by Max Monroe
None of it made sense, not one single piece of it, until all at once, it did.
No fucking way.
The doors of the subway opened, and I didn’t even hesitate, shoving my way through the throng of people without apology or remorse. I didn’t even know what fucking stop we were on, but I ran for the stairs with single-minded abandon, taking them two at a time and reaching the top on a leap.
New Yorkers scoffed and jumped out of the way, burning me with their dirty looks and judging eyes. The yellow of a cab shone like a beacon in front of me.
I ran for it without thought or pause or respect for my surroundings. The heavy leather of a handbag may have even grazed my shoulder in a glancing blow, but I didn’t care. Words thrummed in my head in time with the memory of her heartbeat, building and buzzing around my brain until I almost couldn’t stand it. The not knowing, the unlikelihood—it was all too much.
“The Winthrop Building. Fast as you can go,” I demanded abruptly to the cabbie, but he didn’t bat an eye at my brusque delivery—grunts and commands were the nature of more than half of New York City.
I dug in my bag for my wallet and fished out the first bill I came to. With a swift thrust, I dropped it through the plexiglass window and jumped out while the last notes of his screeching tires still rung in the air.
Pigeons panicked and people swerved as I wove my way through them, and a woman strummed a guitar on the corner.
The building was locked after hours, but being the CEO afforded me access to the keyless entry code on the main door. Until today, I could honestly say I’d never broken in to my office building before.
Sixteen smashes of the elevator call button, another code, and a fidgety ride later, I stepped off onto the fifteenth floor in all of my sweaty glory and strode straight for Human Resources.
The lights were dimmed, and once again, the outer door to Cynthia’s office door was locked, but nothing could stop me at this point. Not a lock and certainly not my morals.
I ran to my office at a near sprint and around the back of my desk, yanking drawers open one by one in search of my old master key that opened all of the individual office doors. I hadn’t had a need for it in years, so it took me several minutes of digging through pounds of junk to find it.
Priority for tomorrow: My desk needed to be fucking reorganized. Stat.
Mud under my fingernails from practice, I clutched the key tightly and jogged back down the hall.
With a turn and a click, I was in, moments away from officially violating half a dozen privacy laws.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the drawer of the filing cabinet slid open with ease, laughing maniacally to myself before trailing into words.
“Of course it’s not fucking locked. It’s not like she was expecting a fucking psychopath to break into her office and dig through it.”
Like fluttering wings, my fingers shuffled through the labels, knowing Cynthia followed an unbreakable filing system. Nothing was ever out of order or place, and finding it would be easy enough.
Not knowing the actual wording of the label challenged me a little bit, but it wasn’t more than five minutes before I was pulling it out of its spot and cracking it open.
Tracing the lines of the employee names, I ran my finger down the page, muttering through last names until the one I wanted stood out in stark relief.
“Cummings, Georgia.” I slid it across the page in some kind of slow-motion daydream until the other column sealed my fate in undeniable bold text.
TAPRoseNEXT.
Some Kind of Wonderful.
Gary clicked to the next PowerPoint slide, stating something about the cost effectiveness of blah blah blah… Who knows what he was talking about by that point? We’d been in the meeting for over two hours, and I was seconds away from losing my cool.
My stomach growled its irritation.
I glanced at my watch and noted it was five minutes past three, which meant it was five minutes past my daily scheduled sugar fix. I had a Greek yogurt and a leftover piece of cherry cheesecake sitting inside the break room fridge with my name on it.
Conclusion: Someone needed to end this or I was going to end Gary.
It was Thursday afternoon, and it’d been five whole days since I’d had any real private interaction with Kline. We’d texted a lot, snuck a few minutes to chat and say hello here and there, and even had lunch together twice, but he’d been unbelievably swamped with work and activities and I was still one hundred percent determined to keep a professional relationship in the office. The combination of all that crap had put the kibosh on substantial alone time. And let me tell you, the memory of last weekend had my anticipation riding at an all-time high.
Gary plodded over to his laptop, tapping around on the keys. The man moved like a turtle. He was a genius when it came to numbers, but a moron when it came to social cues. While everyone in the room was moments away from falling face first into a coma, he appeared to think we had all the time in the world to discuss more goddamn numbers.
I was numbered the fuck out.
“And if you’ll just give me a minute here,” he mouth-breathed, licking his lips and clicking away. “I’ll pull up another spreadsheet that documents how effective we’ve been in narrowing down our target ratios for the last financial quarter.”
Jesus Christ in a peach tree.
My stomach roared its impatience. Hunger pangs. Crazy, loud hunger pangs. It’s a mystery no one else heard it over Gary’s droning.
The flash of a text notification caught my eye.
Kline: Was that your stomach, Cummings?
Okay. Obviously, someone heard them.
The handsome bastard was sitting beside me. Honestly, I had no idea why he was subjecting himself to this meeting. It was solely for my marketing team. I glanced at Kline out of the corner of my eye, scratching the side of my face with my middle finger. His body jerked noticeably with the effort to conceal his laugh.
Me: It’s 3:05pm, Brooks.
Kline: Ah, right. Georgie’s snack time. What was I thinking?
Me: I don’t know, but if you don’t end this soon, I will murder Gary with my pen.
Fighting a smile, he subtly nodded his head in understanding as he set his phone down on the table. My eyes trailed to his forearms—sleeves rolled up, hard muscles and thick veins on display. To quote Uncle Jesse, Have mercy. If I hadn’t been so damn hungry, I’d have happily sat through this tedious meeting just to gawk at those glorious arms. They were a beacon of muscly man delight.
Gary chuckled, seemingly entertained by himself. His monotone voice penetrated my daydreams about Kline’s forearms, officially popping my Big-dicked Brooks fantasy bubble.
I tapped my pen against my notepad. Shut Gary up. Now.
Kline knew it was a warning. He flashed a secret grin, eyes crinkling at the corners. God, his eyes, they were this flawless shade of blue—so bright, so vibrant. Montana-sky blue.
I’d started to make a game out of nicknaming Kline’s eyes. Those ever-changing blue retinas could be Montana-sky blue one day or, like today, M&M’s blue. But that probably had more to do with the starvation setting in than anything else.
Mmmmmmm, M&M’s. I’d have devoured a bag of that candy-coated chocolate goodness.
“Fantastic work, Gary,” Kline interrupted moments later. “I think we can all agree we’ve gained valuable information on Brooks Media’s projections for the fiscal year.”
Everyone in the room nodded, agreeing far too enthusiastically.
I knew I wasn’t the only one dying a slow death with each PowerPoint GoodTime Gary put on the projection screen.
Gary started to respond, but Kline stood up from his chair. “Go ahead and send the materials out to the rest of the team. That way all departments within Brooks Media can see how they’ve contributed to another fruitful quarter.”
“Oh, okay, but—”
“Really great work, Gary.” Kline patted him on the back, not giving him an inch. “I thi
nk we can officially say, successful meeting adjourned.”
My coworkers scattered faster than roaches when light flooded the room. I followed their lead when I realized Kline would be tied up with Gary for a few more minutes. My stomach couldn’t wait. I damn near sprinted to the break room, all kinds of ready to dig into my snacks. Would I start with my yogurt and then move on to the cheesecake? Or would I just go for it and dig into the cherry cheesecake first?
The world was my oyster, baby.
“Uh oh,” Dean announced, walking out of the break room. “It’s a quarter after three and Georgia isn’t eating?” he teased, making a show of glancing between my face and his watch.
“Yeah, GoodTime Gary gave a go at murder by numbers in our quarterly marketing meeting. If Kline hadn’t cut it short, I think I would’ve staged a riot.”
“Well, I’m sorry to tell ya, cupcake, but inside there isn’t any better. Ivanna Swallow is on her selfie break and she has blowregard for anyone but the spoon she’s currently sucking yogurt off of for Instagram’s sake.”
I groaned.
“Head down, don’t make eye contact, and you should be fine.” He grinned, slapping my ass as he walked past me and down the hall.
Leslie was sitting at one of the break room tables, doing exactly what Dean said she was doing—taking a selfie of a spoon in her mouth. She could probably describe her life in a series of hashtags.
Hashtag, my spoon is so sexy.
Hashtag, my lips bring all the boys to the yard.
Hashtag, my life’s goal is to be a walking bonertime.
“Hey, Leslie,” I tossed over my shoulder as I headed for the most important thing in the room. The fridge.
“O-M-G. You’re, like, never going to believe how adorable people are.”
My phone buzzed in my hand. Thinking it might be Kline begging for a rescue, I let my heart overpower my stomach and paused to look. No message from Kline, but the TapNext icon was aglow with a message from Ruck. He’d been messaging me in a steady stream ever since Monday night, and I had to admit, he never failed to amuse me.
BAD_Ruck (3:11PM): Lizards or Birds?
Lizards or fucking birds? Jesus.
The sadistic bastard had talked me into this little game by starting it with normal choices. Pillows or blankets, candy or pizza—he’d been getting a real kick out of asking me which thing I’d rather have in bed with me. You can only have one, he’d say. With this kind of choice, the decision was a struggle for a different reason.
TAPRoseNEXT (3:11PM): Neither, you lunatic.
My stomach growled, reminding me that I didn’t have time for Ruck and his random get-to-know-you choices right now.
Opening the fridge, I started searching for my snack-time loot. I didn’t respond to Leslie, knowing full well she’d just prattle on. If Gary was the prime example of not understanding social cues, Leslie was the girl who didn’t care about those cues. In her hashtag and selfie-driven mind, everyone wanted to know what she had to say.
For fuck’s sake, where is my food?
“Seriously,” she called, completely oblivious that I’d left a two-minute pause for a reason. “People are, like, so cute. I just ate a turkey sandwich named Gary, and now I’m eating a yogurt named Georgia.”
I stopped mid-rummage and slowly stood, glowering at Leslie over the fridge door.
Her answering grin told me that my eyes weren’t actually shooting out death rays.
“How cute is that?” She held up the half-eaten cup of yogurt. My half-eaten cup of yogurt.
“People are naming the food in the break room. I just can’t even. It’s totes adorbs.” She went back to wrapping her crazy-huge lips around the spoon that was feeding her my fucking yogurt.
It had to be severely unhealthy to want to kill two of your coworkers in the same day.
I took a deep breath, counting to ten in my head.
One-Don’t-Kill-Leslie
Two-Don’t-Kill-Leslie
Three-Don’t-Kill-Leslie…
By the time I reached ten, my hands felt less stabby.
“Hey, Leslie?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“Uh-huh?” she responded, mouth full of yogurt.
“So, that turkey sandwich named Gary was actually just Gary’s turkey sandwich. He wrote his name on it so no one else would eat it.”
She cocked her head to the side like a confused puppy. “But what about the yogurt named Georgia?”
I fought the urge to shout, inhaling and exhaling another cleansing breath. “The yogurt wasn’t named Georgia. I wrote my name on that yogurt because I brought it in. It’s my yogurt and I planned on eating it today.”
She stared back at me, her pea-sized brain visibly processing my words.
The wheels were turning; slowly but surely, they were turning.
“Ohhh, my bad.” She held out the half-eaten yogurt container. “Here, you can have the rest of it. I’m already so full from eating that turkey sandwich and piece of cherry cheesecake.”
Wait a minute…
Piece of cherry cheesecake?
I glared the fuck out of the food-snatching idiot for a good minute before turning for the door.
“So, like, I’m just going to eat the rest of it, okay, Georgia?” was the last thing I heard as I stormed out of the break room and straight for Kline’s office. Since he had hired her, I figured it would be a nice gesture to let him know housekeeping was going to need to branch out into crime scene remediation.
His door bounced off the wall with a bang. Kline raised an eyebrow, his expression confused yet curious behind the large mahogany desk. “Everything okay?”
“Nope.” The door slammed shut, courtesy of my stiletto-adorned foot. “Everything is not fucking okay.”
I strode around his desk and planted my ass on the edge, forcing him to push his chair back to allow room for me and all of my bristling glory.
“I need housekeeping’s number. They’re going to need to bring a body bag tonight. Figured it’d be nice to give them a heads-up.”
“A body bag?”
I nodded. “For Leslie.”
He crinkled his forehead, but I guess apprehension did that to a person. “Come again?”
“She’s fine,” I reassured. “Well, right now. She won’t be fine later.”
He tilted his head. “What’s happening later?”
“I’m going to kill her.”
“Any particular reason you’re plotting her murder?”
“She’s eating everyone’s food, including mine! She ate my cheesecake and my goddamn yogurt!” I gestured wildly, flinging my hands into the air. “Do you know why she’s doing this?”
Kline shook his head. The hint of a smile kissed the corners of his lips.
I pointed my finger at him. “Don’t even think about smiling right now.”
He held up both hands. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m taking this very seriously.” He forced his mouth to the side, trying to hide another smirk, and his voice turned almost offensively diplomatic. “Why is Leslie eating everyone’s food?”
“She thought people were being totes adorbs and naming the food.”
Blue eyes lit up with amusement. “Leslie didn’t realize the names on food meant it belonged to someone?”
“Today, she enjoyed a turkey sandwich named Gary. And a yogurt and piece of motherfucking cheesecake named Georgia. She thought it was like, the cutest thing ever how her coworkers were naming food. She’s too dumb to live. Literally.”
I saw the second he couldn’t hold back laughter. A grin had cracked the secret code and covered his entire face—his eyes, lips, and cheeks were all lit up with hilarity.
Like a boiling pot, it worked its way up his throat and spilled right over, coating me with its vibration. If I hadn’t been so pissed, I might have acknowledged its ability to turn me on.
“This isn’t funny! Your intern is a dumbass! All she does is take selfies and eat my food! Why haven’t you fired her?”
“Not costing anything!” I very nearly shrieked. “She just cost me my goddamn cheesecake!”
Kline shook his head with a smile and started to turn his leather chair in the other direction, away from my glaring eyes, but I was too quick, damn near jumping on top of him. “Don’t even think about it!”
His strong hands gripped my hips and finished the job.
In an instant, his laughter was gone, a look of pure, unadulterated longing taking its place. For two days, we’d practically crawled all the way inside each other, we’d had so much physical contact, but it’d been a long time since then.
For a few moments, all we did was stare at each other. I was straddling Kline’s lap, his muscular thighs forcing my legs to spread that perfect amount. Only a few measly inches kept me from finding out if he was as turned on as I was. And judging by the look on his face, if I pressed my hips to his, I’d hit the cock landmine.
“Dessert named Georgia?” He caressed the sliver of skin that was exposed above the waistline of my skirt. His lips were near my ear. “I’m certain this is something I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from devouring.”
Oh, my…
His hands disappeared under my flowy skirt and gripped my ass, pulling at the cheeks to open me farther to him. Only a minuscule piece of lace was separating his fingers from touching my bare skin. Kline’s hips ground into mine, and I had to swallow the moan threatening to spill from my lips. He wanted this as much as I did. The evidence was hard and ready between my thighs.
My breathing turned ragged, heart pounding inside my chest.