When the fog of lust cleared, I realized what I shouldn’t have done—mauled Natasha in the conference room. It had made perfect sense at the time, but that was the kind of shit thinking a hard dick could manage.Still…The image of her looking up at me, mouth stuffed with my cock, was number one in my spank bank.“Sorry,” I said as I helped her from the floor.“Feel better?” she asked. Her hair was a mess, lips puffy and pink.“Yes.”“Good, because you owe me.”I quirked my brow at her. Tit for tat with her. “Before or after dinner?”She bit down on her lower lip, and that was when I caught the heaviness in her eyes and the flush of her cheeks. The sight was seductive, and made me want her more.“Or right now?”“You’re early,” she said, deflecting again, though I was certain it was to steer the conversation away from sex.“You were at forty-two hours for the week before you even came in today.”“Did you check my time?” she asked with a quirk of her brow.“Of course,”

 March After two weeks, Monday through Thursday became simple stepping stones counting down like a clock until I got to see Richard again. I made them productive, if only to keep myself busy, to keep myself from missing him.It was hard to believe how much I missed him after only being together for a few weeks. Jenna spent a lot of time with Brent, and they sometimes invited me along, but I hated feeling like a third wheel. Also, the baby was zapping my energy and I usually went home and didn’t move from my couch.Of course Richard and I talked on the phone, and texted, and even emailed, but all that did was make me long for him more. I felt the need to be physically connected, surrounded by his arms and breathing him in. I craved him. My skin crawled in desperation for him.The first week I started sending him memes during the day, but he didn’t really understand them, much like the emojis, and it took him a moment to pick up. I had a feeling his office may have bee

 For weeks I’d heard the whispered words and theories, Jenna had even filled me in on some of the gossip circulating on her side of the building. I tried not to let it get to me, but every time Richard popped up, he didn’t care who saw us being affectionate. It negated all of my efforts to appear professional.However, I felt a change occurring in my relationship with Richard. Work Richard, the VP, was serious and stiff, while my boyfriend was loving and attentive. The problem was the VP was becoming more and more present with each week.Earlier in the week I sent him our favorite baby Yoda memes, and twice in the week he hadn’t responded. One night I even went without our nightly phone call. It wasn’t like our nightly calls were long and time consuming, sometimes they were as short as a couple of minutes, but it was enough just to hear his voice.It felt like our footing had become uneven somehow, but I attributed it to the distance between us.“Natasha, did I hear Richard

 There was a strange feeling in the air when I woke up shortly before we arrived deep in the heart of downtown Chicago. Almost as if there was an invisible wall that had been erected between us, dividing the car in two. It hadn’t been there before, and its appearance now was a foreshadowing that made my heart ache.“Why don’t you go take a nap,” Richard said after we walked in.“I just woke up.”He nodded. “What sounds good for dinner?”I brushed my hair behind my ear, my brow furrowing. I didn’t like the distance in his gaze but what scared me was the physical distance that he placed between us. This wasn’t the same man who dropped in to my office hours ago. What had happened when I was asleep?“Pasta. Does that work?”He nodded and walked into the kitchen and the drawer where he stored menu copies. “There’s an Italian restaurant that’s good.”I watched as he flipped through them, his concentration focused until he found what he was looking for. He handed me the menu bef

 For the past week Natasha helped me to smooth out and perfect the budget analysis, and I was quite impressed with her work. She had it more streamlined than I’d been able accomplish on my own in the past.We both had stayed up late, talking on the phone, emailing back and forth in the final week, until everything was just right. I knew it took a toll on her, and I was ready to free her for an early weekend, to pamper her a little.And to share the excitement of a job well done.The walls built to protect myself from Natasha did nothing to stifle the deep-seated desire I had for her. Natasha had worked her way into my bloodstream and had become a drug my body needed regular doses of to survive.Meeting her family only highlighted how dysfunctional my family was. Susie and I weren’t close like that because she was a girl and I was a boy. Girls cooked and cleaned and sewed and played with dolls, while boys did hard chores outside, played sports, and made money.I had a paper