Page 41 of Rival to the Billionaire

When I don't answer, he grins.

"Did you?" His voice is a low rumble as he pulls me closer.

"No," I lie, gazing up at him.

I've thought about this moment since the minute we started working together. Since the day I was hired as Derek's Chief of Staff. Since the moment I became CIO.

All of it.

I've thought about this moment since the day I graduated from grad school. From college. From high school.

I thought about this moment at prom, at my sister's wedding.

At the big moments and the little moments, and every other moment in between.

Ryder is right.

I felt this way fifteen years ago.

I felt this way when we were friends, when we were enemies, and when we were nothing.

He steps towards me and the center of my brain explodes with electricity, core between my thighs throbbing, every nerve tingling.

As he moves to his knees in front of me, my breathing becomes erratic.

My heart is pounding, my breathing is ragged. When he places a hand under my dress, I feel the heat of his skin against my leg.

Throb. Throb. Throb.

When he begins to pull the hem up my right leg, inch by inch, I am covered in goosebumps, my eyes squeezing shut, my hands balling into fists at my side.

"Ryder…"

"You know, you're a horrible liar, Jenny. A horrible one. You always have been." His voice lowers as he pulls the dress to my mid-thigh. "You were a liar in sixth grade when you said you didn't care about my basketball tryouts, and I found you waiting for me after practice," he mumbles, his hands pausing on my thigh.

I gulp, heart hammering uncontrollably as my stare lands on his face.

"You were a liar our junior year in high school when you told Alyssa Day that you thought I was the human equivalent of a dung beetle," he notes, lifting the hem of my dress and his fingers slipping beneath the fabric and around my right thigh. "And then I caught you gaping at me as I was coming out of Mike Jones's pool that summer with my shirt off."

I am captivated, helpless as he continues.

"And you're lying now, Jenny," he whispers, his thumb grazing the top of my thigh. "Because I see it. You want me, too. I know it. I can feel it." Still on his knees, he rubs his nose against the hem of my dress, inhaling deeply. "I can smell it… And I can feel it in the way you look at me. The way you say my name. The way you hate me. The way you hate yourself for wanting this."

He presses a kiss to the skin of my thigh, and my eyes fly wide.

"I know you hate me," he hisses, sliding my dress up to my hips, exposing my underwear. "But I know that you want me. I know that you're fighting yourself every second. I know…because I realize that that's exactly what my stubborn ass has been doing for too goddamned long, Jenny."

His head tilts over my thigh and he looks up to me, eyes ablaze.

My heart is racing. My head is spinning. My body is on fire.

He looks up at me, his stare burning my skin and my insides with that intense, full-of-embarrassment, wanton desire.

"You want me, too, don't you?" His words are biting. I feel my face flush as I inhale from surprise.

I know that I do.

And I'll know it a thousand times more as I imagine his mouth pressed against my now soaking panties.

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