He cocks his head at me, confused.
Maintain dominance.
I stand up straighter and put my hands behind my back now, letting him know that I don’t need them there to defend myself, that my word is enough.
He makes to jump again.
Again—I click my tongue.
He pauses.
He tilts his head.
And very, very slowly, he lowers his behind to the floor and cocks his head at me again, curious.
“Jesus,” Colton whispers, glancing between me and the dog with his emerald green eyes. “How did you do that?”
“He wants to be trained,” I say, looking into Scrappy’s alert brown eyes. “Don’t you, boy? You’re a good one, aren’t you?”
He wags his tail and then leaps toward me. I click my tongue, but he’s had enough of that game and jumps up anyway, forepaws against my thighs, wagging and hopping and trying desperately to get to my face for another lick.
Well, at least it started well.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Crew,” I murmur. “Shall we begin the interview?”
“No,” he snaps, glaring at me again, his face devilish and handsome and stern all at the same time.
“Oh,” I murmur, making to turn for the door. I ruined it by letting him jump on me the second time, I sense, a mistake perfect freaking Kylie would never make. “Well, it was lovely meeting you Scrappy. And you, Mr. Crew.”
“No, Katherine,” he says, and a shiver courses through me at the sound of my name on his lips. “I mean we don’t need to do the interview. You’re hired.”
What.
“Um … I don’t know what to say,” I admit, a tremor in my voice. “And I actually prefer to be called Kat.”
I try to bite back that last statement, cursing myself for a pretentious douchebag. But Colton just smirks and nods shortly.
“Kat is in, then,” he says. “Give Janine your address and I’ll have a car sent for you tomorrow. We’ll start the training at my estate tomorrow evening.”
“Yes, and thank you, thank you so much,” I say, wondering if I hit my head on the way in here and this is all a mad fever dream.
As I turn to leave – Colton wrestling with Scrappy to keep him from following me – I feel the CEO’s gaze on my body. I feel it tingling up and down my thighs, my ass, my everything. I feel it moving deep inside of me and triggering something primal.
And then I tell myself I’m being an idiot, and of course, he’s not staring at me, not like that, anyway.Chapter ThreeColtonSleep has never come easily to me.
This suited me well in the SEALs when we’d grab what shuteye we could where we could, ready to be woken at a moment’s notice to go out on a mission.
But tonight sleep dances away from my grasp for a different reason, and it’s not Scrappy, who’s finally settled down into a restful sleep just outside my bedroom door.
No—it’s her.
All throughout today’s business, Katherine – no, Kat, and damn it was hot when she corrected me like that – rose in my mind like an impossible-to-ignore mirage.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her luxurious brown wavy hair, the way it fell down past her shoulders, or the absolute fucking gorgeous majesty of her body, a curvaceous landscape trapped in her tight-fitting business attire and just ready to be torn free.
Her eyes stared at me in my mind, those pale eerie blues, the color of the sea in winter, the color I want my children’s eyes to be.
My children’s eyes, I think now, rolling over and burying my face in the pillow. Get a grip.
But I can’t mock the notion. It hammers into me with the weight of truth.
I can’t convince myself that the thought is ridiculous, no matter how hard I try. Instead, my imagination throws me into a hundred scenarios where I claim her, peeling off that shirt and revealing the bountiful voluptuousness of her breasts, squeezing them, teasing them, making her sing and sigh in that sultry slightly raspy voice.
I felt my seed swelling inside of me, some savage primal instinct, something I’ve only ever felt – in a much different form – in war. It’s the part of a man most people never have cause to tap into, the hunter-gatherer part, the kill-fuck-survive part.
And as I stared at her, trying with everything I had not to just leap over the table and pin her against the wall, I felt it triggering a series of explosions inside of me, this instinct, this savage atavistic need.
I groan as I feel my manhood give another rock hard twinge, as though roaring at me to release my desire.
But the idea of wasting a single hot drop on anything other than her fills me with distaste. I need to plunge deep into her warmth, and then fill her with everything I have to offer.