Legally Binding Read online

  But when she brought it to him, he ignored her.

  “Mrs. Donahue said two tablespoons of cream, right?” she asked, carefully placing the gleaming silver tray atop the credenza.

  He didn’t look up from his work. “If I wanted something different, I’d tell you.”

  So much for Mr. Banno being the approachable partner.

  She dumped the cream into the coffee and placed the mug on the desk.

  He reached for it, then paused. “The sugar?”

  “Oh… um…” Using the stupid little tongs, she picked up one white square. It glittered like frozen snow.

  It slipped out of the tongs, slid across the desk and disappeared over the side.

  “Fuck!” she said, then clamped a hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

  His eyes were like ice. “Pick it up.”

  She stared.

  “Now.”

  Springing into action, she hurried around the desk and crouched.

  Mr. Banno used the side of one polished black shoe to nudge the sugar cube under the desk.

  Confused, she sat back on her heels and looked up at him. Being on her knees in front of her boss felt funny. It made her mind go to strange, forbidden places, to things that could never happen in real life.

  “Get it,” he ordered, sliding back with his chair and making space for her.

  Oh, this was humiliating. To retrieve it, she had to crawl under the desk, her palms and knees scraping across the carpet. Her skirt was uncomfortably tight over her ass and the backs of her thighs.

  There was a paper clip on the floor, so she picked that up, too, then scrambled to her feet.

  “Fix your shirt,” Mr. Banno said.

  She looked down and saw how the fabric had bunched up under one of her breasts, pulling the neckline to the side and exposing an inappropriate swell of cleavage.

  She quickly straightened herself out, then dumped the sugar into the trash. She kept the paper clip, though.

  “Maisie?” Mr. Banno said. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I… I’m sorry. Did you need something?”

  “My sugar.”

  So she had to walk back and do the sugar ritual again, but this time she got close with the bowl and didn’t screw up.

  Mr. Banno picked up his pen and began writing something, like she wasn’t even there, and Maisie took the opportunity to flee the room.

  “What the hell was that?” she murmured as she plopped down at her desk and tossed the paper clip into a drawer.

  Then she realized.

  That was payback.

  A smile crept across her face. Game on.

  An hour later, she had another excuse to return to Mr. Banno’s office. Technically Mrs. Donahue was the one sending her, but Maisie had angled for it by asking several times if there wasn’t an errand she could be running, to avoid sitting for too long.

  But not only was his door closed, his assistant—Maisie didn’t remember her name—was sitting at her desk.

  “I need to speak with Mr. Banno,” Maisie said.

  The secretary’s gaze dipped toward the folder Maisie was carrying.

  “It’s about the Easton case. Mrs. Donahue said to make sure Mr. Banno saw this subpoena right away. I’m supposed to bring it back to her.”

  The secretary shrugged, then picked up the phone. “Something that needs your attention,” the secretary said. “Yes, sir.” To Maisie, she said, “Go on in.”

  “Thank you. They really run us ragged here, huh?”

  “You’re telling me.” She turned back to her work.

  Maisie entered the office. Mr. Banno might have been surprised to see her, but he turned away so quickly that she couldn’t see the look on his face. “What is it?” he asked.

  “A copy of a subpoena that came in for Easton, about some documents related to his dry cleaning business.”

  “Bring it here.” Mr. Banno stood, and she gave him the paperwork. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the chair beside the credenza. “This will take a few minutes.”

  It was going to be more difficult to seduce him with a desk between them and her stuck in a chair, which was maybe his intention.

  But Maisie refused to give up so easily. She sat gracefully and crossed her legs, knowing her tight skirt would highlight the outline of her shapely thighs. She swung her foot a little, letting her high-heeled shoe dangle from her toes.

  And then the shoe slipped off and hit the floor with a quiet thump.

  Mr. Banno glanced over, but he didn’t say anything.

  Maisie delicately removed the other shoe, then stood and went to pour herself some water from the tray on the credenza. She couldn’t think of a good reason to bend over, but she very much wanted to give Mr. Banno the image of her curvy ass, so, carrying her water, she undulated over to the coffee table and bent at the waist to study the magazines on offer.

  Nothing juicy, just law journals and reviews. It was a bit of a disappointment.

  “Put your shoes back on,” Mr. Banno said matter-of-factly.

  She sashayed back to the chair and wiggled into her heels. Mr. Banno watched, his face expressionless.

  “Am I allowed to choose a magazine?”

  “If it’ll keep you from moving around and distracting me.” He shifted away from her.

  But she’d caught a glimpse of what he was trying to hide: an obvious tent in his pants.

  She’d only gotten a peek… Too bad.

  She chose a magazine at random and couldn’t help glancing back to see if Mr. Banno was watching her.

  He wasn’t, but he’d hooked a finger behind the knot of his tie. She watched hungrily as he tugged it a little looser.

  She slipped open another button of her blouse, then sat primly in the chair. Mr. Banno was marking notes all over the pages she’d brought.

  Holding the magazine up so he couldn’t see what she was doing, she slid a finger into her shirt, then her bra.

  It wasn’t easy to pull the cups down so that her nipples were bare under the shirt, but she managed it. When she was done, she took the magazine back to the coffee table.

  “Finished,” Mr. Banno said, holding out the marked-up papers and the folder.

  And then he saw her.

  His eyes went from her face right to her chest, where her heavy breasts jiggled with every step as she returned to him. The fabric of her shirt slid over her nipples, the stimulation turning them into hardened little peaks.

  Maisie knew men were visual creatures. Give them the sight of an attractive woman who might be interested in sex, and it was difficult to get their attention on anything else.

  Mr. Banno was attractive, successful, and wealthy. There was no way he didn’t get as much pussy as he wanted.

  But he probably wasn’t used to women trying to seduce him at work.

  “Will that be all?” she asked innocently.

  Mr. Banno swallowed hard and looked toward the door. “Um, yes. Thank you, Maisie.”

  She felt his eyes caressing her ass as she walked out.

  A smile of triumph made her cheeks ache. She held the papers in front of her chest until she’d fixed her bra.

  “Type this up.” Mrs. Donahue handed Maisie several stapled pages. The handwriting was different than before, sloppier. It wasn’t from Mr. Banno.

  Too bad.

  In fact, the writing was so messy that she could barely decipher it. After a few minutes of valiant effort, she took it back to Mrs. Donahue, who put on her reading glasses.

  After a moment, she said, “Nope, I can’t read it.” She removed the glasses. “Mr. Brennbach’s handwriting is a bit of a disaster to begin with, and to make it worse, sometimes he writes while he’s driving.”

  Maisie looked at the chicken scrawl and wrinkled her nose.

  “You’ll have to ask him to clarify what that says. Some of it you’ll be able to figure out in context, but you’d better check on the name and the address.”

  A strang
led sound escaped Maisie’s throat, but one look at Mrs. Donahue’s stern features and she knew better than to beg for a favor.

  She trudged back to her desk and typed as much as she could, but there were several sentences she couldn’t begin to guess at.

  No getting around it—she’d have to go to Mr. Brennbach.

  Unless she told Mrs. Donahue about what had happened on the street. But if she did… That might come off as gossiping. If Mrs. Donahue told another assistant… if it got around the office and Mr. Brennbach found out… disaster.

  Girding herself, she set off to find the beast himself.

  6

  To Maisie’s relief, Mr. Brennbach’s secretary was at her battle station.

  “Hi,” Maisie said. “It’s my first day, and I can’t quite make out some of these words.” She fanned the papers.

  The assistant jerked her head at the door. “He’s in.”

  “Um…” Maisie smiled and held the papers out. “I was thinking maybe you can read it?”

  The assistant didn’t quite roll her eyes. “I spend enough of my time trying to unscramble his scrawl. Enjoy!”

  Her heart pounding in her throat, Maisie headed for the door. The assistant stopped her. “You can’t just barge in there. Call first.”

  “Oh.”

  A phone sat on a table beside the door. Maisie pushed the button labeled E. Brennbach and picked up the receiver. “Good afternoon,” she said. She hoped she sounded professional and not like she was about to upchuck. “I’m outside your office. If you have a moment to spare, I’d like to—”

  “Come in, and close the door behind you.” He hung up.

  Had he recognized her voice? No… he wouldn’t. But by process of elimination, he might know it was her.

  What if he’d been extra careless with his handwriting to force her to come down here? Maybe it was a trap.

  The taste of shame in her mouth, she opened the door and walked into the lion’s den.

  Mr. Brennbach was watching when she entered. From the second she set foot in his office, she felt like she was on trial.

  “Hi,” she said, feeling stupid, then immediately pulled her gaze away from his face. She looked at everything except him, but his image was imprinted on her retinas: that flawless body, irresistible in a tailored suit, his thick hair perfect for a woman to dig her fingers into while she rode him hard. His face was a blur, though.

  She swallowed and tried to focus on his office, with its classic dark wood furniture. The design was more modern than the other two, but not by much. Maybe it was a legal thing, she thought. Maybe clients expected classic sophistication. Bookcases lined the walls on either side of her. Intimidating-looking law books crowded their shelves. There was a wood filing cabinet, too.

  “Where’s the typed form?” he asked, his voice unnecessarily loud.

  “On my computer.” Where the hell else would it be?

  He picked up a yellow legal pad and tossed it across the desk at her. Impatiently, he jerked his hand, beckoning her closer.

  She practically ran across the room to hand the papers to him. “It’s just the name and address, and the second paragraph under the notes section.”

  For some reason, her gaze jerked to his, and she found he was staring intently at her.

  Instantly she was sinking into the gray depths of his eyes. She felt naked in front of him, like he could see all the naughty things she’d been thinking about doing to Mr. Banno.

  Things she ached to do to him, too.

  She wanted to lean across the desk to sniff him, to catch another whiff of that delicious aftershave.

  He cleared his throat. She waited for him to say something… then realized he was expecting her to pick up the notepad and a pen.

  Her fingers frantically grabbed out. She fumbled the pen but managed not to drop it on the floor.

  “Elmore Rubins, Jr.,” he said, and spelled out the last name.

  She quickly wrote it down, and when he gave the address, she wrote that, too. Then he was quiet for so long that she looked up from the notepad.

  “Let me ask you a question,” he said.

  Her heart skipped a beat, then pounded back to life, working overtime. Why was it so easy to lose herself in his eyes? She didn’t want him to think she was gawking. Even though her eyes were locked on his, she couldn’t help being aware of the two halves of his face, one smooth and handsome enough to make women swoon, the other stiff, pitiless and cold, to make women shriek.

  He leaned back without releasing her from his stare. Her mouth felt as dry as the Sahara after a thousand-year drought.

  Was he waiting for a response from her? Or was all this part of his punishment, to make her feel as small as she’d made him feel?

  Eventually the silence stretched out for so long that she couldn’t stand another second. “What’s the question?” she blurted.

  Her voice trembled. He had to have noticed. A little smile turned up one corner of his mouth—the unscarred side. The effect was frightening… like he wasn’t intimidating enough, with his unblinking stare.

  “What were you looking at?” he asked.

  The fire of a rare blush shot across her cheeks and up her neck, like she’d bitten into a devilishly spicy chili pepper. Her face was so hot that she could feel blood throbbing in her temples and at the hinge of her jaw.

  “I am so incredibly sorry about that—”

  “This morning. What were you looking at that made you forget how to stand?”

  The blush bloomed even hotter. “The building,” she said quickly.

  “Why?”

  It wasn’t a trick question, but her mind had gone blank. This morning? It might as well have been a year ago. “I don’t know.”

  He seemed disappointed by her answer, but he didn’t press any further. Picking up the papers, he said, “What else did you need help with?”

  “The notes section,” she managed to say. Was it the second paragraph or the third? That bit of information had also flown out of her head, but she couldn’t make herself walk closer to him. “I can’t remember which.”

  She wondered if people always lost their memories around Mr. Brennbach. He seemed to be short-circuiting her prefrontal cortex.

  “Show me,” he said.

  Walking the few steps toward his desk was as difficult as if she’d tried to flap her arms and fly there. Yet, somehow, she managed it, probably only because she was staring at the papers and not into his arresting eyes.

  The notes section lay flat on the desk. The index finger of his right hand rested on it.

  Maybe it was her imagination, but it felt like an echo of what she’d done with Mr. Banno, when she’d pointed out the missing signature.

  She didn’t dare take the paper from him. Should she walk around?

  Maybe, if she could meet his eyes, she’d understand what he wanted. Today is a lesson in the importance of nonverbal communication, she thought. But actually, today was, above all, a lesson in humility.

  She sucked the swell of her lower lip into her mouth and, exhaling slowly, leaned over the desk to take a better look at the notes section.

  It was upside down. At the moment, she probably couldn’t have read anything if the letters had been eight inches tall and right-side up.

  Cooler air stirred over her chest, and she remembered that even though she had fixed her bra after tormenting Mr. Banno, she hadn’t re-buttoned the top of her blouse. Was Mr. Brennbach looking down her shirt? Were his eyes caressing the fullness of her breasts while he imagined ripping away her clothing and exposing her?

  The thought woke every dormant nerve in her body, and she became acutely aware of her pussy, which was wet—though she had no idea why or when that had happened. She’d made out with guys, long sexy sessions, yet had stayed bone dry. Lick it before you stick it, because otherwise she never got wet enough. But now she could feel moisture seeping through her panties, dampening the insides of her thighs just under her sex.

  “
Maisie.” His voice was so deep, the room seemed to vibrate with her name.

  How could one word fill her with so much longing? “Sorry,” she said, and had to stop to swallow hard. “The first few lines, I think.”

  “Make certain. Partners bill at $2,500 an hour. My time is valuable.”

  She squinted, bent deeper, and tried to focus. Now she could see the letters—or what Mr. Brennbach tried to pass off as letters. “The second paragraph,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”

  She could have straightened up, but for some reason she felt like she was waiting for him to… to what?

  To release her.

  Remaining in place, she forced herself to look up. The sun coming in through the window made her squint, but she stared defiantly into Mr. Brennbach’s eyes.

  “I’m not Trent Banno,” Mr. Brennbach said. “He thought about taking you across his knee and spanking you for your insolence, but then decided it would be prudent to restrain himself until after your probation.”

  “Spank me?” she asked, her mind reeling.

  “That’s correct,” Mr. Brennbach said. “Trent felt you deserved a spanking, and after hearing how you behaved, I’m inclined to agree. If you continue to shove your tits in my face, I’ll be obligated to take you in hand myself.”

  She flinched when he said the word tits, but she held her uncomfortable position. She hated that word, and he’d noticed. “No need to be vulgar,” she said.

  “Keep flashing your tits and you’ll see how vulgar I can be.”

  He wasn’t laughing, wasn’t even smiling.

  He meant what he’d said.

  7

  Maisie’s face was only eight inches from the desk’s surface.

  Her arms began to tremble, and she let her upper body sink another few inches. The desk reflected back her uncontrollable shallow breaths. She was drowning, right there in a room full of air.

  But she wasn’t going to stand straight. A smile tugged at her lips.

  With pointed deliberation, Mr. Brennbach’s gaze raked over her, pausing at her lips, then her neck, before settling on her partially exposed breasts. She could feel him, a hot phantom touch that she yearned to make real.