19. Cassie
— ? —
Cassie
Three days after the sprinkler incident, I’m at Elliot’s office pretending to be a functional adult.
It’s not going well.
We’ve been inseparable since Celine’s soggy retreat from our front garden, partly because we genuinely cannot keep our hands off each other and partly because neither of us wants to be caught off guard when she inevitably makes her next move.
So I’ve set up camp in a spare office down the hall from Elliot’s, surrounded by client files and coffee cups and the constant, distracting awareness of him just fifty feet away through the glass partition.
The glass walls are both a blessing and a curse.
A blessing because I can see him whenever I want, watch him work, admire the way his brow furrows when he’s concentrating or the way his jaw tightens when he’s annoyed by something on his computer screen.
A curse because he can see me too, and every time our eyes meet through the partition, heat floods through my body and settles low in my stomach like embers waiting to catch fire.
I’m supposed to be reviewing contact lists for potential clients I might be able to bring over from my old network.
People I built relationships with during my years as Charles’s assistant, people who trusted me and might follow me to a new opportunity if I approach them the right way.
Instead, I’m staring at the way Elliot’s shirt stretches across his shoulders when he leans back in his chair, remembering what those shoulders felt like under my hands this morning when he pinned me against the shower wall and made me forget my own name.
This is a problem. A delicious, distracting, utterly unprofessional problem that I have absolutely no intention of solving.
My phone buzzes with a text from Jinny: How’s the new job going? Managed to keep your clothes on for more than five minutes yet?
I type back: Barely. He’s very distracting.
Pics or it didn’t happen.
I’m not sending you pictures of my boyfriend at work. That’s an HR violation waiting to happen.
BOYFRIEND. You called him your boyfriend. This is not a drill. I’m screenshotting this for posterity and framing it on my wall next to that photo of you drunk at my birthday party.
You’re ridiculous.
You love me. Now go seduce your billionaire and stop texting me. Some of us have actual work to do that doesn’t involve eye-fucking our boss through glass walls.
I’m smiling at my phone, shaking my head at Jinny’s particular brand of chaos, when a knock on my doorframe makes me look up.
Elliot is leaning against the frame, arms crossed over his chest, watching me with an expression that makes heat pool between my thighs.
He’s wearing a charcoal suit today, no tie, the top button of his shirt undone in a way that shouldn’t be as devastating as it is.
His hair is slightly disheveled from running his hands through it, and there’s a look in his green eyes that I’ve come to recognize very well over the past few weeks.
It’s the look that usually precedes me losing my clothes.
“Something funny?” he asks, his voice low and rich.
“Jinny being Jinny.” I set down my phone, trying to look professional and failing miserably. “Did you need something?”
“I need you in the conference room.” His voice is perfectly professional, but his eyes are anything but. “There’s a matter that requires your immediate attention.”
“What matter? I don’t have anything scheduled, and I’ve been through the calendar three times today.”
“Conference room. Now.” He pushes off the doorframe and disappears down the hall without waiting for a response, leaving me confused and curious and more than a little suspicious about what exactly is waiting for me.
I follow, my heels clicking against the marble floor.
The executive wing is quiet this time of day, most of the staff in meetings or working in other parts of the building.
We pass Miranda’s desk, and she doesn’t even look up from her computer, though I catch the subtle twitch at the corner of her mouth that tells me she knows exactly what’s about to happen.
The conference room is at the end of the corridor, floor-to-ceiling windows offering a stunning view of the city sprawling below.
Fifty stories up, the people on the street look like ants, and the buildings stretch toward the horizon like a forest of glass and steel.
When I step inside, the room is empty. No files on the polished table.
No presentation on the screen. Just sunlight streaming through the glass and the distant hum of the city far beneath us.
“Elliot? I don’t see any files. What exactly requires my immediate attention? Because if this is about the Harriman proposal, I already sent the revised numbers to accounting and they said…”
The door clicks shut behind me.
I spin around to find him leaning against the closed door, looking at me with undisguised hunger. The professional mask has dropped completely, replaced by raw desire that makes my breath catch in my throat.
“There are no files,” he says.
“I’m starting to figure that out.” My heart is suddenly pounding against my ribs. “What’s actually going on?”
“What’s going on is that I’ve been watching you through the glass all morning.
” He pushes off the door and stalks toward me with predatory grace, each step deliberate and purposeful.
“Sitting at your desk. Chewing on that pen. Crossing and uncrossing your legs. Do you have any idea what that does to me? Do you have any concept of how hard it is to concentrate on quarterly projections when you’re fifty feet away looking like every fantasy I’ve ever had? ”
“I might have some idea.” My voice comes out breathier than I intended.
“You do it on purpose.” He stops in front of me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his body, smell the cedar and sandalwood of his cologne mixed with something underneath that’s just him.
“Every movement calculated to drive me out of my mind. Every glance designed to make me want to clear my schedule and spend the rest of the day buried inside you.”
“Maybe I do.” I tilt my chin up defiantly, refusing to back down even as my pulse races. “What are you going to do about it?”
His smile is slow and dangerous, the smile of a predator who’s cornered exactly the prey he wanted. “I’m going to do something about it right now.”
“We’re at work.”
“I’m aware.”
“Anyone could walk in. Anyone could look through those glass walls and see exactly what we’re doing.”
“I locked the door.” His hand comes up to cup my jaw, tilting my face toward his with gentle but firm pressure. “And Miranda knows not to disturb us for the next hour. She’s been my assistant for eight years. She knows when I need privacy.”
“You told your assistant that you were going to…”
“Miranda knows everything. It’s why I pay her so well and why she’s never once threatened to quit despite my more demanding tendencies.
” He leans in, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, his breath hot against my skin.
“Say yes, Cassie. Let me have you right here, right now, with the whole city spread out below us like witnesses to what we’ve found. ”
Every rational part of my brain is screaming that this is a terrible idea.
We’re in a glass-walled conference room in the middle of a workday, with dozens of employees just outside who could look in at any moment if they walked by at the right angle.
This is reckless and unprofessional and absolutely insane.
I’ve never wanted anything more in my entire life.
“Yes,” I breathe.
He kisses me and it’s nothing gentle. It’s hungry and demanding, full of all the tension that’s been building since we left the house this morning. His hands are in my hair, tilting my head back, and I stop caring that we’re at his office with a wall of glass and a city full of people below.
“This is insane,” I breathe against his mouth.
“Completely,” he agrees, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “Tell me to stop and I will.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Look out the window.” His voice is low at my ear. “All those people down there going about their day. They have no idea what’s happening up here.”
“You’re terrible.”
“You keep saying that like it’s a complaint.”
I don’t tell him to stop. I don’t want to. For once I let myself be reckless, let myself want something purely because it feels good and it’s mine to take, and I stop keeping score of all the reasons I shouldn’t.
His mouth crashes back onto mine, tongue pushing deep, while his hands drop to my ass and yank me hard against him.
I feel his cock already thick and straining in his pants, and I grind forward without thinking, rubbing myself on the bulge.
He curses low and spins me around so my front presses to the glass.
The city sprawls out below us, tiny figures moving on the sidewalks, cars crawling through traffic.
Anyone with a good view could look up and see us if they tried.
“Fuck, Cassie,” he mutters, hands already shoving my skirt up over my hips.
“This skirt has been driving me crazy all day.” His fingers hook into my panties and drag them down, leaving me bare.
Cool air hits my pussy and I shiver, but his palm is there a second later, cupping me, two fingers sliding through my slick folds and circling my clit.
I moan and push back into his hand. “Elliot, someone could see.”
“That’s the point.” He nips at my neck, teeth scraping skin, while he works my clit faster.
“Let them look. Let them see how wet you get for me.” One finger pushes inside me, then two, pumping steady.
I rock on them, hands flat on the glass, watching the street below.
A man in a suit glances up toward the building, and my stomach flips with the thrill.