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I know you. I know you. My head persists, but my heated body has other ideas. Maybe Lacie was right. Maybe I need to do all the little things I haven’t done in so long—live, breathe, laugh, and fuck. Perhaps, now is the time for it.
Pushing my bloodred manicured finger into his chest, I swallow down the gasp that bubbles up my throat from the smallest of touches.
“If I knew you better, I would say he’s not only an asshole—”
“And a sack of shit.” I sway a little with the way my legs turn to Jell-O when his hands bracket my hips.
“And a sack of shit, but he’s clearly stupid. Now, Lacie—” He licks his lips like the name on them makes him hungry. “—you don’t strike me as a stupid woman, or a woman who humors stupidity. So, I’d say he did you a favor.”
“He did,” I utter when Henry pulls me flush to him.
Beneath his black shirt and jeans, his body is hard, and I really want to become acquainted with it in a way that I have never really wanted before. Not even with Marsh.
Our chests press together with every breath, rubbing and squeezing until my nipples are furled so tight that the friction between us aches.
“You can have better,” he says, looking down at me, his focus sweeping from my face to my boobs. The shadows of his face darken, and at the same time his hands round to the top of my ass, I roll onto my toes.
“Are you better, Henry?” Tilting my face to within a breath of his, I melt into him.
Henry swipes his tongue along his bottom lip with a smirk, and the humid heat of it clings to the contours of my mouth like static pulling us together.
“Are you going to ask me to dance?”
“You look like the kind of man that likes to control the situation.”
“Actually, I couldn’t give a fuck about control.” I’m momentarily thrown back by his remark, and my stare darts from his glistening lips to his eyes. Maybe he’s telling the truth, but the way his eyes bore into mine, it doesn’t add up.
I’d ask, but the thrill is in the mystery and the knowledge that after tonight and whatever this is, I may never see him again. He’ll never know who I am. This will be a fun blip in my otherwise tame life.
Turning in his arms, I press my back to his front, tilting my head on his shoulder so that my lips graze the line of his jaw as I tell him, “Let’s dance.”
Chapter 2
Ava
The traffic is a disaster. It’s my first day, and I can’t be tardy.
“This cannot be happening,” I grit out, taking out enough cash to cover the cab fare and tip. I can see the office tower a couple of blocks away, and it would take me less time to rush in my heels than sit here agonizing over my first impression.
“I’ll walk from here,” I tell the driver, handing him the money before I get out.
It takes all of seven minutes, groaning lungs and a sore shoulder from running into every possible person. Pulling my security card out, I freeze as a familiar scent throws me back to last night. Amber and freshly chopped wood. Like sap, the scent sticks to my senses. I’m looking around, but apart from the throbbing ache between my thighs, there’s nothing.
Get your shit together! I tell myself as I go through the barriers and straight to the elevators. I keep telling it to myself in one of the elevator’s packed corners. Just when I think we’re done and the doors are about to close, two guys press inside. Everyone shuffles closer together as one walks in backward, laughing at whatever the other has said.
That deep laugh…
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” The one facing me looks up, and his eyes narrow before he smiles.
“Sometimes if you want the job done right, you got to do it yourself.”
That voice…
“I bet it was a hardship.” The guy smiling at me cocks his head to the side like he’s trying to see me through the crowd or over them. “A real hardship.”
The elevator fails to stop at all the floors people have requested, shooting right to the top where the two men get out. Luckily, I’m only two floors down and next to get out.
Claude, the HR woman I’ve been dealing with since signing my contract, is waiting for me at the front desk. With the exception of the glass walls and floor-to-ceiling windows, the place is a polished concrete box. Hard and cold with the letters CPM frosted over most of the partitioning glass and Coldwell Press emblazoned across the front desk in a luminous orange hue that is the only focus of the large space.
