“Fuck, Sage—”
He wasn’t listening to me, wasn’t respecting the boundaries I was trying to erect. He moved, ready to get to his feet, ready to come around the desk to my side, so I rushed on.
“It was like I’d survived…a bomb blast. Something intense had gone off inside me, and that left me sore.” His face went milk pale as he froze where he was. “At first, I ached because of the way you’d pushed yourself inside me, then I ached because you weren’t there.” I shook my head sharply, letting out a hiss of breath. “It was just ghost dick.”
He let out a rude splutter at that, but I forged on.
“You jam something that big up inside me, it leaves an ache behind, like you’re still there, making me re-experience the ghost of that pleasure over and over, every time I move.” I stared at the desk, unable to look at him. “At first, it’s kind of intense, but then later, it’s like a kind of seduction, reminding you of what you had, tantalising you with what you could have again.”
“Fuck, Sage…” His voice came out in a guttural growl, a wolf’s voice, not a man’s. “And did you tend to that need? Did you push some rubber facsimile up inside you, working it in and out of your cunt as you—”
“Not this,” I said sharply. “We need to get past what happened if we’re to work together, so if there’s any relevant questions you want answered, then ask me. Once we walk out of this office, I’m going to pretend we’ve never seen each other naked before and so are you.”
He was an alpha, so I could tell he didn’t like my tone much by the stiff set of his shoulders, but as that silver gaze went on and on, a smile slowly spread across his face.
“Last chance, huh? Well, I just have one question. Are there any omegas in your family?”
“What?” I blinked as I considered his words.
“Are your parents betas? Your grandparents?” I nodded slowly. “OK, that’s all I needed to know.”
“Right.”
He went back to work on his computer like the issue was dealt with, and while academically, that seemed like a good thing, my mind was spinning. He hit print, the machine behind him whirring as it spat out his document.
“Here’s your boarding passes for tomorrow,” he said, laying them on the desk in front of me.
“What?”
“We’ll be flying over to the symposium site, doing a walk-through with our local people to get up to speed on where the project is at. Joey will set you up with a laptop.”
He went to the door, pulling it open to reveal a surprised-looking IT guy standing there.
Actually, make that IT girl. Her hair was cropped close to the sides of her head, then a stylish quiff formed an almost mohawk of hair on top. She wore a white button-down and a fluffy knitted vest over that, as well as chino pants.
“Ah…hi, Lucien. Miranda said you have a new hire?” She held up a laptop by way of explanation.
“Sage Davies, this is Joey from IT. Joey, this is Sage. Make sure she can use the device from the office as well as at home because we’ll be flying out tomorrow morning for Sydney. She’ll need access to all of Crystal’s files, plus all of the folders I own.”
“All of them?” Joey’s eyes fluttered.
“All of them,” he confirmed with a look back over his shoulder at me. “I need to drop down to legal and make sure they’re working on your contract now. As soon as we have that signed, you can head home for the day.”
“Ohhkay…” Joey turned to me, then smiled, her face transforming when she did. It was as if she were possessed by the gods of mischief right then, her eyes dancing. “So I hear they had Crystal removed by security.” She grabbed Lucien’s chair and wheeled it around to the side of the desk, plonking the laptop down and then opening it. Her fingers whizzed along the keyboard the moment the device had booted up, but her eyes were on me. “Gimme the goss!”
“There’s not much to tell—”
“C’mon, I know you’ll be thinking that you need to be on your best behaviour on the first day, but damn… You got a front row seat to something the whole building is talking about. What went down? You took her job right from under her?”
“Ah, well…”
“Did she make a scene? I bet she did.” Joey pulled her fingers from the screen to fix me with her gaze. “Was it messy?”
“Um…”
“Oh my god, it was, wasn’t it?”
Abort, abort!my mind screeched. Getting involved in office politics on the first day was a nightmare I wanted to sidestep.