My mouth parts. The whole room looks my way. I feel the eyes of the three at the other end of the table and Brandon at my side. Their stares bore into me like aiming archers.
But not Ben. The pompous, arrogant, cocky, powerful, cold-as-can-be Ben only continues to squeak that marker on that board, not even allowing me the simple dignity of a glance.
It’s infuriating. Couldn’t he at least treat me like a human being who’s worth the air he breathes? He doesn’t have to announce to the room that I drank his wine, or took off my shirt in his home, or eye-fucked him across a smokey nightclub.
But he can at least acknowledge my damned existence.
“Perhaps he has lost his voice,” muses Ben, taunting me worse as he continues to circle, squiggle, and draw arrows across his big board.
I squint heatedly, lift my chin, and use my voice. “I’m Trevor,” I state, “and I’m taking notes for Emilio. And no, I did not lose my voice. It is very much here. Obviously. Sir.”
Piercing silence is all that is returned to me. After it persists for a second too long, Ben finally pops the cap back onto his marker and faces the room.
Namely, me.
And the look on his face is not the indignant one I expected.
He looks … amused.
The subtle twisting of his striking eyes to convey how very funny he must think this whole situation is makes me angry. Doesn’t he know how much effort I put into preparing for this internship, preparing for the workload I would have to endure and the expectations I would have to live up to, and preparing to meet him and get in his good graces?
His “good graces” are all I wanted to get in. I didn’t count on almost getting into his bedroom before my first damned day in his office. That wasn’t part of the plan.
And damn it, neither is this.
“You know,” he says at long last, “that kind of attitude you just threw my way would have me kicking any of my interns to the curb without so much as a sticky note of good riddance.”
The blood drains from my face.
“But …” He crosses his arms and squints at me, questions and curiosities in his eyes. “You’re not just any intern, are you?”
Despite the glint of defiance in his gorgeous eyes—those same eyes I poured into, even if briefly, Friday night—I don’t find myself angered in the least by how he’s looking at me.
Instead, worse, I’m turned on.
Really, Trevor? Turned on? Right now?
Yes. Right now. Turned on by the heat in his eyes. Turned on by the bulges his biceps make when his arms are folded in that tight shirt. And I’m finally looking upon those lips of his again—those full, lush, heart-shaped lips that I had just one little taste of.
And I’m imagining those lips on mine again.
I feel my own lips everywhere on Ben’s body—from the nape of his wide, strong neck, to the peak of either of his big, firm pecs where a sensitive, pebbled nipple awaits on each, to the ridges of his six-pack abs, down to the base of his quickly swelling cock, where I’ll be sure to stay for hours and hours and hours, working him to the edge.
Suddenly, I have a totally different situation to handle, which inspires me to quickly—and tightly—cross my legs.
Fuck.
“N-No, sir,” I manage to reply, despite my “situation”. I can’t believe this is happening. “I’m not just … any intern.”
“No, you’re not. You were picked to take notes for Emilio. And you have a voice, we’ve discovered.” He gives me a curt nod. “So use that voice, and don’t you ever let me catch some other guy speaking on your behalf again. Got it?”
I choke on whatever words I could possibly say. Brandon has frozen at my side, every part of him turning to ice under the cold words of Mr. Gage.
My face sets, my jaw tightening. “Got it. Sir.”
“Very well.” He swiftly turns back to the dry erase board. “Let us focus on the living hell that is our favorite boy band renegade from New Jersey, shall we?”
His question is returned with a grunt of agreement from the non-interns at the table, and then the imaginary spotlight that just inspired a nervous sheen of sweat on my forehead mercifully wrenches away from us, and he begins talking.
I should be taking notes now. The pressure is off and all of the attention is on Benjamin Gage as he talks about his plans.
But I’m not listening; I’m watching. Benjamin’s writing hand moves with quick, sensual finesse as he draws charts on the board. It’s hypnotizing, the sexy, muscular way in which his body moves. All of his back muscles dance tauntingly as he writes, revealing themselves to me through his tight shirt as intimately as if he wasn’t wearing a shirt at all.