Unzipping my suit trousers and fucking my employee in the middle of a work retreat would have been easier than what I was doing with Izzy.
I was giving her a reason to trust me, a reason to like me, and a reason to go down a rabbit hole with me that she couldn’t come back from.
It was selfish. I always had a target on my back. I was in the mob even if I was a ‘businessman,’ and I was no good at any sort of relationship. I didn’t enjoy making people feel wanted or important. I enjoyed dismantling them. Consuming all the information about them and then holding the power of their lives in my hands. To see them squirm was a victory for me and my family every time.
So I didn’t know why my damn heart beat faster with her in the room and why I wanted to hear everything about her life now. Sure, she was the hottest fuck I’d had in a long time but pushing her past the facade she put up for everyone was becoming something I couldn’t stop myself from doing. It was also unavoidable with her sitting on my dick looking at me with those big hazel eyes that held flecks of gold, like she’d captured the sun and dimmed its shine just enough for us to be able to study them.
“I can’t look away from you, haven’t been able to since the moment I met you.”
“Ha-ha.” She took my confession as a joke, but I wasn’t kidding. “Is that why you moved me to Stonewood Enterprises?” She pursed her lips and rearranged her clothing before scooting off my lap to sit on the table.
“I moved your ass because you were poking around in top secret, confidential records.”
“Well, that worked out well. Still breaking into systems, just different ones.” She combed a hand through her silky hair.
“That and kissing your boss now, huh?” I looked at her lips and knew I wanted another taste of them as she licked them.
“Don’t be an ass.” She moved to get up, but I didn’t let her. I took her face in my hands and brought her mouth down onto mine. I tasted her, ravaged her, devoured her exactly the way I wanted to. She somehow always tasted sweet, but with a hint of candy canes. Her lush lips moved skillfully with mine as the kiss grew more and more heated, and then she moaned before ripping herself away.
I let her go, my mind swirling with confusion. She wasn’t something I could decode, but the way I would rather focus on her than my work was unheard of for me.
She hopped off the table and hurriedly grabbed her glass of water, then paced out of the room and re-entered two minutes later in a big T-shirt that had As if written across it with the blonde Clueless girl.
She didn’t stop moving back and forth in front of me, never taking a sip of the water still in her hand as she raced through her own thoughts. “Don’t come near me again on this retreat. We work and then we go our separate ways. This cannot happen.”
I stretched before getting up and chuckled, taking a step toward her.
Holding the water between us, she took a quick step back. “I’m not kidding, Cade. This is a bad idea. You know it is. What if we get caught? Then what? We tell the president, ‘It’s fine, we got your election all set. No one is going to hack the voting systems, even though we were fucking behind closed doors instead of working on it.’” She winced like it killed her to say it. “That sounds so unprofessional.”
“You’re that nervous about being unprofessional?”
“Coming from the guy standing in front of me in a suit while I’m in pajamas. It’s a perfect display of who will get blamed if we don’t keep this together.”
I shrugged. “I’d take the blame.”
“Even if you did, my reputation would be ruined, Cade. And it’s already so tarnished, I can’t withstand another stain.”
She was so hard on herself. “You realize you’ve gotten over your drug addiction, right? You fought and you won, and people respect you for that.” Maybe I’d never told her so, but she had to know from everyone else she surrounded herself with that people thought she was badass.
She’d walked into our office, and her peers had leaned in to be a part of her conversation; she spoke, and they listened.
“No. Nobody respects that. They’re scared I’ll veer in the wrong direction again.” She sighed and turned to the sink. “And if I misstep at all, it will point to me going right down that path again.”
“You can take a misstep without going down that path, dollface. You can have a bad day.”
“No. You can.” She rinsed out her dish, then pointed at me. “You can, and everyone else around here can. Me, Lucas, people who’ve struggled with addiction and our reputations, we can’t. We have to set an example and show everyone we have it together. Always. Do you know how tiring that is?” Her shoulders slumped and it was a reminder to me how small she was, how big her personality could be to hide her vulnerability. She sounded exhausted, like she needed a break but knew she’d never get one.
“I can imagine.” I answered honestly.
“How can you? You’ve been—”
“My father was in the mob, I’m a product of the mob. And I have access to causing world destruction because I’m good at my job. People will always think I’m one step away from snapping.” I rubbed a hand over my face.
“Does it bother you?” she asked quietly.
“Not much. I know my place. We all have our crosses to bear, right?”
She took a deep breath. “Yep, and mine is okay. It’s fair. My family cares about me and loves me. So does this team. I just need to continually prove myself. I can’t slide one toe off that straight and narrow line, Cade, or they’ll all think I’ve lost it.”
“And I’m ‘off that line’ for you?”
“You’re the damn circle on the other side of the room, Cade!” She slammed her hand down on the island countertop, and her confession—the way her eyes blazed, the way she thought avoiding me would keep her sane—had me doing what I did best.
“You’ve been over on that side, jumping in and out of my circle, for a long time, Izzy. Problem is, you don’t see that you can indulge without going back to using. You can be you without that. Who you are isn’t a bad thing.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I am me, and I don’t want to indulge in you.” She shook her head at me, tears suddenly in her eyes.
“You can hide it and avoid it, but there’s no real use fighting it.”
“I’m not avoiding anything. I just like it over here on my side.” She said it loud, as if to make us both believe it.
I put my hands on the counter, facing her, and leaned in. “Yeah, well, I’m here waiting on the other side when you want to put your pussy where it belongs—on me.”
I saw the blush rise over her neck, saw how her breathing picked up, how her lips parted. It was how I knew Izzy needed the adrenaline, the close calls, the risk in her life, just like I did. She would never be able to put herself in a two-story box with a white picket fence and live a normal life.
She just needed to figure that out for herself. And as her hand fisted, I knew it wouldn’t be tonight.
“Did you hear a word I said? I’m one of your best employees, and that’s all I’m going to be from now on. We’re not sleeping with each other while we’re working on national security. It’s irresponsible.”
“That right? Even if you’re in a cabin with Rodney?” I shouldn’t have said it. I should have left it alone, but I’d watched her eye him up and I’d seen red.
“Yeah and about Rodney. You can’t go around changing accommodations, Cade. That’s so unprofessional.”
I didn’t deny it.
She pulled at her hair and growled. “The fact that you moved me to this cabin just because of Rodney is ridiculous, Cade. You realize that?”
“I do need you here to work. It’s easier that way. And now you won’t have to deal with Rodney either.”
“Deal with Rodney? Deal with him?” Her voice got higher and higher. “What if I wanted to deal with him?”
“You just said we shouldn’t be fucking around.”
“Yeah, me and you. You’re my boss. Rodney isn’t even on our team!” She started to storm off to the bedroom, but then she came back to point her finger in my face. “You don’t get to dictate my accommodations and manage my personal life.”
“Well, actually I do.” I was just stating a fact.
Her eyes widened like she couldn’t believe I’d double down on that. Clearly, she didn’t understand that I’d go round and round with her all day. That I loved seeing how her hair got messier and messier as she combed her hands through it, how her clothes became more rumpled, and how she raised her voice after working so hard all day to speak softly.
“You’re an entitled dick, you know that? I don’t care if you’re in the mob, and I don’t care if you’re my boss. I’m getting through this election, then I’m going over your head to Jett to get a different position. This”—she motioned between us—“toxic back-and-forth is over.”
“If you say so,” I murmured just to rile her further.
Izzy Hardy didn’t disappoint. When she got pissed, I practically saw steam come out of her ears. She stomped back to the bedroom. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that we’d ever be more than fuck buddies, but I’d at least teach her that she didn’t have to worry about other people’s expectations of her. It was probably hindering her life in some way; she’d thank me later.
Or so I thought.
Until I heard a rattle and then a hiss that sounded a lot like spray paint. And there she was.
Izzy fucking Hardy. Not disappointing for a second as she sprayed a big-ass red line along the center of our room, up the bed, over the comforter, across the middle of the frame, ending on the wall as high as she could reach.
Whipping her head my way, she had a smile that was genuine on her face, and her eyes shined a more vivid green and gold than I’d ever seen, sparkling with so much life that I knew this was the phoenix in her—the version of her I wanted to see always. She looked like she did when I took her breath away, like she was dancing with death, and it turned her on more than bumbling around aimlessly living.
“You’re going to stay on that side, and I’m on this side, Cade. Want to know why? Because I do say so.” She lifted her chin in triumph.
A normal person would have called the event coordinator and sent her insubordinate ass home. I chuckled, though, and leaned on the doorframe, putting my hands in my pockets. “Maybe you should put my name above the headboard so we’re clear. I don’t think the big-ass red line is enough.”
She stomped over to my side and painted Entitled Dick.
Then she grabbed her bag and went to the spare bathroom in the living room, most likely because the en suite bathroom was on my side.
I let her fume for the rest of the night, went back to my computer, and got to work on the code she’d used to break through JUNIPER.
A few hours in, the silence of the wilderness closed in on me. My mind wandered to her. I was losing my edge, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it back.
While she slept soundly, I rummaged through her luggage and found her spray paint. I put Dollface above her head. She woke on the last letter and squinted up at me, leaning on her side to do it. Then she smiled like I’d made her whole life, like this was normal behavior.
No words were spoken between us. She rolled over under the comforter on her side of the damn red line and snuggled in.
I stared at her for far too long before I growled and went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. If I was going to indulge the red line down the bed and across the room, I was happy that the bathroom was on my side. I knew I’d be jacking off to her more than once on this retreat. My dumbass split-second decision to have her stay with me was already backfiring. Indulging the jealousy that coiled through me at seeing her with someone else should have been an indicator to back off.
I turned out the lights as I entered the room and pulled the blankets up over her shoulder, staring at how her dark hair fanned out across the light pillow, how her lips parted with a breath, how her small neck was so delicate that I could steal her life in a second and make sure she enjoyed the feeling the whole damn time. And I fucking wanted to do the latter instead of the former more often than not now.
I swore before rolling over to my side.
The red line wasn’t going to last, but I’d give her tonight. She wouldn’t get much more than that.
