I couldn’t stop thinking about how she looked beneath me when she picked up that piece of paper.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
And my hand, unfortunately, was not enough to quell the thoughts or turn them into something sane.
I hear her before I see her. The faint scuff of heels on marble, the clumsy jangle of her keycard against that stupid little bee pin she keeps on her lanyard, the beep of that keycard at the glass entryway. She’s early, and I almost admire it. Even in a crisis, she’s punctual.
The moment she steps into her office, she freezes. I see it. That brief halt, the way her shoulders tense when she notices the door between us is ajar. Her eyes stared straight ahead at her desk. She takes a breath as if she’s bracing herself, then sets down her bag. She disappears behind the door for a moment before it moves with the aching slowness that makes me impatient. And then she walks in.
She’s got a deathly pallor, but her cheeks are flushed more than I’ve ever seen. Her makeup is almost nonexistent. She either rushed this morning or thought better of wearing it in case she cried. She’s dressed in stockings and a black, knee-length skirt with a white blouse that hangs loose around everything but her breasts. Her blonde hair is damp at the ends, hanging over her shoulders and breasts instead of up like it normally is.
Christ, I’ve never wanted a fistful of anything more in my life.
“Close the door,” I say, my voice level, but just a touch softer than the way I’d usually speak to her. She blinks at me once with her big green eyes, searching. She listens and closes it behind her, but her eyes lock on mine like she’s begging for mercy.
I nod toward the chair in front of my desk, not more than a foot in front of where I’m leaning. “Sit.”
She blinks faster, crossing the space slowly, her heels clicking with every step. The subtle scent of her perfume wafts over to me. She moves within inches of me, turning to sit, and I dig myfingers into my biceps just to keep myself from doing something insane. Even though this is already insane.
She lowers herself into the deep brown leather chair like it might explode and crosses her legs. She pulls her arms in tight to her chest, which only accentuates her breasts more. Her face is composed in the loosest sense of the word. She’s not crying or outwardly panicking; she’s simply sitting there with her lips parted. I’ve never seen her so…thrown.
I know she’s waiting for the guillotine. So I take my time.
“I received a very interesting string of messages last night,” I begin, my voice steady as if we’re discussing supply chain logistics or the Paris release, like we were meant to be doing. “They were…vivid. Unfiltered. Surprisingly articulate for something typed, I assume, while drinking.”
She flinches, just slightly, but lifts her chin. Her eyes focus off to my right as she shakes her head just once.No.
“No?” I ask, leaning right to place myself in her view. “You weren’t drinking?” She meets my gaze, then shakes her head again before her eyes dart away. Ah. That changeseverything. “What were you doing then?” I ask, tilting my head to the side. She glances at me once before averting her eyes again. Silence. “Oh, you?—”
“No,” she chokes, her cheeks flaming. “No, no, I wasn’t—I was making tea. I was just making tea, Anthony. Christ.”
I stare down at her, unmoving. “I didn’t even finish my sentence.”
“You didn’t need to.”
The words slip out before my brain has the chance to vet them. “Because you were already thinking about what I was going to say?”
Her cheeks are flaming red, and in the split second I get to see it before she buries her head in her hands, I realize just how much I want to keep seeing her this flushed, this flustered. AprilSwan is never flustered. “Why does it matter?” She mumbles into her hands. “Are you just looking for better material for my termination letter?”
I grin, just a small one that she can’t even see. “You think I’d fire you for telling me I have a voice that ‘sounds like a sin some god invented just for him to tempt me with’?”
The noise she makes sounds somewhere between an exhale and a squeak. I’m enjoying this far more than I should, especially when her head lifts, her gaze unfocused, her mouth opening in a littleOlike she’s going to say something, but thinks better of it.
“I’m not going to fire you,” I say carefully.
That, of all things, startles her. She blinks once, then again rapidly, confusion replacing the panic for a split second. “You’re not?”
“No.”
She pauses, her breathing audible. I swear I can see her pulse hammering in the vein on her neck. “Why?”
I push off my desk and move around it, pushing my chair out of the way to reach for the drawer on the bottom right. The handful of papers I’d printed yesterday before I left are right where I left them. I pull them out, feeling her gaze on the side of my face like tiny daggers. Our eyes meet as I set them on the desk.
“Because,April,” I say, drawing out her name just to watch her fingers tighten around her arms.The way he says my name. God, am I really that tempting for her? “I have a problem, and I think you may be the solution.”
Her brow furrows beneath her glasses.
“You’re aware of my position here at Voss & Bartley, obviously. What you likely do not know is that my continued control of this company, the company Ibuiltwith my father, is tied to a trust established by him,” I explain, pushing the papers toward her.
