The Businessman's Tie (The Power to Please, Book 1) by Deena Ward

spiteful, but I simply didn’t want to touch him. Or for him to touch me.
    He didn’t comment, and we walked down the halls side by
side. He dropped the key card on Sarah’s desk as we passed, Michael only
briefly nodding in reply to her subservient, “Thank you, Sir.”
    When we rounded the corner to the last hall, Michael
stopped. “Before we go out there, I want to tell you that I enjoyed myself very
much tonight.”
    I mumbled a deliberately unintelligible nothing.
    Michael wasn’t fazed. “I’m hoping you’ll take me up on my
offer. I only ask that when you think about it, you remember what happened
between us tonight, what happened before you had to be punished, and how you
felt. I can make you feel that way again. And much, much more. Remember that.”
    I didn’t say anything. He said I had to be punished. Had to.
As if it were beyond his control, as if he didn’t have a choice. I gritted my
teeth.
    We walked down the hall and out into the overblown blast of
loud music and the clamor of the crowd.
    Michael asked me to sit with him, to have another drink,
whatever. I told him no, that I was leaving. He offered to wait outside with me
for a taxi, but happily, at that moment, I spotted Lilly heading toward the
door. I told him I’d catch a ride with her.
    I’d be fine, I said, and no I didn’t want him to come
outside with me.
    I wanted away from this place, from him.
    He let me go.
    When I reached the door, something made me glance back at
him, to see what he was doing. There he was, standing where I left him. His
stance was relaxed, his arms hanging loosely at his sides. But his expression
was fierce, his mouth a straight line of intensity. When I met those pale blue
eyes of his, he smiled a slow, half smile.
    I turned away and left him behind.
    I caught Lilly out on the sidewalk, but she wasn’t alone. A
nice-looking young man was chatting with her.
    We exchanged hellos and I asked Lilly if she was getting a
cab to return to the other bar. I left my car there, and assumed she’d done the
same.
    “No,” Lilly said. “A friend dropped me off. Anyway, Scott
and I have plans for a nightcap at his place, and his car is here.”
    They wanted to wait for my cab with me, but I told them to
go. When I called from the ladies room, the dispatcher told me a car would be
there in less than ten minutes, so I wouldn’t have long to wait. It wasn’t like
I was alone. Although it was late, people steadily filtered in and out of the
club.
    Before they left, Lilly whispered to me that Scott was a
definite trade-up from the man who stood her up at the restaurant earlier in
the evening. I hoped she was right. We exchanged phone numbers, and they left.
    I enjoyed the chance to take a few deep breaths, to wind
down from the emotions of the evening. My anger with Michael wasn’t as sharp as
it had been. I hadn’t forgiven him, certainly not, but at least I felt calmer,
more myself.
    I had just checked the time on my cell phone when a shiny
black town car pulled up in front of the building. The rear window rolled down.
I couldn’t see inside the car, only a vague masculine outline. An arm appeared
and waved me over.
    I was reminded of hookers in television shows and movies.
They were always being beckoned over to vehicles. The hookers would totter on
their too-high heels, their round asses jiggling out of their, for lack of a
better descriptor, skirts. More like half-skirts, really. They’d lean down and
rest their crossed arms on the door, all the better for the johns to ogle their
big boobies, my dear.
    I grimaced. Some man in that town car probably thought I was
a hooker. What a jerk. I might have been loitering around in front of a sex
club, but my skirt was way too long for me to be a streetwalker. Okay, so maybe
it was true that less than a half hour ago, I’d given a man a blow job in front
of other people. What did that make me?
    Not a hooker, I thought. And I motioned at the man in the
car to go away.
    He