Page 5 of After-Hours Heir

Baby: And you’re a brat.

Kid: You could spank me.

He felt his body stir. He could go again. And she wasn’t even here.

Baby: If I spanked you, you wouldn’t be able to sit for a week. You’d have to think long and hard about how badly you wanted your job since being at your desk would be torture. Or perhaps I’d just come visit you at your job and take you, bending you over your desk.

He wondered if he was pushing it, but for some reason he felt on edge tonight with her. More than he had.

Kid: I’d be okay with that.

But as the fantasy took shape, it was clear he was imagining one woman. And one woman only. Was that who he saw every time he spoke to Kid?

Because as he typed to her, spinning out a whole new fantasy, it was impossible to deny that the woman he had bent over the desk in his mind’s eye, the pale, glorious ass he was riding, belonged to the woman currently making his life a living hell.

The woman whose business he was about to take over.

The woman whose life he was about to destroy.

Sylvie Jones.

CHAPTER TWO

SYLVIEWASWRUNG-OUTthe next morning, like she actually had spent all night having sex with a mystery man, instead of just typing steamy erotica for two in a round-robin with a stranger.

She took a sip of her coffee as she walked into the lobby of the publishing house and waved her badge in front of the elevator.

She had that meeting today and she was trying to block it out and think about Baby. It was a stupid name. She wished she knew his name.

She wished she could actually have his hands on her.

There were so many reasons not to, though. First of all, she was drowning in her job. Second of all, she was not a glossy, sleek socialite, and maybe it was weird to think he’d expect her to be.

They only knew vague things about each other. The conclusions she’d drawn about him were based on the way he came across in writing. She knew he worked a lot, like she did, so she’d drawn conclusions about him being in the corporate machine—as she was.

He didn’t know who her mother was. She did. And even when her mother shouldn’t be a factor in something it felt like she was right there.

Are you going to finish that whole plate?

I can get you in to see my stylist, Sylvie. You could do with a keratin treatment on your hair to manage that frizz.

You should get that hyperpigmentation treated.

She’d only been able to stare at her mother after that one. Until she’d figured out her hyperpigmentation meant…freckles.

Sylvie looked like her dad. A midsized short redhead with cheeks that got very red when they were angry, excited or overheated.

Sylvie didn’t actually want to know what had ever drawn her mother to her father, so she hadn’t asked. But whatever had been there once had soured, and Sylvie was never sure if her mother was critical of her looks because she reminded her mother of her former husband, or if she just thought Sylvie was unattractive.

Either way, it had done a number on her self-esteem.

And it informed how she felt about the potential for meeting her mystery man and she just…she couldn’t bear it if she met him one day and the first time she saw that face it was twisted with disappointment.

Bleh.

Her heart was beating too fast. It was the eternal problem of being a somewhat anxious person who also needed a hefty dose of caffeine in the morning. She could make it so that she wasn’t sleepy, but then she was a little bit overly charged-up.

And she refused to credit this feeling to anything else.