Control

Charlotte Stein has written over thirty short stories, novellas, and novels, including entries in The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance and Best New Erotica 10. Her latest work, Addicted, was recently called salaciously steamy by Dear Author. When not writing salaciously steamy books, she can be found eating jelly turtles, watching terrible sitcoms, and occasionally lusting after hunks. For more on Charlotte, visit: www.charlottestein.net.

Control

CHARLOTTE STEIN

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Mischief

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

Originally published in 2010 in England by Xcite Books.

Copyright © 2010, 2013 by Charlotte Stein

Charlotte Stein asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008148836

Version: 2015-08-17

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

More from Mischief

About the Publisher

Chapter One

The first applicant for the assistant job is very promising indeed. He puts his head between my thighs with minimal supervision and almost no prompting.

The only problem is—I don’t recall creating an oral presentation portion of the interview. Or, for that matter, a portion that requires the answer: you know you want it. To a question I don’t remember asking.

But I guess I must have asked for something, or none of it would have happened. Maybe it was all the staring I did at the curling, many-colored tattoos all over his heavy-looking arms. Or the way I bristled beneath the weight of his deep blue gaze. I must have leaned forward and asked about his previous job experience in a way that suggested an underlying code.

Job meant sex. Experience meant now.

It was sharp of him, really, to understand. He got a cross in the interview attire column—such a thin, barely-there T-shirt!—but he got a big tick in the “takes initiative” and the “understands subtle instructions” columns.

I don’t think I got any ticks in the “cool, calm, controlling boss” columns, unfortunately. But can’t I be forgiven? He looked like liquid sex and I can’t remember the last time I had anything even remotely resembling a drink. Or resembling a hard, solid body over mine. Or resembling the scent of someone besides myself all over me—the slick slide of a tongue against my skin.

It’s probable that some of these needs showed on my face. And though I’m sure that some people are of the mind that women who wear neat little pleated skirts and boxy corduroy jackets—the uniform of bookstore owners and librarians everywhere—are bookish and quiet and quite dull, there’s probably an equal amount who view said women as repressed cauldrons of lust.

I’m pretty sure he sensed my boiling cauldron.

I think he felt I was a certain type—the type who won’t admit they want it, not even to themselves. But when he pressed me up against the door to the back and then shoved me through, I didn’t deny anything. My insides shimmied to think of this big handsome man having me up against something. Just doing it, without columns or questions or things neatly arranged.

Even better than that, it had come to me in a sudden flash that he might be fucking me to get the job. Of course, such an idea could have put a damper on things—what a terrible person I am! How awful, how seedy! Such a shame that thinking the word seedy only made the whole thing sweeter—perhaps because the job is so nothing, so pathetic. It’s a sales assistant job. It requires all the skill and ability of a tomato.

But I’m a sucker for a tomato that lies on the casting couch for me, apparently.

When he had bent me over my kitchen table, I don’t mind admitting that I moaned aloud. I moaned and pushed my hand into my knickers before he even got there, skirt shoved rudely up, finger firm on my clit.

I was as swollen as anything, just swimming in cream and buzzing to the touch, while in my head I had imagined the casting couch version of him asking what it would take. Would I give him the job for a nice hard fuck? What about if he let me fuck him? His rough stubbled face would twist into a grin on that one.

The expression he didn’t make makes me wet, just thinking about it.

Back in reality, he had just kicked my legs apart. Grunted something like oh yeah, you really need it, huh? While the same thought sung in my mind and my clit fluttered and pulsed to feel my knickers being wrenched down my legs.

There’s nothing like a horny boy, and he was very horny indeed. He had bent me over the kitchen table and knelt between my legs, thrusting his tongue roughly into my pussy and all through my slit, juicing me up for his prick.

He needn’t have made the effort, however. And I felt it was only perfunctory anyway—a little flourish to show what a clever stud he was, before the main event.

The main event was glorious. As I sit here, going over the whole thing, I can almost feel the rough wood of my kitchen table, drawing against my cheek. The way the edge had bitten into my fingers as I held onto it, and the sound of latex snapping and my own trembling breaths rubbing through my aching body.

His grunts turned me on more, though. His urgent grunts, sawing back and forth as he jolted against me. And then his bruising grip on my hips and my bare arse, while his thick cock stretched and fucked into me.

I remember what he had said, shortly before he shot inside me. I remember because it almost made me giggle:

“You want it, you slutty little bookworm.”

But the giggle was cut short by the sudden realization that my feet were no longer touching the floor, prompting a fresh burst of arousal that turned into something more when, quite suddenly, he smacked one big rough hand down on my bare arse.

I had called out in twisting mixtures of pain and pleasure, feeling my pussy spasm around his jerking cock, gasping with relief when it became a tense and roughly unfolding orgasm.

And then even better, I had turned my head on the table and seen the person standing in the doorway—a person who could have been standing there for who knows how long and judging by the flush on his cheeks probably had been.

A very uptight and nervous sort of fellow, who ran when I caught him looking.

Of course I can’t hire him. When would we ever get any work done? I’m rocking in my seat right now simply thinking about him—anything more would be a complete disaster. Not to mention the travesty it would make of me, trying to give him an order. Clearly, he was not the type to obey commands without a whisper.

And that’s what I need. I need to be able to trust someone to follow my meticulous plans for my shop, whether I am here or not. The whole point of hiring an assistant is so that I can have a day off, a weekend off, a good night’s sleep. Maybe find some time to develop a torrid affair outside of work, instead of giving in to the voracious need to bonk potential assistants.

I have the whole thing laid out, and the lay out does not include rough sex in my kitchen.

Unfortunately, the second applicant does not turn up. And the third is just as wholly unsuitable as the first—a gum-chewing girl in an outfit I barely understand. Despite the fact that we’re not five years apart in age.

I’m ancient at twenty-eight, it seems.

By time I turn the open sign to closed and check and re-check the locks three times and climb the stairs to my flat.

I’m close to sure that it’s better to simply do everything yourself. I can rely on myself. I am trustworthy. Just look at the wonderful job I do of re-wording the advert for an assistant:

Reliable, hard-working, non-horny assistant required. Must have a thorough understanding of alphabetical filing. Experience working in either a bookstore or library desirable, but not essential.

Perhaps I should take out the word desirable. It just gives people the wrong idea, apparently. It gives them the idea to put their hand over mine, and then their hand on my thigh, and then they say things and suddenly we’re in the back of my store.

Later on, when I’m lying in bed pretending to myself that I’m watching The Office, I think about his tattoo. The one high up on his left bicep. It had been some sort of twisted artistic thing, something that I’ve got no idea about—but the blues and greens had drawn my eye. I like a man with tattoos.

Or at least, I think I do. It’s been a long time since I really thought about what I like, if at all. There was Greg, who beguiled me with his urgent forceful manner and his weird business-speak: all those alien words that I felt free to invent dirty meanings for.

When he rapped into his mobile that he needed to draw a line underneath all forward planning and brand to influence, my head had filled up with images of intricately constructed foreplay games and a big red S for slut stamped on my arse.

Sadly, I had been mistaken.

I was mistaken in Kevin, too. Kevin liked to speed walk. He went for power runs. I had high hopes for our bedroom adventures, but sadly his can-do up up up attitude did not extend to sex.

I think I may just be too difficult to please. Even today’s encounter, on reflection, doesn’t seem that exciting. Despite the fact that just remembering the wood against my cheek and the sound of harsh breathing in the tiny downstairs kitchen sets me off again.

I stop pretending completely that the television is holding my attention and play him back in my head, instead. The couple in the flat next door to mine—they own the pet store next door, too—are going at it, and it makes for a good soundtrack. Headboard banging against the wall, lots of grunts and sighs…they usually don’t make much of a fuss, but this time I definitely hear Jeanette, crying out with something that could possibly be real pleasure. It makes me wonder if I sound the same when I’m with someone.

It makes me wonder what I’m missing out on, if timid Jeanette’s getting better sex than me.

I press my finger against my still aching clit and sigh, just to hear my own voice. Then louder when I rub, gently, then louder yet to think of someone over me. The first applicant, with his sinewy arms and his tattoos and his narrow sly face, all rough with stubble. I imagine said stubble scraping against my sensitive places—my tight nipples and the soft expanse of my thighs and my clit—oh God rub my clit.

I’m wet before I know it and clutching at the pillow, the first applicant turning quickly into the usual suspects: that hottie from my latest favorite movie, that waiter from Delmonicos with the weird manner and then weirder yet…oh Lord, I always go weirder yet when I’m this close, body tensing and mind homing in on things I didn’t even know I wanted.

Like that guy, staring at us from the doorway.

I try to switch the channel back to the first applicant, to being pushed down over the kitchen table and shafted hard, but it’s too late now. My clit is jumping against my busy fingers and my juices are running between the crease of my arse cheeks, and I couldn’t stop even if the couple next door banged on the wall and told me to knock it off.

In fact, I think I’d quite like them to do that. There’s nothing like being caught in the act, it seems, even if the act is solo. I have a secret streak of needing-to-be-spied-on, and my mind won’t stop going there. To him, and his too-thick glasses and his tweediness and those hunched shoulders and Jesus, that’s a good image. Oh, that’s so good. I bet we really shocked him—I bet he couldn’t walk straight all the way home.

I bet when he got home he did just what I’m doing right now.

The thought is enough to send me right over the edge, so fiercely that it shocks me. All the sounds I wanted to cry out catch and stutter in my throat and I arch up off the bed, wanting more. I want a cock in my pussy and someone else’s fingers on my clit and when we’re through, I want to start all over again.

As I lie on the bed still shaking and dazed, I realize what I must want: someone to watch. I want to be watched, right now. Or else I want to watch someone else, someone tweedy and uptight. Is that it? I just don’t know. I own a smutty bookstore, and I’ve got no idea.

Could somebody tell me, please?

Jeanette from next door brings me a pie and I have to wonder: Did she hear me the night before last? It’s a possibility. But then again, she often brings me things. I think her and Derek believe that I’m lonely or too young to be running a bookstore or some such.

They’re nice people. She stays and has a chat with me during the before-lunch lull. We sit in the general romance section where I’ve got my comfy chairs and my little antique table so that people can pretend they’re in one of the big chains while they shop for porn.

Of course, I don’t sell erotica alone. But truth be told, that’s why people come to me. The big boys are terrified of being anything but family-friendly, so my store continues to make money. And I feel that I am family-friendly, anyway.

Families are born, after all, because of some of the things I sell. I’ve wanted to do the thing that makes babies plenty of times, after reading something from the erotic romance and erotica sections. Hell, sometimes the paranormal romance section gets me going, too. Sometimes just standing in front of shelves and shelves of reds and purples and flaming silvers gets me going.

I do love my store. Occasionally I’ll take my shoes off, just so that I can wriggle my toes into the thick crimson carpeting.

Jeanette seems to appreciate it, too. She keeps pushing her plain white trainers into the pile and she has that look on her face—the one she always gets when she’s in here. A kind of wonderment, I think, despite her sure and certain knowledge that I am a lonely spinster. She giggles every time she has to say the name of my store: Wicked Words.

Though at least she gets the intention. I honestly didn’t think people could miss it, what with the red lettering on black and all the glossiness, but I get a lot of disappointed Goths and Wiccans, too. Some who are expecting handcuffs, some who aren’t.

Not that I mind. In truth, I thought it would alienate far more people than it actually ended up doing, in such a bustling but twee city as York. And I honestly didn’t think that so many romance fans would be attracted, but I get more romance customers than any other. They like me, because I get in a lot of the big American names that take seventeen years to filter down to us. I get the smaller ones, too, that never appear on these shores.

I fill a niche with my Wicked Words.

“Did you manage to hire anyone yet?” Jeanette asks, just as I’m busy trying to think about books.

At least I can answer no, thank God.

“Really? That chap who came by yesterday looked…interesting.”

I think about his mouth, crushing mine. The wood against my cheek.

“Him? Oh, he was awful. No good at all. Couldn’t hire him.”

“That’s a surprise. He looked just the sort to fit right in here.”

She glances around as she says this—it’s pretty obvious what she means. Big, liquid-sex Andy Yarrow, surrounded by books that feature men just like him, doing plenty of randy things. Yes, I’m sure he’d fit right in amidst all the sex and the horny shopkeepers.

“He didn’t know the first thing about books,” I say, which is perfectly true. He did have plenty of firsthand experience of the kinds of things that go on in my books, however—though of course I don’t say this.

“That’s odd. Maybe he was just nervous.”

As Andy appeared about as inclined to nerves as a robot programmed to kill, I have to start wondering if Jeanette knows him somehow. Perhaps this is some sort of defense of him, which will then be followed by her persuading me to hire him. I can’t imagine why she keeps banging on about him, otherwise.

“I don’t think he was the nervous type,” I say, at which she laughs.

“What, that little mouse? I think we’ve got our wires crossed, Maddie. He was the most nervous I’ve ever seen such a tall man be! He could hardly ask me if you would make a nice boss. I told him yes, of course—”

“Who on earth are you talking about?” I ask, but of course I know the moment the words are out of my mouth.

The nervy guy. The one who watched.

“The chap with the dark hair and the glasses! Didn’t you interview him? Perhaps he took a fright and ran off…”

Of course, of course—he wasn’t some spying customer at all! He was my second candidate.

Chapter Two

It’s odd, showing him the ins and outs of the place. I can feel his eyes on me all the way around my store, as though they’re checking me for specks of seediness. My wicked ways are going to rub off on him—poor, sweet, nervous candidate number two.

His name’s Gabriel Kauffman. Gabe, he tells me, but he doesn’t sound convinced about this shortening of his name. Clearly he prefers Gabriel, but that’s a bit too formal for someone who’s probably seen most of my tits and at least some of my pussy.

Or maybe he doesn’t look convinced about the shortening because he’d like things to stay formal—something I can well believe when looking at him. He’s even more tweedy and well put-together than the glimpse had suggested.

He has side-parted his hair so perfectly, I could use the white stripe of his scalp to rule a line under Bargains! on the sign in the window. It’s made even whiter and straighter looking by the perfect coal black of his hair.

I think it should be weirder that I immediately think Snow White, but somehow it doesn’t seem weird at all. The perfect pale skin, the dark hair, the probable fear that seven dwarves are going to do dirty things to him…it’s all there.

Snow White was pretty nervous and unaware of her own beauty too, after all. And she likely thought all sorts of things, before the dwarves reassured her that they just wanted her to keep house.

I tell him his duties in a clear, direct sort of way. No sexual subtext.

He seems to respond well to boundaries. Restrictions. He’s as obedient as a dog, his tongue curling up to his teeth whenever I lay out another rule or duty for him. I explain that the shelves need dusting every Wednesday, that I like the little recommendation cards to lie flush to the wood, that the book of the week stand should be perpendicular to the shelf behind it.

I like right angles, I tell him, and his tongue touches his upper teeth. He has neat little pointed incisors, I note—that should seem vampiric, but don’t.

Eventually, he manages to work up the nerve to ask questions, though they’re not exactly the questions I expect. If Andy asked them, I’d be nervous. They’re the questions of a thief, a meddler, a pain in the arse.

“So, while I’m working in the shop, where will you be? Will you be here with me?”

He looks away while he says it, too. I’d think he was planning something, if he wasn’t so wound tight and reined in. He probably just wants to make sure he doesn’t fuck everything up.

“At first, I’ll be with you. There’ll be a short training period, and then you’ll be on your own for three mornings and two afternoons of the week. Maybe less at first, if you’re not quite ready.”

He turns and flashes me the first smile of this entire interview and hiring process. It makes his face different—much less somber, obviously, but it gives him a boyish air, too. His application told me he’s thirty, and he looks it until he smiles. It’s the heavy eyebrows, I think, and the tweed.

“I think I’ll be fine. Everything seems really straightforward,” he says, and then there’s a moment. It’s not exactly the kind of moment that tells me he’s going to use what he saw against me in some way, but it’s definitely one that gives the impression that he hasn’t forgotten. The whole thing hasn’t just slipped out of his head, as his behavior until now had almost suggested.

I think the event embarrassed him. But not enough to make him block it from his mind.

I stick out my hand, and he hesitates before shaking it. As though maybe sex is coating my palm, or girl cooties, or something similarly nerve-firing. It’s weird enough that I imagine, for a second, that he’s never actually shaken a woman’s hand before.

But then he steels himself, and grabs ahold of me, and shakes until my teeth rattle.

I need to get Gabriel on his own as soon as possible. I know this, because while we’re in the store together, stuff happens. Stuff that isn’t within the boundaries and restrictions and rules. And it’s entirely my fault and it’s nothing to do with him, it really isn’t.

It’s just that I keep thinking: watch me.

I keep bending over, right when I shouldn’t. In much shorter skirts than I’d usually wear for work. And stockings with seams, that I absolutely never wear for work. It’s much too delicious and addictive when he reacts as predictably as a puppet whose strings have just been pulled.

He gets flustered. Blushes are really obvious on his face, because his complexion is that perfect milk-pale—he can sometimes compose himself by the time I turn around, but he’s never able to hide that flush high up on his cheeks. Sometimes it even gets him around the throat and at the tips of his ears, and then I just want to lick it off him.

By the end of the fourth day, I’m beginning to suspect that hiring him was as much a mistake as hiring Andy would have been. Apparently I’m not allowed to hire any men at all, because I’m a sex maniac.