Beautiful Bitch(22)

But for as much as everyone probably wanted to give her an earful for making us cancel our holiday plans, no one did. Each of us had been raised in the business world under the same ethos: work trumps all. The last person to leave work is the hero. The first person in has bragging rights. Working over holidays gets you into heaven.

And while a more experienced executive would have told Papadakis that what he’d asked wasn’t possible, as always I admired Chloe’s determination. This wasn’t just about meeting a new milestone for her. This was her launching her career. This was her foundation. Chloe was me a few years ago.



After everyone else had left for the evening, I knocked on her open door, gently alerting her to my presence.

“Mr. Ryan,” she said, pulling off her glasses and looking up at me. The city skyline winked behind her, speckled lights covering her entire wall of windows. “Here to show me how to grow a penis so I can get the job done?”

“Chloe, I’m pretty sure if you wanted to grow one, you could do it by will alone.”

She let a half smile form, pushing back from her desk and crossing her legs. “I’d grow one just so I could ask you to suck on it.”

I couldn’t contain my laughter, bending over and collapsing into the chair across the desk from her. “I knew you were going to say that.”

Her eyebrows pulled together a little. “Well, before you say anything else, yes, I know this sucks. And . . . I think you were right. We could be in St. Bart’s right now, on the beach.”

I started to speak, but she held up her hand to urge me to wait.

“But the thing is, Bennett, no matter how much I should have, I didn’t want to tell Papadakis no. I wanted to deliver, because we can, and we should. It’s down to the wire anyway and we’ve had a lot of time to work on this. It felt disingenuous to say we couldn’t make it happen.”

“True,” I conceded, “but by letting him push a milestone ahead to the beginning of the quarter, you’ve set a precedent.”

“I know,” she said, rubbing her temples with her fingertips.

“But actually, I wasn’t coming in here to tell you what you’d done was wrong. I was coming in here to tell you I understand why you did it. I can’t really fault you.”

She dropped her hands, eyeing me cautiously.

“At this point in your career, I can’t be surprised you said yes to Papadakis.”

Her mouth opened and I could see a litany of curse words form on her tongue.

“Easy, firecracker,” I said, leaning forward and holding up my hands. “I don’t mean you’re na?ve; I’m not pulling the ‘seasoning’ card again—though it’s true no matter how much you hate to hear it. I mean you’re still building. You want to show the world that you’re Atlas—and to a Titan, that f*cking celestial sphere weighs nothing. It’s just that it’s impacted the entire team, and over a holiday. I get why you did it, and I also get why you’re conflicted. I’m sorry this is hard for you, because I’ve been there.” I lowered my voice, moved a little closer. “It sucks.”

The room seemed to grow darker, the sun dipping behind the horizon just as I’d finished my sentence. Chloe watched me, face smooth and practically unreadable.

Well, unreadable to anyone else. Anyone who hadn’t seen that face a thousand times, the one that told me she wanted to smack me, kiss me, scratch me, and then f*ck me.

“Don’t smirk,” she said, eyes narrowing. “I see what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?”

“Trying to build me up. Being a hardass, yet also my lover. Damnit, Bennett.”

“You’re going to f*ck me in your office!” I crowed, my words colored with surprise and glee. “God, you’re easy.”

She stood quickly, walking around the desk and reaching immediately for my tie. “Damnit.” She unknotted it, wrapping it around my eyes and tying it behind my head. “Stop studying me,” she hissed into my ear. “Stop seeing everything.”

“Never.” I closed my eyes behind the silk fabric and let my other senses take over, inhaling the delicate citrus scent of her perfume, reaching to feel the soft skin of her forearms. I moved my hands slowly down her body and turned her around, pulling her back to my chest. “This better?”

Her quiet huff wasn’t for my benefit; it was a sound of genuine frustration. “Bennett,” she murmured, leaning back. “You’re making me crazy.”