The idea was absurd.
Forget the nearly twelve-year difference in our ages, I was her boss, for fuck’s sake. Her fucking livelihood depended on the paycheck I provided. Her food, shelter, transportation. She owed it all to me. It was a massive power imbalance. Which was why workplace fraternization was so fraught with complications and needed to be avoided at all costs.
When I’d run my company, the policies had been clear about manager, employee relationships. I didn’t allow for it. There’d been a couple of instances where it hadn’t mattered, but those couples had left the company on good terms.
Not that what we’d shared on Saturday night was any kind of fraternization.
We had a moment. That was it. An acknowledgement that we’d gotten too close to one another. Too personal. There were supposed to be lines, only when I tried to imagine them in my mind, I couldn’t see them.
She shouldn’t have texted me to help. I shouldn’t have called in a favor to get her in the club. I shouldn’t have known she was even going to that club on Saturday.
Yes, I’d lost some of my normal self-imposed willpower, but I’d gotten it back before things had deteriorated.
It’s not as if I’d kissed her.
Absurd.
I hadn’t pressed her against the wall, taken her mouth and swallowed her whole.
Ludicrous.
I certainly hadn’t ripped apart that red blouse, that she probably thought was sexy, but was so damn conservative a nun could wear it and captured her breasts in my hands and sucked her hard little nipples between my teeth until she screamed.
Delusional.
Shit.
I had to fire her. Not because I couldn’t control myself. I wasn’t such an asshole that I would ever put someone who wasn’t receptive to my advances in a compromising position. The problem was, I knew she would be.
Might be.
Was.
I needed to fire her now, while she still had the chance to escape me. Because I knew myself too well and I had unusually singular focus when I wanted something.
Wanting someone wasn’t something I got to do anymore. I’d had Allison and she’d been enough. She’d been everything. I hadn’t needed other people, because I had her.
It was something Allison used to…complain about? Fret about? She’d always been on me to expand my circle of friends. My connections with other people besides her. She didn’t think our relationship was always healthy. On my part.
Except I never saw the point. Allison had been my friend, my lover and my wife. What else did I need beyond that in a world filled with people who didn’t really understand me?
There’d been nothing left for me after she was gone, so I’d resolved myself to live a smaller life.
A quiet life.
Except now, here was little orphan Anna with her hammer and chisel, taking aim at my stone heart.
How frightened would she be if she knew I had the potential to swallow her whole?
One stupid text had been enough to trigger all those old tendencies inside me.
Find her. Protect her. Take her someplace safe. Don’t let Derek know where she lives.
All of that sounded mostly reasonable until you looked a little deeper under the surface. What my instincts were really saying.
Mine. Mine. Mine. Don’t touch.
Only she wasn’t, and I had to stop myself from even having the thought. I didn’t want another person. And Flowers should have the life she imagined the day she left the state home.
