Rule's Addiction (5 page)

She was beginning to loathe Garrett Rule more and more every single day. The more she’d been exposed to him, the more she’d come to detest his air of arrogance and the complete command he seemed to have over every situation. She hated his supreme intellect and the fact that he was always,
always
right.

She hated his temper, his good looks, his complete conceit. She hated the way he guarded his privacy as if his life was more important than anyone else’s. She hated the females who called the hotel at odd hours demanding to speak to him . . . and she hated even more his continued rejection of the women’s overtures as if he couldn’t care less . . . as if they were beneath him.

She hated the fact that somehow, somewhere along the line, she’d become nothing more than his glorified secretary. The work he was doing had little to do with the hotel, it was Rule Corporation business, and she didn’t have time to be his at his beck and call. She
hated
having to work so physically close to him . . . and she hated that the damn butterflies in her stomach had only gotten worse the longer she knew him.

But most of all, she hated his complete and utter disregard for courtesy . . . and the fact that he continued to ignore her as if she didn’t exist.

Fucker.

She smiled sweetly, as if her only ambition in life was to serve him. “Yes, of course. It’s on your desk,” she replied in the same soothing, placating tone she’d been using with him for the past few weeks . . . a tone that, for some reason, was almost impossible to maintain today.

The look he pierced her with would have made a lesser woman wilt and fade away, but Maria only held his eyes and stared back while she waited for the rejoinder she knew was coming.

He regarded her with set features and said in a low, tempered voice, “I didn’t see it.”

“It’s there,” she fired back smoothly.

His gaze became pointed and a subtle tension seemed to fill his large frame. “It’s
not
there.”

His voice held that damn arrogance she detested.
Asshole.
She blinked up at him and attempted a look of patience she was far from feeling, trying her best not to make it sound as if she were instructing a six year old. “It’s in the legal-size manila folder underneath the red paperweight.” She hated the crystal paperweight that had simply turned up in his office one day. She hated the blood red lines running through it; it was overly ostentatious and far too fragile for everyday use.

His mouth flattened. “There’s nothing under the paperweight.”

She took a deep breath and pasted such a large smile on her face that her eyes were forced into narrow slits.
Why would he lie about this?
She knew damn good and well where she’d placed the folder. With an exercise in control, she kept her tone neutral. “I put it there this morning, not thirty minutes ago.”

It was obvious he didn’t care to be argued with; his body shifted and the muscles under his suit corded into lines of strain. His casual position disappeared completely as he stood to his full height.
“You must be mistaken.”

She took a deep breath and without speaking, stood to her feet with a fluid motion and immediately smoothed the lines of her simple grey skirt. Refusing to make eye contact with him, she kept her gaze on the doorframe as she began walking toward the entrance to his office . . . the office that should have been hers by now.
When the hell would he go back to St. Louis and leave her in peace?

When she reached his side and would have passed through, he halted her forward motion with a detaining hand on her arm.

The move paralyzed her immediately.

He
never
touched her.

Never.
It was an unwritten rule between them
.

But now, his fingers grasped the fleshy part of her bare upper arm and no matter how hard she fought against it, at the first touch of his callused fingers, she immediately stiffened with nerves and her pulse rate accelerated. As his scent hit her nostrils in a conflagration of sexual heat that she
refused
to acknowledge, a fine trembling took hold of her legs.

A dangerous sizzle filled the air as he stood only inches away, looming over her. Trying with everything she had to appear unaffected, she ran her eyes up and down his length, attempting a dismissive expression that she knew was a pathetic fail. There was no question that he was intimidating when he wanted to be, his designer suit molding his tall, powerful body, enhancing his stance of authority. His eyes were hot and dark as he stared down into hers. “Is something bothering you today? Cat pissed in your Post Toasties this morning?”

Her breath snagged; he was so close she could see the gold striations running through his pupils. “You know very well that I don’t have a cat.”

“It was a rhetorical question. I don’t care for the attitude, Maria. You need to lose it,
pronto.
Capisce?”

Maria firmed her lips
. Keep your mouth closed. Just keep your damn mouth closed, Maria.
Absolutely nothing good can come from arguing with him.
He’ll be gone soon and then you’ll have the job you’ve always wanted and you’ll never have to deal with him . . . at least, not very often.
As his hand gripped tighter, then loosened, and then pulsed tighter again, she took one stabilizing breath and then another. When that didn’t calm her down, she counted to ten and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she found him watching her with a merciless expression that was colored with retribution.

Every muscle in her body tightened, and when she remained silent, refusing to give him an answer, his features turned menacing. She could almost feel his inexorable control slipping; the primal attributes that made him so much a man had never been quite so obvious as they were now, as he held her in an uncompromising grasp not six inches away from his torso. Oh, yeah. He was a man like no other, there was no getting away from that fact. She could lie to herself all she wanted, but Garrett Rule was pure unadulterated male, through and through.

Their eyes stayed connected; his intense gaze narrowed and the pagan, dominant personality he usually took pains to keep hidden rose to the fore. Her breath snagged in her lungs.
He was dangerous
. She’d known that from the moment she’d met him, hell, from the very first phone conversation she’d had with him.

Now, as a wave of anger seemed to grip him, he leaned down until his mouth was at her ear and he demanded an answer. “Do you understand me, Maria? Are you screwing with me? You’ve never been careless enough to fuck with me before. I’m warning you, now wouldn’t be a good time to start.”

Maria attempted to give him a benign agreement as she struggled for control, but she lost it.

Challenge accepted, douchebag
.

Using all the strength at her disposal, she pulled back from him and glared, not even trying to hide her truculent expression. At the warning that smoldered in his eyes, her stomach flipped wildly, but she had a point to prove.

She was about to knock the son-of-a-bitch on his ass; she’d teach him to try to intimidate her.

He thought he could subdue her with his hard-core masculinity? Just wait…. how would the motherfucker react when faced with her undisguised femininity? She took a cleansing breath and then purposely softened her features, making her eyes turn liquid. Tilting her head to the side, she let her hair swing forward. She’d caught him staring at her hair more times than she could count and now she put the thick tresses to good use. Holding his stare from under her lashes, she dampened her bottom lip and then caught it between her teeth. Not overtly. Not innocently. Just
perfectly.

An instantaneous, ferocious look crossed his features while his jaw clenched at her actions.

She held every bit of his attention and she used it to her advantage. Dropping her gaze to his mouth, she held it there for the count of two seconds before letting it slide down to the bulge in his pants. Not expecting
that
and yet refusing to blush, she lifted her face and let her eyes clash with his before dropping her bombshell in a falsely soothing voice that was barely more than a whisper. “I promise,
Mr. Rule
, I wouldn’t
dare
fuck with you. And if I ever did, I assure you,
you’d know it.”

Her words seemed to hit him full force, holding him momentarily transfixed, and taking the opportunity it gained her, Maria ignored the whirling in her head and brushed past him, walking into his office.

Taking a quick look around, she spied the missing file folder under a slew of documents not far from where she’d originally left it. Not knowing who’d moved it and at the moment not caring, she dug it out from the bottom of the pile and slipped it under the paperweight.

Without deigning to look at her boss again, who’d evidently shaken off his stupor and had followed her into his domain, she walked past him and out of his office, shutting the door with a snap.

****

The back of Garrett’s head hit the closed door.

His blood was pumping furiously, his goddamn cock was as hard as a rock.

That had been
Too. Fucking. Close
.

He’d touched her and she’d retaliated, using her feminine wiles on him for the first time since he’d actually met her. And fuck, she’d hit her mark. That look in her eyes. The softness of her voice. Son-of-a-bitch. It had been bad before, but now . . . shit, this was going to come back to haunt him. Every. Fucking. Night.

How could he have been such a dumbfuck? He couldn’t believe he’d actually touched her.

Touched her,
hell
. He’d reached out and grabbed her, and instead of going for an innocuous spot like a shoulder or a wrist, he’d just had to touch her soft, feminine flesh.
Because he’d been dying to know what it felt like for the last . . . for-fucking-ever
. Since before he’d even seen her. And since he’d come to Florida? Nothing but weeks on end where he’d fantasized about shutting and locking the outer office door, with only the two of them inside. Weeks where he’d dreamed about her
all the time
. Not daydreams, hell no. He wasn’t some kind of pussy. He
never
should have stopped jacking off; trying to prove that he was in control had only made matters worse. Because now he was dreaming about her all night long. Wet-
fucking
-dreams. Dreams that made him wake up from a perfectly good REM with his cum sticking to the sheets. Dreams that should have been somewhat satisfying but weren’t in the least.

Usually he could control his thoughts during the day. It was unmitigated hell, but usually, he could stay focused on work, on the business that he and his brothers had built from the ground up. But the nights . . . he had no control . . . he thought of her incessantly. He’d even tried a shot or two of bourbon to get her out of his head.

It hadn’t worked and he’d given up trying.

He knew that when he lay down at night, she’d creep into his subconscious and invade his mind and body whether he wanted it to happen or not. He’d see her face, and he’d get hard. He’d imagine her body naked, and he’d get even harder. He’d see the belligerent fire in her eyes as she would snap her mouth closed and refuse to take whatever bait he’d pitched out to her that day.

Then he’d toss and turn and give up on sleep and go take a cold shower. And more often than not, that wouldn’t work either and his suffering only made his imagination run more rampant. He’d see her slip to her knees in the shower stall. Yeah, Maria on her knees. There was no question that he wanted her kneeling in front of him . . . her eyes on his, her lush, reddened mouth open around his cock, taking him in, making him come, swallowing him.

Yeah, he wanted her on her knees, but not until he’d fucked her and fucked her good . . . and made her come in every goddamn position he could think of.

****

As had been her habit for at least four days a week during the last month, Maria left for the hotel gym at eight o’clock that evening, knowing good and well that Garrett would arrive to lift weights at around ten. She wanted to be long gone before he arrived: no way did she want to see him anymore than she was forced to, so she’d quickly figured out his schedule the very first week he’d arrived.

Adjusting hers to his had taken a bit of jostling, but it was more than worth it not to have to be in close contact with his glowering features anymore than necessary.

Holding her gym bag over her shoulder, she stepped into the service elevator and rode it down. She hated being confined, but usually, it was a quick trip, as the car went straight down, but tonight, for whatever reason, it stopped on the floor below hers. Knowing that only employees used the back elevator, she felt a tiny flurry of nerves, but quickly shot them down. What would be the odds . . .?

The doors opened and her stomach sank. Evidently, the odds were good . . . or bad. Whatever.

Her breath caught in her throat as Garrett took a step inside and then came to an abrupt halt, looking at her for the space of a second before his features became emblazoned with an emotion that she couldn’t make out. He was obviously surprised to see her, and a small flurry of butterflies tried to take off in her stomach but she took a deep breath and refused to give in to them.