The way he said fuck made me want to rip off his flimsy t-shirt and grubby jeans and straddle him right there on the deck.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
He smiled as he led me toward the ship’s wheel. “Go ahead, touch it,” he said, pointing at the glossy wooden wheel and still refusing to answer my question.
“Okay, fine. I get it. It’s none of my business. You can bring up my brother, but I can’t ask about your boat.”
I stood behind the wheel and wrapped my fingers around the wooden spokes. He came up behind me and grabbed my waist before he leaned in and whispered in my ear. “Charlotte was my grandmother.”
The sensation of his breath on my ear raised goose bumps all over my body. “Oh.”
He grasped my waist tightly and spun me around fast. His face was inches from mine. “I have something else I want to show you.”
Oh, crap! This was it. There would be no turning back after this. I had to decide now if this was how I was going to approach this job. As I gazed into his gorgeous blue eyes, I realized I had no choice. This was what my mother would call a “frozen margarita” moment. The kind of moment that tastes delicious going down but gives you a major brain freeze. I didn’t know what to say or do—I was frozen—but I knew that if I followed Luke and his sexy ass below deck everything would get delicious.
His hand slid over my waist and stopped just below my breast. I bit my lip as I grabbed his hand and nodded toward the hatch. I descended the steps behind him and as soon as my foot hit the floor his mouth was on mine, hot and hungry. His hand slid around my waist and pulled me close as I hooked my fingers into his hair. His other hand grasped my face softly as his tongue danced around mine, his lips crushing mine as the growing erection beneath his jeans was crushed against my belly.
I reached down and undid the button and zipper and his cock flung itself at me, hard and huge.
He kissed my neck ravenously and I took the broken lip-lock as an opportunity to sink to my knees. I had to taste him. I covered my teeth with my lips and took him into my mouth slowly. My eyes widened as his cock slid over my tongue and kissed my throat. His girth made my eyes water. I was on the brink of gagging when I slid him out. He groaned as I massaged the head with the tip of my tongue, licking and sucking the sensitive ridge. He tasted clean and juicy with just a hint of saltwater. A true seaman.
I curled my fingers around the base of his cock and stretched the skin taut before I sucked him in again and bobbed quickly then slowly. I grabbed onto his tight ass with my other hand to steady myself as my knees ached against the wooden floor. His fingers clutched my hair, pushing himself deeper inside my mouth, tugging my hair back and forth a few times before he pulled out. He was still hard and slick and I immediately began to pump my fist up and down his shaft. He pulled away again.
“Get up,” he said, and I brushed my lips over his rock-hard chest as I rose.
He ripped open my button up shirt, sending a deep thrill coursing through me, and kissed me tenderly as he pulled me deeper into the compartment. I opened my eyes for a moment and saw the ceiling covered in mirrors above a queen-size bed. I should have known. This must be the lair where Luke, king of the technology jungle, brought all his conquests.
He guided me onto the bed and laid me back so I could see myself in the mirrored ceiling, buttons ripped away, breasts exposed, chest heaving. He gazed at me for a moment before he lifted my pencil skirt, pushed his way between my thighs, and kissed my throat. I could feel him hard against my panties, but he didn’t attempt to remove them. One hand rested on the pillow next to my head as his other hand trailed lightly over my ribs, sending chills over my skin and hardening my nipples. I couldn’t help but wonder if he did this with all his assistants?
His hand roamed farther down until he reached the wet crotch of my panties. I gasped as he slipped his hand beneath the flimsy fabric and found my clit. I gripped his neck tightly and he gently caressed me. He stopped just as I began to arch my back and he began to move down.
Oh, my God. This cannot be happening. Luke “Fucking” Maxwell is about to go down on me.
He slid my panties off and pushed my knees down before he buried his face in me. He kissed and licked me as if I were his last meal on earth, savoring every bit of me. He spread my lips and lapped softly at my most sensitive spot and I came within seconds. He knew exactly what he was doing.
He kissed around my clit and all the way up my inner thigh for a while until he assumed I was ready for more. His tongue was soft and firm, all at once, it was everything I needed, but I reached down and pulled him up by the shirt. I wanted him inside me.
He tore off his clothes in record time and proceeded to lie down next to me. I climbed on top and gasped with real pain when his huge cock entered me. I pushed up a bit then down again. A whimper escaped my lips at the pleasurable pain.
“Oh, my god!” I cried.
His hands roamed over my breast and ribs as he thrust deep inside me. I arched my back and saw my reflection inches away in the ceiling mirror. I looked at Luke’s reflection and he was staring back at me as we grinded against each other. He slid his hand between my folds and stroked me as he watched the pleasure register on my face.
“I’m going to come. Are you going to come?”
“Yes!” I whispered, my legs quivering as I rocked up and down on top of him. “Don’t stop.”
We came at the same time, a bone-shaking, skin-tingling, muscle-twitching orgasm that made us both cry out with pleasure before I collapsed next to him.
“Fuck,” he whispered, his chest heaving as he reached down and grabbed my hand. “That was fucking fantastic.” He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it before he turned on his side to face me. “Want to do it again?”
3
I spent the entire walk back to Luke’s car silently agonizing over what Ryan would think if he knew what I had just done. He would want to kill Luke. I would never forget the time he punched a journalist who had been hounding the mother of one of his friends who had been killed in action. He didn’t care about prestigious titles or money. I didn’t used to care about that shit either, until I had to start supporting my parents. It seemed my principles had fainted at the sight of my bank account balance.
We approached the sleek silver sports car and he unlocked my door with his fingerprint. He held the door open for me and I couldn’t help but smile.
“Are those fingers insured?” I remarked, silently wondering what kind of secrets I could dig up inside his car if I could make a duplicate of his fingerprint. Probably nothing, but I couldn’t rule it out. I needed the password to his mirror network; the network his engineers used to test beta projects. I might have to try the fingerprint trick at some point.
His eyes roamed over my legs as I slid into the passenger seat. “Planning on cutting off my fingers so you can take this baby for a joy ride? ‘Cause all you have to do is ask and she’s yours. In fact, I have an extra set of keys at the office for you, for when you need to run errands.”
He shut the door, leaving me with the bitter taste of the word “errands” on my tongue. I was supposed to be his executive assistant, not his personal assistant. I graduated from fucking Cornell.
He slipped into the driver’s seat and started the engine, which made the whole car hum around us.
“That sounds like a powerful engine.”
“V12,” he replied, as he pulled out of the parking space and I couldn’t believe how smooth the car drove. I had never been within a mile of a car this expensive and he expected me to drive this to pick up his dry cleaning?
As he drove through the gloomy downtown streets of Seattle, I eyed the glove compartment and wondered if he had any secret passwords in there. I imagined opening it and having a mountain of condoms tumble into my lap. I was so lost in my thoughts I didn’t notice Luke reaching across the console until he grabbed my hand. I flinched as I looked up into his eyes, the clearest aquamarine I’d ever seen on a human.
He winked at me before he turned to face forward and accelerated as the streetlight turned green.
Why was he holding my hand as if we were on some kind of date? We had just fucked each other’s brains out. That’s all it was: a good, clean, positively amazing fuck. He squeezed my hand tighter as he rounded the corner and quickly turned into the underground parking structure at Maxwell Computers. He stopped just outside the elevator and a valet quickly appeared at his door. He let go of my hand and gave my knee a playful tap before he climbed out of the car.
I suddenly had a strange feeling I was the one who was being played. There was no way he could be this rich, this smart, this gorgeous, and this sweet. Maybe he was on to me and he was just stringing me along, playing coy until he brought down the hatchet and killed my career.
Geez, Brina, stop being so paranoid.
I could hear my brother’s gruff voice in my head and I realized how crazy this assignment was already making me, just three hours in. This was not a good sign.
He stopped outside the elevator, but he didn’t press the call button. “You can go home for the day. You start tomorrow.”
“That’s it?”
“No. I’m picking you up at your house tomorrow morning at seven and you’re coming with me to a meeting in Newport.”
“Okay, I’ll be ready.”
“And wear something casual. This,” he said, glancing at my business attire, “isn’t the image I like to project.”
“Anything else?”
“One more thing.” He stepped toward me and leaned in to whisper in my ear. “I rejected your internship three years ago because you were over-qualified. You’re too smart for your own good.”
He knew. He had to know. Too smart for your own good? He definitely knew.
My new Flame rang and I answered immediately. “He knows.”
“Relax, Brina. He doesn’t know.”
“Yes, he does! He said I was too smart for my own good.”
“You are too smart for your own good,” Milo’s usually soothing voice carried a slight annoyance.
He was a year younger than me and, though he never shared this with me, I was certain he had been gunning for this assignment. Instead, our boss Kip Singer had given me the assignment without considering any of our colleagues. Kip insisted I was the most qualified to manipulate a guy like Luke Maxwell who, though he was extremely private about his personal life, had a notorious weakness for gorgeous women.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Milo sighed. “Nothing. So how did the interview go? Did you get the position?”
I thought of the many positions I’d been in this morning in Luke’s boat and nearly laughed out loud. “Yes, I got the position.”
I couldn’t tell Milo about what had happened at the marina. Not only did Milo want my job, but he’d also had a not-so-secret crush on me when I began working for NeoSys. He had never asked me on a date, but he spent the first three months of our work relationship glued to my cubicle. Three months was exactly how long it took me to confess to him that I had a boyfriend. Three months after that, we were both promoted to Competitive Intelligence Analyst and working out of our home offices ever since. Since then, we had kept our interactions very business-like, except for the one time the entire CIA team went out to a teppan restaurant to celebrate the acquisition of two pages of computer code that would make us nearly $200 million. That was the night Milo and I had a few too many sake bombs and made out in the restaurant parking lot. We never spoke about it after that night.
No doubt my ability to get hired on the first interview would be cause for celebration amongst the CIA team. But I couldn’t be seen with any of them until my assignment was complete.
“Trust me. Men believe what they want to believe. Luke knows nothing about Operation Mirror and he never will, as long as you do your job and stick to the objective,” Milo said, and I found myself grateful for his ability to calm my nerves.
“I just think I got in a little too easy. He seems pretty eager to welcome me in. He said I would be using his car to run his errands.”
“The Bugatti?”
“Yes, the fucking Bugatti. Isn’t that strange? And he’s picking me up at my house tomorrow morning for a meeting in Newport.”
Milo paused on the other end of the line. Maybe I had said too much. He probably knew that this meant Luke and I had slept together.
“Brina?”
“Yeah?”
“Do what you have to do. Don’t worry about what any of us will think. Only you can know how you have to approach this.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and took a deep breath. “Thanks.”
“Now get the fucking password for that mirror network.”
4
Luke’s car pulled up to the curb of my apartment building at exactly 6:58 a.m., but I didn’t run to answer the door to wait for his knock. Instead, I went into the restroom and turned the blow dryer onto the cool setting and pointed it at my head.
I heard the faint ding of my doorbell, but I ignored it as I stared at my reflection in the mirror and watched the cool air blow my hair in all directions. I waited a couple of minutes before I switched off the blow dryer and the doorbell rang again. I opened the door and was not surprised to see Luke wearing a pristine gray suit as he gazed at the fountain in the courtyard of my apartment building.
“How much do you pay to live here?” he asked, without looking at me.
“More than I can afford. Come on in.”
“You don’t even know how much I’m paying you. How do you know you can’t afford it?”
He wiggled his eyebrows before he stepped into my apartment and I couldn’t believe how uneasy he made me.
“The agency said the position paid 60 to 80 thousand. That’s not a lot for this area,” I replied, as I closed the front door.
“Then, why do you live here?”
He took a seat on the used sofa I had bought at the local Salvation Army when I moved into this apartment six weeks ago in preparation of Operation Mirror. Kip wanted me to have a nice apartment, but he didn’t provide a stipend for furniture. He probably didn’t expect Luke to be sitting in my apartment less than twenty-four hours after my interview.
“I live here because I like to push myself. There’s no motivation to succeed better than the prospect of having your electricity cut off.”
Something about what I said affected him. His eyes dimmed before he turned away to face the sliding glass door that led out onto my tiny patio.
“I was homeless for five months when I was seventeen. A lot of people don’t know that about me.” He stared at the door as he continued. “My stepdad kicked me out for smoking weed in the garage with my geek friends. I was too proud to ask any of my friends to take me in. I slept in public restrooms mostly, but I spent my days at the library and the computer lab at the local community college where I had befriended a professor. It took Mr. Keller three months to find out about my living situation.”
I did know about Luke’s homeless days, but I couldn’t tell him that because that would open up questions as to how I had found out.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He finally turned to me. “Why are you sorry? Look at where it got me. I’m trying to make a point. I’m trying to tell you that it’s not too late for you. Maybe the $140,000 I’m offering will help you on that road.”
He rose from the sofa and made his way toward me as I stood dumbfounded by this number. That was almost double what NeoSys was paying me. He stopped in front of me and I leaned into his hand as his fingers grazed my cheek.
“Why?” I breathed, as his other hand slipped behind my neck.
“Because you’ve already been through enough.”
He kissed me and I was lost, spinning in a haze of his presence, his scent, his power… his kindness. I threw my arms around his neck and he lifted me up, carrying me to the kitchen island where the bowl of leftover milk from my breakfast cereal sat next to a b
lock of knives. He sat me on the counter and I tossed the bowl and knives to the floor as I lay back. He pulled off my jeans and sunk down to bury his face in me.
“Oh, my God,” I whimpered, as he lifted my legs onto his shoulders and proceeded to taste every inch of me. His fingers curled inside me as he massaged both my spots. “Oh, Luke!”
“Yes?” he hummed into my lips and I shuddered with pleasure.
“I… Oh, no.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“Yes. Please stop.”
He stood up and pulled his fingers out of me, though his thumb still rested on my throbbing clit. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, as I slid off the counter, trying to ignore the intense longing pulsating between my legs as I pulled on my jeans. “I’m really sorry, but this is so wrong.”
I couldn’t tell if he looked more confused or dejected by my words. He had probably never been rejected by a woman before. At least, that was what I was counting on.
“You’re right. We should keep this professional.” He strode quickly toward the door. “Are you ready to go? We have a meeting with Imitex in two hours.”
I stared at him for a moment, feeling like a ten-ton bitch. “It only takes forty minutes to get to Newport Hills, with traffic. I’m thinking that countertop was all wrong. My bed is much more comfortable.”
We spent the next hour exploring every inch of each other like curious, untamed primates. He wanted to know exactly what I liked and I discovered a sensitive area on his lower back that made him squirm when I kissed it. By the time we got into his car, I was sure we reeked of sex, but there was no time to wash his scent off of me. And I didn’t want to, anyway.
He reached across the space between us and grabbed my hand again. I stared at our fingers woven together and thought of my first boyfriend, Jimmy Nichols. Jimmy was the first boy, beside my brother, to hold my hand. When I asked him what the point of holding hands was, he said something to me I would never forget. “Holding hands is like giving someone a mini-hug.”