Page 68 of Due Diligence
I brought my hand up to push his hair away from his forehead. “Same,” I said, even though the admission felt weighty when it escaped my lips. With post-orgasm clarity, it dawned on me: to be with Marcus would be final. He would never just be a quick fuck or a passing phase. No, he was so much more than that.
At one point in my life, I thought I had committed to final. I flipped my world on its head for a guy I thought was final. That had burned into cinders. I didn’t know if I could do that again.
I contended with both feelings for a moment: satisfaction and trepidation. In the end, I decided to enjoy the feeling of his hands on me. His eyes on me. The whispers in my ear. I memorized him, vowing to savor these memories more than all the others.
Trepidation could wait until tomorrow. This moment was for him.
Chapter 18: Marcus
The next morning, Cass and I worked together in the fishbowl as usual, but everything was different. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I didn’t even try to. She had this freckle a centimeter to the right of her lower lip that I hadn’t noticed until last night. I wanted to put my lips on it, right here in this glass conference room—the audience of my coworkers be damned.
I had rewritten the same sentence three times over. Every time I hit the halfway point, I found myself watching Cass and losing track of my progress. Whenever I returned to the sentence, I had forgotten my intention. I should have been frustrated. Hell, I should have been concerned at the sheer amount of company money I was wasting in my own salary by staring at her instead of working.
Fuck it. Didn’t care.
As far as I was concerned, the entire world revolved around her.
Of course, the only thing keeping me from announcing it publicly on the Libra Twitter account to our 4.6 million followers was the fact that Cass was a locked box. She was password protected with two-factor authentication and retina scan. And just like me, she was remarkably talented at keeping it that way. When we made eye contact over the tops of our laptops, she didn’t even offer me a coy smile or a wink oranythingto confirm she didn’t regret last night.
I felt so uncertain around her sometimes—in ways I hadn’t experienced since I was a teenager. It was partially due to her unparalleled caginess, but some of it had to do with her mystique. Cassie Pierson—the gorgeous, brilliant freshman class president who could have dated any Rockefeller or Kennedy she wanted. If I had gotten a hold of a time machine and told eighteen-year-old Marcus he would one day have frenzied sex with Cassie Pierson on a public stairwell, he would have never believed me. Sure, he would havelovedthe idea, but he never would have believed it.
“What are you staring at?” she asked after a moment, confusion detectible in her tone. Her eyes were focused on me as I blinked, snapping back to attention.
“You.”
“Clearly. What’s wrong with me?”
“Absolutely nothing.” I grinned at her, which made her roll her eyes.
Cass let out a sigh and picked up her metal water bottle. She drank from it deeply, releasing a soft involuntary moan that made me want to take her right on this glass conference table.
“Do you have any plans this weekend?” she asked when she put down her water bottle. She screwed the cap back on and slid it to the side before she looked back at me.
Slowly, I shook my head. “Nope. I have nothing going on other than fucking you so thoroughly that you spend hoursapologizing to yourself for ever pretending that us hooking up wasn’t the most brilliant idea since Libra.”
She couldn’t suppress her smile, but she sure as hell tried and said, “You know, sometimes you’re justso freaking closeto being likable, and then you go and ruin it for everyone.”
“So, you’re coming over on Saturday, right?” I said, ignoring her comment. I picked up my phone and checked the time—and I realized I was two hours into the workday and all I had managed to do was stare at her, make myself hard, and let my inbox pile up so high I would have to spend the remainder of the day trying to salvage it.
“You have plans on Saturday.”
I put down my phone and frowned. “I do?”
“Alex’s birthday.”
Those two words immediately made my heart sink so low, we would have to hire a submarine to find it. “I forgot about that,” I admitted, somehow exercising the restraint to withhold from lacing my response with the countless expletives running through my mind. “You’re going?”
“Yeah.”
I leaned back in my chair and fixed my expression before I asked, “Do you want to go together?”
She didn’t respond right away. Her gaze ticked to the side before she removed her hands from her keyboard. When she made eye contact with me again, a look of apology crossed her face. “You know we can’t.”
“I’m really not having this conversation with you again,” I said, using my COO voice. “I’ve been clear: I don’t care about my contract anymore. I can’t hold out any longer—not after last night.”
“But what about me?” she responded “Look, this may be the most mind-numbingly boring job in the world, but I need it. It pays a ton and I can’t afford to lose it. Plus, I really can’t getcaught sleeping with a seller. That would put this entire process at risk, could potentially cost you the sale, and wreak havoc on your share price and Davenport-Ridgeway’s.”
I was silent. Most things she said and did were unfathomably sexy to me, but this was one of those rare occasions when I hated everything that was coming out of her perfect mouth.