Chapter 18 Marcus

The next morning, Cass and I worked together in the fishbowl as usual, but everything was different. I couldn't keep my eyes off her. I didn't even try to. She had this freckle a centimeter to the right of her lower lip that I hadn't noticed until last night. I wanted to put my lips on it, right here in this glass conference room—the audience of my coworkers be damned.

I had rewritten the same sentence three times over. Every time I hit the halfway point, I found myself watching Cass and losing track of my progress. Whenever I returned to the sentence, I had forgotten my intention. I should have been frustrated. Hell, I should have been concerned at the sheer amount of company money I was wasting in my own salary by staring at her instead of working.

Fuck it. Didn't care.

As far as I was concerned, the entire world revolved around her.

Of course, the only thing keeping me from announcing it publicly on the Libra Twitter account to our 4.6 million followers was the fact that Cass was a locked box. She was password protected with two-factor authentication and retina scan. And just like me, she was remarkably talented at keeping it that way. When we made eye contact over the tops of our laptops, she didn't even offer me a coy smile or a wink or anything to confirm she didn't regret last night.

I felt so uncertain around her sometimes—in ways I hadn't experienced since I was a teenager. It was partially due to her unparalleled caginess, but some of it had to do with her mystique. Cassie Pierson—the gorgeous, brilliant freshman class president who could have dated any Rockefeller or Kennedy she wanted. If I had gotten a hold of a time machine and told eighteen-year-old Marcus he would one day have frenzied sex with Cassie Pierson on a public stairwell, he would have never believed me. Sure, he would have loved the idea, but he never would have believed it.

"What are you staring at?" she asked after a moment, confusion detectible in her tone. Her eyes were focused on me as I blinked, snapping back to attention.

"You."

"Clearly. What's wrong with me?"

"Absolutely nothing." I grinned at her, which made her roll her eyes.

Cass let out a sigh and picked up her metal water bottle. She drank from it deeply, releasing a soft involuntary moan that made me want to take her right on this glass conference table.

"Do you have any plans this weekend?" she asked when she put down her water bottle. She screwed the cap back on and slid it to the side before she looked back at me.

Slowly, I shook my head. "Nope. I have nothing going on other than fucking you so thoroughly that you spend hours apologizing to yourself for ever pretending that us hooking up wasn't the most brilliant idea since Libra."

She couldn't suppress her smile, but she sure as hell tried and said, "You know, sometimes you're just so freaking close to being likable, and then you go and ruin it for everyone."

"So, you're coming over on Saturday, right?" I said, ignoring her comment. I picked up my phone and checked the time—and I realized I was two hours into the workday and all I had managed to do was stare at her, make myself hard, and let my inbox pile up so high I would have to spend the remainder of the day trying to salvage it.

"You have plans on Saturday."

I put down my phone and frowned. "I do?"

"Alex's birthday."

Those two words immediately made my heart sink so low, we would have to hire a submarine to find it. "I forgot about that," I admitted, somehow exercising the restraint to withhold from lacing my response with the countless expletives running through my mind. "You're going?"

"Yeah."

I leaned back in my chair and fixed my expression before I asked, "Do you want to go together?"

She didn't respond right away. Her gaze ticked to the side before she removed her hands from her keyboard. When she made eye contact with me again, a look of apology crossed her face. "You know we can't."

"I'm really not having this conversation with you again," I said, using my COO voice. "I've been clear: I don't care about my contract anymore. I can't hold out any longer—not after last night."

"But what about me?" she responded "Look, this may be the most mind-numbingly boring job in the world, but I need it. It pays a ton and I can't afford to lose it. Plus, I really can't get caught sleeping with a seller. That would put this entire process at risk, could potentially cost you the sale, and wreak havoc on your share price and Davenport-Ridgeway's."

I was silent. Most things she said and did were unfathomably sexy to me, but this was one of those rare occasions when I hated everything that was coming out of her perfect mouth.

"This is bigger than you," she continued, as if I didn't know that. "Breaking your contract is one thing, but the financial implications of you tanking this deal would hurt a lot of people."

"Since when are you so responsible?"

"Since the moment when you had only been inside me for, like, two minutes and already I was thinking about when we could do it again."

God, she was so fucking cool sometimes.

She flipped her hair over her shoulder. "This has to be our secret. That's the only way this is going to work."

"Let's skip the party then," I suggested.

To my surprise, she shook her head. "No way."

"Why not? I need to spend ten hours straight just exploring your magnificent body, and I don't want to wait until next weekend."

"Because I want to go," she protested. Nonchalantly, she raised a shoulder. "Maybe I'll meet a billionaire there and he'll whisk me off to Iceland for the weekend."

"Who the hell wants to go to Iceland?" was my response.

"Spoken like someone who can go to Iceland whenever he feels like it," she replied. And that pissed me off for a few reasons. For one, not only did she respond so quickly I basically had whiplash, but she wasn't wrong—I had been to Iceland three times.

For another, it pissed me off because Cass didn't need a billionaire. All billionaires were assholes, and that was an irrefutable fact. Plus, she had me. I would have been thrilled to give her anything she wanted. All she had to do was ask.

And finally, it pissed me off because her hesitation was obviously not just about contracts, jobs, and money.

"Look, if you don't want me, you just have to tell me." As I said this to her, I was striking deals with every evil deity in the universe. Satan, Hades, Cernunnos, Set—I was calling them all up and exchanging my soul for a promise that Cass wouldn't agree with what I was saying.

"That's not it."

"Are you sure? Because I'm starting to get the feeling this is about you not knowing if you want to be in my bed, and only my bed, for the next month straight—until we're so tired from fucking we can't even get up and go to work in the morning."

She sighed heavily as she closed her laptop. "Marcus—"

"I don't care," I went on. "Cass, I don't expect you to delete every guy in your phone and to add my personal calendar to yours. If you want to keep sleeping with other guys, be my guest. It's up to you. But I just need to know—do you want me or not?"

"I don't want to talk about this right now." She glanced to her left. "Not when all your beloved staff is sitting right over there. I don't care if they can hear or not."

I sighed as well, feeling a weight building in my chest. I was a kid again, wanting to hang with the other kids on the playground and having them laugh in my face. The new kid. The adopted kid. The kid with two moms. Hastily, I shook my head.

Six-second reset .

I knew she didn't want to talk about this right now, but I also knew she had no intention of talking about this later. But as much as it frustrated me, I had no right to pressure her.

"You know where I stand, but I'm not going to push you. From here on out, I'll just…" I let out a breath. "I'm going to respect your boundaries."

Cass didn't say a word. Her expression was impossible to decipher, as usual, and her eyes remained on me. Even when I opened my laptop, I could feel her watching me. I looked up at her, and the moment I saw her face I couldn't help but pull up the corners of my lips. She was so pretty to me, even when she was in the business of breaking my heart.

"So, any news from PwC? Did they start the audit?" I asked, breaking the silence. We needed to work. Work was good. Work was the only thing that could keep me from fidgeting with the shards of my shattered ego.

She nodded and began to type on her laptop. "They did," she confirmed. "So far so good."

And just like that, we were two professionals, working together on due diligence.

A few hours later, when Cass left to take a call in one of our office phone booths, I managed to successfully put together and send an email.

Erin,

Long time no talk. Hope all is going well and you're having a good week.

A last-minute favor: Alex's birthday party is this weekend, and as you know, Lilac likes me to bring a date to these things. I was hoping to bring another friend of mine, but she shot me down (please don't pity me too much). Any chance you're free on Saturday night? Happy to double our deal since this is last minute. Let me know.

If not, let's get drinks soon.

-Marcus