billion book
31
I didn’t know why. It shouldn’t matter.
But it did.
“Stop deviating. You’re wasting my time.” I nodded toward the stack of papers. “What does this revelation-as you would call it-have to do with the evidence?” I ignored the way my hard-on was pressing against my zipper. “Our client has two email addresses. Most of us do. So what?”
As she took a deep inhale, I glanced down her body, seeing her nipples were even harder than they had been before.
She caught me staring, and I pushed the chair back, getting ready to stand.
“Maybe you called me in a little prematurely.”
“No.”
“Then, tell me, Hannah, what have you found?”
Her work-assigned laptop was open near the head of the table, and she brought it over to me. “I tracked the IP address from where this email had been sent. It’s not from Kennedy’s home or his office.” The data on the screen showed a location in Northern California-an area that wasn’t associated with Kennedy at all, but a region that had come up numerous times in our research. “The question isn’t why he sent it. It isn’t how he sent it. It’s if he sent it.” She shut the laptop, our eyes locked. “And the answer to that is no.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the plaintiff knew he was going to lose this case, and he created false evidence, hoping that we’d be caught off guard so we wouldn’t be able to authenticate it. It’s not Kennedy’s motive, Declan. It’s the plaintiff’s.”
Now, she was playing the fucking song I wanted to hear.
“Keep going.”
She walked to the whiteboard, slowly taking the papers off that she’d taped there, placing them one by one on the table. “Kennedy has been painted as the villain of this story. The one who breached his contract and is being sued for millions. But he’s not the villain here.”
She had found the loophole.
She had shifted the power.
But it was a situation that was merely hypothetical, a scenario I’d created an hour before she arrived.
Had I wanted her heart to drop, her entire body to shake, experiencing the stress of what she would soon face in the courtroom once she passed the bar?
Or had I just wanted to spend more time with her, alone, in a setting that would test my strength?
Fuck, I didn’t know.
I raised my hands and clapped them in the air. “You did it.”
Her eyes instantly brightened. “I did?”
“Yes, Hannah. You found the answer I was looking for.”
Her head tilted back, her mouth opened, her hands pressed against her chest. “Oh my God, I did it.”
The second her eyes left me, I craved the closeness.
I needed it.
I stood and moved toward her, stalling a few feet away.
The moment her head straightened, she processed my new placement. The way my hands were holding the table. How I was leaning against it.
Her breathing sped up as she scanned my face. “Did I forget something? Did I do something wrong-”
“No.”
I needed to back up.
I needed to return to my fucking office.
I needed to tame the thoughts consuming me.
But I couldn’t.
My hands clutched the table and released it.
“Then, what’s wrong, Declan?”
My jaw clenched and unclenched. My toes ground against the bottom of my shoes. My breath came out like huffs from a raging bull. “I’m fighting something-something I shouldn’t even be thinking about.”
“Me.”
Her voice was so soft. At first, I wasn’t sure she’d even said the word or if it had been in my head.
But then she added, “You’re trying to stop yourself from touching me.”
How the fuck does she know that?
Especially since she thought I’d never touched her before.
How would she have connected the way I’d been treating her to my desire of wanting to fuck her?
“Yes.” I took a step closer. “But you’re my intern and a Dalton.” My feet moved again. “Someone I haven’t wanted on my team-still don’t.” My hands hovered in the air above each side of her face. “Someone who has put me through hell since the moment you became employed.”
Her eyes bounced between mine.
“Someone whose mouth has challenged me in so many fucking ways.”
“But don’t you love that about me?” She was almost timid when she spoke, yet she still closed the distance, her body barely pressing against me. “Isn’t that why your eyes devour me at the same time you’re screaming at me? Why you clench your hands whenever I’m within reach to stop yourself from grabbing me?”
She noticed.
“Yes, Declan, I’ve noticed.”
And now, she was in my fucking thoughts, the same way I’d been in hers on the night we met.
Maybe she needed a refresher of what she couldn’t remember from that evening.
The way I’d made her feel.
The octave in which I’d made her scream.
Since she could see it anyway, there was no reason to keep this in. “I’m not going to be able to leave this conference room unless I lick your pussy.”
She rose to her tiptoes. “But you despise me.”
My palms landed on her cheeks, and I aimed her mouth up to mine. “At times … yes.”
“And you want me on someone else’s team.”
I ran my thumb across her bottom lip. “I’ve all but begged your cousins to reassign you.”
“But you can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to fuck me.”
I knew what it would feel like.
That was the goddamn problem.
“That thought often crosses my mind.”
“What’s stopping you, Declan?”
I lowered my face, placing my lips close to hers. Not touching, just within a hairbreadth. “You.”
“Why?” She paused. “I haven’t said no.”
“But you haven’t said yes either.” I set my ear next to her mouth. “Tell me you want me, Hannah.”
Each of her breaths echoed inside me as she teased the folds of my ear with her tongue. “I want you … but you’re such a dick to me.”
“But don’t you love that about me?” I asked, using her own words. “When I treat you so roughly, you can’t stop thinking about what else I might do that’s rough. Would my teeth bite as hard as my shouting?” I cinched her waist, feeling her breath hitch again. “Would my tongue whip you the same way as when I bark at you?”