Chapter 3
KYLE
The conference room at Ultra Bright wasn’t what I expected. Smaller. Sleeker. Too clean. A glass table, two leather chairs, a massive monitor on the wall… It felt less like a tech empire’s headquarters and more like a high-end interrogation room.
I’d come in at nine sharp, ready for battle. I was expecting a firing squad of lawyers and senior devs, armed with NDAs and jargon thick enough to choke a man.
Instead, I got Avery.
She was standing by the monitor, tablet in hand, wearing a navy skirt suit that shouldn’t have been a weapon but was. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail, but those blue eyes? All nonsense. One look and I forgot every carefully rehearsed line I’d planned to start with.
“Mr. Ashbrook.” She smiled, professional and warm. “Thanks for coming.”
I glanced around the empty room. “Where’s everyone else?”
Her smile faltered slightly. “Mr. Baxter had an emergency this morning—something about a supplier issue in Singapore. And our legal team is available by phone if we need them, but I thought…” She hesitated. “I thought it might be more productive if we kept this technical. Just us.”
Just us.
The words hung in the air, loaded with implications neither of us acknowledged.
“Reed stood me up again,” I said flatly.
“He didn’t stand you up. He’s just—”
“Sending a message.” I set my briefcase down and shrugged off my coat. “That he doesn’t take this seriously.”
Avery’s jaw tightened. “I take it seriously.”
“I know you do.”
And I did. That was the problem. If she’d been some vapid corporate puppet, this would’ve been easy. But she wasn’t. She was sharp and capable and so damn beautiful it was starting to interfere with my ability to think like a rational human being.
“We can reschedule,” she offered. “If you’d prefer to meet with Mr. Baxter directly—”
“No.” The word came out faster than I intended. “We’re here. Let’s do this.”
Something flickered in her expression—relief maybe, or satisfaction—and she nodded. “Okay. Have a seat.”
I sat. She moved to the monitor, pulling up a presentation that was clearly hers—clean, organized, and color-coded in a way that made sense. Not some generic corporate deck.
“Let’s start with the hardware,” she said, and launched into an explanation of ClimaGlow’s sensor array that was so detailed, so precise, I forgot to be suspicious.
She knew this system inside and out. Every component, every line of code, every decision the development team had made.
And when I asked questions—hard questions, the kind designed to trip up someone who didn’t actually understand what they were talking about—she didn’t stumble.
She met every challenge head-on, explaining, clarifying, and occasionally pulling up additional documentation to prove her point.
Twenty minutes in, I had to admit that she was right. ClimaGlow didn’t violate my patent. The architecture was too different, the approach too distinct. Similar outcomes, completely different methods.
I should’ve been relieved. Instead, I was disappointed that I’d just lost my excuse to keep seeing her.
“So.” Avery turned away from the monitor, crossing her arms. The movement pushed her tits upward, and I had to force my gaze back to her face. “Any other questions about the code?”
“No.” My voice came out rougher than I intended.
“Good.” She moved to gather her tablet and notes, all business. “Then I think we’re done here. I’ll send you a copy of the documentation for your records, and if you need anything else—”
“Wait.”
She paused, looking at me with those wide blue eyes. “Yes?”
I should’ve let her go. Should’ve thanked her for her time, walked out, and moved on with my life. But I didn’t.
“I have one more question.”
She set her tablet down slowly. “Okay.”
I stood, closing the distance between us.
Not too close—I wasn’t a complete animal—but close enough that I could see the way her pulse jumped at the base of her throat.
Close enough to catch the faint scent of her perfume, something light and citrusy that made me want to lean in and find out where she’d applied it.
“Are you seeing anyone?”
Her eyes widened. For a second, she just stared at me, and I braced for the rejection, the professional outrage, the inevitable HR complaint.
Then her lips curved into the smallest smile. “No.”
The air between us shifted. Thickened.
“That was inappropriate,” I said, because apparently, I still had a few brain cells left. “I shouldn’t have—”
“I liked it.”
My heart kicked against my ribs. “What?”
“I liked it.” She took half a step closer, and now we were definitely too close for a professional setting. “The question. I liked it.”
“Avery—”
“I feel it too,” she said, her voice dropping to something softer, more intimate. “In case you were wondering.”
I was wondering. I’d been wondering since the second she’d walked into my office three days ago and turned my entire world sideways.
“Feel what?” I asked, and yeah, I was teasing her now, pushing to see how far she’d go.
Her chin lifted, a spark of defiance in her eyes. “Chemistry.”
“Chemistry,” I repeated, tasting the word. “That’s a nice way to put it.”
“What would you call it?”
“Pure physical attraction.” I let my gaze drop—just for a second—to her mouth, then back up. “I’ve been thinking about kissing you since the second I first saw you.”
Her breath hitched. I watched her chest rise and fall, watched the way her lips parted slightly, and every rule I’d ever made about keeping business and pleasure separate went up in smoke.
“Then why don’t you?” she whispered.
That was all the permission I needed. I closed the distance between us in one step, cupped her face in my hands, and kissed her.
And holy fuck.
She tasted like coffee and something sweet, and the little sound she made when my mouth met hers—half gasp, half moan—nearly broke me.
Her hands came up to grip my shirt, fisting the fabric like she needed something to hold on to, and I backed her up until her hips hit the edge of the conference table.
The kiss was supposed to be controlled. Professional, even—if a kiss could be professional. It wasn’t. It was hot and hungry and completely consuming.
I angled my head, deepening the kiss, and she opened for me like she’d been waiting for this as long as I had. Her hands slid up my chest to my shoulders, her nails digging in just enough to make me want to see what marks she could leave on me.
I pulled back just enough to breathe, my forehead resting against hers. “Avery—”
“Don’t stop,” she breathed, and then she was kissing me again, pulling me closer, and I was completely, utterly lost.
My hands found her waist, slid around to her back, and I lifted her onto the edge of the table. She gasped against my mouth, her legs parting to let me step between them, and—
The door.
We both froze. The conference room door was glass. Transparent. Anyone walking by could see exactly what we were doing.
“We should—” Avery started.
“Yeah.”
I didn’t move. Neither did she.
We stared at each other, breathing hard, and the weight of what we’d just done settled over us like a heavy blanket. This was a terrible idea. A horrible, reckless, completely unprofessional idea. And I wanted to do it again.
“Kyle,” she whispered, and the sound of my first name on her lips made every rational thought in my head scatter like leaves in the wind.
I kissed her again—slower this time, deeper, tasting every inch of her mouth like I had all the time in the world and nowhere else to be. Her fingers threaded through my hair, tugging just hard enough to make me groan, and she smiled against my lips.
“Avery,” I murmured, trailing kisses along her jaw, down the column of her throat. She tilted her head back, giving me access, and I took full advantage, finding the spot just below her ear that made her shiver.
“We’re in a conference room,” she said, but her voice was breathless, unconvincing.
“I know.”
“Anyone could see.”
“I know.”
“We should stop.”
“Probably.”
But neither of us moved. We just stayed there, tangled together, kissing like the world outside that glass door didn’t exist. Like there weren’t a dozen reasons this was a terrible idea. Like we had every right to be exactly where we were. And for now, in this moment, maybe we did.
I went in for another kiss, hoping like hell we didn’t get caught.