SIX
JACE
The numb expression on Lucy-I-Know-Fucking-Everything’s face takes me back to our junior year of high school. When she’d accidentally stumbled upon Reese Hawthorne, one of the cheerleaders, and me behind a vending machine.
I never found out where she was headed in the middle of a pep rally—knowing Williams, it was probably to get an early start on schoolwork that wasn’t due for months—but the second she spotted us, she froze. Standing with her pretty mouth open, her eyes darted from Reese’s vise-like grip on my hair to my fingers, which were showing my own version of school spirit beneath the cheerleader’s skirt.
Since Reese’s back was turned, she never knew Lucy was there, but I did. Warmth had spread across her creamy skin when I lifted hooded eyes and raised my chin to acknowledge her presence. She had lurched in the opposite direction, toward the sound of some awful eighties victory anthem rattling from the gym sound system, but I’d smirked and shook my head. I wasn’t ready for her to go.
Not until I saw her reaction.
I’d circled my thumb over Reese’s clit and crooked the fingers inside her cunt at the same time, drawing a noise from the back of her throat that had left prim and proper Lucy Williams flushed and shaking.
Once Reese’s cries died down, Lucy stalked off without so much as a sigh.
She had never mentioned it directly, but that moment always hung between us. It was in the back of my mind whenever she gave me hell about forgetting my homework—she did enough for the both of us—or every goddamn time she cast those hazel eyes my way.
At the end of the day, I hadn't given a fuck that she saw me that day in the hall because I’d loved witnessing the look on her face.
I’d loved shocking her.
My motivation for tonight was to get her unfiltered response to my world; if she thinks she can sell my gear, she’d better get used to groups like B’s. They pay our bills—make us successful—and I’ll be damned if I let Lucy’s holier-than-thou attitude come through around my clients. But even though I was looking for a reaction, I expected to feel a little more satisfied when Williams discovered we don’t make clocks.
Seeing how she’s huddled against the door of my car with her arms crossed tightly over her firm breasts, though, I feel … guilty.
It’s the second time that’s happened this week.
“You’re quiet, love,” I say over the song booming from the radio. She hangs her head low, and her inky hair tumbles over one shoulder. I want to reach out and brush it back, but I have a feeling she might bite my goddamn hand off.
"Say something,” I implore.
She tightens the corners of her mouth and glares down at her lap.
You want to do this the hard way, Lucy, so be it. "Was it everything you expected?"
Jabbing the radio's power button, she ends the song in the middle of the lead singer bragging about parents crying when women bring him around. She whips her head in my direction, and the fury behind her stare catches me off guard. “Sorry, but I couldn’t listen to that anymore. It was so fitting for the type of man you are, I could scream,” she spits out. “What do you think I expected, Mr. Exley?"
"I expected you'd be better prepared, Williams." I concentrate on the dark highway, speeding up. She’s so pissed off she doesn’t bother to highlight that I’m going twenty over. "I expected you wouldn't just stand there with your mouth dangling open, looking like you were just invited to join in on the fuckfest and—"
"You. Tricked. Me!" she shrieks before I can finish reminding her of the Voyeur Room. I was distracted the entire time I spoke to Bailon because she looked like she was seconds from writhing on the floor. Seeing her like that, with her skin flushed pink and her red lips quivering, had fucked over my train of thought.
"I didn't trick you, you just didn't do your research." I loosen my grip on the steering wheel because pain shoots through my knuckles. "You always were the sort to research every fucking detail so you wouldn't look like an arse when you forced your opinion down some poor bastard’s throat. I figured you already knew just what you were getting yourself into. You seemed so confident in what you were saying in my office."
"So that's what this was? You decided not to clue me in because you have a vendetta against me for forcing my point on you when we were kids? Thanks for being such an adult, Jace."
"I don't hold grudges." I glance her way, and her breath hitches as our eyes lock. "Yes, you were a bitch with all that underachiever shit when we were kids, but I don't hold that against you. If anything, it motivated me to be more. Better."
"So if it’s not a grudge, why didn't you say anything? Why did you even hire me if it wasn’t just to get a good laugh over stupid, naïve Lucy Williams?"
To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t wanted to hire her because I don’t like being physically attracted to her. It’s dangerous; a disaster for business, and that’s one thing I do enjoy—my business. The people who work for me are my family, and I don’t need someone coming in and fucking that up.
I’d hoped her references would throw her under the bus. That would have made saying no simple and going with someone with less education and experience even easier. But then Lucy’s ex-husband had begrudgingly admitted the woman could sell crack to a crack dealer—just before he told me what a godawful bitch she is.
Godawful bitch or not, I knew I needed her. Not just because I thought she’d take us to a whole new level but because something about her ex’s snide tone made me want to give her the job.
My dick can find a distraction. Just so long as it’s not her pussy doing the distracting, I told myself last night when I called. I was ready to tell her everything about EXtreme. But then she’d assertively claimed she’d have our name out in every corner of the world within the year—because she thought we made clocks and that excited her. And I knew right then that I didn’t want to warn her.
That I wanted to make sure the woman I was preparing to throw money at could market cages and cuffs with the same enthusiasm as clocks and shitty, over-hyped coffee.
"I wanted to see your reaction,” I finally admit in a gravelly voice. “I needed to see it because I want to be sure you can get my product out there without acting like a nun in the Red-Light District.”
She mouths my last several words and then releases a breath and drags another in. "Don't you think my reaction might have been a little—oh, I don’t know—calmer if you had told me we were going to a sex club."
"It's not a club," I correct. "It's a private residence."
“Whatever you want to call it, I was completely blindsided, and you know it."
I take the exit toward my shop. "You've got to admit, at some points you seemed pleasantly surprised." She issues me a dark look that I immediately reciprocate. "The Voyeur Room. Or have you already forgotten so soon?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." But she does, and she squeezes her knees together at the reminder. My cock stirs inside my jeans. "I've seen that look enough times to know what thoughts were rolling through that brilliant mind of yours. You were curious. And curiosity is a beautiful thing. Despite the saying, it really didn't kill the pussy."
She gasps, and I let a grin split my face as I wait for her to form a comeback.
"Okay, for starters, you’re a raunchy person. And secondly, what makes you the expert on knowing if a woman is thinking about sex? Telepathy? Or, even better, all the time you’ve spent on the other side of that glass getting it on?”
I shrug. "I've never been on the other side of that glass."
"But you're not denying that you've gone to those—"
"No, I'm not denying I’ve gone to those parties and done naughty, filthy things that would make your toes curl," I interrupt. From the sudden twitch in her eye, I can tell dozens of images spiral through her mind all at once. Maybe she’s wondering what room I indulged in? What fantasy?
And with whom or how many?
If she asks, I’ll tell her everything because I don’t think Lucy Williams will be my employee after tonight.
She’s too prude. Too scandalized. Too …
Fuck, I wish she’d stop blinking at me and doing that thing with her throat.
“So when I say I know that look, love, I know what the fuck I’m talking about,” I say and hope she’ll respond with something other than fluttering her eyelashes and making swallowing noises that test my patience.
Focusing her attention on a fingerprint smudge on the windshield, she clears her throat and smoothes her fingers through her long ponytail. "You don't know anything about me," she finally informs me.
I laugh.
Then I turn the music back on. I’d rather listen to My Darkest Days sing about casual sex than hear Lucy pretend I haven’t known her for the last fifteen years.
We ride in silence for the next five minutes, and I barely shift the car into park before she stumbles out, slamming the door behind her. I’m right on her heels. She refuses to turn around. I yell out her name, so she finally pauses at her car door.
“What?”
"I'll see you Monday morning. Nine on the dot." I lock my car, and the beep is like a trigger, tightening her body. I’d planned to call it a night, but a few hours with the woman has left me wanting to blow off some steam. "I'm assuming since you're thirty minutes early for everything, you'll be right on time. And if you’re not going to be here … let me know now."
She balls her hands into fists then turns her head just enough to glance at me out the corner of her eye. She flinches at my expression because I’m not smirking. There's not even a ghost of a smile dancing on my mouth. Instead, I just want an answer from her.
"Goodbye, Jace," she whispers before she climbs into her Jeep and speeds off.
“Why so serious, E?” The breathy voice draws my attention up from the sketches on my desk. Sonora stands in the doorway of my office, her red hair piled on top of her head and a black trench coat wrapped securely around her body. I’d be willing to bet there’s very little—or not a fucking stich of clothing at all—on beneath it. “You didn’t message back after that last text saying you were here, and I got worried about you.”
“It’s not polite to let yourself in. Especially when you don’t even work here.” She responds with a shrug and saunters inside.
“The front door was unlocked.” She eases onto the edge of my desk, crossing her legs toward me. “It’s three am, Jace. Why are you still here?”
I gesture to the sketches I’ve been working on since Lucy left. I had expected to be long finished with the design for B’s newest toy, but my thoughts have focused on hazel eyes and pouty red lips. Fucking Lucy Williams.
“I like to work,” I say, although Sonora’s already fully aware of that. “Why are you still out?”
Rolling her blue eyes so dramatically my attention zeroes in on the smudges of eyeliner at the corners, she tilts her head to one side. Her hair spills from its knot. “You know why I’m still out. You should go home.”
“No plan to go home tonight.”
Her mouth parts in a silent O, and she looks down at her lap for a moment. “The woman you brought to B’s—”
“Is my new marketing director,” I correct her, the muscles in my neck straining because she’s brought up Lucy. I’d hoped to wrap up the night without giving that woman another thought, but now I have a vivid image of her in my head that won’t piss off. I lean back in my chair and scratch my chin. “My plans have me going … elsewhere.”
“Fun.” Sonora’s smile doesn’t touch her eyes. She shifts on my desk, lowering her foot to the center of my thighs. Bumping my cock lightly with the heel of her pump, she casts me a look that would make a weaker man go fucking crazy to find out what she’s hiding beneath her coat. “I was hoping—”
I grab the inside of her ankle, and she gasps. “You know me better than that.” We’ve been friends since I met her through my first client—my ex-girlfriend—and I have the same rule for Sonora that I try to maintain for my employees: No fucking. No intimacy. Nothing but friendship.
“You’re an ass, Jace Callum Exley, but you’re a wonderfully talented ass.” She draws her foot from my lap and crosses her legs in the other direction. She clenches her fingers around the hem of her coat. “By the way, your new marketing girl is … very beautiful. Andrew couldn’t keep his eyes off her when you showed him how to—”
“Why the fuck are we talking about her?” I interrupt and she twists to stare at me like there’s a bag of dicks growing out of my forehead. “Shit, I’m sorry. It’s been … a long day.”
“I can tell.”
“Tell Andrew my marketing girl isn’t one for cuffs.” I hate the thought of that prick Sonora was with earlier tonight staring at Lucy. Talking about her. Thinking about her. I hate it even more that I see red at the thought of him doing any one of those things, which are all harmless. “She’s here for work, not to meet him or his bride.”
“I never said they wanted to meet her, just that he mentioned she was beautiful right before we started to play,” Sonora says cautiously. Her eyes crinkle as she flicks her tongue over her lips. I think of Lucy doing the same, and I groan. “Jace—”
“Don’t start.”
“I thought you don’t do employees ever since that Michaela fuckery.”
“I don’t.” I massage the bridge of my nose between my fingers and release a sharp breath. What the fuck is wrong with me tonight?
“You should.” She laughs as she slides off my desk. “I know I would.”
“She quit tonight.” And I’ve not been able to get her out of my fucking head since she left.
Sonora offers me a sympathetic frown. “Then there’s nothing standing in your way of sleeping with her, is there?”
“She’s not my type, and I’m sure as shit not what she’s looking for.”
I don’t remember Williams being involved with anyone in school, but I’ve got a clear picture of the kind of man she’d go for—a stuffy hedge fund manager, for example. One who takes his lattes with an extra shot of boring before he plays Scrabble and argues abstract words.
Sauntering to my office door, Sonora peeks over her shoulder and shifts an eyebrow. “Well in that case, offer her more money to work for you. The woman’s obviously a keeper.”
“Get the hell out of my office.” But I grin, and she winks just before disappearing around the corner, loudly advising me to wrap up the work and my cock for wherever I’m headed next.
If she only knew.
For the next half hour, I sketch in silence, until I’m finally satisfied with the design for B’s table. As I leave my office, I can’t resist sending Lucy a message.
Are you still upset, Williams?
By the time I get into my car, she’s already read it.