I take a step into the room, then another until I’m almost flush against her.
“I’m leaving you a note, obviously. A letter of resignation.” She holds up the notepad like it’s significant even though she hasn’t written a thing on it.
I burst out laughing. “You’re resigning? You begged me for this job, remember. You’ve worked, what, a few shifts? And you’ve decided it’s not for you?”
A flush creeps up her neck, as her nostrils flare.
She drops the notepad on the desk, her movements sharp with frustration. “Maybe I decided working for an asshole wasn’t worth the paycheck.”
Guilt hits me square in the chest. I’ve been gone for a few days, dealing with the Red Hook disaster. I went radio silent after I killed a man for her, then drove her home without a word, practically kicking her out of the car.
I am a fucking asshole, but she makes me feel out of control. I have the weight of the world on my back. The pressure to prove to my father that I’m capable of leading this family. And yet I nearly started a war with the Italians because some drunk prick touched her.
She’s a complication I can’t afford. A distraction that could cost me everything. And I still can’t fucking stay away.
“Don’t quit because of me.” The words sound like a demand, an order. It makes me sound like exactly the kind of asshole she thinks I am.
“Pretty full of yourself to think this is about you,” she seethes. The air between us crackles with tension. She’s breathing hard, color high in her cheeks.
I close the remaining distance until I’m crowding her back against the wall and she stops me with a hand to my chest. “Listen, I get it. I’m an employee and what happened at Apollon complicated things. I’ll step back from the job and?—”
“Would you shut up?” I grit out, fisting my hand in her hair and dragging her mouth to mine.
She makes a sound between a gasp and a moan, and it goes straight to my cock. She bites my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood and I release her hair to grip her ass and haul her against me.
Fuck staying away from her. I tried that, and it turns out I don’t like it.
“You think you can just quit?” I break the kiss long enough to snarl the words against her mouth. “Walk away from me?”
“I can do whatever I want,” she spits back, but her hands tear at my shirt, nails scraping down my chest. When she gets my belt buckle open and frees my cock, stroking me hard, I nearly lose my mind.
“Oh, really?” I grip her hips and lift her onto the edge of my desk. My other hand sweeps across the surface in one savage motion, sending papers and pens and whatever else was on it crashing to the floor.
I spin her around and bend her forward over the wood. Her palms slap down to catch herself as I shove her dress up to her waist and tear the black lace panties off her hips, baring the generous swell of her ass to me.
My palm cracks down on her, hard enough to make her gasp. She whips her head around, dark hair spilling across her shoulder, and glares at me. “What was that for?”
“That’s for how fucking obsessed I am with you.” Another spank. “How deep you’ve gotten under my skin.” Another. “How much I need to fuck you right now.”
She’s panting, her back arched, her skin red from my hand, and when I slide my fingers through her pussy, she’s drenched. Instead of pulling away she rocks back against me, lifting higher like an invitation. Like she wants this just as badly as I do.
I free my cock and line up with her opening. The rational part of my brain that’s kept me alive this long forces me to pause, to drag in a breath and ask, “Should I get a condom?” I’ve neverfucked anyone bare. Never trusted anyone enough. But the idea of something between us is an insult when I want to feel every inch of the woman I’m claiming.
“N-no.” Her voice trembles but certainty runs underneath it. “I’m on the pill. And you’re the first person I’ve been with in over a year.”
Possessive satisfaction floods my chest. That’s all the encouragement I need. I slam into her with zero finesse, zero patience, just need and want and days of pent-up frustration.
She cries out and I can’t tell if it’s pain or pleasure but I don’t slow down to find out. She’s velvet heat wrapped around me, slick and perfect, so tight I grit my teeth against the urge to come immediately.
She’s gorgeous bent over my desk, taking everything I give her. When she glances back at me over her shoulder, our eyes lock, and everything tilts. This is beyond lust or possession. This is a feeling that’s far more dangerous. The kind that settles into my bones and refuses to let go. She’s not just someone I’m fucking. She’s mine in a way I don’t understand but can’t deny.
“This is what you do to me,” I grit out, one hand splayed across her shoulder blade, pinning her down. “Make me so fucking crazy I can’t think straight. Can’t focus. Can’t do my goddamn job because you’re all I can think about.”
I pull her upright, one hand around her throat, the other sliding down to her clit. I work the swollen bud with my fingers, circling it, stroking it, feeling her slick and sensitive against my touch.
Every time I touch her there, she clenches around my cock, and something primal roars through me at the realization she owns me just as completely as I own her.
“Have you learned your lesson?” I croak. “Do you understand now that you’re mine and you’re not going anywhere?”
