Corrupted Chaos (Tarnished Empire)(56)

I slid a finger inside and moaned. There was no lasting when he watched me like this, when I felt like I was doing everything wrong, but it felt so right. I screamed his name when I orgasmed, and my whole body convulsed as I saw stars.

He pushed himself from the doorway and strode over to his side of the bed where he sat before grabbing the wrist at my shorts. He pulled my hand from my panties and sucked my fingers clean. “Jesus Christ, you taste so damn good when you’re being bad, baby doll.”

And before I knew what he was doing, he stuck his phone in my face and snapped a picture. “What the hell, Cade?”

“One for one, doll. You took mine, and now I took yours.” He slid his phone back into his pocket, and then his dark eyes, warm as molasses, roved over me.

“Oh no.” I shoved him back. “Stay on your side. We have a team-building exercise in twenty minutes. Heather said we’ll be doing a paddleboard relay race before I assign teams to work on the different parts of JUNIPER.”

“Well, you can be late.”

“No. You and I are not going to be late.” I poked him in the chest. “You have to come.”

“For what?”

“For people to see you and trust you and want to work with you,” I said as I grabbed my pink bikini.

He eyed it. “You’re wearing that for a paddleboard relay?”

“Yep. And I’m hoping it falls all the way off,” I threw back because I knew he was going to say something about it being too skimpy.

He groaned, padded over to his suitcase, and grabbed swim trunks, surprisingly without saying a word. Then, he went to his bathroom to change. I thought I was winning as I threw on my bathing suit and sucked on a candy cane in the living room, waiting for him.

My plan went completely off the rails when he walked down the hallway in nothing but dark swim trunks. I’d never seen the way his tattoos wrapped around his chest, how the black snaked over his skin. When he moved, each of his muscles flexed.

Caden Armanelli hid that perfect body under those tailored suits he wore, but not today. He had two towels hanging off one arm, and he grabbed some sunglasses from the counter to put on before he said, “You ready?”

The answer was no.

I leaned against the table for support. I knew I was drooling too.

How had I never considered that he’d look so good without a shirt on in the sunlight? “I don’t think . . .” How was I going to get around this? “Why don’t you have a shirt on?”

His brow furrowed. “What? Why don’t you have a shirt on, dollface?”

I glanced down at myself, completely forgetting what I had on. “I have a bathing suit on.”

“So do I.”

“But you are . . . You look . . . You’re the boss.”

“I don’t care what I am. If you’re getting in that water wearing a swimsuit you might lose, I’m getting in it with you. Now, let’s go.”

“Instead of focusing on what might be happening with my swimsuit, focus on being the boss, Cade. The team needs to see you.” I was telling him as much myself, goddamn it.

“The team has a boss. Me. Whether they like me or not doesn’t matter.”

“It always matters. Respect makes a person work harder. Just because you’re their boss and they might fear losing their jobs doesn’t mean they are going to do the job well. Haven’t you ever heard that?”

He stared at me for a second too long, and his eyes changed. “I used to think the same about my father, about my family. We didn’t need fear; we needed respect. My brother and I made friends rather than enemies.”

“See?” I pointed out and shrugged as I walked past him through the doorway. At least maybe now we’d get somewhere, even if I had to look at how hot my boss was throughout the whole day.

I stomped out to the paddleboard relay and tried to hide my frown and irritation when basically every girl swarmed Cade. Lucas was by my side in a hot second, too, telling me exactly what he would do if he got Cade alone. It definitely wasn’t subtle, or professional, but I didn’t blame him. That body and those tattoos had everyone drooling.

Then, I was even more frustrated when Cade did exactly what he was supposed to do. He freaking interacted and swam and engaged with everyone on the team. He joked with them. He laughed. An outsider would assume he belonged there, like he was a part of us, like he wasn’t the callous boss everyone made him out to be.

The fucker won the paddleboard relay for his team too. All of a sudden, the billionaire tech mogul was an avid paddleboarder? I swear I almost shoved him off the damn thing.

And after, everyone was more than willing to accept job tasks for JUNIPER. They even complimented us on a great team retreat, as if I had something to do with it.

Cade nearly knocked me off my feet when he told everyone that none of it would have been possible had I not built the system.

I went to bed that night hoping he would roll over onto my side of the spray-painted line and tell me it was all overrated, that we should screw until the sun came up.

He didn’t.

Suddenly, he was the perfect boss, and I was the one who wanted to step over the line.





16





Cade





A week in, I was still showing Izzy what a good boss looked like. Her words had stuck with me, made me realize I’d neglected a large part of my job. I’d treated the teams I’d worked with like employees rather than family.