I loved it when she surrendered to me. But I liked it almost as much when she fought with me. Being around her was like turning the intensity up on life. Colors were brighter. I could hear more clearly. Scents were layered and intoxicating.
“We’ll keep the door open,” Deena said through clenched teeth. Her smile was a forced grimace as her eyes bore into me. “Sorry, Cal. Them’s the rules.”
“Oh, rules, shmules!” Mrs. Brand said with a giggle. “You’re a grown woman. Just don’t tell your father.” The older woman gave me an exaggerated wink, and before Deena could protest, she yanked the bedroom door closed.
I turned back to Deena and grinned.
She stared at me, practically vibrating with tension, and finally let out a sharp snort. “I need to do some work,” she announced. “Make yourself at home.” A venomous look. “I know you’re already going to.”
I watched her stomp to the attached bathroom with the loungewear set under her arm, and then I made my way to her bed. When I was reclined on it with my fingers braided behind my head, Deena reappeared.
The soft navy fabric of her pants hugged her curves, but the top was just loose enough that I had to guess what lay beneath.She looked more like herself in the loungewear, but I kind of missed the princess dress. Her hair had been gathered up in a high bun that revealed the curve of her neck and the stubborn set of her jaw. She’d scrubbed the makeup off her face, showing me the bare, unfiltered side of her.
Gorgeous.
Deep in my gut, the thrill of the hunt began to pulse. I’d had her once already, and I wasn’t going to let her go now. She thought she could push me away. She thought she could build walls between us by agreeing to work for me.
But she was wrong.
Deena ignored me as I watched her, choosing instead to flip open the screen of her laptop. The device began to run, sounding like a plane clattering down the runway for takeoff. Deena sucked in a hard breath.
“Shit,” she muttered, grabbing the laptop bag from the top of her desk. She yanked it open and dug her hand through it, grimacing. Tossing the bag aside, she looked under the desk, then around the room.
She didn’t look at me.
“Something wrong?” I drawled.
“I need to plug this thing in.”
“Hmm.” I glanced at the nightstand, where her laptop charger was bundled. I imagined her lying in bed last night, finishing a few things for her business, the driven, determined woman who never gave up. She was like me that way. She enjoyed control too. Control over her life and her choices. Control over her finances, her independence. She’d do anything to protect those things.
Except the part of her that craved release. The part that had begged me to hold her down. The part that had shattered so beautifully when I had her pinned beneath me so she had no choice but to give herself to me.
And right now, her control was fraying as she frantically searched the room for her charger.
But she was studiously ignoring the entire corner of the room where I reclined, so she didn’t see it.
“It starts this rattling sound, and then the cursor stops working,” she explained, getting on her hands and knees to check behind the desk. “Then it crashes, and it wipes out tons of work, even if I’ve saved it.” Her voice was muffled, but I could sense the edge of her panic.
I unplugged the cord from beside the bed while Deena hunted for it. From my vantage, I could see a little strip of skin on her lower back, her shirt riding up as she bent over, her ass on full, beautiful display.
The laptop began to hum, and Deena’s movements became more frantic. Finally, she looked at me and spotted the black cord in my hands.
“Give me that,” she said, lunging toward me to snatch the charger. She stabbed the end of it into the wall and got the other end into her laptop just as the screen began to flicker. Holding her breath, Deena watched for a few moments, then tentatively touched the trackpad. The cursor moved on the screen, and she let out a long breath.
“I should’ve learned my lesson by now,” she muttered. “I’ve lost hours of work more times than I can count.”
“You need a new laptop. How old is this thing?” I reached for her screen.
“Don’t touch that!” Deena smacked my hand away. It was the first time she’d touched me since we left the country club. She stuck her arm out, guarding me from getting any closer to the computer. “If you move the charger from that precise angle, the screen goes all fuzzy and I need to restart it to get it to work again. It takes forever, and there’s no telling what gets deleted.”
I stared at the screen, then at Deena. Her words made no sense. “You built your entire business on that thing? It looks like it should be in a museum.”
“Yes, well, we can’t all be venture capital firm owners, can we? Now tell me what you’re still doing here. Your room is down the hall.”
“We’re supposed to be a couple, remember?”
She stared at me for a beat, then very deliberately grabbed her chair and sat down in front of the ancient beast that was her laptop. I couldn’t quite suppress my smile.
