The Boss (The Boss 1)

I shook my head. “No, someone asked me not to go to lunch until one-thirty,” I reminded him.

He winked at me. “Well, now you see my sinister motive. Sit down.”

I put my hand on the back of the chair across from him, and he said, “No, not there.”

I hesitated, unsure of what he wanted. Was I supposed to sit in his lap and eat sushi? The idea wasn’t unappealing, but it was a little cliché. “Is this some weird Don Draper thing?”

He scoffed. “You should know me well enough by now to have more faith in me.” He moved aside a square black plate with a truly intimidating arrangement of sliced rolls and patted the desktop. “Up you go.”

I looked down. I was wearing an ivory lace skater dress, not exactly the length made for sitting on desks demurely. But I had a feeling he wasn’t aiming for demure. I edged past him and hopped up, careful not to sit on or put an errant hand in one of the other plates. I primly crossed my ankles and gazed down at him expectantly. “What do you mean, I should know you well enough by now? We only met officially on Monday. Now it’s Friday.”

“I think we packed quite a lot of getting to know each other into our night together.” He slipped his hand between my knees and pushed my legs apart. “Open.”

I took a shaky breath. Beneath the dress, I wore lacy crème-colored panties. I hadn’t been on a purposeful seduction mission; I just liked to match my underwear to my outerwear sometimes. But the panties were awfully thin, and awfully skimpy. If I spread my legs, he was definitely going to get more than the standard panty flash.

“What happened to not screwing around at the office?” I asked, allowing him to slowly part my thighs.

“I don’t believe I ever said we wouldn’t screw around in the office. I said we’d have to be discreet about it.” His big hands rested on my inner thighs, and I gasped as he pushed them wider apart, putting me on total display. “I also don’t believe I said we were going to screw around now.”

“Explain to me how this isn’t screwing around.” I bit my lip to stop a moan as his fingertips skimmed over the sheer material of my panties.

Abruptly, he pulled his hands away and reached for the plate he’d moved. He settled it on the desk between my spread thighs and picked up his chopsticks again. Then he smiled up at me as though absolutely nothing were amiss, suppressing what would undoubtedly have been the cockiest grin in the history of maleness. “We’re eating lunch.”

He lifted a slice of roll, and I had to physically restrain myself from snapping at it like a starving dog. The second the cool rice and soy paper hit my tongue, I groaned gratefully.

“I’m sorry to make you wait so long,” he said, truly apologetic. “But I wanted to have lunch with you. I was hoping to spend some time with you this weekend, but Emma is going to be in town this evening through Monday morning. I’d like to be able to see her as much as possible while she’s here.”

My heart sank. I’d secretly been hoping he would want to hook up again on the weekend, but I hadn’t pressed. We were keeping it casual, and I figured since I wasn’t the one going through a messy, stressful divorce, I’d let him take the lead. Still, it wasn’t like I thought he should put me above his daughter. I swallowed before answering. “No worries. Isn’t delayed gratification supposed to be a turn on?”

“Delayed by six years?” He poured some steaming hot sake from a ceramic carafe and handed me a cup, clinking his own against mine before sipping his.

Are we really drinking at work? I asked myself. Oh well. When in Rome.

He fed me two more slices, both with distinctly different tastes and textures. As a meal, it was better than the salad I’d been planning on getting from the building’s commissary. As a sexual experience...

Every time he moved, he brushed against my bare legs. When he reached past me for something, his bare forearm grazed my thigh. The backs of his knuckles swept up my knee as he took food from the plate. The entire process was an exercise in frustration. All I wanted was for him to push my panties aside and plunge his fingers into me, something he seemed not at all inclined to do.

I noticed the plate of sashimi, and the cold slices of ruby red, raw tuna. Then a very bizarre association connected in my mind. “I don’t know if I want you to eat tuna from between my legs.”

Neil had been sipping his sake. He choked on it. He covered his mouth with his napkin, coughing and laughing at the same time. I couldn’t help but laugh, too, and quipped, “Was that on purpose or something? Was this all a setup for a bad tuna joke?”