Wild Child. Christy McKellen

whole thing churns my stomach. Not because women shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy themselves, but because I’ve had a lot of experience with spoilt, bored, rich girls throughout my life, so I know one when I see one.

      In my teens I worked as a maintenance guy at Tinderly, the most famous and moneyed of all the private girls’ schools in the country. It was only a few miles away from where I grew up, in a rundown post-war prefab house on a rough estate on the edge of Oxford, but those girls’ lives were a million miles away from my own tough upbringing.

      I worked at that school throughout my late teens, saving every penny I could so I’d finally be able escape the life I’d been desperate to leave behind since I was old enough to realise that I had a waste of space, sociopathic drunk for a father and that I needed to earn enough money to rescue and rehouse my mother so we’d never have to see that piece of shit again.

      That’s how I was able to stick it out at Tinderly—carefully navigating my way through a dangerous minefield of adolescent girls’ boredom and lust. I swear to God, I never met a single pupil there I believed would go on to make any meaningful contribution to society. It was clear they’d all end up living off either their parents’ vast fortunes or their self-satisfied aristocratic future spouses’.

      From my inferior position of servitude I experienced it all from those girls: abuse from the privileged, the occasional veiled but thankfully not acted upon threats to have me fired when I wouldn’t give in to their sexual demands—as if I was just some plaything put there for their entertainment—and their cruelty and scorn when I refused to engage with them on any kind of level.

      That school was a terrifying microcosm of a pampered, obtuse and corrupt society that I’ve tried hard to avoid during my working life.

      Unfortunately, in order to maintain my software company’s position as market leader, I now find myself having to associate with exactly those sorts of people. Including, it seems, Maya Darlington-Hume, who personifies everything I’ve come to hate about rich people: the petulant, entitled behaviour, the narcissism and, most of all, the goddamn self-indulgence.

      She might be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, with a charisma that makes it virtually impossible to keep my eyes from being drawn to her, but I’m no fool. As hard as it is to ignore her after that intensely erotic moment we shared in her father’s bathroom the other week, I know I have to.

      The trouble is I’ve not been able to stop thinking about her ever since I unashamedly watched her beautiful body writhing in the water as she brought herself to orgasm.

       Fuck.

      I’ve thought about it a thousand times since then, even though I’ve told myself not to.

      The expression in her eyes as she came in front of me, seeming to see inside my mind and know that I couldn’t bring myself to look away, has haunted me ever since.

      I’ve spent more time in the gym since she’s been working here than I normally would in a whole month, battling to drain the energy out of my sexual urges, trying not to picture what it would be like to have her lying writhing and needy beneath me as I thrust into her, teasing that beautiful, spirited face into the same expression of ecstasy I saw that day.

      And now here she is in the flesh, looking at me with those defiant, perceptive eyes, waiting to see how I’m going to punish her for deliberately flashing me.

      It’s as if she senses it in me—the urge to dominate her and to take pleasure in it that I’ve fought against since she first started working here.

      But I can’t let myself do it. I can’t get involved with her.

      I need to keep her father sweet if I’m going to use his influence to get what I want: his agreement to sit on my executive board and exert his not insubstantial influence over the money men, so that the business I’ve strived so hard to build from scratch has a real chance of survival in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

      We’re getting our biggest product—a piece of Customer Relations Management software, or CRM as it’s more commonly known, which organises and logs client contacts—into a lot of key British companies, but there’s another supplier on our tail who’s starting to win some of the business we’ve pitched for recently. Trouble is, this competitor is run by a guy who comes from one of London’s most powerful society families, and he’s getting a lot of help from the Old Boy Network.

      Which is where Maxim Darlington-Hume comes in. I may not have a rich and powerful family of my own to call on, but Maxim’s backing is as good as, if not better than, the next best thing. Word of mouth and personal recommendation are powerful beasts, and if Maxim will agree to play his part in convincing the majority of companies to go with us the rest will hopefully follow.

      So, much as I hate it, Maxim Darlington-Hume has the ability to make or break the company I’ve built with my blood, sweat and tears over the last ten years, and I need to play the game in order to gain his benevolence.

      That’s the only reason I agreed to let Maya work here for the next few weeks—not that I’ll be trusting her with anything important.

      Unfortunately, it seems she’s determined to make it impossible for me to ignore her until her time’s up, and deciding how best to deal with her obvious cry for attention now puts me in a real quandary.

      I know what I’d like to do—put her over my knee and give her a wake-up call she won’t forget in a hurry—but of course I’m not going to do that.

      I scowl at the tall, willowy temptress standing before me in my office, who gazes back coolly, her full lips pursed and her bright blue eyes meeting mine with a fortitude I feel all the way down to my cock—which twitches disobediently. She’s clipped back her long, chocolate-brown hair today, and is wearing a sky-blue skirt, which skims the edge of decency with its mid-thigh hemline, and an almost see-through silk blouse under a figure-hugging jacket.

      She’s the very picture of an executive’s wet dream.

      I was acutely aware of the tense, sexually charged atmosphere between us in the room earlier—how could I not be?—and it had become glaringly apparent to me that she was going to be a real distraction whenever she was around. She has a palpable presence—a disrespectful, carelessly sexy confidence that I seem to be innately drawn to.

      I’m going to have to use every reserve I have at my disposal if I’m going to keep this woman from causing me trouble I really don’t need.

      ‘Do you think that’s an appropriate way to behave in a business setting?’ I ask her calmly, folding my arms and frowning, determined not to let her deliberate ploy to get a rise out of me work as she backs slowly up against the desk in the middle of my office.

      ‘I’m sorry, Mr Chivers, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

      She’s all innocence and big eyes, and the sheer bloody audacity of it makes my cock twitch again. She knows damn well I understand what she’s up to. The woman is clearly a pro at getting what she wants and has a lust for trouble.

      An awe-inspiring combination, but also a dangerous one.

      ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, Maya,’ I say quietly, imbuing my voice with terse authority.

      She just blinks at me, but I sense the smile behind her mask of naivety.

      ‘You were sitting in an inappropriate way in that meeting,’ I say, keeping any expression in my voice to a minimum. I don’t want her to know how much this chemistry between us affects me.

      ‘You mean like this?’

      Without a second’s pause she sits down on my desk and raises her right leg, propping her foot on the back of one of the visitor chairs in front of it. The movement forces her legs open and her skirt to ride up her thighs, exposing her pussy to me again.

      I try not to look.

      Really fucking hard.

      ‘You