Free When in Rio by Delphine Dryden

time?” Jack slid his hand that crucial inch to the side at last and cupped my mound, his sensitive fingers tracing the delicate, clean-shaven lips.
    “Yeah…”
    “Yeah?” he repeated in clear disapproval, but not of my shaving practices. My eyes flicked open to see him looking at me expectantly. Blue. “Answer again, and answer right, Katie.”
    “Yes Sir,” I offered, and sank into his responding smile.
    “Good girl,” he whispered, kissing my mouth now as gently as his hand was fondling my pussy. “I like it like this. I wish I’d known this the other day when your jeans tore—it would’ve provided me a whole new level of visualization.”
    “You saw that?” I was horrified, although I wasn’t quite sure why. At least the mailroom guy hadn’t been the only one, and the idea of Jack sneaking peeks at my butt without my knowledge…
    “Of course I did,” he said matter-of-factly. “You had bare butt showing at the office, you didn’t think I’d notice? I had to close my door to get any work done, and even then…” His fingers slipped around the side of my thigh to caress the spot that had been displayed through the hole in my jeans, just at the crease between my ass and the top of my leg. “Very distracting. You’re very distracting to have around the office, Miss Snow. You always have been.”
    “Is that really why you brought me here?” I could have kicked myself for asking, but something drove me to find out now, before . “To see if this would take the edge off? Known quantity’s less distracting, that sort of thing?” It was easy to think more clearly when he pulled his hand away from my ass, but I still felt the loss pretty keenly. Kendra’s cautions seemed so far away, so irrelevant, although they still nagged at the back of my mind where common sense was trying to keep me from diving off into the deep end.
    Jack backed away a little, scowling, his fingers still pressing into my wrists fiercely. “Would you be here right now if you believed that?”
    I realized the answer even as I responded. “No, of course not. Well…I knew I was qualified to be here in any case. Not here , here. I mean at the conference. I don’t think you would’ve made advances you weren’t pretty sure were going to be accepted, and I didn’t think my job was in jeopardy if I wasn’t interested.”
    When he remained silent, I kept going, a bad habit I had of trying to fill any conversational void. “I’d been throwing off vibes too, I know that, it’s just that up until this weekend I really didn’t think…I mean, there was the whole office, working-together thing. And I didn’t think you’d be interested. I didn’t think you were, um, inclined a certain way? Or that you wouldn’t think I was? Or—”
    “Katie, stop talking.”
    “Yes Sir.”
    Smile.
    Melt.
    “Listen. First of all, if anything, it’s the opposite of what you think. You’re not here because of this. I meant it before, I almost didn’t pick you because of this. Hell, I almost didn’t promote you because I was worried about this. Even though you were clearly the best candidate. I did promote you, but I worried. And I was obviously right to worry.
    “But about the other part, the vibes. Look, when we’re working together in the office, we work well together. You’re professional, you’re very passionate about your work. You clearly have a great deal of knowledge about the field and if you feel you need to argue a position, you do that. In your own way, you get right in my face and you always have, even when you weren’t reporting directly to me. And I give your opinion the respect it deserves. Right?”
    I nodded, not sure where he was going.
    “Your last supervisor didn’t actually like that about you. She told me you had an attitude problem. But I do like it. I know where you stand on things, you’re very honest and you don’t hide your agenda, which is unusual. And I know you’re working harder than I’d ever ask