I rise to my tiptoes and brace myself against Lewis’s chest. My hands roam up over the nape of his neck, the corner of his jaw, the places that have been out of reach all this time, but that I’ve been dying to touch. Desperate to get him closer, I hook my fingers through his belt loops, and then, finally, he brings his hips flush with mine. His hands trace the outsides of my legs, where they hesitate for a breath. I curve into him, frustrated by the last pockets of distance that remain between us, and he lifts me onto the table, bringing our heads to the same height and crowding into the space between my legs. Satisfied with the new angle, Lewis coaxes my mouth open with the tip of his tongue. His teeth skid across my lip and—
More.
I want more.
It’s a singular thought flashing through my mind. Want claws its way down my body, and, hungry for the pressure, I tighten my thighs around his hips, sighing as I feel Lewis heavy with need against me. His next breath is audibly ragged, and it sends a pulse of heat low into my belly.
Before I can sink my hands into his hair and urge him to kiss me deeper, somewhere something heavy clangs to thefloor. The shrieking sound of laughter hits my ears, and then I remember—we’re in a library. Behind those shelves that shield off our little alcove, there are students. There might becolleagues.
What were we thinking? What wasIthinking?
Clearly, nothing at all.
I pull away, and under my mouth and fingertips, I can sense the awareness gradually returning to Lewis, too. A slow wave of stiffening limbs, a shuddering breath, a shift backward.
“I…” I falter, mortified at how breathy I sound. How turned on I am.
“Frances,” Lewis rasps, eyes blazing, lips bruised and raw. The gruff sound of my name and the disheveled sight of him make the desire spike up again, but it’s narrowly chased by a grounding realization.
I just kissed Dr. Theodore Lewis North.
And even though I try to convince myself that it was merely in preparation for tonight’s meeting of his family, the urge to get back to it tells me that it was more than practice. That, somehow, inexplicably, I liked it.
Chapter Twelve
I wrench my hands from Lewis’s shirt like it’s on fire, as awareness of what just happened singes through my veins.
“I—”
“We should probably—” Lewis says at the same time and drags a heavy hand through his hair. The collar of his button-down is crumpled, and my fingers tingle with the memory of messing it up. I shove them into my hair and scrape my curls into a bun so tight that my brain gets forced out of its dazed, horny state, then remind myself that this kiss was in preparation for tonight. So he can focus on reconnecting with his brother.
“Okay, so the data…” I try to revert back to scientific language while I tell my reward centers to stop demanding more, more,more, but my voice sounds breathless.
Lewis’s brows flick up as he echoes, “The data?”
“Yes, the data. The kiss.” I clear my throat. “We hypothesized that, uh, some physical intimacy would make this relationship seem real.” I can’t tell who of us I’m reminding. With his lips against mine and his hands on my thighs, the kiss felt dangerously close to the real thing.
Real desire.
Which it can’t be, because we’re only doing this for a specific purpose: protecting my academic integrity, and helping Lewis reconnect with his family. Everything else is secondary, so I need to get over how my body still hums with his proximity.
I try to get off the table, but while Lewis has pulled back, he hasn’t left the place between my open legs, which makes me slide down his body until I’m eye-level with his mouth.
“Fuck, Frances,” Lewis growls, stopping me with a palm on my hip, inadvertently trapping me between him and the table. His hardness against my abdomen leaves no doubt that he must’ve been into this kiss, too.
All my blood collects in my cheeks. I didn’t think this through.
“Could you, please…” My handtremblesas I motion for him to move out of the way.
“Oh.” He glances down at the sliver of space between us. With his head tipped forward, I get a whiff of his hair and a front row view of the blond strands. It’s not helping. “Right.” But our lanyards are tangled up in each other, keeping us chained together. Knuckles brush as we hastily work ourselves free. When he finally steps back, his hip catches against a chair and topples it over.
Desperate to put some distance between us, I rush to the opposite side of the table where my laptop is propped open. Lewis picks up the chair, then meets my eyes with a sheepish expression, one corner of his mouth tucked up. “I—I think we should talk about this.”
A sticky, uneasy feeling prickles over my skin.
Talk?
Absolutely not. We don’t need to. Nothing’s amiss, because this kiss was meant to make us more convincing as a couple. The way it set me alight doesn’t mean anything. It cannot.We’re colleagues, and those are better off not fooling around, not kissing, and, most especially, not dating.
