Reckless

by Stella Rhys

  Christ.

  I’d successfully forced the image away for most of last night while we were watching TV, and though it had come briefly back in the bathroom—after I witnessed the closest thing to a fuck-me face as I’d ever seen on AJ—I had ultimately kept the thought of her knockout curves wrangled, because there was something entirely too fucked about getting hard off the thought of your half-naked assistant while she slept innocently in the same room.

  But we were both fully conscious now, so I let myself have it, running my eyes over her and trying not to smirk because while she’d had her game face on throughout the meeting—staying doggedly on top of the discussion, anticipating Knox’s questions and flipping to the exact page of research for my every point, just in case I needed backup—I could see now that it had all been her trusty poker face.

  Because with the room about empty now, she was already breathing faster. I could see it in the rise and fall of her chest. She looked completely worked up, and given it could’ve been one of a handful of things bothering her, I broke the silence by asking, “What’s on your mind right now?”

  She glanced at me before swiping the last few printouts off the table. “Being petty,” she finally said without looking up.

  I raised my eyebrows, studying her for a second before dropping my gaze to her phone, which was actively lighting up with new texts. I didn’t need to look too hard to know who they were from.

  “What’s he been saying?” I asked.

  AJ

  Once upon a time, I had actual nightmares about my boss being able to read my personal texts.

  And yet now here I was, voluntarily handing Adam my phone, giving him a VIP, first-look tour of my shitshow personal life, all because I simply couldn’t think anymore.

  Last night had been, in a massive understatement, fucking wild. My fiancé cheated, my boss nearly beat the shit out of him for me, and then said boss and I had an increasingly inappropriate sleepover that started with whiskey and ended with me asking about his masturbation habits—and then getting very openly flustered by his answer.

  I genuinely could not imagine the monumental levels of awkwardness that awaited me in the morning. But then I awoke at 7AM to an empty room and an email from Knox.

  Can’t do noon. Let’s do 9 or reschedule.

  Shortly after, Adam rushed back from the gym looking pissed. “You see the email?” he demanded. “I’m letting everyone know,” I said, on the phone.

  And then we were off.

  I made a round of calls while he showered and just like that, we were too busy to think about the night before. It was a miracle. An actual godsend of a dick move from Knox, and it had me thinking this day might just go by drama-free.

  But then came Caspar.

  Deciding to blow up my work phone mid-meeting, with what I’d thought might finally be reflective, remorseful texts, but nope.

  They were completely unhinged.

  CASPAR: Tell me what you did with him

  CASPAR: I know you fucked him. Just admit you always wanted to

  CASPAR: I should state for the record that I did fuck Vicky

  CASPAR: Twice last night and once this morning.

  CASPAR: Depending on what floor you’re on you might’ve heard

  It didn’t even stop there.

  He went on to detail how I could have prevented this. How he’d only slept with Vicky after I chucked his engagement ring. How Adam probably couldn’t even make me come. That he probably just pounded women like sex toys.

  Yep.

  Super charming.

  In a weird way though, I was almost grateful for the texts, because they were so revolting that they fast-tracked me to about the ninety percent mark of getting the hell over this jackass.

  The downside, however, was the fact that they had me so fucking pissed that I was thinking of all the filthy, sweaty sexual acts I could tell him I did with Adam. He was harassing me for the info, so why not?

  Well.

  Because you didn’t actually sleep with Adam, you will never sleep with Adam and thinking about this is the last thing you need after getting kind-of-almost turned on by Adam last night.

  Not that that counted, I reminded myself, feeling my neck getting warm as I watched Adam read the texts from my phone.

  His brow was furrowed as he stroked his thumb across his bottom lip, drawing my eyes to all the places they didn’t need to be right now. His mouth. His long fingers. Those thick goddamned forearms that brought me right back to last night’s dirty thoughts.

  Okay—easy, perv, I warned myself, trying to remind myself that I was angry right now, not horny.

  My nose crinkled. Unless there’s a fine line. Is there?

  Potentially valid question but I didn’t ponder the answer for long because Adam finally got to the part about how he probably “pounds girls like sexy toys.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” he exhaled a laugh that I could only describe as amused disgust. Then he handed back my phone, his blue gaze locking on me with a look of intrigue. “So are you going to respond?” he asked.

  “I mean…” I swallowed, my eyes on my phone as his eyes remained on me.

  And just like that, I was asking myself how the hell I survived five years of standing this close to Adam, being the recipient of his scrutinizing gaze. He was so damned casual, his hands slid in his pockets and his head tilted just so as he watched me with interest. Meanwhile, I could think of nothing but the fact that I was standing barely a foot away from him, my eye line right at his chest, forcing me to look up at him from under my lashes.

  “I definitely want to respond,” I finally answered, my bones feeling every millisecond of silence between us as Adam’s lips turned slightly up at the edges.

  “With what?” he asked.

  Ugh. It was an innocuous-sounding question, but it made the conversation feel suddenly like we were talking dirty to each other. So I tried to play it off with a shrug.

  “I don’t know. Probably just the obvious.”

  “Which is?” Adam asked, making me narrow my eyes.

  “You’re really going to make me say it?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Well, for starters, do you pound women like sex toys?”

  He smirked. “Only when they want me to.”

  My tongue was running along the bottom of my teeth before I knew it. Oh my God, stop that. Put your tongue away, I scolded myself, but it was clearly too late because there was something different in Adam’s crooked little smile now as he watched me. Something… flirtatious?

  For fuck’s sake, are we flirting?

  I’d barely asked myself the question before I was putting on my poker face, forcing myself to sound as un-sexual as possible as I lowered my voice and said, “I’m just going to tell him that you… did make me come.”

  The back of my neck felt like it was on fire as Adam’s curious eyes taunted me. “That’s it?”

  I shot him with a look of mock irritation. “Hard—okay?” I added. “Harder than I ever have in my life.”

  He nodded with satisfaction before adding, “Twice.”

  My eyebrows went up. “Oh, really?”

  “Gotta make it realistic,” he smiled just as Craig poked his head back in the room.

  “Adam, quick question.”

  “I’ll be right there,” he said without taking his eyes off of me.

  God. I just wanted to chew the living hell out of my lip, but I suppressed the urge and gave him a little eye roll instead. “Right. Well, while I’m at it, I’ll go ahead and tell him you got the job done in twenty seconds flat.”

  “You can if you want. It’s happened before.”

  I burst out laughing. “Okay, look, I can believe your nine-inch, no-porn claims if I really have to,” I said with my voice lowered to a murmur as I gave a quick glance toward the door. “But what I can’t believe is that you’ve made a girl orgasm in a matter of twenty seconds. That’s literally impossible.”

  “I unders
tand how it would feel that way when you’ve dated a guy like Caspar for five years.”

  “You’re a dick.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “And speaking of dicks, you’d get about twelve thrusts in with twenty seconds.”

  “You have no idea how many I’d get in with twenty seconds,” Adam countered, looking thoroughly entertained as he held his gaze on me. “But for the record, it wasn’t my dick I was using that time,” he said, lingering to watch my taunting smile promptly falter as I processed his words. Then with a chuckle to himself, he ambled off to meet Craig in the hall.

  Leaving me standing alone in the conference room, tingling all over and wondering with hot reluctance what he’d used.

  His hands or his mouth.

  According to my imagination, it was his mouth.

  “Fuck,” I whispered harshly, squeezing my eyes shut for a second and opening them to find that Adam had caught my little moment from the door. Crap, I thought, our eyes locked as he broke into a little laugh before returning swiftly to whatever he was saying to Craig.

  Okay.

  So this is definitely flirting, I concluded, completely disturbed but also vaguely fascinated, because how the hell did this happen? For five years, there had been literally nothing between us. We were practically brother and sister. But suddenly here I was, staring in disbelief at my phone as I held off on texting Caspar about my pretend fuckfest with Adam.

  Because it wasn’t to spare Caspar’s feelings.

  It was to control my own.

  I had denied it since last night, knowing that nothing I felt after all that chaos could be remotely trusted. But clearly, I wasn’t out of the woods today.

  Because according to every fiber of my aching hot body, I wanted to fuck my boss.

  Which was bad. Very bad.

  This weekend was madness, yes, but anything I did this weekend would still have very real consequences on Monday. The kind that would affect the career I’d been busting my ass for since college, and any chance of respect I’d ever have in my industry.

  Reminder: this isn’t even real, I told myself.

  Yes, Adam Maxwell was objectively hot as sin, but I’d also spent an entire week hyping myself up for a night of wild, sweaty, all-night-long sex. I’d done my hair. Bought new lingerie. Got a frickin’ Brazilian. I’d gotten myself all worked up for absolutely nothing to happen—and then I found myself wearing lingerie in front of Adam.

  Who definitely did notice my efforts.

  So of course I had a case of misplaced horniness.

  If it wasn’t an official medical term, it needed to be, because that was exactly my problem right now. To a tee. I had so much sexual energy pent up inside me and to make it worse, I was sharing a damned hotel room with Adam. To make it doubly worse, my ex was still wreaking havoc on my emotions, which meant I had no idea what exactly was going on in my head right now, but if there was any one thing I did know, it was this:

  Under no circumstances would I be sleeping in the same room as Adam tonight.

  I just wouldn’t.

  Because for a million and one reasons, I couldn’t let whatever craziness I was feeling right now get any bigger. I couldn’t risk another night like last night.

  And I most definitely could not fuck my boss.

  No. Never.

  Just not gonna happen.

  8

  ADAM

  My history of arguing with AJ was a storied one.

  We essentially bickered for sport, going back and forth often, over things we cared passionately about and things we didn’t care about at all. The topic of discussion was never actually the point. The point was just to win, so I blamed this mildly screwed-up aspect of our relationship for what I couldn’t stop thinking about right now, which was proving her wrong.

  Specifically by draping her legs over my shoulders and making her come in twenty seconds flat.

  “Christ, Adam. Stop,” Iain said, prompting me to blink hard and frown defensively, trying immediately to act like I didn’t completely forget I had him on the phone.

  “Stop what?”

  “Thinking about fucking her.”

  “What makes you think I was—”

  “You muttered ‘fuck’ under your breath in a way that was half-groan and frankly very disturbing for me to listen to,” Iain said, making me break into a shit-eating grin as the car pulled onto the highway. “Also I asked you a question about ten seconds ago and you still haven’t answered it.”

  “Sorry. I was thinking about fucking her.”

  “I know.”

  “In my defense, it’s only because we’re pretending explicitly like I fucked her,” I said as Iain made a vaguely dubious sound. “But anyway, what’s your question?”

  “Where is she right now?”

  “The hotel. She headed back way before me while I hung back to talk to Craig.”

  “Do you know what her plans are for the night?”

  “Well, she’s probably getting ready right now.”

  “For what?”

  “The fundraiser.”

  Iain paused. “You mean Engelman’s big ass party that your whole company gets hammered at every year?”

  I laughed, feeling like this was a trap. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Nothing,” Iain said wryly. “Just sounds like a perfectly safe environment for you and AJ, given everything you just told me about last night.”

  I grimaced as I reclined in the backseat of the car. “Yeah, speaking of all that shit, don’t tell Holland, alright?”

  “Asshole—how about you don’t do this to me since you know I can’t keep things from her.”

  “To be fair, this isn’t necessarily a ‘thing.’ It’s a fluke that I’ll get over, so there’s no sense in worrying Holland when I can assure you I’m not going to do anything to jeopardize my work relationship with AJ.”

  “Yeah,” Iain said flatly, with that tinge of disinterest he employed whenever he wanted to convey that he did not in fact believe me. I snorted.

  “Look, no need to guilt me like I’m one of your clients. I’m not going to do anything to screw things up. I’m well aware of what AJ’s done for my life,” I said, though I knew I sounded somewhat like a surly kid, because I kind of hated this topic.

  Not because I wasn’t grateful for AJ, but because I hated thinking about how non-existent my relationship with Holland was before AJ came along.

  “Alright, I’m going to choose to believe you then,” Iain relented. “But for your sake, I hope she wears something as ill-fitting and unattractive as possible tonight.”

  I laughed at the remark, but by the time I got back to the hotel, I was thinking about it again—mostly because I was realizing that AJ hadn’t originally planned to attend Engelman’s fundraiser tonight. She had expected to be with Caspar, so in all likelihood, she hadn’t packed anything to wear to this party.

  I wasn’t exactly sure what this realization meant, but it definitely had me walking a little faster down the hall as I approached the door of my room.

  When I got in, my eyes went straight toward the closed door of the bathroom. I closed the door slowly as I called, “Hey.”

  I heard the distinct rustle of makeup brushes before she called back.

  “Hey! Do you need the bathroom? I’m done in here.”

  I eyed her open suitcase as I set my things down. “Take your time,” I said, drifting over to the bar to grab some water. “All I really need to do is—”

  My sentence cut off as the bathroom door swung open, and wherever the rest of my words fucked off to I couldn’t say.

  Because all I could do was stare.

  Fuck. Me.

  Whatever she was wearing, it was black, sleeveless, and wrapped so tight around her body I couldn’t blink if I tried. Her long, dark hair was down and gathered over her shoulder to show off the curve of her neck as she fastened her bracelet, and when she looked up at me, my pulse picked up at the sight of her smoky eye makeup. Her c
reamy lipstick.

  One look at those lips and my blood went hot. Some lonely corner of my brain was telling me to relax, but it was way too late.

  “Jesus fuck, AJ. What the hell are you doing?”

  AJ

  It was pointless to act dumb, but I did it anyway.

  “What?” I asked with convincing nonchalance. Impressive, considering the way Adam was raking his stare all over me right now, leaving a trail of heat over every inch of my bare skin he dragged his eyes across.

  “You’re going to act like this is how you normally dress for a work function?” he asked as I walked out of the bathroom.

  “Well, obviously not, but I didn’t initially plan on going to this party and all I packed were date-night dresses and lingerie,” I said, fastening the backs of my earrings. “So it was between this and the slutty maid costume, and for some reason I just thought this would be a little more appropriate.”

  Adam’s eyebrows were still deeply knit as he looked at me, but I could see the reluctant interest twinkle in his eyes till he cracked a grin. “You have a slutty maid costume?”

  I smirked. “Just pretend you didn’t hear that part.”

  “Might take a minute.”

  I rolled my eyes as I headed to the table, one hand braced on the table as I leaned over to ease myself into my heels—which was, unsurprisingly, kind of difficult with the heat of Adam’s unabashed stare on my backside.

  Things still felt grey this morning, but it was like we just went from zero to sixty. Boundaries: Annihilated.

  “Are you really checking me out that blatantly right now?” I finally called him out. But he didn’t exactly back down.

  “Pretty hard not to when you’re bending over in a dress that looks like it’s going to explode off your body like a fucking rubber band.”

  “Oh, and you’re slut shaming my outfit now?” Standing up straight again, I cocked an eyebrow at Adam, feeling a strange little thrill course through my veins when I caught the single tic in his jaw.