Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 102479 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 342(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102479 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 342(@300wpm)
I probably should’ve been freaked out that he’d just told me he’d been watching me, yet it made me feel just the opposite. It settled my nerves.
I stared at the screen for a minute, even though nothing was happening in the security feed since no one was in yet. Then I turned to face Jagger again. “Will you have dinner with me this weekend?”
His eyes reflected his hesitation. “We wouldn’t be good together, Sutton.”
“I thought we were pretty good together Saturday night.”
He smiled sadly. “I’m a workaholic who’s controlling and likes things a certain way.”
“How do you know I don’t like them the same way? I don’t even know what I like yet, Jagger.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he stared into my eyes for the longest time. Eventually his hand went to my hip, and he mumbled a string of curses as he yanked me flush against him. I felt his cock, hard and thick against my abdomen.
“Fuck it. Maybe this thing will finally go down on Saturday then.”
I nibbled my lip. “I could…make it go down now.”
He groaned. “We don’t have time for that. I told everyone to be here by seven this morning to go over the DOJ filing. I expect Edmund will be walking in any moment.” He reached behind me, grabbed my ponytail, and gave it a yank so firm that my head snapped back. “Seven PM Saturday. I’ll pick you up. Now kiss me and get out of my office.”
Jagger moved in fast, pressing his lips against mine. Within seconds, all the tension that had been swirling inside me was gone, and I melted into his tight hold. He groaned again. “Open your legs. I need to make you come quickly, or I’ll never be able to think straight today.”
I didn’t even have to think about it. I widened my stance, and Jagger’s hand dipped down and under my skirt. He sucked my tongue as his fingers pushed away my panties and stroked along my center.
“Fuck.” His voice was a sexy, low rumble. “You’re wet for me already.”
One finger pushed inside, and he started to massage along my walls. He added a second finger, and it didn’t take long before I was a panting mess. I was on the edge of finding ecstasy, standing in the middle of his glass-walled office.
But then Jagger abruptly pulled away.
I reached for him, thinking he was playing some kind of a game—until I realized why he’d backed off. Someone was coming down the hall.
And it turned out to be my stepfather.
***
“Sutton.” Edmund’s eyes slid over my face before moving to Jagger. Luckily I’d put some space between us before he walked in, so at least we weren’t caught standing inappropriately close. “Is everything okay?”
My stepfather misread my heated cheeks for something other than what they were. “Oh, yeah.” I fanned my face. “I’m fine. I just came straight from the gym. It takes a long time for me to cool down after.”
“Oh.” He nodded, seeming to at least mostly accept my explanation. “What are you doing here so early?”
I’d made up one good excuse, but my brain was still misfiring from what had been going on thirty seconds ago, and I couldn’t come up with a second one. Luckily, Jagger helped me out.
“I had my assistant call her last night,” he said. “As Sutton’s mentor, I thought it would be good for her to sit in on this morning’s meetings. She was the first one to arrive.”
That did it. My stepfather’s face went from ninety-percent satisfied to one hundred. He looked at me and smiled. “Eagerness is a great asset in the workplace.”
“Indeed it is.” Jagger’s eyes slanted to meet mine with a glimmer. He was lucky my cheeks were already red. Though Edmund thankfully seemed oblivious.
“I’m just going to get some coffee,” he said. “Where are we meeting?”
“Board room,” Jagger responded.
Edmund looked at me. “Did you get your morning cappuccino yet?”
I shook my head.
“Join me.” He gestured toward the hall. “I’ll fill you in on your mother’s latest plans to set you up, this time with Patrice’s nephew, so you can thwart them before she accepts a goat for your hand in marriage. That was all the two of them could talk about when she was over yesterday.”
“Great.” I rolled my eyes before exchanging glances with the boss. It was just my mother being my mother, but the glimmer of fun in Jagger’s eyes was gone now, replaced with something I thought looked a lot like jealousy. It made me smile.
“I guess I’ll see you at seven,” I told him.
***
The seven-AM meeting went on for more than six hours. A team of in-house lawyers, outside attorney consultants, and every member of the executive team sat together, going through all of the details of the antitrust violations Apex and Jagger himself had been accused of. I got lost in some of the minutia of the law, but I definitely followed the government’s theory when it came to the algorithm. Basically, they claimed that Apex and other large financial investment firms were colluding without having any direct communication just because there were some commonalities between their algorithms. This caused the companies to provide similar guidance to investors about the prices at which they should buy and sell stocks, thereby creating what looked like a conspiracy to fix prices. The problem was, in order to defend such a claim, Apex would need to prove that their algorithm differed from their competitors’ algorithms, and doing that meant spelling out the secret sauce of Apex’s internal system, which obviously Jagger did not want to do.