by J. A. Dennam
The fact he’d pissed off others in order to slow her down was testament to how far he’d go to win this particular round. Brooke peeled her white knuckles from the steering wheel and turned on the air conditioning. As her immediate surrounding cooled, she rolled up her window and took a deep breath.
Calm, she needed to remain calm.
A man’s voice came over the phone. “This is Sid.”
Still boiling from the green light episode, Brooke had to force the smile back into her voice. “Hi, Sid, it’s Brooke.”
“Hey, I’ve been wondering about you.”
Since she’d met him through her ex-fiancé, Brooke never thought too much about dating Sid. This time, however, she wondered how the flirtatious essence of his words could work to her advantage. “What about me?”
The arrow turned green and the car in front of her began to move.
“I thought maybe you’d be up for a drink so you can tell me all about your vacation.”
She wanted to scream that it had all been a big sham to get her out of the state. Instead, she said, “I’ll definitely have that drink with you, but for now I need a huge favor.”
“Sure, what’s up?”
As she drove at a reasonable pace now, calm reentered her bloodstream. “As long as I don’t get stuck at anymore lights, I’ll be there in about four minutes. I was wondering if you’d let me in through the back door.”
“Sure. Any particular reason?”
“You have two bottles of 2010 Duckhorn Cabernet on your shelves. I’m in a big hurry and I need you to hold them for me so I can be in and out of there as quickly as possible.” Before Ethan got wind of what she was up to.
“You know they’re almost a hundred bucks apiece, right?”
Knowing she’d only get reimbursed for one, Brooke chalked it up to a necessary expense. “Do you take credit cards over the phone?”
“Sorry, no, but I’ll keep an eye out for you.”
Since she’d lost sight of Ethan long ago, she focused on reaching the back of the liquor store in one piece. The wet streets were horrible as usual, as heat and steam rose upward to distort her view ahead through the slow-moving traffic. When she finally wheeled her car into the crowded strip-mall parking lot, Brooke followed the drive that would take her to the back of the shops. Once there, Sid’s mop of red hair glowed like fire in the early afternoon sun. True to his word, he had the door propped open.
When she was parked, they rushed inside together.
“So what’s the hurry?” he asked as he passed her on their way to the register up front.
She kept her voice low, scanning the large rustic showroom for signs of Ethan. “I’m late for work,” she said as she spotted Ethan’s wavy hair bobbing down one of the wine aisles. “I’ll wait here.” She handed Sid her credit card.
He took it, his hand white with an abundance of red freckles. “I’ll be right back.”
Hiding behind stately displays of fine wines, Brooke watched in pained suspense as he reached beneath the counter and set the bottles in plain view. If Ethan spotted them before they were paid for, he could possibly finagle the employees into letting him have one. The register beeped out a sale. Ethan’s hair had moved to the end of the aisles and was quickly bobbing over the selection of bottles near the front of the store.
Sid fluffed out two bags while the cashier swiped her card. In went one bottle, then the next. The register spit out a receipt and only then did Brooke feel the weight of the world lift from her shoulders.
As Sid put the receipt in one of the bags and scooped them up, Ethan reached the counter.
“Hi there,” he drawled, his charming smile putting a blush on the female cashier’s cheeks. “I was told you have a bottle of 2010 Duck-horn Cabernet, but I don’t see it on your shelves.”
Sid placed the bags in Brooke’s arms just as the cashier pointed in her direction. “Sorry, that lady just bought the last two.”
Ethan’s smile vanished. His gaze shot around, searching for that lady. The moment he recognized her, his face morphed into an angry mask of disbelief.
With the surge of victory warming her body throughout, Brooke returned his earlier salute with one of her own. “Nice try, slick,” she purred.
Ethan chased after her as she headed toward the rear exit. “Ken only wanted one bottle, you know!”
Brooke graced him with an over-the-shoulder smirk. “I needed something to go with my macaroni and cheese tonight.”
When Ethan reached the back hallway, Sid stopped him with a hand to the chest. “Sorry, no customers beyond this point.”
“She’s a customer!”
“She’s an exception.”
While Brooke listened to the exchange, Sid shot up to the top of her list of favorite people. With a hand on the exit door, she turned around and flashed her hero an appreciative smile. “Thank you, Sid. That first round will be on me.”
Behind Sid, Ethan paced back and forth like a caged tiger as she slipped out and into the warm Florida air. “Everyone knows you don’t drink a hundred-dollar bottle of wine with mac and cheese!” he shouted after her. But the last word was cut off when the back door slammed shut.
Cradling both bottles in one arm, Brooke popped the top button of her blouse open…and let the sunshine in.
The moment she placed the coveted bottle of wine in Ken’s eager hands, Brooke floated back to her desk on a fluffy white cloud of victory. After such a tumultuous week, this win meant more than just the competition; it was a symbol that things were finally turning in her favor.
And, despite Ken’s recent lecture about office romance, the first person she wanted to tell was Roger. There were still twenty-five minutes left for lunch, so she headed for the break room with a handful of quarters. As she fed them into the machine, the door swung open.
“That was my bottle,” Ethan growled behind her.
Though his tone begged for a fight, Brooke was just too damned happy to care. “It was my money.”
When he approached, his thunderous mood cast an electrically charged shadow over her perch on cloud nine. “I can’t believe you spent a hundred bucks just to screw me over. It only proves how far you’ll go to win.”
She bent over to retrieve her package of sandwich crackers from the machine. “Don’t even think of comparing a wine purchase with leaking information.”
When she left the break room, he hounded her every step as they walked through the office. “Anyone who deserves that title,” he persisted, “doesn’t have to spend money to get it.”
She gave a dry laugh. “It’s no worse than making your patsy run offense for you.”
“You’re just upset because all your patsies were fired!”
The crackers crushing in her fist, Brooke halted, turned, and met his scowl nose to nose. “You’re right. But in this case, it paid to have friends.”
She left him simmering by the reception desk as she continued down the long hall, her heart beating a mile a minute. With that last remark, she’d just scored another major point. Life was good and getting better with every breath she took.
When she reached the server room, Roger was there alone, surrounded by the warmth of humming hardware and working his way through a bag of chips. He looked up, stopped chewing as his eyes fixed on the opened top button of her blouse. A flush crept into his cheeks. “Wow.”
Her smile widened. “You’ll never believe what just happened.”
They finished their lunch together, Roger listening in rapt attention as she relayed what went down at the liquor store. When she got to the macaroni and cheese part of her story, he threw back his head with an infectious whoop of laughter. Her body exploded with delicious tingles at the sound, his joy heightening her achievement like nothing else could. Leaning toward him, Brooke beamed. “I feel like I can accomplish anything. Oh, Roger, I’ve never felt so alive in my life!”
Just like that, the air around them changed. As thoughts of him touching her naked skin began to percol
ate in her mind, his look lingered long enough to make those thoughts a definite possibility. “I must say, I’ve never seen you quite so alive,” he murmured.
Her heart skipped a beat. “Pissing off Ethan Wolf must agree with me.”
“I so want to kiss you right now.”
The shock of his words rendered her speechless for a moment. But, by God, she wanted him to kiss her, badly. He must have seen it in her eyes because he rolled his chair a little closer.
An image of Ken lecturing her from across the desk broke through her lustful haze. Brooke clung to it as if it were her only link to sanity. “It wouldn’t be wise, Roger. Ken is watching us pretty closely.”
He stared at her mouth. “There’s always the darkroom.”
Holy moly. The way his chest rose and fell beneath the shirt and tie made her desperate with need, all consequences be damned. Never before had she fostered such a strong desire to test her limits. “We can’t—”
“Why not?” he interrupted. “No one’s discovered it yet, no one would even think to look for us in there.” She was silent for so long, he tilted his head. “Come on. Break a rule. Take that one last step over the edge….”
They both jumped when the server room door opened. The new systems administrator came in with a Coke in one hand and a half-eaten burger in the other. He spotted Brooke, lifted the burger in greeting, and then sat down at his desk to finish his lunch over an open binder.
Brooke returned her attention to Roger. Though they had company, he repeated his last request through the heat in his eyes.
“I’d better,” she swallowed hard and abandoned the chair she’d borrowed for the last fifteen minutes. “Um…get back to work.”
She could feel his intense gaze on her back until the door closed behind her. She was standing in the creative department with its scattered, individual work environments that defined the quirks of every artist there. Roger was right. Their old team of artists loved to express their creativity and took advantage of their unique opportunity to blow off some steam when the managing heads were turned.
This new team would be no different. For the first time, Brooke understood the need for such venting. She hadn’t slept with a man since Brandon.
But the urges were there now more than ever.
Penny waved her little pixie fingers, snapping Brooke out of her ruminations. She waved back, gave the woman a wobbly smile, and then dashed out into the hallway. The alcove to the bathrooms was just a few feet away. Once there, a cool drink from the water fountain beckoned. As she sated her raging thirst, Brooke made a deal with herself. If Roger found her there within the next few minutes, she’d take him up on his offer. If he didn’t, she’d go back to her desk and never give it another thought.
But in her current mood, she really, really wanted to break a rule. Eyes closed, she leaned against the wall next to the water fountain and fought to steady her breathing by counting down from one hundred. At ninety-three, she noticed a shadow dimming the light from the windows. She opened her eyes.
There stood Roger, his body braced with anticipation.
A zing of excitement shot through her core. With a slight curve of her lips, she pushed herself from the wall. “The darkroom,” she said. “Five minutes.”
ETHAN PACED OUT HIS FRUSTRATION IN THE stairwell. With today’s win, Brooke now had a significant advantage. How had this competition turned to shit so fast? All he’d done was bring to light the possibility that she was leaking bids to the competitor. Was it such a fucking stretch? Did Ken not want to believe that she was out to hurt him or the company?
The man needed to open his goddamned eyes.
A noise alerted him that he was no longer alone in the stairwell. Ethan turned to find Shannon leaning against the door she’d just walked through and closed.
“You look like you want to drive your fist into the wall,” she said with a strange lilt in her voice.
He did. But Ethan knew that what he really needed was to drive himself in and out of a woman…and here was one whose last offer echoed in the void between them.
I like it rough. I like to be tied up. And I like teeth marks on my ass.
“I have a lot of anger inside me, Shannon,” he rasped, openly scanning her curves from head to toe.
Her hands flattened against the sides of her skirt.
And she smiled.
9
BROOKE WAS ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING SHE considered wicked and reckless. Something she had vowed never to do—which is exactly why she snuck into the storage room with a wicked smile on her face.
Her pulse hammering throughout her veins, she turned on the light illuminating the stacks of boxes and office furniture that blocked her path toward the back. Moments later, she stood before the black cylindrical door that was built way back when to keep out even the faintest sliver of light. Now would be the time for that inner voice of reason to come out and tell her that this was wrong.
But she couldn’t hear it. She didn’t want to. Hell, Roger was probably already in that darkroom waiting for her with his clothes undone. With a steadying breath, Brooke flattened her hands against the cold metal cylinder.
Do this.
The door began to rotate on its narrow track, creating a low, hollowed sound. When the chamber opened, she stepped inside. As she rotated it closed with one hand, she opened the buttons of her blouse with the other. Now she was in the pitch-black abyss that was the darkroom. Brooke stepped out of her capsule, feeling much like a heroine in one of those sci-fi movies exploring strange new worlds with unimaginable bravery.
“Roger?” she whispered. Nothing.
Since he wasn’t there yet, she felt around the wall and located the light switch. She flipped it on only long enough to get an idea of her surroundings. The film-developing equipment was still arranged the way it had always been, relatively undisturbed since the darkroom had been decommissioned, but various things had been piled around it, like some outdated fax machines, some old waiting-room chairs, and a shelf stacked with boxes of forgotten computer cables and keyboards.
The smell of sex was gone at least, replaced by a bottled-up odor of old plastic. With the room memorized, she turned off the light and kicked off her shoes. As she ripped the elastic band from her low pony-tail, voices began to reverberate through the walls from the conference room on the other side.
Damn! One of the other account specialists had brought in a client. She heard the click of the conference room door and identified Regina Sandusky’s voice as she offered them coffee, water, or anything from the soda machine. Brooke was horrified by the sound quality, knowing that if she and Roger so much as grazed against anything, it would be heard on the other side of the wall.
But somehow, the danger only heightened her excitement. Flipping her hair upside-down, she knotted it on top of her head where it would stay out of the way. In a hurry to disrobe before she changed her mind, Brooke pulled down her skirt and finished unbuttoning her blouse.
The revolving door began to turn, sending shockwaves of excitement throughout her body. More than five minutes had passed since they’d made this deal, and now Brooke stood in her bra and panties unable to wait any longer. She touched the door and felt it move beneath her hands. Once the opening came around, she reached in, grabbed Roger’s shirtfront, and pulled him against her.
In a frantic bid to keep him quiet, she covered his mouth with hers until he could figure out the situation for himself. While the conference room voices hummed around them, his lips opened. Their tongues met for the first time. Brooke felt an immediate, overwhelming connection, one that had remained untested between them for days now. The kiss built with scorching intensity, her sigh of pleasure whisper-soft. The fact that there was a meeting going on right beside them ramped up the naughty factor and made the game that much more exciting.
Her sense of daring soared out of control. While her hands explored his chest, his traveled up her bare arms, clamped around her shoulders, and yanked her agains
t his lean, hard body. With trembling fingers, she loosened the first button of his shirt and then another. While she worked on getting his clothes off, his fingers hooked her bra straps and slid them down her arms, exposing her breasts to the chilly air. Her nipples instantly hardened, coming alive with a tingly yearning to be touched.
She ripped her mouth away with a gasp. He softly shushed her, kissed her neck and shoulders as he cupped both her breasts in his large, warm hands. She arched into him, finally able to tear the shirt from his shoulders. Before she could do more, he grabbed her hands and forced them behind her back. The heat was so encompassing, all that mattered was the pulsing need between her legs. She needed him to enter her, needed him to fill her up, needed him to quench the fire until it no longer consumed her.
While they sipped from each other’s mouths, she stepped backward, her bare feet moving along the cold floor until she bumped into one of the old cushioned chairs behind her. Thrown off balance, she fell back into it, making a bumpy noise in the process.
The voices next door stopped for a second. Someone asked what that was. Brooke waited, her breath suspended as the juices flowed from her aching body.
Despite the danger, Roger’s clothes continued to rustle with movement as he removed them. Apparently, he would not be deterred in his quest to have her. Commanding herself to breathe, she waited for him, knowing that she was about to get laid for the first time in a long while.
By a man other than Brandon. And at work.
His zipper made a painfully loud noise. Her tongue skimmed her lower lip in anticipation. Then something unexpected happened.
In one smooth move, Brooke was lifted out of the chair and spun around. He forced her back down into the cushion, only on her knees this time. Bent over, she rested her cheek against the back of the chair, keenly aware that the mood had changed from sweet and cautious to something much more frantic. She heard a tearing noise and knew he was arming himself with protection at that very moment. His mouth came down and left an erotic trail of nips and kisses along her shoulders and back. All the while, he fondled her breasts, kneading them at first and then rolling her nipples between thumb and forefinger. She buried her gasps against the musty fabric of the chair.