The Cocky And The Cougar by ikss COMPLETE, T - Z
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The Cocky And The Cougar
By ikss
Summary:
Credit and Sales - often at war in Corporate America. When Con-Vert's new, young Director
of Sales Edward Masen met 38 year-old Director of Credit Bella Swan, it was almost inevitible that
sparks would fly. AH
Chapter 1 ~ The Cocky
I looked up to see his tall, almost lanky form standing in the doorway of my office, an envelope in his hand. I
smiled at him and he took that as an invitation to enter.
"Another check?" I asked, alluding to that which he held in his hand.
"Yep. See? I only bring you money - never work."
My smile became larger as he handed me the envelope. "And that is why I love you." Never mind that the
checks which had erroneously ended up in his department should be given to Janice, our Cash Application
Specialist. He knew this. At the very least he knew that the Director of the department didn't post payments
so why would he bring these things to me?
I knew very well why. And he knew that I knew.
HesmirkedIfIonlyhadanickel
He pulled one of the chairs away from the small conference table in my office and sat down, crossing one
ankle over his knee. His hands crossed behind his head as he leaned back in to them.
"Comfortable?" I asked, grinning. As he was apparently planning to stay for a bit, I turned my chair to face
his, crossing my own legs. I was fully aware that, by my doing so, he was now getting an eyeful of quite a bit
of my thigh.
"How's your day going?"
"James, can I help you with something?" I enjoyed our little flirtatious games and James was fun to look at,
but I had work to do.
He chuckled and looked at me with a definite glint in his eye. "Oh, there are many things you can help me
with, Bella."
I chuckled back at him. "While I have heard that you need help in those areas, James, I don't think I'm the
womanforthejobbutistheresomethingbusiness-related with which you need my assistance?"
His eyes narrowed as he considered me across the table. "Have a drink with me, after work."
"A drink?" We both knew it wasn't a drink he wanted to have with me.
"For starters," he said.
I considered it, and not for the first time. Although he was significantly younger than I, James was quite
good looking and undeniably sexy in a very dirty way. And I had a hanker on for dirty lately. He'd been
blatantly flirting with me since he started at the company, only just this past May - not even three months
ago. The day he started as our new Cost Accountant, he was walked around to each department, to be
introduced to the department heads he would be working most closely with. Upon meeting me, his eyes
sparkled and he lewdly looked me up and down as I shook his hand. "Bella," he'd said. "What a fitting
name."
WhenheleftmyofficeIwasntsureifIwantedashowerortoshower with him.
I had seen him in shorts and without a shirt on, during a company picnic in June. Some of the guys had
decided on a spur-of-the-moment basketball game and my friend Angela and I sat on the adjacent grass to
watch them play. Angela had to watch in show of support for her boyfriend, Ben. I just wanted to watch so
that I could view all the testosterone on parade.
James was not hugely muscular, but he was long and lean and well built, with abs that practically begged
me to run my tongue over them. He had muscular thighs and my mind reeled at the thought of the strength
they held within them.
It may have been my imagination, but it seemed he was showing off a bit for me while he played. He even
dunked a couple of times, once hanging on the rim like he was Shaquille O'Neal in his prime.
Angela and I giggled at his being such a ham, but secretly I watched with an inner-drool as the muscles of
his chest rippled while he swung. He noticed me watching, too. As he ran by on his way to the other end of
the court, he winked at me. Angela laughed at his brazen display and I softly chuckled along with her, even
while I clenched my thighs together.
There was something about The Cocky that pulled me in, almost every time.
Swimming in the company pool was tricky business, though. I didn't exactly have a policy against it, but I
knew it was not a very good idea. The potential to damage my reputation and even worse weighed heavily
onmymindIfIdecidedtoer
socialize
with a man I worked with, I had better have a very damn good
reason. Otherwise, it's not worth playing in the mine field.
While James and I didn't exactly work in the same department, Accounting and Credit were related to one
another and we did work with each other regularly, on several projects. We would be staring at each other
across conference tables often. Plus, I didn't really know James well enough to know if I could trust him.
The potential for catastrophe didn't seem worth the temporary thrill that a fling with James would bring
me.
And it would only be a fling and it would most definitely be temporary. Because while James was hot as hell
and I'm sure we'd do incredibly dirty and wonderful things to one another if given the chance, that was all I
wanted from him. Even aside from our age difference, James was definitely not relationship material.
Much of this flitted through my mind while I bit the end of my pen in thought. I watched as James' eyes
darted between the pen at my mouth and my eyes, waiting for me to give him an answer. I adopted a half-
smile and stretched out the moment of anticipation, making him wait and loving that he was obviously
getting annoyed at having to do so.
FinallyhiseyesstayedatmineandheleanedforwardBellaHis voice was teasing. "You and I both
know you want this. And I won't keep asking forever."
And that was when The Cocky crossed some invisible and perhaps even subconscious line. There was
something about the implied "now or never" of his statement which put me off. I made my decision.
HmmIpulledthepenawayfrommylipsandturnedmychairbacktowardmydesklookingdownat
some papers I had left there when he came in. "I can't James. Sorry if I missed my opportunity."
From the corner of my eye, I saw him rise from his chair and move toward me. I felt his fingers at my chin,
lifting my face so that I was looking in his eye. His close proximity made me nervous and my heart began to
race.
His voice was breathy. "You should be sorry, beautiful Bella. Because what I have planned would make you
scream my name and never want to leave my side."
I managed to chuckle as I pulled my face out of his hand, happy to have the opportunity to look away from
his eyes and catch my breath. I hoped my demeanor remained confident and casual and did not betray how
uncomfortable he'd just made me.
"Well, my not leaving your side would make things at work a tad inconvenient, wouldn't it?"
James straightened up and put his hands in his pockets. He turned and headed slowly toward the door.
When he reached it, instead of leaving my office, he closed the door and turned back toward me. I looked up
from my desk.
"Why?" That was all he asked. When met with my blank expression in reply, he expanded. "Why do you
always say no when I know you want to say yes?"
I set my pen down and looked at him, shrugging in mock casualness. "You know I am much older than you,
right?HejustshruggedatmysayingthatandIcontinuedWellbesidesIdontshitwhereIeatJames
It wasn't that I was necessarily averse to having a fling with someone ten years younger than I. Not at all. In
actualitylotsofhotmonkeysexwithsomeonewhohasthestaminaandthereboundabilitiesofwellofa
twenty-eight year old, held a significant amount of attraction for me. Really, the age difference was just a
convenient excuse for not sleeping with James.
I was not yet officially divorced, although Jacob Black and I had been separated since I found him in a
stereotypically compromising position with one of his graduate students three years ago - one who was
stereotypically much younger than I. By, oh, about thirteen years if I gauged her probable age correctly;
which would mean she's twenty-three years younger than Jake. I had met her once before. She attended a
cocktail party we threw at our house for some of his select students and the grad students he advised. I had
thought her sweet, if a little vapid, and cute.
I didn't find her so cute when I found her sitting on top of my husband wearing no clothes. In my bed.
The irony of losing my husband to one of his students was not lost on me, considering that's the same way
we had met, some fifteen years prior. Of course, the situation had been slightly different, seeing as he'd not
been
married
when I met him, but really, that was just a technicality. When I thought about it, which I did
frequently in the months which followed, nothing about my discovery of their writhing and sweaty bodies
surprised me at all. Jake's students - male and female - thought of him as a literary god. Even with his now
rapidly-graying hair, he was quite attractive in a dorky-professor kind of way. He was extremely tall and
well-built, charming, intelligent, insightful and thoughtful - almost soulful. He had a charisma about him
which was perfectly suited to the lecture hall.
And to twenty-something American Literature students.
There was no real reason for the delay in our actual divorce. We never talked about it. In fact, we never
talked at all. He just never filed and I never got around to it, either. That is, until the cute but vapid girl
ended up with, stereotypically, a bun in the oven.
All of which made me laugh for months. I could be at work, sitting in an extremely boring meeting; in the
grocery store picking out grapefruit; stuck in traffic; sitting in my dentist's office. I could be anywhere and
all of a sudden, I would start to giggle. Because the prospect of Jake as Daddy was the funniest thing ever to
have happened in the history of the universe.
I knew he must be in misery, which made me infinitely happy. Jake hated kids like I hated brussel sprouts -
he thought they were slimy and gross and smelled awful. Whenever we went out to dinner, he would
become incredibly irate if we were seated next to children - especially babies. In Jake's eyes, parents who
came out in public with crying babies were guilty of the worst of crimes. When approached by the children
of our friends, he was incredibly uncomfortable and looked for the quickest getaway humanly possible.
Jake's hatred of children was actually one of the things which drew me to him, initially. And now here he
was, almost fifty and a father for the first time. Father to a baby girl, at that.
When our marriage met its necessary end, I kept the house and I kept the dog. I also got a new job - a step
up for me and a change which meant a pay raise of twenty grand a year.
It's spelled J-U-S-T-I-C-E.
So now, I had been Director of Credit at Con-Vert for just under three years. It wasn't an exciting or a
glamorous job, but I was good at it and I liked feeling I was good at my job. I was one of only two females at
the Directors Meeting each Monday morning and I liked knowing I could go toe-to-toe with any of the
fourteen men in the room and win my battle almost every time, but that I was also the first on everybody's
list to work on special projects, teams and sub-committees. I had the feeling most of them thought of me as
kind of an Ice Queen, but I also knew without a doubt that they all respected me as the smart woman and
the hard worker that I was and that quite a few were intimidated by me. And I loved it.
Plus, I got four weeks' paid vacation every year and that's what I really worked for. In the past three years I
had been to Italy, France, Hawaii, Alaska, Santa Fe, New York, Washington DC and New Orleans, along with
occasional weekend getaways within California.
Of course, while I had a blast on all of my trips and wouldn't change a bit about any of them, they were all
taken with girlfriends, with a tour group or on my own. Because, while the rest of my life was working out
extremely well, my love life was an entirely different matter.
It's not that I didn't date. I had dated several people in the past three years, in fact, just nobody who was
worth forgoing a good book and a long, hot shower with my removable shower head. I found that, if a man
was single at my age, there was most likely an extremely good reason he was single. The ones I liked were
no good in bed. The ones who were good in bed were assholes or boring or, in one miraculous case, both.
And let's not even discuss the horrors of dealing with another woman's kids. At my age, it was rather
difficult to avoid that particularly buzz-killing speed bump.
Lately, I hadn't even been trying. After an especially frustrating one night stand a few months back, after
which I ended up getting myself off in the stranger's bathroom because he couldn't be bothered to help me
out with the project earlier, I just decided to stop the madness and hold out until I found somebody I
reallywhat?Caredabout?Hadgreatchemistrywith?WelloneofthosetwoIdfigureitoutifandwhenI
was confronted with either one those situations.
Then James came along. He had been my first real temptation and, subsequently, my first decision along
those lines. And I had just apparently decided that his particular brand of cocky wasn't worth the potential
risk to my career.
Having denied James, I met Alice and Rosalie for drinks instead. I'd had a late meeting with our CFO which
ran long (as all meetings with our CFO tend to do), so they were already sitting at a table when I arrived at
Newt's Bar & Serious 'Que, not exactly waiting for me. They had drinks in front of them which already
needed refilling.
"Bella, Bella, Bella," Alice spoke as I dropped my purse into an empty chair and pulled another one out so I
could sit in it. "How kind of you to join us."
"Believe me," I said. "If I could have gotten here any sooner, I would have. Man, that guy is a bag of wind."
"Doesn't he know it has officially been the weekend for," Rosalie looked at her watch, "Ninety minutes? You
are off the clock, girl."
"I'm never off the clock, Rose." I sighed as I sunk in to my chair. "The problem is the guy understands
nothing about credit, so I have to explain everything to him over and over, ad nauseam." I looked up at my
friends. They wore politely interested expressions on their faces, but I knew I had broken the unspoken
rule of our get-togethers: no whining about work. I changed the subject. "Do we have a waitress close by or
shall I go to the bar?"
"We have a waitress, somewhere," Alice said.
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