The Billionaire's Heart (The Silver Cross Club Book 4) (21 page)

Everything as usual, then. Right. I could pretend it was a normal day at work, and that I hadn’t sucked on her nipples last night while she writhed beneath me and moaned. I cleared my throat. “Have you finalized the paper goods?”

She nodded. “I did that last night. They’re uploaded to the server.”

“I’ll send everything to the printer today, then,” I said. She wore a blue dress that looked soft to the touch and hugged her curves in a way that was entirely too appealing. “What about the banners for the booth?”

“Still working on it,” she said. “I’ll finish those today.”

“Great,” I said. “We’re getting there.” I was proud of myself: an entire, coherent conversation about work and nothing else. No innuendo, no subtle undercurrents. It was foolish of me to be pleased, maybe. We were both adults. It wasn’t like we would succumb to animal passion, strip off our clothes, and fuck on the office floor.

Come to think of it, that didn’t sound like a bad idea.

We worked. I finished my slides, wrote my speech, and wandered around the office muttering to myself and periodically glancing at my cue cards. I made a second pot of coffee and drank a cup, then another. I looked out the window. I sent a few emails.

Sadie, intent on her computer, didn’t look at me once.

The feeling I’d had the night before, staring at myself in the mirror while Sadie lay in my bed on the other side of the door—it was panic, and guilt. I didn’t want her to think poorly of me. I didn’t want to think poorly of
myself
; I didn’t want to be the sort of man who used his power and position to take sexual advantage of women.

I was having second thoughts, now, watching Sadie ignore me.

Sex with her was only a mistake because of our circumstances. If she wasn’t my employee—well, if she wasn’t my employee, I would have asked her out to dinner weeks ago, and would be doing my absolute best to make sure she never looked at another man for the rest of her life. She was exactly my type: brash, confident, but with a quiet watchfulness that hinted there was more to her than met the eye.

And the sex was, quite frankly, exceptionally good.

Irrelevant. It didn’t matter how much I liked Sadie or wanted to have sex with her again. Nothing had changed since last night. I was a grown man, not a horny adolescent, and I wouldn’t let desire overrule rationality or common sense.

No matter how tempting it was.

With a sigh, I got up to pour myself another cup of coffee.

The day passed slowly. Truth be told, there wasn’t much left to do before the conference. I ran through my speech a few times and then tried to act busy, when really I was just emailing Kris and reading the news. Finally, 5:00 rolled around and I decided that I could justify leaving. I gathered my things and put on my coat, and stood beside Sadie’s desk until she finally deigned to look up from her work.

“I’m leaving,” I said. “You should go home, too.”

“Okay,” she said. “I will, soon. I’m almost done with this.”

“Okay,” I said, and tried to think of something else to say, something meaningful but not inappropriate, that would convince her to get up and put on her coat and go home with me.

But even if I knew the right words, I couldn’t say them. I wouldn’t.

I went home, sans Sadie.

The next day, I kissed her again.

The day started innocently enough. We made polite conversation beside the coffee pot and then spent the morning working at our respective computers. She offered to go to the printer’s after lunch to pick up the things I had sent over: business cards, pamphlets, prospectuses. I forced myself to get some work done while she was out, but when she came back an hour later, I looked up from my computer as the elevator doors opened and realized I wouldn’t get anything else done that day. Or maybe even for the rest of my life.

She was beaming, luminous, carrying a large cardboard box full of papers. Her coat was open, and her hair was slightly mussed, a few braids falling out of her loose ponytail.

She was the most gorgeous creature I had ever seen, and I was fooling myself to think I could resist her.

“The stuff looks great,” she called out, coming toward me with her box and her hair and her smiling face. “Let me show you.”

I rolled my chair backwards to give her room, and she set the box on top of my desk. “They got the colors right?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Even better than the proofs. I think they used nicer paper.” She handed me a pamphlet, her eyebrows raised expectantly.

Not wanting to disappoint, I made a long, slow perusal of the glossy cover. The picture on the front was a small dark-skinned boy beaming as he clutched a glass of clean water—a tacky cliché, but Sadie had insisted it was important to play into investors’ expectations. Beneath him was the company logo, and beneath that, the words “GIVE THE GIFT OF WATER” in a streamlined sans-serif font.

I opened the pamphlet. The colors were clean and crisp, and the paper was glossy but not
too
glossy. It looked great, sharp and professional, and better than I had hoped. “They did a nice job,” I said. She was standing just slightly too close to me, and I could smell her perfume. It was intensely distracting.

“It gets better,” she said, and gave me a business card. “Just look at that! Lord, I sure did a nice job designing that thing.”

I laughed at her self-satisfied tone, but she wasn’t wrong. She was still grinning, excitement oozing from every pore, and I was no saint. I was just a man, and not a very good one at that.

I stood up, and took her in my arms.

“Elliott,” she said, eyes wide.

I kissed her.

She dropped the business cards she was holding, and they scattered across the floor. I had long since discarded my suit jacket over the back of my chair, and her hands clutched at my shirt, untucking a few inches of fabric from my trousers. I buried my hands in her braids, tipped her head backward, and took full advantage of my access to her soft, sweet mouth.

She made a hungry noise and pressed closer to me. Blanket permission, then, and I kissed her more deeply, imagining what I would do when I had her in my bed later, her soft skin beneath my hands, and the soft, slick heat between her thighs—

She shifted against me, twisting away.

She turned her face, breaking our kiss. “Elliott,” she said, and this time she didn’t sound so inviting.

I released her immediately and stepped back. “What’s—”

“You know we can’t do this,” she said. She tugged her dress back in place and ran one hand over her hair.

I rubbed my face, reeling from arousal and confusion. “I don’t see why not.”

“You
know
why not,” she said. “If we’re going to work together, we need to have a professional relationship, and this,” she gestured between us, “is not professional.”

Elliott Sloane, my father’s heir, agreed with her. He knew that screwing around with the help inevitably ended in misery, and that sexual harassment lawsuits were far more trouble than they were worth. But I didn’t want to be that man—had spent years trying not to become him—and I said, “Maybe we should consider it.”

“What, professionalism?” she asked.

I rolled my eyes. Sadie’s most annoying trait was the way she deflected serious conversations with sarcasm or humor. It was clearly a defense mechanism, and I understood why she did it, but it irritated me anyway. “Not professionalism,” I said. “Us. Kissing. Sex. What are you concerned about? That the other employees will find out, and think you’re getting preferential treatment?”

She folded her arms and scowled at me, which I found far more appealing than I should have. “There’s Jim.”

“He doesn’t count,” I said, “seeing as how he’s still in Boston. What are you so afraid of, Sadie? We get along well. We have killer, mind-blowing chemistry. Why can’t we just give this a shot and see what happens?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea. Because I’m not ready,” she said, and raised her hands to cover her eyes. She took a deep breath and let it out, and then moved her hands to cup the sides of her face and looked at me. “I’m not ready for a relationship.”

“Oh, Sadie,” I murmured. It was the one reason I couldn’t argue against—and didn’t want to, even if I thought logic might change her mind. She deserved the time she needed to grieve and move on with her life.

“We can still have sex, though,” she said. “And hang out. God, I sound like an undergrad, don’t I?
Hang out
. Like we’re going to head to the amusement park and kiss on the ferris wheel.”

“Sadie,” I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry. I just mean—the sex was really good, like,
really
good, and I’m—we can keep doing that. If you want to. Casually.”

“Are you suggesting a no-strings-attached arrangement?” I asked, amused now. “I didn’t think you were that sort of girl.”

She dropped her hands to her hips and frowned at me. “What’s that supposed to mean? Why aren’t women allowed to like sex? If a man likes sex, it’s all well and good, but women are supposed to be frigid and—why are you smirking at me like that? Are you trying to make me angry on purpose? Oh my God, you
are
.”

“I would never do such a thing,” I said, even though she was 100% correct. The faces that she made when she was aggravated were entirely too delightful, and I couldn’t resist teasing her to provoke a reaction.

“Fine,” she said. “I take it all back. I’m never having sex with you again. You can just spend every lonely night dreaming of what you missed out on.”

“Let’s not be hasty,” I said. Casual sex wasn’t what I wanted from her, but it was better than nothing. I would just have to be very charming and persuasive and wait for her to realize that we were perfect for each other.

But for now, I was tired of talking and could think of far more rewarding ways to spend the afternoon.

I took a step toward her, and felt a rush of anticipation as her eyes widened.

Another step and she was in my arms.

“I didn’t mean right
now
,” she said, and I silenced her with a kiss.

As my lips touched hers, arousal slammed into me with all the force of an avalanche. I had intended to tease her for a while and leave her wet and begging, but the feeling of her body pressed against mine was too intensely erotic to resist. I slid one hand down her back to squeeze her ass, and used my grip to crush her closer against me. My erection rubbed against her hip, and I spent a brief but intense moment wishing I were the sort of man who carried a condom around in his wallet.

Minor problem. There were plenty of other things we could do.

The only obstacle was that Sadie was wearing far too many clothes.

Still kissing her deeply, I reached down to tug up the hem of her dress. The full skirt easily slipped up around her waist, but beneath that she was wearing every man’s worst nightmare: those stockings with the elastic waist, weirdly tight and almost impossible to peel off. I groaned and broke the kiss. “You’re going to have to help me out here.”

Her eyelids fluttered open and she looked at me with her dark, endless eyes. “Help you with what?”

“Your tights,” I said. “Unless you want me to rip them. Sexy, but you might be cold on your way home.” Or her way to my apartment, to spend the night in my bed.

She leaned away from me, planting her palms on my chest to keep me at arm’s length, and I clamped one arm around her waist so that she wouldn’t topple backward. “We are
not
having sex in the office!”

I grinned, and bent to kiss her again, using my height to overcome her half-hearted attempt to hold me away. “Why not?”

“It’s unprofessional,” she said.

“Every single one of our interactions has been unprofessional since the day we met,” I said, “when I couldn’t keep myself from staring at your ass.”

“You dog!” she exclaimed, and laughed. “Did you really?”

“I did,” I said. “It was those pants you were wearing. And yes, I did feel like a creep, and no, I didn’t stop. Now take off your tights.”

We worked together to shove her tights down to her knees. That was far enough for my purposes, and I abandoned the effort. She stood there, hobbled, and said, “I feel ridiculous. Don’t you want me to take these off?”

“Good enough,” I said, and backed her up against my desk. She made a surprised noise when the backs of her legs hit the edge of the desk. I pushed on her shoulders, gentle pressure encouraging her to sit down, and she did, looking up at me with a question in her eyes that I couldn’t wait to answer.

I kissed her, relishing the way she gasped and clung to my shirt, and then I slid one hand between her legs and tucked my fingers inside her little cotton panties, rubbing at the wet heat of her.

She moaned, her mouth slack against mine. I kissed her neck, her ear. I wanted more room, more access, but her tights prevented her from spreading her thighs, and I wouldn’t stop now. Good enough. She was slick and swollen, eager for my touch, twitching slightly with each movement of my fingers. It was wonderful. I had never been with a woman who was so responsive, so uninhibited in her enjoyment of sex. Sadie knew what she wanted, and she was shameless in her pursuit of pleasure.