Five years earlier
I should close my door and leave her alone.
Alone.
That’s precisely the problem.
Cole is on vacation—fucking his beautiful girlfriend on a beach in Hawaii, I’m sure—and Tag and Wilson are doing a security system walk-through with a client in Arlington.
Which means Ellie and I are all alone in the office, and any second, I’m going to get up from my desk and go find her. I’ll invent a problem. Ask if there’s coffee—which there isn’t, because I’ll have already dumped the pot on the way to reception.
She’ll get up and lead the way, her pert, round ass bobbing in front of me like a matador’s red cape.
Which makes me the bull.
Fuck, yes.
Except…no.
For one thing, it would make me a hypocrite. And for another, I’m pretty sure that if I give in to my base need for her, this isn’t going to end well.
I’m not the upstanding SEAL I once was, for many reasons, not the least of which is that I covet my employee’s ass.
And her tits.
And her soft, wet mouth.
A knock at the door interrupts my fantasy and I snap my shit tight. “Yep,” I say coolly, clipped.
Ellie marches efficiently up to and around my desk, leaning her hip against the side of it. “There are six schedule conflicts on your calendar next week. I’ve flagged them all in bright red so you can go in and fix them.”
I swear under my breath. “Again?”
“Your work load has changed. It might be time to hire an assistant.”
I can’t do that. “I’ll think about it. And thank you for flagging the conflicts. That’s not your job. I appreciate the quick eye.”
“No problem.” She hands me a neatly written message. “Also, the young Miss Conroy has called twice this afternoon looking for an appointment.”
I make a face. I fucking hate socialites. “We should hire someone to hire the nuisance cases.”
“She’s harmless.”
Exactly. I don’t have time for harmless. I’m rather busy with the exceedingly harmful types. “Do you want to take the appointment?”
She blinks in surprise. “Me?”
“If she’s harmless…why not let her think you’re the crisis specialist?”
Ellie’s cheeks turn pink. “I dunno. I’m not…I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“You’re very capable.” My voice runs rough, and I clear my throat. I hold the note back out, but she doesn’t take it, so I stand, which means I’m suddenly looming over her. When I push the paper into her hand, her fingers wrap around mine, and a sizzle of electricity burns my skin.
She looks up at me and her lips part, her eyes wide.
Fuck.
I don’t move.
She does, though. She ducks her head and twists, breaking the connection. I take a hard step back. Lock that shit down, Evans.
I can’t hit on my employee.
I won’t.
She wiggles the piece of paper in the air as she heads for the door. “I’ll handle her.”
“Charge her a full consultation fee.”
“I’m going to have a woman-to-woman conversation with her and convince her how to solve her problem without hiring G.I. Joe,” Ellie retorts.
This is safer ground. I snap back at her. “We don’t do pro bono work.”
She stops in the doorway and looks back at me, her gaze piercing. “We do when it’s a good cause.”
“Socialites are rarely good causes.”
“An excellent point.” She spins around and leans her shoulder against the door frame. “Hey. funny story…”
She trails off as she realizes my gaze is locked on her legs. The swing of her skirt has settled back around her knees now, but as she spun, I caught the unmistakable sight of old-fashioned stockings hooked to a garter belt.
Silence falls between us.
I’m supposed to prompt her here. Ask her what the funny story is.
I don’t say anything.
She holds my gaze, and my cock thickens beneath my desk. “It’s almost lunch,” she says huskily. “Should I order something in?”
An hour later, takeout containers litter my desk and my jacket and tie have been discarded. Ellie is sprawled in the chair across from mine, her skirt carefully covering those stockings I caught a glimpse of, and she’s doing some healthy damage to the chicken adobo.
“Have you thought more about handling the Conroy inquiry?”
She wrinkles her nose at me. “It’s not my job.”
“It could be.”
“I like what I do. I don’t know if I want to take on more work.” She frowns. “Unless you’re not happy with—”
“God no. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to this firm.”
“Thanks.” She gives me a soft smile, almost sad. “It’s a point of pride, I guess.”
I think I’ve stepped in something here and I should back the hell up. I sit up straighter. “You’re very good at it. You manage our different personalities well.”
“You’re as close as brothers. I don’t need to manage much. You’re…really a family.”
I’m surprised that she seems surprised. “You weren’t expecting that.”
She shakes her head, then leans forward to swap the chicken for the BBQ pork. “Nope.”
“What did you expect?”
Leaning back in her chair, she re-crosses her legs, and her skirt climbs up her thighs a couple of inches. “Ego clashes.”
“We have those sometimes.” My jaw twitches.
“But you’re the alpha.”
Damn fucking straight. “Sure.”
“Does that ever get old?” She blinks, and now she’s looking at me—really looking at me—and I’m blindsided. So much for her being soft and me stepping all over her feelings.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s Ellie who’s the secret alpha. “No,” I say carefully. “I knew what I was signing up for. We need to project a certain strength and it has to be authentic.”
She nods, accepting that answer.
But her next question is just as sharp. “Do you ever think about cutting loose?”
“Never.”
“Is that your military training?”
“Sure.”
She giggles. Giggles, which isn’t a sound I’ve ever heard from her before. Ellie laughs, sometimes with us, sometimes at us, and always with the confidence of someone who sees us as the boys we are. This laugh is different. It’s a private laugh, just between us, and it might be an act, it might be sexual, but I don’t care.
I mirror her nonchalance and lean back in my own chair. “Do you ever think about cutting loose?”
“Never,” she whispers, mimicking my word and my voice at the same time.
Ah. A game.
I grin. “Military training?”
“Sure.” The word slides between us like a silk sheet dropping from her body.
Ellie doesn’t have a shred of military training in her body. It’s one of the reasons we hired her. She’s an innocent-but-smart girl from the Midwest. New to D.C. and untainted by the corruption outside these walls.
“If we were to cut loose, what would we do?”
“The two of us?” One of her eyebrows curves high. “That’s an intriguing thought, Mr. Evans.”
I groan. It’s quiet, but we’re all alone and she’s not that far from me. Just on the other side of my desk.
Her lips part, and she crosses her legs the other way again. “Is it okay if I call you that?”
Jesus. “Ellie—” I cut myself off. My dick is rock hard in my pants and my brain is swimming, but I’m not stupid. “We can’t—”
“Of course not.” She smiles lazily. “And so we won’t. This isn’t happening.”
She looks like a very satisfied cat who has caught a canary, and as far as I’m aware, I’m no fucking bird. “Can we speak frankly?”
Her lips twitch. “Is that not what we’ve been doing?”
I stand. I need to pace. I need to think, to be sure of what I say next. Because this is so wrong, so absolutely off-limits unacceptable that if I proposition her, it’ll be like threading a needle. I’ll get one chance to do it perfectly, or it’ll be all fucked up.
I roll my sleeves up as I move past her to the window. The left first, neatly to my elbow. Then the right.
“We’re all alone,” she says from behind me.
I don’t turn around. “I won’t take advantage of you.”
“You aren’t.”
“I’m your boss.”
“I absolve you of that role for the afternoon.”
“Is that what you want?” I turn now, and she’s standing in front of me. “One afternoon?”
A dark shadow passes through her gaze, then she blinks, her dark lashes brushing her cheek. When she looks at me again, it’s gone. “I want a lot of things I can’t have,” she murmurs. “Do you have to be one of them?”
Fuck the rules. I haul her against me and her lips part, a tiny gasp rushing between us before my mouth consumes hers.
She softens immediately in my arms. Her fingers wrap around the back of my neck, crawl up into my hair, and the curvy front of her body somehow finds a perfect fit against the hard angles of mine.
As I kiss her, I back her up. Taste by taste, step by step, until we’re at my desk.
Then I lift her and sit that perfect ass on the smooth wood surface.
“I want to see those stockings,” I rasp. I drop my hands to her silk-clad thighs.
She spreads her legs. “Be my guest.”
Gliding my hands over her muscles, I feel the lace and the ribbon straps first. Then I pause, playing my fingertips over the bare skin at the top of the stockings, before lifting my hand and easing her skirt up her legs.
She wiggles to help, and my right hand drops between her thighs.
Bare skin, warm and inviting, is even better than perving on stockings. I give up on my plan to only have a good look and give in to my craven need to touch her. I get more than I could ever have hoped for. “Ellie, you aren’t wearing any panties.”
“I lost them,” she says breathily, and not really at all innocently.
A heady thrill charges through me. “When did you…lose them?”
“After lunch was delivered.”
I groan and stroked her flesh again. “Fuck, you’re already wet.”
Her breath hitches, and her sweet little pussy gets even slicker against my fingers.
“You needed this, didn’t you?” I graze my teeth on her earlobe, the dirty talk turning me on just as much as her. “Were your thighs aching as you sat across for me?”
“Yes,” she gasps.
I nudge her legs wider. Her pussy lips open and that slippery goodness spills onto my palm. This is messy on every level. Physically, emotionally, professionally. Knowing that I shouldn’t be playing with her on my desk, that this is not the place and our receptionist is not the person for my depraved desires only turns me on further.
When I turned around and she was standing in front of me, something deep inside me unlocked. I won’t stop unless she stomps on the brakes. I’m going to make all the mistakes right now and love every one of them.
“Let me see you.” I growl it out, a hoarse command. “Lean back and put those legs on my shoulders.”
Her eyes go wide, but she follows my instruction—and then does one better. She rocks back on her wrists and lifts one leg up to my shoulder, but the other she curves out wide, bracing her thigh against the edge of my desk. “Don’t stop touching me,” she whispers. “It feels so good.”
That makes me feel like a God damn giant. Fuck. I nod as I hold her gaze, then slowly look down. Her legs are spread lewdly around my body, her tan thighs an open invitation that leads right to a private swatch of creamy white skin, with a swollen pink cunt right in the middle. Waxed bare and glistening everywhere my fingers drag her juices. Up and around each outer lip, over the inner folds, and back up to a dark pink clit that hardens a little more with each pass.
My fingers look obscene against her delicate sex. Like I’m violating her, and I am. This is wrong, so wrong, but now I’ve touched her and we can’t un-ring that bell.
She bucks against me as I circle her tight little entrance with a blunt, thick fingertip. I need to see my cock there, need to watch as her body stretches to accommodate my dick.
I add a second finger and slide my thumb against her clit. With each rude thrust, she grinds a little harder, and when I pause, she tells me she wants more.
“Yes,” she breathes. “Jason, yes. Fuck me with your fingers. Make me ride them.”
Holy shit, Ellie has a dirty mouth. “Aren’t you a sexy little fiend,” I growl. “Does this feel good?”
“So good.”
“It looks good. You’re fucking beautiful, you know that?”
“Yeah?” She bites her lip as I work my fingers in and out of her.
“Can you come like this?”
“Oh…yes…” Shuddering, she rocks her hips. “I’m close already. I was close as soon as you kissed me.”
I won’t let that go to my head. “When you come, I’m going to fuck you.”
She whimpers. “Yes. Please.”
“Do you want that? You want my cock inside you?”
“Jason…”
“You’re so tight, Ellie.”
“I want it…”
“Say it.”
She bites her lip, then nods. “I want your cock,” she whispers.
Fuck. Me.
I press my thumb down, holding her clit as I curve my fingers inside her pussy. I want her orgasm so fucking bad right now. I want to feel her come apart on my hand, and then I want it all over again with me buried inside her.
With a strangled gasp, she surges forward and clamps her hands on my shoulders. I feel the first grip around my fingers, then a shimmery ripple of sensation. The climax repeats itself, rings on a pond, and I stand there like an oak, feeling like that giant all over again, absorbing the aftereffects of the most gorgeous orgasm I’ve ever witnessed.
“Good one?” I ask as she presses her face into my neck.
“Mmm.”
“I enjoyed it, too.”
She giggles and wriggles off my hand.
I lift my fingers to my mouth, and she watches, gaze hooded, as I lick them off.
“Do I taste good?”
I offer her the tip of my index finger and she bites it between her teeth. Gently. Just enough to remind me that there’s more to Ellie than meets the eye, maybe there always has been, and she’s in charge here.
We do as much or as little as she wants.
If she’s done now, that’s more than fine by me.
But she’s not done. Not by a long shot. She slides her tongue between my fingers, then slurps it back up between her lips in a lewd, arousing sound before making her next request. “I want you inside me.”
Hell yeah. “Any chance that when you were losing your underwear, you happened to find a condom at the same time?”
“It just so happens…” She hops down and leans over to her purse, her skirt still rucked up high on her waist, and I rake my gaze over the swollen pink flesh between her thighs.
There’s no way we’re going to excise this chemistry that haunts us in a single afternoon. Whatever dark magic Ellie has unlocked today, I’m hooked. I drop to my knees, the request for a condom forgotten. I need more than a taste of her. I need to gorge myself on her flesh.
She shrieks and grabs for the desk. I’ve got her by the thighs, she’s not going anywhere, but I love the throaty giggle she lets out as she tries to gain purchase and hold still for my oral attack.
“Jason, I want you—”
And she’ll get me when I’m good and ready.