Lustfully Ever After Page 5

  As the week progressed, Julie discovered the predictable resistance to warmth or consideration that Heath displayed. Each day when she came and went, she passed by Vivian, the receptionist, who had made no secret of the fact that she found Julie’s job far from enviable.

  “Good luck doing that kind of work with such a beast of a man,” she’d said not unpleasantly when Julie had introduced herself her first day there. “He’d just as soon growl a nasty comment at you as say hello.”

  Julie just smiled and went on her way. To be sure, she found working with Heath distasteful sometimes, and at times she even grew frustrated. But Julie had been raised very consciously, and she knew that the only way to overpower hate was with love. Love could take many forms—kindness, protectiveness, fierceness—but it was essential in all dealings in order for them to be true. So she took a deep breath and found that awareness in her heart, and she responded to Heath from that place.

  Though Julie was a clever girl and had discerned an understanding of many things about Heath thus far, she was unaware that an unwanted attraction he felt toward her was making him even edgier than usual. He felt no desire to give in to any kind of connection with anyone, and the carnal pull inside him whenever the image of the beautiful young woman floated across his mind was something he simply clenched his jaw against and pushed from his awareness, as he had so many other things.

  When she was physically present in his office, the challenge became considerably more intense. One such time he even found himself idly remembering the single unopened condom he had tossed carelessly in the bottom drawer the morning he had discovered it mysteriously lying beneath his desk. (This was only mysterious to Heath, because he was unaware of the pastime the cleaning crew had begun to enjoy of having irreverent sex atop his desk after hours.) When he realized where his mind had drifted, he had slammed a fist onto his desk and said some vicious thing to the beautiful woman sitting on the other side of it. She had met his gaze, never losing her cool. Heath, on the other hand, found himself shaking and clamped down with even greater resolve on the unwelcome libidinous urges that had crept their way into his consciousness.

  Monday morning of the second week, Julie entered the office in a bright yellow power suit with a lavish bouquet of red roses in her hands. Vivian looked up from her desk as Julie passed by with the large vase.

  “Ooh!” the receptionist said, her eyes lighting up. “Who gave you flowers?”

  Julie gave a tinkling laugh as she paused. “No one, Viv darling. I bought them myself.”

  Vivian’s brow crinkled. “You bought a dozen red roses for yourself?”

  Julie laughed again. “They’re for my father. Red is his favorite color. I’m taking them to him later to cheer him as he heals.”

  With a little wave she turned and continued down the row of cubicles to the elevators, and a smiling Vivian went back to the work at her desk. Though Julie had been headed to Heath’s office carrying a bouquet of flowers, it never occurred to Vivian or any of the workers at any of the cubicles that the roses might be for him, as no one liked him enough to even consider that anyone would take such interest in him.

  Heath didn’t look up as Julie sailed into his office, and she accepted this slight with her usual grace. At the soft sound of the glass vase as she lowered it onto a shelf, his head lifted. He did a double take as his gaze landed on the flowers.

  “What the hell are those?” he demanded, his gaze darkening even more than usual.

  “Roses,” Julie said, stating the obvious. “I’m taking them to my father’s house on my way home.”

  Heath’s glare had grown more pronounced as she spoke, even as it didn’t leave the blooms now set atop the shelf. “I don’t want them in here. Get rid of them!”

  Julie looked at him evenly. “Heath, a little brightness in this room while I’m here is not going to hurt you.”

  Heath looked enraged, and he stood up, slamming his palms on the desk in front of him. “If you don’t get them out of here, I’ll do it myself!”

  He made a move from behind the desk, and Julie stepped calmly in front of him. Neither spoke for a moment as they stood toe to toe, Heath breathing heavily, Julie meeting his gaze with the silent strength she had always shown in the face of Heath’s hostility. It was this time that she saw, as she looked into his stormy gaze, the flicker of sadness she suspected he didn’t even consciously register. His aggression, his maleness, stood inches from her, and while she felt the stirring of arousal in her gut at the challenge, she took a deep breath and tempered it in the face of her immediate duty.

  “What do you have against roses?” she ventured in a quiet voice.

  The flicker grew then, but it was quickly replaced by an even stronger fury. “I hate them!” he snarled, moving to push past her, but Julie stayed rooted, and her steadfastness made Heath back up.

  The progress Julie had made working with Heath over the past week began to show when Heath chose to offer more information. In a low, furious voice, he muttered through clenched teeth, “They remind me of my mother.”

  “What?” Julie was surprised by the disclosure, and she stepped closer to him.

  “Nothing!” Just as quickly Heath retracted, and Julie felt his energy draw back in as his nostrils flared with anger.

  “Would you like to tell me about your mother?” Julie’s voice was quiet, the invitation like a feather floating through the air between them.

  “My mother was an evil witch! It’s because of her that I’m the way I am!” With this furious outburst Heath stood and stalked to the window, sending his rolling chair flying back to bang against the wall.

  Julie looked at him, sensing the importance of his words. “What way is that?”

  Heath whirled on her and glared. “Do you think I don’t know what people think about me? What they say? That no one wants me around? Why the fuck do you think I stay locked in my office all damned day? Because I like it so much?” He gave a dry laugh that scraped like metal against concrete. “Not quite, sweetheart. It’s because I know people don’t want me around. Which is fine, because I don’t want to be around them either.”

  Julie didn’t answer, sensing, despite his anger, that she should let him continue. The young woman was surprised to find that his use of the word sweetheart had given the undeniable arousal in her a jolt. She took a deep breath, however, and released the distraction, focusing again on her present responsibility. She stood still and remained quiet, holding a place of safety for him to speak if he wanted to.

  After a few minutes, she heard his voice start up again. “I had a younger sister. We grew up rich, of course. Materially, we had all we could ever want.” His jaw clenched. “But my father worked all the time, and my mother—my mother hurled nothing but cruelty at my sister and me. We threatened to run away, but my mother told us we were ugly children, and that no one else would ever want us.” He turned away from Julie, and she could see him trembling as he stared out the window.

  “Michelle killed herself.” The words were like the wretched creak of an abandoned, centuries-old castle door. He stayed facing away from her. “After that, my mother ran off. I never saw her again.” He turned slowly from the window. Fury seemed to spark from his eyes as he trained his seething gaze on the bouquet of roses on the shelf. “She sent a spray of red roses to Michelle’s funeral, even though she knew Michelle hated red.”

  Julie remained silent, allowing Heath’s words to land and be heard.

  After several minutes, she spoke, barely above a whisper. “I’m so sorry about your sister.” She paused, then went on. “And I can understand your feeling very hurt by your mother’s actions.”

  Heath didn’t move, though she saw his jaw clenching and unclenching.

  “And it’s because of that hurt that you’ve treated people so cruelly yourself.” Julie said it as a statement rather than a question. In Heath’s eyes she saw the understanding of the declaration as truth.

  It encouraged her, and she spoke ag
ain. “What might that tell you about why your mother treated you so cruelly?”

  “What?” he snapped.

  She repeated herself, pausing to allow the question to register before adding, “I don’t know what happened in her life or why she herself felt so much pain, but the bottom line is, it was likely the pain in her that hadn’t been released that made her treat her children that way.”

  A look of sadness came over him like the sun from behind a cloud. “I know what happened to her.” His expression became so distressed it looked as though he might cry. “She was hurting.” Then his expression hardened. “But it wasn’t fair for her to take that out on us.”

  Julie acknowledged his comment with an emphatic nod. “You’re right, Heath. It isn’t fair to take our pain out on others.”

  Her gaze stayed on him as he looked at her, the internal struggle smoldering in his expression. His eyes were dark again, and Julie could see he had not understood. The defensiveness was rising up in him again, threatening to take over and burst through at an even stronger degree than before. Julie knew it was not unusual for defenses to arise in the face of revelation, for the mental processing of words alone to not be enough. She saw the opportunity, and she knew she would need to take a different tack.

  The pain, like a spell, needed to be broken.

  Anger continued to rise visibly in Heath, and Julie took a deep breath, allowing fierce love, love in its warrior form, to rise inside her as it was called forth. When she felt it fill her being, she stepped forward and met the stony gaze of her client head-on, her own reflecting the hardness of twin diamonds.

  “Sit down.” Her voice had changed. She heard it, and she could tell by the look on Heath’s face that he did too. Wariness among the fury and bitterness now, he hesitated only a second before lowering himself back into his chair.

  Julie reached forward and started to untie his tie. Her closeness made Heath’s breath hitch even as he began to demand to know what she thought she was doing.

  The sharp connection of her hand with his face resounded in the office before his sentence was even finished. Heath’s jaw dropped, though the countenance of Julie, who happened to know how to deliver such a slap without damaging anything, didn’t change.

  “I’m doing whatever I want, and you will do so as well until I release you from that order.” She pulled his tie the rest of the way off and stepped back. “Stand up.”

  Julie minced no words as the orders came through her, the alignment of fierce love displaying its unique beauty.

  Still stunned, Heath did so without a word. Julie turned him around and secured his wrists behind his back with his tie. She felt his muscles tense beneath her hands, and she left one hand on his arm after she was finished, sending warmth from her body into his via the physical contact. She kept it there until she felt a degree of relaxation beneath her fingers. Then she put a hand on his shoulder, bending him at the waist and pushing his cheek down to the surface of his desk.

  Though Heath would never have wanted to admit it, Julie’s sudden treatment of him seemed to make the arousal he had clamped down so tightly rocket into his consciousness like an erupting volcano, his cock providing immediate and granitelike evidence as such. He stayed still in the position in which she had put him, desperately hoping she wouldn’t notice this incriminating evidence. He made a move to speak, but the pressure of her grip on his body relegated the sound to only a whimper.

  Then Julie was behind him, her body pressing against his as she leaned forward and grabbed his hair. Reaching below the desk, she grabbed his crotch without preamble. Heath jerked with humiliation, his face burning from being caught in such a state of arousal. Julie, on the other hand, almost breathed a sigh of relief. Though she had fully expected it, she was more than a little relieved to feel the hardness between his legs. Her instincts had been correct.

  The revelation also made the wetness grow between her legs. The arousal she had felt earlier was in full force now, but she still relegated it to a secondary position, inviting her slick pussy to be patient while she attended to the struggle taking place within Heath.

  Julie held his hair unflinchingly and squeezed the base of his erection just hard enough to keep his attention.

  “Do you like that?” she hissed in his ear, tightening the grip of both her hands. She let go of his cock and undid his belt as he whimpered incoherently. She yanked his trousers open unceremoniously, and his pants and underwear fell to the floor.

  The smack resounded in the cavernous office as Julie brought her hand down against his behind. Heath jumped and cried out as Julie’s hand, already poised for the second blow, found its target again before she paused and ran her hand over the red blossoming over his skin. She kept her grip on his hair, the warmth of her hand exuding a strength she knew was founded on compassion and alignment, whether or not Heath felt it consciously yet. Over and over she hit him, then caressed him, checking the surging of his cock periodically and barking orders as he squirmed beneath her hands. The energy swelled and retreated like an orchestra, the harmony and dissonance of hers and his and that which was unique to their connection administering just enough pain to touch that which was repressed within him.

  Julie watched as the immediate and past hurt melded together, rising into Heath’s consciousness as his body shuddered. She held on tighter, holding steady and guiding him with her hands and her heart to release, the place where what had been trapped for so long was experienced, processed in a moment of agony that for an instant seemed everlasting before it exploded and vanished, just another form of light in the infinite array of all that is. Finally Heath’s cock erupted at the same time he did, his body collapsing in a roaring sob as come spurted to cover her fingers.

  Julie yanked the tie off his wrists and moved immediately to cover his body with hers, holding him tightly as he released beneath her. The energy affected her deeply, and she found herself feeling awash in the beauty that broke forth from beneath the beastliness that had covered it for who knew how long. The transformation took her breath away, transferring effortlessly through her body to the arousal spilling between her legs.

  Seamlessly Julie slid her mouth to his ear. Careful to only complement and not interrupt the long-overdue expressing as it came from him, the words were barely a whisper, almost simply a movement against his skin:

  “You’re beautiful.”

  Heath’s body convulsed, his sobs continuing long after his orgasm had culminated. Eventually he fell silent. His eyes closed, Julie watched him take a deep breath as he rose to his feet. She stood as well. He turned to her and opened his eyes.

  Julie blinked at the transformation. She was startled to discover how blue Heath’s eyes were, as though the tears had literally cleaned them out, polished the tarnish away to restore them to their original luster.

  They were also, she noted, filled with desire, a potency of a purity she had not yet seen from him. Before she could respond, Heath stepped toward her and lifted her from the floor, almost crushing her in his embrace as he backed her up against the wall, his mouth on hers with a sizzling urgency that made all professional considerations drop from her consciousness. Nothing but her sex commanded attention now, the wetness between her legs covering Heath’s fingers as he slipped his hand beneath her skirt.

  Gently Heath lowered Julie to the wooden floor, unbuttoning her suit jacket and sliding her bra out of the way as he took one nipple then the other into his mouth, eliciting in Julie a burning desire over which she felt she had no influence. Rising to his knees, Heath yanked open the bottom drawer of his desk and scrabbled through it frantically until he found the tiny foil packet he had remembered only days before.

  Then he sank into Julie, who was waiting beneath him with flushed face and rapid breath. The two of them cried out in unison as he entered her, and her arms came around his strong shoulders as he pumped into her, somehow knowing exactly how to move his hips so that her breath grew even faster as Heath felt her start to tremble
beneath him.

  When her release came, she wailed with abandon, releasing all the earnestness Julie had collected while caring for Heath and succumbing to her own state of sublime luminescence.

  They lay on the floor together, neither speaking nor moving, for some time. When Julie rose eventually and began to straighten her outfit, Heath stood up as well.

  “I’ll walk you downstairs,” he said. For the first time, Julie saw him smile.

  Moments later the two stood just inside the glass door in the entryway of Castle Jewelers headquarters as their lips came together in a kiss softer than the rose petals adorning the stems in Julie’s hand. Behind them, Vivian’s eyes practically popped out of her head as she stared from her desk.

  As they eased apart, Julie extracted, with exquisite delicacy, one of the scarlet blooms from the vase. With reverence, she extended it gently to the man in front of her.

  Heath swallowed and looked down at the flower before lifting his big hand to accept it.

  “Please don’t tell me I must wait until tomorrow to see you again,” he whispered back as he looked up at her.

  Julie smiled. “I’ll text you my address right now.” Palming her phone from her purse, she gave Heath a last kiss on the cheek and strode through the glass door into the sunlight beyond.

  And so it was that the beast within was released in the face of unconditional love. Because Julie had loved and accepted even what was ugly in Heath, it had transformed and returned to the beauty inherent in all things. And from that day forth Heath became beautiful again to all who knew him, and especially to Julie, who continued to visit his tower office long after their two-week contract was up, whenever he wasn’t already taking the day off to spend at her small cottage by the lake.