Her New Boss: A Rouge Erotic Romance Read online

  Throwing her T-shirt onto the bed, she walked to the folded pile of laundry stacked in the white basket on the floor. Her favorite pair of faded denim jeans was clean. As she picked them up, she again caught her reflection in the mirror. Maybe Kat’s constant teasing about her weight was right. Maybe Zoe was too skinny to be a chef. She’d gladly gain fifty pounds in order to live her dream. It wasn’t her fault that her metabolism paralleled that of a hummingbird, or that she had a natural abundance of energy flowing through her veins. Her normally thin frame was skinnier than usual. At least as a chef, she’d always had food to eat.

  The dusky hue of her nipples through the white tank top drew her notice. She dropped the jeans on the bed next to the T-shirt. Studying her frame, she lifted the tank over her head. Her small breasts were flushed with heat, the nipples peaked from the caress of the material running across them. Thin ridges pressed along the right side, indenting the soft flesh with the pattern of her ribbed tank top from where she’d lain against the bed.

  Taking a slow, deep breath, she ran her fingers along her stomach. It had been a long time since she’d had a lover. Sometimes she wished she was confident like her sister, Megan, or free-spirited like Kat, adventurous like Ella, even self-assured like Sasha who seemed to have both her love life and future under her own control.

  Zoe glanced at the bed, where the prince stared out from the book cover. Sadness overwhelmed her and she longed for his world, a magical world where there were always happy endings and true love existed. She closed her eyes, vividly imagining a palace bedchamber. He was there, a prince – perfect, built, seductively handsome and confident with a surprisingly tender side he would show to no one but her.

  Licking her lips, she lightly ran the pads of her fingers along them, imagining a kiss. It had been so long since she’d been touched in passion. She needed a man, someone to hold her and watch movies with, someone who smelled nice and knew how to kiss, who would laugh and look at her like she was the only one in the world.

  Moaning softly, she drew her fingers down her neck, rolling her head back slightly. Her pulse quickened and she clung to the image of a magical prince in her head. She wished it was his hands in place of hers, warm and strong. As she cupped her breasts, rolling the nipples delicately between her fingers, she moved to sit on the bed.

  She imagined green eyes, deep and penetrating, staring into hers. Naked muscles, glistening with exotic oils, would move in streamlined grace, crawling over her, forcing her back onto the bed so her limbs sprawled over the expensive silk comforter. Zoe rolled back, keeping her eyes closed, ignoring the stiff brush of her blue jeans against her bare leg.

  Her heart longed for this daydream to be real. She refused to open her eyes and return to reality. Running her hands down her flat stomach, she wiggled her hips. How would the prince smell? Sound? Spreading her thighs, she ran one hand down between them to stroke her sex through the lace of her panties. She brushed lightly at first, a gentle caress. A little jolt of pleasure traveled up her stomach. With her free hand, she massaged her breast.

  She kept the magical prince in her head, imagining his mouth kissing her hard nipple. If she stopped to think about how this fantasy was all she had, she’d start to cry, so she pushed it from her mind and ignored the ache of loneliness in her heart. Instead, she concentrated on her fingers, dipping them beneath the lace of her panties. The slick folds of her sex parted easily and she rubbed along her clit, massaging the sensitive bud as arousal continued to build.

  Though Zoe knew how to touch herself, there was still a terrible emptiness deep inside. For some reason, she’d always been too shy to buy a vibrator, and perhaps too cheap, though there were times she wished she owned one. The image of the prince had slipped from her mind as real life tried to invade. She pulled him back, focusing on his long brown hair, his illusory kiss.

  Zoe gasped as she stroked herself harder, moving her hips against her hand. He had firm lips, a war-hardened physique and a thick cock ready for action. Knowing no one would hear her, she let a soft cry escape her lips. The first hint of an orgasm caused her to stiffen in anticipation. Almost desperately, she cupped a second hand over the panties to cover the first. She pressed down, jerking slightly as she reached climax. After, she let her legs drop to the side, and weakly drew her fingers from her sex. Her heart beat fast, but her breathing only rasped a little.

  Turning her head to glance at the clock, she exhaled noisily, ‘I’m going to be so late.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘IF ONE MORE guy asks me to dance on the bar, tries to put a cheap-ass one-dollar tip down my shirt, recites me a poem or even so much as looks at me with interest, I swear I’m going to rip off his manhood.’ Zoe forced a smile so none of the bar patrons would see her anger – not that a bad attitude mattered in this place. In fact, rudeness was almost encouraged by the owner. It gave the bar atmosphere. Turning her attention back to her sisters, Kat and Sasha, and her brother-in-law, Ryan, she frowned. They had come to visit and all three sat at the bar as Zoe provided them with generous mugs of draft beer.

  ‘Only you would threaten someone’s manhood.’ Kat giggled. ‘You and those damned novels. Why don’t you try a threat that isn’t so “nice”-sounding?’

  ‘Drink your beer,’ Zoe ordered, making a face at Kat as she swiped Sasha’s mug to refill it without being asked.

  Loud music pumped from the speakers, forcing everyone to speak even louder to be heard. The songs in the jukebox were a mix of classic and modern rock. The Phoenix Arms dated back to the late 1800s and looked as if the decor hadn’t been updated too much since then. Old photographs had been added to the plaster-covered walls. The red bricks underneath showed through in some places. Wooden booths with worn tabletops lined one wall, with smaller tables and chairs along the other, reaching all the way to the far back wall. There was no room for bar games or pool tables, except for an old dartboard that hung on the wall and was only played on weekdays when the bar wasn’t crowded.

  Surviving more on its landmark status than anything, the bar filled to capacity almost every weekend when partiers came out to play – mostly yuppies blowing off steam. Muscled hard bodies in tight shirts and even tighter pants hit on young things in short skirts and the latest trend. Women air-kissed their girlfriends, making sure to hit each cheek, and men shook hands and postured like they were all rock stars.

  The atmosphere seemed to both reflect and reject the bohemianism of the surrounding Greenwich Village. Business stayed steady throughout the week with the usual gathering of troubled writers and poets who claimed to be more creative when drunk. Zoe didn’t know anything about that, as she thought their drunken limericks quite horrendous.

  ‘Can you believe that guy actually licked his finger, pressed it to my shirt and asked me if I would like to get out of my wet clothing?’ Zoe grimaced, nodding her head toward the young man at the end of the bar. His boyish smile made him look seventeen, but his ID said he was of age to drink. The sad thing was she’d, for a brief second, considered taking him up on his cheap come-on. Pleasuring herself earlier had left her feeling a little … empty.

  ‘Oh, hey, look at that, my pager,’ Ryan said, pretending to glance at his waist. He wore his customary jeans and T-shirt, the easy style perfect for his relaxed nature. When he looked up, chin-length brown hair framed his face and he gave Zoe a lopsided grin. ‘Hand me my camera?’

  She arched a brow.

  ‘Sorry, sis, but this looks like it’s turning into a girls’ night and the last time that happened I woke up in a dress and my oestrogen levels skyrocketed.’ Ryan held out his hand. Zoe handed him the camera bag from behind the bar, unable to help laughing.

  ‘Don’t even go there,’ Kat said, looking very chic with her navy-blue-streaked bangs and matching silk voile shirt with contrasted piping along the seams. A thick band around the waist showed her trim stomach. Kat had been one of those women who looked gorgeous pregnant and who other pregnant women tended to hate because of
it. ‘It was a kilt, not a dress, and it was for a Halloween party.’

  ‘The five of us bar-hopping in the middle of December does not count as a Halloween party,’ Ryan protested, slipping the strap over his shoulder.

  Zoe chuckled. ‘That’s probably why your oestrogen levels were up. It had nothing to do with us women and everything to do with being bare-assed in winter.’

  Ryan gave a dramatic shiver. ‘I wasn’t completely naked and still my balls nearly froze. I had never been so glad in my life that I didn’t listen to Megan. She told me real Scotsmen don’t wear anything under their kilts and I should do the same.’ Winking, he lifted his hand in farewell.

  ‘Tell Megs hi for us,’ Sasha said.

  ‘Tell her to call me,’ Kat added.

  ‘Will do.’ Ryan nodded once as he headed toward the door, weaving his way through the thick crowd.

  ‘Why can’t I find a guy like that?’ Sasha sighed heavily. ‘Only one that doesn’t feel like a brother.’

  Sasha wore her bobbed brown hair in two small pigtails right behind her ears. The lightweight, classic black button-down shirt had pleats along the sides, causing it to fit snugly along her waist. After gaining twenty pounds her first two years in college, Sasha had become an exercise fanatic. It showed. She looked fantastic. Split cuffs on the three-quarter-length sleeves showed off a new, small tattoo on the inside of her forearm. Whenever her sisters asked her about it, though, she’d just laugh nervously and say it was some stupid college night.

  ‘Mom would be thrilled if you did,’ Zoe teased. ‘Why don’t you bring home that college boy of yours and let us meet him and get mom off my back for once. She seems to think that I’m next in line. Though, it does occur to me that this might be why you keep switching majors. Tell the truth, do you do it so mom doesn’t pressure you to get married?’

  Sasha grinned mischievously, only to take a long drink of her beer by way of an answer.

  ‘I think dad would be happy if you just found a major and stuck with it,’ Kat said. Sasha had turned into a career college student, or at least that’s what it seemed like to her family.

  ‘Have you noticed that she’s gotten much sassier since becoming a wife and mother?’ Sasha asked Zoe. ‘A little too know-it-all?’

  ‘Don’t bring me into that one.’ Zoe lifted her hands, seeing a couple of expectant eyes looking at her from the other side of the bar. One of the men waved his hand impatiently and the bleached-blonde woman with too much make-up next to him frowned before turning up her nose. One of the waitresses hadn’t showed and Pete, the second bartender on staff, was out in the crowd helping out with orders.

  ‘Hey, Zoe, feed us when you’re done!’ Kat hollered as she walked to the waiting couple near the front door.

  Zoe lifted her hand, not turning to look at her sisters as she made her way down to the end of the bar. Kat must have been getting tipsy. There wasn’t really anything worth eating in the place, beyond nachos with an unpalatable processed-cheese sauce, oversized pickles and shelled peanuts. ‘What’ll it be?’

  ‘Cosmopolitan,’ the blonde said, her voice as nasal as could be expected. Zoe leant forward, having a hard time hearing her. ‘And he’ll have a dry Martini.’

  ‘We have beer,’ Zoe answered evenly, placing her hands on the bar top.

  ‘I want,’ the woman said louder, ‘a Cosmopolitan and a dry Martini.’

  ‘We have beer,’ Zoe repeated, jerking her thumb to point at the wall of beer bottles behind her. ‘Over three hundred flavours. Which can I get you?’

  Behind the couple, the door opened and Zoe glanced to see who came in. She smiled out of habit, only to stop in mild shock at the dark eyes that met hers. Silky lashes swept down, leading her gaze to a crooked grin. Sexy men weren’t lacking in New York, but there was something about the way his eyes glanced around only to land back on hers that held her notice. Most men either looked with a piercing intensity that revealed their true primal designs or didn’t look at all, using the city dwellers’ innate habit of minding one’s own business.

  A fine, dark stubble shadowed his chin. Zoe shivered to see the small detail in the glow from the streetlights outside as the door slowly closed behind him. She wondered what it would feel like scratching against her skin. The thought was fleeting, an instant sensation so real it left her body tingling and her pussy wet.

  The blonde’s whiny voice instantly drew Zoe back to her job and she didn’t dwell on the new customer. ‘… get you fired. I want a Cosmopolitan.’

  ‘It’s the owner that picks the beers from around the world. It’s the owner who makes the menus and it’s the owner who says Cosmopolitans are for whining sissy girls trying to act more sophisticated than they really are.’ Zoe forced a fake smile to her lips, only to add sarcastically, ‘Should I get you his number? He likes nothing more than to be woken up late at night by drunks.’

  ‘Ah! I heard the help at this bar was rude.’ The woman made an awful, high-pitched noise of displeasure. ‘I’m going to tell everyone I know not to come here.’ Her nose scrunched as she grabbed her boyfriend by the arm and forcibly dragged him with her toward the door. The man glanced back before leaving, winking at her. Zoe rolled her eyes heavenward, really not in the mood.

  ‘Don’t worry, ma’am, I just came for a beer.’ A loud voice drew her attention, mostly because the Southern inflection seemed out of place. It wasn’t so heavy as to be Deep South, but enough to be far away from New York.

  When she turned, she saw it was the man with dark eyes. Her heart skittered a little in her chest. His medium-blue dress shirt lay open at the collar and was rolled up at the cuffs. Tan arms rested on the bar top, but when she looked at his face, she didn’t see the telltale white around his eyes that people got from wearing protective glasses in a tanning bed. As she studied him, something in the curve of his mouth reminded her of a romance-novel hero. It was a small thing, a fleeting passage in some book she couldn’t quote, recalling a flutter she got in her stomach when reading.

  ‘What flavour?’ Her strained voice came out breathy. Zoe didn’t move, couldn’t force a smile, so instead she just stared rudely at him. Inside, she trembled with a desire she’d not felt outside of a fantasy. Part of her wanted to flirt, to bat her eyelashes and secure a date for after the bar closed. She’d never picked up a man at work, but the idea of being with this one after hours caused her stomach to tighten. The more she wanted him, the more her face tightened in what would appear like irritation. It was a reaction she couldn’t seem to control.

  The sudden surge of rock music made it hard to hear the exact tone of his voice beyond the drawl, so she watched his full mouth. ‘You pick.’

  Zoe nodded once, turned, pulled open a standing cooler and grabbed the first beer her hand touched. She thought about pressing it to her flushed skin to cool the sudden flame of heat that rushed over her neck and face. She refrained. Opening it without thought, she slid it toward him. ‘That’ll be eight dollars.’

  ‘Keep the change.’ The man tossed down a folded ten-dollar bill. She picked it up and moved on to the next customer, refusing to look at him even as her knees tried to wobble. After a few more orders, she was back beside her two sisters.

  ‘You know him?’ Sasha asked instantly, as if the question had been burning on her tongue for quite a while.

  ‘Who?’ Zoe didn’t bother to follow her sister’s gaze. She’d been pointedly ignoring the handsome stranger. Talking to him would only bring disappointment and she really couldn’t use any more disappointment right now. Surely that was all that would come from a relationship.

  ‘Mr Tall, Dark and Delicious,’ Sasha said. ‘If you don’t know him, then I think it’s obvious that he wants to know you. He’s been staring at your ass like a man ready to jump onboard for a ride.’

  ‘I don’t want to know him.’ Zoe ignored Sasha’s crudeness. The woman always got a little crass when she drank. And her answer wasn’t a complete lie. Some animalistic part of her did want to kn
ow him, but the logical part knew better. She had to get her life on track first. Didn’t all the experts say that a person couldn’t be happy in a relationship until they were happy with themselves? Still, it didn’t stop the fantasy of straddling his lap as he sat on the barstool from entering her thoughts. In her mind, everyone disappeared from the bar, leaving them to their sexual devices. Her lips tingled. How would he kiss? Gentle and soft? Hard and desperate? Warm and probing? She knew the beer she’d given him would flavour his tongue if she were to suck it. Hearing one of her sisters clearing their throat, Zoe shook the images from her mind.

  ‘At least Contiello isn’t here again,’ Zoe continued. Other lurid thoughts about the handsome man tried to surface, but she pushed them away. ‘I swear I could kill the person who told him I work here. He’s been here twice this week for drinks, once with a big-name chef and another time with a publicist that has a lot of connections.’ At her sisters’ looks, Zoe nodded. ‘Oh yeah, he made sure to point that out. He also made sure to introduce me as “that one who did that thing I was telling you about.”’

  ‘What do you think he told them?’ Sasha asked.

  ‘Who the hell knows? Whatever it is, it’s not the truth. If I didn’t need this job so badly, I’d have told him off … again.’ Zoe sighed, rushing off to take more drink orders as a new group came to the bar. Pete had come back from working the floor and was filling the waitresses’ drink orders along with his own. An unkempt college dropout, Pete had a habit of quoting old writers while he worked, often answering questions with some line only the literarily inclined patrons could understand.

  ‘“Lord, what fools these mortals be,”’ Pete said to Kendra, the waitress.

  ‘Lord Byron?’ Kendra asked, tilting her head to the side. Her soft curls bounced, as if an extension of her energetic frame.

  ‘That’s right, love.’ Pete nodded, grinning. The woman giggled and walked off.