I tried to protest by grumbling, “This is stupid—”
But I was cut off by him hitting start on the screen, and my drive for wanting to do it faster and better than him kicked in. I couldn’t bear to be worse than he was or to prove him right.
I read through the coding, trying to find patterns as his fingers went to the base of my neck. He swiped away my hair and then inhaled me.
“You’re corrupting me, dollface. I tried to avoid you for days, and then I switched accommodations because I saw you look at another man. And I don’t know if I can concentrate with the smell of you in every corner of this cabin.”
I felt the air being sucked in by him, felt his hand sliding around to the front of my throat, and then his fingers wrapped around my neck. I shifted on him as his cock grew against my ass.
“You wearing panties under that skirt?”
“Shut up,” I ground out as I tried to maintain my focus.
But he squeezed my windpipe as his dick twitched. My body didn’t belong to me when I was this close to him, and my legs parted a bit as I arched, wanting to feel him, rewarding his ridiculous efforts to distract me.
He hummed as if he approved of my body shifting on him and then whispered, “No, baby. I’m shutting you up.” He cut off all my oxygen as his other hand flowed over the curves of my body, taking time to trace the underside of my breasts and then skim over my stomach before kneading one thigh. “You keep pushing like you want me to break you. Don’t you know I make the world squirm for a living, that I enjoy it?”
His dark confession heated my skin, making me wetter. I rolled into him and dropped my head back onto his shoulder to give him better access to choke me out, to nip at my neck, to consume me.
He lightened his hold. “Breathe, Izzy.”
I gasped for the air he gave me and let him push my panties to the side. The codes all blurred together, but I wanted into the system about as much as I wanted that orgasm.
The seconds ticked by. His fingers picked up speed, and I was about to surrender when it all came together, when the numbers finally stood out, and I bypassed what we hoped no one could.
“Fuck,” we both said at the same time, though for different reasons.
I gave into the orgasm, and it blinded me, my pussy clenching around him like I needed him there for eternity. He probably swore because I’d decoded and broken into what he couldn’t.
He continued the slew of curses and then mumbled, “You’re better than I thought. You’re better than anyone, Izzy, and that’s a damn problem.”
I shook my head as I leaned back into him and let his suited arms encircle my waist. It was a firm reminder that I was the mess while he was all buttoned up—still not the least bit unraveled. “This can’t keep happening. I don’t even like you, and it’s a risk to my job. I’ve worked to prove I belong on this team.”
He licked at my neck and murmured, “No one’s said you haven’t.”
“But if they think I’m screwing you, then they’ll question it, and I won’t be a part of—”
“The team,” he sighed, like he finally understood me, or at least knew what my anxieties were, because he then asked, “Did you always want to be a part of something?”
“I grew up in a household full of kids. I was the youngest. I needed them to see me, even if it . . .” I’d never meant to blurt that out to him. Maybe it was the moment or the fact that I’d done something that he couldn’t, and I felt like I finally had enough of his respect to share something personal.
“Your family would see you either way. Everyone sees you, even when you’re not paying attention.”
I sat up and glanced back at him. “What do you mean?”
Cade’s eyes were melted chocolate, and his look suddenly felt approachable. Maybe in another world, it would have been. I swear we could have been friends had we met at a different time, in another life.
Here, we couldn’t.
11
Cade
Unzipping my suit trousers and fucking my employee in the middle of a work retreat would have been easier than what I was doing with Izzy.
I was giving her a reason to trust me, a reason to like me, and a reason to go down a rabbit hole with me that she couldn’t come back from.
It was selfish. I always had a target on my back. I was in the mob even if I was a ‘businessman,’ and I was no good at any sort of relationship. I didn’t enjoy making people feel wanted or important. I enjoyed dismantling them. Consuming all the information about them and then holding the power of their lives in my hands. To see them squirm was a victory for me and my family every time.
So I didn’t know why my damn heart beat faster with her in the room and why I wanted to hear everything about her life now. Sure, she was the hottest fuck I’d had in a long time but pushing her past the facade she put up for everyone was becoming something I couldn’t stop myself from doing. It was also unavoidable with her sitting on my dick looking at me with those big hazel eyes that held flecks of gold, like she’d captured the sun and dimmed its shine just enough for us to be able to study them.
“I can’t look away from you, haven’t been able to since the moment I met you.”
“Ha-ha.” She took my confession as a joke, but I wasn’t kidding. “Is that why you moved me to Stonewood Enterprises?” She pursed her lips and rearranged her clothing before scooting off my lap to sit on the table.
“I moved your ass because you were poking around in top secret, confidential records.”
“Well, that worked out well. Still breaking into systems, just different ones.” She combed a hand through her silky hair.
“That and kissing your boss now, huh?” I looked at her lips and knew I wanted another taste of them as she licked them.
“Don’t be an ass.” She moved to get up, but I didn’t let her. I took her face in my hands and brought her mouth down onto mine. I tasted her, ravaged her, devoured her exactly the way I wanted to. She somehow always tasted sweet, but with a hint of candy canes. Her lush lips moved skillfully with mine as the kiss grew more and more heated, and then she moaned before ripping herself away.
I let her go, my mind swirling with confusion. She wasn’t something I could decode, but the way I would rather focus on her than my work was unheard of for me.
She hopped off the table and hurriedly grabbed her glass of water, then paced out of the room and re-entered two minutes later in a big T-shirt that had As if written across it with the blonde Clueless girl.
She didn’t stop moving back and forth in front of me, never taking a sip of the water still in her hand as she raced through her own thoughts. “Don’t come near me again on this retreat. We work and then we go our separate ways. This cannot happen.”
I stretched before getting up and chuckled, taking a step toward her.
Holding the water between us, she took a quick step back. “I’m not kidding, Cade. This is a bad idea. You know it is. What if we get caught? Then what? We tell the president, ‘It’s fine, we got your election all set. No one is going to hack the voting systems, even though we were fucking behind closed doors instead of working on it.’” She winced like it killed her to say it. “That sounds so unprofessional.”