“She’s fragile,” Lo whispered, but the accusation still hung in the air.
“I know.”
“Then you know what happens when you fuck this up.”
“You make it sound like it’s the inevitable.”
“Isn’t it?” Lo pursed her lips waiting for him to disagree. But could he?
She wasn’t wrong. History had shown time and time again that he went in hot and heavy to only cool off like a blizzard rolled in out of nowhere. He didn’t want to do that to Cass, but want and reality are two very different things. Up until Friday, he hadn’t even given a relationship between them much thought. Sure, there were signs that Cass had meant more to him than he cared to admit, but when a man is blind, he’s blind. They were friends, until the switch suddenly turned on and everything became clear.
Every feeling he dismissed came rushing at him as soon as she told him about her ideal man. He breathed easier when Cass was in the room. His eyes always found her. He laughed more with her, felt more confident with her, and he had this burning desire to make her feel like the beautiful woman she was. He wanted to be the one to bring a smile to her face, to give her confidence, to be the one she leaned on. He wanted to touch her, feel her close, and never, ever take her for granted again. He had no desire to go back to the way things had been, but would that desire hold?
Would he break her heart?
“I don’t know,” he sighed, leaning back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling.
“Fucker,” she grumbled.
“I want this. You know that, right?”
“You always do. But this isn’t some random woman. She isn’t one of the stick thin bitches you’ve been with before who will get sad for half a second until they move onto the next loser CEO who can boost their rep. This is our Cass.”
“She’s stronger than you think,” Maddox growled. Lo acted as Cass’ guardian, but sometimes she treated her friend like a child.
“Not with this,” Lo replied.
“She’s not a child. You need to let her live.”
“I am letting her live. I haven’t talked her out of this. But don’t pretend like you won’t destroy her in the end.”
“How do you know she won’t destroy me?” he asked, and as the words came out, he realized how true that statement was. He was all in with Cass. He wanted her more than anything. He couldn’t imagine his life without her. But what happened if her insecurities took hold and she walked away? Or worse, if she stayed, but all he did was send her deeper into a well of anxiety? And what if, after all this, what if she decided she couldn’t deal with him and walked away?
Pain ripped through his heart.
Lo sighed.
“You have it pretty bad, don’t you?” she uncrossed her arms and began toying with her bracelets.
He glared at her.
“Oh, stop it, pretty boy. You may be my boss, but I’m taking off the employee hat right now. It’s time for you to shut up and listen to me. Cass is my girl. She’s my best friend, my sister. I love her as my own. And I don’t care about any job or career as much as I care about her. So let me tell you that there will be a world of hurt if you destroy her. I will never, ever, let you forget what you did,” Lo seethed as she leaned forward, her eyes boring into his. Maddox had no response for the seething venom in her voice. Lo was always flippant and full of sass. Her anger never boiled very hot. This was different. Mama Bear had her claws out.
“But I’ll tell you, if you want her, make it work. Make her yours. Let her work through her shit, and there will be a lot of shit, but be patient and let her get through it. She’s had years to make herself crazy, and a little mind blowing sex and sweet nothings in her ear won’t make it all magically disappear.”
Mind blowing sex? How did she…oh. Really?
A small grin pulled up at the corners of his mouth before he hid it back away. The iciness in Lo’s gaze told him she hadn’t missed it.
He cleared his throat.
“I know you’re worried about her, and I appreciate that, Lo. I do. And part of me wants to tell you to get the fuck out of my office, because I’m pretty pissed you’d think I’d take any of this lightly. But you’re right. I suck. I’ve left a long trail of broken hearts and used women. But I’m not doing that with Cass. I know what she is, who she is, and I’m not in this for the short term. Is that good enough for you?”
“For now,” Lo stood up and moved to the door.
“We have an understanding?” she asked before reaching for the handle.
He cocked his head. What?
“You’re going to try, and I’m going to not have to kill you?” she grinned.
“I’m going to more than try. I know you’d look too good in orange.”
Lo laughed as she stepped out of his office, but it wasn’t until his door shut behind her that he let his guard down.
Damn, Lo.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been saying the same things to himself. He was an asshole. He knew what he’d been doing with woman after woman. He knew how he ran hot and cold, and he knew that this was a very, very dangerous thing he was getting into here. He wasn’t even this scared with his ex-wife, and he’d married her. Cass was that woman he could tell anything to, and she never judged him. Well, at least not to his face. The relationship was so unconditional, and he knew that a screwup meant losing something that came once-in-a-lifetime.
He ran his hands through his hair. Shit. Shit. Shit.
C: Jackass.
His phone lit up. Maddox peeked at it, and his heart fell. What had he done?
C: I ate too much at lunch, and I blame you.
Okay, nothing wrong. Just her way of joking.
M: I wasn’t there.
C: Exactly.
M: And I would have…
C: Distracted me from giant, yummy ice cream concoctions.
M: Definitely. I can think of a few ways to distract you right now… Damn. He was getting hard again. He had to get control over that rogue dick. He couldn’t walk down the hall this way.
C: No office nookie.
M: Tease.
C: I’ll make it up to you later.
He grinned thinking of all the ways she could make that up to him later. He had quite the imagination.
M: You’d better. Dinner?
C: Don’t talk about food. No food. Never eating again.
M: Oh, I definitely wasn’t thinking about eating food…
C: Bad man.
M: You know it.
* * *
The glow from her screen highlighted the strain on her face as she stared at her computer. Maddox leaned against the side of the doorway, his lips turning up at how she mumbled to herself as she examined whatever it was she was working on. She was so engrossed in her project, she hadn’t even realized he’d been staring at her for the past few minutes.
“Creeper,” she mumbled when she finally caught him out of her corner of her eye.
“Didn’t want to disrupt the zone.”
“Others would’ve just left me be,” she grumbled, looking back at her screen.
Well, someone was in a bad mood.
“Everything okay?” he asked, coming to sit behind her.
“Fine,” she responded, but the low growl coming from her as she refused to look at him in favor of the website plan on her screen definitely meant things weren’t fine.
“Obviously not. Wanna talk about it?”
“No.”
“Not wanna talk about it?” he glanced at the door to make sure no one could see before running his finger up her arm.
She closed her eyes. “Not right now, Mad, please,” she pleaded.
Well, that wasn’t going to work. He didn’t like this. Something was really wrong. Cass wasn’t the type to hold back.
“Did I do something wrong?” he whispered. Already. How could he have screwed up already? He hadn’t even seen her. Maybe that was the problem? Maybe her no-nookie-at-work rule wasn’t really a rule, but a chall
enge? Should he have paid her more attention? He thought letting her be all day was what she wanted. He-
Ooookay, that was some good side eye.
“Not everything’s about you.” She pursed her lips.
Right. Right. The muscles he didn’t realize he was clenching relaxed. Well, then, he could deal with this.
“Well, if you’re sitting in your dark office grumbling to yourself, and it isn’t about me, then it’s about work, and since I’m the boss I’m asking you what’s wrong.”
“This. This is all wrong,” she motioned to her computer.
“The website plan?”
“Yes. It’s impossible to navigate. There’s no cohesion. It’s not intuitive.”
“Then have them redesign it.”
“This is the redesign of the redesign, and we’re two weeks from the deadline.” She put her face in her hands.
“Let me see it.”
“No.”
“Cass…you know I adore you, but let me see the damn website.”
She sighed and stood, allowing him to take her place. He scrolled through the design, and realized something…it sucked.
“Who designed this shit?”
“Mad…”
“Cass…”
“Look, I’ll deal with it, okay?” she pushed him out of her chair.
“Phil?”
“I”m not saying anything.”
“No. If this is his idea of good, then we need to have a chat.”
“Please don’t,” she pleaded, her eyes brimming with tears.
He shut the door and turned back to her.
“Tell me.” He folded his arms over his chest and stared at her. He wanted to hold her close. He wanted to wipe away the tears he was sure were coming. But a closed door wouldn’t do anything to keep someone from walking in, and even that wasn’t in the realm of normal for them. Besides, once he started to comfort her, he knew he wouldn’t want to stop at just a hug. His control was good, but not that good when he’d been thinking of the weekend all day, spending half the day behind his desk because he’d been hard as a rock.
Besides, now he was pissed.
“Please let me just deal with this,” she whispered.
“No.”
Her eyes widened and then turned hard. “You’re not my savior.”
“I’m still your boss. Tell me why this website sucks. We can’t roll that shit out. You know that.”
“Of course I know that. What do you think I’ve been doing for weeks? Do you think I’ve just been sitting here trying to find ways to make it suck more? THIS,” she waved her hand at the screen, “is salvage. This isn’t event the worst of it.”
“Salvage isn’t good enough.”
“It’s what you’re gonna get.”
“I need you to do better. I need your team to fix this,” he stared at her, realizing she was fixing it.
“This is me fixing it, okay?” She changed her screen to another plan, and he moved back behind her to look at it. The navigation was clean, the design simple. It was easy to follow and had a well thought out design flow.
“You did this?”
“This was the original design.”
“Then what the fuck are you showing me?”
Just then the door opened and Phil stepped through.
“Do you have the redesign?” he glared at Cass before noticing that Maddox stood behind her. “Hey,” he acknowledged.
“It’s almost ready,” she mumbled.
“I asked for the draft an hour ago,” he scolded, looking at Maddox like, “See. This is what I’m dealing with.”
“Cass and I were just discussing it,” he responded before Cass could say something snarky. She glared at him in warning.
“You were, huh?” Phil’s eyes narrowed at Cass.
“He came in and started nosing around, just like Mr. Annoying Ass usually does,” she waved him off, and while the words were typical Cass, there was tension behind them.
Phil stepped around, and Cass wasn’t fast enough to hide the design from her desktop.
“Why are you showing him that crap?” he accused.
“I wanted to know how we got to the piece of shit she was working on when I walked in,” Maddox interjected. “Phil, why don’t you meet me in my office in 5,” he dismissed Phil, and once the sputtering man left, he turned to Cass who was fuming.
“Baby girl—“
“No, no, don’t. Don’t fucking ‘baby girl’ me. You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” she seethed. He stared at her wide-eyed. “You’re about to destroy the small shred of respect I have in this office. You. I don’t need you to rescue me.”
“Dammit, Cass. Yes, I know you think you can do this all on your own. You think you can just suck it up and deal with putting out a piece of shit. But hell if I’m going to let that happen. First of all, you’re not Phil’s boss. You don’t get to tell him what to do. I do. Second, I most certainly, as his boss, get to tell him that website is a piece of shit, and as COO, I will not allow it to see the light of day.”
“He’ll think I tattled on him,” she sunk down, defeat writing its way across her face.
“So.”
She glared at him. “So? Are you blind here? Seriously? He’s already making me miserable. He’s micromanaging my day. He’s changing my decisions behind my back. He’s trying his damnedest to make me look bad, and now? Now he gets to to add ‘Can’t stand up for herself’ to his litany of things I can’t do.”
He couldn’t handle it anymore. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. “No one in this office would ever accuse you, of all people, of not being able to stand up for herself. You earned your title, your majesty.”
Her strangled laugh rippled through his chest, and he suppressed the desire to pick her up in his arms and comfort her for the rest of the night.
“Let me deal with Phil. I’m actually glad I saw this now and not the day before the presentation. I needed to see this, and you know it.”
She sighed, and Maddox knew she was acquiescing to his logic.
“Keep working on the original design. Scrap what Phil has had you do so far.” He let her go, lifting her chin and lightly brushing her lips. “I’ll deal with the rest.”
18
Cass
Frustrating man.
She huffed to herself as she grabbed her purse and headed over to Lo’s office. “I’m leaving,” she announced, peeking around the corner.
“Did you check in with Phil. I mean, it’s five minutes early. He might need something in those five minutes,” Lo teased.
“I think he’s going to be a bit busy. He won’t notice. And I just need to get out of here.”
“You okay, hon?” Lo grabbed her own purse. If they were going to go down, they might has well go down together.
Cass relayed the website conversation, and Lo smiled.
“You’re okay with this?” she cried.
“Hell yeah! The asshole has had this coming for a long time. He’s been making us miserable, and karma is a righteous bitch. Besides, this isn’t Maddox protecting his girl, this is Maddox protecting his company. That design was shit, and Phil would’ve totally thrown you under the bus for it.” A Cheshire Cat grin spread across her face. “Think this deserves shots?”
Cass tried hard to suppress her own smile, but Lo was right. Phil deserved what he was about to get, and a little part of her wanted to revel in it. Okay, not just a little part—every single inch of her.
“Maybe…”
“There’s my vindictive little she-bitch.” Lo grabbed her arm and walked out the building to McCallan’s. Within ten minutes they’d done one celebratory tequila shot and were ordering up a second.
M: Where’d you go?
Shiiiit.
C: McCallan’s. With Lo. Meet us here?
M: I’ll pick you up outside.
C: K.
Her brain was a little fuzzy from downing two shots and a beer, but that didn’t mean she was oblivious
to how he was white-knuckling the steering wheel of his car.
“Sorry,” she whispered as she sat down in the seat.
His brow furrowed, and he stepped on the gas.
Silence.
She stared down at her feet, because she was sure the swear words he mumbled under his breath meant they were pretty much going to die in a fiery car crash before she found out anything that was going on.
The lack of conversation between them became a suffocating balloon filling the physical space, serving to only increase an anxiety inflamed by alcohol.
She stepped inside the door, barely registering the soft click of the lock before she was swung around and thrown against it, Maddox’s bruising lips capturing her shocked gasp.
She knew she should be upset with him for not letting her deal with things her own way, and a part of her knew he was pissed that she didn’t come to him with her concerns. But all that went out the window when his fingers brushed over her hardened nipple as his teeth captured her bottom lip.
Cass couldn’t help herself. She needed him. Inside her. Now.
Not letting herself think, because thinking would mean talking, and talking would mean ruining this moment, she stroked her hand over his hardened length before unfastening his pants. She unbuttoned his shirt in record time, violently stripping off his clothes. Not to be outdone, Maddox jerked down her skirt and panties in one fluid motion and yanked her top over her head before claiming her mouth once again.
Maddox wasn’t playing gentle, and Cass wasn’t sure she minded angry sex. He nipped his way down from her earlobe to her shoulder, where his nipping was bordering on biting. A mixture of pleasure and pain flowed down to her center, her moans serving as his encouragement.
He lifted her leg up, wrapping it around his waist before plunging his fingers into her over and over. Her wet clit made sucking sounds as he thrust in and out, again and again. His thumb found her sensitive nub, and she cried out as she tumbled into bliss, but Maddox wasn’t close to done, because as soon as she cried out, his fingers were replaced by his hot, hard cock. Where the fuck had he found the condom? He was magic and-oh, hell…
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