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He hates her the second he walks into the room.
The scent of her hits him first, an overwhelmingly spicy scent that fills the oversized boardroom with notes of cinnamon, French vanilla and something that might have been clove.
The woman herself, smirking confidently with painted purple lips from her place at the head of the table, unfolds herself from the chair and stands, barely tall enough to reach his chin.
“I’m so glad we could meet so quickly,” she drawls, voice crawling over him like spiders in the dark. “I can feel that this is an issue you wish to be put to rest.”
Wesley holds in the need to shudder, instead offering her his most professionally charming smile and his hand.
“Yes, thank you for making the time—”
“I didn’t,” she interrupts, never once dropping her smile, “make time. I was asked, no, ordered to attend ‘as soon as possible.’” She grips his hand tightly, as though attempting to compensate for her smaller stature by crushing his own hand into submission. He holds his ground, matching her firmness and meeting her eyes unflinchingly, taking momentary note of how hard and cold they were. To say she was unhappy about this meeting appeared to be a gargantuan understatement, but there was little he could do to that end. He wasn’t here to exist at her general convenience.
This was work, but he can’t help the slight crack in his authoritarian exterior, the sudden need he felt to verbally whiplash her into compliance.
“Well. Thank you for coming, regardless.”
Sitting off to her left, he opens his briefcase and brings out the stack of documents, shuffling them to properly ensure they were all in the right order, and also to remind the woman across from him that as far as he was concerned, this was his boardroom, and here he was king. He’d take as long as he damn well pleased.
“In regards to the subject in question, my employer was hopeful that all that would need to be done would be to sign these—,” he lays a small booklet of paperwork in front of her, choosing to ignore the curl of her lip at the sight of them, “—and this.” He produces a single sheet of paper, the finality of the agreement, already marked with Fisk’s sharply sloping signature, and Vanessa’s tidy scrawled one.
There is only one missing signature, one he intends to acquire today at any cost.
Well, almost any. The .22 tucked into his jacket pocket is heavy and warm against his side, freshly oiled. He wonders if she can smell it over that perfume.
“So what,” she muses, flicking through the booklet with an air of heavy distain, “I sign off on this and then what happens?”
“You never hear from us again,” he says, a note of cheer in his voice. “So long as you do the right thing, there need not be any further interaction between yourself, or my employer.”
“Or your employer’s—” she clicks her tongue and smiles cruelly— “squeeze?”
His smile flickers. “If that’s how you wish to interpret—”
“I don’t need to interpret anything,” she shoots back at him, colouring her words with just the slightest snarl. “Your ‘employer’ has political intentions, and he can’t afford anything slanderous reaching the press like, for example, that his pretty little bit of arm candy used to be a raging lesbian?”
It takes almost all of his considerable restraint not to let the scowl reach his face, his jaw tightening with the effort to keep a calm, empty countenance in front of her. He is well aware that people like her feed on reactions, one of the many reasons why Fisk had chosen to have him handle her himself, rather than let Vanessa sort it out in her own way. She had fought him on that, but in the end had caved when reminded of just who she was attempting to silence.
He composes himself by reaching inside his jacket, fingertips brushing past the cool metal of his gun, to retrieve his pen, holding it out to her. His smile was back and it wasn’t going anywhere.
“Hardly your concern, is it? Just sign and that will be all.”
Part of him wants her to sign it, he knows that, but there is another side, a little voice that screams up from the very depths of him, that wants her to throw the paperwork back in his face. He almost needs, craves, for her to give him an excuse, any excuse, to draw the weapon and shove it in her mouth until she does exactly what he tells her to do.
The twitch between his legs is almost a surprise.
Cynthia Lyle stares him down, heat in her gaze and venom dripping from her lips, dying to lash out with words and possibly some degree of violence, wanting nothing more than to wipe that self-satisfied smirk off his face. This was her life, her past, something that she had cherished even when it ended, and she was being demanded into silence for...what? Some asshole with his eye on the Mayor’s chair at City Hall?
She tosses the pen down and leans back in her chair, examining him.
“Explain to me,” she says, idly examining her glossy fingernails, “why should I sign? Why should I pretend that what happened, didn’t?”
Wesley glances down at the pen, his eyes flashing momentarily before looking back up at her, calmly adjusting his glasses. “We’re not asking you to forget the past,” he replies, carefully measuring each word to correctly gauge her response. “We are merely suggesting that you move on with your future, without speaking out as you have in the past against former lovers.”
Her cheeks flush, and he can see the muscles in her jaw work from where he sits.
He doesn’t smile.
Fuck, he wants to.
Dark blue clashes with stormy grey, a warring gaze stretching between them, a silent dare to make the first move, be it violence or defeat.
She relaxes.
He tenses, watching her recline in her chair as though the tables had turned in her favour, as though she knew something he didn’t.
He doesn’t let the trepidation show.
He hates it.
“I’d still take her back, y’know,” she says, her tone almost forlorn, raising her face to the ceiling, a lazy smile curving her lips. “I was quite the addict, you see.”
He doesn’t like where this is going.
She drops her gaze back down to him, locking eyes, the smile quickly becoming mocking. “Her cunt was like heroin.”
The twitch is more pronounced this time, and it almost makes him jump, goosebumps prickling along the back of his neck, raising the little hairs there. He feels his tongue lick his lips, but can’t remember giving his brain the conscious order to do so.
Her smile widens.
“I often wondered if Hell’s Kitchen knew when I was between her legs,” she continues conversationally, as if they were talking about the weather and not the bedroom antics of his employer’s soon to be fiancé. “I used to worry about the neighbours in the next block.”
He tilts his head to the side, refusing to be made uncomfortable. He wouldn’t leave without getting what he came for, not for anything less than a galactic scale assault on the city.
“At least you weren’t overly concerned about her volume,” he replies with a sardonic smile. “Anyone else would have assumed it was disingenuous.”
There is a moment of fury caught on her face before she schools it away, instead returning his own smirk in such a perfect mirror of his own, he finds himself wondering if she had practiced it beforehand.
“I think I know when I’m being lied to,” she retorts, leaning back in her chair again. She didn’t realize that she had been leaning forward. “More so when I have my tongue between their legs.”
“Not always,” he shrugs his shoulders, not entirely sure why he was playing into her game rather than shooting her down and having done with it. But there was something almost fun about trading shaded insults and insinuations with this woman. “Volume suggests lies, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps where you’re concerned, Mr Wesley.” His name is like honeyed shards of glass from her mouth. “If one hasn’t had the experience, perhaps volume wouldn’t be something that one would be used to? Therefore, suspicious.”
She arches an elegantly shaped eyebrow at him, the challenge evident in her words. He supposes if he could see under the table, her legs would be open.
“Please. I prefer just ‘Wesley’.”
“Well, then, ‘just Wesley’.” She folds her arms beneath her breasts (deliberately, he was certain), pushing them together in the scooped neckline of her blouse. “I want you to tell me why you think I should sign these, and why I shouldn’t tell the whole of Hell’s Kitchen exactly what Wilson Fisk’s good-looking, European bride sounds like when she’s being eaten out.”
The image flashes before his eyes before he can stop it.
Vanessa Marianna, the love of his employer’s life, sprawled across dark sheets, naked from the waist down, fingers tangled in ash blonde hair...
Purple lips parting, pointed tongue flicking out against delicate, pink folds, pressing forward to suck and tease, and torment...
He takes his glasses off, polishing them almost absent-mindedly, the imagined sounds of the two women echoing in the back of his mind. It would be so easy to throw something back at her, equally filthy and full of dark promise.
But that, of course, was what she wanted. And James Wesley was not in the habit of giving people what they wanted. He made them want what he wanted them to want.
And he wants her to sign that damn paperwork, and stop looking at him like the cat that ate the canary.
There is a beat.
“Sign them.”
“Make me.”
He lunges across the table, revelling in her suddenly terrified expression, grabbing her outstretched hands and twisting them behind her back, stepping behind her and forcing her flat on her front on the table, tightening his grip when she tries to struggle.
“What the fuck are you—?”
“You...are going to sign those papers,” he purrs in her ear, pressing the evidence of his arousal against her, grinning when he felt her stiffen. “You’re going to sign them, and you’re going to shut the fuck up about everything that went on between the two of you. Do you understand?”
She bucks against him in a frantic move to get free. He grabs a handful of her hair, slamming her face down against the table, gripping both of her wrists in his free hand and pinning them between their bodies. He lays the full length of his torso against her back, exhaling hot breath into her ear.
He could almost hear her heartbeat.
“See that dotted line?” He turns her head to the side so she can see the papers and the pen sitting neatly on top of them. “You are going to pick up that pen, and you’re going to sign.”
“Fuck. You.”
He huffs out an impatient breath, releasing her hair just long enough for him to slide a hand up the silk of her inner thigh to the flimsy gauze of her panties.
“Listen to me. Can you do that? Just listen?”
She whimpers, trying to shy away from the feather-light touch of his fingertips.
He wasn’t fooled.
She was wet.
“You feel that?” He presses his nose into her hair, inhaling deeply, drawing the tiniest of circles against her soaking flesh until she whines, resisting the contact but also wanting it, oh so very, very much. “That’s why you’re going to sign it, Miss Lyle. You’re going to sign that paperwork because you want this.” He pushes his fingers into her panties, the tip of his pinkie teasing along the length of her slit. “You want to know...how it feels, don’t you?
I think you do.”
She tries to shake her head, and he tuts, withdrawing his fingers from the confines of the fabric. She groans at the loss and he grins, knowing he’s just moments away from getting what he came for.
“Pick up that pen, Miss Lyle. I know you can. Come on.” His hand crawls up her stomach, seizes a handful of breast and squeezes mercilessly.
He thinks about releasing both of her hands, and decides against it, letting up her dominant hand only, grasping her remaining wrist sharply to better remind her of her place.
Breathing hard, panting really, Cynthia clutches at the pen like it was her lifeline to reality. He rewards her with a casual pinch of her clothed clitoris, smirking when she shudders under his attentions.
“That’s it. Pick it up.”
The angle is awkward, her shoulder aches, and her cunt throbs with the desperate need to be properly attended to, but she signs it anyway, spurred along by the strong strokes of his fingers through her embarrassingly dripping panties.
“See now, what wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Never let it be said he wasn’t good at his job.
Wesley unzips her skirt and yanks it down, followed quickly by her underwear, and plunges two fingers into her before she has a mind to protest, tasting her assent in her arching back and whimpering plea for more, more, fucking more!
“I can feel how wet you are,” he says softly, brushing her hair to the side and clenching his hand on the back of her neck, squeezing just enough to elicit another whimper, curling his fingers inside her to seek that elusive little spot that would make her weak in the knees. “You have such a pretty little cunt, did you know that? Do you want to know what I’m going to do to you? Of course you do. Look at you. You’re practically gagging for it, Miss Lyle.”
He twists his fingers, searching, rubbing at her clit with the pad of his thumb as he does so. Wesley feels the shiver travel down the length of her body, and smiles.
“I’m going to slide my cock between those pretty purple lips, Miss Lyle. I’m going to fuck your mouth until I come, and then you’re going to swallow it. Every last little bit.
Do you understand?”
She makes a high, keening sound that she would most certainly be ashamed of in public.
He takes it as a ‘yes’.
He grinds hard against her, pressing so close that he can feel the heat of her cunt through his slacks.
“Do you know what I’m going to do after that, Miss Lyle?”
She shakes her head ‘no’.
He smiles wider, and leans over her, his lips a hair’s breadth away from the curve of her ear.
“I intend to find out—” He feels her clenching around him, so close, so damn close— “if volume really is a lie.”
All at once, Wesley withdraws his fingers from her and steps back, raising fingers glistening with her wetness to his mouth and delicately licking them clean, wiping the residue on his trousers.
Reaching past her, he gathers up the complete bundle of paperwork and smirks down at her when she raises her head, an incredulous and honestly livid expression spreading across her flushed face.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Miss Lyle,” he says pleasantly, inclining his head at her, turning on his heel and stalking out of the room.
Cynthia stares after him, a truly ugly look distorting her face.
She hates him the second the door slams shut.