I narrowed my eyes at him. “You? You were . . . you are my fucking enemy, Cade! You tear me down every chance you get. The first time I met you, you threw in my face that I was an addict and couldn’t be trusted.”
“I stand by that assessment back then. You were going into dangerous undercover work.”
I couldn’t keep my eyes from bulging. I think my hand even twitched because I was ready to smack him. “If you weren’t my boss, I’d—” I shook my head, so ready to inflict physical pain upon him.
And then I saw it.
His real smile.
The one nobody ever got to see. Cade in action. Cade in malice. Cade in destruction mode, relishing in the chaos he was about to create.
“Go on, dollface, say it.”
“You’re unhinged, you know that?” I said, but my heart had picked up speed. My body clenched, my pussy grew wet, and my breath caught in my chest just feeling what was in the air between us.
Even if I knew it was dangerous, pushing Cade to that smile was so enticing that I couldn’t help it.
He chuckled. “Oh, really?” He leaned against the wall as he casually eyed me up and down. “If that’s the case, you’re delusional thinking you could work well with me tonight. I work alone.”
“Just because you’re ridiculous doesn’t mean I can’t handle it.”
He hummed low before he pushed off the wall, forcing me to move back. He had a look in his eye I hadn’t seen before, the look of someone on the hunt, someone ready to capture his prey.
He stopped a centimeter before his body touched mine, and I stared up at him, completely aware that the heat between us wasn’t a work-related issue.
“You can handle this?”
“What?” I whispered.
He made a point of looking down between us before he took that last step into my space. Our bodies collided, the sparks flew, my mind scrambled, and my heart jackhammered the blood through my veins.
“This,” he murmured into my ear. “We might be enemies, Ms. Hardy, but this is where we aren’t. This is inevitable when we work in the same building.”
There was no use denying it, not when my nipples stood to attention as his hard cock pressed into my stomach. I breathed his air, and he breathed mine.
“And do you think we should indulge in it?” I asked softly, as I stared at where our bodies connected because I wanted him to say it, to admit that I affected him the same way I knew he affected me.
“No.” His response felt like ice water being poured over my head. “And that’s all the more reason for me to have you fired at this point, because I normally do indulge in shit I shouldn’t.”
And those words felt like fire licking over my body, warming me up again.
“From the reports we get, you’ve actually done a lot of what you should,” I whispered. He’d kept businesses afloat, helped to curb trafficking, money laundering, big drug deals. He’d done so much.
“I’ve done a lot of bad too.”
“Sometimes good requires bad.”
He nodded a few times as he stared at me staring at him. I swear he was dissecting me, like he could find every hidden answer. Like the algorithm would show him something nobody else could see.
Then he took a deep breath, and with it, he stepped back, ready to walk away.
Instantly, my body missed the tension and the proximity of him. The closeness of Cade was dangerous. I knew I could end up reliant on someone like him, and that I couldn’t afford. Not when I’d come this far on my own.
“You’re right.” He cracked his knuckles in front of me as if he was readying himself for his next words. “What’s the bad in us that will bring the good, Izzy? Is it indulging so we can get it out of our systems? Is it me firing you quickly, which would be bad but end up good for everyone in the end?”
“Don’t you dare.” I stood up ramrod straight. “I deserve to be here.”
He chewed on his cheek before running one tattooed hand over his jawline. I read the letters that were on each of his fingers as he did it.
CHAOS.
And I thought, as his smile creeped up again, I was about to witness it.
“Dare? Is there something else you do dare me to do?” He waited for me to give him permission, to step over that line. We’d danced around it for years, and I knew if we took the jump now, it’d change our dynamic forever.
“Would you even take a dare?”
“Try me.”
“I dare you to do what you want to me. What I know you’ve been wanting to do.”
He didn’t even wait a second before his tattooed hand shot out so fast, I barely saw the blur of ink as it flew to my neck and pushed me up against the wall where he held me captive as his mouth descended on mine.
He didn’t kiss me. He consumed me.
He commanded my mouth to open with his, pushed his tongue in and tasted every part he could of me. I met his kiss with the same passion, like I was ravenous for him, like I’d been starved of him for too long. I clawed at his back and moaned into his mouth as his other hand went into my shorts. I didn’t care that we were in a hallway where our coworkers might walk in, I didn’t care about my job. I didn’t care about anything but having him.
He squeezed my neck harder along with my thigh and shoved me high enough up the wall for my pussy to settle against his cock. My legs immediately wrapped around him, and I rocked my hips forward, letting my body take over. He encircled my waist with his arms and walked me back into his office, shutting the door on the way and locking it behind us.
I took my lips from his to say, “Maybe we should leave and—”
“I’m not waiting another minute for you, baby doll. I’ve had to endure your bad attitude for long enough. Now, I’m going to fuck it out of you.”
“Jesus,” I murmured. “I shouldn’t love your mouth as much as I do.”
“You’re about to love it more when I taste you.”
He slammed me down on the desk, and I moaned at the intensity of it.
No more time was given to me to prepare. He shoved my shorts down and grabbed hold of my panties.
“Hurry,” I demanded.
“Hurry?” He cocked his head, and then he straightened, stepping between my legs and towering over me. I pushed up on my elbows to see him taking his sweet time as he slid one hand up from my thigh all the way back to my throat. Leaning close, he whispered, “I’m the boss, remember? I tell you what to do and you listen.”
The instinct at this point in our relationship was for me to fight him. I swear he knew it too as I said, “If you’re the boss, try to make sure you establish that here tonight, because I might have forgotten.”
His hold on my neck increased as he pushed my back flat on the desk, his thick length pressing against my entrance. “Breathe when you’re told, dollface or you’ll pass out.”
“What? Like I’d forget—” His grasp completely cut off my oxygen—he didn’t waste time warming me up to the idea—as his other hand worked my clit in earnest.
Instantly, the fear of not breathing kicked my adrenaline into gear while I simultaneously writhed against him. I’d never experienced pleasure with the fear so acutely. I tried to cling to rationality and told myself this wasn’t special. It was simply the thrill of hooking up with my boss, the guy I’d lusted over for so long.
I was riding his hand, lost in my desire for him, holding his wrist for leverage, not paying attention to the lifeline that was breathing.
“Breathe, Izzy,” he growled. He’d loosened his grip on my throat and I hadn’t realized. My eyes flew to his, and I saw a look that wasn’t normally there.
Desire and awe.
I didn’t have time to consider it much before I gulped in two breaths. Then, the pressure was instantly back on my windpipe, and he was unzipping to pull his cock from his trousers. “Feel just the tip, now, huh?”
I stared at him guiding his hard cock to my center, and my eyes widened when I saw the metal there. If I could have, I would have asked. I would have spent some time assessing the piercing. Instead, he rolled the head of his cock over my wet pussy.
“God, you’re already soaked. Next time, I’m going to document this. Make sure we have enough evidence to prove that despite how much you claim to hate me, you paint my cock so well with your arousal.”
I couldn’t focus on anything as my vision blurred, as my high almost hit, as he looked at me like he was finally about to give me that darkness.
“You on the pill, baby?”
I nodded.
He thrust in and commanded, “Breathe.”
I gasped for air. Maybe from the size of him entering me. Or because I needed to breathe. Or because the orgasm ripped through and ravaged me. I couldn’t tell which. Clinging to his shirt, I pulled him down as he pumped into me and ground my pussy onto his cock. The feeling of him against my inner walls as I took a breath to bring life back into my body was one I’d never felt.