Page 10 of The Boss’s Obsession
Sienna let out a long sigh and sank back to the pillows. “I don’t even feel well enough to care about stopping you,” she complained.
“Good.”
I made for the bathroom in the hall. Opening the doors, I looked for the thermometer, bypassing sanitary products and beauty lotions. A large pack of ribbed condoms sat on one shelf. I took it down and examined it before I could question myself. It was unopened, and something primitive unclenched at the sight of the unbroken seal. Sienna wasn’t sleeping with anyone. Good. Next, I moved to a small black pouch. It was velvet. Since the thermometer was nowhere in sight, I opened the back and closed my hand around a smooth shape, and pulled it out.
“Wait! I found it, it was in my drawer,” Sienna said, rushing into the bathroom, just as I turned the sleek, pink vibrator over in my hand, desire punching me in the gut.
She stopped in the doorway, her eyes riveted to the sight of the toy, clutched in my large hand. I pulled my eyes from it with difficulty. The idea of her using it to pleasure herself had already filled my mind to the point where forming a coherent thought was challenging.
“Oh my god,” she muttered, and suddenly reached out to snatch the toy. “Oh my god!” She turned and ran out of the room, and I followed slowly.
“That was supposed to be in the drawer and the thermometer was supposed to be in the bathroom!” Sienna’s wail reached me, as I followed in her wake to her room. She whirled when she reached the threshold and stared at me with blazing eyes. “This is all your fault. If you hadn’t gotten too drunk to get home last night, you never would have been here, and now, I wouldn’t need to die of embarrassment!” She poked a hard finger into my chest. “If you want to make fun of someone about all this, start with yourself.”
I caught her hand as I pressed into my skin, trapping her against me. My pulse was pounding and my temples were tight with the rising pressure in my head. I didn’t feel like myself at all. I took a step toward Sienna, and her eyes widened. She didn’t move back. Our joined hands became trapped between us. A whisper of last night broke through the haze of my hangover. A trace of a memory, not much to go on at all, and yet, I knew immediately that it was real. The feeling of Sienna’s petal soft lips against mine, and the feeling of her tongue sliding against mine. My entire body felt hot, and my skin tight, like I needed to shed all my clothes just to press against Sienna better.
“Last night-,” I started, my voice so deep and growly it even surprised me. She jerked, as if bracing herself to face the memory of last night together, then, her nose wrinkled and she leaned away and sneezed dramatically, just as the door buzzed loudly, the sound echoing through the apartment, and dousing the rising tension between us like a bucket of iced water to the head.
“That’s Jim. I told him to come and get you early,” Sienna said, reaching for a tissue tucked up her sleeve. Jim, right. Work. Reality. The fact that my driver had to be standing downstairs in the early dawn light was the resounding slap around the face that I needed to return to reality. What was I doing?
I stepped back jerkily, and our hands dropped. Mine burned where it had held hers.
“I’ve intruded enough on your personal time, I apologize,” I said stiffly, suddenly needing to be anywhere but here. My emotions were too complicated to puzzle out standing here, with Sienna seeing my every thought. If there was anyone in the world that knew me, it was her.
“It’s fine. I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Sienna said quietly, as she followed me toward the door. Shoving my shoes on, I practically fell out the door and into the hall. Damn it. If I’d had any sense last night, I would have slept downstairs. I’d bought the whole building out when I was helping to settle Sienna’s father’s debts. That way, the strange, unsettling energy wouldn’t be coming between Sienna and me now. That way, I wouldn’t have stepped over a line I could never take back.
The early morning air was bracing, as I approached the car. I fancied I could feel Sienna’s eyes on me, as Jim opened the car door for me, and I slid inside, but when I turned back to look up at her window, it was empty.
CHAPTER9
Sienna
My headache and stuffy nose persisted and only seemed to get worse as the day wore on. Ronan hadn’t come into work, which was weird as hell, and I could only guess that his hangover wasn’t sitting well with him.
I didn’t know what to feel about the night before. The memory of his heated, surprising words kept replaying in my head, making me distracted and confused. Did Ronan Turner like me? That seemed utterly impossible. Nothing about it made sense, and yet, there had been nothing unclear in that kiss. That kiss had been… My skin flushed at just the thought of it. Who’d have thought stuffy, uptight tech genius Ronan, the only billionaire in the city to never be caught in dating scandals, would kiss like that? It had been completely unexpected and utterly devastating. How was a girl supposed to get over a kiss like that? What about all the other kisses that I’d have in my life that would never match up?
The phone on my desk rang as I was replaying the moment when his lips pushed mine apart, and his tongue swept inside my mouth, and I answered carelessly.
“Ronan Turner’s office,” I said.
“Sienna.” Ronan’s deep voice gave me such a fright, I dropped the handset. Feeling caught red-handed mooning over the kiss, I guiltily picked up the handset and put it back to my ear.
“Mr. Turner?”
“I’m feeling under the weather, but I still need to work on the Elston account. Bring all my notes and the prototypes to my house. We’ll work the rest of the day from here,” he said firmly, before hanging up.
Putting the phone down, I sprang into action. Still feeling flustered, I gathered together all the things I needed to bring and started downstairs. As I got in the elevator and pushed the button for the ground floor, a shiver of unwanted awareness ran down my spine. I’d worked from Ronan’s penthouse plenty of times, often late into the night and I’d never once felt uncomfortable. Of course, my little, fruitless crush had sometimes sprung up at inconvenient times, but it had never bothered me that much since I knew how out of the realm of possibility it had been.
Now, the idea of sitting beside Ronan on his long, leather couch and eating in his elegant kitchen, just the two of us, made me feel warm all over. I had to get a grip.
* * *
Ronan was waitingfor me inside the penthouse, already hard at work, sitting in front of a bank of computer screens that took up an entire wall. His home office was larger than his sitting room, which made sense considering he barely used the sitting room and was constantly in his office. I organized the things I’d brought from the office on the long table in the middle and turned to see Ronan rubbing his eyes. Today he’d put his glasses on, instead of contacts, and there was something wildly attractive about his round, wire-rimmed glasses.
He had a black polo shirt on and his biceps were testing the give of the short sleeves. It was distracting as hell. After a year of never seeing him out of impeccable business wear or black tie, I’d seen him in casual clothes twice in a week. It was doing absolutely nothing for the hot, crawling sensation that seemed to be writhing over my skin when he looked at me. Man, Robbie was right, I was wound tighter than a spring, and in desperate need of getting some action. I’d decided in the car over that I wasn’t going to feel embarrassed about the vibrator thing. He should never have been in my apartment in the first place, and besides, I wasn’t a nun. Being a virgin at twenty-three was one thing, but I was still a woman with needs, and like plenty of modern women before me, I could see to them myself.
“Can I get you something for your headache?” I asked him shortly.
“Who says I have a headache?” he mused, resting one arm behind his head and leaning his head back against it, as he watched me.
