Asking For Trouble by Kit Tunstall

Chapter One
     
    Orion seethed with jealousy. He wasn’t accustomed to the
feeling, especially for a woman to whom he had no claim. Why it bothered him to
see one of the other partners talking so intently to his new personal assistant
was a question best left unexamined. He had no right to be annoyed with the way
Graham leaned in close to Natalie, or of the way his hand brushed against her
side in a way that could have been accidental, but probably wasn’t.
    She didn’t seem to mind Graham’s attention. Just because
Orion wasn’t sleeping with Natalie didn’t mean another man wasn’t, or that she
wasn’t looking for one.
    That was the part that had him on the verge of stalking
forward to shove Graham a few steps away from Natalie to impose some
much-needed distance between the couple. They didn’t seem too intimate, but
that could change. Orion knew Graham didn’t share his conviction that
interoffice romances were a bad idea. Knowing Graham’s history set him even
more on edge. It seemed likely that his partner would sweet-talk Natalie into
his bed in no time. The other man had slept with most of the women who had
worked at Garner, Taylor & Bosley, except for the high school interns and
Mary, Orion’s recently retired PA. Only the fact that she had been old enough
to be both Graham and Orion’s mother when she came to work for GT&B had
spared her from his attentions.
    If Natalie was going to sleep with anyone in the company, it
should be him. Orion gnashed his teeth in a futile attempt to push back the
unwanted emotions assailing him. It had been like this since she started
working for him last month. When Orion had interviewed her, he had found her
womanly curves attractive, but didn’t let that influence his decision to hire
her. He had found women attractive in the past and successfully resisted their
allure.
    Yet Natalie was different. He spent half the day thinking
about her soft body when he should be focusing on the stock market. The other
half of the day he spent denying he was thinking about her, or staring at her,
or inhaling her scent with his wolf senses. She haunted his dreams, leaving him
aching with need and waking up drenched with sweat, his cock so hard that it
might explode if he had spent even one more minute dreaming of her.
    To be infatuated with a woman to this extent, at the age of
thirty-eight, was frankly embarrassing. He hadn’t been so captivated since
Patty Smyth, way back in eleventh grade. Despite the similarities to that teen
crush, this was also completely different. He wanted Natalie with a mature
passion. Where he had once dreamed of mysterious actions with Patty, his adult
self knew the myriad ways he could enjoy Natalie’s voluptuous figure. It was
torturous to deny himself the opportunity to explore that heavenly body, to
bury his hands in her mane of wheat-blonde hair. He longed to rake his fingers
through her wavy curls and wrap the strands around his hands as he thrust into
her, taking possession of her sweet body. All the valid reasons he’d had for
not getting involved with his subordinates were thin as water when used to keep
him from Natalie.
    As if his thoughts had conjured her gaze, she looked up from
Graham, her eyes homing in on his immediately. A blush stained her cheeks and
he knew he didn’t imagine the spark of heat in her brown eyes. When she turned
back to Graham, her posture suggested she was trying to withdraw from the conversation.
Orion waited with bated breath, wondering if she would come to him.
    Instead, Natalie walked right past Orion, flashing him a
brief, impersonal smile as she made her way into her office. Though he had just
left his office with the intent of meeting a client for lunch before allowing
the cozy scene with Graham and Natalie to distract him, he followed her. Her
office led to his, and he had every right to be there, but couldn’t seem to
think of a reason when he walked in to find such a tempting sight. He bit back
a groan and