The Double Life of My Hot Secretary novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ember

Under her mask Tara sets the rules, dances for her boss, and he asks her to come back three more Fridays.

I did not sit.

I stood at the edge of the velvet couch in silver heels, and for the first time in five years I was looking down at Vaughn Draycott.

"Rules," I said, in the low voice I used on stage.

His eyebrows rose a fraction. "Go ahead."

"The mask stays on."

"Fine."

"No names. Not mine, not yours."

"Fine," he said again, and the corner of his mouth moved.

"No hands. You touch me, the hour is over and Gus puts you on the street."

"I'm not going to touch you."

"And this happens once."

He looked at me for a long second. "One hour," he said.

It wasn't a promise, but I took it.

I walked to the speaker panel by the wall and pressed play.

A slow bass line came on, thick and low.

I went back to him and put one heel on the couch beside his thigh.

Vaughn sat very straight.

He had pulled his shirt back on, though he hadn't buttoned it, and I could see the line of his chest rising and falling.

I turned my back to him, rolled my hips once, and looked at him over my shoulder.

His hands were gone.

I frowned. Then I saw he had put them under his thighs and sat on them.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Following the rules."

"You could just keep them on your knees."

"I could," he said. "I'd rather not find out."

I turned to face him, and I laughed before I could stop it.

It was a real laugh, a short one, and his eyes snapped up to my mouth.

That was the thing about the Lantern. A man who paid to stare was one thing. A man who stared because he could not stop was another, and I had never been on this side of it.

I moved closer, slow, my knees on either side of his legs, hovering an inch above his lap.

His breath caught.

I felt him through his trousers, hard and thick against the inside of my thigh, and he did not move.

"You're shaking," I said.

"I'm aware."

"Is it the money?"

"No."

I lowered myself the last inch and rolled against him, once, firm and slow.

A sound came out of him that I had never heard in five years, low and rough, and his head tipped back against the couch.

My own pulse jumped.

I had hated this man since the first day I worked for him, and I was wet from one noise.

"Talk to me," he said, with his eyes closed.

"About what?"

"Anything. Please. Anything that isn't my office."

I kept moving, my hands braced on the back of the couch on either side of his head.

"Bad day?" I asked.

"The worst of my life."

"What happened?"

"My secretary quit."

I almost stopped. "Maybe she was tired."

"She was the only person who ever said no to me," he said. "Everyone else says yes before I've finished the sentence."

"That sounds restful."

"It's unbearable." He opened his eyes. They were grey and tired and not angry at all. "I fired ten of them in one day once, you know. She was the first one who didn't flinch."

I did not know that. I had heard the rumor, but not from him.

"Maybe she flinched in private," I said.

"Maybe." His voice dropped. "I'd like to think she'd have told me."

I ground down on him again, slower, and this time his hips lifted against me, helpless, before he caught himself.

"Sorry," he said, hoarse. "Sorry. Hands still."

I felt it in my stomach, hot and low.

I leaned in until my mouth was by his ear.

"Good," I whispered.

He shuddered all the way down.

I stayed on him for the rest of the song, and the next one, and I used every move I owned. When the music finally cut out, his shirt was damp, his jaw was clenched, and he had not touched me once.

I climbed off him. My legs were not entirely steady.

He looked at the ceiling and breathed out.

"That was the hour," I said.

"Yes."

"Then pay the man at the door."

"I already have." He sat up, finally pulling his hands from under his thighs, and flexed his fingers. They had gone white. "Ember."

He had the stage name from the card by the door. Hearing it in his mouth did something to me.

"Come back Friday," he said.

"I told you, once."

"Three more Fridays. Fifty thousand each."

I stared at him.

Fifty thousand three times was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It was my mother's room until next summer, and then some.

"Why?" I asked.

He looked at me with that unguarded face I had never seen at the office.

"Because for an hour I forgot who I was," he said. "I'd like to do it again."

I should have said no.

"Friday," I said.

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