Her Secret Santa: A Christmas Protector Romance (Perfect Kisses Book 3) Page 6

  His eyes were looking at me questioningly now. I shrugged. I didn’t really have a good answer for that. “Um, no. I don’t. I just want you to know that I’m fine with whatever you are most comfortable with. But don’t worry about me. I’m just fine.”

  “Ok,” he said. “Then we will tell people when we are both ready.”

  I agreed. I wasn’t sure exactly what reasons he had for wanting to keep this a secret, but if he was just worried about me, then he didn’t need to be. I was tougher than he probably realized. I’d had to be in my life.

  “That looks amazing,” Barb said.

  I looked at the necklace around my neck. It was gorgeous. It was also more expensive than anything I would ever be able to afford. And Barb probably felt the same way which was why she was now asking about it when I was deep in thought about something else. I stroked the necklace remembering a few nights ago when Tony had presented it to me after dinner. He was so sweet. It was a wonderful gift, but I did tell him I wasn’t comfortable with him buying me anything. It made me feel weird. I’d always paid my own way and it just made me feel somehow odd to have a man buying me things.

  And I’d forgotten to take it off. Or did I just love wearing it so much that I never wanted to take it off? Yeah. Probably that one. But I had forgotten to tuck it back into my shirt. That was my fault. And now I had Barb asking me a question about it. My brain searched frantically for a lie.

  “Oh, my parents bought it for me as a gift for my birthday this year,” I said.

  “Ah, that’s nice. It’s beautiful,” she said. “For a moment I thought you had some sugar daddy.”

  That remark filled me with rage. Barb probably didn’t mean anything by it, or did she? Was she just saying that she didn’t believe me? Did she think that Tony bought it for me as my Christmas gift? Or just because we were now an item? I wanted to tell everyone and make sure they all understood that Tony and I were together and that it would not affect my work or the job I performed in any way. I would not allow Tony to play favorites with me even if he wanted to, which I doubted.

  But I kept my mouth shut. It was kind of fun to keep these secrets. It was nice having something that was just to myself. Whenever I was with the employees and if they said something about Tony that they didn’t like, or about how they all wanted to fuck him six ways from yesterday, I could just play along and keep quiet. When this did come out eventually, they would all be shocked and probably hate me for lying to them. But that could be fun, too. I was not there to make friends. And on the way to doing great things, I was prepared to make some enemies. It was the nature of the beast. That was one of the biggest things that Tony and I had in common. We were both so competitive.

  It had been a few weeks since our night together after the Christmas party, and things had been going amazing. The sex was only getting more extreme, which I didn’t know was even possible. Tony had so many different kinky things he liked to play around with and explore and as soon as I thought we’d tried everything, that sexy bastard would think up something else. It was so exciting, like a never-ending wheel of pleasure. I was up for anything and he was, too. Watching that fire in his eyes when he suggested something new to try in bed was so much fun to watch. It turned me on and when we got into it the entire world just stopped.

  And afterwards, we would hold each other and talk for hours in bed. We had so much in common, so many things about our lives were so parallel. We had the same values, the same things in life we were both striving for, and I knew I was falling in love with him. I hoped he felt the same about me. I thought he did. But I wasn’t sure.

  Tony would go back and forth about his feelings. He was vocal one moment and then a mystery the next. It was a bit frustrating at times to deal with that, but I did my best. And that was exciting, too. The wondering… the wondering if he was really in this for the long haul as I was. That was what kept me going on a day-to-day basis anymore. I woke up each morning with a rush going to get to work, and then when I wasn’t at work, I was with Tony which gave me a rush of a different kind. I felt like I was living in some kind of dream.

  “By the way,” Barb said as she came back past my desk with a new cup of coffee. “I loved that pitch you gave in this morning’s meeting. I wasn’t sure if you were going to go for it, Mr. Anson loved it. I think that Tony loved it too. I could see him giving you that special eye of approval. But be careful that eye doesn’t become too attached to you.”

  I wanted to thank Barb for her compliment, but the last thing she said stuck with me. “Why? What’s going to happen?”

  It was a bit bold of me to ask. I was almost toying with her now, even though I didn’t really mean to. I didn’t want to rub it in her face that I was with Tony, the man that she couldn’t have. But it felt good. I wasn’t sure why, but it somehow made me feel so special. Out of all the beautiful, sexy women that Tony came into contact with every single day, he’d chosen me to be with.

  It felt invigorating.

  “It’s all too easy to get drawn into it with him,” she said “And when you are in there with him, he lets go. You are left devastated. I’ve seen it happen.”

  I nodded and pretended to heed her warning, but it kind of pissed me off. I was fairly certain her jealousy was coming into play here. As she spoke with me, I could see a few other women looking at me as they walked past. They smiled and nodded, but they were not as enthusiastic with me as when I first started. Was it my imagination, or could people tell I was getting very close to Tony? Was Barb spreading rumors based on her own suspicions? And did I really give a shit anyway?

  I laughed it off and went back to work. I was just getting right into some new notes for a presentation I was going to do for the team tomorrow when I got a message on the office Instant Messenger to come to Tony’s office.

  I wondered what was going on. Was I in trouble for something? Maybe I’d been bad, and he’d have to teach me a lesson… Oh, maybe he would do it right then and there. We hadn’t had sex in his office yet…oh, that could be so damn fun.

  When I arrived at Tony’s office, he was sitting behind his desk having a drink. It was late afternoon, so I guessed he was entitled. Not that Tony gave a damn about convention anyway.

  Just the sight of him was enough to make me wet as could be. My knees were a bit weak, but I held myself together and tried to act natural. I didn’t want him to think that I had no self-control. We were at work after all.

  “Hey, honey,” Tony said.

  “Hey,” I replied as I sat down in one of the comfortable chairs across from him.

  “I know you’re busy, so I won’t keep you,” he said. “How well do you like Mexican food?”

  “What?” I did not expect him to call me from my desk to ask my taste in Mexican food.

  “Yeah, Mexican. Yay or nay?”

  “Um, yay. I love it. Why?”

  “I was hoping you would do me the honor of having dinner with me tomorrow night as Los Agaves. Have you been? It’s a fine Mexican restaurant. Very swank and fancy, beautiful mariachi music with real musicians, a great area for dancing, and the service is outstanding. My friend Luis is the chef there. The guy is an artist. He will make a fajita that tastes so good, it is just so orgasmic in your mouth.”

  I smiled. He knew where my head was at. “That sounds good,” I replied.

  “Fantastic,” he said. “Alright, so tomorrow at six? I’ll pick you up and we will make a great night of it. I was thinking after dinner we could take in a show. Dane and Thames are in town.”

  “What is Dane and Thames.”

  He appeared shocked. “Wow, you have to get out more. Dane and Thames are two of the most amazing magicians in the world. They also do extreme stunts like sword swallowing, fire swallowing, glass swallowing—basically they swallow a lot of awful shit. It’s very entertaining.”

  I laughed. “Ok. That sounds great.”

  “That’s all I needed,” he said.

  I got up to leave his office. I glanced ba
ck as I reached for the door and Tony was watching me with a sexy smile on his face.

  I couldn’t wait until work was over.

  7

  Tony

  “Pull!”

  I watched the disc fly up into the air and I tracked it quickly in my sights. I took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger. The rifle fired and the disk smashed in half as I hit it dead on. I loved that feeling. It was an adrenaline rush like no other.

  “Whoo! Man, that is five in a row for you,” Quinton said.

  I smiled at my work. I sat the rifle down and grabbed another beer from the cooler. I enjoyed these lazy days off. Weekends were usually filled with work, too, but today Quinton and I decided that we would just not worry about it. Time to drink some beer and shoot some discs. Skeet shooting had been something I’d done since I was nine years old. One of the few memories I had of hanging out with my dad was the once-a-month thing when I could drag him out to the field, and we would shoot clays for a while.

  “Yeah, I’m on fire today,” I said.

  “I got to tell you man, this is fun, but nothing compared to the white-water rafting. That was insane. I thought we were going to die about six times.”

  Quinton was laughing hysterically. He was on his seventh beer I believed. Yep, he was tanked. The guy was only five feet six and about a hundred and forty pounds. He just couldn’t hold his liquor like the big boys.

  “I told you, man. It will change your life. I’m surprised Sophie isn’t out here with us.”

  “Nah, she hates guns.”

  “Ok. To each their own.”

  I watched Quinton get his gun ready. Then he yelled out, “Pull!”

  The disc flew up in the air and he took a shot. He missed by a few inches. “Damn!”

  “It’s alright. Just breathe. You almost got this.”

  He waited and then screamed for another one. This time he hit it dead center as well. I slapped him a hearty high five. He fired off three more rounds and missed all three of them before he finally sat down to rest again.

  “Hey, let me ask you something,” I said. “What do you think of the new girl in marketing, Julie?”

  Quinton scratched his head a moment. “Do I know her?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “You met her at the Christmas party.”

  “Oh, ok. She seems cool. Why?”

  “We’ve been seeing each other for the past month,” I said.

  Quinton’s eyes went wide. “That’s great. Sophie would definitely want to hear that to congratulate you. She’s been kind of worried about you spending so much time alone. There hasn’t been any romance in your life for a long time.”

  “I know,” I said. “I haven’t felt this close to anyone, since Amanda. I don’t know… when I first saw Julie, I just felt my heart leaping out of my chest. I had to find out everything about her. We started talking and that thing just clicked between us. I think she might be the one, man.”

  “That’s awesome. I’m happy as shit for you,” Quinton said. He slapped me a high five and brought in a bro hug. “Good going, man.”

  “So, I assume you are keeping this hush hush at work?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “I am. Right now, it just isn’t a good time to let the cat out of the bag. She is new. She is working hard to make a name for herself. She doesn’t need the attachment to me or our relationship becoming a gossip, making things harder for her. You know how psychotic some of those people in marketing can be. The whole thing is so cutthroat and full of backstabbing, everyone trying to get their numbers up. It’s brutal.”

  “Well, the secret is safe with me,” Quinton said. “I won’t tell a soul. But the four of us should go out sometime soon. We can double date. It will be a blast.”

  “Yeah, I think we’d both like that,” I said.

  I got ready to shoot another round. It felt good to tell someone about me and Julie. She made me so happy that keeping the news to myself was damn difficult. I just wanted to spread it with the world and show them how much joy I was feeling. It had started to color every single thing I did. Christmas was in a week. Just one week… I couldn’t believe it. Time was flying so fast and I wasn’t even sure what I was going to get for Julie. I didn’t want to get her anything too flashy or crazy, but I wanted it to be something she’d hold near and dear forever. And I hoped that might include me.

  I meant it when I told Quinton that she was the one. I wanted to ask Julie to marry me. Maybe that might be the best time to come out and tell everyone. If she said yes. God willing, she would say yes. And we could show the world that this wasn’t some fling, this wasn’t Julie trying to get in good with the boss to get ahead. No this was love. This was the real thing. The thing that they wrote billions of songs about and made hundreds of those annoying Hallmark Christmas movies about every fucking year. Maybe now those sentimental works of art would start to resonate with me.

  I knew I loved Julie. I’d probably known since first sight. That’s why it was so hard to breathe when I saw her. It was like walking into some dream and there in front of me was this beautiful angel waiting for me. And when she expressed those same feelings back towards me, it was like some miracle had been performed on me.

  I finished shooting the discs with Quinton and then had my driver Harold take Quinton home. He was in no shape to drive. And I had a date to get ready for.

  I’d purposefully occupied myself the entire day with other things so that I wouldn’t sit around counting the minutes until I could see Julie again. I had to create some absence, didn’t I? She had to miss me sometimes. That was key. And we hadn’t been dating long enough to spend every single second together, even though that was what I wanted to do. Work was almost unbearable at times because I could have just typed a quick message and had her on the way to my office. Then we could lock the door and let it all happen.

  I went inside, took a shower, shaved, and got dressed. Then I took a look at myself and smiled. Yeah, looking sharp. Tonight, was going to be a very special night. I could feel it.

  I just hoped everything went the way I wanted.

  8

  Julie

  The restaurant was phenomenal.

  Tony picked me up in his best limo. It was waiting for me when I came down from my apartment. I could just see the other tenants in my building who were coming and going watching me with envy. It was fun to live this rich fantasy life sometimes. It made me feel privileged and special. I had to concentrate to keep my head from getting too swelled sometimes. I thought I was handling it fairly well. If only Lizzy and Nellie could see this…

  Tony looked amazing as always. He was so suave and always dressed the best. He was easily the best-looking man in every single room. And I was so proud to be on his arm as we entered the restaurant. We were led to a private room where our table was waiting on us. The mariachi band was great. They moved around a bit and played for one table and then the next. The restaurant combined the essence of a casual dining restaurant with the swanky sophistication of an upscale one.

  As we were seated a waiter came to our table to take our drink orders and to tell us the specials. He spoke mostly Spanish, but when I asked for a clarification, he was more than happy to explain it in English for me. Then he poured us each a glass of sparkling water. Tony ordered a bottle of an expensive sounding wine and we dug into our chips and salsa.

  “It’s getting harder,” Tony said halfway through dinner.

  I finished my bite of the enchilada and looked up at him. “What’s that?”

  “Being around you at work without being able to just show you how much I want you.”

  “I get that. I feel the same way. You have no idea how sexy you look when you are walking around being the boss man.”

  “Hey, I hate that nickname,” Tony said.

  I laughed. He continued. “What is your biggest sexual fantasy that you’ve had at work?”

  “Oh, that is a big question,” I said. “I’m not sure.”

  “You have so many t
hat you can’t just pick one?”

  I thought a moment. “I’ve fantasized about you in the ladies room.”

  “While you were doing your business? That’s either really weird or really hot.”

  “It’s hot, I think. Yeah, I was sitting there yesterday just wishing that you would burst through the door and then find the stall I’m in, burst through that door, and then you would just take me right then and there bending me over the toilet.”

  “That sounds very dirty. And I’m sure we can make that happen, but I’m also sure everyone is going to know we are in there.”

  “That’s kind of what makes it so damn exciting.”

  He nodded. “I agree. Hmmm… I like this game.”

  So did I. Talking about this was getting me really turned on.

  “So, what else have you been thinking about?” I asked I was very curious now.

  “Oh, the office, taking you in a car, like the back of the limo, and maybe taking you in front of an audience.”

  “An audience?” I asked. “I’m not really the exhibitionist type. I didn’t think you would be either given your status and all.”

  “Well, that isn’t what I’m thinking.”

  I leaned in a bit closer to hear. He continued. “What if we made love in front of a camera and streamed it live on the internet, but we wear masks so that no one knows who we are.”

  I had to let that one sink in for a moment. Wow. That was crazy, but very hot. “I think we could do that. Are you sure that no one would ever find out?”

  “No. That would be the beauty of it. So many people would know us, what we look like naked, what we look like fucking, and they would probably even get off to it. Can you imagine people masturbating until orgasm at the very sight of us on the screen? But they would have no idea who they just watched. And we would make it so that there is no way in hell it could ever be proven.”