Chapter 5

When she sat down in the comfortable chair behind the negotiating table, Gina’s could feel that she was already wet in her panties. How would she last the entire meeting? Giles sat directly across from her. Jerry and Luke sat on one side of her, while Wesley sat next to Giles. Her most natural sitting position brought her face to face with him.

She opened her bag and got out her report. She busied herself with presenting her results, but she knew them backward and forwards. They did nothing to distract her from Giles’s mysterious eyes that penetrated her with his gaze.

She got through the results, and the serious negotiating began. Giles never said a word. He left the whole thing to Gina. “So you see, Jerry, we can come to an agreement now and you can ride off into the Wairarapa sunset, or we can all go home crying how the other guy did us wrong. The choice is yours.”

Jerry and Luke exchanged glances. “Well now, I see you’ve got us backed into a corner. We’re none of us ace negotiators like you. We’re engineers. This negotiation would go so much differently if you’d come over to us instead of leaving New Zealand.”

“I would be telling you the same thing if I was on your team,” Gina told him. “Just for a second here, let’s all pretend I’m on your team. Pretend I accepted Southern’s offer and I stayed in New Zealand. I would be telling you the same thing. Any other ace negotiator you could hire would tell you the same thing, too. This is the best offer you can hope to get. I’m telling you this as your friend. I know you guys, and I wouldn’t do you wrong to line my pocket or anybody else’s pocket. Take this and be happy about it. Take this, and let’s all ride off into the sunset together. Then we can all join Jerry and Kim for a beer in their new bach.”

The Southern team exchanged glances one more time. They hung by a thread, but Gina knew her business. She stole a peek at Giles across the table. He stared straight at her without blinking. He couldn’t be thinking about sex at a time like this. He couldn’t seriously be imagining all the things he’d like to do to her while she negotiated a hefty pay-out for him and his company. Could he? What kind of man would do that?

She forced herself to relax. He wasn’t thinking about sex. He wasn’t thinking about sex. He wasn’t thinking about sex. He was a businessman—a very successful businessman who worked hard at a business he loved. He was listening to her negotiate with these guys—nothing more.

A moment later, Luke cracked a grin. He stuck out his hand to Gina. “All right, sweetheart. You got a deal.”

Gina shook his hand. “Great. I think Giles has the contract all drawn up for you to sign. Then we can shoot you the first draft plan of your development project before you leave for your hotel tonight.”

Jerry froze. “What? So soon?”

“Why not? You just said we had a deal.”

The team looked at each other. “We didn’t think you’d have the contract already drawn up. We thought we’d negotiate that, too. We weren’t expecting everything to happen that fast.”

Gina stood up. “Don’t worry about it. You can go over the contract if you want to, just to make sure it’s the way you want it. We prefer to move fast at Infrastructure Consultants. We’ve got a deal, so we want to go ahead to finalize the details. You guys won’t be in town long. The faster we get all this done, the faster we can get this development underway.”

The team hesitated a little longer. Jerry staggered to his feet, but Wesley sat still in his chair. He stared straight in front of him in stunned shock. Luke kept looking at his friends for reassurance.

Gina held out her hand to Giles, and he set a file folder in her hand. He still hadn’t said a word. He was great that way. He knew how to disappear at the right times and come out guns blazing at others. These guys would only take the hard sell from Gina. If he tried the same technique, he would scare them out of the room faster than you can say, “Cheese.”

Instead, Gina laid the folder open on the desk in front of Wesley. “Here it is. You can take this back to your hotel and spend the next twenty-four hours reading it, or you can take your new draft plan back to your hotel and spend the next twenty-four hours reading that. It’s up to you guys how you want to spend your time, but I can assure you, on my honor, there is nothing in this contract you could take exception to. Everything is by the book. All we need is your signature.”

Wesley bent over the contract. He was a speed-reader of the highest order. He flipped the pages until he came to the end. “That’s all right, Gina. We’ll sign now, and you can send us the draft plan.”

He straightened up, and the other two peered into his face. “Are you sure?”

“Sure. This is a great contract, and we never expected any better when we walked through that door.” He held out his hand. “Give me a pen. I’ll be the first to sign it.”

He scrawled his name at the bottom. Gina stole another glance at Giles. He still regarded her with that passive, inscrutable gaze of his. He never took his eyes off her to watch this lucrative contract fall into his lap.

Wesley stepped aside, and Jerry took his place to sign, followed by Luke. Giles showed no sign of having noticed, but now, more than ever, Gina understood. He was thinking about eating her out and nailing her over his office chair the whole time. That’s why he never took his eyes off her. He told her in the elevator he would be thinking about doing her, and he did.

The more adroitly she negotiated this contract, the more he wanted to pound her right there over the desk. Contract negotiations like this excited him beyond belief. They made his cock throb for action and release.

The adrenaline of bagging big game excited her, too. It thrilled her inside out like wild sex. She could just imagine him grabbing her by the hips and pushing her down on the table right in front of Luke and Jerry. He would grab her by the hair and wrench her head back so she moaned and whined right in their faces as he made love to her to kingdom come.

That’s what contract negotiations meant to him—to both of them. Did she really think she could run away after this? How could she go home to Winnona with this aching need digging into her? How could she look forward to a night playing with herself when she could take his throbbing cock instead?

The guys shook hands all around. They shook hands with Giles, too. He smiled at them, but still, he didn’t speak. He left Gina to do all the talking. She thanked them and told them to watch their email for the first draft plan. They would have it in their inboxes by the time they got back to their hotel, along with copies of the contract for them to review.

She escorted them all out of Giles’s office and into the elevator. Jerry held the door open. “Aren’t you coming downstairs?”

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I have to debrief with Giles before I leave. I’ll catch up with you guys another time.”

He didn’t let go of the door. “How about dinner sometime?”

She laughed in his face. “Jerry, dear, you’re a married man.”

He blushed to his eyelids and dropped his arm in a hurry. The door pinged closed, and Gina turned back to Giles’s office. Debrief? Yeah. That’s what they called it.

She found him staring out the window. He turned around when she walked in the door. “You were magnificent. You had them eating out of your hand.”

She shrugged and closed the folder with the signed contract inside. “It’s easy when you know the person. All you have to do is make it personal, and they crumble.”

He strode over to the table. “I crumbled, watching you. I would have done anything for you just now. I would have sold my first-born child if you asked me to.”

Gina looked away. “Don’t say that.”

He frowned, but his face cleared right away. “Come on. I’m taking you to the penthouse.”

Gina froze. “What?”

“I can’t leave you after the way you just made me feel. You were incredible. And I saw how you looked at me too. How can we just ignore the tension we both felt just now?”

She burst into action. She grabbed her handbag and headed for the door. “I can’t. I have to get back…..I have something I urgently need to do.”

He flew around that table faster than you can blink. She never saw him move that fast. One minute he regarded her from across the table. The next he appeared in front of her to block her way. “You’re not going anywhere except to the penthouse. You’re all mine.”

She withdrew a step. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Mr. Pendragon. I have a prior commitment that I can’t get out of.”

“You said that before, but since you won’t tell me what that prior commitment is, I have no choice but to doubt your word. I don’t like to do that. I would love to believe you, but after the way you talked to me in the elevator before, I still cling to the mistaken belief that you want me. Unless I hear something from you to convince me otherwise, I’ll keep believing that.”

She searched his eyes for some slim hope. “I do still want you. I want you as much now as I ever did. It’s just….”

“Then say it.”

Gina caught her breath. “Say what?”

“Say you want me. Say you want me to do it to you like we used to.”

She gulped hard. “You know I want it.”

He gritted his teeth so his jaw muscle popped. He breathed heavily and low in his chest and fixed his eyes on her just the way he knew would bring her to her knees. “Say it. Say it like you mean it. Say it so I’ll believe you.”

A sob broke out of her throat. Why did he have to be so damn dominant? Why did he have to be so Alpha all the time? She couldn’t resist him when he got like this. Her voice rose to a whining cry. “I want it so bad, Mr. Pendragon. You know I want you to do it to me so bad.”

He took a step closer. His whole being pulsed with masculine power. “What do you want me to do to you? How can I do it if you don’t say what you want?”

She whimpered in her pathetic shame. “Oh, please fuck me. I can’t stand this. Oh, please, sir. I can’t do this.”

He moved the last little inch so his bared teeth hovered before her eyes. “You’re gonna do it. You’re gonna do exactly as I say, Ms. Kemp. You’re gonna take off those wet panties of yours right now and hand them over to me.”

Her eyes popped open. “Right now, sir?”

He held out his hand, and his voice cut like a knife. “Right now, Ms. Kemp. You wouldn’t want me to have to discipline you for insubordination, would you?”

She couldn’t stop her hands trembling. What was she doing? How did she get into this—again? She set her bag on the table, hooked her thumbs up her thighs and slid her panties down. She stepped out of them and handed them over.

She shrank into a tiny ball and awaited her fate. He stuffed her panties into his pocket and sliced the air with his forefinger. “Now turn around and put your hands on the table.”

She watched herself from far away. Who was that woman in the business suit with no panties on? Whoever she was, her pussy twitched for fulfillment from his thick, cruel intrusion. She hadn’t had anything in five months. She needed this as much as he did.

She knew when she told Jerry she had to debrief with Giles that it would end this way. It always did, so why did she balk at it now? She kept hanging around in the same office. She made no attempt to leave. She could have avoided this by leaving with the Southern Mining team. They would have shaken her hand and maybe given her a hug outside. They would have thought twice if her panties were wet.