Her heart skipped an excited beat. “Maybe we do.”
Hand shaking, she opened the lock, and willed herself to calm. That had been incredible, but unsettling just the same. Some primitive part of her liked the idea of being chased, caught and ravished by a man so dominating, so utterly in command of himself and the people around him, that he had only to lift a finger to have them do his bidding. And yet giving up her control went against everything she had fought for with her family—recognition of her worth, a status equal to her brother. Respect. An end to the violence that had overshadowed her life.
She needed to regain some control of the situation. Make sure she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life by giving in to the chemistry that burned between them.
The lock opened with a click, and Mia walked inside and turned on all the lights. “How about I show you around?”
*
Nico let out one slow, ragged breath after another as Mia showed him around her office. Although he tried to pay attention, his mind wasn’t on the exposed brick walls or the finished pine floors. He needed to pull it way back, calm the fuck down. Never had he been so aggressive in his pursuit of a woman. Never had he come so close to losing control. But hell, when she appeared in the pool hall, his plans to drop off her boot went out the window. She was the most sensually alluring woman he had ever met—beautiful, brave and strong—and he wanted her, wanted to touch her more than he needed to breathe.
What was it about her that turned him inside out? It was more than her physical attributes that got to him. So much more. And that made her dangerous.
For reasons other than the obvious, he needed to stay away from her. It wasn’t just because she was the daughter of his enemy or because she distracted him from his goal, but because she reminded him that he had a heart. After watching his father die in his arms, he’d locked that part of himself up tight. He’d lost both parents and he wasn’t prepared to go through that kind of pain again.
“So this is where Jules and Chris, my two on-site staff, work,” she said, unaware he was only half-listening. “I have six online hackers who help me as well from remote locations.”
“Where do you work?”
“Over here.” Mia walked into an office, hidden behind a sheet of frosted glass. Nico followed her and listened patiently as she described her set-up with four screens and three hard drives as well as the bits and pieces she had picked up over the years.
“So you can test my system from here?” Nico settled in Mia’s chair, welcoming the moment of respite to gather his thoughts.
“Yes, but I would need that USB I brought to the casino put back into your hard drive to finish the test. Your security guard, Louis, took it from me.”
“Nico pulled out his phone and typed a quick message to Louis a.k.a Mikey Muscles. “Five minutes. It will be done.”
She gave him a puzzled frown. “You want me to test your system now?”
“I’m interested in what you do, bella. Not just what’s underneath your clothes, although I still plan to take them off you before the night is done.”
Laughing, Mia gestured Nico to her spare chair. “Then you’ll need to move your dominant alpha self over to the side. I need to sit front and center to run the tests.”
With a grunt of disapproval, Nico shifted to the side and draped his arm over Mia’s chair, trying to find a position that would not be too restricting for his painfully erect cock.
“I see you have to lay claim to the chair, even if you’re not sitting in it.” Amused, she settled beside him and picked up her ear buds.
“What are those for?”
“I need music when I work.” She clicked an app on her screen. “It helps me focus. Do you want to listen?”
Curious, Nico took the offered ear bud and placed it in his ear.
“What do you listen to?” Mia asked, scrolling through her playlist. “You didn’t have anything personal in your office so I couldn’t figure you out when you dragged me there to give me a tongue lashing.”
What would she say if he told her he loved the Rat Pack? The Old Vegas-meets-Hollywood style? He’d never shared his nostalgia for the old days with anyone; pushing aside anything that might distract him from his goals to be the man his father wanted him to be.
When he didn’t answer, she tilted her head to the side and smiled. “Come on, Mr. Mob Boss. Just one song.”
He loved her gentle teasing, her nickname for him, the way one side of her mouth quirked with a smile when she thought to cajole information from him when he would have told her almost anything she wanted to know. “Sinatra’s ‘Strangers in the Night.’”