Sapphire’s Delaney Dilemma

Chapter 5

An hour later she was back in her own office where Bill was grumbling and griping about having to train someone to take her place and on such short notice. He muttered something about needing coffee and headed to the kitchen area.

 She ignored him and called home, praying Emerald would answer.

“Sapphire.”

“Dadai,” she sighed impatiently knowing he used his magic to determine was on the other end of the phone. They had no use for caller I.D in their home. “Is Em, around?”

“No, your voice is high. What is going on?”

“I got promoted at work.” She waited for him to begin his long and winded spiel on prolonging her delay in completing her duties. She did not have to wait long.

“And what of your other obligations, Sapphire Rose. Have you forgotten you are supposed to be deciding which husband you will choose so your destiny can be fulfilled?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten but I would like to point out I am mistress of my own destiny, and I will not have you or anyone else, dictate to me how or when it will be carried out.” She retorted angrily, forgetting momentarily she was in the office and her voice took on the thick accent of her homeland.

 “Dadai, do not think for one minute I will allow you to pressure me to marry some dolt not worthy of my time.” She clenched her fist around her coffee cup and grimaced. “Now, I’m assuming since you are in such a foul mood Em and Mamai, are out in the garden with the children avoiding you like the devil himself?”

“Do not be sassy, young lady.” Her father warned.

She was a more powerful sorceress than he would ever be as a sorcerer and yet as her father he still demanded her respect. “Or what Dadai, what will you do?” She asked suddenly ready to fight with him.

“Sapphire Rose, you and I will discuss this impertinent behaviour when you get home.”

“Dadai, I am not a child, and it would serve us both well if you would somehow try to get it through your head.” She set her cup on the desk and looked up in surprise to see both Bill and Drake standing in the door. Bill’s mouth was hanging wide open, his jaw slack with incredulity and his eyes bugging in his flushed face.

Drake seemed slightly startled by what he witnessed but she saw something else in his eyes and she quickly turned away from it. In this moment of temper, he found something about her desirable and she had to not allow it to continue. Instantly she lowered her voice, returned it to the pitch-perfect whisper of American twang she’d mastered in her youth and spoke quietly. “I have to go. Tell Em my good news please and I’ll see you when I get home.” She hung up the phone before he could say anything else.

“How the hell do you do that?” Bill, in his usual annoying, loud, and belligerent tone demanded. “You have the thickest Irish accent I’ve ever heard. What kind of game are you playing?

“It’s not Irish but it is from near there,” she spoke quietly. “I moved here to America as a small child and it’s easier to just sound like everyone else than it is to sound different. As a child I learned very early different doesn’t fit in.” She deliberately kept her gaze away from Drake. “I rarely hear my own voice anymore unless my father jumps on my last nerve which he just did.” She put her hands on her desk as she stood up and changed the subject.

“I’ve completed the payroll so it will run on Monday automatically, so it will be one less thing to think of. I’ve also completed the review of the advertising department’s monthly expenses and I’ve left the report with some sections highlighted for your review.” She held her hands out with a copy of the report. There was no point in hiding any longer how much of Bill’s work she actually did for him considering it was apparent Drake had known. “Oh, and your doctor called and asked you reschedule your appointment for Monday instead of tomorrow morning unless it is urgent.” His prescription for yet another s****l enhancer must have run out. She bit back the grin wanting to surface at his scowl.

Drake eyed her coolly, masking whatever she had thought she had seen in his eyes earlier. “Rose, I have a luncheon meeting and Wanda has suggested this would be a good time for you to begin your training.”

 “Would it kill him to smile even occasionally,” she wondered to herself furiously knowing it was pointless to argue with him. She lifted her purse from her bottom drawer of her desk and headed to the door wordlessly.

Again, his hand settled on her low back, and she couldn’t blame him. Most men, whether they were conscious of it or not, were drawn to touching her. It was of course her body exuded seduction and not even a terrible wardrobe could mask. For the most part, she kept herself at an arm’s length from anyone in the office but since Delaney was close, it was impossible for him to not be drawn. It would be so easy for her to seduce him and make him her plaything but for some reason it did not seem enough to make him want her, she wanted him to want her without her powers forcing it.

They were silent in the elevator, and she kept her eyes on the lights telling her which floor she was on. On one attempt to kill her, the Guild had locked her in a metal box and had dumped nightshade and holy water on her in repeated doses. She’d been burnt and injured but when they’d opened the doors to check on her, the built-up fury had blown the metal clear off their hinges and no amount of their combined powers could have dealt with her pent-up rage. She’d destroyed them until there had been nothing left of the three warlocks but the snippet of hair, she’d kept from one of the men. She’d sent it back to Bartholomew in a tiny box she’d filled with deadly nightshade and holy water. It had taken twenty years before they’d tried again.

She thought again of Monday. Although the spell the men had used to get her into the car had been quite powerful, it almost seemed as if the Guild was not considering just as they trained and contemplated ways to murder her, she trained equally hard at staying alive and contemplating their next moves.

“You are very quiet,” Drake spoke breaking the silence as the doors swished open to the lobby.

“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say,” she replied honestly.

“Are you even interested in where we are going?” He looked sideways at her as he led her to his car.

“You said a luncheon.” She spoke quietly.

He started to regret his decision to hire her at her words. She was almost too quiet for his liking and if she couldn’t engage at all with his counterparts, she’d be useless to him. “I have several contacts from various companies and venues, and it is simply an informal meeting to discuss different ways of coping with the current economy. We’ll be out of the office for a couple of hours. You can take notes and listen attentively. If at any point you feel you have something to add, do not hesitate.” Somehow, he knew she was going to be silent the entire time.

She nodded once and tried to get the scent of him out of her head. She couldn’t put her name to the cologne or the aftershave he wore but there was something in it wafting in her direction making her strangely aroused. She was going to have to sit next to him for a couple of hours, think straight and not rip his clothes off. “It was going to be a hellish afternoon,” she decided angrily, suddenly aware of her polar tendencies as she moved from lust to fury in a millisecond. Her chest rose and fell as she fought to control her annoyance. She needed s*x, not an afternoon of playing working girl.

The close confines of his sports car made her even more aware of him and she looked at him and noticed he had color on his cheeks, his eyes were hard and staring straight ahead, black as night and just as deep and his jaw was tight, his teeth clenched behind his straight lips. She wondered if he was struggling to control his own hormonal reaction to her because she was emitting crazy doses of pheromones. She looked away and stared out the window, folding her arms over her chest as she realized the foolish man was simply in his usual poor mood. Then he spoke and she was shocked.

“What the hell is your problem?” He asked suddenly as he heard her sigh under her breath for the fourth time in as many minutes. He took in her rigid posture and the way she was hugging the car door as if wanting to roll out at the next stop. “Do you really hate the thought of working for me so much you appear ready to jump out of the car at the first red light?” His words were harsh and angry and although he didn’t raise his voice she felt as if he was screaming at her from across a cavern.

She had already been annoyed but now his words served to infuriate her and she spun back to face him, her eyes blazing. “You ignorant jerk! How dare you address me like this? Who the hell do you think you are?” The insignificant human fool was trying her patience in the worst way. “Just because you’re my boss does not give you the right to speak so patronizingly.”

The tires screeched on the pavement as he pulled them onto the shoulder of the road and he turned to face her now, his own eyes spilling his fury at her. “I am tired of watching you huddling in a corner and pretending to be a frightened kitten. You forget, I heard the way you were on the phone earlier and I now know different. You are no more a church mouse than I am. Stop playing games and acting afraid of me.”

“I’m not playing games and I’ve never said I was afraid of you and I’m certainly not huddling from you.” Her face was inches from his and she leaned into him, her breath in short puffs as she drew angry hisses of air, inhaling his scent which only infuriated her more as she felt again the pull of lust for something she should not have. “Fear is the last emotion I feel, in any situation and not even you with your high-handed attitude could change this.”

“Is that so?” His nostrils flared as he moved in, her breath sweet and reminding him somehow of ginger and jasmine and his lips were only a hair from hers. “Then tell me why it is you tremble so violently.”

“Because I want you,” she said honestly, without reservation and knowing later she would regret it but the shock registering in his eyes kept her speaking, “I want you and I know there is nothing but a dead end in you and so it’s not worth the time or the effort and yet I want you just the same. That is why I avoid you. That is why I keep to my own office and that is why I don’t want to work with you!”

“Then we have a dilemma,” his hands were still very much occupied, one on the steering wheel and one on the shift and yet as if he was pulling her closer to him, her torso was leaning into his, her head tilting to one side knowing he was going to initiate a kiss, “because as much as all of this is true, I can assure you there is nothing to ever come of it, I want you.” His tongue licked the corner of her mouth just before he closed the gap. It hadn’t occurred to him until this very moment he wanted her but as soon as she’d spoken, he did.

Her hands stayed clenched in her lap, his hands never touched her but the moment their lips touched, Sapphire’s entire body felt engaged and ready. Her breasts were straining against the front enclosure of her bra, her n*****s jutting through the cotton of her pale pink blouse in hard buds, her legs twitching in anticipation of locking around his waist while he filled her, and her lips parted for the intrusion of his tongue. His tongue slipped alongside hers and she sighed knowing this was not going to be enough but bracing herself for the inevitable she would have to stop this before it went too far, or she would regret it. But just as quick as it had started, his lips tore from hers, his breath shallow and uneven as he threw the car into gear and began driving at an alarming speed down the freeway. “We have ten minutes to make it to lunch and I’ve never been late.”

“Oh,” she answered as she fought to clear her mind of the fog which suddenly reminded her of the way the thick mists clung to the peaks of the mountains at home. The thought of home made her even more confused, and she blinked rapidly as she had a sudden longing for her chalet in the hills.