Ruthless (A Lawless Novel)

by Lexi Blake

  He’d become obsessed.

  He lined his cock up and pressed in.

  “I love the way that feels.” She leaned back, giving him a better angle of entry. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”

  He gripped her hips and let her heat suffuse him. He was the one who couldn’t get used to it. Her legs wrapped around him. “I love fucking you on my desk. It makes working the rest of the afternoon so much more enjoyable.”

  She sighed and bit her bottom lip. “Why?”

  “Because I’ll be able to smell you all damn afternoon and think about you like this.”

  A chuckle came from the back of her throat, a deeply sexy sound. “Dear God, we won’t be having any meetings in here for the rest of the day. It would start more talk.”

  He thrust in hard and fast. It didn’t take much to get him going. Her pussy was so tight around him, her body clinging to his. “Let them talk. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is this.”

  He leaned over and kissed her, his cock doing its work. He could feel her nails biting into him through the thin material of his shirt. He loved how crazy she went when they fucked.

  Made love.

  Stupid phrase, but he was making love to her. He wouldn’t make it into something less. She was the one, and he was going to do his best to make sure she was always satisfied.

  Her head fell back and she held on as she came. He fucked her hard, letting go of everything except the feel of her clamping down on him. He groaned as the pleasure took him, jetting into her, giving her everything he had.

  He drew her close as he came down from the high.

  “Maybe I won’t be screaming at our PR people,” she said with a lazy smile.

  They would both be in infinitely better moods now. “I’ll go down with you. I’m going to be by your side all day. Let them talk. Let them know we’re a team and they can’t bust us up.”

  She nodded, holding on to him a little tighter. “I’m going to have to go through the rest of the day commando-style. I can’t put those things back on. Thank God we have private bathrooms. Kiss me so I can go clean up.”

  He pressed a sweet kiss to her and stepped back. He was sure he looked like an idiot with his pants around his ankles, but he couldn’t work up the will to care. He watched her walk into his private bathroom, already plotting how and when he could have her again.

  He straightened up, his brain still pleasantly fuzzy when he heard the knock on the door.

  That sobered him up. He straightened out his clothes, hoping he wasn’t too wrinkled, and managed to buckle his belt. He grabbed Ellie’s undies and shoved them in his pants pocket before glancing around. Everything looked in order.

  He opened the door.

  Lily was standing there, a frown on her face.

  “You and Ellie are needed in the boardroom. Castalano called an emergency meeting.” She leaned in. “I swear to God I will rip your balls off if you’ve gotten her in some kind of trouble.”

  He forced himself to breathe because he had the sudden thought that they were all in trouble.

  Eight

  Ellie walked beside Lily, Riley on her other side.

  As they walked down the hall, she could feel eyes on her. It looked like the employees of StratCast could feel the tension in the air. Ellie schooled her expression and smiled brightly, nodding as she walked past.

  She was going to have to gather them all together and have a talk. The last thing she needed was the troops getting anxious. They would be worried, too. They might not have millions of dollars in stock, but many of her employees had invested and some got stock as incentives. They depended on it for their retirement since her father and Castalano hadn’t seen fit to give out bonuses or match 401(k)s.

  That would change when she took over. She intended to have employees heavily invested in StratCast’s future. It was one thing she and Riley saw eye to eye on. An employee who made more money when the company succeeded was an employee who worked harder. They had to have skin in the game or it was simply another job and not a commitment.

  “Lily, put together a company-wide meeting for three thirty.” She wanted them to go home with their worries eased.

  Lily nodded. “I think that’s a good idea. People are scared. I think they’re more scared now that Steven’s dragged board members in.”

  “Any ideas about what he’s planning?” Ellie asked.

  Lily shook her head as they made their way toward the boardroom. “No idea. I was making a few calls and Castalano’s admin walked up with a shit-eating grin on her face and told me I better have you and Lover Boy here in the boardroom asap.”

  “Lily,” she ground out.

  Lily waved her off. “Sorry. Everyone knows what you’re doing when he closes the blinds and locks the door in the middle of the day. And you suddenly don’t have panty lines. I’ve told you time and time again to wear a damn thong.”

  She hated thongs. Could everyone really tell she’d recently had a mind-blowing orgasm? She squared her shoulders because she wasn’t about to apologize for that.

  “You look perfectly respectable,” Riley murmured. “I wish I had a couple of minutes to figure out what this is about.”

  He’d argued that they should take their time, figure out what Castalano wanted before they walked in. She was sick of waiting and game playing. She wanted to get through this so she could deal with the fallout. If she was about to get raked over the coals because of that article and the problems with the coolant trials, she would rather it happened sooner than later. Worrying about it wouldn’t help anything.

  “It’s fine. They’re pissed and think I mishandled the situation. They probably don’t understand that the new trials are going to prove that everything is proceeding exactly the way it should. I’ll explain it and we’ll all move on so much faster. I can set up a new trial this afternoon if that helps.”

  Confidence was required in situations like these. Never let them see you sweat. It was one of the few helpful things her father had taught her.

  Lily stood back, frowning. “I want to know everything the minute you get out. I’m going to talk to some of the other admins. I swear if I find out they’ve been holding out on me, I’ll be dealing with a couple of those women myself.”

  Ellie glanced up at Riley. She wished she could hold his hand, but she had to look like the toughest bitch in the room. And tough bitches didn’t hold hands with their boyfriends in the middle of board meetings.

  She pushed through the doors and had to stop herself from gaping.

  Steven Castalano was in a three-piece suit, sitting at the head of the table. He looked every inch the elder captain of industry. She hadn’t seen him looking so strong and put together in two years. Since her father had passed and it was decided she would buy Castalano out, he’d taken to dressing for the golf course, not the boardroom. He’d become almost docile in the way he handled things right up until the blackmail attempt.

  He stared out at her in a way she’d never seen him before. Cold. Calculating. Ruthless.

  What the hell was happening?

  “Kind of you to join us, Ms. Stratton, Mr. Lang.” He gestured to the two seats he’d left for them. They were off to the side, a deliberate insult to her place in the company. She should be at the head of the table or in a place of power.

  Unfortunately, to get there, she would have to evict her partner or the elderly board member at his side, which would make her look either weak or nasty. Her position was always a delicate balance. Unlike her male counterparts, she was judged for social graces as well as her business acumen. Castalano knew that, and it looked like he was placing her in an untenable position.

  “Please, Mr. Garner, don’t get up,” she said, even though the man had made no move to stand. “I can sit here. I’m sure I can still make myself heard from this seat.”

 
Riley held the chair out for her. “As this isn’t a formal meeting, I don’t think it matters where you sit, Ms. Stratton.”

  Garner had flushed. If they used her femininity against her, she could call them out for not being gentlemen. Castalano merely smiled, his eyes watching them as she settled in and Riley took the seat beside her.

  “I’d like to know what’s going on.” She looked around and recognized the six most important members of her board. They didn’t form the majority of the shareholders, but they came damn close. An enormous amount of StratCast stock was currently sitting in the room, looking at her with judgmental eyes.

  “I would as well.” Riley was looking around, obviously seeing the same thing she was seeing. “There isn’t a quorum here. There can’t be a vote. And I don’t know who those two are.”

  He gestured toward the two people she didn’t recognize. A man and a woman sitting across the table and to her left. She didn’t have time to truly think about them however as Steven was pressing on.

  Castalano sat back. “I’ll get to that in a moment. I don’t need a quorum. I only called in some longtime board members because they were very disturbed by the turn of events around the company lately.”

  So this was a dressing-down and very likely the start of a nasty fight. There were fifteen board members. Six of them were sitting in this room. These were the men on Castalano’s side. Along with Castalano’s own vote, he had seven. That left her and Riley, and four others she was sure were on her side. That was likely the reason they weren’t here. That left two votes unaccounted for—a woman who had bought Patricia Cain’s stock in the company and whoever had purchased her sister’s stock. Riley was looking into that. He’d put a call in to the company that had bought it but hadn’t gotten a call back yet. She needed to feel out the new investor. Whoever it was would have a voting share. She needed to get to that person before Castalano could.

  This was likely Castalano’s way of showing her he still had the muscle in this world.

  “I understand we’ve had a setback with the reports about the coolant system’s issues. I’m very happy to tell you that those reports are false and I’ve got someone looking into them right now.” She’d set a couple of her best managers on it early this week. They would figure out who had leaked the reports on the faulty systems.

  “I’ve discovered who leaked those reports.” Castalano sat back, looking over the table.

  “Excellent. I’d love to hear who it was.” If he’d done the job, she would thank him profusely. It would have been better had she been the one to take care of things, but she would make the best of it.

  Riley was on his phone, texting someone. “And if you’ll wait a moment or two, we can have the new reports up here. I’ll bring the head designer in to explain what went wrong and how it has no meaning at all to where the project is right now. Which is on time and under budget.”

  It was a perfect solution. She had them here. She could get her best guys to truly explain the situation.

  “I think we can skip the scientific drivel.” Steven nodded to his admin, who was standing in the back with a stack of file folders in her hands. “Jane, if you will. Gentlemen and Ms. Stratton, as you know, an article came out today questioning leadership here at StratCast and calling our cornerstone project an abject failure.”

  A low grumble went through the room as Jane began to pass out copies of the article. They’d worked very quickly to get everything together. Steven must have been desperate to make her look bad.

  Had she made a mistake in not paying him off? She’d gone back and forth but finally decided that she’d brought Riley in for a reason. She was paying him handsomely and, given their relationship, he wouldn’t steer her the wrong way. After all, he had a stake in StratCast as well.

  “Do you expect me to answer the charges one by one or to simply give you all my opinion of this guy’s hatchet job? I apparently pissed him off at some point in time.” She was trying to figure out who the extra people were.

  One man, one woman. Both in suits. Both very buttoned up, but not in a corporate way. They looked somehow tougher than executives.

  Neither one looked down at the reports. Every now and then they spoke to each other or looked at their phones.

  Riley was staring at them, but she didn’t think it was a good plan to lean over and have a private conversation.

  “I have to question why you thought it was a good idea to talk to reporters when we were having trouble with a product as important as the coolant system,” Steven said pointedly.

  Deep breath. It wouldn’t do to show how angry she was with the man who was supposed to be her partner. “That’s the point. We’re not actually having problems with the coolant system. Those reports were based on miscalibrated machines. I got the go-ahead from PR. I would never have talked to anyone from the press without clearing it with public relations. The story was supposed to be about me taking the reins as one of the few female executives in telecom. It was never supposed to be about the coolant project. It is not my fault the reporter had an axe to grind.”

  “Did he have an axe to grind or did he ask very pertinent questions?” Castalano asked.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Riley sat up straight beside her, his irritation obvious.

  Castalano shook his head. “I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to Ms. Stratton. She is the one whose decision making is in question here. You’re simply one of those decisions that I call into question.”

  Riley’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sure you wish she’d stayed with a lawyer you could buy off. Did you get upset that I refused to allow her to sign away the coolant system?”

  Castalano sat back, obviously unmoved. “I believe you’re the one who added that clause to the contract in an effort to make me look bad. You’re the one who has tried time and time again to discredit me with Ms. Stratton.”

  She was so aware of the fact that they were doing the one thing she knew they shouldn’t—air their dirty laundry in public. Every eye was on her.

  Riley leaned forward. “I’ve done my best to protect her from you.”

  This was the last thing she needed. Riley needed to be her lawyer, not her lover. “Steven, why are we here and not talking about this in private?”

  “We’re here because the stock has already dropped twenty percent.”

  Her stomach clenched. Twenty percent? It had only been a few hours. How low would it go before the end of the day? Before she could get those corrected reports out? Oftentimes the media preferred to report bad news over good. It could be days before the word spread. “You know as well as I do the stock will come back up once the real reports get out.”

  “That will take time.” Her partner stared right at her, accusation in his eyes.

  Where was this coming from? He’d never once looked at her like that.

  “We have time. We’re a few years away from actually manufacturing. A few weeks means nothing.”

  He nodded regally. “Yes, you’re right about that. I’ve brought some worried members of our board in to reassure them that our stock won’t stay down for very long. The company will survive this unfortunate incident, and it will be all the stronger for flushing out the employees who caused the problems.”

  Shit. Had he figured out who had messed up the calibrations on the machines? That had been her job. She handled R&D. Always. It was her baby. Even when her father had been in control, he’d ceded R&D to her.

  She wasn’t about to let go of her place. “I think we need to talk about any possible staff changes, and we don’t need to do that in front of the board. I’m sure they have much more important things to do with their time. I assure you all that we can handle this situation. The stock will come back up in a few weeks. It’s unfortunate, but I will get the correct information out as soon as possible. My PR people are contacting the big financial networks and informing the
m of the issues we’re having. We’ll show them the correct reports, perhaps invite a couple of trusted reporters to witness our tests. This is going to pass, and we’ll be stronger for it.”

  “We still have the issue of your image and poor decision-making process,” Castalano explained.

  “You can’t possibly believe what that article said. Steven, you’ve known me all of my life. I’m certainly not the woman portrayed in that article.”

  “Are you having an affair with Riley Lang?”

  Riley shook his head. “That’s absolutely none of your business.”

  She wasn’t hiding behind half-truths. “Affair is a ridiculous word to use. Do I have a personal relationship with Mr. Lang? Yes. Does it affect my decision-making process? No. I still do what’s best for this company, and as a fellow stockholder, so does Mr. Lang. This isn’t a case of having a relationship with someone working against us. It also isn’t the first time an executive has had a serious relationship with a coworker. I’d rather not list them all, but it’s happened many times. There’s nothing in the company codes about fraternization.”

  “That’s something we intend to fix,” Garner said righteously. He slapped at the table. “You young people think you can sleep with anyone at any time. By God, when I was working here, we were businessmen. What would your father think?”

  “My father didn’t give a crap about my personal life and neither should any of you. Let’s not be hypocritical, Bill. We all know about the affair you had with your secretary when you worked here.” If they wanted to play hardball, she could throw them a few sliders. “And you, Steven. Should I get into your relationship with the head of HR a few years back? You were married at the time. I’m not married and who I sleep with is my own business.”

  “Not when you use him to do your dirty work,” Castalano said.

  “He’s my lawyer. Doing my dirty work is his job,” she shot back.

  “Is devaluing the stock so you can buy me out at a bargain-basement price his job, Ms. Stratton?” Steven’s question dropped and the whole room went silent.