Whispers & Lies

Chapter One-2

He kissed away her red lips and caressed his way down to the chain - which he tugged until she protested. Then he pressed his erection where Decker had been, though Decker would never be where Kevin would go. The driver drove around the city while they made love. In the dark. In the black of night. In neighborhoods where there was no illumination but their hearts to see by. They were wordless, little oohs, and ahhs, and guttural groans from Kevin the only fanfare. With his hand between their bodies, he tugged the chain again as she was beginning to orgasm, and harder still the more she jerked her clit against him in her finishing frenzy. She was asking for it harder, which he gladly gave her. Once feeling her most vibrant spasm, he pressed himself towards a climax, forgetting hers. In that instant they were oblivious of each other. Though inside themselves they could feel hearts beating, and thighs pulsing, and lips meeting lips until they were conscious again.

As they lay entwined at the finish, the driver took them to the brownstone where they lived. Without bothering to cloth themselves again, they gathered their broad overcoats around their nearly naked bodies to protect them against the cold, and then slipped into the night and into the house without saying a word.

***

“Get out of bed,” Kevin said, looking down at her.

“Oh, why?” Mackenzie moaned sensuously. Her olive skinned body lay against the cream-colored sheets and the damask rose comforter, blending in hue as if she was an element from a painting that was coming alive with the rays of the morning.

“You’re lazy,” he informed her. He was tying his tie from memory, a burgundy one that would have a sharp knot at the neck in seconds. He was wearing his tan suit. Without his coat on, Mackenzie could see his hip’s gentle sway as he walked from the dressing area to the bed. His tie in place, he had a leather belt in his hand, which he snapped against her exposed thigh.

“Ouch! You nasty brute,” she cried.

“You didn’t think me nasty last night,” he answered her.

“I never think you’re nasty when we’re making love.” She looked up at him with a mellow “just out of sleep” kind of smile.

“Of course, just when we’re living the rest of our lives. Like right now,” he said. He snapped the leather against her again, playfully.

“You really want me up, don’t you?”

“You’re going to the office with me, Mackenzie. We have a meeting at and I damn well better have my editor with me.”

He turned away.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Eight,” he said, as he slipped into the bathroom.

“Dammit! Why didn’t you wake me earlier?” she cried, jumping from the sheets.

He was smirking as she hit the shower because she was going to have to race to be ready in time. Mackenzie was his editor-in-chief, his lover and the only woman that had ever been close to him, close enough to be under his thick skin and his immovable resolve, and beyond the ice and reserve, and the startling attractiveness that put people off so easily. She hadn’t been intimidated by him, at least not until she understood that he was a voracious s****l dominant. That only made her more intent on having him. She needed to be subdued sexually, and she knew he was the man to make her surrender.

It was a war of strength against strength from the beginning. Mackenzie wasn’t always so compliant as she’d been the night before in Shackles—the private club.

Five years before she’d been a junior editor on his staff, sometimes a very mouthy one, and as complaint as an unruly March wind. Newly sophisticated with clothing purchased in fine boutiques, and a proud attitude to match her impressive manner, she’d taken a sometimes stodgy McLeod Inc. by surprise. Her opinions on publishing decisions came to pervade every corner of the McLeod business. Something sharp and witty about her mind attracted followers like a magnet - all but Kevin McLeod himself.

“You’re wrong, Mr. McLeod,” she’d announced to him, the day he first noticed her.

In a conference room with three other editors, she was the one he hadn’t bothered with, except to note that she was an efficient looking woman with voluminous dark hair clipped back at her neck, looking as if it was struggling to get free. Something wasn’t quite right about her, but he hadn’t taken the time to figure it out because he wasn’t yet intrigued by her—despite the way his fellows found her so intelligent about his business. But then that changed. She made her mark on him that day more than she would ever realize. Her comments were shrewd, and the inner beauty that she hid so well suddenly screamed in a way he couldn’t ignore.

“And what am I wrong about?” he asked her directly, after her clear assertion came quite out of nowhere.

“The book’s idiotic. It may sell, but this is not the reputation you want to cultivate,” she explained.

“I make my reputation daily,” he countered her.

“And you don’t want anything to do with Oscar Gould,” she said defying him.

“I suppose you know why that is?” he asked.

“Because he’s a hack writer. I had to clean up everything he did when he was with Schene Bros. He’s a fraud with a great grin and a lousy sense of literary timing, convoluted prose, and even worse, he’ll drive an editor mad.”

“Perhaps I should let you work with him?” Kevin said, adding sarcasm to the exchange.

“You do and I’ll quit,” she replied.

“Quit?” It was quite a statement for a junior editor who should have been clawing at any opportunity for a plum assignment.

“Yes. It’s as simple as that. I have limits. Oscar Gould hit mine.”

“Following you around like a bad penny, perhaps,” Kevin wondered aloud. His amusement with her was hard to disguise. But neither was his admiration, or the sparkle in his eye the more they sparred. Kevin McLeod never sparred with anyone, and his eyes rarely changed from their distinctly dark and brooding temper.

She stood firm—or rather sat—across the table, her eyes as dark and immovable as his. Though Mackenzie’s were more changeable than Kevin’s fixed ones. They could soften, because there was an innate softness about her, a quality of natural sensuousness. As hard a stance as she was taking, the sensuality still poured from her like the rays of an autumn sun that make the air gleam gold.

“I’ll consider your advice, Ms. Durrant,” he nodded to her. Apparently so swept up in her firm convictions, he had little else to say, except to adjourn the meeting. Although as MacKenzie was about to leave the room, he stopped her, “Ms. Durrant, will you stay a moment?”

“Yes, Mr. McLeod?”

He stared at her for a few moments without speaking in an attempt to unsettle her, though it did not have that effect. She stared back at him with an equally intense expression. Like two tigers squaring off, they were in that state of prickly expectation before an impending battle.

“Undo your hair,” he spoke at last.

“I beg your pardon?” She was stunned.

“Undo your hair,” he repeated.

“And why would I do that?” she asked suspiciously.

“Because I asked you to,” he replied. She hesitated still. “For heaven’s sake, I’m not making a pass as you, Miss Durrant, just undo the clip.”

She didn’t want to, he could see that readily; but she complied, reaching around to let loose the unruly curls. They almost appeared to bounce off the walls when she set them free.

“There, that’s better,” he said. “You can go.”

“How about an explanation, Mr. McLeod.” She wasn’t budging an inch.

“While you work here, you don’t have to hide yourself in some stereotypical business garb, Ms. Durrant. You looked like a dowdy old spinster with your hair all tied away from your face.”

She was startled by his appraisal of her. “And how do I look now?” she asked.

“Beautiful,” he replied, coolly. The phone rang, and she was obliged to leave him to his call.

They were initially cool with each other, no emotion transmitted between them. Except that in each other’s presence there was a distinguishable agitation beneath the surface of their interactions - something few people would pick up on, unless they understood the two well. Kevin McLeod, known for his austere cool would retain that mien when Mackenzie Durrant was around. But there was also a distinct look of interest in his eyes, and a tendency to seek her out, and her opinions, something he would rarely do with any other editor.

Mackenzie’s agitation when she was around her boss was strictly fear, though it never showed its face that way. Kevin alarmed her, set off unexpected s****l fires in the middle of her business days. Refusing to call it desire, she lived with the constant dread of being in the same room with him alone, wanting to strip off her clothes and offer her body for his plaything. By the time three months had passed with unfed hungers making their appetites soar, they were ravenous for something more than just their clipped, dispassionate conversations. The heated exchange between them had brought their passions nearly to a boil.

“In my office, Ms. Durrant,” Kevin McLeod barked at her as he breezed by her one afternoon.

She took a few minutes before she joined him, a deliberate move, which annoyed him since he insisted on punctuality.

Standing in front of him, Mackenzie had the distinct feeling that she was being undressed by his eyes, even though it wasn’t lust that she recognized, but anger.

“This is unacceptable,” he said, throwing a manila folder to opposite end of the desk near where she was standing. Picking up the file, she looked at the week’s worth of work. The carefully compiled proposal had ribbons of red s***h marks from his pen visible on every page. “Do it over.”

Every atom in her body shot off with that command.

“Would you like to tell me why?” she inquired, trying to remain calm.

“The conclusions are poor, ill thought out,” he said. “It’s poorly prepared, so much so, it makes me wonder if you had some ulterior motive for turning in work of this mediocre quality.”

“You must be kidding,” she exclaimed. “You praised me last week for my thoughtful proposals, and you revile me this week?” she asked in wonder. “It’s the same mind that produced that proposal.” She couldn’t figure why was he berating her.

“That’s just my point. I expect quality from you, Ms. Durrant. This is not. Do it over.”

“And if I refuse?” she asked.

He sighed, as if he expected her objections. “You’re a stubborn woman.”

“Only when my work’s attacked,” she said.

“Is that so?” He chuckled darkly. “There are solutions for women like you.”

“You say that as if you disdain women,” she said.

“No. I just prefer that they own up to themselves.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“You spend too much time trying to be a b***h when your nature is so much more subdued.”

“And you are a chauvinist ass,” she declared. Her body was burning hot. She could feel it in her cheeks, and her hands and thighs.

“Indeed,” he agreed.

“If you don’t mind,” she said, as she turned to walk out on him.

“You leave this room,” he blared, “I’ll have your ass as red as a well-spanked child.”

She spun around, not sure she’d heard him right. Her eyes were opened wide in wonder at his declaration. It was the last of many things he might have said, and clearly the most astounding.

“I’ve done it before with undisciplined employees and I would do it with you in a second.”

“And you think I’d put up with it!”

He smiled broadly, a cold one.

“Frankly I think you’re looking for it. You begged this confrontation. You laid this piece of amateurish drivel on my desk. You were waiting for me to react, and so I have. But perhaps it’s not the way you planned it.” His eyes were lit strangely, in a way that made her quake more. “Could it be that your desires are slapping your face like an angry mother?”

“You’re, you’re . . . .” She was stumbling for words.

“Is anything I’ve said untrue?” he asked.

She shook her head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, I can’t stay here,” she said. She started to walk out again.

“Oh, yes you can,” Kevin said. He hopped up from his desk and was at her side in an instant. His hand was on her chin, gently holding it so that she was forced to stare up into his eyes. “Tell me you didn’t want this confrontation?” he said softly.

She trembled looking at him, knowing he had her about to lie, and she couldn’t.

“I can’t,” she finally answered honestly.

“And you bungled that project to get that confrontation?” he added.

She would have admitted to murdering at that point, the way he was holding her on the edge of the instant. Anything he said. Just the simple touch of his hand on her chin was an erotic bliss that catapulted through her limbs and then dove right to the center of her s****l self.