Chapter 12
Pippa sat at the conference table, kicked one foot out of her faux-suede flat to tap it on the carpet, and tried to focus on the current meeting.
Kenzie from HR stood at the front of the conference room and flipped through her presentation.
Kenzie had prepared a lengthy slideshow with zoom effects as well as coordinating pop songs, and it was highly rude to ignore something with that amount of effort, but how the hell was Pippa expected to listen to it over the vibrant memory of Maxim Sheppard diving face-first into her crotch?
A warm, tight ache bloomed between her legs and she shifted in the padded chair.
That ache was part overwhelming lust, part tenderness from how he’d thoroughly done her over.
His hands were large, and he’d been moving them with gusto, driving his fingers into her and working her orgasm from her like it had been his to take.
Pippa caught herself before she could let out a tight moan and wrangled it into a choke. She tugged at the knitted scarf she’d put on this morning to cover the lingering bite mark he’d left. Thankfully, the weather had turned chill enough that the scarf didn’t look out of place.
“You good?” Jules whispered next to her.
“Mmhmm,” Pippa whispered back. “Just, uh. Pollen.” She tugged at the scarf again, fluffing it to make sure the pink marks on her neck remained covered.
“Right.” There was something unnerving in Jules’s expression, and something far too intrigued.
Maybe that was the unnerving part. An intrigued Juliette Cohen was about as obsessed as they came; Pippa had never before met a person who had been able to successfully prophesize the entire third act of a movie from a single grainy image released a year before.
It was unnerving, sure, but also more than a little terrifying. When Jules discovered a secret, she treated it like a walnut. She rooted it out and pried it open and scooped out every morsel until there was nothing left but a shell.
Through their entire friendship, Pippa had been surreptitious enough about her other demon- and magic-filled life that Jules hadn’t thought to investigate.
Pippa hadn’t acted suspicious, hadn’t arrived at work with visible injuries that couldn’t be explained away with a falsified habit of rescuing injured wildlife.
All of her heavy, leather-bound books worked equally well as priceless heirlooms and “Oh this? I picked it up at a yard sale. Thought it looked spooky!” coffee-table displays.
The worst part about Jules’s intrigue was that Pippa hadn’t a single idea what she was intrigued by.
The near-constant flush that stained her cheeks since she’d seen Maxim across the office this morning?
Or maybe she’d finally put the magic-y tomes and the scrapes and the feigned illnesses together.
Pippa swallowed. Jules—damn her—gave her neck an intrigued look too.
Then Kenzie changed slides and background music, and Jules’s attention returned fully to the front of the room.
Which meant that Pippa could return her attention to Maxim.
God, for the past four months he’d been the most frustratingly stoic and grumbly wall of emotional repression, and not twenty-four hours ago, he’d sunk to his knees in front of her and given her a thousand new fantasies.
He’d attended to her with a desperation and an urgency that made her writhe in her chair just thinking of it.
And yet he’d stopped. Ordinarily, this would have made her pause and wait patiently.
If someone stopped in the midst of relations, they had a good reason.
But then he’d stuck his fingers in her mouth as he told her things far dirtier than she’d ever dreamed.
And then had the gall, the absolute gall, to tell her that this was all in the name of teasing.
Maxim was toying with her, making her his plaything.
It was arousing as fuck, but that didn’t mean Pippa would just let that sort of thing go.
She glanced across the long lacquered table at Maxim.
His arms were crossed over his chest, the well-tailored suit creasing in all the right places.
For the first time in weeks, his hair was back to its immaculate almost-tousled style.
All his attention was on the projected screen.
His lips were pursed in concentration, and he wasn’t even fidgeting.
How unfair that he wasn’t distracted in the same way as she was, that he had the capability to actually focus.
Not if she had anything to say about it.
The magic in the conference room was eager, responding readily as Pippa tweaked and twisted it into a tangible, invisible extension of her hand that she slid up Maxim’s calf.
He jumped a little and looked under the table with a confused frown, then returned to the presentation.
Pippa touched again, and this time, Maxim frowned more deeply and glanced around the room.
As his gaze landed on Pippa, his confusion shifted quickly into amusement, and he raised an eyebrow. Really? that eyebrow seemed to say.
Really.
She slid her extended touch higher, cresting the sharp edge of his knee, brushing over the swell of his thigh.
A dark flush peeked out over the top of Maxim’s collar.
He shifted in his seat, pinching his lips tight.
Pippa felt marginally sorry for making him uncomfortable in a room of coworkers, so she paused in her advances, which was when he leaned forward and set his chin on his fist. It was a perfectly natural change in position, the sort that came with someone becoming more intrigued by the presentation’s content at the front of the room.
But as Pippa watched, he uncurled two fingers and brushed them in an absent sort of way against his lips.
Those fingers. Those same fingers had been in her.
In her mouth and her pussy. The realization crashed on her suddenly, and heat flooded her body.
He shouldn’t be able to entrance her with such an innocuous gesture. She was the one with the magic and should have been the one doing the entrancing, but all Maxim Sheppard needed to decimate her was a hint of a satisfied smirk and some minimal gesticulations.
One side of his smirk twitched higher, and with the same amount of tease as if he were participating in a miniature burlesque performance, he uncurled a third finger and let it rest gently on his lips.
Dick.
Pippa collected herself, sat up straighter in her chair, and used magic to pinch Maxim’s thigh hard enough for him to let out a startled grunt.
“Any questions?” Kenzie asked in a voice almost as bubbly as her handwriting.
Pippa started. The presentation was over. And, just like that, so was the game.
She had barely dropped into her own chair when Jules hurriedly scooched across the carpet to intercept Pippa from the other side of her desk.
“Okay,” she said, in the sort of tone that implied there was either gossip to share or a secret to pry unwillingly from its host.
“What’s up?” Pippa said, attempting nonchalance.
Jules narrowed her eyes. “Don’t put on that act for me.
” She linked her hands together on the desk and leaned forward like a detective in an interrogation.
“Something is going on with you. Ever since Mad Maxim gave you a ride to the dinner, you’ve been way too”—she made a circular motion with one hand, then immediately linked both together again—“fine.”
“I’ve been way too ‘fine’?”
“Yes!” Jules hissed. “There’s been no complaining. No ranting. You haven’t texted me at three in the afternoon to tell me that your feet hurt because of the stupid shoes you have to wear. You haven’t been pissed at your mom for wanting you to get a better job.”
“I’m still pissed at my mother for—”
“Well you haven’t been telling me about it!”
Pippa patted Jules’s hands. “Aw, sweet Juliette, are you feeling left out?”
Jules pursed her red lips. “Either something has happened that’s made you extremely happy, or something has happened that’s made you so wildly upset that your former problems are utterly inconsequential.”
Pippa forced out a laugh, though it emerged as more of a wheeze. If not for the consistent lack of magical aura around Jules, Pippa would have thought the woman capable of telepathy.
Jules thunked her elbow on Pippa’s desk and settled her forehead against the heel of her hand. “Or, shit, maybe it’s both. Maybe you’re upset with how happy you are.”
Opening her mouth for a retort, Pippa caught the movement of a charcoal-gray suit over Jules’s shoulder. Maxim was leaving his office. He strode over to the copier, set some pages in the tray, and leaned over it with his arms locked straight and braced against the sides.
It really shouldn’t have been sexy. Making copies wasn’t the subject of the average person’s wet dream, but maybe that was because the average person couldn’t picture the bare, muscled, shuddering torso of the photocopyist.
Her fingers clenched on the edge of her desk with the need to touch his body and feel the heat of his skin.
She reached out again and swept magic up Maxim’s sides.
He stiffened at first in surprise, but then relaxed.
As she moved along his stomach and up his chest, she spread warmth and pressure over his ribs and the broad planes of his pectorals.
He dipped his head. His shoulders rose in a short, sharp breath and his knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip on the copier.
Tension built in her as she watched, just as it must have been building in him, the contact pushing them both toward some perfect finale.
“Christ, seriously? You’re not even listening to me.”
Pippa started and snapped her attention back to Jules. “I am! I’m unhappy. I’m the unhappiest.”
Jules gave her the same look she would have given if Pippa had just declared that she’d grown webbed feet and wanted to try swimming across the Pacific.
“No you’re fucking not!” She rubbed her temples with two manicured fingers. “God, I swear—”
“Beverly.”