It was strange how life had thrown us together. I hadn’t chosen her for the role, but even I had to admit I’d chosen tokeep her. All the other assistants had quit within six months. The most notorious case—the one that my employees loved to gossip about—was a beta who had shown up for work, heard me berating a contractor on the phone, and vacated her desk in two minutes flat.
I knew my reputation preceded me, but Dessi had decided she was up for the task anyway.
She was too warm and too kind for her own good. When she’d been assigned to me, I’d made a bet with myself that she wouldn’t last six months on the job. She’d proved me wrong, although I’d never admit that to her.
Three years—the longest relationship I’d ever had. And, perhaps, the healthiest.
Would it be strange if I admitted out loud that I’d recently begun thinking about her as the yin to my yang? The calm to my chaos. The rainbow to my gloom. The smile to my permanent frown.
She had been hired to make my life easier, but what she had done instead was make me palatable to the employees. A feat I would’ve thought impossible.
It was hard to keep the soft spot from growing and taking up all the room in my chest, especially when she brushed her nose against my skin like a sleepy little kitten waiting to be cuddled.
“I can hear you thinking,” she muttered, still half asleep. “You tense up when you think.”
I tried in vain to relax my shoulders, but they had been set in that rigid position for almost twenty years. There was no use trying to re-train my muscles now.
I glanced over Dessi’s shoulder at the little silver alarm clock on her bedside table. It read six in the morning, but that meant we’d only slept for a couple of hours.
“Let me guess,” she said, popping one dark eye open. Her words were raspy with sleep. “You’re regretting what happened last night?”
It was, in fact, the exact opposite.
After one taste, I wanted more. So much more. It would frighten her to know the truth. I wanted her like a roaring flame seeking oxygen—damn the consequences. Even now, as she fought sleep, I knew I wanted to ruin and wreck her in ways no one else could. I wanted to have her gasping my namealways. Not just for a day; not just for now.
“This doesn’t have to change anything, you know,” she said, pushing her curls away from her cheek. “You’re still my boss. We can still work together. It doesn’t need to be awkward.”
“Awkward?” I echoed.
She nodded, fighting a yawn. “We can pretend it never happened. No one else needs to know if we just act… friendly.”
A shrug crinkled the satin sheets beneath us.
There was something about her nonchalance that didn’t sit right with me.
When I pressed my lips to hers, there was nothingfriendlyabout it. I tasted her sleep, her dreams, the very heart of her, pulling her closer as though I could fuse us together.
Her breath hitched, and I felt her melt against me. Curse it all, she held that same heat, that same fire, and it seared me wherever she touched.
“I don’t want to befriends, Ms. Nayak,” I said, unable to keep the scolding edge out of my tone. “You know how I despise stupid statements.”
She placed a hand on my chest. “Seriously? You’re calling mestupidright now when your cock is leaking all over my belly?”
“That is hardly my fault.”
Her brows rose comically. “Then whose is it?”
“Why, yours, of course.” I loved this familiar space between us. Arguing was our common ground. “If you weren’t naked in my arms, my cock wouldn’t be hard and leaking.”
“That’s a funny way to justify your lack of control.”
“More so than admitting to your boss that you dream about her spanking you in front of the entire office?”
She gasped, pushing herself upright, the sleepy haze gone from her eyes.
A single finger jabbed me in the shoulder—hard.
“That was dirty talk!”
