Violetta.
Maddox Aster would be the death of me. I was sure of it. I wasn't more sure of everything. There I was, sitting at the pathetic excuse of a desk in his office, actually attempting this stupid project of his. It was more than just doing my job as making him my mark. I felt his stare burning the side of my face—something had shifted between us. I didn't know if it was my embarrassing panic attack, or if it was the fact, I'd been practically giving a blowjob to my highlighter for the past twenty minutes, but I knew he was looking at me even if I couldn't see him.
I was getting frustrated under his gaze, relief flooding through me when he finally said something to me for the first time in the two hours, I'd sat at my desk to try and figure out this whole list-of-three-thousand-accounts.
"How is it going over there?" He prodded. I heard his chair swivel before I dropped the highlighter I'd been chewing on and turned to him.
When I turned to look at him, I was nervous. I didn't know why. I told myself it was just because I'd gotten into character as Isla, but that was a lie. "It's going well."
Another lie.
"Yea?" He asked, tilting his head. For a fraction of a second, I could have sworn I saw his eyes trail down to my shirt. They met my face again before I could make a conclusion on it. "How many have you listed so far?"
How many...
I looked at the computer screen. The blank computer screen. I had been trying, but that didn't mean I'd been successful in the slightest. The numbers were tripping me up. I didn't know how or where to start. Maddox gave me very little instruction, probably thinking an accomplished business major like Isla wouldn't have any trouble figuring it out on her own.
It was too late to lie and think up a random number. My hesitation was answer enough for him. The next thing I knew, Maddox Aster was up from his chair, storming his way over to me. I had barely five seconds to scramble and try to close out the tab before he was shoving in front of me. The wheels under my chair sent me back about a foot while he pulled on my monitor to look at my blank screen. I gulped.
A few moments of eerily calm quiet ensued. He wasn't saying anything. He just looked at the screen that didn't have a single thing written on it. I felt his anger before I saw it. It wasn't frustration or annoyance—no, it was full out anger. The sides of his face were red. The red was trailing up his back until it reached the ends of his deep brown waves. I knew I fucked up when he turned to me.
His eyes were peering down at me. They looked to my chest again—once could have been a mistake, twice was intentional. There weren't many people in this world who could make me feel small other than Nikolai and Alexie. Maddox Aster was apparently a third.
I waited for him to say something.
When he did, my heart dropped.
"Get out," he said firmly. There was no hesitation in his throaty voice.
I started to crumple and fold. "What?"
His hand—that I now noticed was very large—gripped onto my arm and pulled me out of the chair. His grip wasn't hard, it was surprisingly gentle, but stern and with enough strength to make me nearly lose my balance. The same arm that pulled me up helped me catch my fall.
"You've been wasting my time for the past six hours." Six hours. Has it really been that long? "I have plenty of other candidates who are clearly more capable than you, who won't come into my company and do nothing. You won't be needed here anymore."
No, no, no. I couldn't let this happen. I could already smell the must from the moldy motel room carpets, could already feel the grimy hands spreading my thighs apart. That's where I would be headed if I walked out of this building and told Nikolai I'd screwed up my mark.
I had to think fast.
I couldn't simply drop to my knees for this guy and blow his mind with the most mind-blowing orgasm of his life. That wouldn't work on Maddox Aster. I had yet to figure him out, he was much more closed off than my other marks. The same tactics wouldn't work on him.
Before I even had a plan on how I was going to get myself out of it, a pile of word vomit came tumbling out of my mouth. "Please I need this. You don't know what they're going to do to me if—" I stopped myself as soon as I said it. I wasn't even thinking about what I was saying, and I almost just said too much. I probably already did.
Maddox's hard face stared at me. Panic was beginning to settle. He would want to push the subject—he would want to demand me finish my sentence, to tell him who I was talking about and what they were going to do to me.
He didn't.
He broke out into a fit of penalizing laughter instead.
I was both confused and offended he thought this entire thing was so funny. I wasn't laughing. I was freaking out.
Then, his laughter stopped, his face turning hard again. "I don't care how angry your parents are going to be with you. If you didn't want to disappoint them, you should have come prepared to do work."
Oh. Maddox didn't care about my almost confession. He thought pathetic little Isla was scared of what her daddy would do. A man like Maddox Aster would never think someone like me had seen more in her twenty-two years than ninety-nine percent of the population. I wanted nothing more than to scream in his face that he knew nothing about me. Then, I remembered that to him, I wasn't Violetta. I was Isla, the girl he didn't need to know much about to know everything about.
Nikolai had never gotten a mark wrong before, but he got this one wrong.
Maddox Aster wasn't interested in good girls who were willing to kiss the ground he walked on. He had that every other day of the year. If I wanted to make an impression on him, to get him to trust me enough to let his guard down, I needed to be different than the girls he was used to. Like before, when I was ignorantly honest with him about how I got the job here. He liked that I was honest.
I didn't need to be Isla. I needed to be Violetta, the girl who would never let a man like Maddox Aster talk to her like that.
I was already fired, and Isla wasn't about to change his mind. Maybe Violetta could.
"You're not going to fire me," I said. My voice matched his. Firm and hardened, not a hint of the timid girl he'd known for the past six hours.
His eyes widened only a fraction, caught off guard but my sudden shift in demeanor. Shrugging off his surprise, he cleared his throat and straightened his tie. "I believe I already did, Isla."
The way he said my fake name pissed me off. I have power over you, I own you.
"No."
He took a step back, shaking his head. "Did you just tell me no?"
I nodded. "Yes."
"You told me no, as in no, I can't fire you?"
It was my turn to smirk. For someone who liked to seem smarter than God, he was acting pretty damn stupid. "I didn't peg you for the type who needed things smelled out to them. I said no. N-O, you're not firing me."
I could tell by the look on his face he was determined to keep his composure. I must have been the first girl to ever try and defy him. That thought made me want to smile, but I held it back. These next few minutes would be important. If I was right about him, about what he secretly wanted, maybe what he didn't even know he wanted, I had to play my cards right.
"I want you out of my building, now."
I crossed my arms over my chest, tugging down my top just a smidge as I did so. "You don't intimidate me Mr. Aster. I know your type."
I waited... he was going to take the bait. I knew he was.
"What exactly is my type?" Bingo.
If I was going to take this all the way, I needed to meet him where he stood. Pushing myself out of my chair, I stood up, stepping towards him until we were mere inches apart. He still had a foot of height on me, but our closeness made his chest rise and fall faster than before. This was turning him on. "You hate hand-outs so much because that's all you've ever had. You never had to work for something a day in your life. You went to law school because you thought, finally, this is something I can say I worked for. Getting handed your dad's company must have really pissed you off, huh? Now, you have all this power you don't know how to handle, and you thought you'd start with your helpless little intern."
Maddox's face is plastered with a helpless anger that has his hands balled into fists so tightly wound his knuckles are white. His mouth was turned down, eyes narrowed on me. If anything, it looked like he was itching to hit something. I almost, almost backed away at the sight, but I didn't. I held my ground, daring him to deny it.
He huffed. "What you just said... has nothing to do with why I'm firing you."
I brought my hand to my mouth, biting the end of my index finger. "But you're not firing me, didn't we already establish that?"
Somehow, we'd grown even closer to each other. We were nose-to-nose, hot breath fanning against each of our faces. He had to have been the one to step closer to me, I know I didn't move while I ripped him apart.
I didn't move away from him.
"I don't think you really want to be here, Isla," he said. My heart jumped when one of his fingers brushed against my hand. I would have thought it were unintentional had he moved it, but he didn't. He kept his finger there, grazing against the softness of my hand. It was a sharp contrast to the roughness of his. "So why are you?"
"You're right, I don't want to be here," I said, watching his face for more anger. It didn't make him angrier, only intrigued. "But neither do you. We're both here because our parents have certain expectations of us, they expect us to follow. I don't know how it worked for you, but in my family, you don't disappoint them."
Maddox's finger made a daring move, slowly raising against my arm, moving up, up, up, over the sleeve of my blouse. It shouldn't have made me feel anything, but there was a tingle between my legs. My body grew hot under his touch. Searing heat that followed wherever his finger went, even if it was over my clothes, I felt it burn.
His finger stopped at the base of my neck, pressing down into my skin. I winced, suppressing a gasp at the pressure. His head turned in, leaning down to brush against my ear. "Did your boyfriend give you that, Isla?"
I moved back; he dropped his hand. The fucking hickey. That's what he had been looking at before. It was never my chest. The makeup must have rubbed off when I was leaning my head against my hand all day.
"Well?" Maddox continued. He wasn't deterred by my moving away from him. Every comeback or snide remark was shoved down my throat when he reached out again, tugging against my blouse. It wasn't a rough gesture by any means. If I'd wanted to, I could have stayed in place, but my body melted against him, shoving forward and pressing into his hard chest. "Who put such an ugly mark on a pretty girl like you?"
"Ugly?" I asked, just above a whisper. No guy I'd ever met thought hickeys were ugly. Usually, they're hell-bent on giving them out. Marking women like objects.
"It's disgusting, Isla, do you know why?" Maddox's hand found my body again, reaching around to press down into the small of my back, pulling me harder against him. It took everything in me not to moan. Not to fucking moan. What the hell was happening? I was not the type of girl to get all hot and bothered by a prick like Maddox Aster.
"I don't know," I answered.
"Because you come into my office... wearing this," his other hand tugged on the top of my blouse. One of the buttons popped, revealing to him the outline of my red laced bra. "Just begging to have it ripped off, and I can't even do it because someone else has already marked you as his."
I was breathing too heavily. Somehow, we'd switched. He wasn't the one breathing fast. His breaths were steady, deliberate, while I was panting like some sex-deprived schoolgirl. My mouth opened to speak, but they were cut short when his hand removed itself from my blouse and he pulled my bottom lip between two of his fingers, tugging on them gently.
"And this fucking lipstick. Tell me, did you come here just to tempt me?"
I was shaking my head so fast I was going to get whiplash. "No, I didn't."
The anticipation was killing me, wanting to know what his next move was. Cold air hit me when Maddox pulled away from me, sauntering over to his desk and sitting down. I stood there, completely flustered, a wave of confusion and... desire, still hot and alive inside of me.
Maddox looked up at me when he sat down, all the emotions that were on his face moments before, gone. "Leave today, come back tomorrow morning with the first category of accounts finished. Then, we'll see if you can continue being my PA."
I didn't waste another moment. I grabbed everything from my desk, taking with me the laptop in my desk drawer that was mine for at-home work, and rushed for the door until Maddox stopped me.
"One more thing, Isla." I stood frozen, waiting his next words with my back still turned to him. "Don't wear that lipstick again."
God, what the hell just happened?
YOU ARE READING
Honey Trap
Любовные романы[18+] You come here wearing that, just begging to have it ripped off... and I can't even do that because another man has already marked you as his.- Make him fall in love. Steal his money. It should be simple. Maddox Aster wasn't supposed to mean a...
