Breathe (His Command Book 5) Page 9

  Your lips are on mine. You’re kissing me, and I’m a slut for you, aren’t I? I’m eating your attention up. I know that it’s wrong, and you know that it could get you in a world of trouble, but neither of us care, do we? We’re so fucking horny for each other. You need me so badly it doesn’t matter that it’s a risk to have me in there with you. You’re too hungry for me, and you can tell by the look in my eyes that I’m just as hungry for you.

  “Marshall,” Samantha mouthed in irritation from where she sat. “Focus.”

  Marshall was focused, just not on the right thing. He took a few grounding breaths, but all of his efforts were dashed when Oliver’s next text arrived.

  You push me to my knees, and I crumple beneath your strength. I look up at you as I nuzzle against the front of your slacks, nosing your erection. Because, let’s face it, you’re already hard for me, aren’t you? And I’m so, so eager to make your dick mine again. I’m addicted to you, and I can barely control myself. I want your cock and I want it now.

  Marshall swallowed a lump rising in his throat. He shifted his thighs as inconspicuously as he could to mask his rising erection.

  But you’re the one in control. You’re always the one in control. You tug open your belt and undo your fly, and as I watch you from my knees, you pull your cock out from your briefs and you feed it to my lips. You make me kiss it. You make me nuzzle against it like I’m addicted to it… but you don’t know that the truth is that I am. If I don’t touch it, I’ll never be satisfied. I need you more than I need air. I want to be your dirty, dirty boy.

  Pressure forced Marshall to clear his throat—it was his best attempt at staving off the cough that he knew was on its way. His lungs screamed, and he focused as best he could at breathing steadily in and out. It was much more difficult to convince his head that it was getting the oxygen it needed—the pressure had started to grow behind his eyes again, and the world was starting to spin. If he didn’t do something about this soon, it was going to end badly.

  Marshall glanced at the men seated nearest him. Alphas, both of them. They were less likely to notice the scent of his arousal than omegas, and he hoped it was enough to keep his secret until he figured out what to do about his situation.

  I slide my tongue down your shaft. You’re leaking now, aren’t you? Filthy, messy precum spilling from your slit. But I’m a slut for you, Alcrest. I lick it up. I tease my tongue into you, milk it from you. I want the taste of you on my tongue. I want the world to know that I’m yours. I want them to know all the things I’m going to do to you, and how glad I am to do them. I want them to know that you’re my addiction, and I’m never giving you up.

  Fuck the meeting—Marshall needed to get to the bathroom. Alone, locked in a stall, he could gasp and pant as much as he needed. He could bring himself to come so Oliver’s words had no power over him anymore, and then he could return to the meeting as if nothing had happened. But that wouldn’t work. The time he spent away from the board room was time that the meeting would be paused. Nothing would continue in his absence, even if his opinion barely mattered anymore. He was the figurehead every man and woman in the room bowed to out of respect—the glue that held them together. Every second he spent away from this room would be one they would count.

  Someone would go to find him and discover him falling to pieces.

  Oliver had him trapped.

  Another text came through on his phone, this one from Samantha. I honestly cannot believe you, Marshall. This is important!

  He looked up at her to find her with her phone in her hand, but her eyes on him. She frowned. But her opinion of him didn’t matter so much anymore when his phone’s screen lit up with a new notification—Oliver’s next text had arrived.

  When I’m done teasing all the precum I can out of you, I’m hooked. I need more. I take you in my mouth and I let you work yourself into me while I keep my lips taut. Do you know how well I work my tongue? Well, you’re finding it out now. I’m giving you my everything, and all I want you to do is take, and take, and take.

  “A team with vast collective knowledge of marketing climates both young and old must be assembled, and...”

  The meeting was going on without him. Marshall couldn’t begin to fathom what it was about, and he wasn’t going to start to tune in now. Screw what Samantha thought of him. Screw what any of them thought. They all knew the truth, and they looked at him in pity. But here and now, with Oliver doing everything in his power to push him over the edge, Marshall was alive.

  How deep do you go down my throat, Alcrest?

  Marshall’s throat spasmed with a cough he refused to see through to completion. A deep breath stretched his lungs, but there was no more relief from the way they ached. The pressure behind his eyes grew, and the world lurched and rippled like it had been plunged underwater. The bright pinpricks of light, like static, ate at the corners of his vision and made him want to close his eyes. He glanced up from the screen and across the table, but everyone’s attention was on the presenter—everyone except Samantha.

  The pressure in his head never went away. It was always the same—like eye strain intensified a thousandfold. The static ate at what he could see, leaving behind ever-growing darkness that narrowed his field of vision. He felt it eat across his eyeballs, snapping and crackling like Pop Rocks.

  He had to breathe.

  Another buzz forced his eyes to open, and as his world started to spin, he read the text that had just arrived.

  I’m gagging on you, but I’m too addicted to your body to ever let you go. I want you inside me. And as I look up at you with tears in my eyes as you choke me, you can see how badly I want it. I want you to treat me like this, like all I’m good for is swallowing your cock and guzzling your cum. I want you to give it to me so badly I gag on it. I’m yours. I’m yours, and no one will take me away from you. No one.

  Marshall made a rattling gasp, but by then, it was too late. The static ate across what remained of his vision like water gushing over the side of a tub, and the agonizing pressure in his skull became too great to bear. He closed his eyes and tried to ground himself, but the pain was spreading through his brain, and his lungs were choked for air.

  In the distance, as if she were on the other side of a football field, Marshall heard Samantha shout. It was the last thing he picked up on before the static swallowed him whole and his head smacked against the board room table.

  The static blinked out of existence. Nothing but darkness followed.

  14

  Oli

  You came, didn’t you?

  Oli snorted and scrolled back to check on the last text marked as read. Throat fucking got most men going, but he hadn’t realized that someone as experienced as Marshall would get off on it. He’d been ready to take things all the way, but Marshall had stopped reading his texts.

  One of these days, you should tell me where you work so I can show up on your lunch break. I’d love to make this fantasy a reality. ;)

  Still nothing. Oli frowned and put his phone on his bedside table. Marshall was at work—it wasn’t like he was exactly at liberty to reply. Oli had been lucky that they’d been able to talk at all.

  Whenever Marshall was free, he’d text back. For now, Oli took his silence as a sign that he was busy—and maybe a little messy—and that it was in his best interest to return to hunting for jobs. For the next hour, he scrolled through marketing job listings and applied to the ones he was qualified for—and some he wasn’t, but that he thought sounded interesting. He had a few interviews coming up this week, including the Tuesday morning interview that he’d be in heat for. Luckily enough, it seemed like this heat would be short-lasting—the telltale scent of his fertility had mostly worn away. Maybe, with a little stubble and some extra confidence now that Marshall was in his life, he would ace the interview and land the position.

  Oli spent the rest of the day applying to jobs, interrupted only once by Cedric, who popped his head in to ask if Oli wanted to join him and G
abriel for dinner. The Shepherd was closed on Sundays and Mondays, although Cedric often went in to place orders or oversee maintenance. Oli turned him down. He wasn’t really hungry.

  Marshall hadn’t texted him back, and he was starting to get worried.

  Before bed that night, when Oli still hadn’t heard back from Marshall, he sent him another text.

  I’m headed to bed. If I said something wrong, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Can we talk? I’ve got my interview tomorrow morning, but otherwise, I’m free.

  There was no response. The message was never marked as read.

  That night, Oli fell asleep certain that Marshall had finally had enough of his bullshit and ghosted him. He couldn’t blame him. Everyone got tired and left eventually—Oli just hadn’t expected Marshall to get tired of him so soon.

  “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. McKellar,” Susan, one of the HR employees at the company Oli was interviewing with, said. She wore a gray pencil skirt and a blouse with the top buttons undone to reveal her cleavage, and reminded Oli very much of one of the heroines from the bodice-ripper romance novels his mother had used to read.

  Or maybe porn.

  Oli didn’t really watch much straight porn, so he didn’t know quite what to expect. He thought the big, black-framed glasses sitting low on her nose and the way her hair was pinned up, though a strand of it hung down to frame her face in a messy, sexy sort of way, had to allude to sex appeal he wasn’t quite picking up on. She was obviously waiting for her Raoul or Fabio.

  Or the pool boy.

  Or maybe the plumber.

  Oli kept those thoughts to himself and smiled. “Nice to meet you, too, Ms. Reeves. Thank you for having me here today.”

  “You’re welcome. Please, come sit.”

  There was a chair positioned at her desk. She gestured to it, then led Oli forward. The click of her heels drew Oli’s gaze downward, and he marveled at the tiny points she balanced on with confidence. Women’s fashion was insane.

  Susan seated herself at her desk, and once she had, Oli settled into the chair offered to him. He smoothed his hands down his thighs and hoped that this interview wasn’t another dead end. The building was big enough that he was sure it supported a huge staff—if it wasn’t divided up between several businesses. If there was a sprawling marketing team, he might actually be able to land this job. With senior staff members there to shape newbies into perfect employees, his fresh face would be an asset instead of a detriment.

  Susan opened a drawer and pulled something from inside—a folder. She set it on the table, then leafed through the pages casually. To Oli, they looked like notes, but he did his best not to stare. Toward the end of the folder, she selected one of the papers and eased it out of the stack.

  Oli’s resume.

  Were all those notes about him? His heart leapt into his throat. Potential employers were welcome to do background checks and discuss their candidates, but it was seldom that he saw evidence that he’d already been talked about. It was as thrilling as it was terrifying.

  If they’d called him in, they couldn’t have been too displeased with his credentials, could they?

  Susan closed the folder and left his resume sitting on top. She didn’t look at it once. “Here at Synecta, we believe that our employees are part of our community. Above and beyond qualifications, we want to make sure that the people we hire are a good fit for our work environment. Before we start this interview, I want to get to know you a little better, Mr. McKellar. Can you please talk about yourself? What are your strengths and weaknesses, what do you like and dislike about being a team player, and where do you see yourself in relation to others while working as part of a group?”

  Oh shitsticks. Here I go putting my foot in my mouth before I even have a chance to win her over.

  Oli inhaled slowly as he considered her question. He needed this job, and he wasn’t going to ruin his chances by saying the first awkward thing he could think of. He could do this. He was capable. “That’s a nuanced question,” he said simply. “I think that it’s hard to encapsulate who a person is by description alone, but until you get to know who I really am by seeing me at work, I’ll do my best to describe myself to you.”

  He thought he saw the corner of Susan’s lips twitch into a smile, but it very well could have been his nerves playing tricks on his eyes. Oli folded his hands on his lap and let a beat pass. He collected his thoughts and continued as eloquently as he could.

  “I’m someone who’s worked hard his whole life, and who continues to work hard, even when faced with difficulty. I may be young, but I’m at a point in my life where I see my future ahead of me, and I know what it is I want, and how to get it. Some people might say that makes me motivated, but I think it just makes me human.” Oli glanced down, hiding a sad smile. It wasn’t often he said nice things about himself, and there was something about it that made him realize just how hard the last two years had been. “I feel like, a lot of the time, I need to remember to breathe. I often get so caught up in whatever it is that I’m doing that I forget that life is more than just financial success. When the blinders go on, sometimes they don’t just keep you looking forward... they make you forget about what’s outside your scope of vision. I’m trying my best to remember that there is life going on around me, not just in my future.”

  It was a hard lesson to learn, but with Marshall there to slow him down, Oli had started to see that it was true. Not everything was tied to his success, and although financially he was in shambles, that didn’t mean the rest of his life had to be.

  “I think that helps to make me a rounded person, and it allows me to appreciate the struggles others are going through, even if those struggles aren’t immediately evident on the surface.” Oli met Susan’s gaze, and he offered her a humble smile. “Group work is about giving your best and supporting the other members of your team, but I think coming into a group and understanding that the people you’re working with have hopes and dreams, successes and failures, and passions and fears is most important of all. You can’t really be part of a team if you don’t appreciate the people you’re working with as... well... people, can you? So I think that’s where my strength lies. People are people, no matter what they look like, no matter what they act like, and no matter what they do. I respect that. There’s so much more to a person than what’s on the surface.”

  Oli hesitated. Susan had said nothing, and he knew he was supposed to continue, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. At last, he laughed and shook his head. “Sorry for getting intense there. It probably wasn’t what you were expecting, but I thought it was important to say. I guess, if you’re looking for my weaknesses, I’d say that keeping my blinders on, like I mentioned, is definitely one of them. Sometimes I feel like I’m on my own, and that leads me to feeling melancholy and hopeless. But I think, in a team setting, I’d flourish... if people can survive my jokes.”

  Susan smiled, and by the way her eyes shone, she meant it. Oli’s heart skipped a beat. Maybe he was on the right track.

  “You’re a comedian?” Susan asked.

  “Not even. But some people say I’m funny.” And mean it unironically, he thought, but he left that part unspoken. Did Marshall still think that way?

  There was a pad of paper by Susan’s right hand now covered in notes, and she twitched a pen back and forth between her fingers. Oli blinked a few times, startled to see that she was paying attention and potentially interested in what he had to say.

  “I think that was a very informative introduction, Mr. McKellar,” Susan said. “I’d like to move on now, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Oh, that’s more than fine. I could ramble on about me for hours if you gave me the chance, so it’s probably better we change the topic of conversation before I bore you.”

  Her smile grew. Oli wasn’t sure why that was, but he wasn’t questioning it.

  “I’d like to give you a few different mock ideas that would need to be backed by adv
ertising and some restrictions. I’d like to see what you can come up with. At this stage, we’re not looking for perfection—we’re looking for ideas and innovation. Are you ready to try?”

  A few mock projects? No problem. Oli grinned.

  He had this in the bag.

  “Sure,” he said. “You’ve got me all morning. Let’s see what I can do.”

  15

  Oli

  Around eight that same evening, while hands-deep in a stack of dishes, Oli’s phone buzzed with an incoming call. He scrunched his nose, dried his dishwater-wet hands on the dry rag hanging from the handle of the stove, and answered. “Hello?”

  “Hello, is this Mr. McKellar?”

  “This is he.” Oli’s heart skipped a beat. Another interview? It was late for any business to be calling, but he couldn’t help but hope that it was true. He had two more to attend this week, and adding a third would help him feel like he wasn’t wasting his time.

  “It’s nice to talk to you again. This is Susan Reeves, from HR at Synecta. We spoke earlier today.” There was a pause. Oli leaned on the counter and braced himself for another rejection. It had come around quickly this time—he was used to waiting for weeks before he found out that another skilled candidate had been chosen. “I’d like to offer you the marketing position you interviewed for.”

  Oli almost dropped his phone into the sink. He fumbled to catch it, then held it back to his ear and pumped the air with his fist and cheered silently. When he spoke, he did his best to sound grateful without gushing. “That’s terrific. Thank you, Susan.”

  “If you’re still interested in the position, I’ll email you the necessary documents you’ll need to fill out and schedule an appointment with you to come into the office to get them sorted.”

  “I’m very interested.”