Seth looked into her big blue eyes and knew he would agree to whatever she wanted. He might need to ice his lap by the end of each day, but he could make it if it meant another night with her. Giving her a smile, he said, “Yeah, I guess I can do that if you can do something for me?” When she gave him a questioning look, he looked down at her skirt and said, “Please don’t wear anything like that again. Nothing is going to stop me from f**king you if I walk in this room and see you like that again.” With those last words, he went back into his office, pulling the door to the control room closed behind him. He needed the visual out of his mind if he was to survive the day.
As he settled into his chair, preparing for his morning conference call with his family at the other Oceanix Resorts, he felt a trickle of unease. What was he doing with Mia? Hadn’t he decided to avoid romantic hassles and just keep things casual? Of course, he had only agreed to wait until she was finished with the installation project before they had sex again, but that was still a commitment of sorts. When Margie buzzed his phone to let him know the others were ready for the morning conference, he shrugged his paranoia aside. It was just no-strings-attached sex. Nothing had changed for him and he needed to remember that.
Chapter Nine
Mia knocked her head against the wall in frustration. Her installation at the Oceanix Resort was now running into the fourth week. It seemed like there was something that happened daily to push them further behind schedule. Of course, no one else at Danvers was complaining because the cause of most of the delays was the Jackson family deciding to upgrade more of their communications and security equipment. Even Seth had contributed to the project delays. He was having monitors installed in his top-floor penthouse so that he could view any area of the resort from there. She understood his reasoning. It was a lot easier for him to look at a camera in the evening rather than walking through the hotel and being stopped ten times on his way.
Today the finish line was finally in sight when the latest problem cropped up. Their last shipment of cameras had been damaged upon delivery and were going to have to be returned and another set ordered. They could have them overnighted, but she still cursed the delay. She was horny and oh-so-frustrated. The one good thing to come from it all was the additional time she had been spending with Seth.
They had kept to their word and there had been no sex and just a slight blurring of the lines between business and pleasure. More days than not, they managed to find the time to have lunch together in the dining room downstairs. They also usually had a cup of coffee together in his office in the mornings and sometimes a snack in the afternoon. At first, she had done most of the talking. She had told him about going to Brown University and then getting a job at Danvers. He knew her parents well enough to know how they felt about their daughter being a technology geek who was determined to find employment without their help. He constantly asked questions and seemed genuinely interested in her life. After a few days, he opened up to her about his parents and his family. She learned that out of all of his brothers, he was the closest to Ash who ran the Oceanix Resort in Charleston. He laughed as he told her about all of the hell they had raised when they were young and about his mother wanting to send the lot of them to military school. He was glad that his father had put his foot down and said that boys should be boys. Sadly, that seemed to be a saying that his father had continued to live by in his personal life until the very end.
She knew it was only supposed to be lust between them, but somewhere along the way, she had really started to care for Seth. Maybe if they hadn’t been forced to put off having sex, things might have been different. Now, she had gotten to know him more as a person rather than just a sexual partner and that could be bad. Despite the obvious enjoyment of each other’s company, he hadn’t suggested anything beyond sex. Never had there been the mention of an actual date. She was afraid that the delays at the Oceanix Resort could well end up breaking her heart.
It was Wednesday, and the official finish date for the installation was Friday. Mia hoped to finish on Thursday afternoon and surprise Seth that evening. She knew that he was having some painting done at his beach house, so he was spending every night at the hotel. She could barely control her need for him. Her desire for things to go further was also getting harder to ignore. Shit, maybe the old saying was right; Why buy the cow if you’re getting the milk for free? In this case, she was the cow and Seth had already tasted the milk. That was one saying she dearly hoped wasn’t true.