Page 6 of Summoned by the CEO (Curvy for Keeps)

Mine. Mine.Mine!

I’m calm and silent, but she keeps talking like she can’t help it. “Well, as far asmylife goes, this is the mostunrealthing that’s ever happened,” she says, that panic showing again on her pretty face. She tenses up beneath me, and I know she’s thinking now, thinking about the practical matters of what just happened, about her job, her future, about my seed inside her. “Oh, God, what have I done?! How could I have . . . have . . . oh, shit, you . . . you came inside me! I let you come inside me! I’m not on birth control! What if I get . . .” She shakes her head firmly, and I can see the wheels turning in her head. “I can take the Plan B pill,” she says, blinking five times and then forcing a smile and nodding. “Nothing to worry about. I’ll just head over to the drug store and—”

“You aren’t taking any Plan B, C, or fucking Z pill,” I growl, feeling a dangerous possessiveness rise up in me like I’m responding to a threat. A threat to my future. A threat to my forever. “Thereisno Plan B, Angie. That’s not how I live my life. No backup plans. No second-guessing. That’s how I built my business, how I earned my billions, how I dominated my industry. After Pops died I decided that I wasn’t gonna make the mistakes he made. He was a hard worker, but he was always afraid of failing, always fearful of taking risks. He always had a Plan B, a backup strategy, a fallback option.” I shake my head and tighten my jaw, reaching up and slowly gripping Angie’s wrists again. “If you have a strategy for failure, it means you’re subconsciouslyexpectingto fail, that you’re afraid of being wrong, that you think youarewrong.”

“That’s just common sense,” Angie says, frowning as she feels my grip on her wrists again. “Everyone is wrong sometimes. That’s just how the world works.”

“Notmyworld,” I whisper, leaning in and kissing her roughly on the lips. “And you’re in my world now, Angie. Youaremy world now. This is the plan. The only plan.”

“OK, maybe we need to take a step back, Mr. Archer,” she says, her voice wavering, her eyes darting left and right like she’s losing her shit—or maybe like shewantsto lose her shit, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, it makes sense, I realize as I narrow my gaze and see that this woman is mentally strong. She doesn’t lose her shit like a little girl. But what she felt in my presence has shaken the fuck out of her, and she’s trying to put it into context, trying to do and say things that a normal woman would deem “sensible.”

“You’re not a normal woman, Angie,” I whisper. “You’re special. I was never destined to be with a normal woman, and you were never fated to be with some normal loser who punches the time-clock and worries about his fucking 401k and cholesterol levels.”

“OK, you are so full of arrogance and prejudice it’s not even cute,” she snaps back at me. “You’ve got a bunch of hourly workers punching the timeclock for your damned company! So they’re all losers?!”

I wince when I realize what I sound like. “That’s not what I meant,” I say quickly. “I just meant thatyou’remeant for something more, someonemore.”

“I appreciate the compliment, and I’ll take it under advisement, Mr. Archer,” she says, a firmness in her tone that tells me she’s closing herself off to the simple truth that we’re together now, that she’s mine and there’s no getting away from it. “Now if you’ll unhand me, I need to get back to work before someone wonders why I’ve been gone so long.”

I snort in surprise, wondering if this woman is for real. And then I’m pissed off. Straight-up angry. “Work?Work?! Fuck, you work forme, Angie! Anyone says a goddamnwordto you I’ll fire your entire department and replace them with those robots on wheels.” I shake my head and snort again. “And who the hell saysunhand me? What world are you living in?”

“Yourworld, remember?” she shoots back triumphantly, like she’s delighted to be able to use my own words as a weapon. “A world in which you think you control everything and everyone. A world long gone, where men think they can growl and grunt and beat their chests and people will bow to their will. A world in which rich, powerful men think they can . . . that they canownwomen.”

She blinks like she’s almost embarrassed that she’s playing the sexist card, but I can’t help but take the bait. She wants to taunt me, get a rise out of me, fuck with my head? Well, it’s working.

“I can’t speak for the pussy-ass men of this new generation of wimps,” I growl. “But Idoown you. I just claimed you with my seed. That means I fucking own you. That’s how an alpha beast claims his mate. And guess what? I’m the fucking alpha beast in this building. And you’re my mate. You’re no longer my employee. You’re my woman, and that’s that. Get used to it, Angie.”

“I’m not going to be defined by being nothing more than a man’s woman,” she growls right back at me, venom in her voice, fury on her face. “And you can’t fire me. My performance reviews are outstanding, and there are no grounds for dismissal.”

“Well then, you’ll have to resign. Company policy clearly states that two employees with a reporting relationship cannot be involved in a romantic relationship,” I say with a grin and a shrug. “And since I’m the CEO, every employee technically reports to me. Which means either you have to quit or I have to quit.”

“So I guess you’ll have to quit,” she says, also with a grin and shrug like she’s mocking me, testing me, straight updefyingme! “Coz I’m certainly not quitting.”

“You’re a fuckingsecretarysomewhere in the bowels of Archer Industries!” I cry out, raising my voice. I hate the fact that she’s getting to me, and I know what I should do is calm the fuck down and just ignore all of this. I don’t even believe what I’m saying, but she’s pulling me into this bullshit argument that I sense is about something else entirely—about us dealing with a shockingly strong connection that defies logic, that seems like the stuff of myths and fairy-tales. Like something from those lame-ass romance novels that all the admin assistants read in the break-room.

“First you belittle hourly workers,” she says, her voice rising in pitch just like mine.

Now you’re downplaying your admin assistants. These are the folks who are the arms and legs of Archer Industries, you know. I’d argue thatwe’remore important to this company’s bottom line thanyouare!”

I thunder with laughter, shaking my head and laughing again. “I’m both the brains and the balls of this company, little girl. IamArcher Industries. Everyone else is replaceable, interchangeable, cogs in the wheel that turns because of my ambition, my energy, my power and dominance.”

Angie rolls her eyes in a way that makes me see red. Blood fucking red.

“So the rumors are true after all,” she says. “Youarea delusional megalomaniac who’s isolated himself from reality, lives alone in his dark tower up in the clouds like some old vulture, counting his gold like a depraved dragon.” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes again. “You got lucky when your business took off twenty years ago, and like so many clueless millionaires you decided that it wasn’t luck but had something to do with your skill or power or whatever.”

My anger has risen to a point where it’s slowly overflowing like a volcano that hasn’t erupted but is simply oozing molten lava, gently enveloping everything in red heat. I feel it course through every sinew in my hard body, and I slowly release my grip on Angie’s wrists, leaning back and caressing her cheek as I slide my other hand beneath her head and fist her thick brown hair. Nobody’s ever fucking messed with my head like this, said shit like this to my face, rolled their eyes at me, mocked and defied me, straight-upinsultedme! I know that in a way Angie’s as surprised at herself as I am at listening to someone talk to me like this. I know that what I sensed earlier is true: This weird fight we’re having is more to do with us trying to work through the explosive way we just came together, trying to fight feelings that are so visceral we’re scared they aren’t real, trying to fight through the confusing sense that we’re in love even though we don’t really know each other yet.

We’re trying to fightourselves, I realize as I narrow my eyes and tighten my grip on her hair until she winces, gasps, and then lets out a low moan that gets my cock so stiff I almost choke. We’re each trying to fight our own long-held beliefs of how two people come together, how two people fall in love, what love even is, at some level.

“A belief in luck is a sign of a lack of faith in one’s own power and abilities,” I whisper as I pull her close. “That’s why you’ve settled for a job that’s below your potential, Angie.”

“Again with this disrespectful crap about admin assistants,” she snarls back, almost spitting into my face, she’s so damned angry. I love it. I fucking love it. She’s got fire, this woman. She’s not a pushover, not a weak, frail little waif who’s going to bow down to the king, submit to the CEO just because he says so.

Nah, she’s not going to submit just because I say so.

I’m gonna have tomakeher submit.

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