Blackout Read Free Page A

hadn’t. While his associates chased skirts, Lennon didn’t have the luxury of a monstrous bank account to settle sexual harassment lawsuits. Plus, Kenzie wasn’t the sort of woman with whom one had a casual fling, and, though he loved watching her, loved their flirtatious banter, loved being on the receiving end of those killer smiles, he couldn’t bring himself to destroy their working relationship.
    Then that damn tape had arrived and everything had gone to shit. Suddenly every glance she tossed him seemed a tease. Every time she set coffee on his desk, he pictured her gasping and pinching one of her succulent nipples, her legs spread and her thighs slick with excitement. He’d find his eyes wandering down her body, then glance away guiltily when she so much as turned her head in his direction. All day. All the time. He’d excuse himself from board meetings to steal a few minutes in the bathroom, his hand stroking his cock to the image of Kenzie’s head tossed back, her fingers pumping in and out of her juicy cunt, her smile aimed at the camera.
    He could have thrown the tape away. Fuck, he should have thrown the tape away…but he hadn’t. It was a drug—a rush, a high, an addiction of which he couldn’t rid himself. Every time, he promised himself, would be the last. He’d throw it away after one last wank, and god, how he’d tried. Excuses mounted and guilt compounded, but he couldn’t trash the tape. He couldn’t.
    Damn, he’d made a mess of things. His first course of action should have been to approach Kenzie with the video. Sure, it would have been an embarrassing discussion, but no less embarrassing than sitting in the elevator with her and confessing he’d been aroused as hell watching her fuck her fingers. That she’d driven him to such distraction he’d been forced to circumvent talking with her at all.
    Lennon looked at the file on her lap. Whatever else happened, he needed to recover what she’d taken. Buckingham might be a horrid, twisted monstrosity of the human condition, but the case was too large to forfeit, and a loss might come at the expense of his job. He’d find some way to help Kenzie and her brother. While his extra income wasn’t as lucrative as people seemed to think it was, he did have connections—enough contacts, at least, to get Scott Drake into a good school and keep Kenzie afloat until she found something else.
    A replacement job for the one he’d cost her.
    Kenzie must have caught him staring at the folder, for she quickly hugged it to her chest. “You’re going to ask for this back, aren’t you?”
    Lennon met her gaze but quickly turned away. Looking at her was difficult at the moment. “You know I can’t let you leave with it.”
    She snickered. “Doesn’t look like either of us is leaving.”
    “Well, hopefully we won’t be stuck in this elevator forever.”
    “Just long enough for you to convince me the error of my ways?” she retorted. “Let me know how stupid it’d be to steal from Doran and Gage, and, more importantly, you?”
    “Enough for you to realize that actions have consequences.”
    “Since when were you an ethics professor?”
    He sucked in his cheeks, his jaw tightening. “Kenzie…”
    “Have you met this clown?” She dropped the file again to her lap and flipped it open. “Kayla told me—”
    “Kayla Bryant. One of his stepdaughters.”
    “Yes. The one he didn’t rape.”
    Lennon winced. Buckingham’s dance around that particular issue was one of his larger complaints with the defense team. Kayla Bryant was the elder stepdaughter and had issued the allegation that Buckingham had pursued her younger sister, Janelle, since the girl turned eighteen. In contrast, Buckingham asserted that Janelle had shown up once at his office one night wearing nothing but a floor-length coat and seduced him, as a measure of gratitude for getting her out of a jam. Although confirming the office seduction had taken place, Janelle swore it was at