“Funny,” he taunted her silkily. “I seem to recall you rather liked a bit of vulgarity and name-calling.”
The fiery glare she fixed him with was just the heat he needed to plow ahead. Absently reaching out, he touched the glass bead dangling from the contraption sticking out of her hair and smirked.
“Baby girl?”
The glare intensified.
“No?” he drawled lazily. “Hmm.”
Stepping back, he rested his hips against the edge of his desk and jammed a hand into his pocket. He knew he was fucking with her for no good reason other than because he could. Behaving this way—acting on emotion—wasn’t his norm, but with Rhiann, he couldn’t help himself. She was the flame he willingly stuck his hand into every damn time.
“Angel lips?”
Holy shit. The incendiary look she gave him let Liam know that one landed with a thud. He didn’t doubt for a second that she wasn’t remembering just how she came by the nickname. His body certainly remembered if the swift, hard surge in his cock was any indication.
Surprising him, she lurched to her feet with alarming speed. He watched the folder in her lap fall to the floor and slide across the tile, coming to rest against the leg of his desk. He’d barely had a second to register what was happening when she viciously snapped at him.
“That’s enough!” she yelled, stabbing the air with the pen she still held. Looking like a stern nanny with a fearsome frown, the feisty brunette drew herself up ramrod straight and slammed both fists on her hips with her legs locked in a defensive posture.
Rhiann the warrior. Prick her and she’d strike back—even if blindly. It was her weakness; one he knew how to manipulate.
From his position leaning casually on the desk, she met him eyeball to eyeball, trying to be all badass and get up in his face. This is fun.
With a husky growl of impatience, she eyed him balls out and unflinching until his unwavering answer to the challenge cut through her control and she looked away.
“L-look,” she stammered.
God, she was cute. Beneath the bravado and take-no-shit attitude lay a tiny nugget of vulnerability that had his name etched on it.
“You’re my boss. Although how or why that came to be seems a bit wonky.”
That last part came out in an exasperated murmur, reminding Liam that he hadn’t exactly been playing fair.
Stripped of the seven layers of bullshit, he’d wrapped the magazine acquisition in, and the bare-naked truth was this—he’d achieved every goal he’d set for himself. All of them—even the one where he decimated his father’s business empire and, quite literally, pissed on the man’s desk chair.
Thing was—once all that was in the rear view, there hadn’t been anything to really occupy his mind. Or his time. Somehow, the synergy of those things led to a chink in his emotional armor. Without the non-stop noise of the business world occupying his thoughts, it was impossible to stop all of his attention from sinking into memories and hot, erotic fantasies about the one thing that existed totally outside the anger and vengeance that had fueled his life until then. Rhiann.
His interest had started innocently enough. An internet search. Seemed simple and relatively non-intrusive. After all, the President and CEO of BPG was not a goddamn stalker.
He also deliberately left his head of security out of the loop on the matter. Ordinarily, he would have directed Roman to compile a complete background dossier, but this was personal and he didn’t want anyone else’s eyes on his private life.
In less than five minutes, he knew that Rhiann had graduated with honors and immediately followed her dream to New York City where she eventually landed the plum position she’d held at Passion for the past three years.
But that was it. He wanted more. Needed to know about her complete life. Was she married? Had children? The thought that another man was enjoying Rhiann’s engaging manner and delectable body turned him to stone. Knowing he was the one who ended their secret affair gave him zero right to feel that way—but he did.
And that right there was the fucking problem. Although he came off with a meticulously crafted persona of detached coolness—Liam felt a shitload of things. All of them for Rhiann. He cared who she was with. Cared big time. Almost to the point of it driving him crazy. And that was when he came up with this brilliant plan to insinuate his ass back into her life by buying the damn business where she worked.
Wonky? Fuck, yeah.
“Yes, we have a history,” she muttered thickly as he came back into the moment and focused on what was being said. She must have stooped at some point to retrieve her folder because she was slapping it against the side of her leg.
“But you called me—as my boss—and demanded a meeting. So, here I am. Your Director of Communications. Prepared to discuss everything and anything about my department. Whatever you want. Branding. Magazine credits. Coordinating photo shoots. It all eventually goes through me, as you well know.”
He heard what she was saying, but it couldn’t have mattered less. At the moment, his senses were drinking her in. She was close enough for him to pick up her scent, and as she spoke, he could feel the puffs of air made by her breathing, landing on his skin. Plus, she had this habit—not so much biting her lip as chewing on the inside of her cheek when she was put on the spot—that made him want to grab her ass and pull her flat against him so he could invade her mouth and distract her with his tongue.
“I don’t know what you’re up to, Liam, so all I can do here is my job, okay?”
His breathing stopped when she called him by his name. Glad she’d dropped the Mr. Ashforth crap, he let the sound of her husky voice as she said Liam wrap around his nerve endings. She was lucky she had no idea what hearing her say his name again meant to him and figured she’d be mortified to learn how desperately he longed to hear her say it again and again as she writhed frantically under his heaving body while he fucked her into next week.
But she was right. This was business, and he didn’t want her to realize what a complete bastard he really was. He couldn’t pretend for a second that he wouldn’t have had her naked and sprawled on his desk in record time if she hadn’t called him out.
He stood up and, in doing so, invaded her body space—looming over her as he heard the faint intake of a gasp. She’d told him once that his big chest made her feel safe. Liam had been little more than a boy then—barely twenty-four—and when she’d said it, he almost changed the path he was on. That whole summer when they met and for long months after when as reckless college students they indulged in a passionate secret relationship, he’d come damn close to denying the heavy emotional forces that drove him. Because of her and what she made him feel.
The little gasp took him right back to that time. Even after what he’d done, he still affected her.
With the triumph surging through his veins, he tried a smile on for size as he gazed down at her. For the first time in forever, it didn’t feel forced or fake. The look she returned was wary and guarded.
“You’re right, of course,” he answered, reluctant to move away. What he said next surprised them both.
“I, uh . . . apologize if it seemed like I was stepping over the line.” He shrugged—yet another uncharacteristic response. “Chalk it up to being glad to see you again after all this time.” He almost said the words, my sweetness; he’d lavished that endearment on her when they’d both been young and stupid.
Okay, he thought. That’s enough. He was doubling down so fast he’d be on his knees at her feet in the next instant if he didn’t get a fucking grip.
“Come here,” he growled—grabbing one of her clenched fists. Pulling her unyielding body along, he moved them beyond his huge desk and guided them onto a wide leather sofa, practically pushing her down until she sat awkwardly so he could slide next to her.
Eyeing her discomfort, he told her rather curtly to, “Relax,” as he leaned back and stretched his arms wide against the back of the seating.
Rhiann wa
s consciously trying not to rub at her wrist where Liam had held tight before depositing her stumbling ass on a sofa she’d neglected to notice in the corner of his massive office.
Relax? Whatever! She had about as much chance of relaxing as she had of winning the Master’s Tournament. And since she didn’t golf, well . . .
“I’m looking forward to the year-end review from your department, Rhiann. From everything that’s come across my desk so far, I’d say it’s clear you run your team with a results-oriented approach that’s been highly effective.”
That sounded a lot like a compliment—one that had her beaming a happy smile.
“I have great people,” she assured him. Hell. If they were going to talk business and keep it to that, she was home free.
He nodded fractionally, acknowledging the mention of the others in her pod who worked so damn hard.
“The spring covers and marketing campaign were quite successful.”
“Is that why you bought the magazine?” she blurted out. “Because of our success?”
Rhiann held her breath and waited for his answer. The signals he was giving off were confusing. One minute, he looked to be eyeing her up for the first course of his evening meal, and the next, he became aloof, hard—distant.
She wasn’t fooled when he relaxed, settling deeper into the sofa. Everything about him screamed high alert. Lifting a foot onto his knee, Liam picked an imaginary bit of lint off his slacks then sat back and trapped her with a look.
“I think we both know why your little fashion magazine is now part of BPG’s holdings.”
Uh . . . what? Did that asshole just refer to one of the top selling hard copy publications still on the market as a little fashion magazine? What. A. Dick. Clearly, not much had changed in Liam Ashforth’s world. He was still a cocky bastard.
Bristling at the put-down, she ignored the bigger part of what he’d admitted and focused on the attitude instead.
“I’m good at what I do, Liam. And Passion is no little fashion rag.” She dialed back the outrage in her tone but only slightly and tried not to cringe at the way she made her point, complete with a belligerent hair flip.
She watched his eyes narrow and noted the slight flaring of his nostrils. Uh-oh.
“Oh, I know all about how good you are, sweetness,” he informed her with a grim expression.
Fuck. She’d walked straight into that one. Without thinking through what she was doing, Rhi jumped to her booted feet and took off at a mad clip for the door. Okay fine—fight or flight. She chose flight. Seemed safer. For her.
“I can’t do this, Liam,” she snapped. “I’m not your sweetness, and as I recall, you rather brutally told me that I was nothing more than some silly little girl you fucked to kill time. What was it you said? That I didn’t know you at all? You were right. I didn’t. Something I regret more than you’ll ever know.”
Rhi had made it to the door before he caught up with her. Dammit if there weren’t tears stinging her nose and swimming in her eyes. She’d loved him. Had she been too eager? Too wrapped up in the seductive nature of their clandestine activities? Oh, probably. But when he’d thrown the fact in her face, she’d crumbled. It hurt then, and it still hurt now. He definitely had balls calling her sweetness.
Catching her around the waist before she could yank the door open, Liam spun her to him, fisting his hands in the soft fabric of her sweater dress.
“Milaya moya,” he growled—his eyes burning bright.
Rhiann groaned at the old endearment. Milaya moya meant ‘my sweetness’ in Russian. He’d called her that—a term shared with them by the kindly curmudgeon who ran the foreign languages department one evening when they ran into him at the university library.
Liam had been showing her a beautiful book he’d come across with gilded edges and fantastic illustrations of life during the Czar’s time. She recalled that his love of books was nearly as consuming as her father’s had been and that they spent countless hours poring over dusty manuscripts and classic texts.
Old Professor Gravrikov had a soft spot for Liam—one of the few people she ever saw him interact with. He noted the book they were enjoying and told them it was a love story. A tragic one. And that the hero had gone to his grave calling out for his long lost lover. Milaya moya. Milaya moya. Why in the hell was he bringing this up now?
“No,” she cried huskily. “Don’t. . . . .”
And then he kissed her. His lips were rough. Demanding. Fierce. The stubble on his face, so much a part of the contradiction that was Liam Ashforth, abraded her skin. It damned her that she responded. How could she not?
In seconds, they were out of control—breathing heavily—his hips pinning hers to the door at her back.
From somewhere, she found the wherewithal to get the hell out of there. Frantically reaching behind her for the doorknob digging into her bottom, Rhi held on tight and pulled the door open. Their mouths jerked apart. His eyes narrowed, but he stayed silent.
Rhi wanted to say something but didn’t trust her voice so she simply turned on her heels and ran as fast as she could. Away from where Liam stood, his face plastered with the scowl she knew so well. Past the fire-breathing secretary who startled as she flew past.
Slapping her hand on the elevator button, Rhiann counted the seconds before the door slid open, and she fell inside.
Yeah. That had gone well. Not!
CROSS-LEGGED ON THE SOFA, RHIANN sat unmoving in the deep silence of her tiny apartment. She needed the quiet to work some magic on her frazzled nerves following the unfortunate conclusion to her disastrous meeting with the boss man. The dude in charge. He-who-signs-the-paycheck. Liam.
Sighing, she caught the faint tinny clicking of the metal wall clock hung in the kitchen. Soon, her left eye twitched in time—a clear signal that she was losing the battle of denial. Blocking the flashing memory of clinging to that man’s lips when she should have slapped his arrogant face and refused to play his game was a lost cause.
As she sat motionless, Rhi became more aware of the slight pulsing in her lips that hadn’t gone away since he’d claimed her mouth with such effective thoroughness. Once the floodgates opened as a result of that kiss, it was inevitable that long-denied echoes in her mind would fire up.
Feeling a bleakness in her soul for how quickly and easily Liam’s reappearance had shattered her world, Rhi couldn’t defend against the crush of memories from those days, when as a bright-eyed coed, she’d fallen for the serious, starchy grad student who eventually broke her foolish, naïve heart.
It was hot that summer between her freshman and sophomore years at university when she’d been on the brink of turning twenty. She remembered that the heat had been relentless, forcing her gaggle of college gal pals to set up camp in the Baron-Wilde backyard where a pool and a large covered pergola offered sweet relief from the monotony of the brutal heat wave. That was where she’d first laid eyes on Liam Ashforth.
“Cannonball!” hollered Shelby Sutton, Rhi’s dorm roommate, as she lunged across the deck and jumped awkwardly into the deep end, sending a huge wave of water exploding into the air. The girls shrieked their outrage as the resulting shower drenched them all.
“Jeez-us, Shelby,” Rhi barked. “Warn a bitch next time!” After scrambling away from the torrent of splashes, she laughed at her roommate’s antics and ran for cover from the noonday sun.
Across the patio, Nicole Bradley—Rhiann’s long-time neighbor—plugged her iPod into a dock and queued up a playlist of favorite tunes. As Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” floated in the humid, motionless air, and Nicole did an exaggerated bump and grind along to the music, Freya Abbott came shuffling noisily from the patio slider with a two-liter of Diet Coke tucked into the crook of her arm. Hugging the bottle close to her body, she also juggled a stack of plastic cups and a big Ziploc bag of ice.
Freya was their resident do-gooder and surrogate mom. In a lot of ways, the serious girl who Rhiann counted among her bestest of best friends was
a substitute for her older sister, Brynn. Known for being a rule follower, Freya pretty much always volunteered to be the designated driver. She kept everyone on the straightedge, and like Brynn, never failed to cross the T’s and dot the I’s.
“Beverages!” she called out with a wide grin before dropping everything onto a wood picnic table. Sticking out her tongue and grunting with comic emphasis, Freya rolled her eyes. “That’s my last waitress run inside, you guys! Next time you want something—get it yourself.”
Shelby hoisted herself from the pool—landing on her butt with a hearty, wet thwack. “This weather!” she lamented on a groan. Ugh. “The pool is like bathwater it’s so damn hot.”
“Oh shit! Speaking of hot—any of you get an eyeful of the Abbott House RA?” Nicole boomed over the thumping music. “Some random chick in my Speech and Language cohort says he’s Poly Sci. I’d give a crap about politics if all the players looked like him.”
“Hmmph,” Rhiann grunted with an eye roll at Shelby. “How come our RA is a card-carrying member of the Nerd Squad?”
Freya set up four plastic cups on the table and was dropping chunks of ice into each one, as they all started moving toward the shade under the wide umbrella over the long picnic table.
“I’d rather stick a fork in my head than be a resident advisor,” she mumbled. “Keeping an eye on you three is one thing.”
Rhiann smiled at the mocking tone and half smirk Freya directed at them.
“But babysitting an entire dorm of unaccompanied college students? No fucking way.” The messy curls of her long black hair danced across her shoulders when she shook her head to stress the point.
Nicole wrapped a colorful length of fabric around her hips, sarong style, and Timberlaked her way over to them just as “SexyBack” came to an end.
“I’d totes do him.” She chuckled with a nod toward the speaker. “Justin—yum. Love a man with moves, y’know?”
Wilde Heart (Wilde Women Book 2) Page 3