Make Me Read Free

thumb then rubbed it on the corner of her mouth, showing her the neon orange cheese dust she was wearing for all to see.
    “Goodbye, Cayson.”
    He didn’t bother to say goodbye back.
    He never did.
    That next day, once the scare about whether or not he’d somehow discovered her interest in spanking had eased, her anger came to the forefront. He could tell her what to do while she was working in his office, but what she did on her off hours was of no concern to him. None – illegal or not. He wasn’t the police. He had no input about her behavior at home whatsoever, and she intended to tell him just that.
    She didn’t bother to knock, just burst into the room with much more drama than she had intended, the door banging back against the wall until she’d wrangled it shut it behind her.
    He was working, staring intently at the computer screen and probably hadn’t even heard the commotion. He was notoriously hard to reach when he was problem solving, trying to identify a virus or a recalcitrant line of code.
    “Cayson.”
    Nothing. Not even so much as a flicker of his eyes as they stared blindly at the screen.
    “Cayson!” Louder, more demanding.
    Still nothing.
    She was of a mind to go over there and unplug his computer, but he’d probably kill her for that. Besides, she knew he had a battery backup installed in case they were hit by a brownout. So instead, she grabbed a magazine – one of the ones she insisted he leave out on the coffee table for clients – not that any really visited them, but still. It happened to be a celebrity magazine with a picture of an outrageous female singer on the cover.
    Jodi grabbed it and held it in front of his face.
    “Son of a – what the hell is that?” he bellowed, jerking back in surprise.
    “Lady Gaga in her meat dress.”
    “No, that is a horror. An abomination. And why are you showing it to me when I have so much work to do?” He turned his chair towards her, reluctantly at first, but then with more intent, training those laser green eyes on her.
    All of that focused attention settled on her like a hand – his hand – heavy, calculating and unrelenting – and she began to reconsider the intelligence of confronting him like this.
    But it was much too late.
    He glared at her expectantly, the fingers of his left hand drumming on the edge of his desk impatiently. “What?”
    She didn’t know why she was so nervous all of a sudden. She never really had been with him, even in the beginning. She’d always known instinctively how to handle him, and had rarely put a foot wrong about it.
    But now, something was different. There was an unfamiliar and unsettling element to how he watched her, and she knew it had to do with his earlier threat.
    He was aware of her as more than just an extension of himself now, more than just the person that made sure his lights didn’t get shut off and that his mother got a lovely present on Mothers’ Day as well as her birthday and that he had coffee – strong, hot and black – available at all times.
    And then it hit her.
    He was looking at her like a man looked at a woman he wanted, and she wasn’t sure she was at all prepared for that.
    Jodi shook her head and closed her eyes, trying to clear the apprehension from her brain so that she could speak clearly. “About the threat you made earlier –”
    “It’s not a threat; it’s a promise,” he interrupted.
    Jodi ignored him. “You’re not my father or my brother or my boyfriend – and even if you were, you wouldn’t have the right to sp–” She knew her face was bright red, so she decided not to use that word. It had too much power, at least for her. “To do that to me. What I do on my own time is my own business – legal or illegal.”
    He opened his mouth to say something, but she shut him down cold. “No. I’m speaking now.”
    Both sable eyebrows rose so far they practically disappeared into his hairline, but his lips closed slowly without him saying a word and that