Page 2 of Mated

There’s a big sweeping table in the lobby with a small bank of receptionists. I go up to the friendliest looking one.

“I think there’s a badge waiting for me? My name is Kira Smith.”

“Of course,” she smiles, sliding over a card on a lanyard. “Go on up to the thirteenth floor and speak to Branson.”

The lanyard has my name on it and a picture they took yesterday. I’m not smiling in the picture, just in case it doesn’t look professional.

I put the lanyard around my neck, then take it off because it feels a little awkward, then hold it in my bag, and then finally try clipping it to my purse as I get into the elevator.

Other workers cluster around me, chatting amongst themselves. If they notice that I’m new here, they don’t show it. They seem busy and driven. I feel like a very small fish in a very big pond. Actually, I feel like I’m barely a fish. I’m more like a single celled organism, wriggling my way around some microscopic algae… except I am about to be serving the biggest fish there is.

The crowd in the elevator thins on the way up. I notice that as fewer and fewer people are inside the space, they start to notice me. I get a few curious glances, which I return with a polite smile. Nobody actually says hello though. I am guessing that they’re used to seeing assistants come and go. Probably not worth making an introduction, as far as they are concerned.

I am the last one on the elevator when it arrives at the thirteenth floor.

As it opens, I am almost immediately confronted by a very handsome and flamboyant young man around my age who greets me with a cool stare and a flick of his floppy golden hair.

“Hi, I’m…”

“You’re the new assistant to Mr. Lupin, right?”

“Yes, I…”

Clearly there is no getting a word in with this guy. He thrusts a sheaf of papers at me.

“Your first job is to deliver these contracts. They’re late, and the Walkers have added thirteen different clauses that I know are going to piss him off. I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name. If he doesn’t fire you on the spot once he sees these, come back and tell me what it is.”

I am about to ask where Mr. Lupin’s office is, but the young man points a finger at a large door which looms at the end of the hallway, dominating the space. This is not a typical office environment. It is more like a big corporate lounge space. Cain’s office has to take up a good amount of square footage of the entire floor.

Cain Lupin is a hulking brute. Six-foot-God-only-knows-what, almost as broad as the doorway, and obviously muscular because his business shirt fits him the way my friend Stacy’s favorite clubbing skirt fits her—skin-tight and figure-hugging. There’s no way that’s just cotton. There’s got to be something in that fabric to give it a little stretch. Do billionaires wear polyblends?

He’s handsome, too. He has a beard, or something like a five o’clock shadow that got out of hand. I get the feeling he’s the sort of guy who is never truly clean-shaven for more than an hour or two. He has a full head of thick, dark hair, likewise rebelling against a cut that I know was probably more expensive than my rent. His features are hard and sharp, the way you’d expect them to be. But it’s his eyes that really grab my attention. They’re somewhere between gray and blue, rimmed with dark lashes and accented by thick dark brows that nature has decided will grow with rough definition, rather than bushy wildness.

I draw in a breath, then forget to do anything with it as I find myself in the presence of this man who comes striding into the room like he owns every atom in it, including me. I might as well be a potted plant for all the attention he pays me.

He goes to his desk, picks up a tablet, swipes around for a moment or two, then curses softly under his breath. He has a reputation for being grumpy, and I can certainly see how he earned it.

“Close your mouth, you’ll catch flies,” he says as he catches sight of me. “Are those the Walker contracts?”

He extends his hand for them, reaching over the desk.

“Yes,” I say, handing them over.

“Are they completed?”

“No, sir. I understand new clauses have been added…”

He flips through them, looking at the little pink-stickered places with an increasingly thunderous expression.

This man is incredibly hot. I’ve seen pictures of him before, of course. Everybody has. But pictures really don’t do him justice.In person, there is an energy that emanates from him, a natural dominance mixed with something I can’t quite put my finger on. He makes metingle, that’s what it is. I can feel myself responding to him in a way I’ve never responded to any man.

I guess that’s what a billionaire will do to a girl who grew up dreaming of a room of her own, a place that had an actual door, not a towel that sufficed as a modesty curtain.

“Are you going to stare at me all day, or are you going to go and do something useful?” He snaps the words at me without even looking at me.

“I’m just waiting for your next order, sir.”

His ice-flint eyes flick up at me. He nods, briefly, as if that was the right thing to say. “Good. Then you can take these back to Branson, and tell him to contact Marius Walker, and tell him that if he thinks we’re going to go to one point five percent on the OTTS when his over-under is inside out, then he needs to go to rehab, because he’s clearly back on the hard stuff.”

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