Page 18 of Not Safe for Work
Chapter Four
She did her best not to think about it too much. She had other things to think of, after all. Like finding a new job before her savings ran out.
The trouble was, it kept barging into their lives. It kept taking them over. They would spend a lovely evening together, as if they were a perfectly ordinary couple dining out at delicious restaurants, most of them brimming with food and drink she’d never tried before: nisperos de batata and sesos empanados and rich dark coffee that made her almost giddy. He might talk about his day and she might talk about hers. Their favorite books would come up to be dissected. Hand-holding would happen. Then they’d get to the bedroom, and suddenly they weren’t an ordinary couple at all.
Hartford was threaded through almost everything they did. When Abel tied her to the bed, she could tell he was emulating that stern voice and those cool eyes. Every time she unbuttoned her clothes, his eyes grew hot, as if he was thinking of that first act of rule breaking, that first defiance of the rule maker.
And she couldn’t deny she was thinking the same.
She couldn’t deny it even when she wanted to. Not even when she wondered if this was all they were: two people drawn together because of some third person they couldn’t have. Though that seemed crazy, considering how much she wanted Abel, too. Abel, who seemed almost the opposite of everything Hartford was. He had no problems admitting his feelings. He didn’t care if she knew what he wanted. He told her what he wanted. He described exactly how he would fuck that man. He confessed that he wouldn’t care if she fucked him, too. He told her things about threesomes that she’d never dared to consider before.
But god, she considered them now. She imagined them being three, not two, and went weak all the way through her body. She found herself thinking about how they could do it, how they could persuade Hartford to be involved in something like that. Though, of course, she didn’t really imagine that it would ever happen.
Things like that never happened in real life.
Or so she thought.
But then Abel asked her to meet him at his office one sultry evening toward the end of summer, his voice heavy with the sort of promise she had come to know well. She even wore her sexiest underwear when she heard that note of desire, thinking that they were going to role play again. Maybe they would even taunt Hartford with the sight of their happiness and passion. And then she got there, and she saw they were definitely going to do that.
They were going to do it with Hartford actually there, in person.
Or at least, that was what it looked like to her. Hartford swiveled his seat by Abel’s desk the second she walked in, eyes troubled but oddly bright and a little feverish. His body was tensed as if anticipating a blow he wasn’t sure he could take. That broad chest of his rose and fell in a way she had never seen before.
She knew this was going to be something insane.
But she couldn’t say anything at first. She could only wait for Abel, and whatever wickedness he had planned.
“I persuaded him to come so that we might have a little talk together,” Abel said as he entered his office, as cool as she’d ever seen him. Though, when he continued, dark delight shone in his gorgeous eyes. “Mostly about his deplorable behavior. Maybe about some other things, too.”
She shot a glance at Hartford when Abel finished speaking. Then waited for the backlash, the remonstration: How dare you accuse me of deplorable behavior when it was you who forced me to fire this vile creature?
But nothing like that came. He just glared at Abel, jaw tensed, his fist a tight knot on the arm of the chair beside him. His mouth pinched into a mean line, each breath flaring his nostrils just ever so slightly. It was as if a real emotion like fury was fighting to get out of him, but found itself blocked somehow. Abel had apparently covered his mouth with invisible duct tape just before she arrived.
Or put a leash of some sort around his neck.
“Firstly, I think what we should do here is have you apologize to Ms. Elliot. What do you think to that, Ms. Elliot? Does that seem like a productive use of our time, here?” Abel asked.
Hartford still didn’t express his fury. He just turned to look at her, seething.
“I guess it depends on whether I get murdered afterwards,” she said.
Then watched with wide eyes as Abel put a hand on Hartford’s shoulder. A warm hand, followed by warm words. “See how funny she is, Tommy?”
Tommy,she thought. He just called Thomas Hartford Tommy.
“I see that you are being an insufferable nightmare,” Hartford said to Abel.
“Then maybe you should tell me to stop. Or fire me, along with your best employee.”
“I’ve already told you I regret that. Allow me to get on with this without your incessant badgering.”
Abel glanced at her then. He addressed her in his most arch tone. “I told you he was as hideous with me as he is with you. Sometimes I truly wonder why I like him at all,” he said.
But it was Hartford who responded.
“Please don’t say things like that, Abel.”
He spoke the words quietly, so quietly, yet they sounded loud. They practically echoed in her ears.
