Redemption (Complete)

7. Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda

Carlton had called his secretary Bev in for a few minutes just before he left to go to the break room. He needed more coffee, but he didn't want to spend any more time with her than he had to. She was wearing some ridiculously low-cut blouse and had more buttons undone than was absolutely necessary.

"Did you run out of the house before buttoning up the rest of your shirt?" he asked her snidely. He was in a bad mood not surprisingly. He had not gotten much sleep over the weekend and it was not a shock to him as to why. "If you needed more time to dress, you should have gotten up earlier or called in to say you would be late at the very least." His voice was cutting as he spoke and Bev had the grace to blush.

"Sorry, Sir," she apologized to him. "I guess I didn't realize I was more undressed than dressed this morning when I left the house. I'll fix myself in the bathroom in a few."

"Please do," Carl told her shortly. "And while you are at it, please give these photocopies to Aiden's secretary for the meeting tomorrow. They need to be collated and put into binders for the board."

"Yes, Sir," Bev said timidly as she grabbed the stack of papers and left the room.

Carl sighed, glad that he was finally rid of his secretary. If she hadn't known all the ins and outs of his office, he would have taken a leaf out of Aiden's book and gotten a temp hired in seconds flat.

As it was, he was hesitant in finding a new one with all of the upcoming contracts being signed. It would be a recipe for disaster for Kintech and one he wasn't about to force. He would have to be more strict with Bev and maybe have Aiden send out a general email in regards to the work dress code. Carl was sure that his secretary would get the hint then.

After Bev left, Carl made a brief pitstop in the men's bathroom before heading to get himself another coffee. He had drunk three cups already and it was only noon.

Walking out of the break room, he looked over at his secretary's desk. A pregnant Constance was standing there talking to Bev and Bev was speaking lowly back, looking a bit upset.

Carl ignored the two women and went back to his office before closing the door lightly behind him. He saw that after a few minutes, Bev took the stack of paperwork and made her way to the elevators, probably going up to Aiden's office with the documents. Carl opened up his laptop and started to reply to some emails from Harry who was concerned about timetables of the contracts and the amount of money being funneled into the projects. There was also an email from Ramon who wanted to see if he wanted to go out for drinks after work. Why the man didn't just text him, Carl didn't know.

A soft knock on his office door interrupted his concentration and he called out for the person to enter. Surprisingly, it wasn't the person whom he expected.

"Hello, Carlton," Constance said after she opened the door. "Can we talk for a bit?"

Carl got up from his seat behind the desk and walked around the side of the desk toward her.

"Sure, Constance," he told her. "What's up? My congratulations on your engagement again by the way." Carl grinned tightly at her, trying to relax his facial features. He was indeed happy for her- and Aiden- but there was a slight discomfort in there as well. The root of which he couldn't place.

Constance frowned at Carl. "That's what's up," she told him and he squinted at her, not understanding what she was getting at.

"I don't understand," he told her, c*****g his head slightly to the side.

"Your face has been like a cat's ass for weeks," she told him and he had to stifle a snort. Constance may now be engaged to a billionaire, but he doubted that her crude tongue would ever settle on acting like she was. She was not an elegant woman and Carlton admired her lack of pretense.

"My apologies about my face," Carl said with a lopsided grin. "I was born with it. Can't really do anything about it and I can't pull off the paper-bag-over-the-head look. Makes me run into walls too."

Constance thinned her lips and grunted slightly.

"I don't mean your actual face," she said. "I mean... ugh- you look like stepped in a dungheap and have yet to rid yourself of the smell."

"Meaning?" Carl asked as he raised a brow at her.

"You aren't happy and it shows all over your face," she advised him. "And from what Bev told me, you've been jumping down her throat like there's no tomorrow."

She wishes, Carl thought to himself.

He sighed and sat back down behind his desk. "If she would wear something appropriate to work and stop flirting with me through her clothes- or lack thereof, I would probably be less on edge with her," Carl admitted.

Constance shook her head. "There's something else besides that," she said. "Something that goes deeper. Is it a woman? Have you fallen for someone and she's not interested?"

How did this f*****g woman know that?

Carl sighed and rubbed his chin with a hand.

"There is... someone I am interested in," he admitted. "But it doesn't matter because I will never be able to have her. Not in this life anyway."

"Why not?" Constance asked. "I came from some hillbilly backwater with little education and a somewhat... unmanageable past and I found my happily ever after. Why can't you as well?"

"First off, I don't know if she is 'it', as you might say," he told her. "And even if she was my happily ever after, I can't do anything about it. There are people who would probably torture then kill me." He paused. "Probably try to resurrect me just so they could kill me again."

Constance scoffed. "Ridiculous," she said. "It can't be all that bad. If you have deep feelings, this person or persons will surely understand that. Eventually."

"So, I just have to avoid the person who will want to wring my neck until they get with the program of me being with thei- this person?" Carl laughed a little at that. "Impossible."

Constance scrutinized Carl for a moment before speaking. "Is it someone in this office that you are attracted to?" she asked. "If it is, I doubt Aiden would mind you mixing business and pleasure if you are genuine. Hell, he did it himself."

That made Carl wince a little bit. It reminded him of the bet that he had made with Aiden a year ago. Of course, if he hadn't made the bet, there was a good possibility that Constance and Aiden would have never gotten together. He had tried to make himself feel better with that knowledge but still ended up feeling like a s**t when he thought of it.

Constance had caught his almost imperceptible wince and softened.

"I don't hold any grudge against you, Carl," she told him. "As ill-conceived an idea as it was, it ended well don't you think?" Her hand absentmindedly caressed her bulging stomach and she smiled a bit as she spoke. She made it clear with her words and gestures that she bore no ill will towards one of her fiancee's best friends.

"s**t happens and sometimes things work out," she told him, walking over towards the door again. "You will never know what you missed out on if you don't at least try to find out what could be."

Carl sat at his desk for a good while after she left, thinking on what she had said to him. He wanted to believe she was right. That sometimes things just worked out. But if things didn't this time, he would lose more than just the girl. He would lose a friend as well.

And as determined as his body was to have her, he would have to settle for just wanting her.

******

Carl spent the next couple of weeks trying to wrest Violet's image from his brain to no avail. All women he hit on all resembled her in some way. Whether it was the tilt of their lips when they smiled or the way their hair curled to their waist, it was all one big fat reminder of what he wanted and couldn't have.

He had thought at first that he could probably get away with at least bedding her and trying to just get it out of the way. Then he tried to think of a way to make it work with her. With rainbows and unicorns and all the other happy horse s**t that came with... whatever this was.

Now, he was just trying to kick his own ass into forgetting all about the woman with the deep blue eyes and wavy black hair who haunted his dreams nightly.

Every time he woke in the morning, it was with memories of his dreams about her and a raging erection that even the coldest of showers in the Antarctic couldn't have diffused. Jacking off to porn did nothing and he spent more time trying to not c*m to thoughts of Violet than actually giving in and imagining it was her hands or lips wrapped around his c**k instead.

He could spend twenty minutes trying to get off by watching porn and then finally giving in to fantasies of his friend's daughter and bust in less than five minutes. It was frustrating and made him feel guilty every time he saw Harry's face.

What made it worse was that besides his friends, family back east and work, his life was devoid of much else. No meaningful relationships. Not that he had wanted any prior to this. To think that the one person he could seriously see himself with was probably one of the few that he couldn't have without stirring up a hornet's nest. No wonder he was such a sourpuss lately.

It was late on a Saturday evening when Carl awoke from a long nap. He had been watching some awful Saturday afternoon tv and had fallen asleep to some sappy romance. It hadn't interested him and had been about some unrequited love the man had for a woman who was out of his league culturally.

If only castes had been the problem with his feelings towards a certain someone. He could have easily bucked the traditions of the mid part of the 20th century. He didn't give a s**t about what people thought of him in all honesty. Let them think he was settling for someone below his social class. They would eat their words in the end. But this- this was something different.

And what the hell would happen if he ended up with Violet? The age gap didn't really unsettle him, but could he honestly see Harry and Mathilde as not just friends but... in-laws?

It f*****g boggled Carl's mind- as did the fact that he had once again dreamt of Violet during his nap. And woken up aroused to the point that he knew he would have to take care of it soon. His balls were already aching and he knew a cold shower would do nothing to deflate his hardened member.

Too tired to attempt to get up and put in a video, he sat up on his couch and undid his button-fly jeans. He pulled his c**k out of his boxers and groaned as his hands skimmed over the sensitive head.

Well, this isn't going to take long, he thought to himself.

He started off where his dream had left off. He had already had Violet in his bed and she was straddling his hips as he bounced her on his engorged manhood, tossing her head back and moaning as her t**s bounced.

Violet's hands were placed on Carl's chest as she worked up and down his length. His hands were on her hips as he watched her breasts sway invitingly.

Bending his knees, he thrust up hard into her and she screamed out with the suddenness of his movement.

"s**t, Carl!" Violet cried out as she looked down at him. She didn't seem too upset at him, only slightly perturbed. Her eyes held a hazy lust and Carl thrust up into her once more before pulling her body down so that she was chest to chest with him.

"What's my name, Baby?" he roughly asked her. His breath tickled her ear and Violet shuddered as her p***y clamped around him at the dominant tone in his voice.

"f**k!" He had given her another hard thrust and almost came up off him with the movement. "Carl," she answered.

"Wrong," he growled out and gave her another punishing thrust into her. "What's," Slam. "My." Slam. "Fucking." Slam. "Name?" Slam.

He was f*****g her hard and fast and she was whimpering as she tried to answer.

Rolling her over so that she was on her back, he spread her thighs even wider as he circled his hips with each thrust.

"Say it!" he demanded. He slammed into her again and he felt her p***y start to convulse around his unsheathed length.

"f**k! Daddy, I'm coming!" she called out in her release.

"f**k! s**t!" Carl's d**k squirted onto his unclothed abdomen. He had known it was coming and had pulled his t-shirt up a bit so as not to soil it.

Carl sat back in his seat, his ass almost hanging over the end of the couch. He could feel the warm liquid on his abdomen and knew he should get up to clean himself off. But he also knew that he should wait and make sure that his d**k was finally going to behave. It wasn't unheard of that he could come twice in a row just thinking about his girl.

No- not his. A girl.

The girl he wanted an couldn't- or perhaps only shouldn't- have.