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These sorts of uncontrolled thoughts are what I am actively fighting to protect women from.
I’m making myself sick.
Briar tangles her fingers together in the corner of my vision while I battle my own brain. A white flower that matches her tights paints each nail, the tips look dipped in the same shade as her dress.
She…
Is so effin’ coordinated.
Frick.
Frick.
She’s beautiful. I can’t breathe. Or concentrate.
“About last time—” she begins.
Nope.
Striding out from behind my desk, I fix my palm against her lower back and direct her toward the door, ushering her a stumbling step forward. “We’re late, princess. Your PowerPoint included a detailed schedule, so we better follow it.”
“That schedule was a joke.”
Obviously it was. It didn’t include meeting with a contact at all and delineated an entire day of amusement park activities. All the same, I say, “No. It was too comprehensive to be a joke.”
She protests, “I allotted thirteen minutes to eat lunch. Who does that?”
“I’ve always thought fifteen was too long and ten too short.”
A laugh explodes out of her, and the sound streaks down my back like a physical touch. Muscles tense, I march her to my car and trap myself in the box with her.
Near instantly, my lungs fill with the aroma of cake, and, in hindsight, accelerating this predicament was an awful idea.
A coy smile teases her lips as I drive, and I want to taste it.
I want to taste her smiles and her skin. I want to discover whether or not she’s as sweet as she smells. She has no business looking, acting, or smelling like she does. She’s supposed to be dark leather and vinyl—a tease or a torment or a temptation. As dangerous as serrated steel.
Instead, she’s soft and warm as sunlight on a spring day.
The worst part is I think I want…both.
I want her warmth to consume me after the serrated edge of her blade abuses my nerves. I want her perfect, pretty pink nails to dig into my skin as her soft lips tease. I want her.
“What?” I growl after the tenth minute of her silently smiling at me.
“Nothing.”
I want to shatter glass. Or grip her wrists and press her into the side of a brick building before—
Before I do things I will never forgive myself for.
Shaking my head, I hit the brakes as a light turns red. Then I scowl at her.
She smiles back, not a care in the world. “You’re uptight,” she says. “I get it.”
“You get what?” I fix my gaze back on the road as the light turns green.
“Feelings are especially spooky when you’ve never been allowed to feel them before.” Setting a hand on my bicep, she sets every cell in my arm on fire. “Take a deep breath and let yourself exist. It’s allowed.”
