Page 88 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

I set the tablet face down on my knee.

That doesn’t track. Killian assigned me the guest list himself, three weeks ago, in this exact room, told me it was mine to run start to finish because he trusted me with it. Now he’s quietly handed it to my superior without telling me, the same week I’ve been triple-checking it every night, and I don’t love how that sits.

He comes back out in gray sweatpants and nothing else, hair still damp, looking considerably more human than he did twenty minutes ago. He picks up the scotch, takes a sip, and gives me a small, grateful nod before settling onto the sectional beside me.

“Thank you for this,” he says.

“You looked like you needed it.”

He sets the glass down and slides one arm around my shoulders, the other trailing down my side and under the hem of his own shirt, and two fingers slip easily inside me. It’s become a habit of his lately, holding me like this when we’re settled in for the evening, like he just needs the contact to fully unwind.

I let out a soft sound I can’t help.

He chuckles, low, and reaches for his own tablet with his free hand, pulling up the digital copy of The Prince he’s been working through for the better part of a month, one of maybe a dozen copies he owns if you count the worn hardback in his office bookcase he won’t let anyone else touch.

I try to settle into him and go back to my contracts.

I lose that fight within about ninety seconds, the guest list sitting in the back of my mind like a stone I can’t stop turning over, and apparently it shows, because he glances over at me without lifting his head from the screen.

“You’re biting your lip, Harper. What’s wrong?”

I take a breath. “The guest list. Mallory says you asked her to take it off my plate.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a huge project and I figured I’d lighten your load a little.”

I twist slightly to look at him properly, which is a little complicated given the current state of his fingers, but I manage. “Because you don’t think I can handle everything? The guest list is just as important as the vendor contracts, Killian.”

He exhales, setting his tablet down on the arm of the couch. “I know you can handle every task required of your position. That’s never been in question. But I can’t be hands-on with it without it looking like favoritism, and if I’m hands-on with something that’s supposed to be entirely yours, that makes you look insufficient to anyone watching. Mallory’s your superior. Offloading something like the guest list to her doesn’t read as me doubting you. It reads as the chain of trust working the way it’s supposed to. It shows the investors and the board that I trust you, that Mallory trusts you, and that this estate runs like a family from the ground up.”

I open my mouth.

“You’re a new employee carrying a massive project,” he continues, “while also being Sophia’s partner for the biggest day of her professional life, on the same calendar date. I’m not going to apologize for protecting you from carrying more than you need to.”

His mouth curves. “And making sure you have one less thing on your agenda that would keep you so preoccupied that my fingers wouldn’t make you this wet and needy.”

I narrow my eyes at him, trying to read past the smirk to whatever’s actually underneath it. “Why would I need protecting, Killian?”

He laughs, the real kind, the one that softens his whole face. “Because you’re American, and therefore a workaholic by default.” He glances at the clock on the side table. “Now. You have five more minutes of letting work interfere with our evening before I put you over my knee and then give your mouth something better to do than ask me questions.”

I give him my most unimpressed look. “You wouldn’t.”

His hand moves before I finish the sentence, a single sharp slap against me, and my toes curl against the cushion, a moan breaking out of me before I can stop it, my whole body pressing closer to him on instinct, my teeth catching my bottom lip as my eyes flutter shut.

“Four minutes, Harper.”

I want to kick him. I genuinely consider it.

Instead I spend the next four minutes completely unable to focus on a single contract, his fingers slipping back inside me, his thumb finding slow, deliberate circles against my clit while he calmly goes back to reading about Machiavellian statecraft like he isn’t currently unraveling me one breath at a time.

I give up entirely on the tablet somewhere around minute two.

The elevator dings in the distance.

“Dinner in thirty minutes!” Asher’s voice carries through the condo, already grinning before he’s even visible. “You’d better be done with whatever you’re doing by then, mon coeur. No phones, laptops, or talking about work once your ass is at the table.”