Wrong Place? Maybe…The Serial Continues….
Welcome to the 2nd installment of the Liz Crowe Serialized Novel Project:
Wrong Place. Wrong Time.
If you are just now seeing this thing, get caught here.
Otherwise….carry on…enjoy….
Chapter ThreeAlex couldn’t breathe. She could literally not suck in air as she stared at the young man, the object of her fairly overheated fantasies lately, as his last words swirled through her brain. She stumbled back, almost fell over a chair. The second time he grabbed her arm to steady her within five minutes of making her breathless for other reasons. She yanked out his grip and let a stew of anger and disbelief cloud her vision. “What in holy hell are you talking about?”Lucas swallowed once. Put some distance between them. “There is a discrepancy in the escrow accounts, fairly deep down in the financials, and the amounts box exactly with large sums getting deposited and withdrawn from your bank accounts.” She tried to register what he was saying, but something gnawed at a corner of her consciousness. Something Jay had said about two months ago. “You know,” he’d been wining and dining her at that time, trying to lure her to his bed. She’d been ready to tell him to stop trying so damn hard, just ask, she was bored enough to do it without all the fuss. “The board wants to shut down this division. The Eastern European branch is losing money. Move us all back home, or let us go.” He’d sipped his wine, stared into its deep purple depths. “I have to give them reasons not to. Or reason to, whatever I like, I guess.” She’d let him babble on, barely hearing him. His ego was enormous. Everybody knew this. His delusions of grandeur combined with a fierce competitiveness made him who he was. “I don’t want to leave here though. It’s an amazing place. Wish we didn’t have to.” He had pinned with a blue glare then, as if willing her to offer some advice. When she’d stayed quiet he went on. “Wish there were a way to keep things exactly like this, forever.” Alex didn’t fool herself into thinking Jay Reynolds loved her. She was convenient, a challenge at first, and his equal in many ways. He’d get bored with her soon enough. And she didn’t trust him any further than she could throw him. She put a hand to her throat, snapping back to the present. Lucas still stood, arms crossed, giving her the oddest look.“Oh fuck.” She shoved past him, hit the down button on the elevator, shutting him out as she got her head around something she did not wish to acknowledge. That she’d given Jay access to all the internal server passwords. “For research,” he’d drawled, trying to kiss her in his office for the millionth time. Typically only the CIO held those, for top to bottom security. They changed nearly hourly but she’d given him the key to access the encrypted files. She’d trusted the asshole, against her better instincts. “Holy shit, I’ve been…played?” Tears burned but she forced them away as she raced to her computer in her office, fired it up and stared at her bank accounts.
Lucas watched as the doors shut between them, his body zinging in ways entirely not suitable for work. Now was not the time to get attached to this woman but he sensed himself doing it already. They developed such a great working relationship he sometimes forgot why he was sent here in the first place. She was high strung and high maintenance but if you could get a handle on her temperament, sense the anxiety behind her inner control freak and embrace it, things went pretty well. He sat, waited about ten minutes, then hit the elevator button and followed her down, trying to sort through the complex mix of emotion in his gut.He’d settled on simple relief that it was not her doing the stealing by the time he stepped into the near darkness of the foyer outside her suite of offices. He halted at the first sound, a strange, low decibel decidedly human noise, somewhere between a sigh and a whimper. He took the few steps to her half open door and peeked inside. She sat, staring at something in her hands below the desk. Her shoulders shook with what he mistook for laughter at first, then realized she was sobbing. He gulped and stepped back, unsure what to do. Marshalling his inner care taker, he pushed the door open, going with the “oh sorry for the interruption” mode of operation. She looked up, tears streaming down her face, shocking him to his core. Without really thinking about it went to her side, put an arm around her shoulders, and caught of a glimpse of a photo as she slid it into the automatically locking drawer. She rose, her classically lovely face wet, her incredible eyes glowing and really, really close to his…holy shit. Lucas closed his eyes when her lips met his.He gripped her hair, met her more than halfway as she walked him backwards until he his back met the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Bosporus. She parted his lips with her tongue, making him groan at the amazing taste of her, the press of her lean body against his. He couldn’t figure out where to put his hands. A joke, he mused, briefly as he settled on one gripping the back of her neck, the other sliding down to cup a breast. He’d been called Magnet, as in pussy, as in he’d been a player his entire adult life. This should be nothing new to him, but somehow it was.She broke the kiss, stared hard at him, and spoke. “I need you,” her voice ghosted through him, making his entire body harden in anticipation. But he reached deep, yanked out his inner nice guy and took her by the arms. “No, you don’t.” He had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from flinging her over the tidy desk and fucking her six ways to Sunday. But something bugged him. “You don’t need him, and think you can purge it with me. But you can’t. The stakes are bigger than just who’s sleeping with whom and you know it.” She gulped, let him push her away. Then she turned away, giving him perfect back view, bringing that little devil guy to his other shoulder ready to arm wrestle Mr. Nice Guy into submission. She sank into her chair, hand over her eyes. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Pretty embarrassing.” He was at her side in an instant, tilting her chin up so he could look into her eyes.“Can’t blame you for doing what I’ve been thinking about since I met you.” She blew out a breath, a look he recognized settling over her features. One of determined focus, regrettably no longer of lust. “Whatever. Go away.” She waved a hand, but Lucas was not about to be dismissed now. They had to talk. But not here. He didn’t trust this building.“Come on Alexa,” He held out a hand. “Let’s go get some ice cream.” She glared at him a minute, angry for using the softer, more feminine version of her name. But he knew her one major food weakness so he beckoned with his hand again. “You know you want to.” She rolled her eyes and stood, but avoided his hand. He grinned at her predictability, put a hand to the small of her back, relishing the warm potential of her, but biting back on it, realizing it for an impossibility. She jumped a head of him. “Don’t touch me.” Her voice was low, angry. Something in his lizard brain snapped and her grabbed her, forced her to face him, leaned into her lips.“Don’t pretend that didn’t just happen Alexa.” She tried to turn her face, tears brightening her eyes once more. “Look at me.” She did and Lucas sensed the first of a million moments with her that his heart would cease beating for a half second, leaving him breathless. He got closer, keeping mere millimeters between their lips. “We will revisit it. I promise you. But not now, and not here.” He kissed her, keeping it noncommittal and frustrating himself beyond belief. Then let her go and strode to the door, his body thrumming with lust and a strange new sensation. Something he’d not identify until many months later.
Alex ignored him all the way down the twenty plus floors to the marble and glass lobby. The obvious swirling erotic tension settled in her gut, making her sweaty and anxious but she jerked her libido back under control, smiling at him as they exited the building together, entering the slightly polluted atmosphere of the Istanbul evening. She started down the sidewalk, annoyed that he kept so close, as if they were a couple or something. Damn the man. And damn her for acting like a horny old lady up there, jumping all over him like a cougar. “It’s him, isn’t it?” Lucas’ first words startled her. She grimaced realizing exactly what he meant but unwilling to recognize it. “Well, if you mean ‘him’ as in the man who runs this company and is stealing from it and setting me up, then yeah, I guess so.” She tried to find a place for her suddenly awkward hands, settling on shoving them in her jeans pockets. The memory of his firm lips, his hands on her nearly bowling her over with lust. “This place has the best dondurma going.” Lucas touched her again, making her nearly leap out her skin and step out his reach. “Such weird stuff, but I love it.” She sat, let him bring her a dish of the thick, sticky concoction. “Yeah,” she gave in to her hunger pangs and admitted addiction to odd combination of milk, sugar, mastic and salep—flour from an orchid. “Chewy and strange, but good.” He grinned at her over his own dish and they ate for a while, silent, but comfortable. They guy had slid into her life and taken over, seemingly simpatico to her needs as an assistant. Amazing, since she’d fired every other one of her assistants within months of hiring them. She squeezed her eyes shut at the memory, then opened them to find her staring at her.“We have to trap him. Force him to show his hand. Anything else and he puts it all on you. It’s a perfect set up, really.” Lucas kept eating, and Alex tried very hard not to stare at his full lips, his strong hands, the angle of his currently stubble covered jaw. She snorted, recalling the last night she’d spent with Jay. “He’s been so insistent lately. His divorce was final last week and the asshole brought me a damn ring. Tried to get me agree the fourth Missus Reynolds. Amazing.” She shook her head at herself, still unwilling to compute what the guy had been doing while simultaneously fucking her brains out and begging her to marry him. Lucas gave her a searching look. “How did he get access to your personal bank accounts anyway?” Alex shrugged. “I’ve left him alone in my place enough. I mean I encrypt so much stuff at work, I probably let my guard down some on the personal side. Don’t do anything as simple as clearing my browser on the laptop. You know. I’m a loner,” She gave him a little wave of a spoonful of the delicious frozen treat. He grabbed her hand, guided it to his mouth, making her nearly pant as he closed his lips around her spoonful of chocolate flavored goo. He grinned and let her go. “Cut it out,” she muttered looking down. “Sorry. Wanted to try the dark stuff. I’m pretty vanilla myself,” he raised an eyebrow at her, making her body heat up alarmingly. “I said, cut it out.” She frowned at him but couldn’t help but crack a smile at his goofy face. “You are impossible. What are you anyway? Fifteen? Twenty?”“I’m twenty-nine and completely impossible, yes.” He smiled and scooped up the last of his ice cream. “But I have an idea. And one I think we might both enjoy.”“I’m not enjoying anything about finding out I’ve been fucking played.” She shivered with a sudden chill, the swirl of emotions she’d experienced for the last hour or two almost overwhelming. She gasped when Lucas grabbed her spoon, set it down in the metal dish and held both her hands. The warmth of his touch eased her some but also revved her libido back up to near earth shattering levels. “I know,” his naturally low, gravelly voice shot through her. “But,” she watched as he raised her hand to his lips, incredulous as his brazen, public display. “I think,” he brushed her knuckles with his lips, then did the same with the other hand. Her thighs shook. “We can set a trap that a guy like Jay Reynolds has no choice but to fall right into.” Alex glared at him, as realization hit her in the gut.She lifted her chin, leaned on her elbows, pressing her breasts together and giving Lucas a lovely view at the V of her shirt. “Hmmm…,” she let him slide his large hands down her arms, cupping her elbows and then up the pebbling skin of her biceps. “You may be right.”
He leaned back, shifting a little in his seat, making her smile. “I know I am. Now,” he draped an arm over the back of the chair. “Tell me about the girl, the one in the pictures in your desk drawer.” Alex frowned, started to stand but he reached out and touched her again, his amazing green eyes alight. “I need to know everything about you if we are going to make this little charade work.” He let his hand linger on her skin. She took a breath, sat back down and changed her life forever by trusting him.
Wrong Place. Wrong Time.
If you are just now seeing this thing, get caught here.
Otherwise….carry on…enjoy….
Chapter ThreeAlex couldn’t breathe. She could literally not suck in air as she stared at the young man, the object of her fairly overheated fantasies lately, as his last words swirled through her brain. She stumbled back, almost fell over a chair. The second time he grabbed her arm to steady her within five minutes of making her breathless for other reasons. She yanked out his grip and let a stew of anger and disbelief cloud her vision. “What in holy hell are you talking about?”Lucas swallowed once. Put some distance between them. “There is a discrepancy in the escrow accounts, fairly deep down in the financials, and the amounts box exactly with large sums getting deposited and withdrawn from your bank accounts.” She tried to register what he was saying, but something gnawed at a corner of her consciousness. Something Jay had said about two months ago. “You know,” he’d been wining and dining her at that time, trying to lure her to his bed. She’d been ready to tell him to stop trying so damn hard, just ask, she was bored enough to do it without all the fuss. “The board wants to shut down this division. The Eastern European branch is losing money. Move us all back home, or let us go.” He’d sipped his wine, stared into its deep purple depths. “I have to give them reasons not to. Or reason to, whatever I like, I guess.” She’d let him babble on, barely hearing him. His ego was enormous. Everybody knew this. His delusions of grandeur combined with a fierce competitiveness made him who he was. “I don’t want to leave here though. It’s an amazing place. Wish we didn’t have to.” He had pinned with a blue glare then, as if willing her to offer some advice. When she’d stayed quiet he went on. “Wish there were a way to keep things exactly like this, forever.” Alex didn’t fool herself into thinking Jay Reynolds loved her. She was convenient, a challenge at first, and his equal in many ways. He’d get bored with her soon enough. And she didn’t trust him any further than she could throw him. She put a hand to her throat, snapping back to the present. Lucas still stood, arms crossed, giving her the oddest look.“Oh fuck.” She shoved past him, hit the down button on the elevator, shutting him out as she got her head around something she did not wish to acknowledge. That she’d given Jay access to all the internal server passwords. “For research,” he’d drawled, trying to kiss her in his office for the millionth time. Typically only the CIO held those, for top to bottom security. They changed nearly hourly but she’d given him the key to access the encrypted files. She’d trusted the asshole, against her better instincts. “Holy shit, I’ve been…played?” Tears burned but she forced them away as she raced to her computer in her office, fired it up and stared at her bank accounts.
Lucas watched as the doors shut between them, his body zinging in ways entirely not suitable for work. Now was not the time to get attached to this woman but he sensed himself doing it already. They developed such a great working relationship he sometimes forgot why he was sent here in the first place. She was high strung and high maintenance but if you could get a handle on her temperament, sense the anxiety behind her inner control freak and embrace it, things went pretty well. He sat, waited about ten minutes, then hit the elevator button and followed her down, trying to sort through the complex mix of emotion in his gut.He’d settled on simple relief that it was not her doing the stealing by the time he stepped into the near darkness of the foyer outside her suite of offices. He halted at the first sound, a strange, low decibel decidedly human noise, somewhere between a sigh and a whimper. He took the few steps to her half open door and peeked inside. She sat, staring at something in her hands below the desk. Her shoulders shook with what he mistook for laughter at first, then realized she was sobbing. He gulped and stepped back, unsure what to do. Marshalling his inner care taker, he pushed the door open, going with the “oh sorry for the interruption” mode of operation. She looked up, tears streaming down her face, shocking him to his core. Without really thinking about it went to her side, put an arm around her shoulders, and caught of a glimpse of a photo as she slid it into the automatically locking drawer. She rose, her classically lovely face wet, her incredible eyes glowing and really, really close to his…holy shit. Lucas closed his eyes when her lips met his.He gripped her hair, met her more than halfway as she walked him backwards until he his back met the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Bosporus. She parted his lips with her tongue, making him groan at the amazing taste of her, the press of her lean body against his. He couldn’t figure out where to put his hands. A joke, he mused, briefly as he settled on one gripping the back of her neck, the other sliding down to cup a breast. He’d been called Magnet, as in pussy, as in he’d been a player his entire adult life. This should be nothing new to him, but somehow it was.She broke the kiss, stared hard at him, and spoke. “I need you,” her voice ghosted through him, making his entire body harden in anticipation. But he reached deep, yanked out his inner nice guy and took her by the arms. “No, you don’t.” He had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from flinging her over the tidy desk and fucking her six ways to Sunday. But something bugged him. “You don’t need him, and think you can purge it with me. But you can’t. The stakes are bigger than just who’s sleeping with whom and you know it.” She gulped, let him push her away. Then she turned away, giving him perfect back view, bringing that little devil guy to his other shoulder ready to arm wrestle Mr. Nice Guy into submission. She sank into her chair, hand over her eyes. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Pretty embarrassing.” He was at her side in an instant, tilting her chin up so he could look into her eyes.“Can’t blame you for doing what I’ve been thinking about since I met you.” She blew out a breath, a look he recognized settling over her features. One of determined focus, regrettably no longer of lust. “Whatever. Go away.” She waved a hand, but Lucas was not about to be dismissed now. They had to talk. But not here. He didn’t trust this building.“Come on Alexa,” He held out a hand. “Let’s go get some ice cream.” She glared at him a minute, angry for using the softer, more feminine version of her name. But he knew her one major food weakness so he beckoned with his hand again. “You know you want to.” She rolled her eyes and stood, but avoided his hand. He grinned at her predictability, put a hand to the small of her back, relishing the warm potential of her, but biting back on it, realizing it for an impossibility. She jumped a head of him. “Don’t touch me.” Her voice was low, angry. Something in his lizard brain snapped and her grabbed her, forced her to face him, leaned into her lips.“Don’t pretend that didn’t just happen Alexa.” She tried to turn her face, tears brightening her eyes once more. “Look at me.” She did and Lucas sensed the first of a million moments with her that his heart would cease beating for a half second, leaving him breathless. He got closer, keeping mere millimeters between their lips. “We will revisit it. I promise you. But not now, and not here.” He kissed her, keeping it noncommittal and frustrating himself beyond belief. Then let her go and strode to the door, his body thrumming with lust and a strange new sensation. Something he’d not identify until many months later.
Alex ignored him all the way down the twenty plus floors to the marble and glass lobby. The obvious swirling erotic tension settled in her gut, making her sweaty and anxious but she jerked her libido back under control, smiling at him as they exited the building together, entering the slightly polluted atmosphere of the Istanbul evening. She started down the sidewalk, annoyed that he kept so close, as if they were a couple or something. Damn the man. And damn her for acting like a horny old lady up there, jumping all over him like a cougar. “It’s him, isn’t it?” Lucas’ first words startled her. She grimaced realizing exactly what he meant but unwilling to recognize it. “Well, if you mean ‘him’ as in the man who runs this company and is stealing from it and setting me up, then yeah, I guess so.” She tried to find a place for her suddenly awkward hands, settling on shoving them in her jeans pockets. The memory of his firm lips, his hands on her nearly bowling her over with lust. “This place has the best dondurma going.” Lucas touched her again, making her nearly leap out her skin and step out his reach. “Such weird stuff, but I love it.” She sat, let him bring her a dish of the thick, sticky concoction. “Yeah,” she gave in to her hunger pangs and admitted addiction to odd combination of milk, sugar, mastic and salep—flour from an orchid. “Chewy and strange, but good.” He grinned at her over his own dish and they ate for a while, silent, but comfortable. They guy had slid into her life and taken over, seemingly simpatico to her needs as an assistant. Amazing, since she’d fired every other one of her assistants within months of hiring them. She squeezed her eyes shut at the memory, then opened them to find her staring at her.“We have to trap him. Force him to show his hand. Anything else and he puts it all on you. It’s a perfect set up, really.” Lucas kept eating, and Alex tried very hard not to stare at his full lips, his strong hands, the angle of his currently stubble covered jaw. She snorted, recalling the last night she’d spent with Jay. “He’s been so insistent lately. His divorce was final last week and the asshole brought me a damn ring. Tried to get me agree the fourth Missus Reynolds. Amazing.” She shook her head at herself, still unwilling to compute what the guy had been doing while simultaneously fucking her brains out and begging her to marry him. Lucas gave her a searching look. “How did he get access to your personal bank accounts anyway?” Alex shrugged. “I’ve left him alone in my place enough. I mean I encrypt so much stuff at work, I probably let my guard down some on the personal side. Don’t do anything as simple as clearing my browser on the laptop. You know. I’m a loner,” She gave him a little wave of a spoonful of the delicious frozen treat. He grabbed her hand, guided it to his mouth, making her nearly pant as he closed his lips around her spoonful of chocolate flavored goo. He grinned and let her go. “Cut it out,” she muttered looking down. “Sorry. Wanted to try the dark stuff. I’m pretty vanilla myself,” he raised an eyebrow at her, making her body heat up alarmingly. “I said, cut it out.” She frowned at him but couldn’t help but crack a smile at his goofy face. “You are impossible. What are you anyway? Fifteen? Twenty?”“I’m twenty-nine and completely impossible, yes.” He smiled and scooped up the last of his ice cream. “But I have an idea. And one I think we might both enjoy.”“I’m not enjoying anything about finding out I’ve been fucking played.” She shivered with a sudden chill, the swirl of emotions she’d experienced for the last hour or two almost overwhelming. She gasped when Lucas grabbed her spoon, set it down in the metal dish and held both her hands. The warmth of his touch eased her some but also revved her libido back up to near earth shattering levels. “I know,” his naturally low, gravelly voice shot through her. “But,” she watched as he raised her hand to his lips, incredulous as his brazen, public display. “I think,” he brushed her knuckles with his lips, then did the same with the other hand. Her thighs shook. “We can set a trap that a guy like Jay Reynolds has no choice but to fall right into.” Alex glared at him, as realization hit her in the gut.She lifted her chin, leaned on her elbows, pressing her breasts together and giving Lucas a lovely view at the V of her shirt. “Hmmm…,” she let him slide his large hands down her arms, cupping her elbows and then up the pebbling skin of her biceps. “You may be right.”
He leaned back, shifting a little in his seat, making her smile. “I know I am. Now,” he draped an arm over the back of the chair. “Tell me about the girl, the one in the pictures in your desk drawer.” Alex frowned, started to stand but he reached out and touched her again, his amazing green eyes alight. “I need to know everything about you if we are going to make this little charade work.” He let his hand linger on her skin. She took a breath, sat back down and changed her life forever by trusting him.
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