Control Read Online Free PDF

fact that it was someone so dark and strange and potentially pliable watching.
    The realisation makes me cover my face with the book.
    I like it. I like teasing him and tormenting him, peeling away all his layers and giving him permission. I could have chosen the girl, if I wanted. I could have chosen Andy, to be my assistant. But I didn’t. I chose Gabriel Kauffman.
    Probably because of my strict father, thanks so much Dr Gabriel Freud.
    Fuck knows what I’m going to do, from here. K-I-S-S-I-N-G my brain sings, and I hate myself. Why can’t I just be satisfied with Andy?
    Because I’ve been satisfied with Andy all my life, maybe.
    I throw the book aside and stand, straighten my shirt, smooth my trousers. I look neat and professional, which should help with the firing of my almost perfect assistant. I can tell him that we’re just not busy enough – which is a lie – or that the economy is biting too hard, or some such nonsense. And then I can go back to the way things were and the way I was.
    Straight, simple, professional.
    Unfortunately, even before I get to the shop I know something’s going on. I know the way I knew when I saw that little flash of hot pink and he stood up too hurriedly. The kitchen door opens out almost on top of the counter, and he’s not there. He’s not anywhere in the main space of the shop – though I suppose that isn’t too unusual, considering that it’s closing time. It could be that he’s just tidying the second tier, the little alcove at the back of the store that made me buy the place.
    And yet I know he’s not tidying. I don’t do anything as clichéd as keeping the filthiest books back there, but it’s where I catch the most embarrassed-looking men in macs. I don’t get all that many, however – I think because I sell so much romance, too. It’s hard to lick the pornography amidst the hearts and flowers.
    I like Gabe, a lot, for not seeming to mind how many hearts and flowers flutter around his smut. In fact, I think he prefers it that way. He’s standing right in the corner, in front of the bookcase beside the window, reading Passion’s Flame . I can tell it’s Passion’s Flame , because it’s one of my all time favourites.
    I can also make out his teeth, biting deep into his lower lip. That furrow he sometimes gets between his heavy black brows, as though he’s uncertain how to proceed. But then his head turns slightly – I think so he can look at the right-hand page – and I can no longer see the lovely slant of his face. His back is almost completely to me – though that’s not exactly an unpleasant sight.
    He isn’t big, like Andy. But that curve, to his back. The narrowness of his hips – so clear in those tidy grey trousers he always wears – contrasting giddily with the broadness of his shoulders …
    I don’t want to alert him to my presence, just so that I can keep looking at his back. I don’t want to alert him to my presence because then he would stop reading, and biting his lip, and acting like a 19th-century maid who’s doing something she shouldn’t.
    I think I know when he becomes aware of me. His back stiffens ever so slightly. He doesn’t turn the page when it comes time to.
    My heart thuds, low and long. I’m not going to fire him. Oh my God, I’m not going to fire him. He’s wrong, he’s wrong – I’m not in control at all. I’m taking the step up. I’m strolling across the lovely plush carpet towards him.
    When I get up close – so close that I can smell that old-fashioned pine-y aftershave he wears – the full pleasure of his height strikes me, as it did before, when I asked him if there was something he wanted. He must be six foot three, and yet so often he doesn’t seem it. He hunches.
    He’s hunching right now. I can see him doing his best not to let me know he’s looking at me out of the corner of his eye. He’s keeping very still, juddery breathing aside.
    I have to put my hand on his back. It’s practically a