Chapter Three
BRAD
My leg was bouncing on the plush leather seat of my town car, and my eyes were rooted to the busy sidewalks beyond my tinted windows, but I wasn’t really seeing anything. My driver, Donald, navigated the downtown traffic, expertly steering us past people dashing by to take cover from the misty rain outside.
I was vaguely aware of all of it, but my brain was working overtime, wondering how to handle the situation with Jordan that I was going to have face within the next few minutes. Two nights had gone by since that electric, drunken kiss. The mistake that I promised myself I would never make.
And today, I was going to have to confront it head on.
The day before, I had meetings out of the office all day. While I wasn’t the type to dodge bullets, I was grateful for the extra day to process the situation.
Not that I’d come up with much. Chances were that she was repelled by what happened. She probably thought I was worse than her previous boss, and she was going to resign or lodge a complaint the second I stepped into the office.
With a resigned sigh, I buttoned up the jacket of my suit and pulled on the door handle to let myself out of the car as soon as Donald parked outside of my building. My longtime driver was a few years older than me. But he was still built like a house. As a former member of the transportation corps, or the “Spearhead of Logistics,” I’d been counting on him to handle my personal transportation and security, when the need for it arose, for over a decade.
It was probably a good thing that I’d had Donald drive me that morning, distracted as I was by Jordan. I was consumed by thoughts of her. That quick, stolen kiss enflamed the lust I’d been trying to suppress. I’d struggled so hard to beat those feelings into submission, but in one drunken moment, I’d awoken the carnal beast inside me. And the beast wanted Jordan now, more than ever.
It shouldn’t matter that I needed another taste of her, but I couldn’t shake the urges burning through me every time I thought of her. Of course, I couldn’t act on those urges. The reality was that I had to deal with it, and her, before the weekend started. If she hadn’t told Nicole or lodged a complaint yet, I needed to at least try to smooth things over. It was the smart thing to do. No matter how much I wanted to do the dumb thing and kiss her again, I just couldn’t let myself.
Crossing the sidewalk, I pushed quickly through the revolving doors and jogged up the stairs to the eighth floor, same as I did every morning. I reached my office without breaking a sweat, marching past the precious few employees who were in before me with friendly, but quick greetings.
I closed my door with a dull click behind me and strode across my office to stare out of the floor-to-ceiling windows behind my desk. I dragged my hands over the stubble on my jaw that I hadn’t bothered to shave.
Most CEOs chose the top floors of their buildings to have their offices on, but I had nothing to compensate for. I’d chosen the eighth floor because it was high enough to provide a spectacular view of the city, while still being close enough to the street to make out the people there.
It was the people that inspired me, staring down at them and asking myself what they needed from a company like mine. It was what kept Woods Technologies ahead of the curve, even after all this time.
But it wasn’t the people who were on my mind as I stared out at the Space Needle, slightly to my left, mist and clouds partially obscuring the SkyLine Banquet Facility. There was just one person that I kept thinking about, the one person that shouldn’t be on my mind in the way that she was: Jordan.
Why the fuck did I kiss her? Well, I knew exactly why I kissed her. It was impossible not to, being so close to those ripe lips. The real question was, how do I keep things from spiraling out of control from here. It was only the end of her first week on the job, and I’d already pushed things too far with Jordan. Sure, we were both a little drunk and it was a heat of the moment thing, but that didn’t excuse it.
There was a soft knock on my door. “Come in.”
Her beautiful face appeared in the reflection of the glass windows, and I clenched my fists in my pockets.
“Good morning, Brad. This came for you.”
I finally turned to face her. She held up a large envelope and moved quietly into the office.
“Thanks,” I said. “You can just leave it on my desk.”
Jordan’s stride faltered slightly when our eyes met, but she collected herself quickly and set the envelope down as I’d asked her to. “Will that be all?” she asked.
We stood staring at each other for just a second, our gazes lingering for just too long. That was it. It was time to man up and call out the elephant in the goddamn room.
“No, that’s not all,” I said. “Sit down.”
“I… uh… Sure,” she stammered. Something flashed in her eyes. Fear, maybe? I didn’t like it.
“Relax, Jordan. I just want to talk to you. You’re not getting fired or anything.”
The tension she was carrying in her narrow shoulders melted away a little. “Oh, okay. Listen, I’m so sorry—”
I held up a hand to stop her. “No, you’re not apologizing to me. I’m the one apologizing. I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was inappropriate.”
Jordan gave me a long look, then nodded slightly. It surprised me when the corners of her mouth started curling up into a stunning smile that lit her eyes and highlighted the amusement dancing in them. “You don’t need to apologize, actually. I didn’t mind.”
Interesting. “You didn’t?”
“No, we were both drunk, and it’s not a big deal,” she said, sinking down into the visitor’s seat across from my desk.
I followed suit, lowering myself into my chair without breaking eye contact with her. “Even so, I shouldn’t have done it. I’m your boss, and I don’t want to make things uncomfortable for you. I can assure you that it will never happen again, if that sets your mind at ease.”
Too many eyebrows would raise if she quit this early on. It would be blatantly obvious that something untoward had happened, even to Nicole. And that couldn’t happen.
Jordan surprised me again by giggling softly, folding her hands in her lap and holding my gaze steadily. Her eyes were warm, none of the disgust I’d expected to encounter present in them. “It’s not going to be weird because we won’t let it be. Please don’t worry. I haven’t even thought twice about it.”
She hasn’t thought about it? The kiss was never more than a second from my mind, and she hadn’t thought about it? That was just fucking wrong. It felt a hell of a lot like a challenge to me.
I leaned back in my chair, brought up one of my feet to rest an ankle on my knee, crossed my arms over my chest, and arched an eyebrow at her. “Is that so?”
Jordan’s breathing quickened almost imperceptibly, despite the fact that she was clearly trying to maintain her calm exterior. “Yes.”
My lips quirked into a smile her obvious lie. Her body was betraying her more than she realized. “The last thing you want is some old man kissing you.”
“You’re not some old man,” she told me. “You’re not even old.”
Both my eyebrows raised at that. I knew that some girls liked older men. I just hadn’t figured Jordan to be one of them, especially given who I was to her. “I’m not?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I’ve always thought you were kind of hot, actually. I definitely didn’t think of that kiss as some old man kissing me. It was nice.”
Fuck. Her confession that she thought I was hot was doing bad things to me. Things that I had to hide by rolling my chair forward to slide my lower half beneath my desk. “How is it that you think I’m hot? You must have men your own age falling down at your feet.”
She waved her hand dismissively without hesitating for a second. “They’re boys, not men. I haven’t even, um. Shit, no. I shouldn’t go there. Ignore that.”
Color me intrigued. There was no way I was ignoring that. “You haven’t even what, Jordan?”
Her cheeks flushed, and she started wringing her hands, dropping her eyes from mine for the first time since she’d entered my office. “You know… Uh… I’ve never.”
Holy fuck. There was no way she could be trying to say what I thought she was trying to say. “You’re a virgin?”
Jordan lifted her eyes for a beat, embarrassment shining clear in their deep blue depths, before she dropped them again. “I am.”
Good god. I groaned inwardly. What the fuck is wrong with young men these days?
I tried very hard not to think about what it would feel like to be the first one inside her tight, virgin pussy. The first one to feel her come around my cock. To own her and make her mine, to introduce her to pleasure that only real men knew how to give a woman.
I pushed the thoughts away. I was already as hard as the fucking wood I rested my elbows on. I was silently grateful for having rolled my chair forward earlier. I wondered how best to handle her confession. I started with the obvious. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about, Jordan. In fact, the way that I see it, you should be proud of yourself.”
“Proud of myself?” she asked incredulously, scoffing a little. “For what? Keeping my integrity intact?”
“For trusting yourself and knowing that you weren’t ready, and waiting for someone who was worthy of you,” I told her, wishing that I wasn’t referring to myself.
Jordan, however, was more observant than I’d given her credit for. She sat back in her chair, lifted her chin, and met my eyes dead on, a small smile playing on those red lips. “Yeah? And who might be worthy of me?”
I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. It was fake as all hell, but there was no way I was letting on what this conversation was doing to me. If she knew how badly I wanted her, she would run away and never look back.
“How should I know?” I asked. “I’m sure there are an army of guys out there vying to be the one.”
“Like I said, those are boys. I’m done with boys. My college boyfriend was an ass who didn’t know the first thing about how to treat a girl properly. The guys on Tinder think sending a dick pic is not only appropriate, but that it’s going to get them into your pants somehow, and the few dates that I have been on have been terrible.”
I kept my eyes on hers. “I’ve heard of this dick pic phenomenon. On behalf of men everywhere, I would like to extend my sincerest apologies. I can’t imagine opening a message to find some guy’s junk, unsolicited and unwanted, on my screen.”
Jordan laughed, causing her perky tits to bounce just a little in her royal blue blouse. Not that I noticed. “You see? That’s what I’m talking about. The guys my age are inappropriate, immature, and full of shit.”
“Now that, I can agree with.”
It was an interesting idea to play with actually. There might be a business opportunity here that I would have to run by my team as soon as it was fully formed. I was sure that there would be a huge market for an app where dick pics were filtered out. I could include add-ons for how to treat girls properly.
I ran it by Jordan first, if only to steer the conversation in a different direction from the highly treacherous territory it was veering into. “What would you think of a dating app that taught young men how to treat a girl right?”
Jordan looked surprised by the sudden change in the topic of conversation, but she went with it. The flash of disappointment in her eyes, however, didn’t escape my notice.
“Yeah, that would probably be good,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I hear my phone ringing.”
It wasn’t.
“Sure thing. See you later.”
Jordan rose without another word, sashaying from my office with her hips swinging slightly from side to side. She shot me a glance over her shoulder when she reached the door, a satisfied smile on her face when she caught me staring at her round ass.
Shit. She was going to get me in trouble. And I’d never wanted to get into, and inside of, trouble more.