Total pages in book: 224
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
“My approval?” he asks, but he doesn’t reach for the folder. “Now you want my approval?”
“Yes, Reid.” I yank the folder back. “I did. I do. I want the company back. That means I win with you. I get that. I spent all day thinking about that. It’s why I almost called you today. To tell you that I really am with you. Either give me a real chance or let me go to start fresh. It’s your turn. Can or can’t with me?”
“That’s a loaded question right now,” he says. “One we don’t have time for me to answer properly, but I will and soon.” His gaze lowers to my mouth and lifts. “You can count on it.” And in that moment, his stare is hot simmering coals and pure unbridled lust, a cage of heat erupting around me that I cannot escape. I’m suffocating in the connection I have with this man until finally, he grabs the folder. “Come sit down.” He walks toward the desk, and the air is instantly thinner, my lungs filling easily.
Reid claims his seat behind his desk and motions to the visitor’s chair.
“I can’t sit,” I say, crossing to stand behind the chair he’s indicated, my hands settling at the back. “And it’s not a power play thing. I’m not looking forward to this meeting. Can you please just read the speech and tell me if it works, at least in premise, as a launching pad to start the conversation with the staff? If not, I need to know ideas.”
He studies me several beats, his expression unreadable, before he opens the folder, reads a full minute by my estimate, and looks up at me. “You listed every reason us working together works and it’s spot on.”
“I told you. I thought a lot about this today. I’m in, so can you please not be such an ass to me until after this meeting? I know this is just a conquest to you, and I’m the woman who cuffed you and left you in a hotel room, but this is my life, and this is not easy for me.”
He’s staring at me again with that unreadable look, seconds passing like hours in which we both know that since I entered this office, I allowed myself to be vulnerable with him. I admitted that I need and want to be here, because that’s what I want to hear from those who work with me. I feel it’s what he needed to hear.
He stands and walks around the desk to join me, and when I turn to face him, I find him close again. He is always so damn close. Power and arrogance radiate from this man, pieces of a puzzle that he is, and I can’t begin to understand. “If you’re with me,” he says, “I’m with you, Carrie. That’s how this works. I have every reason to make that clear in this meeting. Let’s go get it behind us.”
It’s not the pushback I expect, and I don’t even know how to respond. I simply nod and when I would turn away, he catches my waist, more heat radiating up my arm. He pulls me a little closer, so near that I could lean into his hard body. “There’s nothing wrong with being a conquest if it feels good, and you did feel good.” He releases me and motions me forward.
Stunned, I grab his lapels again. “Did you just suggest that I was your conquest in that hotel room?”
“Right up until the moment you cuffed me and left.”
“Which made you my conquest.”
“And yet,” he says, “not only do I still remember how you taste, you’re standing in front of me now. I’m not sure how that makes me the loser.” He grabs my shoulders and turns me, placing me in front of him, his hands on my shoulders, and his lips at my ear. “We are not enemies, Carrie West,” he says softly. “Go into this meeting knowing that in all things, we want the same things.”
There is a seductive gentleness to his words that I do not know as this man. I want to turn and search his face, to know I’ve not imagined it, but I have this sense that he’s turned me away from him for that very reason, to ensure that I cannot see him and read him. I am now certain that there is so much more to this man than meets the eye. I am also certain that he’s right again. He does own me, and you do not want to be owned by a man like Reid Maxwell anywhere but in bed.
Chapter ten
Reid
Carrie walks toward the door, and holy hell, I’m obsessed with this woman’s ass in that pink dress. I’m obsessed with everything about her; the sweet way she smells, those emerald green eyes, and my absolute fucking need to be inside her. All acceptable and expected after our half fuck that needs to be finished, because the obsession will end once we finally do fuck. What isn’t acceptable is the way I’d actually wanted to pull her to me and promise her everything was going to work out. I don’t comfort people. I don’t do tender and gentle, nor do those things help Carrie. She has to swim with the sharks, and that means people like me, to claim this company and the job she otherwise deserves.