The Big Boss - Penny Wylder Page 0,12

before hunting for my bra and finding my shirt. I’m not a self-conscious person by any means, but now I feel out of place. Shabby in comparison to everything shiny in this office. Even the desk that he just fucked me on. Everything I’m wearing is…normal for me. Plain underwear and fraying pants. Second-hand t-shirt.

How could I possibly go anywhere with him? I barely fit into his office here, if I showed up at some fancy restaurant I would be laughed out without a second thought. I’m sure that the offer to take me out is genuine—I know that he can feel this thing between us as well as I can, but we’re from two completely different worlds. And sadly, I can’t ignore that.

“I—” The words on my lips are about to be an excuse. Some lie about how I have to help Lila again or that I have a late client to see, but they stop dead on my lips. After what we just happened—what we shared—it feels wrong to lie to him.

My eyes catch on the cactus at the edge of the desk. He practically dived to the ground to save it. I straighten it so it looks better, and give him a small, polite smile. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“Why not?” `

“I just…I can’t see you again,” I say firmly, even though I’m regretting the words as I’m saying them. But it doesn’t make them any less true. “Especially not in public. You are who you are, Keenan. You’re from this world. You belong in your thousand-dollar suits and among your daily fresh flowers. You’re everything that I’m not.

“And even if that weren’t a problem, the very thing that I do is basically stand against you every day. You’re the kind of person that makes my life difficult. You wanted to know what I do? I work for a non-profit that assists elderly people. People forgotten because their neighborhoods are changing so much that people don’t even notice when they need help. Because they’re all filled with luxury apartments and high rises and people who are too rich to fucking care that their neighbors can’t walk down the stairs for groceries. All thanks to people like you.

“I know what you do,” I say, ending my sudden rant with a release of breath. I didn’t expect for that to all come out at once. I wasn’t planning on it at all. Shit. I didn’t actually want to insult him that much. Especially because of Lila.

But he doesn’t look insulted. He barely looks phased. Just assessing me with a cool glance as if he hadn’t just fucked the shit out of me five minutes ago.

“So,” I say. “Thank you, but—”

“Thank you for what?” he asks with that devastating smirk. “The sex?”

A blush creeps up my cheeks. I guess that is what I am thanking him for. “Goodbye, Mr. Silverman.”

I make it halfway to the door before I hear his voice behind me. “I think you’re making a lot of assumptions about me, Justine.”

The words make me pause, and I stop. But I don’t turn around. Because looking at him does strange things to me that I can’t explain. I think he’s going to say something else to convince me, but he doesn’t. And he probably won’t. He’s just like the rest of them. Like all the politicians and CEOs that have promised that they’re different and that they’ll actually change. But they never do. It’s not who they are. Money will always win out for people like him.

My work and my ethics are too important to me to sacrifice by jumping in bed with the enemy. Even if every second of that would be filled with pleasure.

Keenan doesn’t speak, and I walk away before I can’t make myself leave.

7

Justine

I really need to get out of here. Because I feel like I’m walking away from something I shouldn’t be, even if I know that I’m right. But I force myself to walk at a normal pace past his secretary to the elevator.

He’s on my skin. I can feel him and smell him. That alluring combination of cedar and leather. It’s like it’s walking with me in a cloud, reminding me of pleasure and passion and everything else.

I want to get him out of my nose so badly that I scrub at my face, which of course doesn’t work. It’s partly his cologne, and partly just a mark he left on me. By being in me. By tasting me.

The elevator seems