My eyes dropped back to my computer and the merger file I was reading through when I heard the door to my office slam shut.

I was pretty sure I also heard her mutter, “Jerk.”

I HAD IT COMING.

Literally and figuratively, I’d created this mess.

Honestly, I was beginning to suspect I simply had a thing for jerks. Or at least this particular one. Case in point: Dean had been charming, nice, and polite to me, and I’d dumped him not once, but twice. Vicious was hot and cold, brutal and rude, yet I’d jumped into bed with him. Four times in six hours. And some of those times weren’t even a bed, which was a definite first for me.

What was wrong with me, allowing him to nail me against his office door?

I saw the way everyone looked at me when I left his office to get his lunch. Patty followed me with her gaze and cocked one eyebrow as I made my way to the elevator, rearranging my dress with one hand and flattening my messy hair with the other.

Then I grabbed Vicious his stupid sandwich.

If I was honest with myself, though, I had to confess I did almost come when he invited me to relocate to Los Angeles. Not because I would entertain the idea of ever moving there—this was a matter of principal; he’d kicked me out and had no right to order me back—but because he’d wanted me around.

I swirled the coffee in my Styrofoam cup with my chewed-on pen and watched him through the glass wall from across the vast reception where I hung out with Patty. The place was dead, but he still insisted that we work the full day.

Vicious was pacing in his office, talking on the phone, which was on speaker, always on speaker, though we couldn’t hear a word from outside.

Patty asked if I could go into his office real quick and see if she could leave early, because she needed to start preparing food for Christmas Eve tomorrow.

“Come on, doll,” she prompted. “My grandchildren need their nana’s shortbread. They don’t like the stuff you buy at the grocery store. We all know it’s crap.”

“Why don’t you go ask him yourself?” I frowned. The answer was obvious, but I knew she mistakenly assumed he’d be nicer to me.

“Please?” She was sitting in her chair, clasping her hands together, her eyes begging me from behind her thick reading glasses. “I just want to see the smile on their faces when I surprise them. Their mother is going through a nasty divorce right now. They’re really looking forward to this dinner with me.”

I remembered long ago Christmases where I’d baked with my own grandmother.

“Fine. I will, when he finishes his call.”

Patty turned her computer screen around for me to see. It was already three o’clock. “I’m not going to beat rush hour as it is. The subway will be packed. Please,” she said again.

I heaved a sigh and approached Vicious’s office on heavy feet, like I was on death row. I knocked on the door, and he turned to scowl at me, which I figured was his version of an invitation to come in. Despite the fact we had just had sex against the very door that now divided us, I didn’t feel comfortable walking into his domain. He was still talking on the phone, his hands on his waist, oozing power and manhood.

I reluctantly walked in.

“Well, did she steal your dick while you were asleep?” Vicious spat into the phone, motioning for me to take a seat in front of him with his finger.

I obliged, throwing a look behind my shoulder and seeing Patty toss her hands in the air, exasperated.

“No,” I heard a male voice grumbling from the intercom.

“Did she rape you?” he continued, his face twisting impatiently.

“Well…no.” The guy he was talking to sighed.

“Did she milk your cock with a juicer, slip your balls into her purse, steal your semen, and run away?”

“No, no, no!” the guy shouted, annoyed.

“Then I’m sorry, Trent, but she didn’t trick you into shit. You willingly fucked her without a condom, and now she’s fucking you legally. I know it’s not what you wanna hear, bro, but if the baby is yours, you’re done.”

My heart pumped hard in my chest. Trent had gotten someone pregnant, and apparently he wasn’t too happy about it. Vicious glanced at me before punching a remote. The blinds in his office automatically closed and the room darkened.

Crap. Patty probably wanted to kill both of us.

I opened my mouth to tell him why I came in, but he waved me off.

“She wants five hundred thousand dollars to get an abortion,” Trent grumbled.

My mouth almost fell to the floor, and Vicious walked around his desk, tilting my chin up and pressing my lips together with a wink. He didn’t seem too worried about his friend.

“Well,” Vicious said. “I’m not the guy for moral advice, but everything about this offer screams fuck no to me.”

“I can afford it,” Trent said, but he groaned.

“I know.” Vicious placed one of his knees between my thighs and spread them apart, bending down to where I sat, and fingering the hem of my dress, watching my panties intently, like he’d never seen them before. “Question is—do you want to?”

“What, you think I should let her have the baby? Should I remind you that she’s a stripper with a weakness for coke?” Trent sounded like he was seething.

Vicious flipped my dress up completely, exposing my panties, and lowered himself so his face was pressed against my sex. My hands squeezed the armrest of the chair as he inhaled deeply with a wolfish grin and kissed my underwear.