Page 34 of By A Thread
“Excuse me,” I said briskly, trying to step around her.
“Is there something I can…dofor you?” M-something asked, planting herself directly in my way. Her gaze skimmed up my body, lingering on my crotch.
Ally mimed a creditable dry heave behind her desk, and I may have telegraphed a “please help me” in her direction.
“No,” I said to… Melissa? Magenta?
She took a step closer. I was bent so far backward when her finger trailed down my tie that I could have won a limbo championship. “Anything at all.Anything,” she repeated.
I backed into the cubicle divider, gritting my teeth. I wasnotmy father, and the fact that she thought I was made me physically ill.
“Hey, Mal, why don’t you try sexually harassing men on your own time?” Ally piped up, leaning over her wall. “Some of us are trying to eat here, and your praying mantis routine is nauseating.”
Mal… inda shifted from “put a baby in me” to “dragon lady” in the blink of an eye. The look she shot Ally was so full of contempt I willingly put myself between them. Sure, Ally’s mere existence pissed me the fuck off. But that didn’t mean she should have to die by psychotic coworker while protecting me.
“I don’t need anything,” I said again. Colder this time.
She seemed to get the hint. Raising her chin, the woman sauntered away, a crocodile slithering into a swamp.
“That was a close one,” Ally observed, taking another bite of banana. “She almost took your balls with her.”
“Yeah. After ripping your face off to get to them.”
She blinked at me and then snickered.
Fuck me.“That came out wrong. I didn’t mean your face would be anywhere near…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Fuck. Five minutes in this room and I’d gotten a hard-on and suggested that an employee put her face near my balls. This wasnotwho I was.
She laughed again, harder this time. “Relax, Dom. You might be an asshole, but you’re not trying to get into my underwear.”
I dropped the folder to cover what was now a raging erection because of course I was picturing her underwear. I hated myself.
“Now that Malina? She’s going to try to crawl into yours. So you might want to consider a chastity belt or shark repellent,” she suggested.
“Maybe you should get back to work,” I muttered and then left the room as quickly as I could without running.
Back at my own desk, dick under control—mostly—I put in a request to HR.
While I waited for the paperwork, I buzzed Greta.
“Do me a favor and have some kind of snack sent to the admin pool this afternoon.”
“Some kind ofsnack?” She repeated it like I was speaking a foreign language.
“Yes. Food. Something with protein maybe?”
“Enough for the whole department?” she asked. I could hear the curiosity.
“Enough for everyone. Use my card,” I said. I spotted the research request on my desk. The one I hadn’t bothered delivering. “Oh, and can you put a research request into the system for me?”
Five minutes later, I settled back in my chair to read everything there was in Ally Morales’s file.
12
Dominic
I’d avoided her since Tuesday just to prove that I could.
Just to prove to my stupid cock that it didnotrun my life. That I wasn’t a carbon copy of Paul Russo.
