The ceo's obsession

The warehouse wall glowed under a single flickering street lamp, but it wasn't the light that stopped Mason Blackwell's black SUV dead in the middle of the empty street at 1:47 a.m.

It was her.

A woman-no, a girl barely out of her teens-balanced on a rickety ladder, back arched, arm extended high as she dragged crimson across crumbling brick. Paint dripped down her forearm like fresh blood, streaking the bare skin between cutoff tank top and low-slung jeans. Her dark hair clung to her neck in damp strands; sweat or mist from the river nearby, he couldn't tell. Every stroke of her brush was defiant, angry, alive. The mural taking shape was chaos made beautiful: jagged flames swallowing a glass skyscraper that looked suspiciously like the one he planned to build here.

Mason killed the engine. The silence rushed in, broken only by the soft hiss of spray paint and her occasional muttered curse when color bled wrong.

He should have driven on. Property acquisition didn't require personal surveillance at this hour. But something-some long-buried wire in his chest-snapped taut as he watched her hips shift for leverage, the curve of her ass tightening against denim, the way her breasts rose and fell with each forceful breath.

He stepped out without thinking.

Gravel crunched under Italian leather. She froze mid-stroke, brush hovering. Slowly-agonizingly slowly-she turned her head.

Their eyes locked.

Hers were storm-green, furious, rimmed with smudged black liner. His were blacker than the night behind him, pupils blown wide.

"You lost, suit?" Her voice was smoke and gravel, younger than her fire suggested. Twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. Young enough to make what he was already imagining criminal in most courts.

"This is condemned property." He moved closer, hands in pockets to hide how they flexed. "You're trespassing."

She laughed-short, sharp, unafraid. "Condemned doesn't mean owned. Not yet." She dipped the brush again, dragged scarlet in a deliberate slash across what would have been his building's logo if the mural hadn't eaten it. "Run along. Big men like you have boardrooms to conquer."

Mason's jaw ticked. No one spoke to him like that. Not in fifteen years. Not since he'd clawed out of this rotting town with nothing but rage and a scholarship he stole through blackmail.

He closed the distance in three strides.

She didn't flinch. Just watched him approach like a predator sizing up another predator.

Up close she smelled like turpentine, night air, and something sweeter-vanilla body oil, maybe. Paint speckled her collarbone, a constellation he suddenly wanted to trace with his tongue.

He reached past her-deliberately brushing the side of her breast with his forearm-and plucked the brush from her fingers.

Her breath hitched. Barely. But he heard it.

"Give that back." Low. Dangerous.

He twirled the brush once, then dragged the wet bristles slowly-torturously-down the center of her throat, following the line of her pulse. Crimson painted a thick, dripping line between her breasts, disappearing under the thin cotton.

Her nipples peaked instantly against the