Chapter 3 (1/2)

“You sound like a control freak,” she says, and she’s perfectly serious.

What the hell? Maybe she can see through me.

“Control” is my middle name, sweetheart.

I glare at her, hoping to intimidate her. “Oh, I exercise control in all things, Miss Steele.” And I’d like to exercise it over you, right here, right now.

That attractive blush steals across her face, and she bites that lip again. I ramble on, trying to distract myself from her mouth.

“Besides, immense power is acquired by assuring yourself, in your secret reveries, that you were born to control things.”

“Do you feel that you have immense power?” she asks in a soft, soothing voice, but she arches a delicate brow with a look that conveys her censure. Is she deliberately trying to goad me? Is it her questions, her attitude, or the fact that I find her attractive that’s pissing me off? My annoyance grows.

“I employ over forty thousand people. That gives me a certain sense of responsibility—power, if you will. If I were to decide I was no longer interested in the telecommunications business and sell, twenty thousand people would struggle to make their mortgage payments after a month or so.”

Her mouth pops open at my response. That’s more like it. Suck it up, baby. I feel my equilibrium returning.

“Don’t you have a board to answer to?”

“I own my company. I don’t have to answer to a board.” She should know this.

“And do you have any interests outside your work?” she continues hastily, correctly gauging my reaction. She knows I’m pissed, and for some inexplicable reason this pleases me.

“I have varied interests, Miss Steele. Very varied.” Images of her in assorted positions in my playroom flash through my mind: shackled on the cross, spread-eagled on the four-poster, splayed over the whipping bench. And behold—there’s that blush again. It’s like a defense mechanism.

“But if you work so hard, what do you do to chill out?”

“Chill out?” Those words out of her smart mouth sound odd but amusing. Besides, when do I get time to chill out? She has no idea what I do. But she looks at me again with those ingenuous big eyes, and to my surprise I find myself considering her question. What do I do to chill out? Sailing, flying, fucking…testing the limits of attractive brunettes like her, and bringing them to heel…The thought makes me shift in my seat, but I answer her smoothly, omitting a few favorite hobbies.

“You invest in manufacturing. Why, specifically?”

“I like to build things. I like to know how things work: what makes things tick, how to construct and deconstruct. And I have a love of ships. What can I say?” They transport food around the planet.

“That sounds like your heart talking, rather than logic and facts.”

Heart? Me? Oh no, baby.

My heart was savaged beyond recognition a long time ago. “Possibly. Though there are people who’d say I don’t have a heart.”