Power Players Box Set- The Complete Series

by Cassia Leo

  I pulled away and bit my lip as I stared at his press pass. “He would definitely be proud.”

  His smile disappeared and I braced myself. “Hey, a couple of us are going to visit the grave for his birthday. You should come.”

  I clenched my teeth as I bit back the dozens of angry and irrational replies whizzing through my mind. “I can’t go.”

  “Come on, Brina,” he continued with a smile. “We’re gonna bring some—”

  “I can’t!”

  Jesse stared at me, his blue eyes slightly shadowed by a swoop of black hair, but the disappointment was unmistakable. “Yeah, okay.”

  “It was good seeing you,” I said as I kissed his cheek then patted his arm. “Congrats on the new job.”

  I drew in a shaky breath and walked away before he could say anything else. The last thing I needed was to see Ryan’s name on a headstone. Ryan and I had always agreed that when we died, we wanted to be cremated. I wanted my ashes tossed in the sound. Ryan always joked that he wanted his ashes flushed down the toilet so he could spend eternity with his pet goldfish, Lenny. I didn’t know when he changed his mind, but the will he drew up while serving said nothing about being cremated. For some reason, this made me angry. It was just one more secret I had to find out after his death.

  I queued up outside the conference room, stared at the screen on my phone until the countdown reached 00:00, and the display flashed with brilliant orange light. Then the password appeared: Charlotte. Luke’s grandmother’s name. Also, the name of his boat, the location of our first tryst. I should have known.

  Once I was in, I quickly grabbed a seat in the back. I didn’t want him to know I was there until I approached him after the presentation. I didn’t know if I still had the power to make him nervous, or if anyone had that power, but I didn’t want to take any more chances with Luke’s career. This time, I would play it right.

  I was prepared to sit in my seat and agonize over his exquisiteness for three hours. I wasn’t prepared for my heart to stop the moment he stepped onto the stage.

  He wore jeans and a plain white t-shirt that hugged his solid chest and shoulders. The crowd exploded into applause and, not surprisingly, a few whistles and catcalls. He smiled modestly, and I leaned forward and hugged my knees as I stared at my feet. I couldn’t watch.

  I spent three hours staring at the carpet and playing with my $40,000 phone, only glancing up occasionally when everyone oohed or applauded. When the presentation was finally over, I still wasn’t sure I understood what Blaze technology was, but I knew it had to do with artificial intelligence and that Luke predicted it would come standard on all electronics and appliances within seven years.

  I remained seated in the back of the room, waiting for most to leave, watching as Luke schmoozed with dozens of reporters and tech bloggers. I could tell by the glazed looks on their faces that they were in complete admiration of him, but he never seemed to notice or acknowledge the gaga expressions. He gave everyone a few minutes as if he had all the time in the world to chat. When the crowd around him dwindled to less than six, I stood up and made my way to the aisle between the seats.

  I stood in the center of the aisle, frozen by the sight of him. Was it possible for a man to be this beautiful? Then he laughed and…that laugh. How I missed the days when he laughed like that for me.

  Someone brushed past me, and before I could process what was happening, a tall blonde threw her arms around his neck and mashed her lips against his. He pulled away and smiled at her, looking a bit surprised. Then he glanced over her shoulder and looked right at me.

  My stomach bottomed out and I turned around quickly. I had taken no more than two steps when I heard him call my name.

  Chapter 2

  Luke

  “Brina!” I called out as I peeled Olivia’s arms from around my neck and set off down the aisle. “Brina, wait!”

  “Luke!” Olivia called after me.

  I didn’t turn around as I shouted, “I’ll be right back.”

  Brina burst through the doors and disappeared into the lobby. I tore after her, dodging a group of tech bloggers. They called my name as I passed, but I didn’t bother responding. I didn’t have time.

  I burst into the lobby and glanced around, but I didn’t see her anywhere. It didn’t matter. At least a dozen people were staring out the glass entrance doors and I quickly made my way out to Pike Street. I could barely glimpse her hair bouncing as she raced across the street.

  Dodging the crowds on the sidewalk, I ignored the surprised looks. “Brina!” I called out again as I crossed Pike.

  She finally stopped in front of Clay’s Market and spun around. She stared at me as I walked toward her, her chest heaving with each breath. The look on her face, a mixture of pain and terror, made me want to take her into my arms, but that wasn’t an option anymore.

  “Why did you run?” I asked when I reached her.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I guess I panicked. I…” She closed her eyes as she composed herself. “I came to congratulate you.”

  “Is that your way of congratulating me? By making me chase you into oncoming traffic?”

  “I didn’t make you chase me. Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”

  She turned to leave and I grabbed her hand. “Wait.” She glanced at our hands and quickly wrenched hers out of my grasp. “Brina, don’t leave.”

  “Why?”

  She looked me in the eye and I wanted to say, ‘Because I love you,’ but it was too late for that—and Olivia was waiting for me.

  “I don’t know.”

  She heaved a deep sigh. “Is she your girlfriend?”

  I contemplated the question for a moment. My buddies called Olivia a rebound when we began dating three weeks ago, but somewhere between then and now it had evolved into more.

  “You’d like Olivia. She’s a lot like you.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Olivia is a lot like me. What is that supposed to mean? Is she…? Oh, God…is she your new assistant?”

  I gritted my teeth as I began to feel angry with myself. I had visualized this moment in my mind for weeks, and now I was saying all the wrong things.

  “I am such an idiot,” she whispered. “What does that make me, a single link in a long chain of ‘assistants’?”

  “Brina, you were never my assistant.”

  “No, I wasn’t. I was the fuck buddy who nearly screwed your career. Easily defeated and, apparently, easily forgotten.”

  Even with her eyes narrowed at me and insults spewing from her mouth, she was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on. It took everything in me not to kiss her right fucking there in front of the crowd of onlookers.

  “Can we talk about this somewhere else?” I whispered. “We need to talk about this.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think there’s anything more to say. I came here to congratulate you, and I did that. You have every right to see whomever you want. It’s none of my business. Goodbye, Luke.”

  “Brina, don’t go.”

  The crowd parted as she set off across 8th without looking back. I instantly switched modes. It was the only way to make it back to the conference center without drawing too much attention. Putting on a smile, I nodded at everyone who smiled or greeted me as I crossed Pike Street, and made my way back into the conference room. Olivia was standing right where I had left her, talking to someone on the phone. She didn’t see me.

  The truth was that Olivia was nothing like Brina. Olivia got the same background check Brina got when she came to work for me, but Olivia came up as clean as the code for Blaze. No glitches.

  Brina’s background check was dirty as hell. I didn’t know how the fuck her boss expected her to pull the wool over my eyes. But I was so curious I decided to hire her. Besides, it was good practice for me. I already employed various hackers to attempt to crack the software on our phones. There was no reason not to hire someone to attempt to steal information from me. The
moment I saw Brina’s name on the list of applicants the agency sent me, I knew I had no choice.

  The story of her brother’s death had affected me more than any of the funerals of servicemen I had donated to. It wasn’t just the fact that he had committed suicide or that Brina had missed his funeral. Something about the fact that she was with him when he died made me want to know her. I wanted to know how someone could move on with their life after enduring something so horrific.

  I didn’t expect to find that she hadn’t moved on. I didn’t expect to find someone so beautifully broken and haunted by regret. I didn’t expect to fucking fall in love with her.

  Olivia finally saw me as she hung up the phone. She smiled weakly and, though I really wanted to, I couldn’t smile back.

  Chapter 3

  Brina

  By the time I reached the Prius, Milo was asleep. I climbed in to the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.

  “What the fuck?” he muttered as he flipped up the driver’s seat and oriented himself.

  “Can we please get out of here?” I didn’t think Luke would come after me, but I felt an overwhelming need to put as much distance between us as possible. I didn’t want to know about him or Olivia.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Milo asked as he pulled out of the parking space. “You look like you saw Prince Luke banging someone.”

  I slid the box out from underneath the seat and stuffed the phone back into it before I slid the box back into place. I pulled off the fake press pass and tossed it into the backseat.

  “Just drive. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Milo stared at me as he got in line behind a queue of cars waiting to pay the parking attendant. “What a fucking idiot.”

  “Sure. Kick me while I’m down.”

  He laughed. “Not you, him,” he clarified. “If he let you go then, yeah, he’s a fucking idiot.”

  I slumped in my seat. “Milo, you don’t have to try to make me feel better. I really don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Fine, but I’m starving. Let’s go get some fajitas.”

  I turned my face away from the passenger side window, away from the street, as Milo pulled up next to the automatic parking attendant. “I’m not hungry.”

  He inserted his parking pass into the machine and moved forward when the lever went up. “I thought you said you owe me one. Come on, B.”

  “Fine. Anything to make sure you never call me B again.”

  He grinned as he pulled out onto Union and headed toward his favorite Mexican restaurant. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but it looks like you need to get something off your chest. See, right there?” He pointed at my chest and I looked down. He flicked my chin and laughed as I flinched.

  “What are you, 12?” I punched his arm, but he just kept laughing as he fiddled with the stereo controls on his steering wheel. He stopped when he got to a song he liked, and I recognized it as the band whose shirt he was wearing. The song brought up a memory of sitting in the backyard at my parents’ house with Ryan, Jesse, and Jesse’s girlfriend last summer. Jesse’s girlfriend was pre-law and a raging stoner. As I listened to the tinny electronic beat in Milo’s car, I could almost smell the weed and hear the laughter.

  I guess one good thing came out of this fiasco: I got to congratulate Jesse.

  Four shots of tequila and one ginormous plate of nachos later, Milo finally got me to talk.

  “He already has another girlfriend,” I slurred as I waved a half-empty glass of water in Milo’s face. “And you should have seen his face when she kissed him. Oh, God! It was disgusting.”

  He shook his head at me. “Brina, you are a major fucking lightweight. You only had four shots.”

  I glared at him. “I haven’t eaten.”

  “You just ate nachos,” he corrected me with a grin.

  “Whatever.” I took another long swig of water then snatched my straw out of the glass and pointed it at him as I continued, “Then he follows me outside like it’s some kind of fucking movie and he’s going to say something beautiful—but, no! He didn’t say anything beautiful. He…he pissed all over my plan. Just pisssssssssss.”

  Milo took the straw out of my hand before I could put it in front of my crotch. “All right, that’s enough for you. It’s time to get you home.”

  “I don’t want to go. I don’t want my dad to see me like this…it’s freaking 12:30 in the afternoon.” I giggled as I realized I was tragically drunk at noon on a Monday, but Milo didn’t find it funny. “If Ryan were here, he would laugh.”

  “You can sober up at my apartment.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him as he stuck my straw into his glass of water. “You’d better not try anything funny.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Or what? You’ll pretend to piss on me? Come on, Batgirl—”

  “—to the Batmobile!” I said, finishing his sentence.

  He shook his head as he plunked down a couple of hundreds on the table and nodded toward the exit.

  “Are you sure this is your apartment?” I asked as we entered his apartment in Capitol Hill. “It’s so pretty.”

  I scooped up a hammered steel vase from a dark table near the front door. There was nothing inside the vase. Everything was so clean and modern.

  “I didn’t do any of this. It was all my interior designer.” He tossed his keys onto the dark table and moved farther down the hall toward an open space with a large wall of windows.

  I followed him inside and was struck by how similar the furnishings were to the furnishings in Luke’s bungalow. I wondered if they had the same interior decorator.

  “I bet all the girls just drop their panties the second they see this place,” I said as I dropped my purse onto the coffee table and plopped down on the plush cream sofa.

  “Do you need an aspirin?” he called from the kitchen, totally ignoring my comment. “I’ve got some snacks if you’re hungry.”

  “Aw…Milo’s taking care of me,” I teased him, though I didn’t need anyone to take care of me. I was starting to feel quite sober.

  He walked in with a glass of water and two aspirin resting in the palm of his hand. “Take these and I won’t force you to play video games with me.”

  I took the pills from his hand and swallowed them down with a few gulps of water. “Do you have Mortal Kombat?”

  “Do I have Mortal Kombat? What kind of question is that? Of course, I have Mortal Kombat. You play Mortal Kombat?” he scoffed.

  “It’s the only game my brother taught me how to play.”

  Milo narrowed his eyes at me as he turned on the TV and switched the input to the game system. “Somehow, I find that hard to believe.”

  He scrolled through a bunch of games that were apparently saved on a memory card until he got to Mortal Kombat.

  “Yes,” I hissed. “You’re going down.”

  Seven games later, I jumped to my feet and spiked the controller down on the carpet. “I win again!”

  Milo scooped the controller off the floor and tried to hand it to me. “One more. Best eight out of fifteen.”

  I pushed his hand away as I sat back down. “Nuh-uh. I am undefeated and I’m done humiliating you.”

  He placed the controller in my lap. “Come on. One more. If I win, we go best out of fifteen. If you win, we quit.”

  I picked up the controller from my lap and placed it on the sofa between us. “No. I’m done, and I’m the champion, so I make the rules.”

  He held the controller in front of me again. “Here you go, champ. Just one more.”

  I laughed as I pushed his hand away. “You’re such a sore loser.”

  He put the controller back in my lap, and I immediately picked it up and chucked it across the floor.

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “That’s it. You’re going down.”

  He chucked his controller aside and lunged at me. I screamed as I held my arms and legs straight out to hold him off.

  “Stop it!” I squealed through my
laughter. “Don’t be gross, Milo!”

  His hands groped my armpits, and I laughed maniacally as I kicked and pushed, but he was surprisingly strong and agile, dodging my kicks and grasping both my wrists in one of his hands.

  “There’s no use resisting. I’ve got skills you’ve never heard of.”

  My limbs were so weak from laughing I couldn’t resist if I wanted to—and suddenly, I didn’t want to. As soon as I stopped fighting, we locked eyes.

  “What kind of skills?” I asked.

  He let go of my wrists and my hands fell onto the pillow under my head. A slow, devious smile formed on his lips as he eased himself between my legs.

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  I was still breathing so hard, partially from the laughter, but mostly from the anticipation. I nodded quickly, and his hand slid under the bottom of my t-shirt. I sucked in a sharp breath as his fingers lightly brushed the skin over my ribs. His eyes were still locked on mine as his other hand easily unfastened the button on my jeans and pulled down my zipper. I was breathing way too fast.

  He grabbed my leg behind my knee as he eased himself down on top of me. “Relax.”

  The weight of his body on top of me did relax me. He sank down farther, his eyes still locked on mine as our lips connected. He kissed me slowly and tenderly as his hand slid under the small of my back, lifting me so our bodies were pressed tightly against each other.

  His mouth tasted faintly sweet from the tequila. I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck as I ground my hips against the growing erection under his jeans.

  He pulled back and frowned at me. “Slow down, Batgirl. It’s only three o’clock.”

  I almost laughed. “Ooh, Milo’s going to take all day to seduce me.”

  He rolled his eyes as he leaned in to kiss my neck. “Just give me a few minutes and you’ll stop referring to me in third person.”

  He kissed my jaw and I smiled. “How am I going to refer to you?” I asked as I softly raked my fingernails over his lower back.