AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hello.” I smile.
“Good to meet you. I wasn’t sure what Damon was thinking, but I see that maybe he was right.” Nodding at the table, she adds, “You’ve come prepared.”
Damon Coldwell—New York’s most elusive bachelor. Apparently, he’s an asshole too, or so I’ve heard.
The man from this morning walks in with the same smirky smile on his face. Something about him sets me on edge.
“This is—” Claude begins her introduction when a deep gravelly voice cuts in from behind me. “Miss Monroe.”
Heart dropping to my stomach I feel as though the ground has disappeared from beneath me and I’m plummeting through all forty-eight floors.
It can’t be, I tell myself as I search the reflection in the glass for him. When I find the same dark stare I lusted over last night, I know it is.
His scent envelops me as he meanders around the boardroom table to stand in front of me.
“Ava.” He says my name like it’s always been on the tip of his tongue, and all the regret from not giving it to him last night consumes me until I’m having to exert myself to hold in my shock. “Good to see you again.”
Did he know who I was the whole time?
Maybe he’s put two and two together?
The bolt of familiarity from last night strikes with a vengeance, lighting me on fire.
I’m lost in my thoughts and wonderings when a sharp stab gets me right in the ankles. I shake myself loose from the grip of my spinning mind to find a large, tanned hand extended my way. A hand that knows more of my body than it should.
Shit.
Fuck.
Henry’s fing—scratch that. Damon Coldwell’s fingers look as thick as they felt. Inside me. In a dark corner of the bar.
Good God.
What am I meant to do now? Simple logic finds me almost too late. Shake his hand.
All I can picture as I look into his eyes, placing my hand in his, is the way his body pinned me against the wall. The way his stubble felt over my sensitive skin.
The squeeze of his hand around mine draws me back to the here and now. I don’t need a mirror to know that I’m beet red, and I certainly don’t need to look around to know that every person in this room is thinking of me in the exact same way they thought of my predecessor.
Exec slut.
I feel as though I’m about to implode with my nails digging into his flesh. I hope it hurts even if the grin on his face hitches higher and wider.
“Damon Coldwell,” he rumbles with a harder squeeze that has me retracting my hand. “Should we get down to business?”
Damon or Henry or whatever the fuck his name is doesn’t bat an eyelid throughout the entire meeting. There are no signs that he’s surprised at my presence. There’s no look or lingering stare that says he’s thinking of the way his hands cupped my ass while we fucked in a dark corner of some upscale bar. There’s nothing but a stone-clad front that is all business. Meanwhile, I’m mortified and confused. Completely overtaken by disbelief, and more than that, I’m angry. So fucking mad that I can’t think properly to work the situation out in my head.
The boardroom empties. While everyone else filters out, Owen sits looking at me with that gossip-hungry ogle that nails in the fact that this is a disaster. This is a horrific mistake, and I screwed up.
The longer I try to work the situation out in my head, the more the realization sets in.
Damon knew who I was last night. He had to, or he would’ve been as thrown by my identity as I was by his.
“What just happened?” Owen asks as I stand.
“Nothing.”
“Didn’t look like nothing.”
