Secret Desires (Book Three of the Bidden Series)

  Natalie Harlow’s professional life is on track. Junior Vice President and account manager to Brighton New Media’s biggest client - Fitson Entertainment Groupe - she has everything she ever knew she wanted. All she has to do to keep it that way is hide the fact that her nights are spent with Fitson’s Chief Creative Officer, James Fitzgerald (known only to her as Gentleman Twelve).

  Their secret meetings under the guise of work are thrilling, but Natalie is constantly on alert that someone could find out - it is against Brighton policy to date clients - and bring to an end everything she has worked hard to earn. James, meanwhile, is growing tired of pretending in public that Natalie means little more to him than a stranger, and has hinted at an ultimatum: him or her job.

  Straining the already-burdened relationship is Celine, James’ soon-to-be ex-wife who has come to Los Angeles with a secret of her own; Ivy Whitcomb, an opportunistic co-worker with a past connection to Fitson; and Joe Gallo, who has his professional (and maybe personal?) sighs set on Natalie.

  Can Natalie and James’ relationship withstand bombshell revelations and secrecy? Find out in this provocative follow-up to SINFUL REUNION and CANDIDATE FOUR!

  SECRET DESIRES

  Book Three of the Bidden Series

  Crystal Cierlak

  SECRET DESIRES is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 Crystal Cierlak

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any format, digital or otherwise, without the expressed permission of the author.

  As always, for Jeffrey P.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  A thundering grey cloud clapped so loudly it nearly drowned out what sounded like urgent knocking at the front door. Natalie looked up from her open suitcase and listened, unsure if she had heard the knock at all. She dropped a folded bathing suit from her hands and walked with quiet footsteps to the front door. With two hands on either side of the peephole she leaned forward and closed one eye, but startled when the heavy knock pounded again from the other side. With held breath she looked through the small hole and exhaled at the sight of drenched honey-colored hair.

  "Natalie open the door."

  She hadn't expected him to show up so soon, but neither was she surprised. It was foolish to think he wouldn't follow her. The rain had started pouring the moment she left the driveway and continued all the way down the mountain and west back into her own city. The downpour and subsequently slick freeway lanes meant the trip - ordinarily two hours in decent conditions - took just over three. She listened to the sound of cascading sheets of water and let her mind empty of everything. It was still dark then, and now the sky was alight with a grey mid-morning. How long had he waited to leave after realizing she'd gone?

  "Natalie!" he called through the door again. "I'm not leaving. I need to-"

  She opened the door before he could finish the sentence. He was wearing the suit that had appeared rumpled the previous evening but was now pasted to his skin, drenched uncomfortably to his muscled body. His jawline was fuzzy with three-day growth that only made him even more maddeningly handsome, if such a possibility existed.

  "I don't need an explanation, James."

  "Bullshit." Rainwater spit from his mouth as he cursed the expletive. "Why did you run away from me in the middle of the night?"

  Natalie's hand gripped the doorknob even tighter. "I didn't run. I left." She knew it wasn't the whole truth. But she didn't have the energy to hash it out with him now. "Please go. I have a lot to think about and I'm probably going to be fired tomorrow so I'd like to get some rest before the big event." She got the door halfway shut before his foot planted across the threshold and stopped her from shutting him out.

  " Natalie. I lo-"

  "James!" she shouted, effectively interrupting him. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, and then took a hard look at him. She'd never seen him so disheveled, so emotionally open and vulnerable. She couldn't speak rationally to the man, not when so many revelations had effectively changed the entire dynamic of their relationship, which had already been on uncertain ground. There were only two directions they could go from here, and Natalie felt like she was trapped. What was she supposed to say to this man who had shared her deepest intimacies?

  "I can't. Please just leave."

  ONE

  Natalie's red hair cascaded wave after wave down her backside as she arched her body, her insides tightening as James' sturdy hands held her hips firmly in place during his final thrusts. She cried softly, wordlessly. Her lips parted open as bliss spread like instant warmth throughout her body. Her legs, bent at the knees as she straddled his hips, had gone limp and prickly as they pressed into the leather seat, but she didn't mind. She loved the sensation of being lost in the moment, transported out of her body into another plane of existence by sheer force of pleasure. The high lasted only moments but the muscle memory always reverberated long after, a physical reminder until the next climb to satisfying climax.

  The hands on her hips moved with a certain gentleness to her shoulders, encouraging them and her back to straighten again. She barely had time to open her eyes before his mouth was on hers, their lips slick with moisture from their intertwining tongues. When she finally opened her eyes they were met with a set of all-too-familiar blue-green eyes made darker in the dim lighting of the backseat of the Town Car, beyond the view of passers-by in the company parking garage.

  "This is the third lunch this week we've done this," she finally said through gusts of breath she was still trying to catch. "I think I'm burning more calories than I get the chance to eat."

  "You should let me take you out then," James said as his fingers pressed into her backside, pulling her in closer. He kissed at her lips and then her neck, tasting of her exposed flesh. "We can discuss marketing strategy over steak."

  "No!" Natalie protested, leaning just enough out of his grasp to look him square in the eye. "We agreed: no talking about work. It's bad enough I'm sleeping with a client, let alone one of our biggest." The subject had been something of a sore spot for Natalie from the moment she was promoted to Junior Vice President and realized the man she'd been sleeping with had just so happened to be Chief Creative Officer of Fitson Entertainment Groupe, a client whose billable hours made her salary look like chump change. Of course she had no idea when they first slept together, which made his admission that he had known about her work at Brighton New Media suspicious at best. She immediately worried that her sudden promotion had been due to nepotism, a thought that had made her blood boil. But she believed him when he said he had nothing whatsoever to do with her job; though that never stopped the nagging doubts from trickling in once in a while.

  "Between not talking about work and not talking about the divorce-" Natalie physically bristled at the d-word "-we're running low on topics of discussion," he gently chastised. "Not that we've been getting in much conversation past the word 'hello' recently."

  "I only get so long for lunch, James. Would you rather we meet in secret to talk about politics or the weather?"

  "No, I'd rather we not meet in secret at all, Natalie. What I'd love is for you to come over to my place."

  His place was a penthouse suite at the Jacqueline, an exquisite boutique hotel that successfully married old Hollywood glamour with next millennium technology. And of course the property was yet another jewel in the Fitson Entertainment Groupe crown. Natalie had tried - successfully at first - to convince
James that living out of hotel rooms was not exactly homey, but he went back to living like a player in a perpetual game of Monopoly, claiming that every house he looked at wasn't the right fit. Natalie suspected that, despite his protests to the contrary, James had a difficult time sitting still and placing down some roots, a belief that she kept in mind whenever she felt her heart strings being tugged a little too hard by one Mr. James Fitzgerald.

  She climbed up and off of him and unceremoniously pulled up her panties and slipped her shift dress over her head and shoulders. "I can't go to your hotel, James. You're a client. Besides, I'm usually exhausted by the time I get home, eat dinner, take my bra off..." She chuckled to herself at that last bit.

  "Well stop having contortionist car sex in the middle of the afternoon and maybe you won't be so tired. And I'd be more than happy to take over bra removal duty from you." Still partially undressed he pulled her back into his lap and cradled her, his forearm balanced beneath her shoulders. "We could get out of the city this weekend. I don't own any hotels in Santa Barbara we could stay in to make you feel ethically challenged, but I do happen to know of a private beach where we can do whatever we want." He leaned in and kissed her gently on her lips. "For however long we want."

  Natalie sighed, already regretting the words before she could speak them. "I can't. I have meetings stacked up on top of each other next week and I need the weekend to prepare."

  James held her close and took in the features of her face, from her eyes to her lips and back again. She noted that the intensity that often accompanied his face was back, making his handsome features wooden and stern.

  "Are things between us okay? Are you trying in your own way to not spend time with me?"

  Natalie gave him an are-you-kidding-me look. "You were literally just inside me and you're wondering if I'm trying not to spend time with you?" He grimaced involuntarily, either at her words or his own, and she let her face relax, her voice soften. "I haven't figured out yet how to get to know someone that I could get fired for dating."

  "So quit your job." He said it so easily, so naturally as if it was normal in the current economy to just up and quit a job that finally paid decently and offered some upward mobility. Only a rich person, she thought as she internally rolled her eyes.

  "Not an option," she stated unequivocally.

  "Why not?" he shrugged. "Come work for me. You can do exactly the same job you're doing now and not have to hide the fact that we're having incredibly outstanding sex every possible moment."

  He wasn't lying about the sex part. Or about how incredibly outstanding it was. Natalie wrapped her arms around his neck and stared him directly in the eyes. "Do you remember how pissed I was when I thought it was nepotism that got me my promotion? Working for you would be taking that to several next levels of nepotistic favor."

  "Ah." He finally seemed to get it.

  "Not to mention the fact that your business partner is your sister-in-law. It's awkward enough in our current situation."

  James stroked his fingers along the silky strands of Natalie's volumized, just-fucked hair. "Don't worry about Audra. She's a professional through and through."

  Natalie smiled through a tight line in her lips. "That doesn't change the fact that she's the sister of the wife whose husband I'm currently having incredibly outstanding sex with."

  "So is that it then?" he asked. "I'll just randomly call you at work under the pretense of lunch, have sex inside the car in a parking garage and wait until one of us has a free weekend so we can go somewhere I don't own property and no one we know will find us and you won't have to worry about losing your job?"

  "We'll figure it out, James." She kissed him chastely on the lips. "It's only been a couple of months." She kissed him again, lingering but keeping their contact light. Neither one of them needed much in the way of foreplay to get naked again, but she couldn't just blow off work. No matter how good the sex was.

  The intrusive vibrating of a phone brought them back into the present. James groaned and reached for the device to check the screen, his eyes scrutinizing the display as if they were looking at something unpleasant.

  "I have to take this," he grumbled as he shifted in his seat, the movement encouraging Natalie to get off his lap. She slinked back into her own seat and reached down for her bag as James answered the call. She only heard bits of his side of the conversation, and he was talking so low it was difficult to hear anything at all. Natalie focused instead on touching up her lipstick and gently pressing an oil-absorbing sheet onto her cheeks, chin and forehead. She tapped the home button of her phone to check the time and found several notifications waiting on the screen, a text from Quinn the newest of the bunch.

  "We can discuss that later," James spoke to whomever was on the other side of the phone call, breaking Natalie's attention away from her phone. He looked tense. But then again he usually did.

  Put back together again in something she hoped passed as appropriate, Natalie closed the clasp on her purse and relaxed back into the leather seat of the Town Car. Was she making things difficult for them both? For their relationship? She didn't want to think that she was just a rebound from a failed marriage; that he was actually trying to make something with her that he no longer had with his wife, if he ever had it at all. But Natalie wanted to be careful.

  It had been seven months since that fateful night at The Golden Palm when she was Candidate Four and he was Gentleman Twelve, buying her for an evening of her time. They had a connection despite the unusual circumstances, and she knew he regretted the five months that came after that night together when they thought they'd never see each other again just as much as she did. Meeting by chance in Las Vegas -- at his own hotel no less -- was a sign, she knew that for certain. James lived in a completely different world, in a totally different lifestyle. Ordinarily they would have never crossed paths. But cross paths they did, and Natalie couldn't deny she loved being in his orbit. She didn't want that to end.

  Still, proceeding with caution seemed like the smartest thing to do. They were still getting to know one another and there was no guarantee in the world that he wouldn't come to find he had nothing in common with her and simply move on to someone else. Or she could find something about him she was incompatible with and decide they were better as friends or maybe just strangers. She would allow herself to live in the now, to appreciate what they had in the moment and not think ahead to the future in any way. That, she knew, would protect her.

  "Okay I'll see you then. Bye." He tapped the screen to end the call and stuffed the phone into his pants pocket, button and zipping the two open sides together to make himself presentable once again.

  "Why don't you come over? To my apartment, I mean," she asked as she turned in her seat to face him. "It's not a five-star accommodation but if it'd make you feel more at home I can provide you with complimentary turn down service."

  James visibly relaxed and smiled at her. "Depends. What kind of amenities do you offer, Miss Harlow?"

  "The kind that polite girls like me don't say out loud."

  His smile spread across his face until it reached his eyes. "Then show me."

  TWO

  Natalie was mid-chew on a mouthful of salad when her assistant, Shane, knocked resolutely on her office door.

  "I brought you coffee," he said cheerfully, making the coffee cup dance in his grasp as he passed the threshold and headed towards her desk.

  Natalie eyed him suspiciously, knowing better than to just accept a free coffee without any strings. "You've added something to my schedule last minute, haven't you?"

  "Maybe." He bit his lip and closed his eyes as he nodded. "Yes," he relented. Natalie took the coffee and sipped from it generously as Shane took a seat opposite her desk. He crossed his legs and very flamboyantly flipped his head until the longest lock of his highlighted hair danced off his forehead and landed with a soft bounce on the top of his head. "Evil Jenifer-with-one-N from Graham Martin's office sent out emails to the vee
ps and other higher ups while you were out at lunch. Word around the cubes is there's going to be a shakeup."

  The 'cubes', or cubicles, were Shane's domain. There wasn't an ounce of office gossip he didn't know about first, which both amused and terrified Natalie. So far she'd done a pretty good job of hiding her unethical affair with one of Brighton Media's biggest clients. Shane liked to gossip, but never with malicious intent. She never once had the suspicion that he knew about what she was really doing on her lunch breaks. In fact she suspected that he believed she wasn't capable of doing anything that might be considered indiscreet.

  "A shakeup? Restructuring? Chapter eleven? What?" she asked, leaning forward into the conversation in just as conspiratorially a fashion as her young assistant.

  "Nothing scandalous. I think." He paused and looked as though he was questioning even himself. "The Secretary of Evil was rather vague about it."

  Natalie glanced behind Shane to the interior windows of her office to make sure the woman herself - Jenifer, Graham Martin's secretary, and indeed an onerous woman - or anyone else with ears wasn't passing by the office to hear Shane's less than kind, if not completely untrue, words.

  "So when is the meeting?"

  "Little less than an hour from now so you should have time to finish your lunch."

  Natalie smiled and double-checked through her calendar to see the newly scheduled meeting for herself. When she looked back at Shane a moment he was still staring at her and the half-eaten salad sitting in front of her on the desk. "Thank you for the coffee, by the way."

  "You're welcome. You've been eating out a lot lately. I haven't seen you eating out of a recycled birthday or Christmas bag for at least a week."

  Natalie smiled politely and tried not to let her mind wander to recent memories of straddling James in the back seat of his car. "There's been so much prep work to do for next week that I've sort of been forgetting to pack a lunch. Or buy groceries, now that I think about it." She had been ordering a lot of takeout for dinner lately, now that she really thought about it.