Off Limits: The Billionaire's Forbidden Assistant

Undone

Romero

The word I mutter isn't polite. It echoes off the glass walls of my office.

I don't say it quietly. I mean it.

She reversed a date on the board presentation. One date. It could have cost us a partnership worth more than her salary for the next decade. I don't tolerate carelessness, not now, not in the position I'm in.

So I let her go.

It's barely eight in the morning and my blood pressure is already climbing. I roll my shoulders back, pour a shot of espresso from the machine behind my desk, black as ink, and drink it like medicine.

The office feels too bright.

I walk to the window and let the sun cut across my face. I should be thinking about the shareholder report. The quarterly pivot for the innovation funnel. Anything except her.

I'm not.

I can't stop thinking about the woman from the bar.

Sharp-tongued, tequila-brave, with eyes that looked like they could talk you out of anything and make you thank her for it. She sat down next to me like she had every right to. Asked nothing, offered nothing but herself, and somehow left me thinking about her for two straight days.

I told myself it was nothing but one night. A release, and nothing more.

I've told myself a lot of things this week that turned out to be lies.

I didn't leave her money — that's a line I don't cross, not ever did I with anyone. For her was just a note, two words that's all.

Thank you...

Like an amateur.

I exhale hard, swipe the board files closed, and press my palm flat against the desk until the urge to think about her passes.

It doesn't pass. It rarely does, once something's gotten this far into my head. My therapist calls it fixation, stressing it is the wiring in me that doesn't know how to let a thing go once it's caught my attention. It's part of why I run a tight ship, why routine keeps me sane, why the press started calling me Lucien's Legacy the day I inherited an empire that was rotting long before I got my hands on it.

I need the routine back. I need this thing out of my head.

I pick up the phone. "Paul. Get me a temporary secretary. I don't care who. I need competence and silence."

"Yes, sir."

I hang up, shrug out of my jacket, roll my sleeves to the elbow until my arms can breathe.

The city looks small from up here. The whole strip glittering and a little pathetic, an empire of illusions running on greed and electricity. Somehow all of it is mine to fix now.

The door clicks behind me.

And then I smell peony, citrus, clean skin. Too specific to be a coincidence.

My whole body goes still.

No. I'm imagining it.

I turn slowly.

She's standing in my office in a blouse she's trying very hard to look confident in, a leather folder clutched to her chest like a shield, dark hair pulled back, hazel eyes wide with the exact same recognition currently detonating behind my ribs.

My heart doesn't race. It drops heavy and sudden, like it's trying to hide somewhere I can't reach it.

She freezes. So do I.

She knows what I know.

I school my face. Straighten my spine. Say nothing.

Her eyes flick from the nameplate on my desk back to me, like she's hoping she misread it the first time.

"Close the door," I say. My voice comes out colder than I mean it to.

She startles, then obeys. The click sounds louder than it should.

I stand there and look at the one woman I told myself I'd never see again. The one I told myself I didn't need to remember.

My body apparently disagrees.

"Sit," I say, sharper than intended.

She lowers herself into the chair across from my desk, spine straight, hands folded too tightly in her lap. She doesn't speak. Doesn't offer her name, doesn't pretend this is a normal first day. Maybe she's waiting to see if I'll acknowledge what we both already know.

Her legs pressed together, her eyes wide with recognition. I hate that I notice.

My gaze drops anyway. Down to her thighs, barely visible beneath the fabric of her skirt. My thoughts derail before I can stop them, that same thick thigh I gripped as I made my way to her slick, trembling core. The sound she made... The way she looked when she came.

Fckng hell.

I blink hard. Force it down. Did she see where my eyes went?

That's not actually the problem in front of me.

The problem is that I want to know everything about a woman I only ever meant to know for one night. And now she works for me. Now she's going to be three feet from my desk for the foreseeable future, which is either going to be the easiest mistake of my life to fix, or the hardest one to survive.

I don't do this. I don't fixate on people — not like this, not past the point where fixation becomes a liability.

Apparently my history doesn't care what I do or don't do.

What the hell am I supposed to do now?