by Frost, Sosie
“I came to receive your apology in person,” I said.
He frowned. “You don’t understand how ultimatums work.”
“If you think you can scare me away from my own company—”
“I’d only hoped you could scare up some coffee.”
I tilted my head.
Was it me…or did I detect a teeny, tiny Appalachian twang shadowing his words?
“What would the Board think if I didn’t show up for work bright and early?” I asked.
“They’d probably assume it was their lucky day.”
Cameron permitted me closer to the coffee table. He’d buried the ornate cherry wood under a thick pile of papers filled margin to margin with an endless array of minuscule numbers and figures. At least the billionaire would have enough money for laser eye surgery once he was done studying the spreadsheets.
“The Board has more to worry about.” He tapped one of the pages. “That’s this month’s profit-and-loss statement. With numbers that terrible, you could’ve kicked them all in the crotch and cart wheeled out of my office and no one would’ve cared.”
I ignored the man and dove for the papers.
I hadn’t ever seen the figures. Daddy had talked about them, of course. And the investors always whispered about economic slowdowns, emerging markets, and tightening budgets.
This was the first time I’d ever gotten a chance to really examine the company.
And boy…
Were we in trouble.
But no way would I admit that to him.
“So…” I flipped through the pages. “Do you always work this late at night?”
Cameron retreated to his kitchen—elaborate, empty, and glittering with restaurant quality equipment. The space had the hallmarks of a personal chef desperately attempting to convince a dedicated bachelor to eat quinoa, quail, and arugula. Instead, a blender coated with the remains of a protein shake crowded a sink for his housekeeper to wash in the morning.
Cameron rummaged through his fridge, finishing his beer. He pulled a second drink from the shelves and offered me one as well. I shook my head.
“Does it surprise you that I’d take my work home?” he asked.
“Yes.” I glanced around his silent penthouse. “I figured you’d have something better to do with your time than drink by yourself.”
“Makes the accounting more fun.”
“Never pictured you as an accountant either.”
“And what do you imagine when you think of Cameron Mitchell?”
Oh, all sorts of terrible things.
A steaming hot bubble bath.
A tall glass of wine.
Our bodies tangled together, whipping up even more bubbles.
“The usual for a man with the nickname of Panty King.” I lied. “With your reputation and wealth, I expected no less than three supermodels in your bed, an unconsciously expensive brandy in your snifter, and reservations at the hottest restaurant in town which you intend to cancel fifteen minutes late just because you can.”
“That sounds like great fun,” he said. “Care to join me?”
“Only with a gun to my head.” I dropped the smile. “I have a few demands.”
“Little early to be setting safe words.”
“I meant demands for my return to the office.”
He scoffed into his beer. “This should be enlightening.”
“I want to be a partner with you every step of the way,” I said.
Cameron returned to the living room, reclining in an uncomfortable but outrageously expensive black leather armchair. His knees spread, and the silk pajama bottoms tightened in the ideal spot over his lap.
I averted my eyes. Not that I could hide from him. Every wall of his penthouse held some sort of photograph or memento of the man.
I was surrounded by everything that was Cameron Mitchell, which made this place exceedingly dangerous.
“I want to be attached to every memo you send,” I said. “I will listen on every phone call, join you in every meeting, and follow you like a shadow around the office.”
“I’ll even let you sit in my lap,” he grinned.
“I’m serious.”
“Then I’m going to need something stronger for this conversation.” He lamented opening his beer.
“Is this going to be a problem?” I asked.
His glance wove an infuriating blend of condescension and arrogance into a single arch of his eyebrows. “What’s the matter, Kenza? Don’t trust me?”
Absolutely not.
And even worse—I didn’t trust myself.
I hadn’t just blundered into his penthouse—I tumbled head over heels into a damned trap. My every reaction to this man was extreme. Anger. Irritation. Desire. How could I defend myself, my company, and the only plan that I knew would save our brand if I couldn’t break my stare from his rock-hard body?
“I never should’ve walked out of your office,” I said.
“Greatest afternoon of my life. Peace and quiet.”
“Don’t get used to it. Soon enough, I’m going to talk to everyone you speak with, I’m going to sign off on every paper and email you draft, and I’m going to go everywhere you go.”
Cameron jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m on my way to the shower. Care to join me there?”
My tummy fluttered.
I blamed it on revulsion.
“Let’s leave a little mystery to this unfortunate relationship,” I said.
Cameron eased himself out of the chair with all the grace of a lion slinking through the grass on an empty savannah. Unfortunately, I had no whip, and I wasn’t about to break one of his thousand-dollar chairs to keep the beast at bay.
“If I’m to share my office, my decisions, and my innermost thoughts with someone…” His voice tickled like a leather belt just before the crack. “We might as well share everything else…”
Maybe it was precognition.
Maybe a woman’s intuition.
Hell, maybe I’d just blamed the inevitable future on my own weak will.
But this man would be my every mistake.
Cameron Mitchell would be a complete and total undoing of everything rational and respectable in my life.
So much for dreams of accomplishments and success. I’d denied myself every idle charm and filthy promise of the occasional player who’d crossed my path. And it’d worked. I was confident. Poised. Focused on my future within Maxwell Intimates.
But Cameron Mitchell wasn’t the usual sort of midnight temptation.
This man was strong, powerful, and so frustratingly handsome that I considered just knocking on his door to be good enough foreplay.
If I left now, I’d make it back to the safety of my own home with my panties secure and dignity intact.
“Sorry,” I said. “I require eight hours of beauty sleep every night—gotta wake up fresh as a daisy so I can stop you from ruining my company.”
“What better way than to fall asleep naked under the covers?”
Easy. “How about separate, in my own bed, far away from any and all pricks.”
Cameron’s laugh rumbled, deep and heady. “Is that what you really want? You pounded on my door at ten o’clock at night to deliver a coffee maker, and you won’t even share a cup with me in the morning?”
“Get over yourself, Panty King.”
“As soon as you get under me, Mackenza Maxwell.”
Did I want to rip off his head or his pants?
None of this made any sense.
Not how I squirmed under his gaze.
Not how my racing heartbeat practically hammered out in morse-code a demand for me to retreat.
Not how this man—though I’d insulted him to his face again and again—kept chasing me for more abuse.
Maybe we both liked torturing ourselves?
Made us more alike than I thought.
“My father told me to work for you.” The air turned honey thick between us. I fought to take an untrembled br
eath. “He promised that you were worth the trouble, and that you’d teach me how to manage a company. So, I’m here. I’m ready to work.”
Cameron snickered. I had no idea the man had such a robust sense of humor—unless he only wielded it at my expense.
“Fine. First lesson.” He gathered the company’s accounting statements and flashed the papers toward me. “Those numbers are important. That column represents our debts. That column is our profits. See this number here in red? That’s bad. And when we have too many big, red numbers, it means the irritating office brat better get on her knees and thank me for taking over this lost cause.”
“Do your job and fix the company, and I might be more willing,” I said.
He sighed. “Guess I’ll never get off.”
I bristled. “You have no faith in this company, do you? Why would you ever agree to take control of a business that you don’t believe in?”
“Because I don’t believe in anything.”
Cameron spoke it as if such a concept were obvious and normal.
“That’s not true,” I said.
“And I don’t waste time worrying about the inevitable. My job is to pump the stock prices so that when we sell your family will earn enough money to break even for their life’s work.”
“It’s not that bleak.”
“How’s your resume look?”
“Blank,” I said, without hesitation. “Because the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do is join my father’s company.”
He laughed.
I didn’t.
“Why are you even in the fashion industry?” I asked. “You don’t like it. You don’t care about it. You’re not even fashionable.”
“That hurts.”
“You have a personal shopper and a design team, not your own artistic style.”
“Should I be marching around the office in formless black dresses instead?”
I stiffened. “In our office, the focus should be on the product, not what our employees are wearing.”
“Then strip out of the ugly dress and walk around in the product.”
“You first.”
He smirked, drawing ever closer to me.
I wasn’t about to retreat.
“Before I started LACE Industries, I thought it’d be fun to go to the Antarctic. See what it was like.” His brow furrowed, perpetually burdened save for the moments he’d decided to screw with me. “Know what I found?”
“Sexual gratification from a penguin?”
“Unless a woman wore layers upon layers of clothing, she’d freeze her tits off.” He sighed. “After a few weeks of parkas and scarves and hats and multiple pairs of snow pants…I’d made a decision. If there’s one thing I cannot abide, it’s bulky clothing on a woman—and a stint in the Antarctic encourages beautiful women to wear entirely too many clothes.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“So, I started LACE Industries out of a biological and business-oriented imperative,” Cameron said. “To ensure as many fabulously wealthy and damningly beautiful women could purchase as many scandalously teeny pairs of panties as modern manufacturing can provide.”
I scowled. “Well, if that doesn’t net you the Nobel Prize, nothing will.”
“I see a deficiency in the market—I correct it.” He winked. “There’s a free lesson in economics from someone who knows a thing or two about conquering industries.”
“I’m not like you, Panty King,” I said. “And, for that, I’ll count my blessings.”
“You count blessings—I’ll count my money.”
“Because that’s all that matters, right?” I asked. “You can’t fool me. You’re the sort of man who drifts from career or career, location to location. You’ve got enough money that it doesn’t matter what you’re doing as long as it lets you see everything, meet everyone, and visit everywhere. But that’s not me. I know where I belong.”
“Sure…” His voice thrummed with a forbidden heat. “Bent over my lap, ass in the air, receiving the only true spanking a brat like you has ever felt in her life.”
And the thrill of such depravity nearly buckled my knees.
Oh, now there was a fantasy that would get buried deep in the desperately forgotten depths of my repressed curiosity.
“You couldn’t handle me,” I warned.
“You couldn’t take the pleasure.”
“You don’t know a thing about me.”
“And I don’t care to learn.”
I wished I shared the sentiment.
But this man made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.
He pretended he didn’t care about the company—and yet, there he was, sitting on the couch in his pajamas, pouring over the accounting statements and inventory lists as if Cameron Mitchell—Panty King, Antarctic explorer, and self-made billionaire—had nothing better to do than work.
And work on a failing company in an industry he hated.
“How can a man who has everything…have nothing at all?” I asked.
Cameron hesitated, his jaw twitching. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Why are you here?” I rephrased the question with terms he’d understand. “And why are you here alone?”
“Not alone now, despite my best efforts.”
“Your best efforts? You mean, when you can’t decide if you want to kick me out, fire me, or take me to bed?”
“All good options.”
And all completely transparent. “Why isn’t there someone else in your bed already? You’re handsome. Rich. Presumably someone can tolerate your arrogance. So, the only reason you’re not with a woman right now is because you don’t want one. Why?”
Cameron ignored me and poured himself a drink from a half-stocked bar overlooking the giant plate-glass window. The ornate whiskey bottle contained only a sliver of amber liquid at the bottom of the glass. Macallan. Figured. The man even drank only what would flaunt his wealth. He sipped from a tumbler and stared out over the skyline of Ironfield—his penthouse had the view of the river.
“You have no one close to you, do you?” I asked. “I’ve learned a lot about you, Cameron Mitchell. You’re the only billionaire in this world without a plan.”
He simply stepped toward the wall, tapping his framed mountain climbing paraphernalia.
“Oh, sure, you’ve climbed Everest.”
Like that was an easy task.
Except, for Cameron Mitchell…it probably was.
I followed his gaze toward the other accolades littering his walls. “You’ve been to the bottom of the ocean. And, for some ungodly reason, they not only took you to outer space—they didn’t leave you there.”
He laughed. “And, according to you, this proves I lead a meaningless existence?”
“I don’t know what to think of you. You’ve been at the top of every conceivable field and conquered literally every goal set before you…and yet here you are, in Ironfield, pouring over a failing company when you could be in the Caribbean on your own private island, ordering drink after drink for whatever blonde bimbo happened to pounce in your lap.”
He smiled just to spite me. “Maybe I’m not looking for a blonde bimbo.”
“Well, you’re looking for something.”
“Because I’m accomplished?”
“Because if you really enjoyed any of these escapades—you’d still be under the sea or on a space station or in Antarctica.” I crossed my arms. “But you aren’t. You’re still out there—doing—searching for something. So, what is it that you’re looking for?”
His jaw set.
Pushed a little too hard.
Good.
A man like Cameron needed someone to challenge that arrogance.
Unfortunately, I met his steeled gaze. His chestnut eyes layered with every mystery, every dark and twisted fantasy my mind could concoct.
I loved and loathed becoming the center of his attention. My only wish was for my heart to decide if it wanted to harden or melt under his penetrating
stare.
“And what about you?” Cameron’s voice lowered. “You’d insult my character for reinventing myself and experiencing all that life has to offer, but you’re too frightened to lose your Daddy’s company and face the world all alone.”
He wasn’t turning this on me.
Even if he was right.
“You’re afraid you’ll miss something if you stand still,” I said.
He shrugged, gesturing over the penthouse. “Why should I? Look at where I landed. Best place in Ironfield…just so happens to have a pest problem.”
“If you want to get rid of me, you need only say one little thing.”
“Get on your knees?”
Charming.
“How about—Mackenza, you’re right. You deserve a spot at my right hand, and I’ll ensure you’re privy to my every decision.”
“Fine. Starting tomorrow, you’ll have complete access to every aspect of the company.” Cameron never gave something for nothing, and he waited until he had my full attention. “But I’ll need you to do something for me.”
“What’s that?”
The ice clinked in his glass as he strode to the kitchen. He tapped a hand on the Keurig box.
“I’m not sure how these things work. Why don’t you plug it in for me—give me a demonstration?”
“You push the damned button yourself,” I said. “And don’t drop the scalding coffee in your damned lap—apparently God saw fit to put your brain between your legs.”
Now I understood why this man was perpetually alone.
He was accomplished, rich…
And a complete dick to the entire world.
I stormed toward the door, but I didn’t get far.
Cameron met me in the doorway, grabbed my arm, and spun me into his chest.
Within seconds, he’d captured me in a passionate, knee-buckling kiss.
Oh, this wasn’t fair.
I surrendered into his embrace, dizzied by a kiss which was too good, too revealing, and too perfect for this man.
My world didn’t turn upside down—it shredded to bits, exploded into confetti, and then pasted itself together in a jigsaw puzzle of desire.
Everything right suddenly became wrong.
Everything that had made sense came undone.
Everything safe and logical turned to chaos and insanity.