“First, I’m not your employee. I’m more like an independent contractor.”
He smiled despite himself. “That’s true. You’re not on the payroll.”
“You said it yourself. I have skills you value. Think of me as a very expensive hairstylist. Or electrician or something.”
He couldn’t help smiling. “And second?”
“Second is don’t stop rubbing my feet.” He unclenched his fists, grabbed the foot that was pressing on his dick—somehow, removing it didn’t provide any relief—and began kneading it.
“Third…oh, that feels amazing.” She let her head loll back. She looked so fucking good when she did that, lost herself in a sensation—and she lost herself so easily. She was good at pleasure, this one, and just watching her made him hot.
“Third,” he prompted gruffly.
Lifting her head, she was suddenly all business. “Third. You don’t do relationships. But we aren’t in one.”
“So what is this then?” He nodded at the space between them, her legs draped over him.
“This,” she said emphatically, “is a no-strings-attached…” She trailed off.
“See, that’s the problem. The next word is relationship.”
“Entanglement,” she pronounced.
“That doesn’t sound any better,” he said, though he asked himself why he was arguing with her. If he wasn’t mistaken, here was a woman he was attracted to like no other making a case that they should keep sleeping together. Anyone with half a brain would worry about the details later.
“It does sound better,” she insisted. “Because it can be untangled. And it should be—when we leave for Muskoka. You were right about that. We have to be 100 percent on our games with Wexler. No distractions. So let’s get it out of our systems now. It’s Sunday now. So that’s four nights.”
“Three,” he countered. “I have a work thing on Tuesday night.” And though he’d much rather spend Tuesday night in bed with Cassie, the goddamned Winter Enterprises Christmas party wasn’t going to be much of a party without him.
“Three then.”
He could feel himself starting to weaken, but he remained silent.
“Look, Jack, I get it. You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll take my money, you take Wexler’s company, and we part ways after a job well done—no hard feelings.” He must have looked skeptical because she pulled her feet off his lap. “Fifty grand—it’s not that I don’t appreciate it, and it will make life a lot easier in the short run. But it’s not going to change anything, not fundamentally. I’ll still have to work and inch my way through school. I don’t do relationships either, see? They never feel like they’re worth it, and I don’t have the time.”
“That’s exactly it,” he said. Maybe she did understand. “Relationships just get in the way of what’s important.”
“Which is what?” she asked, tilting her head in that cute way she did when she was trying to size up a situation.
“The company. I know it sounds cold, but it’s how I feel. I’ve been utterly focused on the company from day one. It’s required constant vigilance…and women, they just—” He cut himself off. There was no need to be cruel and finish the sentence with the truth, which was that women just got in the way, demanding time and affection and stuff he wasn’t prepared to provide. It was probably his father’s fault, but he wasn’t interested in psychoanalyzing himself. He was who he was.
“They just get in the way,” Cassie finished for him, suddenly looking very small curled into the corner of the sofa in the almost-dark office.
Before he could try to soften what he’d said, she continued. “Okay, so for you it’s the company, for me it’s school. I get it. We’re on the same page. This isn’t a relationship.”
“Then why bother at all?” Because we can’t keep our goddamned hands off each other seemed like the obvious answer, but he wanted to see what she would say.
“I’m not going to lie. I haven’t had a ton of sex in my life. It just never seemed…compelling enough to go out of my way for.” She laced and unlaced her fingers in her lap. “But now—and don’t let your ego go bananas here—I get it. With you, I suddenly get it.”
His ego went bananas. So did his dick.
Just being around her made him vibrate with lust. What the hell was he doing? And now she was suggesting that they spend three days doing just that with no strings attached. If he couldn’t recognize when he’d won the fucking lottery, he didn’t deserve to run the company he prized so highly.