Read Rule's Addiction for Free Online

fragile for everyday use.
    His mouth flattened. “There’s nothing under the paperweight.”
    She took a deep breath and pasted such a large smile on her face that her eyes were forced into narrow slits. Why would he lie about this? She knew damn good and well where she’d placed the folder. With an exercise in control, she kept her tone neutral. “I put it there this morning, not thirty minutes ago.”
    It was obvious he didn’t care to be argued with; his body shifted and the muscles under his suit corded into lines of strain. His casual position disappeared completely as he stood to his full height. “You must be mistaken.”
    She took a deep breath and without speaking, stood to her feet with a fluid motion and immediately smoothed the lines of her simple grey skirt. Refusing to make eye contact with him, she kept her gaze on the doorframe as she began walking toward the entrance to his office . . . the office that should have been hers by now. When the hell would he go back to St. Louis and leave her in peace?
    When she reached his side and would have passed through, he halted her forward motion with a detaining hand on her arm.
    The move paralyzed her immediately.
    He never touched her.
    Never. It was an unwritten rule between them .
    But now, his fingers grasped the fleshy part of her bare upper arm and no matter how hard she fought against it, at the first touch of his callused fingers, she immediately stiffened with nerves and her pulse rate accelerated. As his scent hit her nostrils in a conflagration of sexual heat that she refused to acknowledge, a fine trembling took hold of her legs.
    A dangerous sizzle filled the air as he stood only inches away, looming over her. Trying with everything she had to appear unaffected, she ran her eyes up and down his length, attempting a dismissive expression that she knew was a pathetic fail. There was no question that he was intimidating when he wanted to be, his designer suit molding his tall, powerful body, enhancing his stance of authority. His eyes were hot and dark as he stared down into hers. “Is something bothering you today? Cat pissed in your Post Toasties this morning?”
    Her breath snagged; he was so close she could see the gold striations running through his pupils. “You know very well that I don’t have a cat.”
    “It was a rhetorical question. I don’t care for the attitude, Maria. You need to lose it, pronto. Capisce?”
    Maria firmed her lips . Keep your mouth closed. Just keep your damn mouth closed, Maria. Absolutely nothing good can come from arguing with him. He’ll be gone soon and then you’ll have the job you’ve always wanted and you’ll never have to deal with him . . . at least, not very often. As his hand gripped tighter, then loosened, and then pulsed tighter again, she took one stabilizing breath and then another. When that didn’t calm her down, she counted to ten and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she found him watching her with a merciless expression that was colored with retribution.
    Every muscle in her body tightened, and when she remained silent, refusing to give him an answer, his features turned menacing. She could almost feel his inexorable control slipping; the primal attributes that made him so much a man had never been quite so obvious as they were now, as he held her in an uncompromising grasp not six inches away from his torso. Oh, yeah. He was a man like no other, there was no getting away from that fact. She could lie to herself all she wanted, but Garrett Rule was pure unadulterated male, through and through.
    Their eyes stayed connected; his intense gaze narrowed and the pagan, dominant personality he usually took pains to keep hidden rose to the fore. Her breath snagged in her lungs. He was dangerous . She’d known that from the moment she’d met him, hell, from the very first phone conversation she’d had with him.
    Now, as a wave of anger seemed to grip him, he leaned down until his