Page 8 of Dangerous Devotion

“I need to talk to you on my break,” she tells me.

She’s not asking for a few minutes of my time. She’s telling me. While I instinctively start to put her in her place, I stop the words. I hold back a chuckle because I’ve never had anyone, but my father issue orders to me, and it’s sort of cute how this feisty little nursing student thinks she can boss me around.

For a second, I recall my dream last night, one that left me in sweat-soaked sheets. A dream of Serena Mayfield breaking into my penthouse, tying me to the bed and saying she can get to me anytime she wants, security be damned, and she’s going to do whatever she wants with me until I agree to let her father go.

I take all the torment I can stand and more—her hair brushing my bare thighs, her hand, her mouth, until I’m begging, offering her anything. Her dad’s debt free and clear, a car, a diamond ring, half my kingdom, anything. In my dream, she laughs at me as I twist my wrists in the bindings that hold me, eyes squeezing shut against the delicious agony of teetering right on the edge. I grow harder at the shard of my dream coming back to me and have to clear my throat.

“About twenty minutes from now?” she says.

“I’ll be in the office,” I say and take my drink with me.

Once I’ve shut the door behind me, I take off my jacket and roll up my sleeves. It’s hot in here. A bead of sweat trickles down my spine as I flick on the fluorescents overhead. I’m sure she wants to formally work out a payment schedule to handle her dad’s debt.

My integrity about positions of power, harassment, ethics—now that I’m in a situation where the woman I want owes a large sum to my family, I don’t want to turn it to my advantage, but I won’t pretend it hasn’t crossed my mind. It’s an unworthy thought, one born of desperation and unvarnished lust.

Serena enters my office and shuts the door. She’s got her t-shirt tied up now, showing a sliver of her stomach. Even the scent of her sweat in the confines of the small office makes me want to growl. I don’t remember the last time I wanted a woman this much, and I know if I had, I wouldn’t have waited this long to let her know.

I force myself to stay there, to keep the desk between us. She’s looking at me so frankly that I’m not even sure what to say. If Ronnie had told me last week that while he was out for a medical procedure that I’d let some sassy girl order me around and I’d find myself at a loss for words, I’d have told him the doctor needed to examine his brain, not his balls. I never expected this, never encountered anyone like Serena Mayfield before.

“What do you need?” I say, aiming for a tone just north of boredom.

I am not warm and friendly. I don’t tell her to have a seat or offer her a bottle of water from Ronnie’s mini fridge. I stand there, my hands braced on the desk, and wait to hear what she has to say, all business and absolutely no pleasure.

“I need—not help exactly. Advice, or options,” Serena sounds a little uncertain.

She’s giving me an opening to tell her what to do, to give my opinion of her situation. It leaves me off balance for the blink of an eye before it registers what she’s doing. She’s appealing to my position of power and giving me the chance to ‘guide’ her out of a thorny situation. Somehow, she seems to have decided that she can manipulate me into thinking I’m in charge just long enough to find her young and vulnerable, endearingly in need of my wisdom and protection. Because I don’t for a minute think she’s asking for my help. She’s too damn smart for that.

I don’t change my expression, not so much as a quirk of an eyebrow, when I meet her eyes. They are a little too wide, and I think she’s trying for a Disney princess kind of innocence.

“Try again,” I say, “That gambit was bold, and it nearly worked on me. If you hadn’t thrown in the wide-eyed innocent look you might have gotten away with it.”

“Shit,” she says, “It was my best hope.”

I take a seat in the chair. “Pretending to be helpless? If you’re going to try that, don’t walk in here ready to do battle for your dad and accept a job on the spot. Don’t prove yourself up to the task by being competent at everything we’ve thrown at you. You can’t walk that back to act overwhelmed. A bluff like that only works when I don’t already know the cards in your hand, Serena.”

“If you’d believed me, what would you have told me to do, advice-wise?”

“I can’t imagine anything I could suggest that wouldn’t piss you off even more.”

“Why not?” she says, color rising in her cheeks, “Why shouldn’t I be mad? I’m paying a pretty steep price for my father’s problem.”

“That’s your choice. Law of the animal kingdom, sweetheart, survival of the fittest.” I’m half-waiting for her to take a swing at me for calling her sweetheart.

“That’s bullshit,” she says, “The lion catches and kills the weak gazelle. They don’t capture it and torment it first just for fun. That’s the law of the wild, for the hunter and the hunted. It’s necessity, not cruelty. This is torture. Coming here day after day knowing it will take forever to pay off this debt when any halfway decent bookie would’ve turned my dad away.”

“Phil’s an excellent bookmaker. I wouldn’t vouch for his decency though, not even on a good day,” I concede.

“You’ve got all this power and money, you can’t just let one guy float? Or do you need more cash so you can buy more cars and shit and show off?”

“I have enough cars. I’m not looking for a new toy,” I say.

“Aren’t you though?” she challenges, “I’m not an expert, but rich boys like you, they like the drama. Otherwise, life’s too boring.”

“Do you think I’m here because I’m bored? I have plenty of work to do elsewhere.”

“No, I think you’re calculating,” she drops that word and pauses a minute to see if I react. When I don’t, she smirks and continues. “Not like it’s a bad thing. I think you do things with intention. You seem like you’ve got a plan all the time."

“What’s my plan, do you think?” I steeple my fingers on the desk and wait.

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