In the Boss's Bed (Harlequin Blaze) (7 page)

9

T
HEY
HAD
WORKED
for hours when Jamie finally looked up from his laptop. “Maya, I think we’re done.” He rubbed the back of his neck. He was suddenly exhausted. His fatigue was probably a combination of the sun he’d got earlier, the few beers he’d had and the fact that he had spent several hours staring at his computer screen.

There had been a problem with one of the sections of his presentation. Some numbers in his projections didn’t add up. It was something that had to be fixed right away, before his presentation in Vegas. He couldn’t afford to look like a fool, and he was glad that his team had caught it in time.
And thank God for Maya
. She had agreed to stay and work with him. She didn’t have to stay, but she didn’t hesitate in saying yes.

“Your neck okay?” He looked up and found Maya looking at him. She was still wearing her bathing suit under her sundress, and the smell of her coconut sunscreen hit his nose. He could see red on her cheeks and nose; he assumed that she must have gotten a little too much sun that afternoon.

He smiled at her concern. “Yeah, I’m just a little stiff from sitting here.” He winced. “I might be tempted to get in the hot tub later.”

“That sounds like heaven,” she commented absently, thumb swiping across the screen of her phone.

He looked at her beautiful form sitting across his desk. A terrible idea occurred to him. “Why not join me?”

That got her attention. She looked up. “I’m sorry. What was that?”

This was his opportunity to take back what he’d said. To offer to call her a car and get her safely out of his condo before he made a mistake. But instead, he couldn’t help but repeat the same awful, terrible, so-bad idea. “Join me. In the hot tub.”

“Are you sure?” Maya sounded skeptical. Jamie regarded her closely. Was she just as worried as he was about the sexual tension that bubbled so closely to the surface of every interaction they shared?

“Yeah,” he answered nonchalantly, mentally slapping himself. “Yeah, it’s a big tub. I think we deserve to relax a little, don’t you?”

She visibly exhaled. Jamie watched her breasts rise and fall with her breath.
This is a bad idea, Sellers. What is the matter with you?

“Sure. It sounds great. Let’s do it.”

* * *

W
HEN
THEY
WALKED
back out to the terrace, the sun had fully set, and the automatic timer had turned on the exterior lights, so that the night was now cast in a yellow-orange glow. He had also forgotten to turn off the music. So now, instead of the pop and dance music that had been playing earlier, it had since slowed to R & B.
Nice romantic setting.
Jamie frowned. It was as if the Fates had conspired to usher him and the assistant he couldn’t ever have into bed together.

This is such a bad idea
. But it was too late to say anything. He couldn’t invite her to relax with him and then turn around and kick her out. He took a deep breath.
Keep it in your pants, Sellers. That’s all you need to do. You’re a grown man. Act like it.

The hot tub bubbled away furiously, steam rising into the chill of the night air. It looked as inviting as all hell. He watched as Maya pulled her dress over her head, and he shuddered inwardly as most of his blood rushed south. He turned away quickly, lest she see the effect she had on what was inside his shorts, and he busied himself at the bar.

“You want a drink or something?”

“Yeah, some water would be good,” she told him, stepping into the hot water.

He opened the refrigerator to look for drinks, bottles of water, cans of soda—
anything!—
but he found nothing but a bottle of cold champagne. It seemed as if his guests had cleared out all of the nonalcoholic options.

“Are you kidding me?” he muttered at their only choice of beverage.

“Everything okay?” she asked, settling in the water and sitting back, closing her eyes.

“Yeah, but all I could find was this,” he explained. Knowing that he was probably making yet another colossal mistake, he pulled out the bottle and held it aloft. “Champagne?”

He heard her sigh.
In resignation?
“Okay, I’ll have a glass.”

He scooped some ice into a bucket and put the bottle in it. Picking up two glasses he walked over to the hot tub and put everything on the edge. He got in and sat directly across from her. He shuddered with the feeling of the hot water scorching most of his skin. He moaned involuntarily. “I don’t think I use this thing nearly enough.” He poured a glass of champagne for each of them and passed hers over.

Their fingers touched and the contact sizzled throughout Jamie’s body, shooting straight to his groin.

“Thanks.” She accepted hers and sat straight against the edge of the tub, not looking at him.

He watched her.
That’s a good way to play this
, Jamie considered.
I just won’t look at her, speak to her or anything else. We can just sit here, enjoy the tub and ignore each other. I’ll forget she’s even here.

“This really is great,” she sighed.

There goes that plan.
He kept his eyes closed. “Yeah, the hot tub was definitely a priority when I moved in here.”

“Too bad you spend all of your time at the office,” she commented.

“Yeah,” he murmured. He was silent for a moment. “Listen, Maya, I really want to apologize for the way I treated you when I first hired you. I was rude and dismissive and I’m sorry.”

Maya furrowed her brow. “Jamie, it’s fine. I didn’t mind, really. I just thought that you were too busy with work to deal with idle chitchat. Not that you needed to apologize. But apology accepted, anyway.”

“Thank you.” He smiled at her. “I’m just glad we can be friends, despite everything that’s happened.”

“Everything that’s happened?” she questioned. “Do you mean the night I kissed you?”

His pulse sped up just at the memory of the kiss.

“Don’t worry. That’s so very much in the past,” she said. “And, yeah, we are friends. Don’t question it.”

Jamie relaxed slightly. And he grinned at her. He was glad to have Maya in his corner. She was smart, charismatic, intuitive, beautiful, sexy... He shook his head and drank his champagne. He extended his glass to the center of the hot tub. “Maya, I would like to propose a toast to us, and to knocking ’em dead in Vegas.”

She smiled and clinked her glass to his. “To knocking ’em dead.”

* * *

M
AYA
HADN
’
T
MEANT
to drink so much champagne. Originally, she was just going to enjoy the hot water, have a glass of champagne, then get out, call a cab and get home. But when the cool bubbles of the champagne hit her tongue, she was suddenly parched. Her next sip was a gulp, as was the one after that and the one after that. Jamie was saying something to her, but she wasn’t hearing any of the words. She was caught up watching the way his arms and shoulders flexed with every movement he made when he spoke, when he drank, when he locked his hands behind his head and leaned back in relaxation.
It should be illegal for a man to look this good.

She loved to see him relaxed and smiling. She’d had fun at the party. She got to spend more time with him and Trevor and some more of their friends, and she’d taken some much-needed time to just relax and sit by the pool in the sunshine.

“Thanks for the invite today. Abby and I had so much fun. It was nice to relax.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have been the same without you. And Abby’s pretty awesome. I see why you love her,” he told her. “And Trevor seems to like her, as well.”

She laughed lightly. “I noticed that. She’s pretty easy to like.”

“I’m happy that you guys had a good time.”

“Jamie, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“It might seem a little personal,” she warned him.

“Well, why don’t you ask it, and see if I answer it?”

She scooted a little closer to him, as if to demonstrate the personal nature of the question. “Why don’t you get out of the office more? Have some fun?”

Jamie considered his answer. “Well, I told you about my reputation as Party Animal Jamie Sellers, but for the past ten years or so, I’ve been trying to keep it clean, keep my name out of the papers for bad behavior. I figured that the best way to stay out of trouble was to lock myself away in my office and bury myself in my work,” he explained. “And being the hardest worker in the room just led to me needing to be the best. The more clubs I opened, the more I needed to open. The more successful I was, the more successful I needed to become.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“But you’re already so successful, and your charity work is so well-known, I think you can afford to take some days off, a little time away, maybe leave before five o’clock some days. You’ve earned it.”

“Well, I think I just got into the habit of working so much. It’s hard to break it.”

Maya nodded. She understood the compulsion to be the best. It was something she had lived with all of her life. She imagined that she and Jamie were similar in many ways. Maybe that’s why they got along so well.

When she didn’t say anything for a while, he smiled. “But we’re not really here to talk about work, are we?”

“I guess not,” Maya laughed. She was sitting next to him, their shoulders touching as they sipped their champagne.

Jamie finished his glass, and instead of refilling it, he shrugged and brought the bottle to his mouth. He leaned his head back and took a swig. She watched the muscles in his throat work as he swallowed down the bubbly liquid. He passed her the bottle and she smiled.

“Thanks.” She also took a mouthful. When she handed it back, he wasn’t looking and his hand slipped, accidentally encircling her wrist. At the contact, her breath stopped. Her eyes caught his, and his grip on her tightened.

Jamie took the bottle from her hand and put it back on the edge of the hot tub, and with a slight tug, he brought her closer to him. She knew what he was doing but was powerless to change course, and then she sat directly on his lap. Under the water, he smoothed his palm over her two legs that were draped over one of his thighs. “Maya,” he murmured, placing his other hand at the back of her neck. He pulled her to him, his lips crushing hers.

He kissed her hard and furious. And she wholly reciprocated. It was as if weeks of pent-up sexual frustration were let loose in one kiss. Her hands gripped his shoulders, as if she were holding on for dear life. And she was. The way Jamie kissed her might actually kill her.

He kept one hand on her ass while the other slid up her stomach and found her breast. With an impatient growl, he pushed her triangle top aside. He squeezed it gently and she gave a moan, which turned to a whimper when he pinched her nipple.

Jamie chuckled at her reaction and pulled away from her mouth, closing his lips on the rosy bud of her stiff nipple. He closed his lips around it and sucked lightly, lashing her with his tongue. She cried out at the sensation, and she brought her hand down to rest on his stiff length—
my God!
When his fingers found the strings of her bottoms, she finally came to her senses.

“Jamie, wait,” she whispered, pulling away.

“What’s wrong?”

“We can’t do this,” she told him, shimmying back to the other side of the tub. She hastily adjusted her bikini top. “I’m your assistant,” she breathed. “You’re my boss.”

Jamie worked to catch his breath. “You’re right. Shit, I’m sorry, Maya. I can’t believe I did that.”

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “We were both pretty much active participants there.”

He spoke over her, looking into his open palms. “It must have been the champagne. We’ve had a lot to drink.”

Maya nodded in agreement and quickly pushed herself out of the tub. In the cool night air, goose bumps rose on her skin. But she wasn’t cold. Jamie’s kiss and his touch had lit a fire in her very core. “I should go.” She reached for a towel to dry herself off.

Jamie also got out. He didn’t bother to hide the turgid erection he sported. It held her attention. It’s not like its presence was any secret, she’d already felt it, wrapped her fingers around it.

“I’ll call you a car.”

She nodded and turned away. If she looked at him any longer, his strong, lean body, the impressive bulge in his trunks, she wouldn’t be able to leave.

“That would be great. Thank you,” she said quietly as he walked into his house.

10

“L
ADIES
AND
GENTLEMEN
,
welcome to Air Canada, flight 395, with nonstop service to Las Vegas, Nevada,” the pilot’s deep voice droned throughout the cabin. “We’ll be pulling away from the gate shortly, and it looks like smooth flying all the way to Vegas. So settle in, get comfortable and please watch the following video about the safety features of this aircraft.”

Jamie put his head back and closed his eyes. He was about to spend the next five hours sitting next to Maya. Since hiring her, he had attempted to keep his distance, for fear of reaching out and touching the hair that looked so luxuriously soft, or the smooth skin that beckoned to him. They hadn’t discussed what had happened in his hot tub, both honoring their unspoken agreement to forget it happened, he supposed. But how could he forget her smooth skin, the noises she’d made when he turned her on.
Jesus, this is going to be a long trip.
He rubbed his eyes and sent a cautious glance at the beautiful woman next to him.

He was surprised to see the anxious, fearful expression that covered her face. “You okay, Maya?”

Keeping her head back in her seat, she turned slightly to look at him. “Yeah. It’s kind of embarrassing really, but I’m kind of afraid of flying. I’ve been on enough planes, but I never like it.”

Jamie smiled. “It’s okay. But you know that flying is safer than driving, right?”

“That doesn’t really help when there’s engine trouble and you plummet to your death, instead of pulling over to the curb,” she murmured as she closed her eyes.

He chuckled lightly. “Touché. Why don’t you try to get some sleep?”

She shook her head quickly. “I can’t sleep on a plane.”

“We can get you some wine...?” he suggested, flagging down a flight attendant.

“Sure, but I can’t drink alone. Will you have some, too?”

Would he have some wine? When he vividly remembered what happened the last time they’d had alcohol together. He would need a lot more than wine to get through this flight. He was close enough to smell her shampoo. The scent brought him back to that night, not to mention their near miss in his office. When he turned to her, he could see the flecks of gold in her otherwise dark eyes. He felt the heat of her arm next to his on the armrest. He wondered if the flight attendants had access to strong narcotics. That would be the only way he would get through this flight.

“Sure, I’ll have a glass,” he said and smiled at her. “I hope to get some sleep later on.” He ordered them each a glass of wine. And when the flight attendant returned, they took their glasses and drank them in mouthfuls.

* * *

A
COUPLE
OF
hours and some glasses of wine later, Maya felt herself jostle awake. She must have fallen asleep at some point during the flight, because her head was perched on Jamie’s shoulder when she opened her eyes. How long had he let her sleep like that without waking her? She checked to make sure she hadn’t drooled on him, but quickly forgot about that when she felt the plane shake violently.

She sat up straight and looked to Jamie, his face undeniably calm. “What’s going on?” she asked him, grabbing and squeezing his armrest.

“Just a little turbulence,” he assured her. “But it seems like you already slept through the worst of it.” When the plane jolted again and she cried out softly, he placed a warm reassuring hand over hers. “It’s okay, Maya. Just close your eyes.”

His calm, sure voice and his hand over hers reassured her. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Okay.”

He leaned closer. Even though her eyes were closed, she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. “Just breathe with me, okay? It’s almost over.” He inhaled and then slowly exhaled, urging her to do the same. “In.” He inhaled. “And out.” He exhaled. “In. And out,” he chanted, rhythmically whispering in her ear. “You with me, Maya?”

“I’m with you,” she whispered.

“Keep breathing. In. And out.”

Maya’s senses were on fire with his close proximity—his scent, his sound, the feeling of his hand and his breath on her skin, it all worked together to completely intoxicate her and keep her focus on nothing but him. “In. And out.” She breathed deeply.

The sound of the seat belt sign turning off broke her out of her trance. She opened her eyes and saw his face scant inches from her own, looking at her with a strange expression. He was breathing heavily, and they remained stuck in place for a couple of seconds, and as the rest of the passengers began to relax and move about the cabin, they were forced to come back to their senses and break apart. They sat back in their own seats.

Maya took a deep breath. “Thank you for that.” She laughed. “You might not have noticed but I was freaking out just a little bit.”

“I didn’t notice,” he replied with a small laugh, not looking at her, but running a hand through his hair. “And it was no problem. I’m glad I could help. It’s the least I could do for the woman who arranged for a meeting with Garrett Collins. I really do owe you much more for that.”

Maya smiled. Looking into his eyes, it was easy to forget that she had been on a shaking plane, and on the verge of a panic attack. “You don’t owe me anything. It’s all part of my job.”