“Just a little longer?” she asked huskily as she pulled on my tie, bringing us closer together.
“I can’t. You know I have to get to that meeting.” Grabbing her slender wrist in my hand, I took my tie from her firm grip and sent her a look.
“Of course, the so-called meeting that no one else in the office seems to know about.” Her full lips pouted, and I exhaled slowly at the annoying look.
“You know about it.”
Cecily smacked my arm and huffed. “Only because you told me.”
“That’s not my problem. Besides, it might be a bad thing that I’m the only one. Who knows? You may get your wish, I might be getting fired.”
She smiled wryly and wrapped her arms around my neck before pressing her mouth to mine. “Now, that definitely sounds like a meeting I want to happen,” she murmured against my lips.
“Power-hungry bitch,” I growled, and kissed her hard once more before backing away.
“Man-whore.”
“Hasn’t stopped you.”
Her gaze raked over me as I backed toward the door before snapping up to my face. “No, it hasn’t.”
I grinned and nodded in her direction. “Are you going to leave my office?”
She slid off the desk and walked around to sit in my chair. “I don’t know, maybe I’ll sit in here awhile to get used to what my new office feels like.”
“I haven’t gotten fired yet.” Not bothering to wait, I walked out of my office and left Cecily in there. I looked behind me to watch the door shut as I fixed my tie, a soft smile tugging at my lips as I thought about the girl in there.
There was no bullshit when it came to Cecily and me. I didn’t like relationships, labels, or being tied down to any one girl; and she liked guys who demanded control. It was the complete opposite of who she was, but I wasn’t going to question it. She wasn’t shy about her need to be at the top of everything—including a company—nor was she shy about her willingness to step on any and everyone to get there.
She wanted my job, I’d known that before we started sleeping together, but she couldn’t have it. And despite our current status and her greed-filled eyes, she wasn’t one to sleep her way to the top—we just happened to be a nice distraction for each other at work.
I looked up just in time to stop myself from running into the man standing in the hallway. He hadn’t been moving; he was just standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, one eyebrow raised as he studied me.
“Excuse me,” I said, and moved to walk around him—he moved with me. My eyebrows slanted down, and I looked up at him. Yeah. Up. I was six-two. To have to look up at someone was saying something. “Can I help you?” I asked when I noticed his mirrored movement hadn’t been a mistake; he was still staring down at me with a calculating expression.
The man didn’t move, and he didn’t say anything. With a huff, I gave him a once-over and smirked. My dad owned a boxing gym, meaning I’d grown up around some of the leanest, deadliest fighters around, as well as some of the biggest meat heads. But this fucker was massive. “If you don’t mind, I have somewhere to be. And lay off the steroids, old man.”
When I went to move around him this time, he let me pass; but when I looked over my shoulder, he was turned around and glaring at me with that same expression before he glanced behind him toward my office.
My footsteps faltered and I racked my brain trying to think of any mention of another guy Cecily might be seeing—one who would come looking for her at work—but I came up with nothing. And somehow I knew in the way he was glaring at me again that he wasn’t looking at me like he was ready to fight. He looked like he was frustrated with what he was seeing in me.
Shaking my head as if to clear it, I looked ahead of me and continued down the halls to my boss’s office. Before I got there, I stopped at his secretary’s desk. “Hey, call security. There’s a guy in here I’ve never seen before, and I don’t think he’s supposed to be here. Height is probably six-five. Weight is around two seventy or two eighty. The guy is solid muscle, tan, Caucasian, black hair.” I watched as she jotted everything down. “Got it?”
“Yeah,” she said as she grabbed the phone, but I didn’t wait to hear the conversation.
Walking toward the office beside her, I knocked on the door as I opened it, and flashed a smile at my boss, Eli Jenkins.
“Hey, Liam, come in and have a seat.”
I sat in one of the two chairs on the other side of his desk, and waited for whatever he had to say as he sat directly next to me. Despite what I’d told Cecily, I wasn’t worried about losing my job. I knew Eli liked me and my work, and I was on the same path he’d taken in this industry. But that didn’t mean he didn’t know about Cecily and me, and our interoffice relationship wasn’t exactly allowed.