by Angel Payne
“Need some help?”
Despite yanking the cord from my mouth, I gritted my reply. “I’m fine.”
“Indeed you are. But there’s nothing wrong with accepting assistance.”
“I’m. Fine.”
His terse growl told me there’d be only one victor here and the name on that medal wasn’t Claire. I raised my hand and slid it against his, thinking if the earth ever had a desire to open up and swallow me whole, now would be a perfect time.
Chapter Three
Killian
Damn.
The woman wasn’t just gorgeous. She was nervous. As in truly nervous.
The revelation struck me the instant her fingers touched my palm, trembling and a little chilly. For a moment, I didn’t know how to react, either.
When was the last time I’d really put a woman on edge?
Out of necessity, my life was lived behind giant doors, at the top of lock-key elevators. The females who made it past those barricades were sure as storm troopers in every step they’d taken to arrive. If they developed “nerves” it was an act, usually in thin disguise, to appeal to my “protective masculine” side. Within seconds, I’d have thighs brushing my crotch, fingers trailing my chest, and any shred of interest deflated from my cock. After that, beneath my own veneer of chivalry, I’d walk them back to the town car, the elevator, the stairs, the lobby, or any other alternative to permanently sideline their game. I didn’t have the time or patience to learn playbooks by anyone’s rules but mine, especially if pretense was involved. Life had already dealt me a shit-ton of overtime where that offense was concerned.
As for the need left behind by those females? Those physical drives were easily handled with one or two phone calls. A number of the city’s most stunning bachelorettes, all requiring discretion for varying reasons, were only too happy to make the service entrance of their building, followed by their naked and willing bodies, available for my breach.
In the end, it worked out for the best. Being crowned “The Enigma of Magnificent Mile” was, after all, an honor of sorts. I’d managed to make the title work for me on a number of levels.
But I didn’t want to make it work right now. There was a heavy ache in my chest, easily recognized as a physical plea to let go, to bask in how I did feel…just once.
With a woman you just met, dumbass? A woman who looks at public reputation in numbers and statistics instead of your hard work and life?
She stood upright again—in a manner of speaking. The stability lasted for two seconds before she tottered again, frantically seizing me for purchase. “Whoa there, San Diego.” I reached and braced both hands around her waist in an equal knee-jerk reaction—but as soon as I damned myself for it and tried to yank away, she squeezed back, spreading her slender fingers above my elbows.
“Oh.” Her touch stretched across the bottoms of my biceps. “Oh, my.”
There had to be a slick comeback to that, somewhere in my head. I was a well-educated sonofabitch. Why was my mind suddenly a wasteland?
The only answer I received was a strange reminiscence from childhood. I gazed at my seven year-old hands wrapped around a duckling during the Triton Academy’s science fair. Though the creature struggled wildly against me, I crooned frantic platitudes, promising I’d be good to it, no matter what Trey and Lance had said about me.
Christ. I was losing it. I’d just capped the mental pen of writing her off as an employee—a temporary one, at that—yet I never wanted her touch to end. Her fingers were long and tentative, with nails filed into graceful ovals and groomed in a striking shade of navy blue that had a hint of sparkle to it.
As soon as she noticed me gawking at her fingernails, she curled them under. Not that I complained. The little torque she gave my shirt with the move was insanely arousing. My mind instantly filled with a fantasy, in which I guided her fingers forward and commanded her to remove the shirt. I wondered what those little nails would feel like against my bare chest, scraping my nipples, following the trail of hair down the middle of my torso…
“I—errr—managed a dash to the salon on the way to the airport,” she explained. “I can’t do the French manicure thing but figured Andrea wouldn’t fault me for matching my shade with the SGC logo. I’ll change it if you insist.”
“I insist that you don’t. I’m impressed by your originality.”
Dammit. Why did that sound as smooth as the platitudes to the baby duck? Because you complimented her fucking fingernails, Kil. Smooth, man.
Not smooth.
Her fingernails? Seriously?
I should have just told her something nice about the stilts. Admiring a woman’s shoes, if done right, was a more subtle way of commenting on how gorgeous her legs were. And fuck, Claire Montgomery had beautiful legs.
She reacted with a subtle blush and a tiny, captivating tilt of her lips. I was stupidly enraptured by the expression. While her combination of shy and saucy caught my dick’s attention once more, my body wasn’t done responding there. The weight on my chest suddenly lifted. My gut performed a back spring that I hadn’t experienced since high school.
Christ.
I should’ve been scared. I needed to wish she’d do something to give up her jig, to show me her sham and let me return to my own, feigning the courtier, keeping everything distant, respectful, and safe. But God help me, I didn’t want to be respectful right now. I wanted to flatten her on this conference table, spread her wide, and keep her that way until her thighs gripped my head, her sex trembled under my mouth, and her screams filled the air.
“Oh, yeah. That’s me. The original one.”
Her mumble pulled my attention back to her face. More specifically, the grimace putting creases into it. She—or someone—had assigned meaning to the words that added disturbed depths to her eyes. I scowled. Those shadows weren’t acceptable. They didn’t belong in the beauty of her features. Frankly, they pissed me off.
But her gaze still amazed me. Aside from the matchless color of her irises, like honey crossed with amber, she retained the same soft curiosity that had arrested me during this afternoon’s meeting. Even now, despite distress, she maintained the open wonder that had driven me to shun the CEO’s chair in order to sit next to her during Andrea’s presentation. Those eyes made me think time had reverted instead of advanced, and soon I’d be simply a snail-wrangling boy in the garden once more, in those days before life took such a complicated swerve.
I wasn’t indulging artlessness. Given what she did for a living, the woman wasn’t an innocent. But for some reason, the garbage of PR didn’t appear to stick to her. To get damn poetic about it, she seemed to float above it.
She fascinated the hell out of me.
I had to learn more about her.
That wasn’t a crime, was it?
And learning more about her didn’t mean she had to learn more about me. For at least the next couple of months, I was technically her boss.
“Well, they say originality is the purest form of sincerity.” I attempted to tack on a charming smile. But real charm was definitely harder than the faked shit. Hell of a time for life to inflict that lesson.
“They say that, huh? They who?”
I shrugged. Christ. Me, shrugging like I had no more clues about life than Trey. “The ‘theys’ who matter.”
“Aren’t you a ‘they’ who matters?”
That was my cue to strut like a rooster who’d fucked half the hens. Instead, discomfited spiders swarmed my chest. Hell. I wanted to just tell her the truth. What would it feel like to do that? To expose myself to just one person on this earth besides Trey and Lance, who didn’t count because my secret was hidden in the same closet of disgrace as theirs?
No. Not now. Not ever.
“‘Mattering’ is all in the way you look at things, Miss Montgomery.”
There was her cute lip-tilting thing again. She went for the other side of her mouth this time. “And how do you look at things, Mr. Stone?”
; “I’m sure you know most of the answer to that already.”
“Oh?”
“A search history on your laptop will return my name in a hundred ways, won’t it?”
“We both know the Internet reveals only tips of the icebergs.” She took a deep breath, as if debating whether to let her next words have life. “And I have a feeling your iceberg is really fascinating.”
Before I could stop myself, I grinned. Yes, she’d just compared me to an iceberg. She’d also called me fascinating, and been genuinely apprehensive about the flirt. The comprehension shot adrenalin through me, along with a rush of attraction best crammed down and fast forgotten. Fuck. Masochism was not my thing.
“All right, tell me this.” I deliberately squared my shoulders, a tactic I usually saved for meetings when I needed to appear taller than my six-foot-three. “If you were after the next inch of my iceberg, where would you look?”
My intention? To throw her off-guard again. I never anticipated my plan ricocheting on me, that she’d topple my focus with her own determined stance, both hands on her hips. The pose was a perfect showcase for her high, taut breasts, the supple curves leading to those incredible legs…the imagination of what their juncture looked like, tasted like…
I clenched back a groan. Masochism was worse the second time around.
“The next inch, huh?” she returned. As if I needed that phraseology at the moment. “Hmm. From what I know of you right now…probably your office.”
I arched both brows. “The ‘personality through osmosis’ approach?”
“More like simply taking a tour of someone’s home. And since I already know you’re here more than anyplace else…”
I chuckled. “Guilty as charged.”
She returned a strange little frown to that, stepping back with a fresh flush. “Or maybe I’d better pack up and call it a night.”
A strange surge of panic pounded me. Reacting at once, I grabbed her hand. “Without your full dose of osmosis from the inner sanctum?”
Hell. From masochist to idiot in less than a minute. While there was nothing to hide behind the doors to my CEO suite—my secrets were buried in much better places—I simply had a firm rule about mixing business with pleasure. Taking Claire Montgomery’s hand was a blur of those lines, a gray scale I pushed wider by the minute, and seriously needed to correct.
What the fuck was she doing to me? Why did she tempt me to break so many rules? Good rules. Guidelines that existed for damn important reasons, like keystones in the archway of SGC’s success. She was the one thinking straight around here, and what did I do to reward her?
Drag her farther down the hall to my office, of course.
But maybe a visit to the hub of Stone Global was the perfect solution for my ass-fool wanderlust. And to satisfy her curiosity, as well—so it would stop taunting me from her mesmerizing gold eyes.
“You prepared for the resplendence, San Diego?”
“As I’ll ever be, Chicago.”
She wasn’t going to let me catch a break. The sarcastic slide to her words begged for a response—something like whirling on her, pinning her to the wall, and stripping the tone from her mouth with my tongue.
Gray scale. Corrected. Now.
I stopped at my door. The patter of her heels halted in a hurry, becoming another erotic taunt as I remembered what those shoes did for her legs.
“After you.” I swept an arm out, palm up, while opening the door. She clattered by me with an inquisitive smile—
That dropped into a gape.
“Okay, wow.”
I’d certainly gotten that reaction before. But none disappointed me as much. Her blurred lines had no doubt begun a refocus. From this point on, she’d see me through the filter of the technical wonderland office, the sparkling cityscape view, and the desk, once Dad’s, that rivaled Odin’s throne. I would be all these things to her, never again a simple guy to trade snarky lines with or to feel up through my shirt just because she liked my muscles.
Back to nothing but the tip of the iceberg.
“I hope that’s a good wow and not a bad wow.” I knew the answer already but threw it out as a comfortable conversation filler.
“A good one.” She bypassed the wall full of video monitors, as well as the kitchenette and designer marble meeting table, in favor of the pictures mounted on the opposite wall. One photo in particular drew her in. “Is this you and Tippi Hedren?”
I walked over, letting her see my surprise at the observation. There were a number of photos on the wall including a shot with the president himself, but she’d zeroed in on this one. “That was a special night for me,” I admitted.
“No shit.” The sarcasm was gone. In its place was genuine awe.
“You’re a Hitchcock fan?”
“No.” She blushed again. “Animal geek. My dad had a thing for the weird cable channels, like Discovery and National Geographic. Watching the specials with him…” A wistful expression took over her face. “Well, those are good memories. He indulged my fascination for everything adventurous, especially the wildcats. Lions, tigers, panthers…such beautiful creatures. What Hedren’s done at her Shambala Reserve is so amazing.”
I indulged a shit-eating smirk. “That picture was taken at Shambala.”
“Sonofabitch!” She slammed my shoulder with a slap before, regrettably, her reserve clicked in again. “Sorry. God, I just beat on the client.”
A little furrow marred her brow. Once again, I fought a bizarre impulse to yank her close and kiss it away. This tiny woman, full of such huge life, pushed at every damn boundary I possessed—leaving me helpless for definable action on the matter. I should’ve been seething at the recognition. Instead, I went for mindless humor. “It didn’t hurt. I promise.”
“I don’t imagine it did. You have—”
“I have what?”
The crimson flags in her cheeks widened. “Really great muscles.”
Heat filled my own neck. And other places, too. It felt fucking wonderful. How long had it been since a woman’s words made me hard? Like the answer mattered. I thanked myself for dragging my ass out of bed to practice with the water polo team this morning despite the mess going down with Trey—but royally cursed myself for being so stressed about the crisis that I skipped the extra ten minutes to jack off in my private shower at the gym. “I’m willing to keep things a secret if you are.”
She gave me an adorable sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
“But my silence comes at a price.”
“A price?”
I grabbed her hand. To my pleasure, extending deeper than it probably should, she issued no protest as I walked her across the office and into the anteroom. I’d added the space as a concession to Britta, who’d threatened to quit if she came to work and found me asleep at my desk one more time. It housed another kitchenette, a sofa that could convert into a bed, and full bathroom facilities. It also contained the sole cabinet in my suite that was ever locked, especially when Trey was around.
Taking a cue from English castle architects, I hid the key in plain sight. On the far wall of the office hung a piece of specialized artwork I’d commissioned, featuring the Stone family crest in mixed media. The knight’s helmet at the top was rendered in actual steel. Velvet, satin, and damask comprised the roses and griffin beneath. The griffin’s head protruded from the piece as if it strained to fly free from the banner, with its tongue extended. I grabbed that part of the piece, revealing the creature’s tongue was actually an ornate key.
I took the key to an ottoman next to the sofa. One well-placed twist into a hidden lock, and the ottoman’s lid swiveled back to reveal six bottles of wine inside. Each vintage was housed in its own temperature-controlled tube. Claire’s little gasp of surprise provided another moment to feel like the goddamn king of the world.
“This is my ‘price’?” She chuckled a little. I echoed the sound.
“Do you enjoy wine?”
“I thought this was about your
iceberg, Chicago.”
“Humor me. I’ll even let you pick the poison. Red or white?”
She let the giggle become a full laugh. The sound of it was close to music in its own right, and I reveled in listening to it. In the feeling of knowing I’d inspired it. Damn. After everything that had happened today, I should’ve had the disposition of a rabid grizzly, ready to eat small children and anything else that crossed my path. Instead, I popped the cork on the Italian Barolo she’d picked and strutted my way toward the kitchenette for a couple of glasses. Yes. Strutted.
I poured a little of the wine into a glass and handed it to her for the first taste. She swished and tasted the liquid like an expert. I arched my brows, almost teasing her with my approval.
“Okay, I’ve done this before,” she admitted. “My dad’s in landscape design. In Temecula.”
“Ahhh. The Southern California version of Napa Valley.”
“Points for the geographic trivia, Mr. Stone.”
“Points for the polished sip and swish, Miss Montgomery.”
She settled her glass on the counter with an expression I couldn’t decipher. Shyness? Sadness? Another attack of uncomfortable? “It’s really all I should have.” Rubbing her forearm nervously, she stepped back. “I’m sorry. I know you just opened the bottle. It’s very good—and expensive—”
“Which I don’t give a shit about.”
My glibness didn’t ease her tension. “For all intents and purposes, you’re now my boss.”
“Who wants to buy a drink for his team after a hard day’s work.” I snuck in a smirk while filling her glass all the way. “Can we help it if you’re the sole definition of ‘the team’ right now?”
She laughed before taking a shy sip. “Rah rah.”
“Their loss.” I poured my own glass. “Everyone left before the fun began.”
“And here I was, thinking that was Wooten’s press conference.”
A cloud skidded over my disposition. Wooten’s three-ring-circus of a press conference hit my memory with all its ugly force. “Hypocritical bastard,” I snarled. “He’s got Trey’s balls in one hand, and with the other, he’s likely groping some intern’s ass.”
