by Cassie Cross
Jason has years of experience of reading people, and he’s positive by the proud look Kaia gives him that he’s just repeated back to her an argument she’s used with her friends and family.
“I think so, too. If you don’t mind me asking,” she says, reaching up and tucking a strand of silken hair behind her ear, “what is it that you do?”
“I own an investment firm.”
“And you own this building.”
He nods. “I do. How did you know that?”
“I didn’t, until you just said it. But peons don’t have private elevators, so it wasn’t a huge leap.”
She’s teasing him, and god help him, he likes it.
Jason is a serious man, focused and intent on handling his business, but he’s no stranger to pleasure. He takes it as he finds it, from a one night stand with a woman he meets in a bar, or a quickie in a coat closet with a hot cocktail waitress at a party. They are flings that never last more than a single night, just the way he likes them.
Then, he’s usually the one teasing. He’s enjoying the tables being turned.
“Do you enjoy your job?” she asks, which is, quite honestly, the very last question Jason expects.
He has to think for a moment, and purses his lips. Kaia watches him intently, her eyes alight.
“I enjoy being the boss,” he says heavily, watching the way her chest rises just before her breath catches. “I like being in control, making sure things go my way. Whether it’s here or somewhere else, I think I would enjoy whatever I did as long as my name was on the door and at the end of the day I could make sure things go my way.”
Kaia bites her lip and backs up against the wall, a movement that makes her breasts stick out. For a split second, Jason considers reaching out and pressing the emergency stop, so he can find out what Kaia’s lips taste like, and feel the velvet of her tongue against his.
But, as Jason gets older, he begins to appreciate delayed gratification. It would be sweet to kiss her now, but even sweeter to do it later, after he’s let his imagination run away with him a few times. Imagined the way her breath will feel against his mouth.
He can wait. He’s formulating a plan.
Too soon, the elevator reaches his floor, and he steps forward, holding his arm out to keep the doors from shutting while Kaia exits.
“Wow,” she breathes, as she looks around the lobby.
Jason has to fight a smile, even though he’s pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to hear that.
He leads her through a maze of cubicles, ignoring the curious stares of his employees.
When they reach Jason's office, he smiles at his assistant, Ellie, and offers her a pleasant good morning.
"Good morning, Mister Turner," she replies. She hands him a small stack of papers—contracts he needs to sign, he's sure—and gives Kaia a friendly greeting.
Kaia smiles in return.
"Call Clark, please," he instructs Ellie. "Tell him we're here. He knows what this is about."
Ellie nods as she picks up her receiver. Even though Jason can tell she's curious about what's going on and why there's a woman she's never met standing in their office, she doesn't question him, which is one of the reasons he's kept her on for so long, and why he makes sure that her holiday bonus is a generous one.
"After you," Jason says, his hand hovering near the small of Kaia's back.
He watches her intently as she steps into his office. She's immediately drawn to the floor-to-ceiling windows, which offer a gorgeous view of the city's skyline.
"Wow," she replies, looking down with a furrowed brow.
"What is it?"
She shrugs slightly, then turns a small smile on Jason. "I don't think I've ever been up this high in the city before. I knew it was gorgeous, but seeing it is something else."
Jason grins. He understands the feeling.
Kaia turns toward him, looking apprehensive. "Is it okay if I take a picture?"
A warmth spreads in his chest at the fact that she wants to do that, that she'd even ask if she could. He nods, thinking that he could never tell her no.
"Sure. Would you like something to drink?" he asks as she slides her phone out of her skirt pocket.
"No thank you. I'm too nervous."
He can't help but watch her as she frames the picture perfectly on her phone, the corners of her mouth turning up in muted amazement.
She bites her lip as she slips her phone back into her pocket. "I'm nervous about the presentation, by the way. Not nervous about being here with you."
He can tell she wants to say something else, probably to clarify another statement, but there's a soft knock on the door that gets their attention.
"Clark," Jason says warmly. "Come in."
The head of his IT department walks into his office with a loaner laptop under his arm. Rich and powerful as he is, Jason isn't a miracle worker, and this is his best option on such short notice.
"Clark, this is Kaia," he says, as Clark reaches out and shakes her hand.
"Nice to meet you," Clark says.
Kaia replies with, "Likewise."
"Kaia and I ran into each other this morning," Jason explains, holding out her shattered laptop toward Clark. "As you can see, it didn't end well for one of us."
Clark's eyes go wide. "Not sure there's any fixing that."
Kaia grumbles a little, and the only reason Jason manages to resist a smile is because he knows that she's on edge.
"That's where this comes in." Jason points to the laptop Clark has cradled under his arm. "She has a very important presentation this morning. This will get her through it?"
"Yes, Sir." Clark explains, as he flips open the laptop's lid. "This will more than do the job. Getting the presentation off of that mangled hard drive will be an issue, though."
"I have a copy of it saved on the cloud."
Clark's eyes light up. "Oh, well...great. That should be easy. This one's already connected to our secure wifi, so all you need to do is download it. I can do that for you, of course," Clark replies, shooting a quick look at his boss.
"I can do it." Kaia tilts her head at the laptop. "May I?"
Clark hands it over. "Absolutely. Do you need any help, or..."
"I think I've got it," she replies. She walks over to a chair that sits in the corner of his office, and lowers herself onto it. Jason hears her tapping away at the keys for a few seconds, before her eyes light up. "Yep. Got it. Thank you, Clark."
"My pleasure. Anything else I can do for you, Mister Turner?"
Jason nods. "I'm going to send you an email with a project I need you to complete for me. Urgent."
Clark presses his lips together before he says, "Absolutely."
"I'll give you all the details, but I want you to contact me if you have any questions at all."
"Absolutely."
Kaia relaxes back into the chair, after, Jason assumes, she has her presentation loaded up onto the loaner.
“Thank you, Clark.”
The IT guy blushes, giving her a smile and a wave as he heads out the door.
“And thank you,” Kaia says to Jason, with a flirty little smile.
“Me?” Jason teases, as he leans back against his desk, crossing his legs in front of him.
Kaia stands, and carefully tucks the laptop under her arm.
“You,” she says, walking closer to Jason in what almost seems like a saunter. She comes to a stop and bites her lip, and Jason feels his cock harden in his pants.
He wants this woman. Badly.
“But what about your laptop? I ruined it,” Jason says, his voice low.
“It died an honorable death, I think,” she says, taking a step closer.
Jason has a great view of her cleavage from here. He wants to lick the tops of her breasts, wants to taste the sweet warmth of her skin.
Later, he knows he will, and the thought thrills him.
“Mister Turner,” his assistant calls over the intercom, breaking up the tension in the air. �
�Mister Avery is here for his appointment.”
Shit.
Jason looks at his watch. It’s just as well, Kaia’s going to be cutting it close for her meeting as it is, and his plans for later all hinge on it going well.
“I should be going anyway,” Kaia explains. “How should I return this to you?”
“How about you bring it by at seven? Then we can go somewhere and celebrate your successful pitch.”
Kaia’s face lights up with a gorgeous smile.
“Dinner?”
With a wry smile, Jason nods. “And dessert.”
Kaia purses her lips together, then looks down at the floor as a blush spreads up her neck.
“I’d like that. A lot.”
“I’ll leave your name with the security guard at the desk, so you can come right up.”
Kaia nods. To Jason’s utter surprise, she pushes herself up on her tiptoes and presses her lips to his cheek. Jason turns his head, and breathes in the soft floral smell of her perfume. It takes everything in him not to hold her close and say to hell with the day, and spend his hours wrapped up in her.
“I’ll see you later,” Kaia says, when she pulls away too soon.
“Looking forward to it.”
She turns and gives him a soft smile that hides a world of trouble. “Me too.”
“Knock ‘em dead.”
She gives the laptop a little shake. “Thanks for this.”
“Anytime.” He means that. And if he has his way, she’s going to be thanking him for a lot more this evening. Loudly, and often.
CHAPTER THREE
"At least that shitty computer bag was good for something," Janine says. She's sitting on the edge of Kaia's bed, cradling a glass of wine between her fingers.
Kaia shoots her a look. She has just spent the past 15 minutes explaining the events of her surreal morning to her roommate, and that's what she chooses to pick up on?
"It worked out well, but what if it hadn't?"
"You would've thought of something, because you're you and you're brilliant." Janine brings her glass to her lips and takes a long sip. "Can't we just focus on the positives here? Because that's literally all there are. You were typically clumsy and ran into a gorgeous guy. Your computer broke, but he insisted on replacing it for you. He could've ended it then, but wants to take you out to dinner to celebrate the pitch that you did, in fact, ace the hell out of."
When Janine puts it like that, despite the shitty beginning, Kaia has had quite a remarkable day.
"I did ace the hell out of it, didn't I?" Kaia steps out of her closet, the evening's dress draped over her shoulders, but unzipped in the back.
She walks over to her night stand and picks up her near-empty glass of wine, then walks over and taps it against Janine's.
"To retaining clients," Kaia says, over the soft clink of their glasses.
"To making rent," she replies with a smile. "And to hot men breaking our laptops."
Kaia raises a brow. "Hoping for something?"
"If tonight goes well, absolutely. I'm going to walk around downtown with some kind of electronic in my arms, praying for the best. Although," she continues with a playful frown, "with my luck, I'll probably get robbed or something."
Kaia laughs, even though she knows that Janine is probably right. She's lucky things turned out for her the way that they did, really. And she's not really sure how to respond to her friend's joke, so she just gives herself a once-over in the mirror hanging behind her bedroom door.
She's wearing a black halter-top with a flared skirt, and her highest, strappiest heels.
"Is this a good dress?" she asks.
"It's a great dress. Appropriate for dinner, and the loose skirt with easy access for dessert."
Kaia laughs, and smiles at Janine over her shoulder. "I like the way you think."
Janine stands, and walks behind Kaia, gently zipping up the back of her dress, which now, instead of hanging loosely, hugs her curves in all the right places.
"Should I put my hair up?"
Janine tilts her head to the side, considering it. "Nah, it's kind of wild and wavy and sexy. It's the way you were wearing it this morning, and obviously this guy liked it enough to want to see more. I say leave it, as long as you like it."
Kaia loves it. She feels sexy, and knows she looks good. It's a rare combination for her, so she holds onto it when she can.
"Nervous?" Janine asks.
Is she nervous? She's about to go meet and have dinner, then dessert with a gorgeous, seemingly generous man who already pretty much told her he wants to have sex with her. She definitely wants to have sex with him.
"An anticipatory kind of nervous. I just wanna...get to it." She wonders briefly if it's okay to admit that.
Janine laughs. "I don't blame you. Should we have some kind of emergency exit strategy in place? Just in case things go south?"
"I'm kind of hoping things go south," Kaia teases, as Janine picks up a pillow and pretends like she's going to launch it in Kaia's direction.
"If you didn't look so hot, I'd beat your ass with this fluffy thing," she says, before tossing the pillow back on the bed. "If things don't go the way you're hoping, then text me with some kind of a code so I'll know I need to call you and make up some reason for you to leave."
Kaia's stomach plummets at the suggestion that such a thing could happen. She doesn't even want to put that possibility out into the universe.
"I think we can skip it this time."
Janine gives her a skeptical look. "You're trying to tell me that the woman who was saved by a last-minute posting to the cloud after some gorgeous man turned her computer into a pile of plastic and wires is going to leave this apartment tonight without a safety net?"
Janine's got her there.
"Good point. Things don't work out, I'll text you with nine-one-one, and then you can call me and make up some plausible and yet not real excuse. I don't want to get jinxed or something, so...no killing off my grandmother."
Janine furrows her brows. "Your grandmother's already dead."
Good point. "Okay, just...no one dies, they just get sick, okay? Or maybe a friend had a bad breakup, or...whatever, just come up with something good. But I'm positive I won't need you to rescue me."
"Better safe than sorry," Janine says, as she watches Kaia apply a coat of shiny lip gloss. "Speaking of, I put a whole package of condoms in your clutch."
"You're expecting more than I am," Kaia teases, although...it would be nice if things went that well.
Janine shrugs. "Aim high."
Kaia wiggles her brows suggestively as she slides her gloss and a mirror into her clutch.
"Here's hoping I don't have to tell him that."
CHAPTER FOUR
Jason Turner has lived his share of long days; people don’t get to be at his level without putting in the hard work. Even though he was born with both of his feet firmly planted halfway up on the ladder of success, he still had to do the work that took him the rest of the way up.
Now that he’s there, he would never try and convince anyone that his life is difficult. It’s not, by any stretch of the imagination. He has more money than he could ever possibly spend, a comfortable home, and he definitely has his choice of women.
Still, some days are an absolute slog to get through, and today has been one of them.
Jason can attribute that to the never-ending meetings he sat through, the pile of contracts he’s had to read and sign, or the sheer number of emails he needs to respond to that are steadily piling up in his inbox. Instead, he’s going to lay the blame directly at the feet of the problem: Kaia.
No matter how hard he’s tried, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about her all day.
As the clock crawls slowly toward 7, all he can think about is the way her body felt against his when she kissed his cheek this morning. The sweet smell of her perfume, the soft touch of her lips, the way her soft breasts pressed against his chest. Thoughts of her are consumi
ng him.
Jason isn't the kind of man who has a lot of regrets—he has some, of course, but not many—but he definitely regrets not kissing Kaia right then and there. He's been thinking about it all day, been driven to distraction wondering how it would've felt to turn his head and taste her.
She's due to be here any minute, and despite the fact that he's been looking forward to this all day, he's nowhere near ready. He wanted to be prepared to leave, jacket on and ready to go, so they were that much closer to the end of dinner and the beginning of a long night in bed. Even though he's been preoccupied for hours, this is the first moment he's stopped to take a breather all day.
His jacket is flung over the back of his chair, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. He knows that most men would go down and meet Kaia in the lobby, but Jason is not most men, and he doesn’t want her to get the wrong idea about what this is. It’s one night, nothing more, and he’s going to make that very clear before they go out, so Kaia can change her mind if she wants to.
As if on cue, Kaia appears at the doorway of his office. She gently knocks.
“Hi,” she says softly. “I’m a couple of minutes early, and I decided not to be that girl who hangs around outside just to be punctual.”
Jason grins at her before his breath catches in his throat. She looks gorgeous.
Amazing.
Her dress is low-cut, dipping down between her full breasts. The skirt is short and swishy, flaring out from her slender waist. She’s wearing high heels with straps that wind their way up her long, long legs, which are tanned and toned. Jason can’t wait to explore the silky smoothness of the insides of her thighs with his mouth, wants to know what her legs feel like when they’re wrapped around his hips.
“Hi,” Jason finally replies. He stands from his chair, and licks his lips as he gives her a long, appreciative look. He’s pretty sure he made what he wants from her very clear, but just in case she didn’t get the message earlier, he makes sure she gets it this time. He steps out from behind his desk and says, “You’re beautiful.”