Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
“Okay,” she agreed softly.
They walked. Away from the terrace, past the gardens, into the grove where the jacaranda grew thick and the light turned purple-blue and the sounds of the club faded into birdsong and the rustle of things growing. She kept two feet between them. He kept pace beside her with his hands in his pockets, and she could feel the heat of him even across the distance, the same cellular awareness that had electrified her on her eighteenth birthday, her body tuned to his frequency like a radio stuck on one station.
“You’ve been different,” he said.
“I’ve been professional.”
“That’s what I mean.”
She studied him. His face was tight. His eyes were on the path ahead, not on her, and the muscle in his cheek was working. He didn’t want to be saying this. He was saying it anyway.
“You told me it was a mistake,” she pointed out. “I’m respecting that.”
“I know.”
“So what do you want?”
He stopped walking. She stopped too, because her body was stupid and loyal and did whatever his did. They stood in the grove with the jacaranda shadows falling between them and the afternoon heat thick in the air, and he turned to her with a rawness on his face that split something open in her chest.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
Three words. Quiet. His voice stripped of the silk, stripped of the boardroom composure, stripped of everything except a nakedness that she recognized because she heard it in her own voice every time she said his name.
“That’s not good enough,” she told him. Not cruel. Honest. “You kissed me like I was air and then told me it meant nothing. You don’t get to say I don’t know.”
“You’re right.”
“I know I’m right.”
Warmth crossed his face, there and gone before he could catch it. “You’re fearless around me.”
“I’m terrified around you,” she countered. “I just don’t let it stop me.”
His focus sharpened on her then. Full on. His eyes burning in the afternoon light, his pupils expanding, and the hunger was back, the thing he’d been starving behind days of her indifference, and it roared to the surface so fast he didn’t have time to tamp it down.
“That’s the problem,” he said roughly.
She stepped forward instead of back.
His hand came out of his pocket and settled on her waist before she’d closed the distance. His fingers discovered the curve of her hip through the polyester, and the touch went through her body like a current, warm and heavy and everywhere at once. She tipped her face up to his. Two feet between them collapsed to six inches, and his other hand came up and his thumb traced the line of her cheekbone. The gentleness of it after days of nothing nearly undid her.
“I’m going to kiss you.” Her tone was part nervous, part determined. “Unless you tell me not to.”
He didn’t tell her not to.
She rose on her toes and put her mouth to his. Soft, this time. She kissed him soft and certain, and felt him go rigid under her hands, every muscle in his body locking tight, and then the lock broke and he made a sound against her mouth, low, from his chest, and his arms closed around her and pulled her into his body and he kissed her back with a thoroughness that turned her bones to water.
His mouth was warm. He tasted like the club’s iced coffee, bitter and cold, and underneath that was just him, and her hands settled on his chest and slid up to his shoulders and she could feel his heart hammering under her palm, fast, so fast, and the knowledge that she did this to him, that his body was as undone by hers as hers was by his, made something fierce and bright bloom in her chest.
He walked her backward. A jacaranda trunk, wide and rough-barked, the purple blossoms drifting down around them. Her shoulder blades met the bark through her polo and she gasped at the texture, and he used the gasp, kissed deeper, drinking her in. Her hands slid from his shoulders into his hair and pulled.
His response was immediate. A rough sound against her mouth. His hips pinned hers to the tree, and she could feel him, the physical evidence of what she did to him, and this time she didn’t freeze. This time she arched into the pressure and heard him groan, a sound that vibrated through his chest into hers.
His mouth left hers and trailed down her neck. Her head fell back against the bark and her fingers tightened in his hair.
“Julian.” His name tore out of her, half breath, half plea.
His hand slid from her waist, up her side, over the polyester, and then his fingers reached the hem of her polo and slipped under. His palm on her bare skin. The shock of contact made her gasp, and his hand flattened against her stomach, warm, and then traveled up. Her spine arched and she pulled herself closer, and the sound she made was something she’d never heard from her own mouth, high and broken and needing.