I bit my lip and slowly unfolded my legs. With Michael's dark gaze fixed on me, I parted my legs on the edge of his desk. He couldn't help himself from sucking in a ragged breath as I parted them as far as my tight pencil skirt would allow. I placed my hands between my legs, palms flat on his desk, and leaned forward so my he could see the cleavage down my unbuttoned shirt.
I whispered, "So if you must know, Mr O'Sullivan, that's why I need to leave work early this afternoon."
Without another word I pushed myself off his desk and crossed his office. The temptation to look back was almost overwhelming. I wanted to see the fire in his eyes as he watched me leave, lust swirling, churning with anger and frustration. I wanted to see his grip on the armrests of his chair one more time, see just how close he was to cracking and splintering the plastic. I wanted to see the hardness of his erection against the zipper of his pants; I wanted to see the sweat on his brow from the exertion of restraining himself from palming his rock-hard cock.
But more than all that I wanted to prove to him that I didn't care; I wanted to prove to myself that I didn't care. I didn't want him. And I certainly didn't need him, despite how my body protested otherwise.
So I didn’t look back.
I slipped out of his office and closed the door with the tiniest click behind me. With shaking hands I gathered my things. I was about to drape my jacket over my arm when I noticed my hard nipples visible through my white blouse. I ducked into my jacket and headed with hurried, almost panicked steps toward the elevator.
Damn. What had I done?
I'd crossed a line. What was worse, I liked it. I wanted to do it again.
I dragged a hand over my face as I cursed myself, though I wasn't entirely sure what I was cursing myself for. Was I cursing myself for going that far with Michael? Or was I cursing myself for not going farther?
"Ms Miller."
In my tangle of thoughts I almost ran into Harry Peterson coming out of his office. I muttered an apology and hoped my cheeks weren't as red as they felt.
"I hope Michael's not riding you too hard," he said with a pat on my shoulder.
I flinched away, images of Michael's naked body atop mine on sheets damp from our sweat flooding my mind.
Shit. I had gone too far. Way too far.
"I have to go," I mumbled, moving to slip past Harry.
I hesitated and glanced back. "Um, Harry?"
"Hmm?"
"Michael wants a meeting," I said and then added with a devilish grin, "right now, he said."
Harry startled like a pheasant at a gunshot. "Right now?"
"Right now."
Harry half ran toward Michael's office. "Just me?" he called back at me.
I thought about it for a moment. "Better bring in everyone," I shouted.
I continued toward the elevators with my chin high and my gait steady. Just as I was stepping into the elevator, I was rewarded with Michael's booming voice barrelling down the hallway.
"Get the fuck out of here, you idiots!"
I laughed as the doors closed.
Michael
A massive grizzly bear on his hind legs and paws raised was growling viciously down at me with glassy eyes.
A large human hand smacked my back. But it might as well have been from that same grizzly bear, at least when it had been alive and not stuffed and frozen into position.
"Isn't this place fantastic?" my younger brother, Eoin, asked, grinning from ear-to-ear in our red leather booth. "We're in the wild, wild west, Mikey."
"Don't call me that," I grumbled. "And I told you, Eoin. I really don't have time for this."
Eoin was in the States for a series of international rugby matches, and it was just my luck that one of the cities on the tour happened to be Denver at the exact time I was here. I glanced around the Buckhorn Exchange, a historic restaurant in Denver decorated with stuffed eagles and foxes and deer and badgers and pheasants and rabbits and, of course, massive grizzly bears. If that wasn't enough animal diversity for you, the menu was stuffed with offerings of yak, ostrich, elk, rattlesnake, and Rocky Mountain Oysters, which Eoin gleefully informed me were bull testicles.
"I'm your brother," Eoin said after ordering a local whiskey I told him I didn't want because I had to get back to the office after this. "You have to make time for me or I'll call Ma."
"Aren't you a little old for tattling?" I grumbled as I situated my white linen napkin in my lap.
Eoin, of course, had his napkin stuffed into the front of his grey workout hoodie like a five-year-old waiting for his alphabet soup. My brother's only response was to stick out his tongue at me. For a professional athlete with a wife and family, he was still as immature and boyish as always.
"I only have time for an entree," I told him, sliding his menu away from him. "No appetizers. And certainly no dessert."
Eoin snatched back his menu and laughed. "We're trying every single thing on the menu, so settle in, buddy."
I rolled my eyes and slipped my Blackberry out of my breast pocket to shoot off some emails. Eoin plucked it from my fingers and before I could stop him, he stood, stretched onto his tiptoes, and balanced my cell phone in the razor-sharp jaws of the grizzly looming over us.
As he
