“Thank you.” She forced a smile and wondered what he would say if he knew that his son had his tongue down her throat last night. Mentally shaking the disturbing image away, she touched her device. “The board is already in the conference room.”
*****
He did not go the next day either, and Reginald told himself he had valid reasons. He could take meetings out of the office. Also, it being a Friday, he was planning on going to the club for the weekend anyway. It had nothing to do with the fact that he could not get that woman out of his head.
He had also not been sleeping well over the past couple of nights. He had gone out with Jayne as a last-ditch effort to get his head on straight. The evening had been spent at a trendy restaurant and went well until he took her home, and she invited him in.
She had set the mood with candles and a bottle of a very expensive cognac. Still, when he started kissing her, the face of the woman he had kissed inside his office only two nights ago had surfaced. The kiss had taken on an intensity that had never happened before and forced him to end it, his heart turning over inside his chest.
“Darling- “Pressing her fingers against her lips, she stared at him dazedly. “That was- “
“A mistake.” He rasped, feeling the sickness in the pit of his stomach. “I am sorry, I have to go.” He had practically flown out of her apartment and come back to his place to drown himself in alcohol.
He needed some files from his office, and he was damned if he was going to involve his dad in this debacle. Bracing himself to make the call, he dialed the number.
“William Tanner’s office. How may I help you?” Closing his eyes at the sound of her cultured voice, he felt his knees getting weak.
“Hello?”
“I- it’s me.” He cleared his throat and continued. “Ms. Lewis-“ He broke off, feeling incredibly foolish. “I need some files for my meeting this afternoon.”
There was a pause as he waited for her response. “You have a meeting to tie up the Folsom’s merger. I will get the things together and send them to you by messenger.”
“Thank you.” He was about to hang up when something stopped him. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“I had my tongue so far down your throat that I could practically feel your tonsils, and you are behaving as if it’s business as usual. What’s your secret?”
The silence stretched so long this time that he wondered if she would answer.
“It was a moment of insanity, and I have gotten over it. Now, is that all?”
Her frosty, polite tone had him seeing red. “No, that is not all; damn you to hell! You can sit there pretending that when I had my tongue inside your mouth, you were not hoping that it would have gone further. If I had not stopped, you would be lying beneath me with my dick so far inside you there would be no room for anything else.”
It took him a few seconds to register that it was the sound of the dial tone in his ear. He lunged to his feet, his body coiled from tension. Once again, she had gotten the better of him.
He had sounded like a rejected lover, and she was her usual composed self. He hated her- but oh God! He wanted her so much that it was becoming a pain inside his body. And he was not dealing with it well.
Dragging his fingers through his hair, he went to get some more scotch to deal with his awful yearning.
*****
She had no idea how she managed to make it through the rest of the day. His awful words were branded inside her mind so deep that it felt as if they were part of her brain. To make matters worse, she had to go into his office several times during the day to get some files.
Each time she stepped inside, she could see him sitting behind his desk, with that smug, arrogant look on his handsome face. She could also feel his lips on hers. She had lied to him about forgetting about it. How could she?
She wondered in despair. She had never been kissed so profoundly or so thoroughly before. She had never felt that kind of intense passion that had made her want to beg him to take her.
And he was right. If he had not stopped when he had, she would have allowed him to make love to her right there on the carpet. The shame of that made her want to cry out in horror. And even now, when she was supposed to know better, she wanted him. Her body was burning up for him. And she had no idea what to do about it.
Firming her lips, she gathered her composure and exited her desk to file.
*****
The Elite Club was established a little less than one hundred years ago, and membership was exclusively offered to the wealthy who could afford its astronomical yearly fees. Money was not the only issue. A bylaw said the members had to descend from several generations who had started from the club’s foundation.
In other words, no one was given membership unless they had family there. The founding members put that contingency in place to ‘weed out the undesirables’ and allow only ‘old money’ to be part of something exclusive to ‘their kind.’
Over the last twenty years, self-made millionaires have been fighting to overturn that rule with no success. The tradition is still holding firm, even with the rise of ‘regular’ men finding and making their fortunes and acquiring the ‘American dream,’ it is now becoming more challenging to maintain the club with the few ‘old and established members.’
Reginald did not care about an ‘all white’ membership or an exclusive one. As far as he was concerned, if someone had the resources to afford the hefty fee, they should be allowed to enter.
Striding over to the bar facing the arched doorway of the entrance, he nodded to the bartender and ordered his usual drink. He was going to spend the weekend, or that was what he told himself.
He would lose himself in the various activities that preceded the holiday season. He had blown off a date with Jayne, making up some sort of excuse. He had to get his mind straight; being here would accomplish that.
Turning around on his stool, he took in the men milling around the adjoining dining room and the smatterings of conversations. Yes, if this did not do the trick, nothing would.