“Meet me there at eight,” he said as he tightened the knot in his tie.
“Yes.”
“Oh, and you might want to straighten up before your next appointment. You look like a woman who’s been fucked properly.”
“But you didn’t fuck me properly, Jack,” she said, as she adjusted her skirt.
He buttoned one of the buttons on her blouse, savoring the soft feel of her skin beneath his fingertips, and the way she shivered from his touch. God, she was so utterly sensual. He wanted to do everything to her. He wanted to explore every inch of her body with his hands, his lips, his tongue, his cock, and with a whole treasure chest of toys. He wanted to give her every kind of orgasm imaginable. To bring her all the bliss in the universe.
“When I fuck you again, there will be nothing proper about it,” he said in a low voice, leaving her with that hint of what he might do.
CHAPTER THREE
Pressure
Jack arrived at his high-rise midtown office, ready to dive into work for the next few hours. His time away from business for the afternoon had lasted longer than he’d anticipated, but he didn’t regret the hour with Kana, and he definitely didn’t regret the moments with Michelle.
When Casey finished her meeting with the marketing team—she oversaw the advertising and brand positioning for the company—she joined him in his office, plunking herself down on the eggplant-colored couch that she’d selected when she overhauled his office a year ago, declaring it too dull.
“A little splash of color makes everything better,” she’d said as the movers lugged in the new couch, and then carried out the old beige one.
This morning, she’d been meeting with their ad agency, so this was his first chance to sit down with her and lay out the details of the Henry and Marquita issue with Eden. Last night, he’d met with one of their top retailers that boasted a storefront on the Upper East Side as well as a burgeoning online division. But the most profitable line of their business was the handful of under-the-radar BDSM clubs they ran in Manhattan. Those clubs were under threat because a rival politician had decided to play dirty.
“Here’s the problem,” Jack said as he joined her in the red chair opposite the purple couch. Yes, the red chair was her selection too. “We’ve got Marquita’s brother, Paul Denkler, running for city councilman in District Four. There’s a special election because of an unexpected vacancy.”
Casey emitted a snoring sound and let her head loll to one side, her eyelids fluttering closed.
“Yes, I feel the same way about politics,” Jack said, rolling his eyes as Casey ‘woke up.’ “But listen, his opponent is this guy, Jared Conroy, and he’s a complete prick.”
“Two of my least favorite words paired together,” Casey said.
“Me too. Trouble is, he’s a former litigator, and he fights below the belt.”
“Below the belt is a pleasure-only zone,” Casey said, gesturing to her skirt. “I don’t approve of fighting there.”
“Nor do I,” he said with a laugh.
Casey twisted her blond hair into a knot and shoved a pencil through it. “So tell me the problem.”
“The problem is, Conroy is hitting all the right notes the residents want to hear with his clean-up-the-neighborhood platform. And hey, who doesn’t want to clean up New York? Nothing wrong with that. But he’s twisted Denkler’s schools-and-safe-streets campaign into a condemnation of Denkler’s sister’s business.”
“How are the two even connected?” she asked, scrunching her brow.
Jack shook his head. “They aren’t, of course. That’s the issue. Conroy plays hard ball, and he’s decided to make the campaign about the BDSM clubs. Conroy has deep pockets. With that money lining his pockets, he’s promising to do a Times Square-style sweep of the—” Jack stopped to sketch air quotes “—tawdry elements. As if the BDSM clubs are causing problems in the area that necessitate a clean up. They’re not, but he’s making it seem like they are, and since the Times Square revamp was so popular, his message is resonating.”
Casey bared her teeth and crinkled her nose. “Bastard. I hate him already. Nobody fucks with Henry and Marquita, especially after all that Marquita has been through.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Jack said. Not only were Henry and Marquita key business customers for Joy Delivered, they were like family. Jack had worked closely with the couple for years, and even donated half the proceeds from one of his company’s products, a small pink pocket-sized vibrator, to breast cancer research, in honor of Marquita. Jack would go to battle with this guy and fight for him on a personal level alone. Add in the business ties they shared, and Jack was all in.