by Layne, Ivy
Struggling to sit up, I held the sheet over my breasts, thoughts tumbling in my head. The smirk that curved the side of Cooper’s mouth was satisfied. A little smug. “Hungry?”
I nodded. I was hungry. And eating would buy me some time while I figured out what to do next. My tender, overused body perked awake at the sight of so much half-naked Cooper and slyly suggested, Why do you have to do anything at all? Let’s just have more sex with Cooper.
Cooper slid in bed next to me and helped himself to a piece of toast from the tray he’d set over my lap. Content to eat in silence for the time being, I tried to get my thoughts in order.
Sensible Alice was telling me to bolt for the door, lock myself in my apartment, and not come out unless someone else was with me so I wouldn’t be tempted to strip Cooper naked and jump him again.
Sensible Alice was a buzzkill.
Sensible Alice had stayed married to her ass of an ex-husband for way too long.
The Alice who’d just had multiple orgasms in twelve hours wasn’t interested in being sensible. Knock on the head aside, I wasn’t deluded enough to think this was anything more than sex.
Cooper wasn’t just my boss—which made him untouchable enough—he was Cooper Sinclair, the oldest of the Sinclair brothers. Cooper was old Atlanta.
Cooper dated socialites. Models. He’d dated a movie star and the bass player in a famous all-female rock band. Cooper did not date quirky office managers. Especially not his quirky office manager.
I didn’t know what madness had ended up with us naked on his kitchen island, but Cooper was too contained, too controlled to confuse sex with anything deeper.
I was convenient. When I thought of it that way, it was kind of a miracle he’d never tried to tap my ass before. I lived right downstairs, after all. I was convenient.
Before that ugly thought could worm a hole in my nice post-orgasm bubble, I snuck a glance at his sculpted chest, his broad shoulders, those strong hands currently peeling an orange that had lifted me so easily and dropped me down onto a long, thick cock…
And it occurred to me that Cooper was convenient.
Cooper was so contained, so controlled, I’d bet he could fuck me for fun and it would never touch our working relationship.
Why should it? We were both adults. We were both professional. We took the job seriously. I wouldn’t be stupid enough to let sex mess up anything at work, and neither would Cooper.
This was just sex. Fucking amazing, mind-blowing, once-in-a-lifetime sex. I wasn’t going to walk away because I was worried we couldn’t handle it. I snuck another glance at the glory of half-naked Cooper and decided to stop being such a wimp.
“So, we’re having sex now?”
Cooper handed me a slice of orange, his eyes impossible to read. “Right now, we’re having breakfast.”
“Smartass,” I muttered, taking the orange. “After breakfast. And later. Is this a thing now? We have sex?”
Cool blue eyes slid to mine. “Do you want to stop?” His voice was so neutral I wasn’t sure he cared about my answer.
“Not a chance,” I said, instinct choosing my words before I could form them into something more graceful.
Cooper said nothing, just leaned over, lifted the tray from my lap and set it on the bedside table before pinning me to the mattress and taking my mouth with his. He tasted of oranges and coffee and everything good.
I wasn’t walking away from this. No way.
Sensible Alice could take a hike.
I was going to take every bit of Cooper Sinclair I could before he lost interest and I lost my chance.
Chapter Five
Cooper
I kept Alice in my bed until the clock ticked down to the very last second before she had to leave to get ready for work.
I wished I could cancel everything and keep her exactly where she was.
Under me.
Where she belonged.
I’d been waiting for her for so fucking long. Almost a decade. It felt like a lifetime. One weekend wasn’t enough.
She slipped from my bed mumbling, blushing, yanking on her clothes and rushing through the door, leaving me hollow.
She’ll be back, I reminded myself. No putting this genie back in the bottle. No fucking way.
Now that I knew how she tasted, the sound of her moan, the sexy, adorable way she babbled as I drove her to orgasm—no fucking way was I letting that go. Ever.
Alice was mine.
This wasn’t the best time to turn our lives upside down.
It was probably the worst time. My father was still MIA, the Russian mob intent on hunting him down. We’d paid off Andrei Tsepov, secured his promise that he’d go after my father and leave the rest of the family out of their feud, but Andrei’s word was worth nothing. He was still out there. Still a threat.
Scarier than the mob was my mother. My brother, Axel, and his wife, Emma, were bringing my mother to Atlanta. She’d left Florida to stay with Axel and Emma in Las Vegas when Andrei Tsepov had threatened to use her to get to my father.
Since then, Las Vegas had gotten too hot, Tsepov’s empire beginning to fracture, with all of the collateral damage that implied. Axel ran the western division of Sinclair Security out of Vegas, and his team was top-notch, but he was spread too thin. The three of them would be safer in Atlanta for now.
Having Axel and Emma close was something to look forward to. Of the four of us, Axel had the least tolerance for my father’s bullshit, and, like me, he’d wanted to run the show. As Sinclair Security had grown, it made sense for him to split off and head his own division. I was proud of him, but I missed having him around.
My mother was a different story. Only weeks after my father’s car went off that bridge she’d put the house on the market and headed for Florida. Knox, Evers, and I had breathed a sigh of relief.
I love my mother. I want her safe and alive. I just don’t want those things one flight of stairs away from me.
Not now, not when I wanted to spend every spare second buried in Alice.
Too much was up in the air, too many balls to juggle to do what I really wanted—tell Alice that things had changed. That she was mine. That we couldn’t go back, and I wouldn’t give her up.
If I’d had any doubt she wanted me as much as I wanted her, the last forty-eight hours had eradicated it completely. Whatever story she was spinning for herself right now, Alice didn’t do casual sex.
She’d married her loser ex-husband and stuck with him until they finally divorced. Once she was done with him, when she might have gone out with girlfriends and let loose, she didn’t. If she had, I would have figured out a way to stop her.
I’d waited, enough of an old-fashioned guy that I wasn’t going to break up a marriage. Even a shitty one. Once Alice was free, I’d bided my time, giving her space to get over her divorce before I changed everything.
She might not realize it, and probably never thought of it in these terms, but I’d spent more time with her over the last nine years than her husband. She’d spent more time with me than any other woman on earth. She knew me inside and out.
No, I didn’t have any doubts about Alice. Now all I had to do was make sure she didn’t have any doubts about me.
She wasn’t at work when I got there. That would have been a miracle. I was out of the shower and in a suit in fifteen minutes. Alice took that long just picking out a dress.
What would she choose after a debauched weekend of nonstop orgasms? I loved Alice’s quirky style, her blunt bob, and her fifties dresses. She was so completely herself, tough and smartass, intelligent and sexy. I’d been hooked from the start.
I hit my office, sending one of the grunts to Annabelle’s to get breakfast and coffee. By the time he was back, Alice was at her desk, the phone to her ear, her voice crisp and businesslike despite the blush that flooded h
er cheeks when her eyes caught mine.
She ended the call, jotting something on the notepad beside her hand, and stood, her head cocked slightly to the side. I held up the to-go cup of coffee and her eyes widened with pleasure.
Taking the cup from me, she sipped, her lipstick leaving a red imprint on the white lid. She wore a red dress with white nautical trim, the top a halter that tied around the back of her neck, a tiny white shrug sweater her defense against the chill of the air conditioning.
When she turned to move her chair, I spotted the flounce of white crinoline beneath the red skirt. If she had any idea how crazy those crinolines made me…
The crinoline wasn’t big—sock-hop, not Scarlet O’Hara. It only added an extra few layers to the already-full skirt. But every time I caught sight of that froth of nothing fabric beneath her skirts, I was instantly obsessed with the way they lifted the skirt away from her legs, leaving no barrier between my hands and her body.
As styles go, fifties rockabilly is fairly demure. Barely any cleavage, and not a single skirt above the knee. I’d seen business suits that showed more skin. Didn’t matter. On Alice, those dresses made me fucking crazy.
If I had a penny for every time I’d thought of bending her over her desk and sliding my hands under those fluffs of crinoline to get my hands on her legs I’d be able to retire to a private island and spend the rest of my life doing just that.
As it was, between the crinoline and the bow of the halter neck begging me to pull it free, it was all I could do not to drag her into the supply closet and lock the door.
Instead, I sipped my coffee and handed her the bag of baked goods. “Whatever you don’t pick is mine,” I said.
Alice rummaged through the bag, pulling out a flaky cinnamon roll and placing it neatly on a napkin on her desk. Her teeth sank into her full red bottom lip and she looked away from me, cheeks still pink.
Under her breath, she hissed, “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what? I’m not looking at you like anything.” Yanking Alice’s chain is my favorite hobby. I have to work at it. She knows me too well to make it easy.
Rolling her eyes to the ceiling, she said, “Go away, Cooper. I don’t have time to deal with you. Your mother, Axel, and Emma will be here in a few hours. I need to leave the desk to give the apartment upstairs a final check before they get here.”
“I’ll send one of the grunts to cover the desk in half an hour. Give you time to drink your coffee. That work?” I asked, proving I could do business if she wanted to do business.
As long as she didn’t forget the pleasure part.
Voice crisp, eyes cautious, Alice agreed. “That would be fine. Thanks for the coffee and the cinnamon roll.”
A clear dismissal. Giving her a long, heated look that brought a flush back to her cheeks, I inclined my head and walked away.
My brothers aside, Alice was one of the few people in the office who busted my balls on a regular basis. From anyone else I would have shut that shit down, but Alice could bust my balls all day if she wanted to.
So many years I’d been wondering if that red lipstick was kiss-proof. Today, I planned to find out.
The phone rang when I got back to my office. A client with a problem. New day, same catastrophes. By the time I’d handled it, I judged Alice would be upstairs getting the safe house ready for my mother.
Alice, a bed, and a door with a lock. Perfect.
Pushing back from the desk, I strode down the hall to the back of the office and ducked into the emergency stairwell. I didn’t need the grunt at the front desk seeing me leave while Alice was gone.
If it were up to me I’d shout to the world that Alice was mine, but I knew she was going to need more time.
Finesse. I could do finesse.
I found Alice in the bigger of the two bedrooms in the apartment, bending over as she smoothed the coverlet across the bed, that froth of white crinoline lifting in the back, exposing the barest hint of thigh.
Innocent, really. Innocent and so fucking alluring I did what I’d been dreaming of for years. Stepping up behind her, I leaned over and slid my fingers up the back of her legs, feeling the light, crisp crinoline pool around my hands, the heavier fabric of her dress sliding up, up, up.
Alice stilled for a moment before she went back to smoothing the coverlet. “That better be Cooper, or somebody’s going to get his balls sliced off.”
I don’t know why her threats made me so hot. “You armed, Alice?”
“I have a letter opener at my desk.”
Sliding my hand up to squeeze the curve of her ass, I said, “Anybody else touches you like this, I’ll slice his balls off for you.”
Alice laughed. I wasn’t kidding. She stood and turned, her eyes hot and wary. “What are you doing here, Cooper?”
“What do you think?” Alice circled around me and backed up, giving the room one last glance before she edged through the doorway into the living room.
Pretending I hadn’t just had my hands on her ass, she said, “I had groceries delivered, stocked the fridge with everything your mother likes, coffee, her favorite wine, cheesecake.”
I ignored her. “Where are you going, Alice?” I asked, stalking her as she backed across the living room. Another step and she bumped into the couch.
Realizing what she was doing, she stopped and propped her hands on her hips. “Cooper Sinclair, it’s the middle of the workday. This is your mother’s apartment. What do you think you’re—”
I didn’t care. I wrapped an arm around her waist, leaned down, and dropped my mouth to hers. Her lips tasted like cherries, her mouth of cinnamon and coffee and Alice.
She kissed me back, pulling on my shoulders to bring me closer, moaning in my arms. When I didn’t think I could last a second longer without flipping those skirts up and burying myself between her legs, I lifted my mouth from hers.
“It is the middle of the workday, but the safe house is my apartment, not my mother’s.”
An eye-roll, less sarcastic than usual. Her kiss-swollen lips still parted, chest rising and falling as she tried to get her breath back, Alice flattened her hands on my chest. I wasn’t sure if she was fending me off or feeling me up. When her fingertips dug in, I wondered if she knew either.
“Cooper. We can’t do this at work. We— I don’t want—”
“We’re not at work,” I countered to her fumbling protest.
I expected the hard slap to my chest. I deserved it. She had a point. She stepped back, her hands sliding down my chest before falling away.
I stayed where I was, watching with fascination as she ran her fingers through her hair, scraped a fingernail under her lip to correct the smudges to her lipstick, and resettled her skirts. A moment later she looked completely un-mussed except for the slight swell of her lower lip. She looked as if I hadn’t just had my hands all over her which, perversely, made me want to kiss her again. And again.
“Cooper. I’ve been thinking.”
I crossed my arms, braced for her to say, We can’t do this, it was a mistake, blah, blah.
Alice surprised me.
“I like my job, Cooper. I don’t want to lose it.”
“You’re not going to lose your job, Alice.”
“Let me finish,” she said, pulling her shoulders back as if to brace herself.
I nodded and kept my mouth shut, already preparing my rebuttal.
“I don’t fool around at work. You know that,” she said with such conviction that I was tempted to remind her of the one time she had fooled around at work.
But we’d never spoken of that. I’d spent nine years trying to erase it from my mind. It had nothing to do with me. With us.
Besides that single incident, Alice was right. She’d never fooled around at work. Never flirted. Never been anything but professional.
“
I think it’s important to keep business separate from my personal life,” she went on. “I know it’s different for you since you work with family—”
She trailed off and I wondered if Alice was losing her nerve. “But?” I prompted.
She sucked in a quick breath, her words streaming out in a rush. “But I’ve never had sex like that in my life.” Her cheeks flared red. She looked away and gathered herself before going on, “I want to do it again.”
The wave of relief was so great it almost crushed me.
“Good. So do I.”
I was moving as the words left my mouth. Alice threw up a hand and I stopped.
Shit, she wasn’t done. I should have known.
“I don’t want anybody to know, okay? No messing around at work. When this is done, it’s done. No hard feelings. Aside from my family, for the last nine years, you and the team, this job, have been the only constant in my life. The only good constant in my life,” she corrected. “I won’t ruin that over sex. Even amazing sex.”
“I agree to your terms with one amendment.”
“What?” she asked, rightfully suspicious.
“The office isn’t off-limits as long as I can guarantee we won’t get caught.”
I wasn’t going to agree to a complete hands-off policy at work. We all worked way too much. Sometimes around-the-clock. I wasn’t boxing myself into a corner if I didn’t have to. I waited for a snappy comeback or a counter-offer. Again, she surprised me.
“Cooper, if we get caught messing around everyone will look at me differently. I don’t want that. Do you understand?”
“I promise, Alice. I won’t do anything to compromise you at work.”
Her mouth quirked as she caught my wording. “As long as you compromise me plenty at home.”
“Exactly.” I moved in, angling for another kiss, but she evaded me, slipping to the side and heading for the door. “I have to get downstairs. Too much to do before your mother gets here.”
I let her go. I’d made progress. She’d agreed to an affair. I could work with that. I had my way in.
