“Don’t.” He grabbed her hand and brought it around his neck. “I have no control right now and I don’t have a condom. I don’t exactly carry one around with me just in case I get the chance to fulfill a fantasy with my assistant on my desk.”
“I’m on the Pill. And I’m clean. I checked just to make sure after I broke up with Rick.” Her desperation for Travis was showing, and she hated it, but she couldn’t help wanting to assuage the throbbing need to have him deep inside her.
“I’m clean, too. And if you say one more word to convince me that I have no reason not to f**k you right now, I’ll have you bent over this desk in a heartbeat,” Travis warned her in a feral voice. “And we’ll be here until morning.”
Ally came out of her daze with a flash of reality. “Morning? Oh, God. I have to go to work. I’m late.” She pulled away from Travis reluctantly, instantly missing the shelter of his warm body. Sully’s had completely faded from her brain while she was in the midst of the most incredible climax she’d ever had.
She quickly righted her top, pulling her bra down and jerking down the tank top. Grabbing her jeans, she pulled them on, scowling at her torn panties on the floor. She bent to pick them up, but Travis beat her to it, scooping up the tattered material and shoving it into the pocket of his suit jacket. “You don’t have to go,” he said flatly.
“I do. It’s my job,” she argued, retrieving her hair clip from the floor.
“You don’t. You don’t work there anymore,” Travis told her in a graveled voice.
Ally gaped at Travis, wondering if he’d had a few drinks before coming back to the office, but she hadn’t smelled alcohol. “I don’t understand.”
“You’ve been terminated,” he explained patiently, his face once again calm, his eyes icy.
Understanding dawned slowly. “You got me fired?” Ally asked, confused.
Travis leaned one hip against the desk and crossed his arms. “I wouldn’t say that exactly. You were technically laid off. I had a little discussion with Mr. Sullivan before I came back to the office.”
Ally felt anger rise inside her, a rage so explosive that her body started to shake. “How did you get him to agree? Did you threaten him?”
“Didn’t need to do that. Money always works,” Travis answered coolly.
“How can you do that to me? You knew I needed that job.” Ally hated herself for ever confiding in Travis. He’d used whatever she’d told him against her. “What did I ever do to you to make you do something like this? That’s my livelihood, my survival.”
“This job is your survival,” Travis contradicted. “And it’s demanding enough. I want you freed up in case I need you.”
The cold look on his face, and his casual dismissal of what he had done, set her off, and at that moment, Ally completely lost it.
Chapter 6
“You haven’t needed me in four goddamn years. Why this sudden requirement?” She glared at him. “You can’t just play with people’s lives, Mr. Harrison. I’m not a toy. I’m a living, breathing person who needs that income right now.” She stepped up to him and poked a finger in his chest, her face flushed with fury.
“No you don’t,” Travis answered with a smirk. “And I think I liked it better when you called me Travis.”
She was quite sure he did because she’d actually been moaning his name in ecstasy. Ally exploded. “You bastard! You are a self-centered, egotistical prick.” Tears filled her eyes, the result of the burning anger spreading through her entire being. She’d just been intimate with this man, the same man who had gotten her fired from a job that she needed right now just because it was more convenient for him. She lifted her hand and let it fly, the satisfying crack of her palm against his cheek not nearly enough to appease the hurt of his betrayal. She’d confided in him about her life in a moment of weakness, and he’d used that information to get rid of anything that might inconvenience him. “Now I don’t have any job anymore, because I quit. You don’t have to fire me this time. I can’t work for you anymore. You’re just another man who can’t be trusted.”
With as much dignity as she could possibly muster with tears streaming down her face, Ally picked up both pairs of her shoes and her dress and stormed out of Travis’s office, shoving the clip for her hair into the pocket of her jeans. She gathered up her purse, leaving everything on her desk behind. She just wanted to get away from here. Asha would help her by retrieving the rest of her things later.
She fled out the main office door and down the hallway, literally running for the elevator.
Please be there. Please be there.
Ally didn’t want to wait for one of the elevators to get to the top floor. She wanted out of this building and away from Travis. Now!
She punched the down button impatiently, over and over, as though it would open the elevator door faster. Her vision was blurred by her tears as she bolted into the elevator and pushed the button for the lobby.
“Ally! Goddammit! Wait!” There was a desperation in Travis’s hoarse shout that she’d never heard before, but it didn’t melt the ice that had formed around her heart.
Travis was a billionaire, a manipulative man who was used to getting everything his way. And he hadn’t one iota of remorse for taking away a job she needed, so she could be at his beck and call if he needed her, whenever he needed her, and for whatever reason he needed her. Bastard! Did he think she was going to become his f**k buddy who he could call any time he wanted to take her out and play with her? Pathetically, she’d fallen under his thrall, and maybe he thought he could do just that now that she’d split with Rick. For the brief period of time when Travis had her body under his control, she’d thought she felt a connection, a deeper understanding between them. Oh, had she been so damn wrong.
He was sprinting for the elevator just as the doors were closing. For an instant, their eyes locked, and Ally could see despondency in his eyes as he caught a glimpse of her face. Or she thought she did. But it really didn’t matter. She turned her head, unable to look at him, as the elevator doors slammed shut.
“Ally!” Travis’s voice carried through the closed doors.
She pounded on the button for the lobby, willing the elevator to move. It jerked and went into motion, but it stopped on several floors on the way down, letting people in and out of the elevator on the way to the ground floor. Ally turned her face away, swiping at her cheeks to dry the tears on her face, hoping nobody would notice.