He hummed, then lifted his hand and slid it over my jaw to curl around the side of my neck. The movement startled me so much I stopped talking and looked up at him.
“I’m not going to fire you, Little,” he said, his voice warm and faintly amused.
“You’re not?”
“Why would I fire the only person who’s ever ridden to my defense?”
At my startled blink, he let out a low chuckle-then he dipped his head and before I knew what was happening, my billionaire boss pressed his lips to mine and kissed me.
It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was a kiss that said, I’ve been waiting for this moment. He curled his fingers around my neck and banded his other arm around my back, pulling me flush to his body. I clutched his shoulders and kissed him back, heat burning away every thought that might have crowded my mind and stopped me.
His lips demanded so much of me. He kissed to possess. To own. The arm around my back shifted and his hand slid down to my ass, squeezing. He groaned against my mouth then moved to kiss my jaw, my neck, and back up again. His hand clutched my hair as he bent me backward, and all I could do was pant and cling on for dear life.
“You make me want things no man has any business wanting,” he said, voice like gravel. He pulled away to look in my eyes, his hands still holding me exactly where he wanted me.
“Like what?” My chest heaved. My mind reeled. I didn’t know what was happening, but it felt so good I couldn’t stop. He walked me backward until my shoulder blades hit the wall, then pinned me there with the bulk of his body. His hands slipped down my arms to my wrists, which he circled with his fingers and brought up above my head, pinning them there with one hand.
“Like this,” he said darkly. “You, breathless.” His free hand moved to my face, and he traced the outline of my bottom lip. “Your lipstick smudged.”
“Some of it ended up on you,” I noted, glancing at the red smeared on his lips.
He grinned. “Good,” he said, then kissed me again.
Jared was no gentler the second time around. He pinned me to the wall with his hips against mine and his hand shackling my wrists, his free hand tilting my head so he could kiss the breath out of me. His tongue slid against mine as he groaned, and then his teeth nipped at my lip. I laughed, leaning my head against the wall, loving the way he was watching me, like he’d forgotten where and who we were.
In that moment, I’d forgotten too.
All that existed was the dark heat in his eyes, the press of his body against mine, the heat burning through me. I’d never felt so consumed by a man before. I’d never had my mind go so quiet, where all that mattered was the feel of his body, the rhythm of his breath, the sin in his gaze.
We kissed until our movements became frantic. He dropped my wrists and I clung to his lapels, my hips bucking against him. I could feel him pressed against me, hard, needy. His hands cupped my breasts, fingers digging into the flesh above the sweetheart neckline, and then he grabbed my thighs and spread them, holding me pinned to the wall in that darkened room where we had no business being.
I moaned, muffling the sound against his neck. My core pulsed. I wanted him inside me.
A dish clattered outside the door, and reality intruded. We flew apart. I ended up clutching the wall, gasping for breath. Jared stood with his back to me, his hands leaning on the table in the middle of the room, head bowed. Silence pressed in.
Gulping, I took a deep breath and bent down to pick up the clutch I’d dropped at some point in our little encounter. Thoughts came to me in fits and starts. My hands trembled. I unclasped the kiss lock at the top of my clutch and pulled out my compact mirror and the travel-sized makeup wipes I always brought with me.
Jared glanced my way, his eyes dark. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
His mouth was smeared with lipstick. My heart thumped. “It certainly went against the code of conduct from Appendix B,” I noted, then pulled out a makeup wipe and handed it to him before pointing to my own lips.
He scrubbed his lips with the wipe as I did the same, albeit with slightly more precise movements using my mirror. When I looked up, he was frowning at the smears of red on the makeup wipe.
“You missed a spot,” I said, then took the wipe and dabbed at the corner of his lip. He stood very still, his gaze steady on mine.
When I was done, I threw out both wipes and touched up my makeup, then went to work fixing my hair and dress. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best I could do. Jared straightened himself, frowning at one of the wrinkles in his jacket from where I’d gripped it in a tight fist.
As I set myself to rights and watched him do the same, the full consequence of what we’d done settled over my shoulders.
I couldn’t fall into a relationship with this man-for a multitude of reasons.
First, he was my boss. It was written out in black and white in my contract that this kind of thing was unacceptable. That should have been enough to guide my actions. If I wanted to gain some sort of financial stability, I needed to work this job longer than three measly weeks. At least until I found somewhere to live and saved up a bit of an emergency fund.
Secondly, he was wealthy. Men like him just didn’t end up with women like me. He’d use me and then toss me aside. That was pretty much written in my contact too. I was the official placeholder. I’d agreed to it. Letting myself get wrapped up in him would be disastrous not just for my stability, but for my sanity too.
I wasn’t able to separate sex from emotion. I was already feeling the pull of his charm. If we did something like this again, I already knew I wouldn’t be able to keep myself from developing feelings for him. That absolutely couldn’t happen.
Kissing him had lit a fire in my gut. It had made me want to submit to him, to give him my body and my heart and my soul. He’d made me feel alive, and I wanted more.
But I wasn’t stupid. The first thing he’d said was that it shouldn’t have happened, and I agreed.
He met my gaze. “Little?-“
I held up my hand. “Let’s not. That was… That happened. We agree it shouldn’t have. We can just move on and go back to the way things were before.”
“Can we?” His question was slightly cynical, his eyes shadowed as the light from the windows silhouetted him against them.
I straightened, adjusting the fall of my dress. “Yes. We can. You’ve hired me to do a job, and that’s what we need to remember.”
Standing my ground while he stalked toward me, I ignored the fluttering in my chest. I tilted my head to meet his gaze as his eyes bore into mine. Having him this close to me challenged my resolve. His energy pressed against me, weakening my defenses.
If he told me he wanted me in that moment, I’m not sure I would’ve refused. Despite all the logical reasons to stick to what was outlined in my contract, a big part of me wanted to rip those papers to shreds, wrap my arms around him, and deal with the consequences later.
But he just slid his hand across my back and guided me back out the door and into the glittering blue and silver of the event. By the time we got back downstairs, the interlude in that room felt like a distant memory.
Jared’s POV
My father gave a charming speech that earned him raucous cheers and thunderous applause, and I didn’t hear a word of it. I sat next to Iris obsessing about the taste of her lips.
I ran over the events of the last hour, cursing myself.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.