Dirty Ties

Trent lowered the phone he was constantly consumed by and leveled me with hard eyes. “Putting your nose in our affairs won’t turn out well for you.”

I didn’t even bother looking to my parents for support. They knew the threats Trent held over me. Their greedy agendas took priority.

White noise buzzed in my ears, and my head pounded. As much as I tried to tune out my mother, her voice penetrated.

“…your thrift-store leggings, and what are you wearing on your feet? Are those biker boots? We have an image to uphold, and your disrespect will not—

“Kathleen.” Logan’s voice was syrupy soft, but everyone in the room stilled, my mother included. “Sit down and shut up.”

A vein bulged in her forehead, and I suppressed a smile. It was impossible to dismiss the lethal edge beneath his sharp black suit, but the people in this room would respect that. They’d want that kind of danger on their side.

“I am Kaci’s boss.” Logan relaxed against the chair back. “If she’s violating the dress code, or if her attitude is affecting her performance, I will deal with it.” He gave me a dispassionate glance and returned to her. When my mother sat, he continued, “As for the cable network’s impact on digital media, I believe it will gain an even greater competitive advantage in the marketplace if you used Dalton’s ideas.”

He carried the conversation seamlessly, even as he knew none of these initiatives would be brought to fruition. I imagined my mother in an orange jumpsuit, her face shriveled from the loss of Botox. Then I pictured her cold, dead eyes and blood draining from her lacerated throat.

I pressed a fist against my stomach and stared at my lap. When I looked up, she was glaring at me with her lips pursed.

She would never care for me the way a mother loved a daughter. She didn’t give a shit about Logan’s video. Hell, she’d encouraged the original setup with the male escort, Holden. But that didn’t justify a death sentence. She also stole millions from charities and was an accomplice in hiring assassins. Maybe the latter justified death, but it wasn’t my decision to make.

The meeting adjourned, and Logan and I went our separate ways in the corridor, headed to our own wings. When I reached the door to my office, I sensed him. I’d been so lost in my thoughts, I hadn’t heard him change direction. But God, how I welcomed the heat from his body at my back, the scent of his clean soap, and the deep rhythm of his breath.

My pulse skipped, and my limbs locked up. He stood right behind me, not touching, but close enough to scramble my brain. I stepped into my office, and he stayed on my heels, shutting the door behind him.

As I turned, he caught my waist with one big hand, preventing me from facing him. His other hand traced a slow, torturous path down my arm, setting sparks of electricity through my blood.

Brushing my hair off my shoulder, he lowered his mouth to my ear and whispered thickly, “I miss you.”

I blinked hazily at the skyline through the windows across the room, stunned by the amount of relief his words brought me. Two weeks of stress sloughed off my body, and I twisted to face him.

He stopped me again, his hands on my hips, fingers clamping down. “Please, don’t turn around. If you do…” He inhaled deeply. “I’m trying to stay away, but if you look at me right now with those gorgeous eyes, I’ll forget all about your marriage.”

I nodded, my entire body focused on the hands on my hips, my skin burning for his fingers to move beneath the hem of the shirt.

His hard chest brushed against my back, and his hands tightened against the thin material of my leggings. “You’re done thinking about this shit. It’s taken a toll on you. You’re too pale. You’ve lost weight.” He touched his brow to my shoulder, his exhale warming my back. “There’s goddamned bruises under your eyes. It’s time to end this.”

His nose and mouth pressed into the curve of my neck. His chest rose and fell against my back, mirroring the heave of mine. He was all around me, bracing me with his strength and chasing away the coldness in my limbs. The connection I’d missed so badly, the simple pleasure of his presence, the hope that maybe I wasn’t alone, his warmth, his smell, his words, all of it snapped into place and formed a power line between us.

My heart sped up. I broke away from his grip and stepped out of reaching distance before turning to face him. “You want to know what I want?”

He nodded once. The rigid tension in his body, the cords twanging in his neck above the tie, and the fire flickering in his eyes told me he was seconds from ripping my clothes off.