AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You can’t—”
“I can. I always get what I want, and I want you.” The excitement I feel about this prospect eggs me on even more. I know this is wrong, so fucking wrong, but it feels so damn right. “You’re mine for the night.”
Her head snaps back, the breath leaving her all at once. Like I punched her in the stomach. “Excuse me?”
“One night. What I say goes.” This time, when I look her up and down, she shivers slightly. Now there’s nothing in the world that could stop me from having her all over this room and anywhere else I can manage. “You do as I say, and you can keep your job.”
“You realize this is a crime, right?” Oh, I’m well aware, but she is worth the risk.
“We’re not in the office, and you have no proof. It would be your word against mine. I could always say you offered to fuck your way into a corner office. You wouldn’t be the first.”
The wheels are turning in her head. Let them turn. I know I’ve won. I didn’t get as far as I have by the age of twenty-six without the ability to talk my way into—and out of—anything I please.
Right now, I’m talking my way into her. Harper Adams. I’m going to find out for certain whether her pussy is made of ice.
Somehow, I doubt it is. She’s not icy, not under that tough exterior. That condescending attitude, the years haven’t done anything to soften. Beneath that is a volcano waiting to erupt. My mouth goes dry at the thought, and fuck, my balls are getting heavy.
“It’s your call,” I remind her in a soft voice, like a steel blade wrapped in velvet. “You want to work for me? You’ll do as I say tonight. Whatever I say. Tomorrow, we go our separate ways.”
Only an idiot would refuse me.
Harper’s many things, but an idiot isn’t one of them.
3
HARPER
He hasn’t changed a bit.
No amount of money could change who he is as a person, I guess—and it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but I can’t help feeling a little disappointed, just the same. “I figured you would have grown up by now.” Can he see how shaken up I am? I hope not.
“I’ve grown up. Stop stalling.”
“I’m not stalling,” I fire back. “But this isn’t high school anymore. You can’t dare somebody to do something like this and expect them to go along with it.”
“This isn’t a dare. It’s an offer.” He looks me over, his generous mouth twitching in a smirk. My heart flutters at the sight of it—he’s breathtaking, always was, and probably always will be.
Only now, he’s more than the devastatingly hot smartass kid I was in love with and came to hate.
“You can’t say things like that just to make me uncomfortable anymore.”
“Who says I was trying to? I don’t say things I don’t mean. We’re both stuck here with nowhere else to go. You might as well enjoy it.”
The thing is, I’m sure he has options. A man like him would have a private jet, right? He could fly back to New York anytime he wanted.
But he doesn’t want to. He wants… no, I can’t even bring myself to believe it. No way does he actually want me, any more than he did when he asked me out after we finished our project. There I was, thinking he was a decent person for a few minutes. Telling myself, I had misjudged him. I knew from the work we’d done that he wasn’t the empty-headed jock I always imagined. He was hiding a brain, and a very good one.
Stupid, naive me thought I was enough to change him a little, to draw out all the good parts of him he felt like he had to hide.
And then he asked me out after we gave our presentation, only he was smirking and snickering when he did. Like it was all a big joke. I cried about it for weeks.
“You really mean it?” I ask with my heart in my throat.
“I do.”
“If I don’t give you what you want, you’ll fire me,” I say more to myself, reminding me that if I do this, it would only be because I have to, not because I want to.
“A quick call to human resources, and you’re gone.” How can he say it so simply? Like he doesn’t care to leave me jobless.
