Page 22 of Wicked S.O.B.

My trip in the elevator this time takes me only another dozen floors up. The air is a lot more rarefied up here in the nerve center of the billion-dollar Blackwood Estate. Spines are a little straighter, shoulders a little broader. But none more so than the man whose office occupies the farthest end of the corridor.

The outer office slides open to my touch on the sleek keypad next to the glass door.

A stylishly dressed assistant looks up as I walk in. Her eyes flicker with recognition but her smile is neither warm nor cool. I don’t fault her for it. It’s been that way since our first meeting.

“Hello, Miss Gilbert. Come right in.” She stands and walks to another set of glass doors at the farthest side of her office. A swipe of her key card and it opens. A brisk nod and she leaves me to it.

I shouldn’t be this nervous but I am.

My palms are slippery against the handle as I push the silver trolley ahead of me. I don’t look to the right where his desk is located, but I know the moment he spots me. The low-murmured conversation he’s having on the phone halts. My heart slams hard in my chest as I slow to a stop.

“Roger, I’m going to have to call you back.” The sound of the handset finding its cradle is the only noise that disturbs the crackling tension in the room.

I’m dying to look at him, but this needs to play out a certain way. So I tighten my fingers around the handle and head toward the long, elegant dining table at the far end of his huge office.

“Wait.” The command is low, deep, and sizzlingly final.

I freeze.

“I don’t recall requesting that lunch be brought to me today, and especially not by someone without basic manners who enters my office without my permission.”

The butterflies in my belly spread their wings and turn to eagles when I sense him rise from his chair and move around his desk. “I’m so sorry.”

“For which offense, exactly? And do me the courtesy of looking at me when you address me.”

I drag my gaze from the floor, across the graphite-colored carpet to his feet. Then in excruciating slow motion, my senses in no mood to speed up, I travel up his tall, mouthwatering, dangerously addictive body to look on the most viscerally arresting feature of Quinn Blackwood. His stunning eyes.

We stare at each other for a timeless age. Then he nods.

“Good. Now, let’s start again. From the top,” he suggests in that mesmerizing voice.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Blackwood.”

Chapter Six

Elly

Zoom Freeze

Once I’m caught, I can’t look away.

“You have an explanation for all of this, I’m sure.”

Does he mean this painstaking act I’m putting on or my reason for being here at all? When the idea came to me in the apartment, I went with it partly because I’d wanted to surprise him. A bigger part of me wanted to reassure myself that he…thatwewere okay. But now, faced with the power and might of Quinn at the helm of his empire, I’m genuinely dumbstruck.

He doesn’t come toward me. Instead he takes two paces back and reaches for a small remote. A second later, the clear glass windows of his office turn cloudy as he activates the privacy setting, and a lock clicks into place. He tosses the remote away and perches on the edge of his desk. The movement plays the muscles of his thighs beneath his tailored pants, and my mouth goes dry.

“Is there a particular reason you’re refusing to speak?”

I drag my gaze up to his beautiful face. God, he’s so gorgeous. I want to kiss him so badly. What did he say? Right, he asked me a question.

“Umm…I…” Okay, this is pathetic.

“My time is valuable, Miss…remind me of your name again,” he commands.

“It’s…Elly…Smith.” The fake name I used when I was on the run last year. The one I used when an accidental meeting with Sully offered a much-needed lifeline of a job at Blackwood Tower.

“Elly…” Quinn tastes the name. Exhales it as his gaze finally leaves my face to track over my head, and the white, actively unattractive food hygiene cap I’m wearing. Then it reverses down my face, my neck. It lingers at my neck, where the white collar of my buttoned-up server’s uniform rests against my thundering pulse. He stays there, absorbing my state of being for a long moment, before he journeys farther south.

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