by Tawna Fenske
“Good,” she said, nodding to reassure herself there was nothing sexual about this conversation. Nothing at all. “And you say you developed it yourself?”
“Yes, I was the head engineer on the project.” He beamed proudly, leaning forward and spreading his hands wide.
Don’t look at his hands, don’t look at his hands, don’t look—
“I made some very exciting developments with minerals,” Ben said. “No one’s ever utilized this exact formulation of materials to create equipment used in the brewing process before, so it’s extremely revolutionary. I melded the stainless steel with a unique mineral blend of fukalite—”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Fukalite. It’s a calcium carbonate silicate hydrate mineral.”
“Fukalite.” She stared at him. “Did you just make that up?”
He grinned. “Google it. F-U-K-A-L-I-T-E.”
She looked at him for a few beats, then down at the laptop. Moving her fingers over the keyboard, she typed in the letters and waited. “I’ll be damned.”
“I told you.”
Holly looked up to see him smirking, and she wondered if it was the thrill of being right, or the thrill of being able to say something so innocently filthy to her. Or filthily innocent. Was filthily even a word?
God, she was losing it.
But it was clear Ben was gaining confidence here. Whatever the cause of it, it was exactly the demeanor she hoped to refine in him. Holly drew her hands off the laptop and wiped her palms on her skirt. “This is good stuff, Ben. Important information to share with your audience. It’s also clear you’re passionate about the subject, which is a key thing to get across in your presentation.”
“Thanks. We reviewed a lot of this in the all-hands meeting last week.”
“Excellent,” she said, trying not to let her gaze drop to his hands. “Okay, what else? Tell me some more things you think your potential client will get excited about.”
“Well, there’s the elongation.”
Holly swallowed hard. “Elongation?”
“Absolutely.” Ben nodded to himself as he bent to scribble more notes, really getting into it now. “Greater elongation means the material is less prone to fracture. While that typically results in lower stiffness, that’s not the case with the materials I’ve developed.”
“Oh.” Holly uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “So stiffness isn’t a problem?”
Ben grinned again. “Not in this case.”
“Good.” She nodded, trying to keep her expression as professional as possible. “You want to address that right up front with your presentation. Let them know you’ve thought of it already, then show them the logic and evidence that proves—um—whatever you said about size and stiffness and hardness.”
Ben grinned wider and stood up, his long legs carrying him to the whiteboard in two easy strides. There was a certain spring in his step that told her he was feeling pumped up about the subject. That he knew it well, and felt confident about his approach.
God, why was that so damn sexy?
“This is really helping, Holly,” he said as he picked up a dry erase marker. “Thanks for getting my gears turning here.”
“Don’t mention it.” She cleared her throat again, wondering who turned up the heater in the conference room. “Um, okay, so tell me more about the elongation. You think this is something your audience will be concerned with?”
“Definitely. As I was saying, greater elongation often goes hand in hand with lower stiffness.” He turned to the whiteboard and began scrawling a complicated-looking formula while Holly fought once more not to stare at his hands.
“And your equipment has the right amount of elongation?”
“It’s perfect. See, elongation is usually expressed as a percentage of the length change over the initial measured length.”
“Right. I’ll see if the designers can work some details about elongation, stiffness, and length into the PowerPoint presentation.” She took a deep breath, willing herself to stay focused, but it was so hard.
So hard. So damn hard.
“Okay, it’s also important in any public presentation to have a very clear call-to-action,” she said.
“Action?”
“Yes. What is it you’re hoping your audience will do?”
Ben studied her for a moment, his amber-flecked gaze holding hers for a few beats longer than Holly expected. “Give it to me,” he said. “Their business, I mean. I want them to give me their business.”
She licked her lips. He had to know what he was doing, right? She honestly couldn’t tell. Maybe it was all in her head, or under her skirt, to be more precise.
Then again, maybe he knew damn well he was turning her on. Did it matter, as long as he was embracing his inner alpha male?
Holly took a shaky breath. “Then tell them to give it to you. Clearly. And make sure you show them why that’s a smart business decision.”
He nodded and set the dry erase marker back on the shelf beside the whiteboard. “I’m thinking I’d like to go a little off-the-cuff with the actual presentation. Maybe have some notes to work from, but not have a rehearsed speech.”
“Sounds like a good approach.” Holly folded her hands on the table again, pretty sure she had her libido under control now. “Tell you what. Why don’t you just pretend I’m in the audience and that you’re giving your talk to me? I’ll take a few notes and give you some pointers afterward.”
Ben looked down at her, then nodded. “In the interest of full disclosure, I feel like I should tell you that from this angle, I can see straight down the front of your shirt.”
“What?”
He nodded. “It’s true. And it’s unbelievably sexy. I’m pretty sure there’s no blood left in my brain and it’s very hard to concentrate.”
Holly touched a hand to the front of her blouse and tried to feel indignant, but she couldn’t muster it up. All this time, she’d been egging him on to speak his mind, to show confidence and ambition and to go after what he wanted.
Was it really so terrible if she was what he wanted?
“You’re going to have plenty of distractions in the boardroom on Friday,” she told him. “You need to learn to work with that and keep delivering your speech anyway.”
He nodded thoughtfully, his knee brushing hers as he eased himself to sit on the edge of the table next to her. He was so close, she could feel the heat radiating through his pant leg. “Working with distractions is going to be tough for me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“ADD. Makes it hard to stay on task.”
“Really?”
“Yep. So I need to practice speaking with distractions. Seeing down the front of your shirt is actually quite helpful.”
Holly laughed, as charmed by this confident iteration of Ben as she was aroused by him. “You want me to wave pom-poms around and juggle watermelons so you really get used to speaking with distractions?”
“Nope.” Ben grinned again, his amber-flecked eyes flashing behind his glasses. “But I do have another idea.”
“What’s that?”
“I think you should take your clothes off.”
Chapter Nine
The second the words left his lips, Ben wished he could take them back. Hadn’t he promised himself he wouldn’t be a skirt-chasing jerk like his dad?
And hadn’t Holly made it damn clear she wanted to keep a professional distance between them? That there was no room in their working relationship for anything of a sexual nature?
And Ben wanted to respect that. He really, really did.
But he could have sworn he’d been feeling some sort of crazy sexual tension crackling in the air between them for the last twenty minutes. It made him bold, or maybe it was just the fact that he was getting to talk about a subject he knew well.
Whatever the case, the look on Holly’s face told him she wasn’t hating it.
“Take my clothes off,” she repeated. “You want me
to take my clothes off.”
“Yes.”
“You know, that’s not a bad idea.”
Ben blinked. “It’s not?”
She reached for the top button on her blouse, fiddling with it as she spoke, and Ben felt his mouth start to water.
“I don’t know if you noticed this, but you started off at the very beginning of this session with a very dry, no-nonsense tone,” she said. “Your posture was atrocious, your eye contact terrible, your enunciation lousy, the pacing of your words—”
“I think I got it,” he said. “I suck. Point taken.”
“That’s just it, though. The second you stood up and started talking about stiffness and elongation and—”
“And looking down the front of your blouse?”
“Exactly! The instant all that happened, everything changed. You stood up straighter, you began speaking more clearly—hell, even your eye contact was better.” She grinned. “When you weren’t looking at my tits, anyway.”
“That’s true, I suppose.” He slid off the edge of the table, relieved she wasn’t offended. “I also liked watching you squirm when I talked about fukalite and the size of my equipment.”
“Making me squirm makes you a better public speaker?” Holly slapped her hand on the table. “That’s what it is!”
“That’s what what is?”
“Power. Confidence. Control. That’s what revs your engine. That’s what brings out your authoritative inner-CEO.”
“Not a bad theory,” Ben said, wishing she’d move a little to the side so he could look down her shirt again. “So you’re volunteering your body for the sake of my public speaking skills?”
“I suppose I might be.”
Ben nodded and folded his hands in front of him. “I approve this plan.”
“I’m not saying that, exactly, but you did give me an idea.”
“Any idea that involves you taking off your clothes is a good one.”
Holly rolled her eyes. “You know how I mentioned that old trick about picturing your audience in their underwear?”
“Particularly awkward with that grade school chess tournament speech I mentioned.”
“I think we should give it a shot.”
“Give what a shot?” He was still hung up on the idea of seeing Holly naked so maybe he’d missed some of the specifics of the plan.
“Start your presentation. Focus on the things we’ve been talking about, from the order of your presentation to your body language while you’re delivering it. Really pay attention to what you’re doing.”
“And not to your breasts.”
“You said you wanted to learn to handle yourself better with public speaking distractions.”
“I think handling myself will be the least of my issues if you’re taking your clothes off.” Ben cleared his throat. “Okay, so you’ll remove an article of clothing for each section of the speech I get right?”
“More or less.”
“Who makes the rules?”
“I do. My company, my rules.”
He grinned. “You know, it goes both ways. I find it pretty hot when you’re in take-charge career mode, too.”
Something flashed in Holly’s eyes, and Ben wondered if he’d struck a nerve somehow. She was looking at him like she wanted to take his clothes off, so something must be working here.
“Okay then,” Holly said, fingering her top button with agonizing slowness. “Let’s begin. Address me just like you plan to address your audience on Friday. Here, let’s start with a little encouragement.”
She flicked open the top button on her blouse. Ben tried not to stare, but then remembered staring might actually be the point. Well, part of the point, anyway.
What was the point again?
He looked away from Holly’s cleavage. He felt dizzy, but he also felt in control. Confident. In command.
“Hello, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “Thanks for joining me here today to learn a little more about what Langley Enterprises can do for you. I’m really excited to share some of the new features of our newly-engineered Brewmaster 5000 deluxe fermentation system and how it can make Kleinberger Brewing even more amazing than it already is.”
“Good,” she said, undoing another button. “Sincere flattery and genuine passion. You’re not just saying you’re excited, you sound excited.”
“I am,” Ben said, meaning it in more ways than one. He strode across the front of the room and turned to the whiteboard. He picked up the dry erase marker and began to scrawl a few words on the whiteboard. “Is anyone here familiar with the term ‘viscous fingering?’”
“Um—”
He turned from the whiteboard to see her looking flushed and beautiful as she stared at his hands. She uncrossed and re-crossed her legs again, and he wondered what she was thinking. “Viscous fingering is the formation of patterns in a morphologically unstable interface between two fluids in a porous medium, and I’d like to tell you how viscous fingering can help Kleinberger up its game in terms of the brewing process.”
“Is this supposed to be turning me on?”
Ben grinned. “In the rectangular configuration, the system evolves until a single finger forms. In the radial configuration, the pattern forms fingers by successive tip-splitting.”
Holly licked her lips. “I have no idea what you just said, but it sounded really good.”
“Undo another button,” he commanded, feeling bolder as he recapped the dry erase marker.
He watched as a smile played over Holly’s lips, her lavender-gray eyes flashing with interest. She flicked open another button. Ben stared right into her eyes, not letting his gaze dip into the visible valley of cleavage. There’d be plenty of time for that.
“Another thing that sets the Langley Enterprises system apart is stimulated emission.”
“God, yes.”
“This process occurs when a photon interacts with an atom’s electron, causing it to drop to a lower energy level. Now, before I explain how that applies to the brewing process, I’d like you to go ahead and undo another button.”
She grinned. “My pleasure.” She flicked open one button and another, then pulled the shirt open wide, shrugging it off her shoulders. She wore a lacy black bra and a salacious expression that made Ben’s pulse kick up three notches. “I’m throwing in another button for your commanding presence in the boardroom.”
“Glad to hear it,” he said, wishing he had the same amount of control over the hard-on now straining against the front of his pants. Damn flat-front trousers didn’t have a lot of extra room. He saw her gaze drop to his fly and knew she could see how much she was getting to him. How much she turned him on.
“As I was saying,” Ben said, not entirely sure what he’d been talking about. There really wasn’t much blood left in his brain. “If you turn to page six in your handouts, you’ll see a detailed diagram of the new Brewmaster system. You’ll notice from the screw positions that—”
“Screw positions, yes.”
“—that the Langley engineering team thought of everything, right down to the hardware. Stripping won’t be an issue…” He grinned at Holly. “Panties, please?”
He didn’t expect her to reach up her skirt, and he really didn’t expect her to pull out a lacy black thong. She tossed it at him, making it the first time in his whole life he’d been pelted with underwear for talking about science.
God, it’s good to be a geek.
Ben caught the panties and kept going. “The manufacturing process for this equipment is also quite unique to Langley Enterprises. Using a heated rod, we penetrate the backside of—”
“God,” Holly said and tugged the fastener out of her hair, letting it fall free from her tightly wound bun. Her hair slid dark and liquid around her bare shoulders, and Ben felt pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to focus much longer.
“You should definitely talk more about penetration and rods,” she said. “Do those use fukalite to make them harder?”
�
��No. They’re already hard enough.”
“I can see that.” She twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “Nice job improving your posture. No more slouching. You’re very erect now.”
“Thanks to you. I appreciate your pointers.” He stared at her nipples, which were jutting sharply through the lace of her bra. Was she as turned on as he was, or just cold?
No way she’s cold. It’s a million fucking degrees in here with the air conditioner blasting.
Ben cleared his throat. “Let’s turn our attention from the equipment for a moment and talk a bit more about Langley Enterprises. As you know, we’re the number one engineering and manufacturing firm in the nation. We have distribution channels in forty-seven countries, and an annual budget of more than a billion dollars. Those are tools we have at our disposal to help clients like Kleinberger.”
“Excellent,” Holly said, nodding as Ben strode from the whiteboard to stand in front of her. “Money. Power. Prestige.”
“Take off your bra.”
“My pleasure.”
She started to reach behind her for the clasp, elbows bent at an awkward angle. Her breasts pushed toward him, and Ben ached to reach out and touch them.
Screw it. She could say no if she wanted to, but—
“Yes,” she gasped as Ben dropped to his knees on the floor in front of her and buried his mouth in her cleavage. The bra fell away, exposing her breasts to his lips, his tongue, his teeth. He used all of them at once, touching and tasting and savoring the feel of her against his lips.
If this is what being an assertive, take-charge CEO got him, he was ready to commit to the job for life.
He slid his palm down the side of her body, all the way down her thighs. When he reached the hem of her skirt, he pushed upward, baring one inch of flesh at a time. Her thighs were silky and bare, and she let them fall apart as Ben shoved the skirt up over her hips.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, grateful he’d had the foresight to get her panties off. He leaned down and planted a kiss between her legs, slipping his tongue inside her. She was wet and hot and he was dying to taste her again.
“Stop,” she said.
Ben stopped, raising his head as he dropped his hands to his sides. “Okay.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”