Desired, Alisa Woods [ebook offline txt] 📗

her yellow-gold pumps and business-smart outfit. The high-class limo with the door held open by a black-tie driver in a Driving Miss Daisy cap only added to the effect.

On the drive in to downtown Seattle, the urban canyon streets were still gray, shadowed by the early morning sun. Mia couldn’t decide what exactly had happened the night before. Lucas kissed her—had thoroughly kissed her—and his rock-hard erection against her body said he wanted to do much more than press his lips to hers. It wasn’t just a kiss, either: more like a volcano of passion erupting. But then he had just… stopped. Was he afraid they would be caught by his father, the Senior Mr. Sparks, CEO of SparkTech? She had snooped a little online and found Lucas had graduated from the University of Washington four years ago, which made him at least twenty-six. Wasn’t that a little old to be worried about what his parents thought? Or was it because she worked for Lucas? She decided that had to be it—he was afraid she might cry sexual harassment or some such thing.

As if anything sexual involving Lucas could be termed harassment of any kind.

And then there was the whole shifter aspect. To be honest, that was the part that excited her the most. He was wolf. And after what she had seen in the alleyway, he was an extremely powerful wolf, in both his human and shifted forms. She had always been drawn to powerful men—at least the kind who wore their power in their broad shoulders and in the muscles underneath their t-shirts. But Lucas was the kind of man she was truly meant to be with: strong, overwhelmingly sexy, and able to handle her in the event her inner wolf became unleashed. The thought of that alone made her squeeze her thighs together and hope the driver wasn’t a shifter, wondering why his passenger was getting aroused by herself in the back of his limo.

The whole thing caught her completely off guard. She was trying to get her degree, get a job, help her mom… she had never imagined she would meet another shifter along the way, much less one who would be so profoundly protective of her. So insistent in ensuring her safety. And who lit her on fire like no boy ever had. But Lucas was no boy… he was most definitively all man. And when he held her in his arms last night… it wasn’t just the passion of his kiss that entranced her. It was the feeling of being utterly safe. Completely, passionately wanted. Of belonging in a way she had never felt with anyone else before.

Lucas seemed such a perfect match for her. It must have been fate—or something equally powerful, perhaps destiny—that had drawn them together. Only he seemed to want to resist it. Why? And why was he so driven to care for her in the first place?

As her limo arrived at the Russell building, Mia realized the things she didn’t know about Lucas Sparks far outnumbered the things she did.

She strolled into SparkTech, pleased she was one of the first to arrive, and immediately went to Lucas’s office. If she could just get him alone for a little while, have a chance to talk, maybe she could reassure him that he had nothing to worry about—he wasn’t just her boss, he saved her life! She would never repay that by jeopardizing him or SparkTech in any way. And maybe, just maybe, he would see that he didn’t have to hold back from her.

But as soon as she entered Lucas’s office, he shoved a pile of reports into her arms and sent her away. She spent the day going over every line: they were already into Stage Two of their due diligence on LoopSource, and these reports were supposed to help SparkTech determine the market potential of LoopSource’s new internet platform. It created apps that were super easy for casual internet users—basically it was a customization tool, but the tech part of this marketing report was thick with terms she didn’t recognize and struggled to piece together. The report itself glowed with numbers that seemed to say LoopSource was the next big thing in mobile computing, but the diligence part of due diligence meant evaluating the report as much as the data within it. No matter what else happened with her and Lucas, she needed to prove she could be an asset to SparkTech—so Mia rolled up her sweater sleeves and dug in. Lunchtime flew by, and it was well into the afternoon before the grumbling in her stomach could no longer be ignored.

Just as she was ready to temporarily climb out of her analysis hole, Lev popped his head in her door.

“Hey, new girl!” he said cheerily. “You know, we’re not actually operating a sweatshop here. You’ll allowed to take breaks for lunch.”

Mia let out a small laugh and leaned back from her desk. “Just trying to make an impression, I guess.” She rubbed her weary eyes, unclipped her hair, and shoved her hands through it, stretching out the kinks.

“Oh, trust me, you’re doing plenty of that.” Lev opened the door the rest of the way, letting himself in. He held up a white paper bag he was carrying, then set it on her desk. “Sustenance for the eager young intern.”

“You brought me lunch?” Mia blinked up at him, amazed. Was everyone at SparkTech determined to look out for her? It warmed something deep in her heart, something she hadn’t felt with anyone other than her mom: a sense of family. Of belonging.

“Well, big brother Lucas told me to take care of you.” He perched on one corner of her expansive desk. “I take those kinds of orders very seriously.” But there was mirth in his eyes, and he gestured for her to look in the bag.

Inside was a chicken salad sandwich, fruit salad, and the most enormous, gorgeous-looking chocolate chip cookie she had ever seen in her life. It all looked gourmet. And very expensive.

“Wow, Lev, I…” She doubted she could repay him—she hadn’t started getting checks from SparkTech yet—and she didn’t want to insult him by offering. So she just peered up at him as sincerely as she could. “Thank you so much.”

“Whoa! Hang on!” He chuckled and put up his hands as if to fend her off. “It’s just a sandwich. But if you’ve been giving Lucas half that big-blue-eyed treatment, I can understand why he’s smitten.”

Her hand froze half-way in the bag. “Smitten?” Suddenly the jitters in her stomach went into overdrive. “What do you mean?”

He looked at her like she was crazy, then lowered his chin. “I thought you two were…” Then his eyebrows hiked up. “Oh boy.” He laughed nervously. “You know, I really do have a big mouth. You need to just ignore whatever I say.”

Mia frowned. “Does everyone think…? I mean, does the whole office believe…?”

Lev held up a hand to stop her. “Nobody thinks anything, Mia. We’re all happy to have you here. Hey, if you and Lucas are just friends, all the better. Whatever your magic is, new girl, you just keep doing it. He hasn’t been this productive since…” His face morphed again into a stricken panic, like he wanted to pull the words back in.

“Since what?” Mia’s eyes went wide. There was something in Lucas’s past. Something everyone was tiptoeing around.

Lev slipped off the desk. “And… that’s my cue to go.”

“Lev!” she chastised him, rising from her seat. How could she get him to spill what he knew?

“Eat your lunch, new girl!” he called over his shoulder on his way out the door. “You need to keep up your energy!”

And then he was gone.

Mia slowly sat down, then carefully laid out the lunch Lev had so thoughtfully brought to her. Something had happened to Lucas. Something that his family—including Lev and probably his father, who she had yet to meet—all wanted to help him get over. Or maybe recover from? She didn’t know, but as she bit into her sandwich, she vowed to find out what it was and help Lucas in any way she could. If Lev was right—if she was having some positive effect on him—she wanted to do more of that. It was the least she could do for all he’d already done for her.

Her inner wolf yipped in agreement. Probably a little too enthusiastically. And she was likely just looking for a reason to spend more time with Lucas. But she had a hard time thinking there was anything wrong with that, either.