Some of his elation vanishes. “What?”
I want to smack him. Punch him in the arm. “Because you let the battery die.” I leave theyou overanxious divaunsaid.
“What?”
I sigh. Apparently I’m not getting out of here until the whole story is told. “You didn’t plug it in fully, and the battery drained.”
“The battery? But what about the storm?”
I shrug. “Dramatic irony?”
“Dramat—” His mouth snaps shut, and a storm of its own passes over his face. “Then what did you do?”
I saved his ass. If I wasn’t surgically attached to my phone, he might have spent all night freaking out about a problem that had the simplest of simple fixes. “I plugged it back in for you.”
“But... but the reset?”
Ah. How to explain that without sounding patronizing. “We needed to give the battery a minute to pick up a charge.”
“So there’s no reset?”
I shake my head.
“And all you did was plug it in?”
“Sometimes the smallest solutions are the most effective?”
He opens and closes his mouth a few times before he finally stabs a finger into my chest. “You better not charge me for this.”
My jaw drops. “Excuse me?”
He scoffs. “Any idiot can plug a laptop in.”
“Yeah.” Now I’ve gotmyfinger in his face. “Any idiot.”
Calling your favourite client an idiot is probably not a smart professional move, but I’m suddenly angry. If it’s so obvious, why did I have to come over here?
“Don’t be a brat, Brady,” he snarls.
“A brat?” I crowd into his space. “I am a saint. I am here at eleven o’clock on a Friday night because you called me in a panic. I could have been in the middle of anything, but I dropped it the second I saw your number on the phone. So don’t patronize me, and don’t for a minute think I’m not going to charge you for every single second that I—”
My head hits the wall with a thump that has me grunting, and I realize in the fraction of the second before his mouth comes down on mine that he pushed me. Shoved me up against the wall and followed right after me.
And now he’s kissing me.
Well, then.
6
Nash
Adrenaline. Colossal lapse of judgement. Frustration. God only knows what possessed me to kiss Brady. One minute I’m the biggest idiot in the world, and the next he’s in my space, lecturing me about how much I’ve inconvenienced his Friday night, and all I can see is the fury in his normally laughing eyes and the color rising in his cheeks, and I want him. Iwanthim. And as he spits angry words at me, he gets closer and closer, and his mouth is tight and firm, and all I can think is that I want to touch those perfect lips and find out if they’re warm and slick the way I think they will be.
So I do.
Brady’s still fighting, still spitting as I crowd against him, taking him to the wall. He makes a surprised noise against my mouth, but before I can second-guess, the noise turns to a moan, and his lips relax under mine.
I didn’t realize how much I needed this until he makes that sound. I growl as I press into him, lips working. Fuck, he tastes good. His mouth is warm as I slip my tongue inside, and he moans again, pulling at my shirt.
