Seth walked into his office whistling and abruptly stopped when Margie smirked at him. He figured he had two options: ignore her and wait while she dropped hints all day or just ask her what was going on. Even as he opened his mouth, he knew he should have gone with the first option. “Good morning, Margie. Is there anything I need to know?”

“Good morning, boss. Marshall was a little miffed about missing his appointment with you, so I offered him a free meal downstairs one evening. He seemed thrilled with that.”

“Is that all?” he asked hesitantly.

“That’s it for now. Is there anything you need to tell me?”

He backed toward his office shaking his head. Shit, how did she do that? Surely, Mia hadn’t told her anything about last night. He would have to find a way to let her know nicely that he didn’t want any of his private business known to his employees. He also hoped that she wouldn’t tell her mother just how successful their date had been.

His eyes went directly to the control room. What he saw there brought to mind a particular fantasy that he had been having since he met her. She was standing with her back to him. She was reaching above her head to examine a set of wires. Her form-fitting black skirt stretched against her firm ass with every movement. She had on a sleeveless white top and a pair of fire-engine red heels. His cock throbbed as he imagined shoving her skirt up around her waist, ripping her underwear off, and taking her from behind. He would bring his hands around the front of her top and cup her tits through the fabric, teasing them with his fingers. He would then lower his hands . . . suddenly, he couldn’t wait any longer. He didn’t care if Margie smirked at him for the next damn month; he had to touch Mia . . . now.

Seth moved silently into the control room behind Mia, stopping to quietly shut the door and turn the lock. As if sensing his presence, she started to turn toward him, a look of surprise on her face. He stopped her progress with a hand on her waist. “No, baby, face forward like you were.” He reached lower to squeeze her ass, saying, “I couldn’t think of anything but doing this the first time I saw you in here.” He heard her breath hitch as he used his feet to wedge her legs farther apart. As his hand slid under her skirt, he had never been more grateful for thong underwear and women who refused to wear hose in the summer . . . God bless them. She rubbed against his hand, like a cat wanting to be stroked. He followed the line of her thong, sliding past the sensitive skin of her ass before finding her already wet slit.

She moaned as his fingers stroked through her heat before abruptly stiffening. Her legs tried to close against his hands as she said, “Seth . . . wait . . . we can’t.”

He lowered his head to her ear, nipping it lightly with his teeth. “It’s okay, baby, I locked the door when I came in. We just need to be quick before Margie starts looking for me.” When he attempted to move his hand between her legs again, she held firm even though he could feel her quaking.

“It’s not that,” she whispered. “My boss knows about us. I can’t let anything else happen until the job here is finished.”

“How?” he asked, wondering if everyone including Margie had been spying on them last night.

“Suzy and Gray Merimon were at the Ivy. Suzy recognized me from Danvers and Gray recognized you, although luckily not me. She told my boss, because she wanted me to cool things before someone else found out.”

He felt his cock scream in protest as he pulled back slightly. Having something you wanted literally in the palm of your hand and having it yanked away was sheer torture. He had only known Mia for a few days, but he had a feeling he would have a severe case of blue balls if he had to wait a day, much less a week until he had her again. He had never wanted another woman the way he wanted her. He had turned into a horny teenager seemingly overnight and his cock now ruled his head. Fuck! He still had one hand between her legs and one on her ass. Neither of them had bothered to move farther away from each other. “If we keep this quiet, no one would ever find out. We could avoid being seen together in public until the project is finished here. Hell, what I want to do with you would get us arrested in most states.”

She finally eased away from him, letting her skirt drop back into position. When she turned to face him, he could see the desire and the conflict on her face. “You have no idea how much I want to take you up on that. And you’re right, we could probably get by without being caught, but I would know. My job at Danvers is one of the things that I am most proud of. I got it on my own, without my parents’ help or their approval. It just seems . . . wrong to sneak around. Could you wait for me until we’re finished here?”

Seth looked into her big blue eyes and knew he would agree to whatever she wanted. He might need to ice his lap by the end of each day, but he could make it if it meant another night with her. Giving her a smile, he said, “Yeah, I guess I can do that if you can do something for me?” When she gave him a questioning look, he looked down at her skirt and said, “Please don’t wear anything like that again. Nothing is going to stop me from fucking you if I walk in this room and see you like that again.” With those last words, he went back into his office, pulling the door to the control room closed behind him. He needed the visual out of his mind if he was to survive the day.

As he settled into his chair, preparing for his morning conference call with his family at the other Oceanix Resorts, he felt a trickle of unease. What was he doing with Mia? Hadn’t he decided to avoid romantic hassles and just keep things casual? Of course, he had only agreed to wait until she was finished with the installation project before they had sex again, but that was still a commitment of sorts. When Margie buzzed his phone to let him know the others were ready for the morning conference, he shrugged his paranoia aside. It was just no-strings-attached sex. Nothing had changed for him and he needed to remember that.

Chapter Nine

Mia knocked her head against the wall in frustration. Her installation at the Oceanix Resort was now running into the fourth week. It seemed like there was something that happened daily to push them further behind schedule. Of course, no one else at Danvers was complaining because the cause of most of the delays was the Jackson family deciding to upgrade more of their communications and security equipment. Even Seth had contributed to the project delays. He was having monitors installed in his top-floor penthouse so that he could view any area of the resort from there. She understood his reasoning. It was a lot easier for him to look at a camera in the evening rather than walking through the hotel and being stopped ten times on his way.

Today the finish line was finally in sight when the latest problem cropped up. Their last shipment of cameras had been damaged upon delivery and were going to have to be returned and another set ordered. They could have them overnighted, but she still cursed the delay. She was horny and oh-so-frustrated. The one good thing to come from it all was the additional time she had been spending with Seth.

They had kept to their word and there had been no sex and just a slight blurring of the lines between business and pleasure. More days than not, they managed to find the time to have lunch together in the dining room downstairs. They also usually had a cup of coffee together in his office in the mornings and sometimes a snack in the afternoon. At first, she had done most of the talking. She had told him about going to Brown University and then getting a job at Danvers. He knew her parents well enough to know how they felt about their daughter being a technology geek who was determined to find employment without their help. He constantly asked questions and seemed genuinely interested in her life. After a few days, he opened up to her about his parents and his family. She learned that out of all of his brothers, he was the closest to Ash who ran the Oceanix Resort in Charleston. He laughed as he told her about all of the hell they had raised when they were young and about his mother wanting to send the lot of them to military school. He was glad that his father had put his foot down and said that boys should be boys. Sadly, that seemed to be a saying that his father had continued to live by in his personal life until the very end.