Page 11 of Tamed

I felt self-conscious all of a sudden. For some reason, I couldn’t tear my gaze from his shoes. The leather was a deep, sooty black, all polished and perfect, and I could almost see my own face reflected back.

“What are you doing, Isabel?” His voice was deep and textured, soft like fur yet rough, like velvet.

There were butterflies in my stomach and I didn’t know why, but they were fluttering around madly. My face got hot, and I felt unaccountably flustered. “What does it look like?” I snapped, concentrating on dabbing at the carpet. “I spilled coffee on your floor so I’m trying to clean it up.”

“Two minutes late and now you’ve ruined my carpet. Give me one good reason not to fire you right now.”

I looked up sharply.

He was standing right beside me, and he was so very,verytall. Looming over me like a giant redwood, muscular and massively built, his midnight gaze on mine. I found it hard to breathe. It was all consuming that gaze, a dark current, a black storm, and it went through me like a spear. Seeing into me. Seeing everything about me, including my silly little crush on him and all my silly little virgin feelings.

My face flamed. I wanted to tear my gaze away, but I couldn’t.

He was so goddamn beautiful he made my heart ache.

“Isabel,” he said in that dark voice of his. “It seems you and I need to have a little talk.”

4

Caleb

Iturned and went around the side of my desk, reaching for the intercom button. “Sally, get someone in here to clean up a coffee spill, please.”

Then with a great effort of will, I sat in my chair and forced away the sight of Isabel Fox, on her knees at my feet, staring up at me with wide green eyes as if mesmerized.

Her face had been flushed and I’d realized that the top button of her white blouse had come undone, and I could see down between her breasts. The flush had crept down across her chest too.

I knew what that flush meant, what the glitter in her eyes meant.

I fucking knew.

I knew what the deep jolt that shifted inside of me was as well.

I’d felt it the moment I’d approached her, watching her trying to clean up the coffee she’d knocked over. Her red hair was in a low bun at the back of her head, but some wisps of it had started to escape, little tongues of fire against her pale, exposed neck.

It looked vulnerable, that neck. Fragile. I could put my hand on it, curl my fingers around it, feel the frantic beat of her pulse at her throat. All very wrong thoughts to have when that lovely, graceful neck belonged to the twenty-three-year-old daughter of my closest friend.

Yet those thoughts might have passed out of my head without comment if she hadn’t looked up, all wide eyes and flushed cheeks. Reminding me of how much I enjoyed a woman kneeling at my feet. Especially when that woman was a bratty little girl, desperate for attention.Myattention.

It had been too long since I’d indulged in that particular kink. Far too long.

I’d never been a man who held back. If I saw something I wanted, I took it, and so far, no one had ever complained. And if she’d been any other woman, I might have kept her on her knees and played with her a little….

But she wasn’t any other woman.

She was Isabel, Ten’s kid. Whom I’d looked after when she was small more times than I could count, and there was no world in which those thoughts would have ever been appropriate. So, no matter how long it had been or otherwise, I ignored them.

Perhaps on Friday, I’d put in a bid on the virgin myself. Or find another woman to play with. Perhaps if I let myself have some playtime, I’d be less…distracted.

Isabel had gotten to her feet, still flushed, the cloth clutched in her hand. She looked furious, though whether it was at herself or me, I had no idea.

No, on second thoughts, I knew. She was furious at me.

“You’re not going to fire me because I spilled coffee,” she said hotly. “That’s dumb.”

“Is it?” I leaned back in my chair and lifted one foot, resting it on the opposite knee. “That carpet is expensive.”

Predictably, she bridled. “You can’t fire me. Not for that.”

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