“
Look, Dad. I’m okay. I like this girl. Everything’s normal.
“Only my father,” I say to Tina, “would imagine that anyone could find paperwork arousing.”
“What?” Her smile is a touch too wide, a little too faked. “Don’t tell me your media training didn’t cover this, either.”
I set the stack of papers on the flat surface of my desk and gesture Tina to sit in the leather-bound executive chair.
“What am I supposed to say, then? Come on, baby. It’s a nondisclosure agreement. You’ll like it. I promise.”
She gives me an unimpressed look. “God,” she says. “And I thought you were supposed to be a good liar. That’s not how you do it.” She bites her lip and then she leans toward me. Her eyelashes sweep down, and when she talks, she lowers her voice toward sultry.
“I don’t know, Blake.” She bites her lip and reaches gingerly for the papers, stroking her thumb along the edge. “It’s so…big. I’m not sure it will fit.”
I almost choke. She looks up with a touch of a smile.
Fuck. I started this.
“We’ll go nice and slow.” I pull a chair beside her and sit down, and very slowly take a pen from the holder. “Tell me if it hurts and I can stop anytime. I promise.”
“Be gentle.”
I know we’re just joking. I know this doesn’t mean anything. Still, my body doesn’t know this is a show when I lean toward her. I don’t feel like I’m lying when I inhale the sent of her hair. It goes straight to my groin, a stab of lust. “Trust me,” I murmur.
She’s sitting in my chair. She’s smaller than me and all that dark leather surrounds her, blending in with her hair. But when she looks up, tilting her head toward me, she doesn’t seem tiny. She pulls the first paper-clipped section of pages to her, glances at the first paragraph, and wrinkles her nose.
“Ouch,” she says in a much less sensual tone of voice. “It hurts already.”
“It basically says that if you tell anyone anything about Cyclone business, we get one of your kidneys,” I translate helpfully.
“How sweet.” She hasn’t looked up from the document. “Do your lawyers know you summarize their forms like that?”
“Disclose two things,” I say, “and we get two kidneys.”
“Mmm. Playing rough. What happens if I disclose three? You shut down my dialysis machine?”
“You get a commemorative Cyclone pen,” I say mock-seriously. “Come on. We’re not monsters.”
She cracks a smile at that. She’s not one of those girls who always smiles, and that means that when she does smile, it means something. Her whole face lights up and my breath catches at the sight. I lean in, as if I could breathe in her amusement. But then she drops her head and goes back to reading. When she finishes, she signs with a flourish.
“What’s next?” she says. “Bring it on.”
I hand over the next few pages.
She holds it up and looks at me. “Don’t lie to me, baby. I bet you make all the girls you bring in here sign this.”
You know what? I have never before found SEC regulations this sexy. I lean close to her.
“No way,” I murmur. “This is just for you.”
“Really?” She manages that look of hurt skepticism so well. I reach out, almost touching her cheek—until I remember that this isn’t real.
“No,” I whisper back. “Not really. Everyone does sign it; it’s company policy.”
“Oh, too bad.” She’s still reading the page. “I was hoping you had a selective disclosure just for me.”
Selective, I realize, is a sexy word when drawn out the way she does it, her tongue touching her lips on the l sound. So is disclosure.
“I can disclose,” I hear myself saying. “Selectively.”
“Maybe you can give it to me in a material and nonpublic place.”
I lean toward her. “You know me. I put the inside in insider trading.”
She’s still holding the pen poised above the paper. I touch my finger to the cap and then slowly slide it down the barrel until my hand meets hers. A shock of electricity hits me, followed by a jolt of lust.
”
”