Tempting the New Boss(14)
He watched her, as if waiting for her to continue the discussion, or conclude it. Now might be the best time to set down some ground rules.
“Fine, Mr. Talbot, I’m willing to disregard your irregular, well actually illegal, suggestion.”
“It’s still hard for me to believe that’s illegal,” he pointed out.
“Well, it is.”
He shrugged. “I guess you’d know.”
“But it will continue to make things awkward for me if you refer to it again.”
“You’re the one who keeps talking about it.”
“Because I want to make sure you understand,” she snapped.
“Fine. I got it. Just so I know, though, if you weren’t my employee, would you have sex with me?”
“No,” she said automatically, not sure it was true, but really, really sure she shouldn’t encourage that line of thought.
“Because you’re not biologically attracted to me?”
If she didn’t know better, she would swear there wasn’t an ounce of ego, or rancor for that matter, in his question.
Who was this guy?
There hadn’t been any personal details in the bios she’d read—other than the interesting fact that his father had been an anonymous sperm donor—but she was suddenly unbearably, and unwisely, curious.
He seemed remarkably clueless.
And, what with that Byronic thing going on, just a little bit adorable as a result. Which was just so wrong.
In retrospect, Mason was sorry he’d brought the whole thing up. But he had, and Camilla seemed to be having quite an adverse reaction to the whole subject. And they had been getting along so nicely. He wished he’d thought to mention this possibility to Marcia. She would have warned him off the whole idea.
He hadn’t realized how long it had been since he had sex until he finally looked at the suit or rather beyond the suit, as she insisted on making conversation and was so helpful at the meeting. And then those pearls. Something about the sheen against her pale skin made him want to shove himself inside her, deep, deep inside, and feel the silk of her thighs against his palms, bury his face in her neck, both of them shiny with sweat as they moved against each other.
His breath came faster.
Most people he saw through a sort of film, and he didn’t care to peel it back. But from the beginning he saw Camilla. And then once on the plane and sitting across from her, completely alone except for the out of sight pilots, the thought just came to him. He could take her shiny blond hair down from the knot she had it in and run his fingers through the mass. He could—
He stopped. Apparently, he couldn’t.
He had a great respect for biology, once it kicked in, and he knew what he was feeling was a powerful attraction. However, she didn’t appear to be feeling the same. A damn shame. With her smiles and the easy flow of the conversation, he had thought she might. Just to be sure, though, he had asked her outright.
“You’re asking if I’m attracted to you?” she responded.
“Yes.” Since she had gone to Harvard, he wouldn’t have thought she was slow, but she did seem to be repeating his questions back to him quite a bit.
“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but this awkwardness in your social skills, does it extend to sexual matters?”
“Quite possibly. I don’t consult Marcia on the specifics of that.”
“Thank the Lord for small favors,” she muttered. “Okay, then I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you’re not continuing this conversation and asking me whether I’m attracted to you because you’re getting some kind of perverted thrill out of keeping the sex talk going.”
“I don’t feel the slightest bit thrilled by the fact you won’t have sex with me.”
“And I’m going to take it at face value that you honestly don’t know that asking me whether I’m attracted to you is inappropriate, like asking me to have sex was.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
“But the blue eyes thing, in the limo, that was okay? You didn’t freak out at that.”
“Not okay exactly, but more like harmless.”
There seemed to be an awful lot of rules around this whole thing. “I guess you really are going to have to teach me about small talk.”
“Small talk, not sex talk. Dial 1-900-whatever for that.”
No clue as to what she meant by the numerical reference, he said, “Well, is there anything I can ask you?”
“You can ask me about my credentials. Or about the job. And we can work on getting you to feel more relaxed in social settings and at big meetings.”
“I meant about having sex together.”