw was clenched.

“I am about to leave,” he announced suddenly, making Vivian blink slowly. “I have business to attend to so we have to cut the trip short. My plane is on standby. Enjoy the rest of your day here if you wish. When you are ready to go back home, let Anthony know and he will have my helicopter come and collect you.”

Every word, every cool flat businesslike word, arriving like the cold tip of a knife’s blade forced Vivian to recognise what he was doing. He had taken her to his bed; now he was distancing himself. Obviously everything he had said last night had been nothing but bedroom talk. In true Scott McCall tried-and-tested tradition he was letting her know without needing to say the words that this- this soulless departure in the pale hours of the morning marked the end of what they had shared!

Beginning to tremble, Vivian shut her eyes, struggling with a nauseating sense of hurt that made her burst forth with the shaken words, “What is going on? Why are you acting that way? Are you seriously doing this to me after everything you said last night?”

“I had some time to think when I woke up…”

“Don’t… Don’t do this to me, Scott”

He moved, twisting the long length of his body to lance her a brief shuttered glance. “Don’t beg, Vivian. It’s unbecoming.”

Beg-? Her eyes flicked open in time to watch him turn away again, every lean hard elegant inch of him so contained she began to feel dizzy now as well as sick.

“I am not begging,” she denied on a wounded choke. “We-we just slept together!”

“A-mistake. It should not have happened.”

“But it did happen.”

“True.” He seemed to be inordinately interested in what was inside his wallet now. “However, it will not be happening again.”

“Just like that? Then why did tell me all that last night when I didn’t even ask you to?”

Beginning to squirm with self-loathing for even trying to discuss this with him, Vivian folded her arms around her knees and crushed them to her chest. “You-you make love to me, then just-just throw me aside as if my feelings do not count?”

“Damn it, Vivian! We did not make love, we had sex!” He spun on her angrily. “We had wild hot amazing sex-Vivian!” he repeated harshly.”Where was the love in what we did in that bed last night? I did not bring it there! And if you did, then you were-”

His nostrils flared as he snapped his lips together, drawing back from what he had been about to say next. His dark eyes blazed at her frozen expression of horror, then with a muttered curse he turned his back to her again.

“I was w-what?” she prompted sickly, feeling like someone living a nightmare she could not wake up from. She found she could not let him stop there even if the rest was going to break her in two. “Naive? Stupid? Ready for it? Begging you for it?”

His lean profile clenched. “I was not going to say any of that.”

“Then what were you going to say!” she fired out.

“Nothing.”

The liar, the cruel wicked liar! Vivian thought.

“Look,” he began, “The things that I said last night, I… did want it, but I… I have been thinking about it a lot, and I shouldn’t have said them. It was wrong for me to ask you, my assistant, be my lover. And we shouldn’t have had sex in the first place… I should have controlled myself.”

Vivian wasn’t listening. She couldn’t. It hurt so damn much and she felt so humiliated. “I hate you so much now I will never forgive you for doing this to me,” she whispered. “No doubt you are relieved and pleased to hear me say it!”

“Actually, I’m not-” his voice remained cool “-I…care about you, Vivian.

But I’m a loner. I always have been. I’m your boss, and I don’t do the kind of relationship you are going to expect eventually. You are just not that kind of woman. You will not believe this right now but I’m doing you a big favor calling a halt now-”

“As you do with all the other women who have shared this bed with you?” she flung out. “Take w-what you want from them, then toss them to one side like yesterday’s rubbish?”

“Exactly like that,” he confirmed.

Stunned that he had dared to admit it as coolly as he had, Vivian stared at him for a second, then pushed her face into her knees and hugged self-loathing to her like it was her closest friend. She’d never felt so cheap, so used and discarded. And whatever it was he had tried not to say, the real truth crucifying her right now was she had been asking for it-begging him for it-for weeks before he gave in! Now here she sat in the middle of his rumpled bed consigned to the low ranks of a one-night stand. Which was probably her just deserts for being such an easy tramp!

“Why don’t you just go,” she whispered when she sensed him still hovering.

“I…need to know you are going to be all right.”

So he wanted reassurance now? “I’m all right, Scott. Thank you very much.” She gave it to him with the taste of bitterness in her mouth. And still he hovered! Why-? Was he going to ask for a liter or two of her blood next?

“Look…” he said heavily. “I’m-sorry I let this happen.” He actually sounded it too. “It was all my fault. I should not have given in to what was happening between us. You’re inexperienced in these things but I am not, and I should have…”

“Say anything else m-more disgusting to me and I will be sick!” Vivian wrenched out.

“It was wrong!” he lashed out suddenly. “You work for me and I shouldn’t have…. I am in a certain… position of power over you and I-‘

That brought her head flying upwards. “Don’t you dare think that I slept with you because I want something from you.” she lashed back, dizzy at the unexpected hot flare of awareness she experienced when she looked at him. “How dare you stand there and speak like I’m a child who doesn’t know left from right!”

His taut profile paled. “I did not mean-“