Hostile Takeover, Hill, W [recommended books to read .TXT] 📗

lean, and he knew she continued that in college. She’d excelled at everything she attempted, studying business principles practically from the time she was in middle school. Majoring in business and minoring in pre-law, she was as brilliant and driven as her sister, who’d been a child prodigy of Pickard Consulting, a negotiation and corporate investigations firm.

The slim choker she wore caught his attention. The pendant was a crystal disk with a tiny trio of blue flowers pressed under the glass. Forget-me-nots. Something about that niggled at his mind, but the fact there was a lock above the pendant, a small keyhole decorated with scrollwork, was even more distracting. It could be an affectation of course, not a true lock.

She was coming around the desk, giving him a warm look. Since he hadn’t moved, he saw a flash of uncertainty behind it, something hard to pin down, as if she wasn’t sure a hug would be welcome. Get up, asshole. Say hello, be nice. What the hell’s the matter with you?

Why wasn’t he getting up? When he’d been younger and more street raw, Matt’s father and then Matt himself had hammered courtesy into him as a mandate, not just as a way to hustle marks. Like Matt’s unbreakable rule about not cursing around women, that and the rest of it had become part of who Ben was somewhere along the way, the instinctive breeding of a Southern male rising above the circumstances of his birth.

But he was also a Dom with extreme preferences, whose radar was on full alert. Something was keeping him right where he was, studying her with firm, unsmiling lips and a calculated gaze he intended her to see.

It was a weighted moment, that indefinable quality teetering on a scale between them. When her gaze shifted to the floor between his knees, her lashes lowering, it hit him in the solar plexus. But then her smile became a wry twitch of her lips. Putting her hand on his shoulder, she gracefully squatted and picked up the pen by his polished shoe. Her fingers slid down over his biceps, an exploratory touch. When she placed her palm on the desk to lever herself back up, she caught the edge of his notepad, knocking it off as well.

“Oops.” With a glance at him beneath those long lashes, she knelt fully to reach farther under the desk. As she did, she reached over his polished shoe, stretching out to retrieve the pad. He got an eyeful of Marcie on her hands and knees before him, her ass turned up, her back that shallow valley that made him imagine caressing the sweet, naked line of it. Her skirt was pulled drum tight over those toned cheeks, the cleft nicely teased. His palm would make a firm smacking sound on it if he gave her a swat for dropping his papers.

What would it be like to cover her with his body, hold her there on her elbows as he ripped the fragile silk open, her breasts filling his hands so he could squeeze? She’d gasp, rub her ass against his cock, wanting, begging…

Christ. Okay, if he invoked that name one more time, he was going to have to go to mass or confession, something he hadn’t done well…ever. To be a lapsed Catholic, you had to be a practicing one first, right?

She’d knocked that pad off deliberately, was doing this deliberately. He wrapped his mind around that as she straightened, turned in the span of his knees to put the note pad on his desk next to the pen. She took her time, straightening things, making sure they were exactly the way they’d been before she’d disrupted them. Kneeling there, her back to him, she had her hair in range of his fingertips. He could unclip that barrette, bury his fingers in those thick strands, pull her head back to set his teeth to her throat. She smelled the way a candy shop did, so many flavors to sample and explore.

Now she shifted back toward him, her hands settling on his thighs as if to push herself back to her feet. He was surprised the heat coming off him didn’t burn her fair skin, even through his slacks. Her gaze traveled along his thighs, lingering over his groin, where it was starting to be very obvious he was responding to her. He stifled a growl. She was putting off every signal in the world, challenging him to take over. When she moistened her lips at the size of his reaction, her eyes widening slightly, he almost gave himself away by putting a death grip on the chair arms. Those sultry lashes lifted, her brown eyes meeting his.

“Something else I can do for you, Mr. O’Callahan?”

He saw it in her eyes. She wanted to go down on him, wanted to feel his hand fisted in her hair, driving her according to his will. Since she wanted it that bad, he wouldn’t give it to her right away. He’d make her get up, turn around so he could grasp her hips, work her against him in a lap dance then and there, make her show him how much her pretty ass hungered for his cock. And then he’d blister it good, so that he’d wring a few tears out of her before he fucked her right here on his desk.

Holy fuck. She was teasing him the way a sub did, trying to goad a Dom into action. He had to be mistaken, but the set of her chin said she could get more determined about it, until she’d be outright bratting, blatantly topping. What the hell was going on here?

He didn’t know, but while one part of him was reeling, the part of him that was sure of this ground, as sure as breathing, steadied and locked like a collar clamping around a pale white throat. He knew this terrain, even if being on it with Marcie was unexpected.

“What are you doing?” As she