The Boss(hole) by Penelope Bloom
Adrian
What the hell was that noise? I’d made sure Jules’ room was right beside mine, and for the past hour she’d been running some kind of machine in her room. It was directly on the other side of the wall from my bed, and I couldn’t sleep through the sound.
I got up and went to her door. I knocked a few times. “Jules. What the hell are you doing in there?” I demanded.
The sound kept going and she gave no response. This fucking woman. It was the second time in less than twenty-four hours I’d had to barge through a locked door to check on her. I took out the extra key they’d given me when I booked her room and unlocked her door.
A wave of freezing air blasted me as soon as I opened it. I frowned. It was way too fucking cold in here. She was going to get sick.
It took me a second to register what I was seeing. It looked like there was a blanket larva with a cord sticking out of it on her bed. It was a blanket-covered lump roughly the length of a small, sassy woman and some sort of loud machine was running inside the covers.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. I walked over and yanked the cord out of the wall.
The blankets stirred, then Jules’ head popped out. Her forehead was plastered with wet hair and sweat. “Uh,” she said, blinking through sleepiness. “I was going to turn that off in a sec.”
“Turn what off?” I asked, yanking the covers back. The moment I pulled the covers back, I knew I’d made a mistake. Jules was topless and wearing only a thin pair of white panties beneath the blankets. The only saving grace was that she had her arms crossed and her knees pulled up in a way that kept me from really seeing anything.
Somehow, in the course of three days, I’d seen my personal assistant in her bra and panties before the office party, with her bottoms down and her ass out on the airplane, and now topless and nearly nude in her bed. It felt like the universe itself was testing my self-control.
I jerked my head to the side. “Shit,” I said through clenched teeth.
I heard the blankets ruffling as she pulled them up to cover herself. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you?” I countered. “I couldn’t sleep with that sound. I thought you were vacuuming or something.”
“Why would I be vacuuming a hotel room?”
“I don’t know? But you were sleeping with a running hair dryer under your blankets. Apparently I can’t assume you’re going to be doing something sane or logical.”
“My heater won’t turn on,” she said. “By the time I was done studying your stupid slides I didn’t have time to wait for someone to come try to repair it. I figured I’d just get through the next couple hours any way I could.”
“You’re lucky the bed didn’t catch fire,” I said, lifting up the hair dryer, which was extremely hot to the touch.
“What do you suggest I do, Mr. White?” she asked. God, she even looked incredible with her eyes puffy from sleep and her hair wild. She looked raw and unfiltered. Worse, I knew the only thing between her nearly nude body and my eyes was that comforter.
“You’ll sleep in my room. We don’t have time for this.” I started walking toward the door. “And put some clothes on. Bring your pillow and comforter, too.”
I didn’t wait up for her. I got to my room and looked around, making sure there was nothing incriminating in view. I didn’t make a habit of being careless with my identity, but I wanted to be sure.
She came shuffling in a little while later. She was wearing pajama shorts that barely covered her ass in the back and a white and blue striped top that was too thin to hide the shape of her breasts and nipples. I averted my eyes. This was a bad idea. I should’ve offered for her to sleep in Jordan’s room, but I didn’t want to admit to my sister that I’d gone into Jules’ room to check on her in the middle of the night.
It was bad enough to have to face my unprofessional attraction in my own head. I didn’t need my sister figuring out how bad it was getting.
“You take my bed. I’ll sleep on the floor. Just let me switch out the blankets.” I started to strip the comforter.
Jules shook her head, yawning. “No, it’s fine. We don’t need to swap them out.”
She handed me her comforter—the same one she’d just had wrapped around her naked, sweaty body, and pillow. I considered insisting we switch the blankets out, but she was already crawling into my bed.
Fuck.
I tossed the pillow on the ground and tried to make myself comfortable. The moment I laid my head down, I was washed in that smell of strawberries and sugar from her shampoo. Worse, the comforter smelled fantastic. Her scent was all over it, and I went immediately hard.
This was pathetic. Jules made me feel like some middle schooler with raging hormones. So much as a whiff of her scent and I was hard? Her hair brushing against me on the airplane and my cock was at full mast? It was ridiculous.
I glared at the ceiling, trying to focus on my anger instead of my arousal.
Jules rolled over on the bed, rustling the blankets. A few seconds later, she shifted again. Then again.
Within a few minutes, I realized she was the most active, restless sleeper on the face of the planet. She moved at least every few seconds. Between the intoxicating scent on her blanket and comforter, the rustling noises coming from the bed, and my aggressively hard cock, I couldn’t sleep.
It had to be around four when she finally stopped shifting around so much. Almost as soon as she stilled, she started breathing heavy. “Mmm,” she breathed. “Mmm.”
I went deadly still. She let out a long, satisfied sounding sigh, then started breathing harder. I desperately wished for a window into whatever she was dreaming about. Except I had a feeling seeing it would only drive me to an unjustified jealous rage or plant very unhelpful ideas in my head.
I squeezed my eyes shut and rolled to the side, careful not to snap off my erection in the process.
Absolutely ridiculous.
I silently swore to myself that I would never again hire someone I found so attractive. It didn’t matter if they were the most qualified, impressive candidate I’d ever met. It was simply too distracting. Too dangerous.
I drifted to sleep moments before my alarm rang.
Jules reacted to the blaring sound like she’d been splashed with cold water. She slung the blankets off and rushed across the room to God only knew where. But I was laying right between where she was and where she was going.
In a painful blur, her foot caught me in the side, and she went tumbling down to land right on top of me. She was only wearing thin night clothes and I’d kicked off my blankets from the heat I turned on to help warm her up.
I was completely awake the moment her small body pressed down against mine. We were face to face, her hair dangling down to tickle my ears on either side.
“Um,” she said. “Why are you in my room, Mr. White?”
“It’s my room. And I should be asking why you keep finding ways to inappropriately touch me.”
She ran her tongue over her teeth, grinning slightly. Her eyes slid down toward where our hips were pressed together. “Please don’t fire me for saying this, but either you live your whole life aggressively erect, or you’re enjoying it.”
I carefully took her by the shoulders and moved her off of me. “I’m not about to talk about erectile habits with an employee.”
She got to her knees, and I couldn’t stop from noticing her nipples were hard and pressing through the fabric of her shirt. She looked fantastic, even with her hair all messy and fresh out of bed. “I have a strict rule. I respect the privacy of anything that doesn’t try to press itself between my legs first thing in the morning.”
I let out a groan. This fucking woman. She really wasn’t going to drop it, was she? “I don’t sleep with my employees. That’s the only thing either of us need to know.”
She chewed her lip. It looked like she was thinking of saying something, but she got to her feet and crossed her arms, covering her chest. “You may want to tell that to your not-so-little friend, then.”
She grabbed her phone and headed for my door.
“Miss Adams,” I said, sitting up. “Breakfast in thirty. Meet me in the lobby. I’ll brief you for today while we eat.”
She looked like she was considering cold-blooded murder for an instant, then she forced a smile. “Yes, Mr. White.”
Once the door closed, I collapsed back into my pillow. I honestly had no idea how long I could keep this up. I was even beginning to wonder if it’d be better for us both to just sleep together once and get it out of our systems. Maybe we could agree to be adults about it and get back to work after.
I ran my hands through my hair and groaned in frustration. I couldn’t believe I’d been foolish enough to hire her when I knew damn well what I wanted to do. At this point, it was going to be a victory if made it back to North Carolina without fucking my personal assistant.