He grabbed my wrist.
My brain stopped. His fingers wrapped around my wrist, firm, warm, his thumb pressing right against my pulse point. Hepulled me forward, not hard, just enough that I had to brace my other hand on the desk, and he was looking up at me from his chair with my heartbeat hammering against his thumb and the bastard definitely knew it.
“Let go.” Breathier than I wanted.
He didn’t let go. Instead he stood up, slowly, unfolding from the chair, his hand sliding from my wrist to my jaw. His thumb traced along my cheekbone and my brain went completely offline because the touch was so gentle it didn’t match anything I knew about this man. This was the guy who grunted and slammed doors and crushed coffee mugs, and his fingers were on my face like I was made of glass.
He tilted my chin up. I was looking at his mouth when I really should have stepped back. But my feet had their own agenda.
He kissed me.
Soft. Careful. His lips barely pressing against mine, testing, giving me a chance to pull away, hand warm on my jaw, mouth warm on mine. For a second it was just that, just the two of us breathing the same air with his lips barely touching mine.
I didn’t pull away.
His hand slid from my jaw to the back of my neck, fingers curling into my hair, and the kiss changed. Deeper, his mouth opening against mine, his tongue, and my hand gripped the edge of the desk because my knees were done. Just gone. I kissed him back hard enough that he made a low sound in his throat that vibrated through my chest. He pulled me closer, my body pressed againstthe desk with him against me, my free hand fisting the front of his shirt.
Just when I was about to deepen the kiss, he pulled back, breathing rough, his forehead against mine for half a second.
Then he sat down. Picked up the report. Read it.
“You were saying? About the projections?”
I was still leaning over his desk. Lipstick smudged, breathing too fast, hand white-knuckled on the desk edge. He was reading. Actually reading. Like he hadn’t just kissed me stupid.
“You are the worst person I’ve ever met.”
“Noted. The projections?”
“The projections can go to hell.”
I grabbed the file and walked out. Made it to my desk, sat down, pressed my hands flat on the surface. My hands were shaking, lips tingling, the taste of him still in my mouth. I kept touching my lips without meaning to, pressing my fingers where I could still feel the ghost of him, catching myself doing it, putting my hands down, then thirty seconds later my fingers would drift back up. Couldn’t type my damn password either. Tried twice, failed, gave up.
I wanted to march back in and kiss him again, wanted him to feel as wrecked as I did right now because the fact that he sat back down and picked up a goddamn report while I was out here vibrating in my chair was the most infuriating thing he’d ever done, and the bar was high.
I’d get him back. I didn’t know how yet, but I would.
The next morning I stood in front of my closet and pulled out the dress. A light blue one I hadn’t worn in over a year, fitted, stopped just above my knee, neckline that walked a very thin line between professional and “HR would like a word.” I did my hair in loose waves, put on the jasmine perfume I only broke out when I meant business, and then, because I was apparently going to war with a wolf king using femininity as ammunition, I put on the good bra. The eighty-dollar one that I bought during a post-breakup rage shop three years ago and had been saving for exactly this kind of bullshit.
I looked at myself in the mirror and I really did look pretty and hot. Finneas Kingsley was going to have a very bad day.
I walked onto the floor and went straight to his office with the morning briefing. He was at his desk, coffee in hand, and he looked up when I came in. His eyes did the slow drop I was counting on, neckline, hem, back up, and his hand tightened on his mug hard enough that I heard the ceramic creak.
I set the briefing on his desk, leaned down to point at the first item, close enough that my perfume was right under his nose and the neckline did exactly what eighty dollars of structural engineering designed it to do.
His coffee sloshed over the rim of his mug onto his hand. He didn’t flinch, didn’t wipe it off, didn’t move his eyes from me.
I straightened up without acknowledging any of it. “Your 10 am got moved to 10:30. Have a good morning.” I whipped around, feeling his stare burn into my back the whole way. Let him sitin his office and be distracted for a damn change. See how he fucking liked it.
What followed was war. Undeclared, unacknowledged, completely unhinged war that neither of us would have admitted to under oath.
He caught me behind the filing cabinets reaching for a folder. Fast, before I registered what was happening, his hand on my hip pulling me in, his mouth on mine hard enough that my back hit the cabinet and the metal rattled. His stubble scraped my chin, his other hand gripped the shelf above my head, and for three seconds I forgot where I was. Then I pulled away and smacked his chest with the folder.
“We’re at work.”
“I’m aware.”
“Act like it.”
