I pause, searching for the right words.
He must notice my hesitation, because he looks over at me with a small smile playing on his lips. “Still don’t trust me?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you.” I swallow. “I just don’t know how much of this I should share with you. WestTech has done business with Lancaster Consolidated in the past. Anything I say could complicate business matters for you.”
“My father is the one who worked with scumbags like Robert Lancaster.” Parker’s lips twist. “Since I took over, I’ve been weeding through our corporate partners a bit. Clearing house — quietly, of course. Don’t want investors to panic or stocks to take a tumble. But I’m hoping within a year, WestTech will be free of its less-than-upstanding connections, for the most part. It’s one of the priorities I brought into the company, when I decided I was taking over. I refuse to run our family business the way my father did — through schemes and manipulation and bribery.”
I stare at him in silence, a little awed.
“What?” he asks, brow knitting.
“Sometimes I forget that you’re kind of a big deal,” I whisper, laughing lightly. “You’re such a—”
Playboy. Man-child.
His brows lift.
I bite back the word. “I mean, you don’t act like a normal CEO. Most of those guys are total tool bags.”
He shakes his head, grabs the seat of my rolling desk chair, and spins me toward him so he’s kneeling between my legs with his hands on either armrest.
“Darling, a lot of people mistake being a dick for being in charge.” His eyes crinkle. “But I’ve found you don’t have to stomp around like a tyrant to earn respect. Life as a CEO isn’t all that different from life on the road. Bottom line — you treat people like shit, they’ll be shit workers. Treat them like gold…”
“Let me guess,” I interject. “Everyone gets gold stars?”
He grins. “I was going to say and you all make a fuckton of money, but that works, too.”
“A CEO who doesn’t have a god-complex, power-trip, or obsession with belittling people,” I marvel. “What is the world coming to?”
He chuckles and before I can react, he leans in and kisses me — hard, uncompromising, his tongue invading my mouth.
“You taste like peanut butter,” he murmurs as he pulls away. I watch his eyes dilate as his hands slide around my waist beneath the bottom hem of his sweater. “This is mine.”
“It was,” I correct. “I’m confiscating it.”
“Looks better on you, anyway.” His gaze flickers down to my mouth. “I like you in my clothes. Almost as much as I like you out of them…”
A pulse of heat shoots between my legs. “I have to work.”
“Uh huh.” His hands slide higher, up my ribcage. The sensual scrape of his calluses against my skin makes my teeth sink into my bottom lip.
“Parker,” I protest weakly.
It’s the wrong thing to say, if I was hoping to deter him. Hearing me breathe his name only seems to make him more desperate for me. And apparently I’m equally desperate, because when he guides me to the floor and pulls the sweater up over my head, there’s not an ounce of hesitation in my mind as I wrap my arms around his back to bring him closer. All thoughts of conspiracy theories and corruption disappear from my head as he makes slow, sweet love to me beneath my desk.
* * *
“What are you doing tomorrow?” Parker calls from the next aisle over.
Waking up this morning to discover there was absolutely no food in my refrigerator besides some expired milk and what, at one point in the distant past, we think may’ve been a banana, he dragged me down the street to the small convenience store where I occasionally stock up on groceries.
And by groceries I mean chocolate peanut butter cups and Diet Coke.
Breakfast of champions.
But of course, Parker is some kind of crunchy granola health-nut who likes to start his day eating cereal that looks like it was made for rabbits while drinking organic pomegranate juice out of an eight-dollar plastic bottle. Needless to say, he doesn’t exactly approve of my highly-nutritious eating habits.
“Tomorrow?” I call back, staring absentmindedly at the small selection of flowers behind the glass doors in the corner.
No more grocery store roses for me.
“Yes, tomorrow.” Parker rounds a corner with one of those little plastic carriers in his hands. It’s filled to the brim with things I will never eat.
“What is all that?” I ask, staring at the groceries.
“Ho boy. We’re going to have to start from scratch with this one, aren’t we?” He shakes his head, like a kindergarten teacher with one of his students. “This green stuff is called lettuce. And the other stuff, right here, is called broccoli. Can you say bro-cco-li?”
I shoot him a death glare. “Shut up. You know what I meant.”
“Did I?” He grins.
“Why are you getting all that food?”
“To eat.” His head tilts. “Why? What do you usually do with your food? Do you have some weird fetish I should know about, where you strip naked and cover yourself with—