ALEX
I stoodin the hallway staring down at the sliver of light illuminated on the wooden floor just outside Sadie’s room. I knew that I shouldn’t be outside her door. But there I was.
I’d spent the past twenty minutes pacing back and forth in my room. I’d taken a shower and jerked off to try and tame the beast that was raging inside of me, but it hadn’t come close to doing so. Within a minute I was hard again.
It was the kiss. It had been so much more than I’d expected. Maybe it was because the only person I’d ever kissed as an adult was Ash. Or maybe it was because I hadn’t kissedanyonein five years. Or maybe it was because our chemistry really was that insane. I had no clue what the reason was, all I knew was that I’d never experienced that much sensation, that much emotion, that much connection in a simple kiss before.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it or Sadie and I wanted more.
Go back to your room, I told myself.
Instead of heeding my own warning, I watched—almost as if I was having an out-of-body experience and I was a spectator not a participant—as my arm raised and my fingers curled in a fist.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The sound echoed in my head and then there was complete silence.
Maybe Sadie was already asleep, or maybe she didn’t want her boss bothering her.
Shit.I was her boss. Yes, it was temporary, but I was technically employing her. This was a bad idea on so many levels. I turned to leave when the door opened, and Sadie appeared. Her cheeks were flushed, and her lips were still pouty from our kiss.
“Hi.” The soft sound of nails clicking on the hardwood sounded behind her. “Oh shoot.” She glanced over her shoulder and then stepped through the door and shut it behind her. Her chin tipped up so that she could look in my eyes. “Eeyore is trying to escape. He misses Lexi.”
Now that we were both standing in the hallway, I wasn’t sure what I was doing there. Sadie looked up at me with trust brimming in her amber eyes and I knew that I needed to say something but I had no clue what to tell her.
I can’t stop thinking about yousounded cliché.
All I want is to be near yousounded desperate.
I don’t know what you’re doing to mesounded lame.
“I just wanted to check to make sure that you were okay.”
“Yep.” She blew a stray strand of hair off of her face and I noticed that she was trying to catch her breath. She pasted on a smile as her cheeks flushed and her eyes dropped to my bare chest. “I’m great.”
I stared down at her. As much as I’d love to take credit for her breathlessness and rosy cheeks, I had a feeling that her current state had nothing to do with the out of the world kiss we’d shared or the fact that I was shirtless wearing only sweats. There was something else going on.
“Why are you breathing like you just ran a marathon?”
Her shoulders slumped, and all pretense melted away. She lifted one arm and reached behind her shoulder. “I can’t reach my zipper. When I put this dress on, the glam team helped me but now…I can’t seem to get it off…”
The thought of undressing her had my already painful erection throbbing with need. “Turn around,” the instruction came out sounding much gruffer than I’d meant it to.
“Are you sure?” Her eyes widened. “You don’t…I can…I was going to try the hanger trick.”
“Hanger trick?”
“Yeah.” She lifted her hand to her head and grazed the tiny scar just below her hairline. “You straighten a wire hanger and hook it in and pull it down. But I don’t actually have a wire hanger. All of your hangers are fancy hangers.”
“Did you get your scar trying the hanger trick?” I’d wondered where that scar had come from.
“No.” She shook her head and her brows furrowed. “Why did you think that?”
“You touched your scar when you were talking about it.”
“I did?” her brows knitted together.
Her lack of self-awareness was as endearing as it was sexy. “You did.”
