Chapter Three
Reese
Cumulatively speaking, I don’t know Ava all that well. In fact, in the roughly ninety-six hours that she’s worked for me, I’ve come to realize precisely three things about her. First, she makes a damn fine cup of coffee. Second, her repressed librarian look is sexy as fuck. And third, she’s not afraid of anything.
After this morning, I have to amend that last one. She’s not afraid of anything, except flying.
“What do you mean you’ve never been on a plane?” I ask.
She glares at me. “I’m not speaking in code, Reese. I have never flown anywhere,” she repeats, exaggerating each word of the sentence. “I’ve lived in Porter my entire life and so far have never needed to fly anywhere. Cars are perfectly adequate.”
“We are not driving to Vegas. That would take two days. You should be excited to fly in the company jet instead of coach.”
She points over my shoulder. “That is not a full-grown plane. That is, at most, a toddler plane. Where is its mama?”
I swallow a chuckle. “Cessnas are widely used and safe. And I am an excellent pilot.”
Her hands fly up to her throat and she starts shaking her head. “No, absolutely not. You know that’s the kiss of death. Eccentric billionaires who fly their own tiny planes are notorious for crashing and dying in said planes.”
“I don’t think that’s a statistic. Also, I was kidding about being the pilot. I have too much work to do during flights to waste my time in the cockpit.” I nod behind her. “There’s our pilot.”
“Morning, Mr. Donovan. Got her all gassed up and ready to go,” Andrew says as he walks over to us.
“Did you have to get a note to miss gym class to make this flight?” Ava asks.
“Ms. Matthews, this is Andrew, our pilot. Andrew, this is my new assistant, Ava Matthews. I don’t suspect she thinks you’re old enough to fly this plane.”
“Is he even old enough to gamble in the casinos?” she asks.
Andrew laughs but doesn’t answer her.
“Are you old enough?” I ask her.
She rolls her pretty blue eyes.
“I can assure you, Ms. Matthews, I’m old enough.” Andrew pats the side of the plane. “The excuse was for Biology class, not gym,” he says with a wink.
I reach up and cup the back of Ava’s neck, giving her a gentle squeeze. I don’t question the movement or touching my assistant so intimately. In that moment, all I can think about is soothing her worries. “He’s a married father of two. He’s like Paul Rudd; he just doesn’t age.”
“Big Ant-Man fan, are you?” she asks, slipping out of my reach.
“He was awarded Sexiest Man Alive a few years ago. It’s my job as the CEO of Aurora to keep my finger on the pulse of what the general public finds sexy,” I say.
A laugh bubbles out of her, and it feels like I just got hit with a defibrillator. “That sounds ridiculous enough to be true.”
“Come on, let’s board. I need to get this meeting over with before I just hire a hitman to take Leon out.”
I let her pick her seat and then, for reasons I do not wish to analyze, I sit right next to her.
Her eyes narrow and she leans over close to me. “Do you really know any hitmen?”
She’s fucking adorable. I lean just as close to her. “All eccentric billionaires have hitmen on speed dial.”
She stares at me for a minute, then unzips her purse. “I hate that I can’t completely tell if you’re being serious right now.”
I try to tell myself to get up and move. Go sit somewhere else. Stop flirting with her. Because that is what I’m doing. We are exchanging banter, and banter is nothing more than verbal foreplay. I cannot have sex with my assistant. I refuse to be that guy. Especially that guy who owns a multi-billion-dollar company that sells sex toys. What a fucking cliché.
Ava pulls out a prescription bottle and reads the dosage information, then reads it again.
“Should I be concerned?” I nod to the bottle.
“Xanax. I was having some significant anxiety packing for this trip so my family doctor called in a script for me.” She pours two pills into her palm, then dry swallows them.
I pull a small water bottle out of the pocket of the leather plane seat, then hand it over to her. “You shouldn’t dry swallow like that. You’re gonna choke.”
“I’ll swallow whenever I want,” she snaps.
I clench my jaw against the groan that rises in my throat, but there’s not a damn thing I can do about the erection rapidly growing in my pants. Fucking perfect .
Doing my best to ignore my body’s reaction, I cock a brow at her.
Then her big blue eyes grow round and her lips open in an ‘o’. “I didn’t mean, well, I mean, you know I wouldn't be talking about anything other than swallowing…”
“Pills,” I provide.
“Precisely.” She nods.
If she glances down at my lap, she will know exactly how turned-on her little word play has me. I don’t understand what it is about this curvy slip of a woman who can make me hard as a fucking pipe with nothing more than her presence.
Though I’d be remiss not to mention those tight little pencil skirts that cup her wide hips and plump ass so perfectly. The way her button-up blouses stretch across her ample breasts. Nothing about her appearance is inappropriate.
Quite the contrary, she is the very picture of professionalism. It’s me and my dirty mind who have imagined all manner of filthy things to do to her with those curve-hugging clothes. Like bending her over my desk and pulling her skirt up just so, not even lowering her panties all the way to the ground. No, I’d lock her legs in position by keeping them at her knees. Then I’d fuck her from behind, slowly and leisurely, until she was begging me to rail into her.
Or the one where I go into my office and sit at my desk to work on my never-ending to-do list. Then I realize she’s under my desk, unfastening my pants, and pulling out my cock so she can suck the life out of me. That particular fantasy plays on repeat.
I pull out my laptop to try to get some actual work done so I don’t spend the entire flight wishing my assistant was naked. Her head lands on my shoulder and I glance over to find her smiling up at me.
“Whatcha doing?” she asks. Her words are a bit slurred, so clearly her pills have kicked in.
“Working,” I say. I pull up the most recent report I’ve been working on.
“I don’t really think you’re eccentric.”
“You don’t?”
She tries to shake her head against me, and it only serves in filling my senses with the tempting scent of her shampoo. Apples and cinnamon?
“Do you keep your toenail clippings in jars?”
I laugh at that. “No. I don’t think most billionaires get Howard Hughes level of eccentricity.”
“Exactly. Instead, you’re just really, really sexy.” Her voice lowers on that last word.
“Oh yeah? You think I’m sexy?” I shouldn’t ask, but like a goddamn peacock, I’m ready to preen under her praise.
“Don’t play dumb, Reese. You know you’re sexy. You probably wear boxer shorts with words on the butt. Like ‘juicy’ and ‘yum.’”
I bark out a laugh. “I don’t think they make those for men.”
“They should,” she mutters.
“Maybe you should try to take a nap because I think you’re going to regret saying all of this out loud to me later.”
The plane wobbles as we fly through some turbulence. Her hand grips my thigh. Her short nails dig into my muscles and my dick grows even harder.
I’m not going to survive this flight.
Her hand loosens, but she doesn’t move it from my leg. “Did you know that all the women in my family have been married by the time they turned twenty-four?”
“I did not know that.”
“My birthday is Monday. I guess I’ll be breaking the trend.”