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She shakes her head, biting down on her lip. “It’s nothing,” she says, falling quiet as she finishes her dinner.
I think back to what she was talking about, drawing a blank. Was it something about work?
Aria is quiet as she clears the table, and I rise from my seat, intercepting her before she disappears into her room. I walk up to her and wrap my arm around her waist, pulling her closer. She stumbles and presses her hands against my chest to stabilize herself. She looks up at me wide-eyed, and this time I’m sure. That’s attraction in her eyes. The way her cheeks flush and her lips part… yeah, she’s as affected by me as I am by her, but I’m not sure she’s even aware of the way her body betrays her. She and I have gotten more comfortable together recently, and every once in a while, I catch her looking at me with an interest that wasn’t there before. I enjoy that look in her eyes far more than I should.
“Tell me. What was it you said? I was just absentminded, Aria. I wasn’t ignoring you. I’ll never do that to you.”
She leans in, her chest grazing against mine. I want her fully pressed up against me. I want to know what she feels like, whether she’ll fit into me as well as I think she will.
“It’s nothing,” she murmurs. “I was just asking you for some advice about some of the work I’m doing. I hit a wall, and I’m not sure how to resolve it.”
“Okay, let’s take a look,” I tell her, twirling a strand of her hair around my finger. She smiles at me, and my heart… my fucking heart.
“Really?”
I nod, and Aria grabs my hand with both of hers. She pulls me along to the sofa and grabs her laptop. I watch her as she sits down and pulls her legs up, making her T-shirt ride up, revealing her thighs. I force my eyes away, but the one glance was enough to make me wonder how soft her skin will be, whether she’ll gasp if I were to open her legs and kiss her inner thigh.
I shrug off my suit jacket and remove my cufflinks, placing them on the table before unbuttoning the top few buttons on my shirt. I pause when I feel Aria’s gaze on me.
Her eyes meet mine, and the way she looks at me instantly has me hard. This woman…
I sit down next to her and grab one of the cushions that magically appeared in my apartment, livening up my otherwise bland, boring space. I place it in my lap to hide how she affects me, and she’s so fucking clueless… so clueless, that she places her laptop on top of the cushion, as though I intended to use it as a table or some shit.
She sits next to me on her knees; her face far too fucking close to mine as she runs me through the issues she’s facing. All the while, all I can’t think of is how I want her flat on her back, my lips on hers and my cock buried deep inside her. I want my name on her lips.
I want what I’ll never have.
21
Aria
“Didn’t you used to work for Torsis, that little boutique firm?” Laura asks, sounding excited. I’m surprised she walked up to my desk at all. In the last couple of weeks we’ve only spoken a handful of times. She always keeps to herself. I initially thought she just didn’t like me until I realized she doesn’t hang out with the rest of the team either. It’s only Gray she ever really speaks to.
I frown and nod at her. “I did.”
She laughs and hands me her phone. “You got out just at the right time, then. Some dude named Brad single-handedly caused the demise of your old firm. Did you know him?”
I nod, reading through the article in shock. Torsis is on the brink of bankruptcy and facing multiple lawsuits due to the delivery of faulty software. Looks like they managed to trace it all back to Brad.
Impossible. I worked on a lot of these projects, and I know everything was working flawlessly when I left. What happened?
My hand is shaking as I hand Laura back her phone. “What a moron,” she says, laughing. “Such a large-scale scandal is rare. I can’t believe how lucky you were to leave when you did. That Brad guy must be a moron.”
“He is,” I say, my eyes turning toward Grayson’s office. Heisa moron, but I worked closely on many of the projects named in the article. This couldn’t have happened unless it was orchestrated. I watch Gray through his open office door, my heart starting to race as I think back to his bruised knuckles the day after Brad broke my heart. Could it be?
I smile at Laura and rise from my seat. “Excuse me,” I tell her, my legs barely holding me up as I walk to Gray’s office, hesitating in his doorway.
He looks up at me, his lips tipping up in a smile. “Aria.”
I walk in and close the door behind me, my hands shaking. Gray rises from his seat and walks toward me, meeting me halfway. “What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice tinged with worry.
“Did you hear?” I whisper. “About Torsis?”
Something flickers in his eyes, and my heart starts to hammer in my chest. I swallow hard as I gather my courage. “Was it you?”
Gray tenses and raises a hand to my face, his expression unreadable as he brushes my hair out of the way before cupping my cheek, his thumb tracing over the edge of my lips. When he looks at me this way, my heart can’t help but race.
“Yes,” he says, taking a step closer to me, and I place my palms on his chest. Gray raises his other hand to my face and cups the back of my head, his fingers threading through my hair. The way he’s holding me… it’s intimate, yet his body is barely touching mine.
