“So, you lied to me?” he asked.
I let out my breath. I needed to be careful, but I was also getting incredibly close to the end of my patience with his controlling tendencies. “When you asked me about it, I hadn’t said yes or no to Parker’s invitation. So, no, technically, I did not lie to you.”
He scoffed and a flair of anger coursed through me at the sound.
“Cooper, listen to me,” I began, tempering my voice to keep my tone steady while the rest of my started to tremble. “I am not your girlfriend. You don’t have any say over where I go, who I see, or if I go on dates. I don’t know why you think you can nose about in my personal life, but I’m sick of it. If I am going to work here for you, then I deserve to be treated just like any other employee.”
I steeled myself, waiting for his wrath to fall.
“Allison, why do you think I offered you the job here?” he asked.
It was an odd question and it caught me off guard. “Because you felt bad about me getting fired from Spotlight?” I ventured.
He shook his head. “I know that you’re new to all this, but I don’t make business decisions, like hiring and firing, based off of personal feelings.”
“Really?” I quirked an eyebrow at him, calling his bluff. “So hiring me has nothing to do with…well, with whatever is going on between us!”
He sighed. “No.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “I find it very hard to believe that you couldn’t afford to hire someone for this secret project thing you keep talking about. I mean, really? You’re the billionaire CEO of a huge company! You can
afford whoever you want. So, why me? If it’s not just because you like staring at my ass?”
“Allison, lower your voice,” Cooper insisted.
I crossed my arms and waited.
“Are you really so insecure that you don’t think I could want you for anything other than your body? You doubt your skills that much?”
I was speechless. I wanted to scream at him, to yell and get loud so he would stop picking apart my walls of defense. But I couldn’t. Because he was right. Even if we hadn’t already slept together, and he was just offering me the job, I would still assume that he had ulterior motives hiding in his back pocket.
“I hired you because I need help obtaining the information we’ve already spoken about,” he continued. “I could have hired anyone, you’re right. I hired you because I know I can trust you to keep things confidential.”
“And how do you know that? Cooper, you don’t even know me.”
I didn’t know why I was arguing. He was right. I was trustworthy and wasn’t going to blab his secret project all over town—regardless of how infuriating he might become.
He stood and came around the desk and I automatically stood up, too, not wanting to be sitting with him standing over me. It felt a little too intimate.
“I do know you, Allison,” he said.
I sucked in a silent gasp as a wave of his cologne hit me. He always smelled so incredible. My knees weakened underneath me but I stayed planted, not daring to move an inch.
My eyes locked with his and my stomach twisted. He was standing so close that I could feel his body heat radiating off him, and I so desperately wanted to take one small step forward and have him wrap his strong arms around me and not let go. The last few weeks had been full of so much drama and stress and I was suddenly overcome by exhaustion. I needed a safe spot to land, and for some reason, in that moment—it seemed that my heart had decided that he was it.
I dropped my eyes back down to look at my hands as they nervously fidgeted with the edge of my blazer.
I was about to make some excuse to get me out of the room, away from the suffocating emotions that were threatening to overtake me, and far, far away from the smell and heat and sound of Cooper. Before I had a chance to say anything, he placed his fingertips under my chin and brought my face up to look at him again. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
I nodded, hardly allowing myself to breathe for fear of falling completely apart.
His face was lowering to mine and I struggled to keep my eyes open. It was startling how much I wanted to let myself melt into one of his hot kisses. His fingers slid down my chin and traced a path down my neck, sending sparks exploding all over my skin, wherever his fingers touched. His lips pressed to mine and my legs nearly went out from underneath me. There was a little voice screaming in the back of my mind, reminding me about the actress, telling me that he wasn’t to be trusted, but the voice was drowned out completely as Cooper’s tongue entered my mouth and swirled around the tip of mine.
He wrapped his fingers around the back of my neck and held me possessively. I let him pull me closer until our bodies were pressed against each other. My breasts ached as I leaned into him, desperately wanting to feel his skin on mine. Scenes of our previous lovemaking flashed behind my eyelids and I was breathless, panting between each crash of his lips on mine.
Just as suddenly as it had started, Cooper stopped and backed away. He released me and my eyes popped open.
“I don’t want you around Parker,” he said, shattering the sexual tension between us.