entice her.”
“But we agreed that nothing can happen again,” she says, standing, stepping away from the couch, striding across the carpet. It’s like she needs to put distance between us. Maybe it’s the distance between herself and her own desires that she’s struggling with. Well, I’m not going to push her. That’s not my scene. I stay on the couch, crossing one leg over the other. “Yes, we did agree to that. Yet I can’t help but wonder if the book is working.”
She stops at the wall with the window that looks over her casino. The top half of a portion of the wall is glass, the bottom half wood. She stares out the glass, then back at me. “What do you think?”
“I don’t want to make any assumptions. But when I look at the way your shoulders are rising and falling, when I look at how the flush spreads across your neck, I’d say it’s working. Or maybe it’s that this chemistry we have is working. That was a long and involved conversation on your couch, and neither one of us wanted to stop talking or flirting. So, you tell me if you’re being seduced, Sage.”
She closes her eyes, swallows kind of roughly, then opens them again to look at me. “You’re dangerous, Cole.”
“And do you like the kind of danger I bring to you?”
Her voice dips, a little husky. “Maybe I do.”
And that’s my cue. I stand, move closer to her, and tip my gaze to the window too. Because this window is part of the seduction. I’ve got a read on this woman. I can sense what she wants. And I want to give it to her. “This is quite a view you have, Ms. Carmichael.”
She taps a nail against the pane. “It was my indulgence when I took over the CEO office. This window.”
Taking a chance, but one I suspect will be met with shivers, I drag a finger down her spine. “You like to watch what’s happening at your casino?”
She trembles as I inch lower, traveling toward the globes of her luscious ass.
A second passes, perhaps one she needs to collect herself before she answers. “I do. I like to look at it and see everything that’s going on.”
“You like to survey your empire. You like to feel your own power.”
She turns to me, a skeptical look in her gorgeous blue eyes. “I don’t think of it as power.”
“What do you think of it as?”
“I think of it as business and family.”
“But it’s also power. You have power over all of this.”
“And is power what you get off on?”
“No. I like opportunity. Opportunity is what I crave,” I say as I rake my eyes over her. “And you have an incredible opportunity in this beautiful casino you’ve built, this incredible property you take care of. That’s your opportunity, and you like to enjoy it with your view, don’t you?”
She hums thoughtfully. “I suppose I do.”
She gazes at all of the activity happening below, a queen ruling her realm.
“I bet you like to look out at it because it reminds you of everything you have and everyone you’re responsible for,” I say, getting to the heart of what motivates this woman. She means it when she says her employees are kin to her. She wants to take care of them.
“Yes. Seeing everyone reminds me of why I do what I do. Why I work long hours. Why I try to do the best for them,” she says, but her voice is getting fainter as my hand drifts lower, cupping her gorgeous ass.
Her breath catches. I suppress a groan. “You know what else I think you’d like?”
Her eyes are curious, her expression intrigued. “What do you think I’d like?”
I move my mouth to her ear. “I think you’d like me to bend you over and fuck you by this window.”
A gasp falls from her lips. “So someone could see me?”
“You love the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be caught,” I say, as her breasts heave, as a flush crawls over her chest.
She parts her lips, exhaling a sensual breath. “Do I like that . . .?” It’s less of a question and more of an open-ended discussion point.
I run my nose along her neck, and she trembles against me before I pull back. “Someone could open the door and walk in here. Someone could look up here and see you as I fuck you while you watch the casino below.”
She shivers against me. A full-body