by Lindsey Hart
“Well, here you have it. The app that made the most money over the past two weeks stretch- and this really was a blow away and a surprise, considering how mundane and bland the idea was- is…”
Asshole.
Despite her uncharitable feelings for the man that ran all of their lives, the devil they all ultimately served at the end of the day, Colette shifted nervously, as did the rest of the staff assembled. She swore she could smell smoke, and no, it sure as shit wasn’t her panties on fire. And no, that wasn’t because they were so wet, they were completely drenched, either.
Those blue orbs swept around the room, wilting females in their tracks, and making men squirm under their scrutiny. They did a full once over before they came to rest, shockingly, back on her.
“Congrats, Office Baby. Looks like your boring trees won you this round. Come to my office at the end of the day to discuss your prize.”
CHAPTER 2
Blaze
Corporate life could be boring as shit. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you the same thing.
Blaze knew he didn’t really have to be at the office, day in and day out, but he wanted to be. He never wanted to be that entitled prick that didn’t even know what was going on in his own company. And with Matt being a silent partner, or at least, silent enough most days, things were pretty much left up to him to run. Matt didn’t give a shit about apps. What he gave as shit about was having money to invest to make more money. If the apps weren’t selling, it was lights out for HBAD and despite what the world at large actually thought, Blaze did have a conscience.
Letting people go and pay cuts weren’t exactly on his list.
It wasn’t that the company was struggling. They were actually doing fine, leading the market, as usual, in app sales and ratings.
If he was pressed to admit it, and he would have to be really pressed because he’d never admit a thing like that to another living soul, he’d created the office competition because he wanted to have a little fun. Spark up the boring, mundane, nine to five shit.
Sure apps were great.
The ideas that his staff came up with, the coding, programming, drawing, all of it was high quality shit. It wasn’t that. He just…
Was. Bored.
He wanted to see what everyone in the office could come up with if pressed. Truth be told, he might have wanted to pit them against each other to see who would rise to the challenge and who would founder like a sinking ship beneath the pressure.
As it turned out, he’d been genuinely surprised. No one had sputtered and gone under. Sure, a few of the ideas had been generally shit, but even they had enough redeeming qualities to sell well enough.
The real shocker had been Office Baby. Colette. Whatever.
God, Blaze hated her.
Rather, he hated what she stood for.
Temptation. Raw, unadulterated temptation. Temptation that was so thick and sensual, it was like a smack to the face every time he had to be in the same room with her. She wore her beauty and charms like a mantle about her. Not that she would have known, but then again, there was nothing sexier than a woman who didn’t know she was sexy. Or beautiful. And Office Baby seemed to be blissfully unaware of both.
Office Baby.
He’d termed her that when she’d started at HBAD two years ago. She’d been eighteen, fresh from high school and could code and draw like someone twice her age, with twenty years of experience under their belt.
He wouldn’t have hired her. He would have taken one look at her and selfishly turned her ass out the door, just so he could run after her and offer to buy her lunch, pursue her relentlessly, and screw her out for a week straight.
HR, on the other hand, being operated by senile nitwits who seemed to do a good job hiring but didn’t actually have eyes didn’t give two shits about the sensual temptation they were inviting into their midst. Case in point, Ashley Hedingly. She was gorgeous. Twenty-five, stacked, and blonde. She was like a delicious popsicle just waiting for the entire office to lick her.
He was pretty damn sure at least half of the office already had.
Another HR nightmare.
Unfortunately, they hired based on smarts and capabilities and not on looks- case in point, Del, although maybe that was a bad example because he was definitely not all that smart. Creepy yes. Artistic, yes. Smart, no.
Unfortunately, HR hired Colette without any other job experience, based on her crazy stellar portfolio. Colette Howard. God. Even her name was exotic. Blaze refused to use it on the basis of the way it rolled off his tongue like a caress. He loved the taste of her name on his tongue, just like he was pretty sure he’d love the taste of her. Instead of using her real name, he preferred to call her, Office Baby, rudely and like a wise ass, pointing out that she wasn’t just young and inexperienced, she was seriously young and inexperienced, and he made sure everyone knew it.
Because yeah, he was a dick like that.
She was also the only woman that he’d ever met who seemed completely immune to his considerable charms. Sure, it got annoying being panted at and fawned over, even pawed, pretty much wherever he went, but he had to admit it was a nice stroke to the ego to turn heads and melt panties in his wake. He could usually smell the lust on women in the same room with him.
Not on Office Baby. She’d never so much as given him a second glance. She barely looked at him unless she was speaking to him and she always kept it professional. She never went anywhere near his office, which was a damn good thing.
Matt told him to cut it out with the screwing chicks who worked for them. He didn’t want to get sued over and over. Blaze had taken that to heart. Employees might be off the table, but anyone else was definitely on. On his desk. Fucked up against the door. The walls. The floor.
His dates liked to take their lunch breaks and come for a little stress reliever. He never complained.
Okay, so he’d broken the rules once, with his secretary. He wanted to see what it felt like to be the ultimate cliché. The fact that Sue was six feet tall with double D’s, curvy hips, a tight ass, and legs that wrapped around his waist nearly twice- well, he wasn’t going to complain about that.
It was a big F you to Office Baby, if he was being honest. Because the whole office knew what he’d done, even if Sue hadn’t said a thing. The ten thousand dollars he’d paid her to keep her mouth shut assured that. He’d also made sure that enough noise came from his closed-in office to warrant suspicion.
He never said he was a nice guy.
Actually, he knew he wasn’t.
And no, he wasn’t big into being honest with himself either, so no, he preferred not to think about his deplorable behavior and temper tantrum over the fact that the one woman he couldn’t purge from his mind didn’t give two shits about him.
And no, he didn’t screw with the system so that her shitty tree planting (what kind of ridiculously boring idea was that anyway) had won. No, he definitely hadn’t done any such thing. He had not hired someone to hack in and fudge the sales so that her app, which surprisingly, had many downloads already, really smoked everyone. Astoundingly, she might have won even without his help, but he wasn’t going to let up on that chance.
He would have half an hour alone with her in his office.
Pathetic? Yes. Desperate. Definitely. Some payback’s a bitch? All the way, Office Baby.
Calm, cool, collected Colette was about to meet her match. Big time. And if he didn’t have her in his bed within the next twenty-four hours, he’d admit defeat and go back to charm school or hit the gym even harder, because no, he’d never failed before. Hell, he might even consider some kind of surgical enhancement. Not really. But it wasn’t entirely off the table.
Blaze gave up a long time ago trying to figure out what was wrong with him where Colette was concerned. He had no idea what his obsession was with her. Why he thought about her at night. When he was screwing other chicks. He’d fucked up and called two of his one night-stands Colette by mistake, when he was picturing
driving into her and not whatever his nameless flavor of the night was. Yeah. To say they weren’t happy about it was the understatement of the century.
He was a self-admitted dick. A rick dick. With a nice dick. His reputation preceded him, and he was fine with that.
What he wasn’t fine with, was that Colette, no matter how many hints he’d dropped, no matter how many outright comments, no matter fucking what, didn’t seem to get the memo.
Either she was trying her damnest to ignore him, or he wasn’t being obvious enough. And he’d been pretty damn obvious at times.
Over the years, the challenge had grown. The mystery that was Colette needed to be solved. He wasn’t the kind of person who gave up. When he wanted something, he either took it or worked his ass off until he earned it.
Maybe that’s why all the women who threw themselves at him meant less than nothing. They were forgotten before they even left his penthouse condo. Because he’d done nothing to get them. They were no challenge and no game. There was no skill involved with obtaining them. They were, in essence, as boring as his day job was most days.
And none of them had raven black hair that reached their waists, huge grey eyes, thick dark lashes, and lips that were red enough and plush enough to look best wrapped around his cock.
Okay, so his thoughts hadn’t been professional in a long time. He’d given up so long ago, trying to force them to be.
Colette’s perky tits, her round hips, tight ass, and shapely legs, were constantly on his mind. She had a strange sense of fashion and dressed, most of the time, in retro clothing. Real retro, not that knock off shit. It was cute. Fuck, it was more than cute. She was petite and curvy, barely five five, and she knew how to dress her curves with sweet little polka dot dresses and cutesy cardigans. Skirts that defined her narrow waist and hugged her lush ass.
Fuck.
Even before Colette strode into his office, smelling like fresh air, vanilla, and sugar- which ironically enough, was exactly how he’d thought she’d smell between her legs- he was hard.
Hard didn’t even begin to cover it.
Blaze had a raging boner that he used his desk to shield as he sat behind the massive modern monstrosity and stared down the woman who had just sauntered into his office. Yes. Sauntered. Or sashayed. Whatever she’d done, her yellow sixties style dress made her hips and rear look good doing it. The way it defined her breasts wasn’t half bad either.
She sunk into one of the teak MCM chairs in front of the desk and eyed him like he was the equivalent of a surprise floating turd at an adults only pool party, or a viper about to latch onto her ankle right above the red pump she’d paired with her yellow dress.
Her hair was swept back off her creamy forehead with a red headband and tied back at the nape of her neck, where the scarf thing she’d used, trailed down her back along with those impossible dark curls.
Blaze steepled his fingers on his desktop and tried to think about anything but how that hair would feel wrapped around his knuckles as he plowed into her behind.
He was seriously depraved.
Judging from the way Colette eyeballed him, she knew it too.
“I’m here,” she stated, and wasn’t that just capital fucking obvious since she was sitting right in front of him.
One dark brow arched and her full lips painted scarlet, parted lusciously. He nearly groaned as her tongue darted out nervously. Or maybe her lips were just dry. It was often dry in the office. Her slate-grey eyes took him in, appraising his expensive suit, his expansive office, and finally, a face that most women would happily pay him so they could lick.
She was completely nonplussed, and fuck, if that didn’t turn him on more. It didn’t matter that Office Baby was hard to get.
He liked a merry chase.
Made him feel like an Alpha wolf and all that nonsense.
“You’re here,” he echoed, like the annoying bastard he knew he was.
She got right to the point. “You said that I could have anything. Well, almost anything. I don’t know what the heck kind of parameters those are, and in the future, you should be more careful about what you put out there, because there are people here who would ask for like, one hundred percent shares in this company and then call you unfair and a liar when you say no.”
“Which is why I said almost anything.”
“That could be anything.”
“Exactly.”
Her eyes narrowed like she wanted to crush him under the heel of that inexpensive retro shoe. He nearly wished she would. It might be a new turn-on and he was always up for a little bit of kink.
“I- well- I was going to ask for a raise.”
This time he arched a brow. He kept his hands folded, his fingers intertwined, his back straight, like a real asshole. Like the rich boss who was so rich, he could look down on her from where he sat. Maybe that was her kink. Did she ever use him for spank bank material, secretly, in the dark of her room? God, he wanted to know.
“You were? As in, you aren’t going to now?”
Those blood-red lips pursed, and it was all he could do not to leap across his desk and brutalize them with his own. Give them a reason to pout, to be so red, so bruised and plush looking.
God, she was gorgeous.
She stared back at him like he was a filthy gnat that she was half afraid of, half hell-bent on destroying.
“No.”
He waited. He figured she’d follow up that word with something. A request. Whatever it was she wanted. When she said nothing, he nearly growled low in his throat. A minute later, she fidgeted in the seat. Actually fidgeted. He’d never seen her do anything like it before. The idea that his intense scrutiny made her squirm actually made him want to yell out a victory cry. Hell, he might even jump up on the desk and do a little dance.
“Well- you won. What can I do for you then? There must be something you want. You name it and I’ll tell you if I’ll grand it.”
Her eyes narrowed further. She blinked those long lashes hard. Twice. “Don’t you mean if the company will grant it?”
“Yes. Of course. But we all know that I’m the company. Matt is a silent partner. He has no say in this.”
Her white, pearl teeth came out to worry at her bottom lip and her eyes darted around the office. The door was still bloody well open. He wasn’t sure what she was so worried about. Her nostrils flared like she was trying to scent the place to determine if the place really lived up to the office rumors as his personal fucking grounds.
Yes, Office Baby, I can assure you it does.
His eyes narrowed in on her lips as they opened and closed. Opened and closed. Just when he thought she wasn’t actually going to be able to say a thing, as nerves or her discomfort or whatever was going on in her head, actually got the better of her, she blurted out the last thing he ever expected her to say.
“I want you to take my virginity.”
CHAPTER 3
Colette
Did she really just say that? The very last thing that she’d ever wanted to say? Did she really just spew that verbal word poison out into the air? Into the air that belonged to her boss’ office, with him sitting right there, presiding over her like a smug judge, jury, and executioner?
She was pretty damn sure she had just spoken out loud the very words she’d rather die than utter.
What the hell was wrong with her?
And why the hell was Blaze Hanson looking at her like she hadn’t just spouted the most ridiculously inappropriate request in the history of ridiculously inappropriate requests? Why were his devastatingly blue eyes narrowing and his tongue sweeping out over his bottom lip, leaving it shiny and glistening? Why was he looking at her like he wanted her to be his next meal and not like he was about to tell her to go pack her things and get the hell out? Why the hell wasn’t he asking her why the ever-living hell she was still a virgin at twenty?
Why wasn’t he saying anything?
Colette had the oddest compulsion to lift her arms up and che
ck how badly she was sweating at the moment. Was she staining her dress? The thing was one of the most expensive ones she owned and sweat stains were a real bitch to get out.
She knew she was sweating between her legs. Or maybe that wasn’t sweat. Because her thighs were also strangely hot and achy and there was a whole lot of weird pulsing going on just above that. Thanks to Blaze’s brutal stare.
He was looking right through her. Not at her.
She was just about to jump up and run, run back to her cubicle and start gathering her things, when he shoved back his office chair and strode to the door, his crazy expensive shoes eating up the floor in long strides.
He slammed the door closed with an audible bang and turned to face her.
One brow arched and his lips nearly turned up his two corners and she realized he was amused by her request. God, he was laughing at her, silently. So, she couldn’t hear it. And that was somehow worse than anything he could have done.
Even if he’d fired her.
“Why?”
She nearly dropped out of the expensive Danish teak chair she was perched on. Why. Not… pack your things. Not… you disgust me. Not… I’m your boss, you twit. Not… are you out of your ever-loving mind asking something like that?
No. Just that one loaded word. Why.
“W-why?” she stammered, her face flushed a bright cherry red. It had to be because it felt like it was on eight shades of fire. Her cheeks flamed so hotly she had to wonder if it was possible to give herself second or third-degree burns.
“Yes. Why.” Blaze crossed his arms over his stacked chest.
His broad shoulders came alive with the movement, muscle rippling and writhing below the expensive charcoal dress shirt. The thing only emphasized the bastard’s triangle like build. Huge shoulders. Powerful chest. Narrow waist. He had the stature of a born athlete, and if the rumors were true, and why the hell wouldn’t they be, he was pretty enough to lick under that clothing.