Page 54 of Dirty Boss

“Wonderful. A family man.”

“She’lldefinitelyget drunk on champagne and embarrass me.”

Her stubborn chin lifted. “Maybe that’s exactly what you deserve.” I’d backed her up against the wall of mirrors, and now she pressed herself against it.

My palm landed next to her head. “Come with me,” I said.

“No.”

“Show all those people who turned their backs on you that you aren’t broken.”

Her eyes sparked. God, she looked good when she was furious. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know that you hate the way you felt when you ran into those assholes at Rebellieux.”

Her jaw clenched.

“You hate to be made to feel small and weak and scared.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she repeated through clenched teeth.

“I know that’s how you felt, because that’s how I feel every time I have to walk into one of these business meetings and pretend I respect the person on the other side of the table. Rich, pretentious assholes who don’t know anything about hard work.”

She turned her head to look at the darkened windows. “So what? I go to one event on some oaf’s arm?—”

“Ouch.”

“—and then suddenly I’m back in? I don’t even want to be back in. I just want—” She stopped.

“What? What do you want?”

Her chest rose and fell with a breath, and she turned to meet my gaze. Tension pulled tight between us, my fingers curling against the mirror by her head. The flash in her eyes was what did me in. I could keep my distance when she put her walls up, but this? When she was real?

Irresistible.

Alba’s gaze flicked between my eyes, her brow wrinkling. We’d circled each other for weeks, and I was so sick of holding back. But I wouldn’t push her. Not when I knew it might push her away.

Instead, I waited. The silence hummed between us, and I thought about how badly I’d wanted her to stay at my apartment. How much it had soothed me to know she was there, safe, taken care of.

Maybe she read that thought in my face, because she finally whispered, “I just want to feel like the rug isn’t going to get pulled out from under me.” Her throat clenched as she swallowed. “I just want to feel safe.”

I could give her that. I would live to give her that. If she let me.

But Alba had thick walls, and I knew it would take a long time to get through them. But I could try.

My free hand slid to her hip, thumb tracing the bone that protruded there. Her breath caught.

“Tell me to stop, and I will.”

She opened her mouth—but nothing came out. A mouth I’d dreamed about every night since I’d tasted it. A mouth of razor-sharp words and wry smiles and desperate kisses.

Slowly, studying the fluttering of her eyelashes and the pulse thrumming in her neck, I moved my palm from her hip to her inner thigh, sliding it up so I could feel the heat of her beneath the stretchy, smooth fabric of her leggings. She shivered, stepping her feet a little wider, and I curled my hand to hold her there, where she was hot and damp. My heart rattled.

“Are you wet, Alba?”

She glared at me.

“Have you been waiting for me to touch you all this time?”