Nicole Edwards - Perception

“I’m good. What time’s my next meeting?”

“Eleven-thirty,” she answered instantly. “You’re scheduled to call Malcolm Hirsh.” Even her sweet lilting drawl was cute.

Fan-fucking-tastic. Just what he wanted to do today.

Hirsh was a persistent bastard who’d been driving him batshit crazy for the last three months. Xander owned a piece of property that he’d been sitting on for the last five years or so. He had no intention of doing anything with it just yet, but Hirsh, the owner of the adjacent property was looking to expand his operations. He wanted Xander’s land. But he didn’t want to pay anywhere close to what Xander wanted for it.

“Thanks.” Glancing over at the clock on the wall, Xander noticed it was only ten. He looked back at Leah, who was still standing in his doorway. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

Her eyebrows darted up into her hairline before she was able to mask her expression. “Are you sure?”

“Very.” At the moment, he had other ideas of how to pass the time, and he didn’t need an audience.

“Ok, then. I’ll… Let me just finish what I was doing and then I’ll go. But I’ll see you tomorrow morning, right?”

“Of course,” he answered, trying to soften his expression. He was thinking too much, and he knew that Leah was sensitive whenever he got into one of his moods. He wasn’t sure why that was, but she shied away from him most of the time.

“Thank you.”

He had no idea what she was thanking him for, but he watched as she disappeared around the corner. He wiggled his mouse to get his screen saver to disappear, and he pulled up his calendar.

“Hey, Leah,” he called out.

“Yes, sir?” she asked, rushing back to his door.

“Clear my calendar for the rest of the day before you go. I’ll take Hirsh’s call, but that’s it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Xander tried to work for the next few minutes, waiting for Leah to leave, but he had a difficult time focusing. Thankfully, his assistant didn’t take long before she was saying good-bye and heading to the door.

Before the front door probably even shut behind her, Xander had picked up his phone and dialed.

“Yes?” Mercedes asked, making the word into two syllables when she answered.

“Meet me in my conference room in ten minutes. Bring the comps with you.” Xander didn’t wait for a response; he hung up the phone and then took a deep breath.

It was now or never.

Mercedes knew she shouldn’t have been all that surprised by Xander’s abrupt phone call but she was. It wasn’t his fault either. She felt as though she was walking around in some sort of alternate universe, confused about where she was and where she was going. Imagine walking around on the ceiling and trying to figure out if you were the one upside down or the furniture was.

That’s how she felt.

Printing out the comps she had pulled up as soon as Xander left, she grabbed a pencil, her cell phone, and the paper now sticking out of the printer. She didn’t know if it had been ten minutes or not, but she was ready to get this over with.

It was a regular occurrence for Xander to summon her to his office to discuss business, and usually she’d be prepared for anything he could throw at her. But this time she felt strange as she rode the elevator to his floor.

When she stepped up to his front door, she was tempted to knock, but she knew that would’ve also been weird, so she turned the knob and walked in. Closing the door quietly behind her, she took stock of the living area. Empty, just as she expected.

A few seconds later, she was walking into the conference room – which, by the way, Xander had never requested that they meet in.

“What are you looking at?” she asked as she moved closer, watching him stare out of the floor to ceiling windows, his hands thrust in his pockets in a typical Xander fashion.

“Just admiring the view.” He turned slowly to face her, and a smile crept across his lips. “However, this view is considerably better.”

Mercedes rolled her eyes. Now this was getting ridiculous. She had thought for sure he’d be over this by now.

Maybe the guy just needed to get laid, she didn’t know.

Watch her, pet. Watch while she lowers herself onto his cock. Just like I want to see you doing to me.

Shit. A chill raced down her spine at the memory of his words from the night before. She could still hear the rough gravel of his voice, evidence that he’d been just as affected by what happened as she had.

But it didn’t matter. She couldn’t help him.

Maybe it would do him some good to go to the club tonight instead of her. She’d be more than happy to back off if he needed to head out and release some of the tension that was clearly building up.

She wanted to tell him as much, except the idea of Xander with another sub, or any woman for that matter, made her stomach churn.

A sudden snap had her glancing down to her hands. She’d broken her pencil right in half.

Fucking great.

At least it hadn’t been her cell phone she had snapped right in two.

Looking back at Xander, she noticed he was on the move, and she went the opposite direction, keeping the small conference table between them at all times. She didn’t wait for him to ask her to sit, she just dropped right into the chair closest to the windows. Expecting him to take a seat on the opposite side, she immediately regretted having sat down when he remained standing.

Crap.

“Nervous?” he asked, his eyes darting down to the broken pencil in her hand, his hands still casually inserted into his pockets.

“Not hardly,” she lied.

“You don’t like that I’ll admit to admiring you, do you?”

Frustrated that he wouldn’t let it go, Mercedes met Xander’s gaze head on and said harshly, “Whatever, Boone. There’s no one to impress anymore; you don’t need to try and flatter me.”

Xander was beside her in a flash. His abrupt movement startled her, causing her to drop both halves of her pencil, the papers and her cell phone onto the table. As he loomed over her, she looked up at him, her body stone still, her eyes wide, and her mouth slightly open as she tried to figure out what the hell he was going to do.

Before she could come to a conclusion, he was taking her hand, pulling her to her feet and then backing her up a few inches until she was flush against the window he’d been gazing out of just a few minutes before.

How the hell had that just happened?

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice low, her anger apparent. “Let me go.”

“No. Not until we hash this out.”

“Hash what out?” she asked as she tried to push him away unsuccessfully. Albeit, she hadn’t been using as much force as she should have, not to mention Xander Boone wasn’t going to budge unless he absolutely wanted to.

Xander gripped her hips gently, holding her in place with relative ease. He wasn’t going to hurt her; she knew that. And she wasn’t at all scared of him. She just wasn’t sure she could hold out being this close to him. Not after everything she’d been feeling since last night.

The man, despite all of the warnings that she’d always given herself where he was concerned, drew her in, made her want things she shouldn’t want, and he’d proven that effortlessly at Devotion. But she still had time to turn things around, to ignore everything that had happened between them and move on with life as normal.

When she stopped pushing against him, he loosened his grip, and she surprised herself when she stopped putting up a fight.

“So talk,” she said after a long, deafening silence.

Xander moved, and Mercedes glanced down as he reached for her hands, linking his fingers with hers before lifting her arms up over her head and pinning them against the glass.