“Leaving?” I repeated. “I don’t know. I haven’t decided.”
“So until you decide, you still work for me?”
I glanced at his hand resting on the arm of his chair and then back at his eyes. “I guess.”
“Then,” he said, pausing before delivering his words slowly, “get over here.”
My fingers twisted in front of me. No dress was worth this humiliation. But I wanted to feel that sting again. I craved it. It was the first thing I’d thought of when I’d woken up. My feet disobeyed me, walking around the desk, stopping beside his chair. He stood in one fluid motion, dwarfing me instantly and drawing my eyes upward.
“I couldn’t help but notice you’re wearing the same skirt.”
“I don’t have much to choose from,” I said. “I wasn’t going to blow all my money on a new wardrobe for one week.”
“I’m not complaining. It’s better than those hideous pants you wore yesterday before the coffee got to them.”
He saidcoffeeas though he knew I’d been lying. It didn’t matter—I wasn’t the guilty one here. My jaw set. “You can’t speak to me that way.”
“By the way, I’m forty-eight,” he said with raised eyebrows.
“What?”
“Not fifty.”
Embarrassment burnt a quick course through my body as I realized he’d overheard my conversation in the break room. We’d all giggled, but Dean didn’t look the least bit amused. My face was on fire.
“You think people my age don’t fuck?” he asked.
I gasped, almost choking at the word.
He grabbed my hand roughly and brought it to the front of his pants. My palm pressed into the solid hardness that strained against his zipper.
“We do,” he said. “Is that enough evidence for you, Alexandra?”
My mouth opened and closed, my hand trembled. He slid it up so I felt the ridges of his crown through the fabric.
“I’m not…I can’t do this.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” he said. His smile was too easy. When he released me, my skin was suddenly ice cold. He’d been warm, substantial in my hand. He seemed twice the size of Trey, and even more so since he towered over me.
“Does Grace do this for you?” I whispered.
He threw his head back and laughed. “No. Nobody does anything for me, Alex. I have a strict rule against office relations.”
“Oh.”
“I spanked you last night because I wanted to. Because it made me horny as hell. It took everything I had not to tear off that tight skirt and take you right there.”
My mouth was hanging open, but I couldn’t seem to close it. I glanced down at the skirt and back up. My brain struggled, and all I could think was that it’d taken Trey close to two months to ask me out, and another couple weeks to make a move.
“Fortunately,” Dean said, “in the nick of time, I remembered the many reasons that could never happen.”
I snapped my jaw shut.Never. The way he said it was so final, so curt, the way he normally was. My gaze fell from his eyes to his lips. The wordsexysizzled in my mind, and I realized it had been since June had said it in the break room. “Because of your office policy?” I asked.
“You’re off limits. Aside from the fact that you work for me, your father’s my good friend. And even if he weren’t, you’re just a girl.”
“A girl?” I gaped. I was an adult. I wore business attire. The thought quickly faded when I realized something else. “You would—youwantthat? With me?”
He blinked slowly as a lazy smile formed on his face. It was disarming when his normally stoic expression broke. “Do I want that? With you? It doesn’t matter if I do. I can’t touch you.”
