"You keep being such a cock tease and I'm going to cut you again," I snap.
That does it. She flinches, softening beneath me like a popped balloon.
I shove inside her, my teeth falling to her throat so I can nip and bite in time with every thrust. As I bottom out, she makes a weak, strangled sob of a sound.
I press a sucking kiss to her collar bone. "Good girl."
"Slower. Please."
"No."
"Ah...please."
I come up on my hands to watch her features contort with agony and arousal. To see the sweat emerge on her honey-swept brow, one tiny droplet at a time. "You're so beautiful like this," I whisper, because she's golden and writhing and tight on me, wet despite her protests and rocking her hips with mine because she can't ignore the hot sting of pleasure my cock leaves in its wake. Black smoky eyes, flushed cheeks, bruised tits and a mouth kissed to crimson; my charred angel.
Somewhere further down the bed, a tinny ringtone bleats from the old Nokia. Leo's face changes—it's almost as if Rachel's ears are ringing—but I push into her harder, harder, squeezing my eyes shut to hold off. I want to come with her, to splash into her taut pink insides while they contract around my cock.
The phone keeps ringing.
The past keeps calling.
A single tear falls down Leo's cheek, salty on my waiting tongue.
***
Despite the fact that she seems perpetually pissed with me, there's only one way I can truly annoy Tuija: undermine her.
I don't mean to do it this morning, per se. It's just necessary. And when I pull up outside the Lore Corp building evidently still in yesterday's suit and with a freshly-fucked smile plastered across my face, I undermine Tuija; not because she thinks she's really my girlfriend, but because of what that represents. As Leo steps out of the car after me, looking a little embarrassed and, if you peer closely, a little more tired, I undermine my firecracker even more. She's practically spitting sparks.
Not to worry. I can deal.
Tuija waits at the reception desk with her iPad, her outfit slightly less hideous than usual. Perhaps my comments on the tartan actually sunk in.
"Morning," she says hesitantly, trying to catch my eye so she can throw me a what the fuck? expression. "Both of you."
I thread my fingers through Leo's. "Morning."
Leo says nothing, just offers Tuija a weak smile—which only seems to provoke her more.
"Good night?" Tuija asks.
I cock my head. "It was a long one."
"Lucky you."
"Lucky me," Leo murmurs to the floor.
I give her hand a squeeze.
In the elevator, Tuija runs through my itinerary at breakneck speed. Then she turns her attention to Leo, struggling to keep her tone casual. "I heard you made quite an impression at the shareholders' meeting yesterday."
Leo shrugs. "I did my best."
"You were brilliant, sweetheart." I shoot Tuija a warning look—she's drumming on the back of her iPad, evidently desperate to corner Leo and blast her with a classic Big Reveal: He hasn't told you what he plans to do with your shitty little cameras, has he? And he won't. Because you'd crucify him!
This needs nipping in the bud right now. The tension in this fucking elevator is heavier than rock. When the time is right—you know, around the launch of the website—I'll tell Leo about my ideas, and she'll acquiesce because she'll have spent all her fight trying to figure me out in the first place.
"Leo?" I tug at her arm. "Come through to the office with us?"
"I...okay?"
Tuija flashes her teeth at me. So this is going well, huh?
The halls, as usual, have an eerie calm about them, as if braced before the news day bursts. We walk down toward my office in an odd little knot, Leo clinging to my hand, probably for fear that Tuija is going to eat her. Welcome to the jungle, grasshoppers; we've got blood and fame.
In the office, I put Leo in one seat in front of my desk and gesture for Tuija to take the other. Then I make a fuss of getting them both waters from my mini fridge, taking my jacket off, switching my computer on. Pulling open the blinds so the light filters in like warm breath. I only scrubbed Leo's blood off my face a few hours ago; if it left a stain, some pale shadow half-mask, then that fucker's just come into full view. I leave off my flatscreens; they interfere with the ceremonial atmosphere I'm after.
"Now." Finally, I take my seat. "Since you've never been formally introduced...Leo, this is Tuija Klein, my assistant and the only person I trust in this bleak, twisted corner of hell." I turn to Tuija. "And this would be Leo. My girlfriend."
Leo glances about, her head bowed and expression awkward. To her right, Tuija grips her iPad like it's the last bar of vegan chocolate on earth. She leans over to Leo and talks from one side of her mouth.
"I've got shit on him, you know. We can totally take him."
A beat. Leo starts to chuckle, thick and dirty.
"Behave," I warn. "Look. Leo."
"Mmm?" She attempts to compose herself, tugging her skirt down and crossing her legs in comic over-gestures—but when the move puts pressure on the sliced skin of her inner thigh, she swallows hard and switches back.
"You know Tuija and I aren't really together. But until...recently, it suited for the world to believe otherwise."
"Oh." Tuija nods, her tone dry. "If this is the break-up talk, you can save it. I saw this coming a mile off."
"This is weird," Leo says, staring between the pair of us.
Tuija reaches over and pats her on the arm. "And now, so are you."
"Shut up. Both of you."
They both scowl; Leo in disapproval, Tuija normally scowls. But still.
"I want a statement put out announcing our separation. All very humble, the relationship ran its course a few months back, usual crap. No interviews, but you can give my Sunday papers the exclusive. Play it all out in nice pictures."
Tuija rubs her hands together. "Ooh. Are we consciously uncoupling?"
"No. Because that's just fucking stupid." In an amusing twist, the concept is ironically appropriate here, but the public hates pretension and consequently, so must we. I pick a pen up from my desk jar and point it at her. "No benders, no public partying. I want this to come off clean."
"I don't like clean," she mutters. "It's boring."
"Work harder. Get a hobby." She's taking this suspiciously well.
"I'm sorry," Leo says to the floor. Then she looks up and shrugs. "What? It feels like the thing to say."
"Nothing to be sorry for," I say. "Tuij? Do you mind?"
"Oh. Of course. I'll leave you in peace." There it is—the jack-o'-lantern smile, broadcast as brightly as any other lie on my networks. She gets to her feet and breaks into a runway walk toward the door. No salute. "All heil Prince Charming."
The door falls shut with a soft click, and then it's just me and Leo and the spectre of last night's carnage, clawing at us from the inside.
Leo pulls at a handful of loose hair. "So I'm your girlfriend now?"
"You said as much."
"I said that I'm yours." Her black button eyes grow wide and nervous. "I didn't expect it to be so...uh...official."
If I were a lesser man, I'd be offended by this. Suspicious, even. But then Leo isn't bothered about what I think right now. "You think it will provoke Rachel," I say slowly, "when it gets out."
"She's not well, Aeron."
"And she'll think you're a horrible person," I go on, teasing, "which I guess technically, you kinda are."
She glances away. "Stop it."
"Sweetheart. Come here." My leather office chair creaks as I ease back in it, patting my knee. "Just for a second."
Leo steps out of her heels before padding around to me. She's walking a little funny this morning; a slower pace, a greater care. It shouldn't get me hard but it does regardless, and when she folds her warm, smooth self into my lap, I know she can feel what she does to me. I'm shoved between her buttocks, stiff and ready.
What she doesn't know, however, is that I'm aware of Rachel's stalking. Perhaps more than she is. "Are you worried she'll hurt you?"
"Hurt me?" She frowns. "No, nothing like that."