Dark Alpha (ALPHA 2) by Carole Mortimer Read Free Book Online Page A

you?”
    “Not me,” Lucien confirmed hardly. “What did he do, Nicky? Try to put his hand down your bra? Your panties? Or maybe both of those things?”
    “This must all seem so trivial to you,” she accused emotionally. “Just one of the perks of being the boss? A little harmless groping of the hired help?”
    Lucien very much doubted Nicky would be saying that if she could see the way his hands were clenched into fists beneath his desk. He didn’t share, and no one touched what he considered to be his.
    And Nicky may not know it yet—may not be willing to acknowledge it yet, Lucien corrected, as he recalled the trembling of her body just minutes ago when he had been standing so close behind her they were almost touching—but Lucien had decided she was going to be his.
    Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow either. But she had walked willingly back into his life, for whatever reason, and by doing so she was going to be his.
    The anticipation would only make her eventual surrender all the sweeter.
    Which was an odd thing for him to think, because he wasn’t usually a man who enjoyed delayed sexual gratification. Wasn’t a man who usually allowed delayed sexual gratification.
    Except he had a feeling that Nicky was going to be worth every minute of that frustrating wait.
    Maybe he was even taking a perverse satisfaction in it?
    If that’s what it was, it now allowed him to sit unmoving, silent, as he waited for Nicky to speak again.
    He didn’t have to wait long.
    “Except it isn’t harmless,” Nicky continued angrily, those dark brown eyes aglow with that emotion. “I’m a person, not an object. And I get to choose who touches me.”
    Lucien’s jaw clenched. “You still haven’t told me where he touched you?”
    “I don’t—”  
    “Where, Nicky?”
    She eyed Lucien warily, disconcerted by the steel she could now hear in his tone. “On my bottom a couple of times. And my breasts that last time when he tried to kiss me.”
    “Did he succeed in kissing you?”
    “No!”
    “So you didn’t go to bed with him?”
    “Of course I didn’t go to bed with him!” She glared. “He wanted me to, and when I refused he—he gave me two days to think it over, said that if I didn’t agree to have sex with him at the end of those two days, then I could look for another job.”
    Lucien could feel a nerve pulsing in his cheeks as he listened to Nicky talking. Yes, he was a man who knew what he wanted, and he always went for it, but he had never ever used force to achieve it. That was his father’s forte, not his. Ever.
    Although he couldn’t help wishing at this moment that it was; a couple of broken fingers might make Lionel Jenkins think twice before he attempted to blackmail one of his young and pretty female employees again.
    But there were other, more subtle ways of payback than resorting to physical violence.
    He nodded coolly at Nicky. “So you walked.”
    “Yes, I walked!” Nicky hated that he was so calm, so cold, when she was so obviously upset.
    But why shouldn’t Lucien be calm and cold? None of this had happened to him. And it never would. Because he was billionaire Lucien Wynter—
    “When?”
    She blinked. “When what?”
    “When did you walk?”
    Nicky gave an impatient shake of her head. “What does it matter when it happened?”
    “Obviously it matters to me or I wouldn’t have asked,” Lucien answered in that infuriatingly calm voice.
    “I…a month ago.” She couldn’t quite meet his gaze as she made the admission. “I’ve been trying to find a new job ever since. But every time I manage to get as far the interview stage, they contact Jenkins, Simmons and Simmons for a reference, and Lionel Jenkins—” she broke off abruptly as she realized that those cool eyes had become glacial in the past few minutes. “I don’t mean this to sound as if I came to you as a last resort—”  
    “Even if you did?” Lucien came back evenly.
    She winced. “I just assumed, after the