“Are you listening?”
“I wasn’t,” I admit.
“Maybe if you stop staring at my tits, you’ll actually hear me.”
I’m slow to pull my eyes away and look at her face, my gaze getting lost on her mouth.
“Gaige,” she whines, and I know she’s had as much trouble with her work rule as I have, but I won’t push her. She set a limit, and I’m trying to respect it.
“You were saying?”
“Deacon is awesome. We all know that, but these women are past the point in their lives where they need validation from anyone, much less a man. They don’t need these jobs. They’ve already carved out their perfect spot in the world.”
“I agree.”
“We have to look elsewhere.”
“We only hire the best of the best.”
“The best are already doing what they love, and they won’t be swayed. They don’t need BBS.”
I shrug because if that’s true, there’s really nothing that we can do. Leighton doesn’t seem impressed with my response. She smacks her back to the seat, her eyes looking out the window.
“I need a glass of wine and an orgasm.”
“Wanna suck me off while we wait for room service?”
Her head rolls on the leather until she’s looking in my direction, cheeks pink. The driver doesn’t even flinch. There’s no telling what this man hears on a regular basis.
“We need a different approach.”
“We’ve tried different.”
The women we’ve met with this week are so busy they wouldn’t even entertain the idea of contract work. I wish they wouldn’t have wasted our time with agreeing to meetings in the first place. We’re burning through BBS resources and money for no good reason.
“Then we need to just give up.”
“I don’t give up.”
“We can’t just badger them until they agree. It doesn’t work that way. Even if you stopped flirting with them, I still don’t think they’d agree.”
“Jealous?” I waggle my eyebrows comically.
She scoffs. “Hardly. It makes you look like an idiot. Not every woman wants to jump on your dick, Mr. Ward. It’s rather disgusting to watch. Men and women alike have been using sex to get what they want for hundreds of years. Do you really think you’re the first? Do you think that any one of the women we’ve met with hasn’t had some man walk in her office and try to use his dick as an offering to get something from her?”
I frown. Her saying it like that is kind of disgusting. I’d never actually pulled my cock out to score something for BBS.
“Jealousy is hot as fuck on you, Leighton,” I say to lighten the mood, because her getting all growly on the topic really is turning me on. I lean in close so the driver can’t hear. “Especially knowing just how pretty your pink puss—”
“Finish that sentence and you’ll never see it again,” she snaps.
My jaw clamps closed of its own accord. At least some parts of me are smart.
My dick?
Still hard and begging me to do something about it.
Her fingers are tapping on her thigh as she chews on her bottom lip. She doesn’t do this often, but I noticed she does this when she’s working through thoughts in her head.
“Just spit it out, Leighton.”
“I want to see Sandra Halen alone tomorrow.”
“No.” My answer is immediate. I could catch a lot of shit if it goes south and I’m not with her. “We approach this as a team. That was the deal.”
“I think I can get her on board if you aren’t there flirting with her.”
“I can go and not flirt.”
She scoffs. “Impossible. It’s innate. You couldn’t manage it.”
The rest of the car ride back to the hotel is silent, and I hate it. The banter between us has sort of become our thing. We don’t touch each other or have sex while we’re traveling, but that never stops the innuendo. It’s like we’re both letting that sexual tension and anticipation build during the week, so it’ll be explosive once we get back to St. Louis on Friday.
The atmosphere in the elevator is weird, but thankfully, we’re alone.
“I’ll let you go alone tomorrow on one condition.”
She turns her face in my direction, eyes narrowed. “I told you shower sex isn’t my thing. Hard limit. I nearly drowned in college. You’ve got to respect my boundaries.”
Okay, we’ve talked a lot about sex in the last three days. Evening meals with her have been a blast. It’s the parting ways without touching that have been hard. My hand will have blisters by Friday.
I laugh. “Not shower sex, but I swear, Leighton, I’m strong enough to keep you standing. I’m not some college fuck boy.”
She crosses her arms over her chest as if she’s anticipating something even worse than a hard limit.
“I want you to attend a function with me.”
“What is it?”
“Doesn’t matter. If you want to go alone tomorrow, you go with me on Saturday.”