Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 49

OCEANS.

Three hours and one hundred and eight thousand dollars later, I hadn’t even scratched the surface of what I was willing to do.

“Oceans.” She was slightly breathless trying to keep up with my stride as I led her into the next boutique. “This is already too much. How am I supposed to pay all of this back?”

“You will,” I said, without breaking stride.

“I already owe you almost seventy thousand from before…”

“You owed the office seventy thousand.” I glanced at her briefly. “What you’re accumulating today, you owe me.”

She processed that for a second. “That still adds up to an obscene amount of money. How long would I have to work to clear all of it?”

I stopped walking, and she almost walked into me.

I turned and looked down at her, the worry sitting plainly on her face, the way she was doing the mental arithmetic in real time and not liking where it was landing, and put both hands in my pockets.

“You’ll work for as long as it takes, Kiss.”

“But…”

“There are other payment plans you could explore.” I held her gaze. “We’ll discuss them when

face lit up immediately almost made me we’re done here,” I suggested, and the way he laugh.

So naive and innocent. So completely unaware of how easy she was to read.

I turned and kept walking.

The moment she told me Moonie had taken everything from the first shopping trip, I had already begun making two separate calculations in my head – one for replacing what had been taken, and one for what I intended to do about Moonie. The second calculation was considerably more satisfying to work through than the first.

I had hired a private shopper this time instead of sending Noella. If Noella were here, I would have spent the afternoon constructing professional justifications for every single purchase that was already summing up to a ridiculous amount that obviously had nothing to do with being professional, and I didn’t have the patience for that today.

22

OGO

O

12:02 Fri, May 22

Chapt

By the time we were back in the car, the total sitting across all the receipts was one hundred and ninety–two thousand dollars.

Kiss had gathered every single receipt into her lap and was sitting with me in the back seat, staring at them like she was looking at a number she couldn’t fully make her brain accept as real.

Her lips moved the smallest amount, like she was doing the math again and arriving at the same answer and hoping she had gotten it wrong.

I smiled and left her to her thoughts until, just like a baby, she fell asleep.

85

No matter how hard I tried, my gaze kept traveling to the hem of the dress that had ridden up slightly with the way she was sitting, exposing the smooth, soft skin of her upper thighs in a way that the dress had not been designed to do, and that my self–control was discovering it was thoroughly unequipped to ignore.

Fuck. My cock had its own opinion about it, and it jerked in response.

I had made her wear it.

The private shopper had asked her to try it on, and when she came out of the fitting room, I had looked at her for exactly two seconds and said we were taking it.

The dress was floral and flared and stopped mid–thigh. It was a perfectly reasonable choice of clothing that I was now deeply contemplating whether selecting it was a wise choice.

I was going to have to establish some ground rules about that dress. Specifically about where she wore it and who else was going to be within visual range when she did. Because the version of events where she walked into a place in it, and every man present formed an opinion about her thighs, was a version I was already deciding wasn’t going to happen.

The list of places that dress was not going without me being within an arm’s reach was already longer than I had square footage in my head to store it.

I couldn’t count the number of times I stopped my hand from doing something my brain would not be able to defend this time.

So, I swallowed it all up and told myself to be patient. We weren’t far from home.

Twenty minutes later, the car pulled into my parking lot and came to a stop. I reached over and took her hand in mine and squeezed gently.

“Hey… We’re here.” I said softly.

She cracked her eyes open and took in her surroundings, “What…? Oceans?” She sat up, “What are we doing at your house?”

22

OOGO

12:02 Fri, May 22

Chapter 49

“What else?” I smirked. “We have some work to do. Plus, I paused, “remember the payment plan I talked about?”

She nodded with narrowed brows, “Yes. I do.”

“Great. We’ll also talk about it inside. Come on.”

***

The walk to the bedroom seemed like a thousand miles. I was eager to get us both behind those doors.

My head was fucking full of so many fantasies I wanted to bring to life already. Fantasies I gathered up and rehearsed just before Sydney. I fucking had plans for that trip.

I had detailed, thorough, extensively rehearsed plans that the missed flight had put on indefinite hold. And, they had been sitting in the back of my mind ever since, gathering pressure with every passing day.

But she was back now, and I had absolutely no intention of letting a single one of those plans

go to waste.

She stopped at the foot of the stairs.

I turned. “What?”

“Why are we going all the way up there?” The look in her eyes told me she already knew the answer and was giving me the opportunity to say something that would make it easier to pretend she didn’t.

“Work, Kisarel,” I replied a bit firmly, “Let’s go.”

I didn’t give her the time or attention to make an argument. I climbed on, hoping she’d join

1. me.

After a second of hesitation, I heard her coming after me.

Good.

I waited by my bedroom door. She came up the landing and stopped a few paces short of me, her eyes moving from my face to the door and back again.

“That’s not your office,” she said.

“No,” I agreed.

“Oceans, I can’t go in there with–”

22

OGO

О

12:02 Fri, May 22

Chapter 49

“Fuck.” I cursed, “Not now, Kiss.” I reached out, closed my hand around her wrist, pushed the door open, and pulled her through it in one motion.

I pushed the door closed with a loud bang, and before she could register what was happening. I pinned her against the wall.

“Don’t tell me you’re scared, Kiss,” I closed the distance between us, standing so close to her it was so fucking addictive.

“I’m not scared.” She lifted her chin, trying for a firmness that her pulse was actively undermining. I could feel it jumping against her wrist where my fingers still circled. “I just think we shouldn’t be doing this anymore.”

Cute. Sounds different from the same woman who let me kiss her in a stranger’s house just a few hours ago.

I leaned down slowly, closing the distance by degrees, watching her eyes track every inch of it, until I was close enough that a breath from either of us would have been enough to close

the rest.

“Why?” I brought my palm to the side of her face, letting my thumb caress her bottom lip.

“You called me a few necessary fucks.” She forced the words out through the visible effort of concentrating on anything other than what my thumb was doing. “That’s not what I want to be.” Her voice dropped. “Even though we’re both cheating on the people we’re supposed to

want.”

I held her gaze.

“Those,” I said, brushing my lips along the edge of hers, feeling her breath catch at the almost–contact, “were the words of a jealous man.”

Her brow furrowed even as her body leaned the smallest fraction toward me. “Jealous of what?”

I brought my other hand to the wall above her head, caging her in fully, “You let Jace touch what’s mine.” I said quietly, my gaze dropped from her eyes to her lips, and I let it linger

there.

Clarity dawned on her immediately, and she didn’t know what to do with what she had just

heard.

“Wait.” She tried to turn her head, but my palm kept her exactly where she was. “What? I’m not yours, Oceans. You can’t actually think…”

“I can.” I held her gaze and felt everything in my body pulling toward her, “I told you before. I don’t fuck my subordinates.” My thumb pressed a fraction harder against her lip and felt her

22

O

OGO

O

12:02 Fri, May 22

Chapter 49

breath stutter against it. “I fucked you, Kiss. Which means you’re mine” I brought my lips back to the edge of hers. “Every. Single. Part of you.”

AD

Comment