thumbing in Max’s direction before stepping past him into the glass-walled office.
“See that we’re not disturbed,” he told Sherri, closing the door behind them.
Emma plunked herself in the closest of the visitor’s chairs, bristling with coiled energy. Max, blasé as ever, took his time as he made his way to the other side of the desk. He sat, and with the push of a hidden button on the underside of the black onyx desktop, the entire expanse of glass between them and the rest of the office frosted for privacy. And then they were all alone, her itching for a fight, him cold and unaffected.
“You wanted me?”
Her double entendre landed like a gauntlet, and the scattered haze of sexual tension that was lingering in the room courtesy of their Friday night tryst coalesced into a lightning bolt of awareness arcing between them.
“What I want,” he informed her, the bite in his voice frigid against her heated skin, “is to know what the hell you think you’re doing?”
So, not completely unaffected after all.
Emma crossed her legs, enjoying the tiny victory, and the slit of her skirt parted to midthigh. Max’s sightline dipped to her leg.
“Reporting for duty, Mr. Whitfield. As per your orders.”
He raked his gaze up her body, pausing meaningfully on the peaked outline of her nipples against the black satin of her blouse, a condition made worse by his attention, before continuing up to her throat, her lips and finally meeting her eyes. Max arched an eyebrow, the gesture thick with innuendo.
“And what duty did you think you’d be reporting for, exactly?”
Smug prick.
Her smile was a big ‘screw you’ drenched in high-fructose corn syrup. “Oh, now that I’m back, I’m open to whatever position you had in mind. Sir.”
The slow, feral grin that slid across his face escalated the sexual arms race they were engaged in. “Don’t call me sir unless you mean it, Emma.” He leaned back in his chair. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to make promises you don’t intend to keep?”
“Who says I don’t intend to keep them?”
“Do you? Is that why you’re wearing this delightfully indecent outfit?”
It was Emma’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “It’s the same thing I had on Friday night. You didn’t seem to have a problem with it then.”
He ran his knuckles along his jaw. “As I recall, you were wearing a bra on Friday night. In the future, stick to the dress code.”
The warning made her smile. “Here’s a fun fact: there’s actually no mention of undergarments in the entire policy.”
She stood then, walked over to the window to give him a moment to wonder what else she may or may not be wearing, in case he had the inclination to do so. “But feel free to send me home if you feel like I’m not living up to the hallowed reputation of Whitfield Industries.”
“I get the impression that you’re trying to upset me.”
“And why would I do that?” She tried to sound offhand as he got to his feet and joined her by the window.
“I’m not going to dissolve the contract, Emma.” The words were soft. Matter-of-fact. Final. “I have too much at stake. SecurePay is going to launch next week, on time, and you are going to help me make sure it does. You signed the employment contract. If you don’t want the perks you were offered this morning to go with it, that’s your choice.”
“Because it’s insulting!” Emma whirled to face him, not in the least surprised to discover Vivienne Grant had called up to let him know how the meeting had gone, but angry nonetheless. “A residence? A driver? A clothing allowance? What your lawyer presented to me this morning was basically a mistress contract, minus the sex in return for your generosity.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously at that. “I don’t need to bribe women into my bed. They come when I tell them to.”
The veiled reference to Friday night snapped her spine straight.
“Come for me, Emma. Just like that. I want to feel you squeezing my cock.”
Bastard, she thought, even as heat uncoiled in her belly.
“You told me why you couldn’t work for me. No house. No transportation. No clothes.”
He let the last reason hang meaningfully for a moment, as though he knew her mind would conjure visions of naked skin, shifting muscles, sweaty bodies, her imaginings made all the more visceral now she knew how it felt to have Max thrusting inside her.
“I was merely trying to rectify those concerns. That’s how negotiation works.” He stepped closer, his nearness muddling her senses. Making her want things she shouldn’t. “In order to reach an accord, sometimes one party submits to the demands of the other party.”
She glared up at him, resenting the innuendo. “What happened between us wasn’t a negotiation. It was a hostile takeover.”
“You seemed to enjoy yourself.” His voice was pure sex, and she hated him for it in that moment.
“You know what, Max? Fuck you.”
“You already did,” he said darkly.
And that, she realized as she turned back to the window, was exactly the problem. He just didn’t know how right he was.
If her time here was just about waiting for him to discover she wasn’t the one who installed the spyware on her computer, she would have gladly stayed while Max’s cybersecurity team did whatever they needed to do to prove her innocence.
The problem, however, was that the longer she stuck around waiting to be cleared for the corporate espionage she’d had nothing to do with, the more opportunity they’d have to figure out that she had, in fact, been espionaging in what could be construed as a corporate-esque manner...
When Max found out she’d been feeding carefully curated bits of information to his own father—a man he openly despised—for the entirety of her tenure at Whitfield Industries, well, it was almost enough to make a girl wish she’d been the one who’d installed the spyware on her computer.
Emma squared her shoulders, crushed the flare of guilt. She’d had her reasons for accepting Charles Whitfield’s bargain, and if she had it to do over, she’d make the deal again.
Max was a big boy. With millions of dollars and an army of lawyers. He’d figure a way out of this unscathed. Her fate, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so certain. She needed to take care of herself.
To that end, she injected some steel in her spine and her voice as she faced him. “You seemed to enjoy yourself,” she taunted, throwing his earlier words back in his face, as though no time had elapsed since he’d spoken.
“You outrageous little—”
His hands manacled her upper arms, hauling her against him as his mouth crashed down on hers.
Emma meant to resist, truly she did, but her lips parted under the siege of angry lust, and when she raised her arms to push him away, they ended up twining around his neck and pulling him closer.
Stupid arms.
Max grabbed her ass and hauled her up his body before executing a quarter turn and shoving her back against the window. They both grunted at the rough pleasure of their bodies colliding. Emma wrapped her legs around his waist, vaguely aware that the ripping sound that accompanied the grind of his hips against hers meant the slit in her skirt was probably up to her navel now, but she was too lost in the taste and feel of Max to care.
A loud beep echoed through the room, intruding before things got really interesting, and he cursed against her mouth, letting her