Mister Monster: A Hero Club Novel Read online

  Dress how you feel. That’s how I lived.

  I expected polished marble floors at the top of the Anderson building. Instead, thick beige carpeting swallowed my heels as I walked toward the big door at the end of the hall. There were barely any doors at all. Just a few small ones on either side of the hall and the one big door with the sign that read: A. Sugarbaker.

  The door was shut and no light shone through the frosted glass. This was the man I would be working directly under, and it didn’t even look like he was in his office. The first floor receptionist I’d gotten my badge from had said my office was right next door to his, and I would have instructions once I got there, so I knocked on Mr. Sugarbaker’s door, and when there was no answer, I shrugged and tried one of the smaller wooden doors to the left.

  It looked like the right place?

  A simple wooden desk, a computer, and a phone, one leather office chair, and a row of file cabinets along one wall. That’s it. That’s all there was in the room. It was sparse and…dare I say, ugly? Oh well, this was what I’d asked for, and I was taking quite a cut in responsibilities from what I was used to handling so beggars couldn’t be choosers. I would be working directly with the CEO. Someone second only to Gabe, which it couldn’t be too bad, could it? I just needed to take the time to make this space my own. Maybe some blinds for the window overlooking the top of the brick building next door, for starters.

  Next to the keyboard, lying pale against the black of the desk blotter was a legal-sized envelope. The front of the envelope read: C. Gower, and nothing more. I muttered to myself as I daintily sliced open the envelope with a fingernail. The envelope contained one sheet of paper, a left justified typed list of instructions. I felt my jaw slacken as I read the list to myself. Then I put it down on the desk. Then I picked it up and read it again.

  There had to be a mistake. Was this some sort of office hazing?

  “Maintenance is on a project today and can’t be pulled away. Please see to hanging any window dressings if you require them. Measure the windows and find what you need in the supply storeroom on the first floor.

  The file cabinets have been moved, but we are short staffed and the actual files you need are still downstairs. Check with the third-floor receptionist and she can direct you to what you need. You can find a cart in the first-floor supply room. If there isn’t one there, go to the basement mail room and borrow one from them.

  Please find any office and desk supplies you need in the fifth-floor supply room. If there are any shelving requirements, you can find the hardware in there. Again, maintenance is not available, but I’m sure you can handle installation yourself. You seem quite capable by your paperwork.

  Once you have picked up all of your supplies and gotten your office and the files straightaway, study the phone manual to learn the phones. You can pick up the manual from the receptionist on the first floor. You won’t have to use all of the same functions she does, but I would like you to know them, nonetheless.

  If you have any spare time after that, please find a way to occupy your time in a productive manner until I’m available to give further instruction. Feel free to spend some time in the basement mailroom. You can learn all about the different departments by spending time down there. Actually, it would be better for you to spend several hours there each day until you are acclimated.

  I look forward to working with you,

  A. Sugarbaker”

  He was fucking kidding, right?

  What kind of asshole did I work for? And he literally spelled out that I was not to contact maintenance for help. He wants me to hang shelves and window blinds? And what’s up with these instructions that have me going to a bunch of different floors in search of basic items for the office?

  I know I asked Gabe to fit me in somewhere but I was confident in what I was bringing to the table. I also grew up knowing Gabe Anderson like a cousin, so I was sure he wouldn’t do me like that. This stunk of new employee hazing, and if A. for asshole Sugarbaker wanted to scare me with tactics like this—he was in for a rude awakening. I was a Gower. And even though I pretty much cut myself off from the family—that didn’t change the pride in who I was.

  Boss wanted to mess with me? I’d give him something to mess with. I’d tackle everything on this list. I’d learn it. I’d complete it. I’d get my little cart from the mailroom and heave-ho to every floor, gathering my goods. And on my way, I’d introduce myself to every employee. I’d make nice with people on every floor.

  I’d have my name on the lips of every employee in Anderson Investments by the end of the day. With a determined huff, I pulled the tie holding my blazer over my chest even tighter, tied it in a double knot, and went off in search of some stuff to block out my stellar view of that hideous brick wall.

  That was how I felt at nine a.m. By three thirty in the afternoon I was exhausted from floor hopping. It had taken three trips up and down that slow ass elevator, with the tiniest cart they could find for me in the mailroom, just to get all the files I needed for the cabinets in my office. Why the hell didn’t they just bring them up with the files still inside them? It’s not like someone carried those things on their shoulders, for crying out loud.

  I started with the reading material for the phone system and the internal accounting software. I’d worked with the updated version of said software at my family’s company, so unlearning a little of the updated perks took little to no time. I even showed Kathleen in Human Resources a couple of cheat strokes that would save time off her repetitive routine by programing some hot keys I’d learned back home. Ally—one in HR—score.

  I checked out the mail delivery system. It was straightforward from floor to floor and anyone with half a brain would have it figured out in thirty minutes or less. Every staff member I met looked appropriately embarrassed that I was sent on such a wild goose chase to begin with, and not for the first time, I wondered just what kind of dickhead I’d been placed under. I would have a few choice words for Gabriel when I saw him again.

  It wasn’t until I went searching for a drill, and started lugging window treatments, shelving and a stepladder into the elevator, that someone finally broke the silence. Randy from maintenance finally couldn’t take watching me struggle and tried to help for that last elevator trip.

  “He told us no one was allowed to help you. Said he wanted to see how you could handle yourself.” Randy couldn’t look me in the eye when he said it, just tried to take the blinds and drill out of my hands, pulling a little harder when I wouldn’t let them go before giving up altogether.

  “Thanks, Randy, I appreciate the help. But If I’m supposed to be passing some kind of weird test, I guess I should probably give it one hundred percent, huh? Plus, I don’t want you to get in trouble just for helping me. I can take it from here, thanks for looking out for me.”

  Randy blushed under the stubble of his post pubescent beard scruff and mumbled something with a ma’am at the end of it, and left me in the elevator. And the heat of that victory kept me going until I got upstairs and lugged everything into my office. I finally ran out of steam when I snagged my heel in the thick carpet and twisted my ankle. Kicking my heels off and groaning at how good my bare feet felt against the carpet, I realized I was actually feeling my bare feet against the carpet. My hose were shredded, barely hanging on to my ankles, and rubbed through with holes. I tore those off and ditched them on the pile of shoes. I’d ditched my lanyard and badge in my purse a long time ago, once I realized I only needed those things for entry and exit from the building.

  Taking one step up the ladder to hang the blinds, I couldn’t move. I hiked my skirt up a little bit, and climbed up, drill and hardware in my hands.

  It was when I reached the top of the ladder everything went south. The leg of the ladder slid on the carpet and the drill in my hands slipped from my grasp and tumbled to the ground. Instinctively I reached out to catch it, but lost my balance in the process, my slippery feet sliding right out from under me. I couldn�
�t stop the shriek from ripping from my throat any more than I could stop myself from tumbling from the top rung of the ladder. I probably wouldn’t break anything, but depending on the angle of my fall—it was most likely still going to hurt.

  I heard the masculine shout the same time as my world tilted sideways, but instead of braining myself on the beige carpeted floor and knocking myself out with all the hardware I dropped on the way down, I landed with a fwump in the circle of some very large, very firm arms.

  4

  Ash

  I recognized that ass before anything else. I don’t know what I expected when I strode into the office at the ripe hour of four in the afternoon. Actually, yes, I did. I expected to find my prissy trust fund wuss, struggling under the load of some manual labor. What I did not expect was to see the woman I only knew as Church, stripping off her nylons, tossing them on the ground and then hiking her skirt halfway up her butt to climb a ladder with a drill in her hands. She wore a lacy purple thong, with a string that slid right up the crack of her ass—from what I could see of it.

  God, I want to see more of it.

  What the hell was she fucking doing, anyway? She didn’t have a badge, which meant she was probably a temp. So, the fucking Gower dick conned a temp into doing his work for him? And it just so happened to be Church? Not that I was complaining, but I couldn’t very well walk into that office and talk to her with my dick as hard as it was. Or maybe I could, we’d had some pretty good banter when I met her, and I’d been thinking about her pretty nonstop since I met her. She was a little headstrong for me, but fuck me, with an ass like that I might let her get away with a little attitude.

  Then all thoughts of letting my cock soften went out the window when her foot slipped and she fell sideways off that ladder. And it became even more impossible when I grabbed her in midair and she landed in my arms, one hand firmly grabbing right between her bare ass cheeks, and her arms instinctively reaching around my neck.

  With a muffled gasp, her eyes flew open and the recognition was instantaneous. At least she looked just as surprised to see me as I did her.

  “Hello, Church, what the hell are you doing here?” I demanded, trying not to move my hand as she shifted her weight and my thumb slid dangerously close to the front edge of her panties. I didn’t think she noticed yet. She was still in shock from her fall. From seeing me.

  “Well? What are you doing here?” I asked again, this time softer. It wasn’t her fault my new hire was a piece of shit.

  Did my facial expression call him an idiot? I hoped not, but I still felt the frown pulling down the corners of my mouth. “Hanging the blinds.”

  “For fuck’s sake, why?”

  “Because my asshole boss told me to.”

  I saw red at that. That new hire kid with a chip on his shoulder was not her boss, and if he was going to start throwing his weight around like that on his first day on the job, I’d have him out on his ass in a heartbeat. Fuck what Gabe said—hired and fired on the same day. I kept a clean house.

  “He is not your boss; you don’t listen to him.” I didn’t mean to growl the words at her, but I could feel the tension it caused in Church. I could tell just how she felt about the sound of my voice by the deep inhale that pressed her breasts closer to me. I could feel her skin warm up because my hand was still palming her ass cheeks, and she leaned into me a little more so that my thumb flirted dangerously close to the lace edge of her panties.

  For a second our eyes met, and I lost my train of thought so that my thumb slid right under that barricade of lace and across her swollen flesh, my hand coated in her arousal.

  By fucking accident.

  Jesus Fucking Christ. She wasn’t my type of woman. She wasn’t.

  But the sound she made when I touched her so intimately made my already hard cock come to even more painful attention. She clenched involuntarily and a soft gasp crossed her lips. The things I wanted to do to her right then and there were reflected in the green of her eyes. And then, just as her breath hitched, begging for more . . . the fucking phone rang.

  “Fuck,” I said, still holding her off the ground.

  She cleared her throat and shifted away from my hand. “Can you please put me down and pretend none of this happened?” It was costing her dearly to speak, I could tell as her voice quivered.

  “That is fucking impossible, Church.” I could barely talk myself. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but if you think I can ignore your sweet response to me as it’s dripping down my hand, I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, I am not that strong.” She clenched again and her head dropped down, trying to hide her face from me. That was okay. It wasn’t her face that I wanted to see right now.

  “How about this? I’m not even going to put you down, that’s how hard I am for you. I won’t put you down because if I do, this moment will break. I feel it.” I kept talking to the top of her head as I backed up closer to the door, shut it tight, and flipped the lock with a satisfying click. “What I am going to do is sit you on the edge of that desk. Then I’m going to pull down those useless panties you barely have on, and I’m going to slide my tongue in your pussy until you scream. And I want you to scream. Does that work for you, Church?”

  I could see the mental warfare flitting across her face. She wanted this. She wanted me. I could feel it and I could smell it. Her legs trembled as I sat her on the edge of the desk and knelt on the ground in front of her, pulling her legs over my shoulders as I sank to my knees on the soft carpet.

  A smile flitted across her face before she shook her head. “I can’t…my boss.”

  “Fuck him. He answers to me anyway. Okay?”

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  Just to show her who was boss, I hiked her skirt the rest of the way until it bunched up over her hips and sank down in front of her until my heels touched the backs of my legs. I didn’t even bother to move the scrap of panties out of the way, just buried my face as far as I could between her thighs and opened my mouth wide, sucking as much of her sweet folds into my mouth as I could, and sucked hard.

  “Fuck me,” she screamed, her hips bucking against my face.

  “Oh, trust me, Church, we’ll get there. But first, tell me you want this. Use your words. Tell me you want me to eat that sweet pussy. I won’t do it again until you say it.”

  “I want you to lick my pussy.” The words came out of her mouth so strong and clear they took me by surprise.

  “Say it again.”

  “I said, lick me.” She reached down with one hand and moved her panties to the side, spreading her lips apart with her fingers and baring her clit to my view. “If you’re going to do this, do it. Finish what you started.”

  Too bold. Where was the embarrassed woman from thirty fucking seconds ago? In one breath she was asking me to put her down and the next she was ordering me to finish her? Oh, my dearest, no. That’s not how we do things. That’s not how I do things.

  Still, kneeling on the floor, eye level with the very dripping part of her, I wanted to finish her. But it would be under my terms.

  “No, Church. You’re mistaken. You don’t tell me, you beg me. So, ask nicely and I’ll take excellent care of you.”

  “I don’t beg,” she said, jerking her chin up; a far cry from the bashful creature I’d held in my arms just moments ago. “You want it just as bad, why should I beg?”

  My cock twitched at her audacity. “Because I want you to. And you will, if you want me to finish.” I ran my fingertips lightly around the edge of her vulva to prove my point. Lightly tracing her outer lips, dipping my fingertips into her arousal and using it to just barely caress her clit. Light enough to feel it but not hard enough for any satisfaction. Her heavy panting was my immediate reward.

  “Just do it.” She ground the words out as she tried to lock her legs around my shoulders, but I wouldn’t let her.

  “Say the words.” I traced her again, this time flicking my tongue lightly everywhere but where she needed the
release the most, blowing lightly on all of the wet spots. I laughed as her hips jerked backwards like a whip crack.

  “Oh God, I can’t be doing this here.”

  “But you already are, and you can’t undo that, so say the words,” I commanded. Already moving closer again, knowing I had her right where I wanted her, and eager to continue where I left off as soon as she gave me what I wanted.

  “Please.”

  “Please, what?” I was pushing, I knew, but she could give me more. She would give me more.

  “Please lick me. Please make me come.”

  “Who is in charge of you right now?” Why are you still pushing her, asshole? I thought to myself. Stop prolonging this, you both want it. But I was perverse in my persistence. I’d have the words.

  “You are.”

  “That’s right, Church, don’t forget it.” I cast her panties aside with a rip, and from her gasp I thought maybe I’d misjudged my strength and hurt her. But no. She locked her legs around my shoulders and shoved herself right into my face. I had no choice but to open my mouth and drink from her, greedily lapping up what she offered to me. Reveling in the fact that, sure, I was on my knees, but she acknowledged my ownership of her in that moment. It was me she begged for release.

  She submitted.

  I sucked her dry, and when she lay limp on the desk, her eyes rolling back and her legs sliding off my shoulders, I moved again. She wasn’t finished. Not now. I still had plans for her. Slipping her over onto her stomach, I leaned her over the desk again, her ripe ass cheeks pointing toward the sky. I thought about testing her to see if she’d taken a cock there before, but maybe now wasn’t the time. I was too hard to exercise the kind of patience it would take to be gentle with her.

  No. Gentle has a place and time, and it was not here. Not now.

  I kicked her knees apart and pulled her ass higher in the air until she braced on her tiptoes. And pressing my cock against her opening I thrust into her from behind. She arched upwards and screamed, but I didn’t slow down and I didn’t stop. And she didn’t ask me to. Instead she reared back against me, matching me stroke for stroke until the only sound in the room was the violence of flesh slapping against flesh. She raised up on her elbows on the desk. That little bow that kept her blazer tied shut in the front had come undone, and she’d lost a button on the front of her too tight blouse. Her heavy breasts swung free, barely constrained by the lacy cups of her bra, and her nipples grazed the desktop as I pummeled her ass cheeks. She slammed back against me in response. I probably could have gone for a lot longer, but the trembling in her thighs and the scratching of her fingernails into the wood top of the desk signaled a second release for her, and I couldn’t hold on. I should have pulled out. I should have done any number of things, but I didn’t. I pulled her back against me as I leaned forward over the top of her and bit her hard on the back of the shoulder as I emptied myself into her, gripping her against my cock as hard as I could.