“Do you think if you put me off enough I’ll walk away and let you be? The time for that is over. It was over the minute you pointed that rifle at my chest. I know I’ve been following you around like a pathetic moron for months, but that’s over, too. It’s going to be my way all the way from here on out.”
Her heart was thumping in her chest, her body warming. Arousal. At least she remembered what to call it. She’d felt it with him before, but Jamie always hovered between them. When Jesse would reach for her, she would see Jamie’s sweet face and back away. Jesse wasn’t reaching for her now. He was clearly drawing battle lines, and something about it called to her. A primal energy started to run through her system.
“Your way?” Her voice deepened, her body prepping for battle. This was what she needed. She needed him to see the real her. She needed to test herself against him and find out who was going to come out on top.
“Yes. Mine. I don’t suspect you’ll like my way so it would be easier to give me what I want and we can go our separate ways.”
She didn’t want to go her separate way. That was the whole problem. The idea of even spending a couple more hours with him tempted her beyond belief. Even if he spent the whole time interrogating her.
She let go of trying to play sweet Phoebe Graham and allowed Phoebe Grant to surface for the first time in a long time.
Phoebe Grant was what Jesse would very likely call a brat. She wondered how Jesse would handle Phoebe Grant. “Bite my ass, sweetheart.”
A little thrill went through her spine as his eyes flared, emotion showing for the first time since he’d walked into the room. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He strode to her, his boots sounding even on the carpet. He scooped her up and tossed her over his shoulder, her ass high in the air.
Phoebe worried she’d bitten off more than she could chew.
Jesse pushed through the double doors, his whole being surprisingly calm. This was what he needed. He’d been sitting in his office waiting for her to wake up, thinking about how he would handle this interrogation with some modicum of civility.
It was so good to know civility wasn’t going to be required.
It wasn’t so good to realize that the minute she’d opened that bratty mouth, he’d gotten hard as hell and he wanted to fuck her more than he wanted to figure her out. There was a little voice playing in his head that told him to just get inside her and all those secrets would open for him. All he had to do was thrust inside her tight body and the mysteries of the universe would reveal themselves.
Yeah, he wasn’t going to do that. He was going to do his job and find out who she worked for and then he would walk away from her. He wasn’t going to hold her tenderly or hope she could love him. No. It was time to grow the fuck up. How was it being through what he’d been through in Iraq hadn’t managed to teach him what this one woman had? He needed to shut down and do his job.
But that didn’t mean parts of his job couldn’t be very pleasurable.
“Uhm, Jesse, don’t you think you should handle this in the conference room? It’s where Ian planned on keeping her.” Adam Miles’s voice was an unwelcome intrusion.
“No.” He knew the old Jesse would have stopped, but this was between him and Phoebe.
“Adam, I can really explain. This is all one huge misunderstanding.” Phoebe tried to bring her head up.
That was an easy move to counter. He brought his hand down on that sweet, sweet ass. Phoebe had the damn prettiest ass he’d ever watched for hours and drooled over, and now he had zero reason to not spank that gorgeous flesh. He heard that sound, that smack as his hand hit her and he felt her shiver. She didn’t scream. Nope. He’d thought if he smacked her good, she would call him a fucking pervert, but he’d been a dumbass idiot and this Phoebe just moaned a little as the slap went through her.
It wasn’t the type of moan that would cause him to stop spanking a sub at Sanctum.
Motherfucker. He knew he hadn’t been wrong about her. He’d thought there was a submissive streak buried under her “I’m a good girl so don’t fuck my sweet asshole” exterior.
“The only explanation is I’m a dirty little spy and I need to tell my captor everything in order to keep him from slapping my ass silly.” He couldn’t be professional with her. It wouldn’t work. It would only serve to put distance between them and now he could see that distance was what she’d worked for the whole time. She hadn’t let him do more than hold her hand and give her an awkward peck. She’d had him convinced he just wasn’t her type but he could smell her now. Yeah, that wasn’t sweet or gentlemanly, but then that obviously didn’t work for her. “She likes me slapping her ass. Take a deep whiff, Adam, and you’ll be able to tell she’s aroused.”
She gasped and her whole torso came up off his. “Jesse!”