That mass text group that she had set up to disseminate information quickly when Cash had been in his accident now was coming in handy, she had to admit. Maybe she should set up mass texts for the animal shelter volunteers and her common cadre of lunch buddies. She thumbed the send button, and eighty-two people in the office got the ping, she hoped. If there was a huge brouhaha, Cash might not go back, and she wanted to avoid that.
Casual, she had told them all. Don't make a huge scene. Say hello and let him pass.
Cash parked his rented SUV in the garage, and they got on the elevator to ride it up to the office's floor.
As soon as the doors touched closed, Cash crowded her to the back corner of the elevator and braced his hands on the walls around her head. "This is going to be interesting."
"Oh?" Rox glanced at the black eye-in-the-sky stuck to the ceiling, but she slid her hands over his strong chest and up to his neck. "Security is watching."
"I know." He ducked his head and captured her lips, kissing her thoroughly. His tongue slid into her mouth, and his hard body pressed her into the corner.
The elevator bounced, stopping, and Cash backed up, his emerald eyes still lit with desire. "This could be very interesting."
By the time the elevator jiggled to a standstill, they were standing apart, hands clasped in front of them, practically wearing their bitch faces as if they were going to an appointment with opposing counsel.
The elevator doors opened.
Bedlam.
Everyone in the office had crowded the elevator doors, applauding and cheering.
A hundred people swarmed at them, grabbing them out of the elevator, and were talking and questioning and jabbering and yanking at their clothes.
Cash laughed aloud, his laugh ringing above the fray.
Rox swatted at the hands clinging to her clothes and stumbled toward the edge of the scrum. When you're short, crowds close in, jostling and bumping, a claustrophobic clusterfuck. She popped out the side.
Because Cash was six-feet-four, however, his head stuck out of the bobbing crowd of office workers who were mostly in the medium range. He looked down, a grin on his face that wrinkled the bandage on his cheek, and talked to everyone, shaking hands, slapping backs, and hugging women who flung themselves at his chest.
He caught Rox's eye at one point and smiled at her, but he kept pressing the flesh and talking.
Indeed, he was pressing a lot of flesh.
A lot of female flesh.
Pretty much every woman in the company wanted a hug, a big, long, full-frontal hug. They were frickin' climbing all over him like creeper vines up a tall tree that got plenty of sunshine. He wrapped his arms perfunctorily around each one, patted their shoulders, and set them back, but Rox felt her own chin jutting forward with each molestation.
Seriously, they were slobbering all over his dark blue suit that Rox had picked up at the dry cleaners just a few days ago. The label said Armani. The jacket was going to be all wrinkled after they finished dry-humping him like a pack of stray dogs.
Cash caught her eye again and took a long look this time.
He turned back to the crowd, raising his open hands in the air. "I appreciate it, guys, but I'm a little sore, still." He grabbed his ribs where the pink surgical scar creased his skin under his clothes. "Let's hold it to handshakes, shall we?"
Mel bobbed up in front of him, giggling, and pumped his hand. "It's so good to have you back. We were all so worried about you."
Lixa and Perry chorused the same thing.
Cash smiled at them, spreading his hands apart. "You're making it very difficult to keep it British, here. I appreciate your concern. It warms my heart, or whatever lawyers have instead of a heart."
Rox practically heard a thud as a hundred pairs of panties dropped to the floor.
She refrained from rolling her eyes. Because she hadn't been to the office on a regular basis for weeks, she was out of practice at repressing her eye-rolling.
Cash started to swim out of the crowd toward her, but Rox continued to scan the room.
Over on the other side of the room, the two senior partners, Josie Silverman and Valerie Arbeitman, leaned against the wall with their arms knotted over their chests. They were both smiling, but their smiles seemed forced, perhaps as they watched billable hours being frittered away.
Rox pushed off the desk and raised her hand, waving, because she hadn't seen Valerie since she had gotten back from her medical leave for her stroke.
Valerie tipped her head toward Josie and muttered something. Josie's grin grew more square, more forced. She noticed Rox watching them and her grin curved into a more genuine smile, and she waved.
Before Rox could leave to go over and see how Val was, Cash had pushed through the crowd to where she stood, and he turned her by the shoulder toward his office. "We need to confer before the DiCaprio meeting."
"Of course." She walked with him through the rabbit warren of cubicles toward his corner office.
When she glanced back, Valerie and Josie were gone, and Valerie's office door was closed. The wooden horizontal blinds in the window beside the door were folded shut, too.
SERIOUS
Once Rox and Cash were inside his corner office, she said, "The DiCaprio meeting starts in two hours, so we should-"
Cash slammed the door, locked it, and grabbed her into his arms. His biceps bulged under his suit jacket. "There's only one reason I came into the office today."
"Cash! Everyone's right outside!"
He chuckled, his face already against her neck. "I know."
She reached behind him and slapped the horizontal blinds on the slot window closed. "I cannot believe that you would-"
"I have thought about this for three years," Cash whispered near Rox's ear, and she went shock-still. He grabbed her ass with one hand but kept the other wrapped around her waist. "Every day that we leaned on this desk to look over those damn contracts and curse about them, I wanted to bend you over it and bury myself in you."
Three years? "Cash!"
"I have wanted to see that luscious ass of yours in the air." He gathered her skirt, lifting it, and slid his hand over her butt. The new lingerie left most of her buttcheeks bare, and Cash palmed her flesh. He groaned, "Oh, God, Rox."
Rox glanced at the wide windows streaming across the two walls, but the glass was silvered on the outside. No one should be able to see in.
Should.
She grinned.
Cash whirled her around, pulling her across the office, but her knees shook when she tried to follow him. One of her heels caught on the carpeting, and she stumbled.
He was there, his arms around her. Cash picked her up, his hands behind her knees, and carried her to the desk. He set her on the edge and leaned between her legs, his arms braced around her on the desk, and kissed her.
When he broke off for air, she whispered, "You were serious?"
He grabbed her butt again and glanced down at her body. "Absolutely."
"I mean, every day? For three years?"
He backed up for a second and looked her in the eyes. "I have never been so serious in my life."
Rox blinked for a moment, finding it hard to breathe, and reached out to touch his face on the side without the bandage. "But you never-"
Instead of the kinky fun that had twinkled in his emerald eyes just a moment ago as he told her that he was going to screw her on his desk, a deep desperation made him look haunted.
She didn't have time to try to say anything else before he grabbed her, threading his fingers into her hair and crushing her to him, his mouth devouring hers. He was shoving at her clothes, bunching her skirt up around her waist and fumbling with the buttons on her blouse.
Rox wiggled, wrenching her arms behind herself and peeling her suit jacket off in back of her. It slithered over the far edge of the desk and landed on the floor. Cash's breath was rough in her ear as he ran his teeth over the tendons of her neck and, pulling her blouse aside, on her shoulder.
He grabbed her, yanking her closer to himself, one arm tight around her waist but the other hand on her breast, thumbing her nipple through her blouse and the thin silk of her bra, as he locked his mouth over hers again. His tongue pushed into her mouth, rubbing along hers, as his hand caressed lower. He groped her ass again, pushing her sex against the hard rod of his erection. Rox made a sound deep in her throat, something near a moan, as his hardness pressed her clit.
Cash growled.
Rox pushed off the desk behind her and grabbed his belt, unbuckling him and unhooking his suit pants.
He pulled her suit skirt up farther around her waist and dragged at her panties. He stole a quick glance at the pale blue silk and lace. His fist tightened on the lace on the side, and she thought he was going to rip them off of her for a moment but he yanked them out from under her butt and down her legs.