Breaking the Billionaire's Rules(28)

Quizzically, he tilts his head. “Mia?”

Have I been standing there weirdly long?

If you feel your control slipping, simply give her another reward for something.

“And as a reward for extra predictable behavior…” I toss one bag onto his desk and pull open the other one with a loud crinkle-snap that splits the air.

His eyes flare.

I remove one puff from the bag and hold it out to him. “Open,” I whisper, pulse racing. “Open for your prize.”

He watches me sternly. Opening for his prize is the last thing he’s going to do. Nobody pushes Max Hilton around.

The book doesn’t have instructions for outright rebellion. The book doesn’t say how sexy that might be. How a person’s beauty can squeeze deep into your belly. How you might really want to kiss him. To straddle him. To sink into him and make him remember. Make him come back.

I’ve wrested control away from him, but I don’t seem to have it, either. Like I flung it out the window. Fly! Be free!

I swallow. “That’s not open.” I nudge his lower lip with the cheese puff. “Do better,” I say.

He grabs my wrist, encircling it snugly and completely with his big, warm hand.

My breath quickens.

His challenging gaze deepens, like he can see right into me.

The bright orange cheese puff falls from my fingers.

Slowly, he pulls my hand toward him, pinning me with his eyes.

I swallow, mouth dry. “Are you going to eat my fingers instead?” I whisper.

He brushes his lips over my knuckle, soft and warm and smooth as velvet.

More shivers. I’m a fireworks show of shivers.

“Somebody thinks he’s quite the operator,” I gasp out. “Somebody thinks his robot moves are all that.”

A chunk of brown hair has fallen over his eyes, and it’s unbearably sexy. He kisses my next knuckle, still watching me.

I stifle a gasp.

Is Max Hilton seducing me? Yes.

My knees tremble.

I steel my resolve. Max doesn’t get to think he’s actually seducing me. No way. Not him.

But his lips are hovering over my pinky knuckle, and everything between us is electric.

God, I need to get control back. I try to think of the book, but I’m in a canoe heading over a sparkles waterfall, and control is soaring over the treetops. Control doesn’t remember me. It will not come when I call.

Max’s eyes are bluer than blue, and his breath is a wisp of silk on my skin. And suddenly I’m imagining his mouth over other parts of me.

Behind those blue eyes I think he’s thinking it too. I ball the hand that he doesn’t have hold of, tightening it against the overwhelming urge to shove it into his hair, to pull his face to my chest. Or maybe just straddle him.

He looks down at our joined hands and adjusts his hold, making my hand all the more his. We’re holding hands. I nearly collapse from the unexpectedness of it. The jaw-dropping sexiness.

He looks up and it’s a bolt through my belly.

Holding my gaze, he kisses my pinky knuckle, a brush of a kiss that sends shudders through me.

How is this happening? He’s taking me over and he hasn’t even gotten past my wrist!

He turns my hand so that his lips are over my thumb knuckle. How could I have forgotten about that one? He’s now going to kiss my thumb knuckle.

I wait, barely breathing. My entire world has collapsed to that thumb knuckle. It cries out for his lips.

And omigod, what will he kiss after that? Images of me stretched naked across his desk crowd through my mind. Flashes of his wicked lips hovering over my belly. Pressing to the space between my legs.

My mouth begins to form his name—Max. I’m not above begging if that gets us moving along.

It’s here I come to my senses. Begging? Moving along? What is happening to me? It comes to me that this is probably what he wanted when he set up these deliveries.

Maybe he even wagered on it with Parker—how long will it take? How many Meow Squad visits until I’m the main course?

I yank my hand away. “In your dreams, buddy. In your dreams.”

I spin around and get back over to my cart, awash in a sense of loss, but you can’t trust a man with no heart.

He turns back to his computer. “Are you going to bring my correct sandwich next time?”

“Doubtful,” I say.





9




The woman will scoff at your rewards and demerits but keep going. Doling out rewards and demerits positions you as the approval giver and her as the approval seeker.

~The Max Hilton Playbook: Ten Golden Rules for Landing the Hottest Girl in the Room





* * *



Mia

Kelsey’s there when I get home from work. I peel off my winter clothes, feeling like a fugitive. Am I running from Max? Or myself?

“So? How’d it go?”

Unbearably sexy comes to mind. Wild. Confusing. Knuckle kisses of wonder.

“I’m definitely getting his attention.” I grab the marker and put an X in the mete out rewards and demerits box. “He got three gold stars for his tower.”

Kelsey smiles. It’s nice to see her happy and excited like this. “All this time he thought it was such an impressive tower.”

“Such high hopes for his tower. And then I gave some supermodels in a photo with him two-point-five stars, and he got an extra bag of cheesy puffs when he behaved well.”