“So, as you can see,” my cousin Nick says as he finishes up his proposal, “there is no other option than to close down the steel plant in Phoenix and move it to Honduras. I highly recommend that we start the process immediately.”

Every person in the room looks to the head of the table where my father is sitting. He’s watching Nick while he twirls his pen in his hand. He always does that when he’s thinking.

“Sounds good,” he finally says, nodding. “You can be in charge of handling it, Nick.”

Nick flashes me a triumphant look before gathering his notes with a smirk on his face.

“If I may, sir,” Dahlia says, straightening up in her seat. “I have an alternative option.”

My ears perk up as I turn to my beautiful wife who is now a constant fixture in McMillan Worldwide Inc.’s top meetings. It’s only been a week since she’s been working here, but my father has already taken a liking to her. And it’s not because she’s his new daughter-in-law. It’s because she’s a killer business woman who knows her shit and who has an unlimited number of intelligent ideas.

My father turns to her with a smile on his face. “You have the floor, Dahlia.”

She clears her throat and then spits out a whole speech on how we can not only save the factory in Phoenix but also cut costs while increasing profits by adding a gold refinery to the existing steel plant. I don’t know how she comes up with these ideas.

“McMillan Worldwide Inc. just absorbed the Klineton Mining Corporation last month, correct?” she says, glancing down at her notepad. It’s covered in notes. Even the margins have notes scribbled on them. I swallow hard as I glance down at my notepad. All mine has on it is a doodle of a penguin who looks more like a rocket ship than a bird.

My father nods. “We did.”

“As you may know,” she continues with a proud smile on her face. “The Klineton Mining Corporation has a small department that specializes in gold. Well, they just discovered a huge vein of gold in one of the mountains they were digging in, and those dole bars have to be processed. If we set that up in the steel factory in Phoenix, we could save a ton of money over the next five years.”

My skin tingles as I watch her do what she does best. She could hold her own against any of these business sharks, and I can tell that she knows it and loves it.

“That’s not going to work,” Nick scoffs, waving a dismissive hand at her.

She ignores him, turning to my dad. “It’s going to work.”

My father is liking the idea. I can tell.

“Arizona has a lower tax on gold,” I add, helping to drive the idea home. “If we refine the gold in Honduras and import it back, we’re going to get slaughtered with importation taxes.”

Nick is breathing heavily as he watches us trounce his presentation.

My father turns to my cousin Jason. “What do you think?” he asks him.

Jason is sitting at the end of the table, listening carefully. He nods, looking impressed at the idea. If Jason thinks it’s a good idea, it’s probably a good idea. That kid knows his stuff.

“I’d have to run the numbers but it sounds like it could work,” he says.

“I already ran them,” Dahlia answers quickly, grabbing some papers from her bag. She hands them around the table, grinning as she hands one to Nick.

My younger cousin Jason nods as he quickly looks over the numbers. He would make a better boss than Nick, but he knows that both his older brother Nick and I really want my father’s position so he has pulled his name out of the running. I’m glad that he did because he’d be making it even harder for me to get the spot.

“It looks good,” my father says, nodding in approval as he looks over the numbers. He takes a second to read the papers and then tosses them on the desk. “Good job, Dahlia. Create a full proposal for me and have it on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

I’ve never seen her smile so wide. It’s adorable.

My father turns to me. “Tyler, you can help her.”

Wow, that smile vanished quickly.

“Anything else?” my father asks, looking around the room. When no one speaks up, he dismisses us all and hurries out of the conference room.

Jason smiles at Dahlia as he passes her on his way out. “Great job, cuz,” he says, giving her a fist bump.

Nick still looks furious. “She’s not your cousin, Jason,” he says, glaring at his brother.

Jason rolls his eyes and taps Dahlia’s shoulder as he leans down close to her ear. “Yes, you are,” he whispers.

She smiles shyly for a second before catching my eye and dropping it.

“I want a copy of that proposal as well,” Nick says as he angrily shoves his notes into his bag.

“Why, so you can see what a real proposal looks like?” Dahlia asks, flashing him a dirty look.

“No, so I can find all of the mistakes that will inevitably be in there,” he answers.

“The only mistake around here is letting you in through the door,” I say, standing up. “That will be changed once I’m the boss.”

I can’t prove anything yet, but I have a strong suspicion that Nick is stealing from the company, and I’m not talking about sticky notes or highlighters. There seems to be seven figures mysteriously missing from the departments that he oversees.

I brought up my suspicions with my father a few months ago, and he got upset, claiming that I was trying to sabotage Nick’s chances for the promotion. I’ve looked for proof, but I can’t find any. He’s covered his tracks well. He always has been a smart one.

“Maybe the factory in Phoenix won’t go down,” Nick says, smirking at Dahlia. “But the one in Summerland definitely will. I’ll make damn sure of that.”

“Not unless you go down first,” Dahlia says as she gathers her notes and stuffs them into her bag. “With my help, Tyler is definitely going to get the top spot.”

“Your help?” he says with an amused grin. “You don’t even work here. You work for the Hospitech division, which is now run by me. I want you back in Summerland tomorrow to help prepare for the layoffs.”

“She’s not going anywhere,” I snap. Both of their heads whip around to me. “You don’t tell her what to do. Ever.”

“Actually, I do,” he says, gritting his teeth. “She’s my employee.”

“She’s my wife,” I growl, staring him down. I didn’t realize I was so possessive of her until this moment. “And she’s staying here with me.”

Nick drops his eyes to the table as his posture turns submissive. He knows better than to mess with me when I’m like this. We’ve gone at it a lot over the years, and I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten all of those black eyes I’ve given him while growing up, so he backs off.

“She can stay tomorrow,” he says, keeping his eyes on his bag, “just so Mack can see what a laughable mess her proposal is, but next week, she goes back to Summerland.” He turns to her with a smile that I really want to slap off. “And you’ll be the one in charge of handing out the layoffs.”

Dahlia is breathing heavy with her nostrils flaring as Nick quickly exits the room. It’s just the two of us left in the large conference room now.

“Was that guy dropped on his head as a baby or something?” she asks, shaking her head. “What an asshole.”

“Now you see why I want to get the company so bad,” I say, walking around the table to get closer to her. “The whole corporation will be in trouble if he’s in charge.”

“The whole world will be in trouble if he’s in charge,” she says, rubbing her forehead.

I walk up to her and sit on the table beside her. “Enough about him,” I say, smiling down at her. “You did fucking great! You killed it!”

“I did,” she says with a big excited smile on her sexy lips. My heart skips a beat as I stare at them.

Working with this girl for the week has been pure torture. Her outfits get sexier every day. They’re all work-friendly and professional, but to a hungry lion like me, they’re catnip. Tight skirts that show the tempting curve of her ass, white blouses with just the hint of cleavage; not too much to be unprofessional, but just enough to drive me crazy.

It’s not just her beautiful face and stunning body that are torturing me, but her smell too. I’ve been working closely with her throughout the week, showing her the ropes of the company, and every time I get a whiff of her vanilla perfume, my dick throbs. She smells delicious, and it always leaves me wondering what she tastes like.

It kills me that I’ve already tasted her, and done a lot more than that, and I can’t remember any of it. That’s the worst thing about that drunken night. It’s not the marriage, or all the lies, or the strange calls I keep getting from the Sunshine Happy Church. It’s that I had this beautiful girl for a night and I can’t remember a single thing.

I sigh as I watch her smiling, wondering if I’ll ever get another chance. We’re always bickering and are constantly at each other’s throats, but strangely, I like it.

She doesn’t annoy me half as much as I let on.

“Did you see your cousin’s face when I handed him my notes?” she asks, biting her bottom lip as she smiles. “He looked furious! It was awesome!”

“He’s probably having an angry cry in the janitor’s office,” I say with a chuckle. “And it’s all because of you.”

She looks thrilled.

“How do you come up with these ideas?” I ask, staring at her in wonder.

“It’s easy,” she says, perking up in her seat. She rambles on at a speed I can’t even follow, telling me her in-depth research process, which is anything but easy. I just watch her lips moving as she talks, wondering what she would do if I leaned down and kissed her.

“So, you’re going to help me?” she asks when she’s finally finished talking.

“Of course,” I say, holding my hand up. “We’re a team, remember?”

She slaps her palm on mine for a high-five, but I hold onto her hand, letting the sexual tension build up between us.

Her cheeks flush an adorable pink as I finally let her go. She takes a deep breath and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she recovers.

“We should get started,” she says, looking anywhere but at me as she gets up and heads to the door. “This is going to take all night.”

My eyes are on her ass as she walks across the conference room, swinging those sexy hips.

This is going to take all night.

I grin as her words replay in my head.

This may turn out even better than I thought.

* * *

I pop open two beers as the clock strikes midnight. We’re in my office surrounded by cold leftover pizza, mountains of spreadsheets, and a few empty bottles of beer.

Dahlia is sitting at my desk, hard at work. She’s typing furiously on her laptop as I walk over to her and hand her a beer. “Let’s take a break.”

Her fingertips dance across the keyboard for a few more seconds before she leans back in her chair and looks up at me. “Breaks are for the weak.”

“You’ve been staring at your computer screen for the past four hours without coming up for air,” I say, forcing the beer into her hand. “Just five minutes.”

She reluctantly takes the beer from me, takes a quick sip, and then makes a disgusted face as she places it on the desk, far away from her. “I don’t know how you drink that stuff. It’s horrible.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, sitting on the desk in front of her, “but I don’t have any white wine spritzers in my office.”

“You remembered,” she says, smiling. “I guess we remember one thing from that night.”

She has one eye on me and one eye on her laptop. She groans when I close it. I want her full attention.

We’re the only two left on the entire floor, and I want to take advantage of it. We haven’t been alone since that first morning together, and we are now. Even the nighttime cleaners left about an hour ago.

“I can’t believe I have to go back to Summerland next week,” she says, taking a deep breath as she stretches her neck. “It feels like a lifetime has passed since I’ve been there.”

I want to tell her that I don’t want her to leave, but I just stay quiet instead.

“My back is so sore,” she says, stretching as she gets up from her chair. She arches her back, pressing her tits in the air as she stretches. If my dick could talk, he would be letting out a groan right now.

My eyes never leave her body as she walks to the window and stares out at the colorful lights of the Strip in the distance.

“What a magnificent view,” she says.

My eyes are on her ass. “I couldn’t agree more.”

She rubs the back of her neck as she watches the blinking lights from the top floor of our high-rise building.

“Let me,” I say, hoping off my desk and walking over. She tenses up as I walk up close behind her and slide my hand on the back of her neck.

“You’re so tense,” I say as I start massaging her neck. Just touching her soft skin with the sweet smell of vanilla swirling in my head has my heart pounding and my dick raging.

“I want to get this proposal right,” she says, finally starting to relax as my hands take away her stress. She melts under my touch, placing her palms on the window for support.

I slide my hands down to her shoulders and begin massaging them, drawing little moans and groans from her sweet lips. I feel her bra straps under my fingers, which makes me imagine taking it off, which makes me start breathing heavier.

I can see her reflection in the glass. Her eyes are closed, her lips parted. She’s enjoying the feeling of my hands, which are slowly moving down her back. I can tell she likes it, even if she’d never stoop so low as to admit it.

When I reach her waist, I don’t stop. I slide my palms over the curve of her ass, and it makes my cock rock fucking hard. It also makes her turn around with a nasty look on her face.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to consummate our vows,” I say with my hands still down there.

“Our drunken vows?”

“Drunk or not,” I say, moving my hands back up to her back to release some of the tension that has suddenly filled the office, “you said the words.”

“Are you sure?” she asks, starting to relax again as I massage her back. She turns back to the window, and I can see in her reflection that she closes her eyes. “I haven’t seen any video proof of me saying anything.”

“The missing videos,” I say, inhaling her sweet scent. “I’m still looking for those, but in the meantime, we can start our honeymoon. Tonight is as good a night as any.”

Dahlia looks around the office and lets out a laugh. “Cold pizza. Warm beer. Pretty lame honeymoon, if you ask me.”

I slide my hands back down to her ass as I lean in close to her ear. “Let me take off this skirt, and it will get really good, really fast,” I whisper as her soft hair tickles my face. “You’ll be in paradise in no time.”

She licks her lips and then swallows hard, her body stiffening under my touch. She’s considering it. I can tell.

“We should get back to work,” she says, pressing her forehead against the window and squeezing her eyes shut.

“Don’t run from this,” I say, squeezing her waist with my hands to hold her in front of me. “There’s something between us for real. I know that you feel it too.”

She lets out a little moan as I press my hard erection against the top of her ass. I know she felt that.

Her beautiful skin becomes flushed as she holds her breath. She could move away from my cock, but she lets me press it against her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says as her body starts to tremble. Her words are saying one thing, but her body is saying another. And her body is saying it loud and clear as she presses her ass back into my hard dick.

I lean in next to her ear as I slide my hands up and down her trembling body. “I’m talking about pulling out my hard cock and bending this beautiful ass over.” She shivers as I slide my hands down on it, gripping her ass cheeks with a firm grip. “This sexy ass that has my name written on it.”

She looks over her shoulder at me with a frown on her face. “Don’t remind me. You’re not allowed to mention that again until you get the matching tattoo on your ass.”

“You want to be on my ass?” I ask with a grin.

“I want you to get a tattoo of my name,” she says. “We probably had a deal and you chickened out. Are you afraid of needles or something?”

I roll up my sleeve and show her my tatted-up forearm. “Do I look like I’m afraid of needles?”

Her eyes linger on my thick forearm as her breathing becomes quick and ragged once again. “You don’t look like you’re afraid of anything,” she whispers.

I spin her around and press her up against the window, holding my body close against hers. I can feel her heart pounding as hard as mine as she looks at me with lust-filled eyes.

“I’m afraid I’ll never get back the memory of our night together,” I whisper in her ear. “It kills me that I can’t remember the first time I slid inside of you.”

Another shiver jerks through her body at my heated words. “First time?” she asks with her eyes closed. “You mean our only time. Ever.”

“That won’t be our only time,” I whisper into her ear. I give her soft kisses on the side of her neck, and she starts to moan. Her back is arched, her tits pressed against my chest as she moves her leg to find my hard-on. She presses her thigh against it when she finds it, and I let out a deep throaty groan.

“It’s going to happen again,” I say between kisses. I move my lips down her neck and kiss a trail over the top of her chest and back up to the other side. When my lips reach her neck, she’s practically panting. “I know you want it too. I know you want to fuck your husband.”

Our lips are so close. They’re hovering over each other. I can practically taste her tongue, and it’s making me crazy.

I slide my palm over her lower back and pull her into me until our bodies are pressed so tight against each other that a thin piece of paper couldn’t slide through.

“I know you want to fuck me,” I whisper on her lips.

Her body is saying everything that she refuses to say, so I let our bodies do the talking. I crush my lips onto hers and wrap my arms possessively around her as I deepen the kiss.

Her body melts in my arms as she kisses me back with equal urgency, holding me as tightly as I hold her.

After a knee-weakening, heart pounding, toe-curling kiss, she pulls away and looks at me with the sexiest, lust-filled eyes I’ve ever seen.

It’s in that moment I know I’m fucking Dahlia tonight.