“Show me how much you want it,” I said, and hated myself for it. “Touch that sweet little pussy for me and show me.”
Her gasp was divine. Her fingers were shaking as she spread those thighs nice and wide for me.
“That’s it,” I growled. “That’s a good girl. Show me.”
She bit her lip. She actually fucking bit her lip. I wanted to lean on over and bite it for her.
But I couldn’t. I fucking couldn’t.
Even I couldn’t bring myself to fucking do this.
I slammed my hands against the steering wheel.
“No,” I said and meant it this time. “No, Faith. I can’t. We can’t.”
Her eyes were so hurt. “But there’s nothing wrong… I’m a woman… I’m totally legal, I’ll be even older… eighteen soon… we can do this…”
I shook my head. “I can’t,” I said again. “You’re my employee. Colin’s daughter. There’s nothing ok about this.” I started the car back up. “And there never will be.”
I imagine my tone must have been definite enough to sting. She spun to face the window and didn’t say another word. Not as I pulled out of the service station and not all the way back the rest of the way home.
I dropped her outside her parents’ house and hated myself all over again when she bailed out of the car.
“I’ll see you at work in the morning,” I said, and barely got a nod out of her.
I watched her all the way up her driveway, and cursed myself some fucking more before I drove away.Chapter NineFaithHe wasn’t going to do it. Not with me.
It hurt like absolute hell.
I knew he wanted it. Holy crap, he wanted it as much as I did, and I knew it now for sure. But he wasn’t going to do it, not with him believing it was so damn wrong.
It wasn’t wrong. I really was a woman, just a few weeks from my eighteenth birthday. All of my friends at college had been with guys loads of times over. I was the sad little virgin behind everyone else, not some little schoolgirl making him some filthy weirdo.
I couldn’t stop the tears as I lay listening to my Mr Lindon playlist in bed that night. I’d been pinging Holly like crazy, and she’d been trying to tell me to chill out and it would still happen, but I didn’t believe her. Not anymore.
I didn’t believe anything good was going to come out of us after the car episode. He just seemed so strong. So strong and so sure he should say no.
Why was he so damn sure he should say no?
The next day had me feeling like a zombie in the office. Numb to everything. It was better that way than feeling so damn broken.
I saw him in the main office in the morning, enough for a smile and a hello, but that was all there was to it. With a wave and nothing more he was out of the office with his briefcase at just gone lunchtime, and I knew then that he’d be away for the rest of the day.
Avoiding me.
He was definitely avoiding me.
It only hurt even more.
It was only when Rachel came buzzing around my desk needing some Brayburn’s listings from the day previous that I had to snap into my office best and dive in to help her.
“I really need it today,” she said. “I need to start the research net up ready.”
I knew roughly what lists he’d been using and typing up that morning. I could remember them clearly as well as my own.
“Erica’s over at the property office,” Rachel said. “She’s probably not going to be back before the day is out. Do you think you could head into Mr Lindon’s office and scope it out for me? His phone’s ringing through to voicemail.”
I got a weird little shiver at the thought of being in his space, so close to him even in his absence, and then came the pang of rejection again.
He just didn’t want me. Not enough to act on it.
Maybe I wasn’t the kind of girl he really wanted. Maybe Penny Andrews had just been a one off, and he didn’t want anything like her again.
Maybe I just wasn’t enough.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. None of it really mattered. Not right now.
“I’ll go and see if I can find it,” I said to Rachel and got to my feet.
It felt weird going into Mr Lindon’s office when he was out of it. I looked through the papers on his desk but found nothing, and I guess it was luck that meant his computer hadn’t quite closed down properly when he’d put it to sleep. The screen started right up again with him logged in as soon as I moved his mouse an inch.
His documents were easy to look through, not a surprise since he was clearly super well organised, and I had no problem whatsoever finding just the list Rachel was looking for. I pinged it right through to her email with a smiley emoticon.