When Blake’s mouth finally met Andrea’s, he felt like he’d found the Force. Like he’d been searching for it his whole life and now he had it in his grasp. Though he’d kissed her before, both sweetly and frantically, this was the first time it had been with all his walls down. He was naked before her, exposed—and he still had all his clothes on. It gave the kiss a sense of newness. It was surprising. Exhilarating. The best goddamn kiss of his life.
His lips sucked at hers, teasing, tasting before he allowed his tongue to slip in and stroke along her own. For several minutes, their hands were still, letting the movement of their mouths take center stage. They had an entire conversation with lips and tongues moving in rhythm—I want you, they said to each other. To get to know you. To savor you. To have more with you.
Soon, though, kissing wasn’t enough. Andrea brought her hands around his neck and pressed into him, rubbing her body against his like an affectionate kitten. God, that made him hot—the way she moved her tits along his chest, her pelvis pushing at his erection. If he didn’t stop her now, they’d be doing it in the hall, and that was not where he wanted her.
He wanted her in his bed.
He pulled away, the confusion in her gaze lasting only until he took her hand and led her silently to the double doors on the opposite side of the hallway. Without flipping on the light, he continued past the threshold of the darkened room, steering her to his bed where he helped her sit.
She reached for his embrace again, but he stopped her.
“I want to see you.” He flicked the switch on the nightstand lamp, the sudden light causing them both to momentarily blink and adjust even though the illumination was dim. The overhead was too bright, but he was aching to gaze at her when he stripped her naked.
In their trysts at the office, they’d never undressed fully. It had been almost an unspoken addendum to their rules—sex with clothes on was much different from sex with clothes off, after all. Maybe not fundamentally, but emotionally. So many times he’d wanted to unbutton her blouse, strip her of her bra, and take her naked breast into his mouth, yet he’d restrained himself. Tonight, with all the other rules already broken, there was no longer a reason to hold back. He’d feast on her with his eyes, then with his tongue. He’d make love to her with nothing between them. Hell, with her permission, he’d even forgo the condom.
When he turned back to face Andrea, he found she’d moved to a kneeling position. She reached forward to tug on his shirt. He smiled, letting her pull him toward her. She was as desperate to keep touching as he was. Cupping her hands around her face, he kissed her again, thoroughly. Then he grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and broke away from her mouth so that he could rid her of the clothing. Her powder-blue lace bra came off next, joining her shirt on the floor.
“That’s better.” Much better. Blake was amazed at how Drea didn’t try to cover herself up, but let her arms stay loosely at her sides, showing him her goods without shame. And she had nothing to be ashamed of in the least. Why had he wasted so much time on such scrawny girls in the past? Drea’s breasts were magnificent. They would fill his palms, voluptuous without being showy. Absolutely perfect. He wanted to squeeze them and watch her shiver. Wanted her perfect dusky nipples between his lips.
Before he could act on those desires, however, his attention was drawn to a nipping at his toes. Puppy.
“Oh, no.” He bent to scoop up the dog in one hand. “You are not staying in here.”
“Blake, he’s fine,” Andrea called behind him as he escorted the creature to the doors.
“No. He’s not.” This was a private party Blake had planned. No Puppy invited.
He set his dog on the floor and shooed him away. Before shutting him out, though, he said quietly, “I promise to give you one of those treats you love in the morning.”
“I heard that,” Andrea teased, confirming again that she knew he had an affinity for the animal.
With a wicked grin, he turned back to the woman he’d left on his bed. “And I’ll give you the treat you love right now.”
“So full of yourself.”
“No, but you’ll be.” He sauntered over to her, enjoying the blush that sparked from his naughty words and ran down her neck to the tips of her breasts. “Now, where were we?”
“You were taking off your shirt.” She pulled again at his T-shirt until he took her hands, lacing her fingers with his.
“That’s not where we were.” Hands locked in hers, he bent down to lick along one of her perfect nipples. “This is where we were.”
She wriggled under his attention. “Come on, I want to see you.”
“You will. But I want to see you first.” And suck you. And taste you.
“It’s supposed to be ladies first, Blake.” But she moaned, thrusting out her breasts so that he could take her more fully in his mouth.
He tugged until her nipple was standing erect. “And ladies will come first. I promise.” Again, she blushed. “Now stop talking.”
“But—”
He let go of a hand and placed his finger at her lips. “Stop.” Turning his attention in full to her bosom, he distracted her from any thoughts of conversation. He adored her breasts completely, sucking and biting at one while kneading the other. Then switching his hand with his mouth until Andrea was gasping.
When he had his fill, he moved down, his tongue swirling along the rim of her belly button before his hands worked the button of her jeans. Gently, he pushed her back to lie on the bed so that he could remove her sandals. Then her pants. Then her panties.
Holy mother of God, he’d died and gone to heaven.
He had to stand back and admire her—her hair spilling around her shoulders, her nipples still puckered from his ardor, her thighs spread to showcase her pretty little pussy. “Andrea Dawson.” His voice was thick with desire. “You are so damn beautiful.”
She whimpered at his words. Or maybe from his touch as he moved in, trailing a hand down each of her inner thighs, his fingers meeting at her core. He skidded across her clit, and her hips bucked. That’s when he lost all his reserve. He’d wanted to go slower, take his time teasing her with his hands. But he couldn’t wait any longer. He had to have his mouth on her and now.
He fell to his knees and pulled her to the edge of the bed.
“What are you—”
He answered with his tongue on her flesh.
“Oh, my God,” she cried, sitting up.
With a smile, he urged her back down and returned to his feast. He licked up her crease, dragged his mouth across her folds, skated his teeth along her sensitive nub. She whimpered and moaned as he pleasured her, her sexy sounds telling him just what she liked and how she liked it. Then he moved a hand to tickle along her opening, and she nearly screamed.
Damn if that didn’t make him harder.
He was desperate now to make her come, eager to watch her fall apart from this new viewpoint. He plunged two fingers inside her, bending his knuckles to hit the spot against her wall that he knew was particularly sensitive. She was almost there. He could sense her getting near. Could hear it in the way her breathy gasps were coming closer and closer.
With his mouth and hands, he worked her until her legs were tensing and shaking, and her whimpers had turned into cries. His tongue drew letters on her clit, a trick he’d learned in college.
Then he found himself straying from the alphabet and wrote a sentence instead. “I heart Andrea Dawson.” Because he did. He hearted her hard. Not just because his face was buried between her thighs, but because of everything else that had transpired between the two of them. Because she laughed at him when he was pompous. Because she didn’t slap him any of the times he’d deserved it. Because she got dolled up and arrived on his doorstep in an attempt to seduce him when she was never sexier than when she was herself. Because she was feisty and outspoken. Because she gave him Puppy and could hold her own in pinball.
Mostly, though, because she was just the most incredible woman he’d ever met, and she owned him wholly—body, soul, and definitely heart.
* * *
Andy screamed and wrapped her fingers in the bedspread as she came. And came. And came. Blake Donovan was a god, she decided. A one hundred percent freaking sex god.
He was more than a sex god, though, she thought as she began to wind down from her dizzying orgasm. He was also more extraordinary than she’d ever imagined a man like him could be. He was funny and even sweet. And he kept the dog. And he had a fully loaded pinball playroom, for crying out loud. How much cooler could a person get? It was overwhelming and also really amazing in ways that she couldn’t comprehend when she was still half blind from her release.
When she’d settled down enough that she could form a more coherent thought, she was no longer interested in analyzing her emotions. She was interested in the god before her—more specifically, getting the god naked.
She scrambled to her knees and pulled at his shirt. “No excuses, now. This has to go.”
Thankfully, he didn’t fight her.
His chest bare in front of her for the first time, she scanned every part of him, tracing along his contours with her fingers. He was gorgeous. Though not completely ripped, he had muscles. Well-defined muscles. Hard muscles, and not just the one bulging in his pants. And those sexy ridges that some men had at their hips? He had those. She had to trace those with her tongue.
Except his stupid jeans were in the way of her path. Too anxious to work at removing them herself, she simply commanded, “Off,” and sat back on her knees to wait.
Blake had them shucked in no time, his briefs as well. Oh, she loved it when he responded to her like that. Almost as much as she loved the sight in front of her—his beautiful, thick cock. While she’d spent a good amount of time in the last week with it inside her, Andy had never actually taken much time to admire it. Now it was standing boldly in her face and she could no longer resist.
“I want this,” she murmured. And so she intended to have it. Circling her hand around him, she pumped his length from top to bottom. Blake’s low mmm pushed her to do it again. He leaped in her hands and she couldn’t help smiling. She brushed her fingertips over his crown and he moaned again. She loved this, too—loved torturing him. Loved having the power to make such a strong, composed man twitch at her touch.
Letting her stroke fall back down his rigid flesh, she realized that this was the component she’d been missing in her matches for Blake—she hadn’t found the woman who could get to him. The woman whom he could expose himself to without fear. Not just clothes-off exposure, but everything-about-him exposure. The kind of exposure he’d shown to her tonight.
Wait. Did that mean that she was that woman? Was she Blake Donovan’s match? She’d been into him, consumed with him, but she’d never quite believed that they were actually good together. Not long-term. But maybe they were.
Wouldn’t that be something?
She ignored the tingle of hope that ran through her at the thought and tucked it away to deal with later. There would be plenty of time to analyze it further when she didn’t have her mouth full.
Andy swirled her tongue along Blake’s crown and then drew his shaft in toward the back of her throat. He groaned and she instinctively echoed him, her sounds reverberating along the length of his erection.
“Andrea. Drea.” Blake sounded on the edge. “Please. You have to stop.”
Before she could figure out if his request to end was because her actions were too awful or because they were too good, he had pulled out of her mouth and pushed her back onto the mattress. He covered her with the length of his body. Automatically, her legs fell open to him, and she felt his shaft against her opening.
“Your lips are heaven on my cock,” he said in husky tones at her ear. “But keep doing that, and I’m going to come. And I already made a reservation in your pussy that I intend to keep.”
Too good, then. She smiled at that. “I need you inside me, Blake.”
He hovered over her, his mouth close to hers. “I need to get a condom.”
He made no move to leave and she didn’t want him to go, even just for a moment. Yet that wasn’t the reason behind her bold decision. “No condom. Just you.”
He responded by entering her with one long, slick drive. He slid all the way out to the tip and then pushed in again, seemingly even thicker and harder than he’d been just a moment before. Then he established his rhythm—a steady pulse that stroked her in all the right ways. Sent her climbing and spinning and soaring all at once.
“Blake, oh, Blake.” She dug her fingers into his back. He felt so good. She was surprised exactly how good he felt because she’d had him inside her before. Perhaps the difference was the lack of condom, but she had a feeling it was more than that. So much more.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, and the new position let him push in deeper. Deeper than he’d ever been—than anyone had ever been inside her—she was sure of it. A general feeling of euphoria settled over her, even before she reached the pinnacle of her climax. She’d never been made love to like this before, and that was most definitely what Blake Donovan was doing. He was making love to her. Every touch carried a weight of affection—the way he brushed her hair from her eyes, how he cupped her face and kissed her with sweet abandon. Each thrust, even, bore the emotion of love.
Andy matched each display with sincere reciprocation. She let herself thrill in her earlier revelation that she was falling in love with the man. In fact, she’d go so far as to say she’d already fallen. Fallen as far as she suspected he had with her. The thought propelled her over the edge and then she was soaring on the crest of a relentless climax. Tears spilled and every nerve in her body burst in ecstasy as she clenched around him and all she could see and sense before her, in front of her, around her, was Blake. Blake, Blake, Blake. Forever Blake. She was drowning in his essence, yet she’d never felt so anchored.
Her spasms hadn’t yet subsided when he joined her—pounding out his climax with each syllable of her name. Finally he collapsed beside her and neither of them said a word as they panted in unison and their heart rates returned to normal. Moments passed in the silence.
Then Andy began to fret. Would it get all awkward now? Should she go home? He had invited her to stay, but now they were barely touching and it was only at the shoulder so did that even count?
Her worry was all in vain, though, because before she had to make a decision about what to do next, Blake wrapped an arm around her and tugged her to him. He kissed and nuzzled at her neck before tucking her into the crook of his arm.
“Wow,” he said. “That was…”
“Amazing, incredible, fantastic.” She could keep going with a whole list of adjectives if her brain cells weren’t numb from having been thoroughly fucked.
“I was going to say everything.” He tilted her chin to meet his eyes. “That was everything, Andrea. Thank you.”
She nodded. Yes, that’s what it had been, she thought, too overcome to agree verbally. It had been absolutely everything.
They lay tangled together, Blake stroking her arm, Andy caressing his chest, for a long while. Though they were silent, it was comfortable. Easy. Perfect.
A clicking noise broke through the quiet, coming from the direction of the TV set across from the bed.
Because it seemed time to say something, Andy asked, “What was that?”
Blake glanced toward the sound. “Just the DVR starting.”
She stretched. “Oh. What are you recording?” Probably some boring documentary on the History Channel. No, Military Channel was probably more fitting for his business style.
“Nothing.” Wait—what?
She adjusted so she could see his face. “What do you mean nothing? It’s obviously something. What is it?”
His silence combined with his pained expression led her to pry. “Why won’t you tell me?” She narrowed her eyes. “Is it porn?” It had to be porn. In which case, she kind of wanted to turn it on and see what kind of sex Blake was into, though she was pretty sure she already knew, what with all their recent activity and such.
But he protested. “No. It’s not porn.”
And her interest was piqued even further. “What is it, then?”
The tight line of his mouth said he wasn’t spilling. But she’d already spied the remote on the nightstand next to her so, in a flash, she rolled over and flicked the ON button.
“No!” Blake shouted as he realized what she was doing. He wrestled her for the remote, the renewed physical contact almost distracting her completely from the DVR. Except the sweeping music captured her attention, and when she looked up she saw a picturesque landscape and a beautiful English manor filling the television screen.
She was stunned. “Downton Abbey?”
With a gaping jaw, she returned her gaze to Blake, who was definitely blushing.
Then she couldn’t help it—she broke into peals of laughter. “Blake Donovan,” she managed to get out with a howl, “watches Downton Abbey?”
“Haha. Very funny.” Blake retrieved the remote from her laugh-limp hand, clicked OFF, and flung it to the floor. “Thank you for your support of my tastes.”
His tone said she should drop it, but she couldn’t breathe. It was too freaking funny.
“Shall I pour you some more tea? Shall we have a crumpet as we watch? Where are my pearls?” Her British dialect was awful, but she wasn’t going to stop.
“Keep this up and I’ll give you something to laugh about,” Blake challenged.
And because she couldn’t stop, he started to tickle her. It was too much. Her peals escalated to hysterics. Tears formed at her eyes, and she had to grab her sides to both ease the ache and fend off her attacker. She couldn’t even speak enough to ask him to stop.
With a sigh, Blake gave up his torture. “I’ll wait.”
It took a bit for her to calm. Then, sensing Blake needed reassurance or an apology or both, Andy pushed up to take his mouth in a sensual kiss. By the time she released him, they were both breathless.
She sat back and tapped him on the tip of his nose. “Do you know how many women you could score if they knew you watched Downton Abbey?”
He captured her finger in his mouth and sucked. “You mean that’s what I should have used as my initial proposition to you?”
“No, not me. But other women. Chicks dig a sensitive core, you know.” That sucking thing could have gotten her naked in a heartbeat, though. Sensitive core there, too.
“Not a fan, huh?” He sounded the slightest bit disappointed.
She settled back into his arms, her head on his chest. “I don’t know. I’ve never watched it.”
Blake kissed her head. “Ah, that will have to be remedied in the future.”
The future. Was it totally reaching to grab onto that word as proof that their relationship would be different from now on? Proof that they had a future? She didn’t think so. And for that, she was telling the truth when she said, “I honestly can’t wait.”
They sank back in their silence, Blake stroking his fingers up and down Andy’s arm. After a few minutes, he said, “How did you end up in my life, Andrea ‘sounds-like-Princess-Leia’ Dawson?”
She’d actually been reflecting on just that very thing. “You posted a job opening and my sister set up an interview.”
“Uh-uh. Too vague. Why were you even looking at jobs like the one I had posted?”
She drummed her fingers on his chest as she considered how to answer. “When I quit working for Max Ellis, I didn’t leave on good terms. In fact, I left on very, very bad terms. Terms that pretty much ended my chances of finding a decent job afterward.” She poked him playfully in the ribs. “So I was forced to take what I could get.”
“Cute.” He shifted her to the pillow next to him so that they were face-to-face. “But that’s not cutting it. Tell me the terms. What happened?”
“Well…” She couldn’t believe she was about to admit the truth. Though, lying naked with Blake, no covers on them even, it didn’t seem as big a deal as it usually did. “Okay. The last year I was with Max, he got more and more … touchy … so to speak. Finally he out-and-out propositioned me.”
“For sex?”
She nodded. “When I said no, he fired me. I could have won a lawsuit against him, I’m sure, if I’d had my head about me. But when he fired me, I couldn’t help myself, I got so mad that I had to do something immediate. So I, um, burned a bunch of his employee files. I mean, like, a bunch.” She kept her eyes down, unable to meet Blake’s gaze. “He was the one who sued me. And he won, not surprisingly, which cost me all my savings and the little condo I owned. And my car. And the tennis bracelet I’d bought myself. Basically, he left me destitute and dependent on my sister. Pretty pathetic, I know.”
“But you didn’t sleep with him?”
She propped her head up with her elbow and met his gaze. “Is that all you can think about after that story?”
“No. I’m also wondering how I managed to have my office remain undestroyed after my own proposition.” His grin suggested that he was half kidding.
But she knew Blake—or she was beginning to know him—and so she was sure he was also half serious.
“I wouldn’t say it remained undestroyed.” She winked at him. “There was the broken wingback.”
“I’ve never been so happy to lose a piece of furniture.” He cupped his hand behind her neck and brought her in for a brief kiss.
She shivered at his words as much from his kiss. Misreading her goose bumps, Blake suggested they get under the covers. When they were bundled up and she was snug in his arms again, their conversation resumed.
“Do you have any regrets?” he asked.
“About the wingback? No.” None at all. “About Max Ellis? Yes. Lots of regrets.”
“Such as?”
“I shouldn’t have burned his files, but I really don’t feel all that bad about that. That was every single bit of work I had done, for my entire career. Just because I learned what I did in kind of sketchy ways doesn’t mean I hadn’t worked really hard. Eight years of hard-core applied psych, that he was going to keep, and try and do me on top of. Burning it felt cathartic. If his lawsuit hadn’t cost me so much, I wouldn’t feel bad at all.”
She pulled out of Blake’s embrace and sat up against the headboard. Though she’d thought about this a lot over the last year, she’d never said any of it aloud. “Mostly, I regret the person he trained me to be. He taught me to seek out weaknesses in employees that would prevent them from doing well at his company. And I was good at that. Good at cutting people down and ignoring the best parts of them.” It didn’t paint the prettiest picture, she knew, and she was somewhat embarrassed to admit it.
When she glanced at Blake, though, there was only compassion and interest written in his expression. It encouraged her to go on. “But I realize now that you can’t always judge a person’s potential by their profile. It’s a nice idea, but not very practical. And if you base a whole life or business on that thinking, you’ll likely miss out on some truly amazing people.”
Andy let her words replay in her head. Though she’d been talking about her job with Ellis, she could just as easily have been talking about the one with Blake. She couldn’t set up a match for him because profiles didn’t contain the whole of a person. There was no way they could. So she could find a woman with the right eyes, the right social background, the right goals and ambitions, but how would that ever be an indication of chemistry or emotional compatibility?
The same lesson could be applied to her initial impression of Blake. Hadn’t she judged him by his “profile”? She’d decided what kind of a man he was—arrogant, self-centered, inflexible. Time together had taught her that he was so much more than that. If she hadn’t been forced into his company, she’d never have given him a second look. And that would have been the biggest regret of her life.
Blake shifted so he was sitting up next to her. “Yes. I believe you may be right.” He cocked his head. “So if you’ve lost your faith in the profile method, why is it again that you’re working for me?”
She weighed her options for a moment—she could come out and tell him that her job was ridiculous, that he should fire her immediately and then date her earnestly.
But even though it was possible he felt the same, she wasn’t willing to risk ruining their beautiful night. Not yet. So she gave a safer answer: “Because you begged me to.”
He chuckled. “I guess I did.”
“Like a desperate man.” She sandwiched one of his hands between both of hers, admiring how small hers were next to his. How strong his were. “It’s comical, actually. Blake Donovan, desperate?”
“Hey, I was desperate.” He pulled her hand that was closest to him into his lap and began massaging it. “I’d tried other methods of finding potential dates. Let’s just say I had my own burned-bridges sort of situation.”
“You must tell me more.” Also, he really must keep doing that to her hand. It felt amazing.
“Must I really? It’s embarrassing.”
“Tell me. I won’t laugh.” She paused. “Or, I’ll laugh, but it will be in good fun.”
His focus on his hand massage, he asked, “Have you heard of Millionaire Matches?”
Andy nodded. Who hadn’t? It was the only matchmaking company that actually had any proven results. It also had a lot of notoriety since the men and women who paid for the service were generally wealthy. Many of their more notable matches made the gossip columns.
“Well, I was signed with them.” Blake worked the sensitive area between her thumb and index finger. “Until I got blackballed.”
Andy’s jaw dropped. “What did you do? Did you accuse your personal matchmaker of having man-calves?”
“Worse.” Sheepishly he met her gaze. “I slept with the CEO.”
Her hand flew from his lap to her mouth. “Oh, my God.” She was struck that along with being appalled, she was also rather jealous. Though she knew it wasn’t reasonable, she hated the idea of Blake sleeping with other women. Even when it had occurred before he’d met her.
Blake scratched the back of his neck. “When I refused a repeat performance, she blackballed me. Then she told the other matchmaking companies in the area that I was a bad risk. That I was only using the program for easy sex.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “You do have a reputation of sleeping with your dates, Blake. Or, I mean, not sleeping with your dates.” She sounded terse, and she knew it. Well, too bad. She felt terse.
“Andy…” He trailed off, and she braced herself for whatever horrible thing he was going to say next. If he had to preface it by calling her that, it couldn’t be good. “I never slept with any of the dates you set me up with.”
“Of course you did,” she scoffed. Not this again. So much for not ruining the night.
Blake took her chin and turned her head until her eyes locked with his. “No, I didn’t. Not a one.”
She was about to protest once more, but when she really studied his face she found that his expression was earnest and sincere. He wasn’t lying. There was no way he could look at her like that and not be telling the truth.
“Oh,” she said, finally accepting it. “Then why didn’t you want to see any of them again?”
“Maybe your profile theory is spot-on. They looked good on paper, but in person they weren’t what I was looking for.” He brought a hand up to her face and caressed her cheek with his thumb. “Or maybe I wasn’t ever looking for what I really wanted.”
Andy could hear her heartbeat in her ears. The tone of his voice, the softness of his touch, the way he was gazing into her eyes—she had this gut feeling that if she asked him what he was really looking for, there was a good chance he’d say her. She knew it as surely as she had ever known anything. She willed herself to press him, to bring the moment to a head. As long as they were confessing, they could confess this, too.
But before she got the nerve, he threw his own question at her. “What are you looking for, Andy?”
You. Here was her chance. She opened her mouth, but the word didn’t come.
“I mean…” He dropped his hand from her cheek. “Now that you’ve decided Max Ellis wasn’t the place for you, and you’ve always been vocal about how beneath you matchmaking is—I tend to agree, by the way—what would you like to be doing with your life?”
Good thing she’d been silent. How humiliated would she have been if she’d answered that she was looking for him when he was asking about her career goals. Maybe she was misreading his cues. Or maybe he was dancing around the subject as much as she was.
Not knowing which it was, the only thing she could do was ride the conversation as best she could. So she pondered his question sincerely. What did she want to do with her life?
She had no clue.
Even if Blake was part of her future, she sure didn’t want to be a housewife. But that was about all she was sure of. “I really don’t know, Blake. Is that sad? Maybe I’d go back to school if I could afford it. Honestly, I like the rhythm of going into an office every day. I hadn’t realized that before. Working at Donovan InfoTech has been a much better experience than at Ellis’s where everyone hated me all the time.”
Instead of mocking her response, he nodded. “Something potentially in an office then?”
“Yes.” She chuckled at her lame lack of ambition. “Pretty vague, isn’t it?”
“Work for me, Andrea.”
She rolled her eyes. “I do work for you.” The urge to address that very issue tugged at her once again.
“I mean after this. In the future.” He grabbed his hand in hers and squeezed. “Work for me.”
She studied him. He was serious. Which was ridiculous. “What on earth would I do?”
“There are so many things I could use your skills for.” He sounded excited about the prospect. Like a kid in a candy store. Or like Blake in his playroom. “You could work in HR.”
Her spirits sank. Hadn’t he heard her earlier? She was disgusted with her old self. She couldn’t possibly do that again.
She tried to remain polite with her refusal. “Thank you, really. But I don’t want to do what I did for Max—”
Blake cut her off. “Not like that. I can use your skills for good. To bring out the potential in employees rather than as something to hold over their heads. We take pride in hiring the best and brightest, but it’s hard to identify special skills that could benefit other departments or positions. What do you say?”
She chewed her lip. Using her skills for good was something else entirely. It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about it before. Not in conjunction with Donovan InfoTech, necessarily, but in what she could potentially do for a corporation. How she could guide and direct the promise in skilled employees rather than cut them down and crucify them for their hidden weaknesses.
“Come on,” Blake urged. “Say yes.”
It was awfully tempting. However, she’d also learned working for Max that her impulsive decisions weren’t always the best. “Can I think about it?”
“Yes. You may.” He grinned—that charming, sexy grin that had her curling her toes. “But you know how I get what I want in these situations.”
She thought back to how he’d coerced her into working for him the first time. “That I do.”
And finally, with all the times they’d skirted the subject, she couldn’t let it go any longer. She took a deep breath. “Blake … about that. About the matchmaking…” About us …
He placed a single finger over her lips. “Shh.”
His reaction startled her and she peered up at him with questioning brows.
“I just think…” He trailed off with a sigh. Then he pulled her to him, wrapping her in his arms. “Let’s not do that tonight, Andy. Let’s not profile what this is yet. We might miss out. Tomorrow we can deal with what we need to. Okay?”
“Okay.” It was a weight off her shoulders, really—the admission that there were things to discuss but permission to put them on hold. She could deal with that.
Especially when Blake was kissing her the way he was. It was fairly easy to put anything on hold in favor of another toe-curling orgasm. Or four.