Free Go Deep: A Bad Boy Sports Romance by Bella Love-Wins Page B

small budgets and are duplicating their efforts unnecessarily, and to the same target audience of potential pet owners.”
    “Good point,” I agreed.
    He was pretty good at this. He hadn’t even looked at my slide deck and he’d gotten right to the point it had taken fifteen pages for me to get to. Our project needed to focus on two streams of thinking. First, the more obvious was how we could assist the public with the adoption process and with finding resources, like animal shelters or pet stores. Second, and possibly more important to a more consistent revenue stream was that we needed to focus more on shelters. They had established, underutilized budgets, and they had an interest in minimizing the number of animals left in their care due to mismatches between the pets and the people who visited their specific shelters.
    While the coffee brewed, he sat beside me and took a look through the presentation. “Looks good.”
    “I went with the idea of rotating the pet adoption drives at individual shelters instead of a centralized off-site location for several shelters to come together. This way we can draw attention to each location, and then cycle through the locations so it’s fair and lets people know where they all are. This also helps for people who want to adopt when there’s not a drive going on. They’ll know where to go to do that, since we’re not going to be running an actual shelter ourselves.”
    “Smart. Did you email this to me?”
    “Several times, but check the last email for the final draft.”
    “Cool. How are we going to deliver this presentation? Maybe you can do the intro and I’ll get into the budgets and answer questions.”
    “That could work.” This was going way better than I thought.
    “So, we’re done with the first two hand-ins for this project?” Slade asked, getting up again to fill his coffee mug. I’d already declined on the late-night coffee buzz, so he didn’t bother asking me again if I wanted to partake.
    “Pretty much. I’ve finalized your draft business plan, and if you’re good with this deck as is, we can call it a wrap until the write-up is due after Thanksgiving.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. We’re way ahead…”
    “Sounds perfect.”
    “With our notes from tonight, I’ll finalize the speaking notes for the pitch. We’ll need to run through it once or twice, and then I’ll set up a meeting with an owner or investor through Dr. Taylor.” I laughed. “He’ll be excited to know that we were able to work together on this project after all.”
    “Yes, he will,” Slade agreed.
    “I guess I should be thanking you for going all gung-ho and setting things up with the shelter.”
    “Hell yeah. I can think of a few ways you could do that.” He stood up to stretch and walked over to me as I finished packing up my things.
    “Slade,” I cautioned him, though my body knew what was coming and hell, I wanted him.
    “Stop talking,” he growled, and I closed my eyes when his fingertips caressed my shoulders and ran down my arms, then hooked around my waist.
    His other hand reached up and I think I moaned when he laced his fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck. I definitely moaned when he lowered his head to mine and our lips met. That hungry kiss sent a heat wave of pleasure and need through my body, right to my toes, now curling inside my loafers.
    He tightened his arm around my waist and pulled me against him. I could feel the heat radiating from his groin, and God, I think I soaked my panties just knowing he was hard already. I gripped onto his biceps, feeling the contours of his perfectly sculpted muscles. I wanted him so bad, but no.
    I pulled away from that smoldering kiss before we could get too far again. “No,” I told him. “This can’t happen. I need to get home.”
    “You want this, Cassidy. Stop fighting it.”
    “I don’t… I can’t, okay?”
    “That’s not what the rest of your body’s telling me,” he whispered, taking the