Taking On The Billionaire (Redhawk Reunion #1) - Robin Covington Page 0,23

there, she just needed to find it.

“We could always order something different,” Adam offered from his place at the table across from her, his carton of shrimp with pea pods in brown sauce sitting by his stack of documents. He cocked his head to one side, observing her, a slow grin taking over his face and showing off the dimple that made her want to kiss it and then him—all over. He picked up his food, scooping up chopstickfuls to eat. “Or we could always go out.”

It was past midnight and the building was dark, empty except for the two of them and the guards settled in down at the entrance. She was exhausted and so was Adam, the dark circles under his eyes testifying to how little sleep he’d been getting these days. But Tess couldn’t claim being the cause of his fatigue. They’d yet to spend an entire night together, opting to have sex at the office or in a car. But the encounter always saw them sated and separately in their own beds at the end of the night.

Though they couldn’t keep away from each other, neither of them wanted to take this fling to their homes, content to exist in this half state in between work and their personal lives where nothing mattered except that they wanted each other. Tess squirmed in her seat, her body still aching a little from the last time they’d been together—hot and fast on her desk in her office. It had been fun, the need to be quiet only ramping up the pleasure and making it hotter.

But they’d never suggested adding any activity other than sex to their time together.

“Go out?” She knew what he meant but she was stalling for time, trying to figure out how she felt about his suggestion. Did she want to take this out of the shadows?

Hell. It didn’t matter what she wanted. No strings. Nothing serious. Adding anything that resembled dating was something she should not do. It was something she might not be able to live with later.

As long as it was just sex she was comfortable walking in the gray area of her real reason for staying close to Adam. He got her one step closer to Franklin and avenging her father.

And that was why she was here. Not to date Adam Redhawk. Not to fall for Adam Redhawk.

It didn’t matter that she wanted him. That she liked him. None of that mattered, even if she wanted it to.

Adam nodded, still picking at his food. His movements were jerky, nervous, but he plowed ahead anyway. “Yeah, like a date.”

“Ummm...this had a shelf life...we agreed.”

“And having a meal together in an actual restaurant and not surrounded by a stack of papers covered with ridiculously private information about my employees is a deal breaker?” he asked, giving her an innocent look banked in an otherwise unreadable expression.

She couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not but if she couldn’t be honest about the real reason she was here, she could be honest about the sexual relationship between them.

“It might be. I think it should be.”

“I’m not talking about what it should be,” he answered. “I’m talking about what we want, which I think is really all that matters.” Adam set his carton down, grabbed his beer from the table and took a sip. “And I’m not asking for us to go steady or to even change our Facebook status. I just thought we could have a meal at a restaurant before we do wicked things to each other.”

Tess shook her head, letting her laugh bubble past her lips as she put down the carton and reached for a spring roll. Now she was stalling, attempting to parse through the butterflies doing somersaults in her stomach. But one sensation came through loud and clear: she wanted to go to that restaurant with him. Adam was the real deal. A good man, smart and ambitious and so incredibly determined. When he set his sights on you—when he set them on her—she felt like she was the only woman in the world, like she mattered beyond taking care of other people and righting old wrongs. It felt like she might matter to someone, to him, just because she made him happy. And that was a feeling no one had ever given her.

Damn. This was getting complicated. Sex she could handle. Amazing, off-the-charts sex, leaving-her-limp-and-wrung-out sex, ruin-her-for-other-men sex; she could handle all of that but this was new