by Angel Payne
I flash a sardonic look. “No kidding.”
“You must listen to me.” He grabs both my shoulders. “He’s…not right, Emma. The man the media has glorified isn’t the one running this hotel. He’s…”
“What?” I’m tired of feeling like the one kid on the science team who hasn’t seen the dissected frog. “What the heck is he? Spit it out, Fershan.”
He compresses his lips. “He’s just…strange, all right?”
“Arrgghh.” I toss up both hands and whirl away from all of them. “No,” I finally snap. “It’s not all right.”
An hour later, I don’t feel any differently. If anything, my feet are planted deeper into that mental sand, mostly because of confusion. How have I perceived things so differently than Neeta, Wade, and Fershan? I’ve only known them for a couple of weeks, but they’ve seemed sensible and smart—at least until tonight, with all their talk about a super hero on the streets and a wackadoodle boss in the penthouse. That being said, there’s no way to disremember the surreal experience of coming face-to-face with Reece Richards. The charged air and the electric presence, sucking out my breaths and telescoping my vision.
Who’s really going nuts here?
And do I want to pass up a chance to find out?
My psyche fires off the question as the printer in the next room starts spewing the weekly reports.
And my whole body answers with three sweeps of decisive action.
One kick. Pump number one is off.
Second kick. Pump number two meets the same fate.
Motion three—a ninja-quiet sprint over to the printer and a surreptitious swipe of the contents in the tray.
Before another minute is up, I’m in the back-of-house elevator, jamming my shoes back on and stabbing the button marked P.
Preparing myself for weird.
No. Hoping for it.
Chapter Two
REECE
“You’ve raised ‘idiot’ to an art form tonight, haven’t you?”
Thank fuck it’s a rhetorical question. I’d start to worry if this asshole glaring back at me from the penthouse’s dark glass had anything to contribute to the conversation. I’m not in the mood to talk, anyway—not even to my own reflection. There are bigger things to worry about.
Much bigger.
As if the point needs clarification, my cock punches against my pants. Right on cue, for the hundredth time in the last hour. Or is it the two hundredth? Does the answer matter? As the residual electricity in my system keeps recirculating through my blood, the torture becomes sheer hell.
I grip the armrests of my desk chair and rear my hips, seeking relief from the ache. No use. I’m as hard as a bull and ready to screw my fucking pen cup. But that’ll bring ten point five seconds of relief before the torture surges again, twice as hot and three times as painful. The pen cup probably wouldn’t ever speak to me again either.
And there’s Karma’s bitch-slap of the day. Because she can’t let any day go by without getting that tidbit of a reminder in, can she?
I deserve this.
No matter how many Santa Claus shop owners I save between now and my deathbed, it’ll be the same.
I deserve this.
Exactly why did I have to grow a conscience? This new asshole I’ve transformed into is way more trouble than the old one. Especially when my idiot factor is added into the equation and I choose to go saving Santa’s slushies the same night the weekly reports have to be reviewed.
I just pray to God, or whatever deity is choosing to listen to me these days, Neeta doesn’t let the new girl bring them up.
Damn. Damn.
The new girl.
No. Not a girl. She’s a woman, as my traitor of a body reminds me in flashback mode, booting up a vision of her lush curves, white-gold hair, and big aqua eyes in time for my next slam of an erection. I groan, struggling to banish her to my subconscious. I can control that or my hard-on. My system won’t allow both.
I opt for keeping my cock in my pants and letting her run wild through my memory.
Her.
Her who?
I couldn’t get my shit together to even ask her name. Maybe that’s a good thing. Because even if I hadn’t been battling a thousand extra watts in my bloodstream, what was I supposed to say? Hi there. I’m Reece. No, you haven’t been transported to another planet and had the equilibrium sucked out of your skull. That’s just me. Wanna grab sushi sometime?
The erection starts to subside. “Thank God,” I mutter toward the ceiling. “Really, man,” I add, taking my first full breath in what feels like days. “I mean it this time.”
Finally, I let my hands stretch over the armrests and peer at the veins still throbbing inside them, glowing in some tone between milky white and quicksilver and pulsing in time to my heartbeats, making me look like a goddamned Christmas display. Wouldn’t that be the irony of the year? The prodigal son of the Richards clan, invited back for holiday cheer as the Yule tree. Pass the eggnog, Pops.
I turn my right arm enough to glance at my watch. Just after midnight. With any luck, there’ll be an unexpected hit of calls on the team downstairs, and they’ll be too busy with check-ins, pillow requests, and noise complaints to pay attention to the weeklies. This crime-stopper hangover needs another half hour to flush its way completely out of my system. I’m almost there but not close enough.
I force myself to sit up straight. I fish into my desk drawer for the spare elevator keycard. Locking the penthouse against staff elevator access will be as easy as swiping the thing. I only need a few minutes more…
And Karma, with her sick humor, picks that moment to send the damn elevator up.
I throw the card back into the drawer while gritting out the F word. The gears in the elevator shaft whoosh and glide, and eventually the car dings at the landing outside the office.
I take another full breath. It wouldn’t be her.
After the exercise in awkwardness that was my meeting with the night crew Scooby Gang earlier, Neeta will make certain it’s not. The woman fought hard to add this new one to the team, so she’ll want to keep exposure to the Big Bad Wolf to a minimum for now.
Or so I tell myself.
Force myself to believe.
Because believing anything feels a lot like…
Hope.
Hope suddenly fulfilled, with brilliance making me grip the desk once more, as the doors slide open.
And she steps out.
And quickens the air.
And quickens me.
Like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Like no one I’ve ever met.
So much more than I ever thought possible.
More.
No. Goddamnit, that’s not possible. Didn’t Angelique force-feed me that juicy tidbit clearly enough?
But the woman’s presence doesn’t let up on the wallop. Literally, my heart rate doubles. The lightning in my blood sizzles before shooting between my thighs, making my ass clench and my hips jerk. It’s agony, but it’s no longer hell.
It’s fucking heaven.
At once, the suspicion hits too. Don’t trust this. What’s wrong with this? I’m not supposed to get heaven. I had my turn at a damn good life and was too huge of an entitled prick to spend a second being grateful for it. I don’t get heaven now. Hell’s my only reward, and I can only pray it comes sooner than later.
Don’t trust it.
But as she takes steps closer on those sky-high heels, file folder clutched to her chest and eyes widened as she takes in the suite, I can’t help but enjoy her magic. I even savor it. Isn’t that what wolves are supposed to do when baby bunnies wander into the lair?
“Hello?” She clears her throat and stops to smooth her jacket and skirt with her free hand, drawing my attention to her graceful curves. Her breasts are high and full, her ass a sweet bump in the skirt. And her legs, especially in those shoes…
Fuck. Me.
I imagine those shoes digging into my back. Then my shoulders.
Then the back of my head…
“Hello?” the bunny repeats, her voice like silk. “Ummm… Mr. Richards? Anyone? I’ve—er—brought the weeklies, and—” As she pivots toward the windows, she cuts herself off with a gasp. It’s so quiet up here—seventy stories up from the city—I’m able to hear her whispered follow-up. “Holy shit. Is that China?”
“Not quite.”
“Oh!”
I bite the inside of my lip to keep from laughing as she nearly leaps like a bunny—only the joke’s on me as she wobbles in those precarious heels. I lurch up, jabbing my hands into my front pockets to hide the glowing tips, but see I don’t fool her with the “casual” approach. She looks me over, head to toe, her gaze bold and probing and unafraid.
Jesus.
When was the last time somebody stared at me without fear in their eyes?
I don’t want to analyze that answer right now. I only want to enjoy the effects of it. The need to move closer to her, even as I feel the danger of her. The fire she ignites deeper in my fingers. The heat she causes to swell to the very tip of my cock. The awareness she opens in all my nerve endings.
Still, I manage to get out, in a tone as suave as how I used to sound, “Easy, Velvet. I’m just here for the view too.” Only it’s sure as hell not the cityscape stretching outside the window.
“My… My name’s not Velvet.”
“Probably not.” I only move my gaze. All the way across the creamy angles of her face. “But it fits.” Velveteen Rabbit. The book had been one of my favorites growing up. Gerta, my au pair, read it to me so many times. What does it take to become real…?
The bunny in front of me now says nothing. She presses the folder tighter to her chest—but I know arousal disguised as decorum when I see it. The recognition draws me closer to her, even though she stiffens and thrusts a stiff hand between us.
“I’m—I’m sorry, Mr. Richards. I’m just going to restart this train and hope I don’t wreck it this time.” She jogs her chin up, beaming a smile I can only describe as adorable. “Emmalina Crist. It’s a true honor to meet you, sir.”
Yeah. Adorable. And now, impossible. If I shake that gorgeous hand, she’ll wonder why my fingers look like glow sticks and my skin feels like an electric fence. She’ll never look at me with such open trust and honor again.
She’ll never see me as human again.
So I put on my own masquerade. I give her fingers and their light-pink nails only a casual glance and step back with an air of moneyed asshole before jerking my head toward my darkened office. “You can leave them on the desk, Miss Crist. On your way out.”
The edges of her mouth fall, but the optimism doesn’t dim from her eyes. “Of course.” She sidesteps me—undoubtedly, at last, sensing what everyone usually does. The air molecules that just aren’t “right” around me. The freakish “force field” that’ll soon have her beelining for the desk and making hurried excuses to leave…
Any second now.
I can only hope.
And dread.
“That desk?” She lifts a tentative finger. “In there?”
I almost laugh. Humor is the heart of pathos, right? I’m sure as hell not going to cry in my milk about giving this woman the creeps from being near me. From what I can tell, she volunteered to play delivery girl on the reports. Curiosity can kill bunnies too, Miss Crist. “Unless you want to drop them on the other one?” I murmur. “In the bedroom?”
Her gaze flares. She’s not too innocent to miss that lob of inappropriate—which baffles the fuck out of me too. I’ve logged more than my fair share on the bridge of the USS Man Whore but have never moored the thing at the company dock. What the hell has made me lose my mind now?
“Does that room have a better view than this one?”
That. Right there. That’s what made me do it. This woman. This pure, sparkling, open, awe-filled creature, taking my obnoxious overture and turning it into something completely different. Something funny, even sexy. The realization is all my dick needs to surge on board once again, making me clear my throat and turn from her—back to the shadows from which I originally emerged.
“Does that matter?” I’m not sure what I mean by that, only that it’ll keep her here a few minutes longer.
“Of course it matters.” She follows me in, her steps becoming more confident. “A desk in the bedroom doesn’t make sense otherwise.”
“Because bedrooms are strictly for romance?”
“Well, they’re not for desk-type sh—” She cuts herself off again. “Desk-type things.” She shakes her head in what can only be a silent self-punishment. “And I’m stepping way out of line again.” She lifts a fast wince to where I now stand, between the desk and the all-the-way-to-China view she loves so much. “So I’ll just…ummm…drop these here and… Well, good night. Oh, good night!”
Her repeat is a full-out shriek as her “casual toss” of the file turns into a different event altogether. Near as I can determine, her shoes are the traitors. She loses balance on one, causing her to overcorrect with the other, but twists that ankle too. She lurches forward, but the file hasn’t left her grip. In one impressive burst, every page of the weekly report is now a white flurry in the air, dancing with each other before landing across the desk and at my feet.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” No self-editing for her this time. She keeps it up, scrambling to grab each page, clearly clinging to the hope of collating them again.
I should tell her to stop. I should reinforce how pointless her cause really is, with fifty-plus pages of data in eight-point font. I should reassure her it’ll be easier to recycle this mess and simply reprint the report.
I should. But I don’t.
Because fate has given me a bonus gift, and I’m not about to waste it.
Because watching her reminds me of beholding something like the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal for the first time. There’ll never be another moment full of all my wonder and none of my breath—
Grabbing me by the center of my balls.
Seizing. Then gripping. Then pounding.
Not even the Eiffel Tower pulled this shit.
I clench back a groan. Barely. I reconsider restraint as Miss Emmalina Crist leans across my desk, stretching for a piece of paper on the corner. The woman’s ass is a work of art—a canvas I imagine painting with streams of my come as she reaches for her own orgasm instead of some stupid spreadsheet…
“Shit, shit, shit, shit.” Yep. She’s still at it. “Guess everyone knows who goofed off in charm school, right? How much lamer can one person get?” She pushes back to her feet, only to hurry around to my side of the desk. “Well, the idiot is going to make this right,” she blurts. “I promise.”
With that, she drops again. To her knees.
Shit, shit, shit, shit. Guess it’s my turn now.
“Miss Crist—”
“Wow. It’s all over the place back here.”
“Miss Crist—”
“I know, I know. I should’ve binder-clipped the pages. This won’t happen again, I promise. I promise.”
“It’s all right,” I mutter. It’s unreal, my brain growls back. No. It’s completely nuts. This, from the guy who just put three assholes behind bars using electromagnetic bursts and a handful of extension cords. But if the angel fucking Gabriel had descended in here ten minutes ago prophesizing I’d be standing here in the shadows, trying to talk a woman up from her knees while my erection all but throbbed in her face, I’d have laughed him back up to the cloud of crack from which he’d descended.
Last time I checked, the angels knew to leave me alone.
Which means I’m really all alone here. In the dark. With this woman. And her hair and her skin and her curves and her frantic little mutterings, filling the air with an energy I can’t comprehend…
Filled with everything except fear.
What the hell?
Why isn’t she afraid of me?
Yeah, I’m damn sure she’s not.
If I’ve become an expert about anything since being turned into a walking diode, it’s what fear smells, tastes, looks, and feels like. I’ve experienced it in some form, big or small, from every person on the planet forced to interact with me since those months with “Doctor La Salle” and her gang of torturing freaks. Emmalina Crist is a lot of things right now, but scared isn’t one of them.
A realization I refuse to let go.
A treasure I refuse to relinquish.
A woman I refuse to resist.
No matter how wrong it is.
No matter how high Karma sets my payback price.
EMMA
Weak, weak, weak.
The word pinches my psyche worse than the damn shoes on my feet. Both are reminders of how I have nobody to blame for this humiliation but myself.
Weak.
I had to go and wear the platforms to work, believing the advertising that sold them to me in the first place. I’d be glamorous, sophisticated. I’d at least look like I belonged at a job in the big city.
Weak.
Glamorous and sophisticated? Look how long they’d lasted from the moment Reece Richards walked in the office door. My massive case of stupidiotic was compounded by this lame excuse to see him alone.
Weak.
Stupid and idiotic have turned to lunacy up here too, from the instant he emerged from the shadows looking better than the sweeping view. His tie is off. His glasses are on. Why the hell is he the only man on earth who looks better in glasses, not the other way around? The bold black frames are lined in silver, making his eyes seem to glow as he exhales hard and stares down at me.
And stares.
And stares.
Right past the noticeable swell between his legs.
The ridge seems to surge toward me now, beckoning with heat I can feel across my whole face. Swelling as I let out heavy breaths of my own, all too aware of how the air has changed between us. Of how it has charged…