Free Beauty and the Barracuda by Nikki Winter

back her panties, she probably couldn’t stand without her ovaries rolling out onto the floor, and she quite possibly looked like a trauma victim…Nyssa found arousal thrumming through every erogenous zone on her body.
    What was wrong with her? This was Sunny !The man who panicked when he got too low on Paul Mitchell! Granted, his hair made him quite possibly the sexiest man alive but his obsession was not a healthy one! The majority of the time he made her laugh at him and there were moments where she seriously questioned why in God’s name she had any association with his insanity. He snored, and for a brief time in their friendship they’d had too many arguments about his refusal to wear underwear. He teased her relentlessly on her minor addiction to dairy products and was a pain in the ass to buy gifts for. But right now, sitting next to him and recognizing the complete and total devotion in his eyes, none of that mattered because she loved him. By all that was unholy, she loved him.
    “Come here.” He leaned back on the couch and patted his lap.
    “I—”
    “Shh.” Sansone held up one finger then pointed back to his thighs. “I said come. Here.”
    Nyssa moved to rest against one leg but he dragged her until she straddled him.
    “Now kiss me.”
    “We’re supposed to be talking.”
    “About?”
    “About why this”—he waved a hand between the two of them—“is a bad idea.”
    Sansone shrugged. “That sounds boring. I’d rather spend more time plundering you into subjugation. Now be a good girl and let me put my tongue in your mouth again.”
    He was ridiculous—so, so ridiculous. “What is wrong with you?”
    “Well, at the moment, the love of my life isn’t allowing me to recite the Russian national anthem on her cl—”
    She place a hand over his mouth. “No…just…no.”
    His only response was a despondent sigh.
    “This…this… Whatever happened here was something we needed to get it out of our systems—” Sansone opened his mouth as if he were going to cut in but she pressed her hand over it harder. “—and it shouldn’t have happened. If we go down this road I can almost promise it won’t end well for anyone involved. We have a business, Sansone. If we one day decide we’re disgusted with breathing the same air, others will suffer because we gave into something we’ve successfully ignored for so long and I. Will. Lose. You. We can’t pretend that you don’t have my panties in your pocket but we can make a definitive choice to stop this before it burns us both.”
    Brows winging, he tried to reply to that but it came out muffled and she had no intention of removing her hand until she was done, so Nyssa left it there. “Ask yourself if it’s really worth it.”
    He then tilted his head and his eyes narrowed just the tiniest bit. Nyssa attempted to scramble off his lap but the bastard held fast, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her skirt up once again. All she could hear aside from the pounding of her own heart was his belt buckle, then his zipper and afterwards his voice saying, “I obviously wasn’t blunt enough earlier when I told you that you had no authority here. Perhaps I should be just a little more thorough.”
    ***
     
    What exactly was it about Nyssa Blackwell that drove him to being completely unreasonable? He didn’t know, and frankly he didn’t give one good fuck because if she thought for even a second he was giving her up in some chivalrous attempt to keep things at work balanced she was insane. Fuck work. Fuck everything else but right now. It was clear as day what she was truly afraid of. Woodard had devalued her, make her feel as though she were an object to be used for his amusement. He made Nyssa feel replaceable. For that alone, if Sansone ever saw him again, he’d hurt him the way he’d hurt Nyssa. She could never be interchangeable. He could never replace her. He could never pretend he hadn’t felt the silken grip of her pussy as she