Off Limits / Ruled. Anne Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ what I hear, telling you my name wouldn’t serve much purpose. You won’t remember it tomorrow, right?’

      I laugh, appreciating her honesty. ‘No...’ I lean forward so that my lips are only a whisper from her ear. My breath flutters her hair and I see a fine trail of goose bumps run across her skin. ‘But you’ll remember me for the rest of your life.’

      Her laugh is husky. She’s everything I would usually find sexy, but in that moment she’s just passably acceptable. If I’m honest, I’m bored. It’s a phone-it-in flirt. A What the heck? situation.

      ‘We’ll see...’

      ‘Can I get you a drink?’

      ‘I can share yours,’ she murmurs, her eyes dropping to my champagne flute.

      I didn’t even realise I was still holding it. I extend it to her on autopilot, watching as her lips shape over the glass and she tilts it back. The liquid is honey-gold. She passes the glass to me and I take a sip.

      ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she says, with a throaty laugh in the rushed words.

      I nod, reaching down and putting a hand in the small of her back. Gemma and Lucy are both in my head now—a fascinating occurrence. A new occurrence. Are they ganging up on me? Would they even like each other?

      Lucy was so soft and sweet. She looked at me like I was her saviour and I suppose I was. I ripped her out of her old life, away from a boyfriend who used her as a punching bag, and I made all her dreams come true.

      But fate is a bastard of a thing, and it only had bad news in store for Lucy. For a while she managed to jump tracks and sit on a different train, and then—bam. It took her. You can’t outrun destiny, can you?

      Gemma is nothing like her. Her personality isn’t so much hard edges as a single hard face. She is smart—smarter than me by a mile—and focussed in a way that is completely familiar to me. She is also sexy. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. She acts so damned cold around me—as though she’s never so much as heard of an orgasm, much less experienced one. It makes me want her more. Want to show her for the liar she is. To make her orgasm again and again until ‘cold’ is a very distant memory.

      ‘Jack.’

      She catches me as I’m about to leave the room. Her eyes briefly meet the blonde’s. There is nothing beyond a polite acknowledgement of her existence. That iciness is there. I want to push Gemma backwards against the wall and kiss the hell out of her. Right here.

      ‘You’re scheduled to speak in twenty minutes.’

      Whoops. Even for me that’s a bit of a slip. I don’t usually let anything get in the way of business—even my sex life.

      ‘We’ll be back by then.’

      Blondie surprises us both. Her meaning is unmistakable.

      Shit. I can’t remember the last time I had a quickie in the car. Is she seriously suggesting it?

      Gemma shifts her attention to her phone. She runs that iPhone as though she designed the thing. Her fingers fly over the screen like it’s a part of her. Her complacency pisses me off.

      ‘Okay. The talk can be brief. Just an outline of what the foundation is hoping to achieve, thanking the commercial partners, yada-yada-yada.’

      ‘Yada-yada-yada?’ I grin slowly, my eyes linking with hers, daring her to forget the coldness and complacency.

      She looks at Blondie and her smile is perfunctory. ‘Have fun.’

      * * *

      Of course Jack nails the speech. Not so much as a hair on his head looks out of place. The tuxedo is immaculate. The white shirt crisp. The bow tie in place as though glued. He speaks eloquently about the foundation and he also speaks with humour, so the crowd laughs.

      I don’t.

      I am wondering about the blonde.

      No. I’m thinking about Jack—but they’re thoughts that I need to run a mile from. This can’t control me. I’ve worked my arse off in this job, twisting myself in mental knots to stay on top of my workload without breaking a sweat, and I am not going to let the fact that my boss is impossibly hot get in the way.

      Instead I let my attention drift to Wolf.

      He’s talking to someone else now—no doubt about that bloody software. His face is serious, and that makes me smile. Because Wolf is pretty much always serious.

      Warning! Warning! Warning! It flashes inside my mind. Because I don’t do serious, and if I let the flirtation with Wolf keep going I think he’s going to see roses and candy and wedding bells.

      God help me, I can’t think of anything worse.

      I am suffocating at the very idea of being a bride in white, having Wolf waiting for me at the end of an aisle. He would definitely want children, too. Three of them. And he’d expect me to be the obliging baby-maker and carer. He’d look at me with those puppy-dog eyes, sadness and disappointment on his features, if I so much as dared suggest we get a nanny.

      Maybe I could be like Marissa Mayer and have a nursery built into my office? The nanny could be based there, so I could still be one of those hands-on Pinterest-type mummies. Wolf would never even need to know I’d hired someone to help.

      But Jack would. He’d hate that. A baby crying when I’m trying to talk to him about tariffs on our Chinese imports? No, he’d probably seduce the nanny and then I’d have to either fire her or kill her.

      Okay, now who’s getting ahead of themselves?

      But Wolf has caught me watching him and his heart is so on his sleeve he might as well be a cartoon character, with one of those thought bubbles popping out of his head. I have to let this opportunity pass me by. He’s not right, and when he realises that I’m not going to leave Jack and move to Manhattan, working with him will become a nightmare.

      I look away.

      Right at Jack.

      He’s standing in front of me.

      The band has started to play and I’ve been so lost in imagining the hell of my future with Wolf DuChamp that I haven’t realised.

      ‘Did you like the speech?’

      ‘Looking for compliments?’ I sip my champagne, pleased at how quickly I’m able to recover. ‘What’s the matter? Wasn’t she suitably impressed?’

      His eyes clash with mine. He’s angry. Ooooh. Why? Have I hit the nail on the head somehow?

      ‘Are you wondering if I can please a woman in fifteen minutes?’

      He shifts his body infinitesimally, but enough to spark something low in my abdomen. Anger. Resentment. Heat. Warmth. Need.

      Fuck.

      ‘Believe it or not, I haven’t given any thought to your bedroom prowess,’ I lie, shifting my attention back to the room of people. London’s elite swirl around us, and I am wanting СКАЧАТЬ