Chapter 23: Butt-dialing the Billionaire: Chapter 23

Jada

“You,” he says.

My belly drops down past my knees. “You think it was me?”

He comes closer, stuffing the rolled-up red envelope into his pocket. He fixes me with his villain gaze, wild and wounded. “I know it was you.”

I study his face. He seems so sure. “Hah,” I say.

“Are you denying it?” His rumble connects to something deep inside me. “Because don’t bother.”

Did somebody tell him? Did he break somebody? “Whoever told you that…” I narrow my eyes. “Who told you that?”

He raises his villain brows.

Yup, I just confirmed it like a fool. “Aren’t you so clever,” I whisper. “You think you’re clever?”

“I do think I’m clever.” His eyes burn into mine, kicking up my pulse. He’s on fire, this man. Dangerous.

I say, “You’d better not tell anybody.”

He smiles, lips full, dark whiskers shimmering in the hallway light.

“Oh my god! You can’t be bothered to do any actual helpful work, but you’re happy to do the most messed-up thing possible?”

“I find the most messed-up thing possible tends to be the most pleasurable, as a rule.”

“I can’t even with you,” I whisper.

His eyes sparkle. I should hate him.

I go up on my tiptoes, getting right into his face. It’s supposed to be threatening, but it turns out anything but. “You’re an asshole.”

“Oh, I know.” His breath is a feather on my lips.

I grab his shirt, move in closer. I should let him go, but my knuckles brush against the hard planes of his chest. I’m mesmerized by this small bit of contact through the fabric of his shirt. It’s a physical sensation, coursing through my body, and my brain can’t form the command to let go.

Quite the opposite—my fists tighten.

“I mean it. You’d better not tell,” I whisper into his maddeningly perfect face, a face so perfect that the stupidest styling can’t mess it up. Even with the glasses. Even with the hair. He transcends all of that.

He grins. “What would Don Juan the Entitled Delivery Driver do? What would Don Juan the Entitled Delivery Driver want in exchange for his silence?”

“Excuse me?” I ask in disbelief.

He draws his finger down the side of my cheek, leaving a slow trail of sparkling sensation as he slowly turns my world upside down.

He’s wrong and outrageous and I want him like fire.

He gives a wicked smile—not his fake one, not his lopsided dimple one, but his glittering one—the one that’s pure dark heat that spears through my core. “If you want to keep your job and your precious family, it’ll cost you a kiss.”

The breath goes out of me. “You’re blackmailing me into doing sexual favors for you?”

“Isn’t it awesome? How many demerits do you have? One? Two?”

My pulse whooshes. “You wouldn’t.”

“It’s already happening.”

“Do you have no self-respect? Are you just like, hey, I’m a thoroughly corrupted, power-drunk Lothario who enjoys sexually blackmailing people who are simply trying to keep their jobs, and I’m good with that?”

“Flatter me all you want. Those are my terms.”

I suck in a breath and close my fists harder over his ridiculous shirt. It’s like an out-of-body experience, but not the ghost kind. If anything, I’m too much in my body, too much in my skin.

“I’ll take your evil bargain,” I hiss, pulse racing. “Your twisted demand.”

And then I go up on my tiptoes and I press my lips to his. They’re soft and warm, and I push into him, moving against his body like he’s got the gravitational force of a moon.

He rumbles into the kiss. The rumble has a direct line to my pelvis where it melts things into a cauldron of want.

He presses his hand to the center of my chest and pushes me roughly against the wall.

“Seriously the worst,” I gasp in the split second before he covers my lips with his.

I’m kissing him for real now. I’m pulling him to me, disintegrating under his touch.

I feel like I’m falling, spinning. He snakes a tongue into my mouth, and I groan, kissing him harder—greedy and frantic.

But then some faint voice inside me—some voice of self-preservation—sounds the alarm. What we’re doing here, it’s practically prostitution! So wrong.

I push him away. “That’ll be all,” I say.

We stare at each other, panting. There’s this strange look on his face. For a moment I think he’s as affected as I am.

“That’ll be all?” he says. “I’m not so sure. I think you liked your entitled delivery driver.”

“Please. And if you think it will ever, ever happen again, you’re cracked in the head—cracked. And you’d better keep up your end of the deal,” I warn.

He gives me one last villain smile and then he heads back down the hall, ducking back into the design department, leaving me trembling with unfulfilled excitement. That was so outrageous, what just happened.

But so, so, so hot.

Not a good person, not a good person, I chant in my mind as I head back after him.

Also, who told him? Or did he figure it out?

Jack is sitting in his cubicle looking all sparkly. If he was as wowed by the kiss as I was, he’s fully recovered himself. He probably kisses women all the time. He probably has so many notches on his bedpost, it’s lost structural integrity. Maybe he has blackmail deals with half of them.

I frown, hating that.

My phone lights up as soon as I settle into my cubicle. It’s a text from Renata even though she’s one row away.