This time, she didn’t answer.
He was being an idiot, and he knew it. It was only ten in the morning now, and he didn’t want to spend the next hour thinking about her. He didn’t even give a damn about the reports—Stein and Sons had been in a financial mess, but it hadn’t been because of anything Corinne had done wrong. All he was doing was looking for an excuse to call her into his office, when what he really needed to do was just go in, take her in his arms, and kiss her until she couldn’t breathe.
Instead, he changed into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt from his gym bag and went for a run. Reese didn’t love running, but that was part of why he did it. He had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other and not on what he was going to say to Corinne about what had happened. By the time he got back, sweating and sore, it was closer to noon than eleven.
She was waiting for him in his office. Today she wore a sleek black skirt that hit just below the knee, with a little pleat in the rear that showed off the backs of her knees when she shifted. Her blouse, a pale green dotted with tiny black dots, had him remembering the times when he’d fed her spoonfuls of her favorite ice cream flavor, mint chocolate chip. She’d pinned her hair up in a soft twist that made him want to tug it free of the pins and sink his face into it.
“I went for a run,” he said unnecessarily, because the way she looked him over made it clear she could see exactly what he’d been doing.
“Would you like to take a shower or something? You’ve already kept me waiting. I can handle another twenty minutes.”
Reese took a long, slow pull from the bottle of water he’d stopped to grab from the break room fridge. He watched her eye his throat as he swallowed. Then his mouth when he licked his lips.
“Used to be that you liked me sweaty.”
“You will want to stop pushing my buttons, Reese,” Corinne said in a soft, dangerous voice. She took a step or two closer. “You called this meeting with a demand for me to bring you ‘correct’ reports like I’ve never provided you anything you needed before, which is not true and extremely insulting. You showed up late, which was also disrespectful. And if you want to talk about being unprofessional, that last comment borders on sexual harassment.”
He blinked.
“You’ve made it very clear that our past relationship is of no consequence to our business dealings,” she continued in that same low, stern voice that had once been enough to get him to his knees in front of her.
It was making his cock twitch, no way to hide an erection in his thin running shorts. God help him, he’d brought this on himself. He didn’t move when she took another step toward him, which put him within grabbing distance…if she chose to touch him.
“Therefore, Reese, I expect that you will treat me with the respect I am due. Is that understood?”
Fuck, that look. That voice. He’d been playing with matches and had started a fire.
“Yes,” he answered.
Corinne’s gaze flashed. Her lips parted. He could see the flash of her tongue as she slid it along her teeth.
“Yes, what?”
Ma’am. Yes Ma’am. Please, Ma’am.
“Yes, I understand,” Reese replied, knowing what she wanted but refusing to give it to her.
Her gaze fell to the bulge in the front of his shorts, then met his eyes. “I’ve already told you once not to push my buttons, Reese.”
He laughed. “Or what? You’ll spank me? You really think that’s going to work on me, anymore?”
Without blinking or turning away from him, Corinne reached to the cup on his desk. With unerring precision she slid the wooden ruler from amongst the pens and pencils. She drew it between her hands, gripping it lightly in front of her. Reese was so immediately and inexorably aroused that he actually thought he might need to sit down. Sit, or fall from knees gone weak.
Corinne tapped the ruler lightly on the underside of her palm. “Since you acquired Stein and Sons, do you feel your behavior toward me has been respectful and professional?”
He didn’t answer her.
The ruler tap, tap, tapped on the underside of her palm. If his cock had ever been this hard, Reese couldn’t remember it. The look she gave the front of his shorts only made it worse, because he could square his shoulders and lift his chin and refuse to give her what she wanted, but there was no way he could hide how much she affected him.
“Do you think it was appropriate of you to come to my house?”
Silence.
The ruler tapped.
“Do you think it was appropriate for you to request that I come to your house, for you to be drunk—”
“I wasn’t,” he gritted out. “I’d been drinking, but I wasn’t drunk.”
Corinne let a small slow hiss slip between her teeth. “That’s one.”