by Kadie Scott
While Marnie, the quantitative analyst on the account, was going over the diagnostic findings she’d been tasked with, Drew had a stern internal dialogue with his dick about what was best.
“What was best” meant not continuing to taunt Cassie with those teasing phrases she just couldn’t not touch. He loved being able to get a rise out of her every time.
Fuck. He was doing it in his head now, even when she couldn’t even appreciate the effort.
The problem was, getting a rise out of her was no longer entirely about getting his job done. Instead, he’d started conjuring all sorts of fantasies of her calling his name in that sometimes prim, sometimes sassy, way of hers, while he did very not prim and entirely sassy things to her body.
If that kiss last night, followed by the heavy-breathing, sexually-frustrated staring contest in her cube a few minutes ago, were anything to go by, his efforts to both befriend her and keep her at a distance had been wasted.
He really should have let someone else handle the undercover part of this op.
“Okay, Cassie and Drew, what about you?”
Cassie took the lead. “Our predictive analysis aligns with what Marnie is seeing. Debuke should be focusing their efforts on increased social media in an effort to reach new customers, particularly millennials.”
He sighed. So much for his input.
“You don’t agree, Drew?” Kevin asked.
Drew pulled his head out of his ass and glanced at Kevin, then at Cassie whose expression clearly screamed, Don’t you fucking dare. Or whatever goofy alternative swear word version of that she’d come up with.
Weighing his options, Drew went for honesty, but only because of the potential downstream impact with his investigation. He wasn’t getting anywhere very fast. Maybe pissing Cassie off would make her slip up so he could end this damn op.
“My analysis produced slightly different results. Rather than focusing on social media, I believe if Debuke focuses on their current customer base—educating, reinforcing, and selling to them—their sales will be better impacted.”
Halfway through his comments, Cassie was shaking her head no, lips white with anger. “My analysis shows their current customer base has been tapped. There’s no cheese down that hole.”
“I disagree.”
“You disagree, or the data disagrees?” she shot back.
Damn she was cute when she was like this. His dick agreed. “Both.”
She glared. He returned her gaze calmly.
“Enough,” Kevin calmly reinserted himself into the discussion. He rose from his seat and nailed them with an expectant stare. “You two need to get on the same page before the presentation to the client on Monday. I want a solid recommendation you both agree on by Thursday. Got it?”
“Fine,” Cassie huffed.
Drew nodded. “Yes, sir.”
She rolled her eyes. “Suck up,” she muttered under her breath for Drew’s ears only.
They were the last two people out of the conference room. Drew went to follow the others back to his desk, but stopped when Cassie grabbed his arm, stopping him in the hallway.
“We need to talk.”
He didn’t reply, merely waited for her to start.
“Don’t you ever—” She cut herself off and glanced around the office. No one was paying them any attention, but she still gave a frantic look around before dragging him across the floor and around the corner where she opened a door marked as the server room, hauling him inside by the arm, and closing the door behind them.
Racks and racks of Data Minds’ proprietary servers hummed as they did the extraordinary work for the company. The room wasn’t as big as it could’ve been as Data Minds did a good deal of their work in the cloud, but these machines were where most of his and Cassie’s work was housed.
She visibly shivered as the colder temperature in the room hit them both. He couldn’t miss how her nipples peaked against her shirt in response to the chill. His mental image of lifting her shirt to suck those hard peaks into his mouth disappeared as she rounded on him.
“Don’t you ever undermine my analysis in front of anyone again. We agreed—”
He stepped closer, refusing to back down. “No. You dictated and assumed I agreed.”
She plonked her hands on her hips, angling her face to look up at him. “But you apologized.”
“For stepping on your toes. Not for being wrong.”
Her lips flattened. “Why didn’t you argue more if you felt so strongly about it?”
“I believe your words were, ‘Knock it off, Kerrigan. My recommendations are what we’re going with.’”
“And then you threw it in my face in front of our boss?”
Damn she was amazing when she got all worked up. The deep V of her shirt showed her breasts rising and falling with each agitated breath.
Suddenly the space felt way too intimate, closing in on him. The hum of the machines all around them provided a strange sense of being worlds away from the office that lurked just on the other side of the door. Her jasmine scent curled around him, and the distance between them needed to be increased. Immediately.
He turned away, intending to leave before he did something ill advised.
“I’m not finished,” she snapped.
Her words had him swinging back around. “What?”
She stalked toward him, stealing his breath with every step closer. When they were toe to toe, she glared at him, opening and closing her mouth a couple of times like she wanted to tell him off, but couldn’t find the right words.
“This can’t go on,” she finally muttered.
Then, in a move that stunned the hell out of him, Cassie stepped into him, tugged his head down, and proceeded to press those lush, fantasy-inducing lips against his. He didn’t respond, shock holding him immobile while she teased his mouth with hers and pressed the soft curves of her body along the harder planes of his.
She made a distressed little sound and pulled back, doubt and disappointment warring in her eyes and a blush creeping into her cheeks. “Sorry. I thought after last night… I mean, it’s pretty obvious what I thought, but I was wrong.” She gave a hysterical giggle. “Obviously.”
She stepped away from him, which was unacceptable. Drew’s shock finally wore off, and the need to take that look out of her eyes while at the same time showing her how not-wrong she’d been thundered through him.
He grabbed her around the waist, dragging her back against his body. “You weren’t wrong,” he practically growled, before he lowered his head and claimed her with a kiss of his own.
Without a single further thought about rules or missions, Drew put everything he had into the kiss, letting sensation take over, need dictating his actions. Before he knew it, he had her pinned against the door while he savored the taste of her with each slide of their tongues.
She speared her fingers through his hair, holding him to her, and sucked his tongue into her mouth, and he just about lost it. Drew shoved a thigh between hers and groaned as she rubbed herself against him in a way that left no doubt as to what she needed. Right then.
He swept a hand up her thigh, over the dip of her tiny waist, brushed her rib cage, and settled right under her breast, teasing the soft flesh there through her clothing, swallowing each moan she elicited. Her heart hammered against his palm in a matching cadence to his own.
Finally, he swept his thumb over the puckered nipple straining for his touch through her bra and top. She shuddered and a sexy moan escaped her that went straight to his already straining dick.
Suddenly, one of the machines beside them started beeping. The harsh sound jerked Drew out his sexual haze, and as the shock unfuzzed his mind, he remembered all the people sitting on the other side of the door he had Cassie pinned up against.
Drew pulled back, slipping his leg from between her thighs. He dropped his forehead to hers as he waited for his breathing to return to normal and the world to stop spinning backward.
“We can�
�t,” he said. Could she hear the regret in his voice?
“We shouldn’t,” she agreed.
Drew pushed away from her and ran his hands through his hair. She watched him with wide, wary eyes, her lips still pink and wet from his kisses, her pale hair tumbling about her shoulders. A vague memory of tugging the pencils out and wrapping her hair around his fist to gain better access to her mouth kicked him in the gut like a mule.
“We work together,” he said. And I’m investigating you.
She nodded. “I don’t even trust you.”
Ouch. Wait. Why didn’t she? Yeah, he’d pushed a couple buttons, but for the most part he thought they worked well together. Why be suspicious, unless she’d put two-and-two together and realized that code she found earlier today was his?
Cassie bent over to retrieve one of the pencils lying on the floor, and he held back a groan as the deep V of her shirt gave him a clear view of her cleavage. “I’m glad we’re on the same page,” she said as she came back up.
She lifted her hands to gather her hair, but the action lifted her breasts and pushed them against the soft material covering them. Her nipples were still hard, pressing out, calling for his hands, his mouth.
Drew forced his gaze away.
“Ready to go get work done?” she asked. Despite her brusque manner, she wouldn’t meet his gaze and her cheeks remained rosy.
Except for a raging hard-on—little brain had zero interest in applying any breaks to this freight train. He ignored little brain. “Yes.”
She gave a brisk nod, turned, and pulled the door open. Then she angled back toward him. “Try to appear contrite and browbeaten like I’ve just been drilling you.” She clapped a hand over her mouth as the implications set in. “Mother trucker. Strike that last comment.”
Drew closed his eyes. “Consider it stricken from the record.” Speaking of records, he definitely wouldn’t be reporting this encounter to the FBI.
“Okay, let’s go.”
He followed her out the door, doing his level best to appear contrite, like she’d asked, and to keep his eyes off her backside, despite knowing exactly how firm and round it felt cupped in his hands.
Eyes up, Kerrigan.
He jerked his gaze forward. He could do this. He could stop thinking about Cassie in any way other than that of a suspect.
Good luck with that, his dick taunted.
Chapter Seven
Being a good girl sucked.
Cassie had never, ever, thought she’d consider that statement to be true, but when a girl just wanted to hear one slightly off-color comment or be on the receiving end of one self-contained but utterly steamy look, despite the unspoken rules she herself had signed up for…something had to give.
She’d considered ignoring her instincts and kissing him again in hopes of pulling a reaction from Drew, who appeared to be perfectly content with their current “professional only” system. Another reason to ignore her urges was the fact that she’d found more irregularities in their systems recently. Footprints that pointed to someone trying to follow Data Minds’ work. Did they have a corporate mole?
She didn’t want to believe it, but she’d started to keep a record of her findings, to see if a pattern emerged. Could be as simple as bad code, though what she’d stumbled on appeared slicker than that. At the same time, she’d paid more attention to her coworkers during office hours.
She couldn’t bring herself to point the finger at Drew. He wasn’t the only new employee in the office, after all, even if he was the newest. Then again, every so often, questions he asked—or cross-examined her with, more like—rang with an ulterior motive. Of course, that could be her overactive imagination, something she’d never credited herself with before. Seeing suspicious signs that weren’t there was not her usual bag of weird.
In the meantime, if she didn’t do something about her growing need to kiss the man soon—a phenomena that had to do with his mind as much as his body—she might spontaneously combust in her cube. That would just be messy.
“Cassandra.” Her mother’s exasperated tones pulled her out of her head. “That’s the third time I’ve called your name. Where’s your head today?”
She glanced around her parents’ large, airy kitchen to find her mother staring at her. She’d come home for the weekend, needing to escape from her apartment that felt like it wanted to close in on her. She cleared her throat. “Sorry, just trying to solve a work problem.” She stood up from where she’d been seated on one of the island stools, lounging around in her pajamas. “Can I help?”
Her mother pointed to a carton of eggs and a large bowl. Cassie took the hint, washed up, and got to work breaking and scrambling enough for a small battalion.
Two of her brothers, along with their families, were coming over soon for brunch. Growing up with four siblings had meant she was used to a rowdy household, but these days, between spouses and kids, their family of seven was now a family of seventeen with kiddos ranging in age from ten years to two months.
50 percent madhouse, 50 percent funhouse, 100 percent guaranteed to drive her totally and certifiably out of her mind. And she loved it.
Best part…Cassie didn’t have a family of her own to watch after, which meant she got to be “Cool Aunt Cassie” and spend most of her time playing with the kids. Worst part…Cassie didn’t have a family of her own, which meant she got hounded about her love life, and entertaining the munchkins was taken for granted.
“If I didn’t know better, I would suspect you’re pining over someone.”
Cassie took a leaf out of Drew’s notebook and neither looked up, nor responded. Her father’s Sunday paper rustled as he lowered it to listen. Cassie beat the eggs with fervent vigor, refusing to lift her eyes. Heat from an uncontrollable blush crept up her chest and neck into her face.
“Is Mom right? Do you have a fella?” he asked.
Cassie rolled her eyes at the old-fashioned term. What she had was a headache.
“Who is he, Cassandra?” her mother asked. “Not a client, I hope.”
“No, not a client.” Much worse than that.
After a minute, her dad shook his head, then took his paper and left the room. After all these years, he could sense a mother-daughter clash coming, and tended to make himself scarce.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Cassie couldn’t pretend to misunderstand. At the same time, her mom had asked. Not prodded. Not demanded. She’d asked. Maybe, for once, Cassie might receive some sympathy, or heaven forbid, some advice.
From her mother. The world had officially flipped upside down.
She worried at her lower lip as she debated opening up. Sympathy was not her mother’s strong suit, and her advice usually didn’t align with Cassie’s needs.
Maybe if she kept things general, rather than specific. “There’s a guy at work—”
Immediately her mother tsked. “Workplace romances are never a smart idea. What if it doesn’t end well, Cassandra?”
Cassie ground her teeth. She couldn’t even get through one sentence. “Which is why we haven’t pursued it.”
“Good.”
That was it? The extent of all the motherly love, sympathy, and advice? Susan Howard might be a top-notch, award-winning psychologist, but she had a thing or ten to learn about helping her family.
“But you want to pursue it?”
Cassie glanced up from the stove. “I don’t know.” How did you tell your uptight mother in not-so-many-words that a man turned you into a pre-orgasmic puddle of goo with every awkward, geeky word he uttered?
“Are you thinking about John?”
Her slap-brain boyfriend in college who happened to take her thesis idea and propose it as his own before she had a chance? “That’s part of it. I worked hard to get where I am, and this guy does the same type of work as I do.”
“Which means you work closely together all day?”
“Yes.”
“If you think he’d take credit for y
our work, I’m surprised you’re even considering an affair.”
Cassie’d already pondered that issue long and hard for weeks. “No,” she said slowly. “If anything, he thinks he’s way too smart to have to steal someone else’s work.” Their “discussions” were becoming the stuff of legend in the office.
She hadn’t considered it in those terms, but now the words were out, they rang true. No way would Drew sabotage her for his own ends. He’d get where he was going on his own merit.
“Even so, is one of you having to walk away from your job if things don’t work out worth the risk? You know working together closely like you say you do will be awkward at best and a battleground at worst if the relationship ends. Especially if it ends badly.”
“I know, mother.” Cassie blew a strand of hair out of her eyes, her hands occupied with the eggs. “I was sort of hoping you’d have a different answer,” she muttered.
“Looking for a different answer when you already know it is just wishful thinking, Cassandra.” Her mother took the pancake-piled plate to the table and set it down. “I expect more from you.”
“I’m well aware of your expectations.”
Her mother pinned her with “the look,” her lips flat. “You wanted my advice, and I gave it. I think you know what I’d do, were I you,” she said.
Walk away and turn off the emotions like an automaton. Smart, sensible, logical—Cassie once believed she was exactly like her mother in that regard. When John had hijacked her thesis idea, she’d been mad as hell and furious with herself that she’d trusted him, but she hadn’t been all that upset about their relationship ending.
Who knew an awkward-as-all-get-out know-it-all could have this kind of effect on her?
The question was, what, if anything, did she do about it? Even after her “heart-to-heart” with her mom, she still wasn’t sure.
