Page 72 of Corrupt Game

He’d known even when I didn’t.

Trying to find the evidence I needed was going to be so much harder than I’d imagined it would be. He wasn’t going to keep something like that just lying around for a new assistant to stumble upon. It would have been buried so deep that only he would be able to find it.

Drying my hands, I walked out of the room with a glance around to find the cameras.

It was creepy that Ian had to check in on me all the time. Was there ever a time that he trusted people? Someone special must have really hurt him.

Why was I trying to excuse his behavior?

There wasn’t this much corporate espionage to elicit this level of response from him. Something else must be behind his actions. I just had to figure out what it was.

What was his reason for such tight control?

I ate the food that Rossi had delivered as I looked over the files from a new angle.

He was always yammering on about how it was my choice. Maybe it was time to find out about his choice. I had been going about this in the wrong manner, I needed to break him and not the other way around.

“My choice my ass,” I murmured happily. He was about to find out how sickeningly sweet I could be when I wanted to get my way.

Chapter 23: Ian

I had run from Collette today. I couldn’t take it anymore. She was taunting me. Flaunting herself was more like it. She’d actually found a way to make me want to change my rules.

There was no way to ignore her luscious breasts when she was constantly bending over in front of me. They were right there for the taking. My hands itched to feel them, to grasp them and hold them.

I couldn’t even be in the office anymore. Everywhere I turned, she was there. It was my own fault, really. I could have told herthat there wasn’t a need for her to be there, but I didn’t want her to be far from my side because I was selfish.

She’d wormed her way into my life, and when she’d confronted me on the need to control her, I hadn’t responded. It wasn’t really any of her business. Then again, I was the one that had brought her here, and in a way, her questions weren’t that far off.

Was I afraid to tell her the truth? Shouldn’t I have wanted to be transparent? How was I ever going to get close to someone if I couldn’t handle a few questions?

For some strange reason, I was wanting to get to know Collette better. She drew me in with her unique personality.

Why did I feel the need to torture her? I could have had the same amount of pleasure without the need to inflict a mental breakdown. Exploring the ways in which she worked made it feel like she was an experiment and not someone that I was developing feelings for.

I really wanted to develop feelings for the first time ever. I was falling in love.

I stuttered at the thought. My heart started beating out a falsetto that I never thought I would experience. Collette has lured so much from me.

Love. That was a foreign word to me. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever had anyone that even meant enough to have that word come from my lips. No one had tried to find a way into my heart.

I probably hadn’t let anyone close enough to try. My mother had been the only one that had shown me love. I wasn’t even sure it was true love. She’d done the best she could, but in the end I had lost her way before I found out how love worked.

To work through this minefield, the research lab had become my sanctuary over the past few weeks. There had to be some separation from my siren.

Torn between the need to be near her all the time or be able to check in on her, it had become a constant habit. Knowing where she was at all times sated my need to overprotect her. I knew that wanting to check on her was a traumatic response to losing my mother.

Everything that happened throughout the day either reminded me of her or drew me closer to her. I couldn’t escape her. It was as if she had something about her that I just couldn’t ignore any longer. I didn’t want to ignore it anymore.

Each thing she did only brought more parts of her to my attention. No matter what I threw at her, she just bounced back up and came at it with a different perspective.

There hadn’t been another woman that had had this effect on me. I kept trying to stop this growing attraction for her, but she didn’t react like any other woman I had ever met. It kept egging me on, and I wanted to explore more about her. Find out all the ways that made her tick.

Everyone else had left for the day, and I turned out the lights in the lab before walking over to the leather chairs in the corner.

“Why am I doing this?” I muttered out loud as I put my head in my hands.

It was too hard to explain. The reason I’d always had a one year contract was so the feelings didn’t get too deep and both parties could always move on.

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