Naughty Temptations

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

Lois raced back to her office and slid her arms into her coat. She pulled the drapes closed over her window, picked up the blanket she kept in the bottom drawer of her desk, and wrapped it tightly around herself. Damn, she was cold. It was only fall, but the temperature must have dropped to damn near freezing already. Inside her boots, her toes ached with cold, and she tucked her feet back under the blanket, wiggling her toes in her boots and rubbing her boots on the fluffy rug she’d bought for under her desk. It was only a small square, but it was a thick shag pile that protected her feet nicely from the cold seeping up through the floor. The damn building was very badly insulated, and there were drafts everywhere. She even had a couple of clothes pins she used to make sure the window drapes were tightly shut in the depths of winter.

But hopefully, she’d warm up soon. Maybe Mr. Mallory would even show some sympathy for the staff and permit the heating to be turned on a little early. Okay, that wasn’t very likely. His office had wall radiators to keep him nice and warm, as well as the central furnace, which was all anyone else had, apart from Mr. Wilson. She pulled a fold of the blanket up over her head and rubbed her ears until they stopped tingling. Only then did she slide her arms out of the blanket, wrap it tightly over her breasts, and settle back down to work. After half an hour, she was warm enough to take the blanket off and put it back in her drawer, which was good because Mr. Mallory hated anyone to mention, even by their clothing, the heat—or lack thereof—in the building.

A lot of the staff wore their coats in winter and even scarves and beanies were commonplace. The women wore fingerless gloves and mittens a lot, but likely that was because the average woman’s hands and feet were up to three degrees cooler than the average man’s. That was one reason why Lois wore boots all through winter. It meant she could wear extra thick, fluffy socks, and no one would know. At least they kept her feet warm. Right now she was starting to wish she’d worn them today, but she didn’t like wearing her heavy winter clothes in fall. She’d better check the Weather Channel carefully tonight though. Catching a cold wasn’t on her to-do list.

Thinking of her to-do list made Lois focus on her work and get busy again. She needed this job. Ohio wasn’t at the bottom of the pile of states economically speaking, but it was nowhere near the top either. There was still plenty of unemployment around, and Lois didn’t plan to be lining up for food stamps anytime soon. She sighed. She really ought to upgrade her bookkeeping qualification to a degree. That would give her some more financial security, and maybe, it would give her the skills necessary to ease the itch in her brain that something shady was happening here at work. Or maybe she was just cold and grumpy and needed some s*x.

Hell yes. s*x with one of the delicious men who’d visited Mr. Mallory today. She gave a half-giggle half-cough. As if any rich client would look at her.

But hot damn, they were yummy.

By the end of the day, her work was up to date, and she hurried through the growing darkness to the parking lot. Another month and she’d be walking these three blocks in the dark. She hated doing that. This wasn’t the nicest neighborhood, and a woman alone in the dark wasn’t completely safe. Often she and Bree would walk back to their cars together, and sometimes one or more of the men would walk with them, although Rodney, in IT, tended to work really late. She sighed. It was so stupid leaving the parking lot out front of the building for clients when clients never came. Okay, so not never because there had been one car today but almost never. Even if they could only use it in winter, it would help.

Again she sighed. Lois knew she’d never ask for such a thing. Mr. Mallory was liable to pitch a fit when they asked for any tiny concession. Using the customer parking lot was not tiny, and she already knew what the answer would be. Exactly the same response to the one they’d gotten when they begged him for permission to turn the heat on before whatever arbitrary date he’d set.

Fortunately her own tiny apartment was gloriously warm. She had the heat set to turn up higher half an hour before she arrived home. That made stepping inside her domain a wonderful delight of removing her coat and outer layers of clothing, taking off her boots, massaging her toes, and sliding her feet into her fleecy slippers.

Ah heaven.

Lois curled up on her couch, pulling a blanket over her knees as she sipped hot, homemade spicy tomato soup, nibbled on slices of warm, buttered toast, and watched her favorite TV shows. Then she pulled the lurid pink curtains around her princess bed, switched on the small bedside lamp, and leaned against her pillows as she checked her personal emails on her ancient laptop.

She studied the files from the company accounts that bothered her and began reading through them again. What is it? What’s wrong? What am I not seeing here?

At ten, she gave up, closing down the laptop and snuggling under her pink blanket. As she flipped off the lamp, she grinned at the fading ghastly pink of the curtains.

She and her sister, Stacy, had shared a bedroom, even after Don had left home. Stacy had fought and screamed to move into Don’s room. She complained that Lois, six years younger than her, distracted her when she needed to study or do her homework. Their parents had refused to touch Don’s room, arguing that he needed it whenever he came home from college on break. But in the end, her father had bought Lois the second-hand princess bed with its curtains, so the curtains blocked out the light Stacy needed to study and also gave both girls a sense of privacy.

By the time she was a teenager, Lois had passionately hated the childish bed, but it had served its purpose, and these days she also appreciated that it kept her warmer because her body heat was enclosed with her. Although she really ought to get an adult bed, she supposed.

Unfortunately that wasn’t the kind of heat she’d really like. Lois thought of the man who’d peeked in her office. He was very tall, with broad shoulders and a solid build. He had thick black hair and sparkling bright blue eyes, as well as an incredibly sexy voice. Handsome didn’t come close to describing him. Lois could just imagine those strong arms pulling her hard against his body in a deep kiss, and she was convinced he’d have a c**k as big as the rest of him. Oh, how she’d like to spend a night with a man like that. It was a damn shame such a thing would never happen to her.

*****

Dragun was ten minutes younger than Drake, but they’d always gotten along well together. They’d also learned young the power they had as a unified team against other people. The two of them acting in unison were a lot more than twice as influential as either of them could be as an individual.

Today they were playing to another of their strengths, that of not informing people they didn’t completely trust that there were two of them. Both he and Drake were co-CEOs of DDK Design. They weren’t sure if Karl Mallory was a good guy or not, so only Drake had interviewed him, while Dragun had talked to the sales staff out the back of the building. If Mallory thought Dragun was a nobody, so much the better.

Meanwhile, Dragun continued to burrow beneath the surface of the company, looking for reasons why they should refuse to be involved in it. He hadn’t found anything tangible yet, just that they weren’t as on the ball about new inventions and upgrades as they should be. That might simply be because the owner was getting too old and unwell to keep his staff headed in the right direction.

The sales staff had complained that other companies had a lot more regular product updates than they did, something Drake had picked up in conversation with the designer as well.

Dragun felt the company was basically sound, with good products. It boasted about being a leader in the field, but that was old news. It had been a leader in the field once upon a time, but it certainly wasn’t anymore, which wasn’t to say it couldn’t be a leader again, but not until a few things changed.

Dragun’s plan was to find out who needed encouraging and who needed removing and then bring Optimized Design under the umbrella of DDK Design and hope the creative staff would come up with a whole barrelful of new thoughts, plans, and ideas.

Hopefully, Drake would gather a lot of first-hand impressions, which would guide them through the decision-making processes.

Dragun’s personal opinion was that the company hadn’t been investing in new young creative staff. With any of the latest technologies, doing tasks “the way they’d always been done” was almost a guaranteed pathway to failure. Technology was changing so quickly that a company’s goal should be hiring people who attempted to do things that had never been done before. Of course, many of those would fail, but the few that succeeded would bring in more than enough money to cover the ones that needed a little more work or were still too far ahead of their time.

However, the more he investigated the company, the more he agreed with Drake that someone had their hand in the till. Money was leaking from the company like its lifeblood, and there were very few people with enough knowledge and power to do that. The owner, the CFO, possibly the accounts staff if they were bright, could be guilty, maybe even some of the IT staff who could manipulate the data, but no one else would have the information needed to carry out such a scheme. Hopefully, Drake would have a lead as to who it might be.

Instead, all he wanted to talk about was a woman.

“Will you shut up about the hot chick and please tell me about the company? We have a ten-million-dollar bid in for this company, and that’s my five million as well as your five million,” he said grumpily.

“Yes, it’s your five million but not your last cent, you know. On the other hand, we don’t have a woman in our lives right now, and Lois McCubbin is the perfect fit for that task.”

Thirty-five years of sharing life with a twin meant Dragun knew when he was facing a lost cause. “Okay then, tell me about Miss Lois.”

“You saw her. She’s the one who showed us out. She has a head full of bouncy black curls, rich chocolate-brown eyes that sparkle and shine, eminently kissable lips, neat little ears, and big t**s for us to share.”

“And how do you know she hasn’t got a significant other who’s six-foot-four, two hundred pounds, and an ex-military spy killer?”

“She smiled at me.”

“That means she has good manners.”

“I don’t think she was wearing any large rings.”

“What do you mean you don’t think? Why couldn’t you be sure?”

“She was wearing those fingerless glove things women like. But there wasn’t a bump on her fingers to indicate a chunk of jewelry there.”

“In other words, you know nothing about her, and she might even have a couple of kids with the former Navy SEAL partner.”

“Why are you so negative? She called to me, Dragun. I could feel the pull between us from the doorway to her office.” That got Dragun’s attention. There was no way Drake would lie about that. A mate was a serious matter for a dragon. Finding a suitable woman could lead to fun and happiness, but finding their true mate would lead to complete, never-ending satisfaction.

“Okay, I believe you. Why don’t you give me a copy of the files you copied, and I’ll work on the financials, and you can check the staff. But I don’t care if she is our mate. I’m not tying myself to a thief or a cheat. We have a good business together, and I don’t plan for some thieving person to steal it away from us.”