#1 Rival
Page 9
So, while there was no feeling of affection, love and romance—the opposite being more accurate. There was an undeniable attraction and lust that crawled through my body like a virus.
See, I knew I was sick.
And as much as I hated to admit it, Roman was right.
Not about kissing me.
Although . . . ugh.
About the Jana Cane case, and settling was probably—and I said that word begrudgingly—the best way to go.
Oh, I still thought we had a fighting chance in court against both her soon-to-be ex-husband and Price Waters, who had very obviously gotten their hands on some insider information. But, I also knew that she didn’t want her new patent and product launch marred by legal red tape, which would drain her resources. Not to mention Daniel had already filed a cease and desist against Price Waters, giving them a chance to politely bow out before he buried them in subpoenas. And after the patent was filed, anything they did with their ill-gotten information would mean serious fines and jail time. They were greedy, but not outright stupid.
My previous day’s “stomach flu” had seemed to miraculously disappear the next morning. As much as seeing Roman and dealing with the confusing and volatile emotions did not seem like a good time, I needed to get back to work. Besides, the son of a bitch didn’t get the satisfaction of running me out of town. Or the office, as the case was.
Ironically, I wasn’t exactly sure what his intentions were when I hadn’t seen him most of the day.
I hadn’t been intentionally avoiding him, walking into to the firm with my chin held high, ready to do battle. But after assuring Daniel I wasn’t Typhoid Mary and whatever nastiness that had struck me down yesterday was gone—easy to promise when you hadn’t been sick in the first place—I hadn’t seen Roman at all.
And after a sleepless and sexually frustrated night readying myself for the showdown, I was actually disappointed.
Instead of striding in with his devastatingly sexy smile, ego the size of Mount Rushmore and taunting me with further seduction, he was hidden away in his tiny, windowless office next door.
No rolling of his eyes, quip of his lips or calling me Harper.
Nothing.
And when I asked Daniel what had Roman so busy—casually, like I couldn’t have been more bored if I tried—I’d been informed he was putting the finishing touches on the reconfigured timeline to send to opposing counsel. Which made sense of course, but it could and should have been something we’d done together.
What the hell was wrong with me?
I should have been grateful, ecstatic that I didn’t have to deal with his ridiculous arrogance for a while. But there were no feelings of gratitude as I rested my hand on the wall that separated our almost identical offices.
Tension crackled through the Sheetrock, the lingering memory of his kiss and touch gnawed at me like a sewer rat, no matter how much I didn’t want it to. The gutter—with said sewer rat—was exactly where my mind was as I imagined clawing through the wall and throwing him across his desk.
And I reverted to my previous statement.
What. The. Hell. Was. Wrong. With. Me?
Trying to ignore what was obviously a serious case of psychosis, I returned to my desk and tried to do some work.
I didn’t like my chances.
Excitement shot through my spine when a few moments later there was a knock at my door, and I knew it was him before he’d even walked in.
My heart pounded as I lifted my head to look at him with fake disinterest. “What do you want?”
“Hmm, what do I want?” His eyebrow rose, locking the door behind him and taking the air from the tiny space with him. “Pushing you up against the wall and kissing you would be a good start. I haven’t been able to get your amazing tits off my mind.” His eyes dropped to my breasts.
My choice in outfit today might have been intentional. The white, sheer fabric of my blouse clung to my body like a second skin and was completely inappropriate for work when I wasn’t wearing a jacket.
Which I wasn’t currently while alone in my office.
Except, I was no longer alone.
“You’re delusional and disgusting.” I glared at him, pretending that heat hadn’t spread across my skin the minute he’d walked in.
“Am I?” He moved closer, not looking convinced. “Did you think about it last night, Harper? Think about the way I touched you and the way I could touch you?”
His long legs had efficiently taken him from the door to where I was sitting in just a few steps. I pretended not to notice how strong his thighs looked stretching the fabric of his pants as he perched himself on the edge of my desk.
“Didn’t give it or you a second thought.” I dismissed him with a wave. “I know you like to think you’re a big deal, but you really aren’t that amazing. I feel sorry for you.”
“Really?” He laughed, the light hitting his perfect blue eyes as he grinned. “And was it sympathy that made you moan in my mouth? Or rub up against my cock?” He leaned forward edging his mouth right near my ear. “Do you think if I stuck my hand up your skirt right now that it would be sympathy I felt, or would it be something else?”
My throat tightened as I squeezed my legs together.
It wasn’t just his hand I wanted him to stick up my skirt. And if he touched me—even just an innocent graze across my arm—I would probably explode.
He was a demon, an incarnation of evil in a designer suit who could obliterate my hormones with a single sexy smile.
“I have work to do.” I coughed, too obvious that he was getting to me.
“Yes, you do.” He lowered his head, teasing my mouth with his hot breath. “Fuck, you drive me insane.”
I could no longer be held accountable as our mouths met in a thrilling frenzied crash. We had already established that psychologically I was compromised by the weird evil phenomenon and was powerless to fight it.
And then there was that mouth of his which was a problem all on its own. Seducing me with kisses that could stroke my G-spot solely with his lips. I had either not had sex in such a long time I’d forgotten how it worked, or the man had sold his soul to the Devil. Pretty sure at this point I didn’t care which of those theories proved to be correct as long as he kept kissing me.
Or was I kissing him?
Oh my God, I didn’t care which as long as it didn’t stop.
My body rose out of the seat as my fingers threaded through his slick blond hair, and like a magnet finding north, I couldn’t stop the contact.
He palmed my ass, pushing me back against the wall—like he promised in the first place—and let his mouth do the Devil’s work.
He was hard, his firm length straining against his pants as he bunched up the hem of my skirt and hooked my leg on his hip.
I rocked against him, his erection stroking me through his pants and my underwear as his hands and lips explored me.
It was the third time I’d been kissed by Roman. The third time, and I wasn’t sure how it could get any better. It was like having sex fully clothed with the most banal parts of my body becoming highly sensitive erogenous zones. He could kiss my freaking finger and I’d probably come.
“Are you wet, Harper?” He moved his mouth and sucked the exposed skin of my throat.
“No, not at all,” I lied, unable to stop my hands from grabbing his shirt and pulling him closer. “You do nothing for me.”
“You’re such a filthy liar.” His fingers traveled up my leg and edged at my panties. “I bet I could touch you right now and you’d be soaked.”
Breaths were sucked in and out in ragged pants, blistering need consuming me. “If I am, it’s because I’m thinking about someone else.”
My lie made him grin, teasing me further as he pushed my panties to the side. “Is he doing this to you?” A finger plunged into me without warning, filling me while his thumb circled my clit. “Mmmmm. Harper.”
I bucked against his hand, getting lost in the friction.
<
br /> He brought his lips to my ear and groaned, “Whose hand are you fucking right now?”
A moan escaped my lips as I closed my eyes.
“Not yours, anyone but yours.”
So much deceit and in a twisted way it just made it more exciting.
“I could make you come like this, Harper,” he teased. “I thought about it all night, all fucking morning too. Walking in here and making you come exactly like this.”
“You can try, but I doubt you can.”
Lies.
Every single word so far from the truth, but I couldn’t stop.
I didn’t want to stop.
He grinned at every denial, my feigned indifference exciting him even more as he pushed in another finger, pumping me while his thumb continued to circle.
“Feel my fingers inside of you?” He brought his mouth closer, biting my bottom lip with a taunt. “Feel how good that feels? That’s not even close to how amazing it would feel with my cock.”
“It’s not—” I’d lost the ability to lie. Wanting to tell him some bullshit about barely feeling a thing or being more aroused at the DMV, but as I tried to form words, nothing came out.
“You’re so close.” His mouth pressed against mine and with a few more strokes he had me unraveling. “Yes. God. Yes.”
They had been his words because I’d lost the ability to say my own. My fingers dug into his biceps as my hips bucked, every part of me shaking as waves and waves of euphoria washed over me.
“I expected you to be more vocal.” He laughed, his mouth against my skin while I reined in my breathing. “You’re rarely at a loss for words.”
“Maybe if you actually made me come, I’d be a little more excited.” Our eyes locked, my fingers slithering down my body where his hand was still between my legs. “Better luck next time.”
“Oh, you think I didn’t feel that?” He pumped inside of me one last time before pulling out his fingers. “Tell yourself whatever you want, but I made you come, and you liked it.”
“I can understand your confusion.” I yanked down my skirt, steadying myself on my feet. “Jerking yourself off is a lot different than doing it to a woman. You might want to work on your technique though.”
He laughed, pulling out a tissue from the box of Kleenex I kept on my desk and wiped his hand. “If you want me to do it again, Harper, all you have to do is ask. But I have work to do, so it’s going to have to wait until later.”
“Don’t you get tired of embarrassing yourself?” I scoffed, the tingles still echoing through my body. “I’m not that desperate.”
And I didn’t know why, but I wanted to kiss him again.
To put my hand against his pants and feel him hard, stroke him slow and tease him just like he teased me. But I kept my hands to myself, folding my arms across my chest as he followed my eyes down to his crotch.
Shit.
He’d seen me looking.
“Maybe if you’re good, I’ll let you play with it later.” He shot me a wink. “Some of us have work to do first.”
I shook my head, glaring at the door. “You can leave anytime, Roman. This is my office.”
He casually tossed the tissue that had been in his hand into the waste paper basket. “Oh, I know that. I was going into tell you about your new assignment, but then we got sidetracked.”
That was one hell of a sidetrack.
I’d walked into a room before and been absentminded, sometimes even forgetting why I’d gone in there in the first place. But I’d never been so distracted I’d stuck my hands down some man’s pants and jerked him off without the intention of doing so.
Not sure if that said more about him or me.
“What new assignment?” I asked, refusing to acknowledge the other part of his statement.
His lips twisted as he sunk his hands into his pockets. “ITP. Fiber Optics acquisition. You lost the bet.”
“Are you serious, right now?” I struggled to wrap my head around the disbelief.
“Of course I am, you didn’t think I was going to let it go, did you?” He fought his grin. “You might want to get on it soon though, it will take forever to go through the prospective candidates. ITP insists you do the vetting for them, and they’ve been looking for a while.”
“You are such a bastard.” I tossed out the insult wondering how only a few minutes ago I had let him touch me.
Wanted it.
Enjoyed it.
He shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve been called worse. I’ll let you get to work. I have a ton of paperwork I need to get through myself.”
Ignoring his still very visible erection and my irritation, he turned, unlocked the door and left.
Walked out of my office without another word.
I fell back into my chair, my limbs still shaky. I wasn’t sure if it was from the amazing orgasm or how much I seemed to like and hate him both at the same time.
Even more troubling was that I was angrier at him for seeming to be unaffected by it all rather than at myself for my lack of judgment. I mean, obviously he had a hard-on and he’d been aroused. But he’d walked in, walked out, and seemed more amused by it than anything else.
I wanted to march into his office and do the same to him. Put my hands on him, tease him to the brink of madness and then tell him to go alphabetize the Roberson files. There were six generations of Robersons. It would take him a while.
Instead, I shook my head, looking at the door he’d closed and wondering what else I could do to bug the hell out him.
And if that was how good I felt when he touched me, imagine how amazing the sex would be.
Ugh.
Torment him, sleep with him—maybe they wouldn’t have to be mutually exclusive?
There was only one way to find out.
Other than our brief interlude, we remained on our mutual respective sides of the wall.
My new assignment—the ITP account—was boring as hell.
They were just another tech company in Palo Alto looking for greater dominance and more muscle in an already saturated market. But the skinny-jean-black-frame-wearing-thirty-something CEO was a multimillionaire who was still making money when so many other companies had iDied. So, of course when they said, “jump”, we said, “Would that be a vertical or horizontal leap?”
Bored.
Bored and agitated, and the day crawled along painfully slow.
So, when the time display on my phone buzzed at five o’clock, I grabbed my handbag and jumped out of my desk chair like my office was on fire.
I hesitated at his door just for a moment, bringing my ear discreetly to the wood and not entirely sure on what I was hoping to accomplish. The low rumble of his voice echoed through the room. He sounded like he was on the phone, but I could only make out every second word. My skin goosebumped as I heard footsteps come closer, pausing as he returned to his call.
“I’m going to have to skip dinner tonight, I have no idea when I’ll get out of here.” His voice was clear like he was standing right there opposite me with only the door between us.
I held my breath, my heart pounding as I waited to see if he’d continue.
“Look, I know you’re pissed, but I completely understand where she is coming from. My advice is sign the fucking thing, shove it in a drawer and move on.”
Huh? Sounded like business but his language was more familiar than he normal would be with a client. And what about the dinner invitation he had to decline?
My feet stood frozen in place, curious to hear more while still conscious about being discovered eavesdropping.
At any moment he could open the door, finding me stalking him like a pathetic loser. Or someone we worked with might see, attracting their own set of questions. But instead of cutting my losses and leaving before either of those things happened, I decided the risk was worth it and stayed.
“Eric.” He said a name, which happened to belong to the eldest of the Pierce hoard. The mystery of the caller had been solved; he was talki
ng to his brother. “If she hadn’t come to me, it would have been someone else. You know that while I don’t always show it, I care about her, and I will make sure she does not get fucked over.”
Her?
What her?
I assumed Roman had a steady stream of willing women. I’d often joked about his “roster” and he’d eluded the same himself. He didn’t date those women though, he fucked them. Then he left, as he so elegantly put it.
And in the year that we had been working together, he didn’t seem to have been in any kind of relationship, let alone a serious one. But whoever he was talking about with Eric obviously wasn’t one of these fuck toys.
A feeling I didn’t understand swirled in my lower gut.
Jealousy?
Anger?
Did I have any right to care?
But as irrational as any of it felt, I stayed, wanting more information.
“As your fucking attorney, I’m telling you not to fight this.” His voice rose in agitation. “Do I need to remind you about the millions of dollars in assets?”
What the hell?
His brother was a millionaire?
Who the hell was the man who hours ago had his hands in my pants, teasing me to insanity? I knew nothing about him. Literally nothing.
“Fine. We can argue about this later.” Footsteps started again. “I’ll stop by on the weekend before you fly out . . .” The rest of the conversation reduced to an inaudible garble.
While I had initially been more concerned with my unresolved sexual frustration, my detective work raised more important questions.
And before I kissed him again—or anything else—I was going to find out exactly who he was.
HE WAS AGONIZINGLY CLOSE.
All afternoon we had spent inches away from each other finalizing the details for the Cane divorce. After spending the day and a half in purgatory vetting companies for ITP, I was given a reprieve when Daniel asked me to help Roman wrap it up.
The double entendre wasn’t even funny.
Neither of us spoke about what happened yesterday in my office. I hadn’t waltzed in and given him a blowjob like I had fantasized about. Nor had he bent me over my desk and had sex with me—I had more than one fantasy.