The Two Week Arrangement (Penthouse Affair, #1) novel Chapter 33

Dominic

The smooth curve of Presley’s back rises and falls with her soft breathing. I’m not quite sure when she fell asleep because I was too busy watching the way the moonlight reflected off her creamy skin, reveling in the pleasurable calm thrumming through me.

What’s going to happen, Dom? Are you really going to let her stay the night?

That can’t happen. I don’t want to have to explain her presence to Fran in the morning, or deal with the possibility of waking up one of the girls while sneaking Presley out. Trying to put a toddler back to sleep at this time of night isn’t my idea of postcoital fun.

Presley shifts under my sheet, her thick hair splayed across my pillows. She nuzzles into the silken material. It occurs to me that she probably can’t afford the frivolous things I take for granted, like eight-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.

I don’t want to wake her, I decide. Let her sleep for a little while more.

I roll out of bed and slip on the same pair of cashmere pants from earlier. As I tighten the drawstring, I imagine Presley pulling it loose later. The way her eyes look when she . . .

Get it together, man.

I make myself comfortable in the chair adjacent to the bed. I open my laptop, the soft glow of the screen the only light, except for the moon.

Presley’s messenger bag lies beside my chair, near my feet. Her laptop is in that bag, the sign of an employee who’s willing to drop everything at a moment’s notice to get the work done.

She’s so damn dedicated, with a work ethic that rivals my own. And it looks like she has plenty of work to do. There’s a folder poking out of her bag, likely jostled loose in our eagerness to get to the fucking part of the evening.

I stare at it, wondering. I haven’t given her an assignment lately. On one edge of the folder is scrawled a name.

Genesis . . . the software company that tried to ruin me.

I reach over, pick up the folder, and open it. My stomach twists at what I see.

“What are you doing?” Presley sits up in bed, the sheets pooling around her waist, her breasts naked in the dim light of the room. Her eyes are heavy with sleep and her cheeks rosy with warmth.

Meanwhile, I feel like I just swallowed a piece of coal. “What is this?”

Presley squints at the folder as if she’s trying to remember. Recognition flits over her features, then fear. “That’s not what you think.”

“What do I think?”

“It’s not my folder.”

“Then why do you have it?”

She sits up straighter, her eyes alert now. “A guy gave it to me.”

“A guy.” My heart rate is thrumming fast now, and anger boils through my veins.

“Someone I met,” she says. “I’ve only seen him like, three times.”

“Are you fucking him, too?” Presley finches at my words, but the adrenaline surging through my veins is too much to ignore. “Is this what you do? Sleep with whomever you think will help with your career?” I keep my tone calm and cold, and she watches me with huge, worried eyes.

I’ve been in this position before. Usually, though, I don’t catch the lie while the bed’s still warm. But Presley is young, and obviously sloppy at the ploy. Many women have wanted to bed me for different reasons, although money is usually at the top of that list.