“—we’ll need to resist for at least some of the time. I had to speak very fast and at length to explain to the board why we were leaving town for a few days. They won’t be placated with updates on our relationship,” Tobias continued.
“Fine then.” Beau flopped down beside me, then cuddled in closer until I was wedged between the two brothers, which inspired a whole lot of feelings, and most weren’t conducive to work. “Will you pat me on the head and tell me I’m a good boy?”
He was being silly, but when my fingers raked through his perfect hair, his eyes fluttered closed.
“I’ll always tell you you’re a good boy.”
“When you earn it,” Max said in a much firmer voice. “I’ve started creating personalised checklists for everyone to complete—”
“Checklists?” My focus was yanked away from Beau to Max’s screen, and I peered at what he’d been working on, my breath coming in faster. “You made checklists?”
“Yeah, we need—”
“She’s talking about checklists as if you just gave her a ten-carat diamond ring,” Beau said, his eyes narrowing as he stared at his brother. “Have you been infecting our omega with your nerdy shit, because I am not down with this.”
“I looove checklists,” I said, reaching over and scrolling down using Max’s trackpad. “I love them so much, I put tasks I’ve already done on them, just so I can tick them off.”
“You do?” Max brightened then. “I do that too. Joey always puts shit on me for it.”
“No way. The rush of ticking off all your tasks is real,” I said, scanning my checklist, looking to see if there was anything I could tick off already. No such luck.
“Dopamine surges,” Max confirmed with a nod, then went still, his eyes dropping down to my mouth. “It sets the pleasure centres in your brain alight.”
“As do other things, much more satisfactorily.” Beau slipped down to the floor, his hands sliding up my thighs, his eyes lighting up when he saw just what I wasn’t wearing under these damn shorts. “I could eat you out right here as you work with Max and do all those nerdy things. Just little kitten licks, all over your hot little—”
I forced my hand to snap out and stop him. Us being together in this place, wearing these clothes, was probably a terrible mistake, but it was one I couldn’t help but keep making. My body was so damn sensitive, ready to let Beau do just that, but…
“If you do that, I won’t be able to focus on anything but you,” I told him and was rewarded with a grin. “But work first, then play.”
“You’ll let me play with you, omega?” He didn’t look anything like the glamorous figure of tabloid fodder right now. With his messy hair and silver eyes, Beau was every inch the alpha. “Promise?”
“I promise. You get…” I looked to Max, who was watching all of this with heated amusement. “How many tasks do you need him getting done today?”
“Four of the smaller ones, three if you sort the big ones,” he said, reaching over and pulling a spare laptop out of his bag and offering it to his brother. Beau got back on the couch and opened it up before logging in.
“‘Decide on a PR company,’” Beau read. “That’s easy, I know exactly who to go with. Janice’s team is top notch, and she’s covered this sort of thing before. Draft a contract and send it off to legal. Fuck.” He glared at Max. “That’ll take forever, and I don’t know anything about writing a contract.”
“That’s why the last two PR contracts we’ve set up are attached to the task in the detail view.” Max showed him how to get to that. “You need to read through them and add relevant details, but that gives you a head start.”
“You fucking genius.” Beau reached over and smacked a noisy kiss on his brother’s forehead. “I love this new system already.”
“That is very useful,” Tobias said, drawing closer, then taking a seat on the swanky coffee table. “Can we create a database of all of our documents to fulfil a similar purpose?”
“Already done,” Max said smugly. “Including permissions on who can view them. No low-level data inputter will be looking at corporate contracts.”
“Really?” I got the feeling not many people managed to surprise Tobias, as Max stared back at his brother for a moment before nodding. “Fascinating. I think it’s past time that we talk more about what you’ve been working on.”
“Add that to Tobias and Max’s to-do lists,” Beau said with a smirk before pulling out his phone.
Several hours later,I looked down the line of green ticks with a growing sense of satisfaction. Of course, while I was riding that wave of dopamine, I just wanted more, more, something Max seemed to notice.
“You did well today.” He pressed his mouth to mine, his body weight pinning me into the so soft couch. “I’ve never gotten this much work out of my brothers.”
Lucien looked up and scowled at us from where he was sitting at the dining table, but his eyes were drawn back to his brother, who was talking on his phone again. Beau seemed to love actually talking to someone but hated emails. Max cramped his style, insisting that he write some quick notes about what he’d worked out into the detail view of each task, but I’d slid my thighs together, just once, and he’d grumbled and started doing as he was told.
“Beau has a short attention span,” Max said in a low voice as we both watched his brother engaging in a long and meandering call, full of chuckles and waving hand gestures. “It might be time to remind him of what he’s working towards.”
Right then, Beau was one of those big, tricky tasks that took a lot of effort to finally tick off, and unlike the others, he seemed to thrive on social interaction. Max met my eyes with a smile. Right now, his brother wanted me to remind Beau of exactly what kind of interaction he should be reaching for. I closed my laptop and set it down on the coffee table, before staring at Beau.