Out of Hours...Office Affairs: Can't Get Enough / Wild Nights with her Wicked Boss / Bound to the Greek

She stared at her reflection for a beat, forcing herself to face the brutal facts. A sophisticated guy like Jack—he knew the rules. He knew that what had happened in the elevator was a one-off, never to be repeated. He must have been amazed when she gave him her number. She closed her eyes against the wash of humiliation that threatened.

Why, oh, why had she been so stupid?

By the time she’d cleansed and brushed and flossed and crawled into bed, she’d convinced herself it was good riddance to bad rubbish. The man had disaster written all over him. He was a self-confessed commitaphobe with a very short attention span. He was so closed off and protected, she doubted he’d ever let an emotion stronger than pleasure or satisfaction breach his defenses.

Yes, the physical attraction between them had been hot, but that wasn’t the only thing in life, right? It certainly wasn’t worth humiliating herself over, that was for sure.

Nope, she was very, very lucky he’d never taken her up on her stupid, ill-informed, ill-considered, impulsive, deranged invitation. She thumped her pillow decisively, determined to put the whole experience behind her.

But then she started thinking about work tomorrow. About seeing Jack for the first time. About looking at him, and remembering, and knowing. Her eyes popped open and she stared at the ceiling.

What if he told someone else at work what had happened? What if she walked into the building tomorrow and people stopped talking as she approached? She had a vivid picture of her business card taped up in the men’s restroom—For a good time, call Claire Marsden.

For a moment she felt sick to her stomach, but then reason returned. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew—absolutely—that Jack wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened between them while they were trapped. The realization calmed her. No matter what else she’d managed to misinterpret between them, she knew that she had this right—what happened in the elevator, stayed in the elevator.

And long might it stay that way. Relieved, she rolled onto her side and willed herself to sleep. She was just drifting off when she remembered that she was supposed to work with Jack for the next few weeks or however long Beck deemed it was necessary to salve old man Hillcrest’s ego.

That was something of a stumbling block. An Everest-size stumbling block. She sat bolt-upright in bed. If she was honest, she wanted very badly to tell Morgan Beck to shove his stupid arrangement. But that wasn’t the way she worked. What Beck had asked from her was wrong, and unfair, and she was still deeply ashamed about sitting through that initial meeting with Jack and Beck without making her feelings clear.

But innate self-honesty forced her to admit that even if she’d had prior warning about the agenda of the meeting, she wouldn’t have kicked up a fuss. Her philosophy in her working life had always been to give her bosses what they asked for. While there were limits to this philosophy—both moral and legal—it had held her in good stead until now.

But did her ethos stretch to swallowing this blatant vote of no confidence without voicing an objection?

She shook her head in her silent apartment.

“No. I don’t have to just lie down and take it,” she told her darkened bedroom.

Tomorrow she’d let him know in no uncertain terms that she wouldn’t accept Jack on her project.

She tried to imagine herself stalking into her boss’s office and laying her cards confidently on the table. And failed. Miserably.

Perhaps if she really talked it through with Beck, they could come up with another solution. As grown adults, seeing eye to eye. Discussing the issues rationally.

This felt much more her style. It still made her feel nervous, but it was doable.

Of course, sticking up for herself would mean that she didn’t have to work with Jack anymore, too. How convenient. She could simply ignore him for a few weeks in the car park and editorial meetings and the elevator, just like old times, and pretty soon he’d forget that Claire Marsden had ever torn his clothes off and had sex with him.

And that was absolutely what she wanted.

So, she was decided. First thing tomorrow, she’d make an appointment with Morgan and see if she could regain control of her life. It should have been the last thing she thought of before she drifted off to sleep. But instead, just as she gave herself up to sleep, memories from the elevator came back to haunt her. The firm, knowing pressure of his clever fingers as he circled her swollen wetness; the sweet, addictive tug of desire between her thighs as he suckled on her breasts; the deep satisfaction of having all of him inside her, and his strongly muscled body tense and passionate above hers.

She moaned frustratedly into the pillow and rolled over. But the memories kept on coming: the wet velvet sweep of his tongue on her neck. That first thrill as he pressed the palm of his hand against her damp mound. The rising excitement as they taunted each other with what they really wanted….

Claire thumped a pillow with her fist. “Get out of my head, Jack Brook,” she muttered.

But it was no good. She was too turned on to sleep. Despite every rational reason for disliking the man, her body had other ideas.

She rolled over again, her nipples brushing against the cotton of her sheets. They wanted Jack’s touch, the heat of his tongue and mouth, and they sat tight and proud, waiting for something that was never going to happen. Claire slid a hand over each breast and pressed them into her chest.

Stop it, she urged her body. Forget him.

But instead of calming her overheated body, the pressure triggered a pulse of desire between her legs. Claire’s eyes flickered open, and she glared at the ceiling.

“Damn you,” she told an absent Jack Brook.

Then she gave in to her desire and slid a hand down the length of her body and between her legs. Closing her eyes as she slicked a finger over her own wetness, she imagined it was Jack touching her, and that any moment now she would feel the warm, velvet nudge of his erection against her outer folds. As her body thrummed tighter and tighter with tension, she remembered the taste of Jack, and the strength of Jack, and the feeling of being filled by him. The way he’d tugged so tightly on her nipples. The way he’d run his hands over her body as though he couldn’t get enough. The feel of him beneath her hands, the hard, smooth power of his body.

She gasped out her release, her orgasm an echo of the one she’d shared with him earlier. It should have been the end of it, but she lay awake for a long time afterward, angry with herself for wanting a man who clearly didn’t want her.

7 (#ulink_8397f109-ca55-565f-845c-d5df0bb8930b)

“HE SAID WHAT?”

Claire stared at Morgan Beck, aware that she’d crouched forward in her chair and placed one hand imperiously on his desk.

“You heard me, Claire. I know this whole arrangement sticks in your craw but I flatter myself that after thirty years in the business I know what I’m doing. I don’t care what sort of a disagreement you and Jack have had, but you’re just going to have to sort it out.”

Morgan was cranky, his voice hard and his posture aggressive as he glared across the desk at her.

“I just don’t understand it. Yesterday the two of you seemed to be in perfect accord, and now this,” he said.

You have no idea, she thought. And she tried very hard to get the image of her and Jack doing the wild thing on the elevator floor out of her mind as she held her boss’s eye. Now was not the time to get turned on by rogue memories. This was her career she was talking about here. Jack and his perfect penis could go hang as far as she was concerned.

“Wait a minute—are you telling me that Jack Brook has refused to work with me?” she asked, still trying to get a grip on this concept.

“Have I been talking to myself for the last five minutes, Claire?”

She fought back the impulsive urge to tell him to keep his pants on, then blanched that any such urge had even crossed her mind. What was wrong with her? When she’d first entered his office, she’d found him seated with his feet up on his desk. She’d had trouble hiding her smile at his aggressive, I’m-the-boss posture. She’d got control of her unruly mouth, but she’d been appalled at herself—when had she ever felt anything but respect and a faint tinge of fear for Morgan Beck?

“Mr. Beck, this comes as a complete shock to me,” she assured him now, neatly sidestepping the fact that she’d come to work this morning with the single-minded intention of finagling her boss into removing Jack from her project. It was one thing for her to reject him…

“Really?”

The single word dripped disbelief. She found herself glaring back at her boss, her temper well and truly firing on all cylinders now. Before she could stop herself, hot and angry words were pouring out.

“Yes, really. Do you truly think I’m so pathetic that I’d get him to do my dirty work for me? I assure you, if I didn’t want to work with Jack Brook I’d let you know in no uncertain terms.”

Okay, that was a lie, because she’d spent the whole night trying to come up with subtle, nonaggressive ways of suggesting Jack be reassigned. But Morgan didn’t seem to understand that she’d spoken out of anger—his eyebrows were rising up, his expression one of pure shock. She tried to remember if she’d ever come close to speaking to him like this before.

No, probably not. Mostly she concentrated on smiling and sounding competent and on top of things when she met with him. Mostly she’d been way too aware of his power and her own desire to win his approval.

But today she was too annoyed to remember any of that. Today she was outraged that not only had Jack left her dangling all night, he’d also pipped her at the post on the work front, too. To top things off, this balding little man in front of her thought she was so wimpy that she’d use someone else as her front man.

“You know, I was prepared to wear all this rubbish about placating Mr. Hillcrest, but I’m beginning to wonder if I wouldn’t be better off stepping aside and letting you simply replace me with someone better qualified,” she heard herself saying silkily.

Good grief. Give a girl a little rush of power to the head, and suddenly she was the Genghis Khan of office politics!

Morgan had gone pale, but she bit down on the apology that sprang to her lips the moment she uttered her challenge. Instinctively, she understood that much hung in the balance right now.