Page 5 of Indecent Demands

I nodded, playing along with my reason for being at Smirtech, even though I knew she had her suspicions about me. I hoped I could go all the way and trust her with the truth—it would make my job a lot easier, but for now I held back. “I’ll be in touch. Perhaps I could get your phone number so I can contact you directly?”

“Sure thing.” Ariana dug out her phone.

“I promise, I’ll only contact you about work.” I didn’t want her to feel that I was one of those guys who would make it personal. Even if there was a part of me who wanted to make it personal—I had a job to do first and foremost. That was what I had to focus on. And I wasn’t in the business of making women uncomfortable.

At least not without her permission.

Ariana blushed a little, and handed me her phone with a blank contact page open for me to put in my name and number. I inserted both, then handed it back. My phone chimed with a text a moment later from a new number:Guess who.

“I’ll ask Tony to up your clearance and get me mine.” I stood up. “It was nice meeting you, Miss Kent.”

“Nice meeting you, too, Mr. Maxwell.”

Ariana suddenly smiled brightly at me and I suddenly wondered what it would take to make her feel shy, to knock her off her game and have her blushing from head to toe. Or getting on her knees and submitting to my indecent, filthy demands. . .

Dangerous thoughts.I ignored them and went to track down Tony. Sure, it had been a while since I’d had sex, but that didn’t mean I was going to get distracted from my assignment by a pretty face, long, sexy legs, and great tits.

Tony was happy to give both Ariana and me access, accepting my story that I needed to analyze things on two accounts in order to ensure that coding and software actually worked, and to conduct certain tests. From there, I locked myself in an unoccupied office and pulled open a spare company laptop to get to work.

For the first part, I just did some exploring. I wanted to know this system inside and out the way the coders did. Unfortunately, it didn’t give me any definite answers about whether the person stealing needed a good knowledge of the system or not. I would have to look into the financial statements for that, but in the meantime I set up a few alerts within the code to ping me on my phone if someone tried to mess with something.

When that was finished, I went up to the accounting department and retrieved copies of the financial reports to compare them to the individual entries in the electronic database. That was going to take hours of not-so-fun busy work and I wasn’t looking forward to it, but the comparison needed to be done.

I left the room, locking it behind me, and went to grab a coffee from the break room. When I entered, I found Ariana in the break room as well, grimacing as she sipped some coffee and scrolled through her phone.

“Hard at work, huh?” I teased, grabbing a mug. There was a box of donuts on the table—I grabbed one of those, too.

“Hard at work the same way you’re eating a healthy lunch,” Ariana replied, gesturing with her mug at the donut in my hand.

I shrugged. “Nothing wrong with a little treat.”

“Nothing wrong with a little work break,” she said back with a smirk.

I chuckled, enjoying our banter. “Touché.”

Ariana went back to her phone and I watched her. It was stupid of me, but… it wasn’t like the thief was going to disappear in the one hour it would take me to have a proper lunch.

“Actually,” I said, putting the donut on a paper plate for later, “would you like to grab something to eat with me? I’m sure you know what’s good around here.”

Ariana fumbled her phone, nearly dropping it. “I—what?”

I tipped my head in amusement. “I’m asking if you’d like to grab lunch.”

“Right, no, I get that.” She blushed again, intriguing me. “I just—are you sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I replied, wondering why she was so hesitant. “Any reason I shouldn’t?”

“I’m a terrible conversationalist,” she blurted out.

“You haven’t met my friend Vaughn,” I said with a grin. “One time our other friend Bryce dared him to stay quiet for a week and didn’t realize that would actually be easy for him and he was happy to do so. Vaughn won the bet.”

Ariana laughed. “Well, all right. I suppose I could take the time. But if there’s an emergency and I get an alert on my phone I’ll have to head back immediately.”

I waved my hand dismissively. “I get that. I worked in coding in the military, so trust me, I understand that when it’s an emergency, it’s anemergency.”

“The military? Wow.” Ariana’s smile looked different than it had before.

She wasn’t one of those people who got weirdly… fetish-y about war vets was she? No, she didn’t have that particular gleam in her eyes. She looked more . . . impressed.

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