Page 67 of Lawless in Leather

Chapter Fifteen

Raina said good-bye to Maggie and followed Mal to his office. Not the security office where he hung out most often but his actual office where she’d had her very first meeting with him. When he’d been all cranky and adorable. Now he was just adorable. She wondered if everyone she passed could hear her heart pounding as she walked next to him and made inane small talk. Or if they knew she was counting the seconds until they were alone.

Mal closed the office door behind them with a firm click that suggested he’d locked it. Then he reached for her and proceeded to kiss the living daylights out of her for several long and delicious minutes.

“Someone will see us,” she squeaked when he let her up for air.

“Nope. Trust me, I know where every camera in this place is and only I have the code that activates the one in here.”

“Still,” she said. “You go sit over at your desk. You’re going to rumple me and then people will know.”

“You’re wearing workout clothes. They don’t rumple.”

“Hair does. Makeup does.” She pointed at the desk. “Get thee behind it, Satan.”

“Satan? I thought I was a knight.”

“Knights don’t kiss like that. Devils do.”

Mal laughed but backed away to the desk and sat. “Happy?”

“Very. Good kiss by the way. Just in case you were wondering.”

That earned her a grin. “Thought it was better to start with that.”

“Before we fight, you mean?”

“Fight?”

“You know, argue. Discuss. Disagree. The part where you tell me that you don’t want me to do any press and then I say that maybe that’s a little extreme and we go a few rounds before we work things out.” She hoped that he was going to be able to work it out. After all, he’d said he would try to let her do things her way.

“Ah, that part. Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,” he said.

“There’s the part where we can have really hot makeup sex after I’m done tonight.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Trying to bribe me, Ms. Easton?”

“Is it working? Can I distract you from the fight part by offering up my body as a sacrifice to the dark lord?” She tried to look like that wasn’t a very appealing prospect. Office. They were in Mal’s office. In the middle of a building filled with many, many people. She couldn’t lose her head and let him kiss her—or do anything else to her—again.

“You said no to the body part just a few minutes ago.”

“So I did.” She sighed. Her past self was sensible. She should listen to her. “Okay, then, dark lord. On to the arguing.”

“You make it difficult to remember what I wanted to argue about,” Mal said. “I keep thinking about what’s under those workout clothes.”

“A body in desperate need of a shower,” she said. “Not sexy at all. So mind out of the gutter. Let’s get this discussion going. There’s this thing called a baseball game happening tonight.”

“So I hear. All right then, discussion it is. I don’t think that you doing any interviews right now is a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because, like I said to Maggie, stuff has been happening. Stuff that suggests there is someone unpleasant out there with a bone to pick with you. I’d rather you didn’t give him a clear shot, so to speak.”

“So far there’s been graffiti, flat tires, and some fireworks. Hardly life threatening.”

“Getting worse.”

“Yes. And believe me, that thought doesn’t exactly make me happy. But I’m not going to let some loser run my life and make me run scared. So I’m not agreeing to do no press at all.”

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