Like a moth to a flame, he’d headed straight for the light. And he’d been burned so bad, upon reflection, even he couldn’t believe it.
Everyone had seen it but him.
More whip cracking brought him back to the present. He cleared his throat, her name stiff on his lips. “Reece? Jax. Call me back at this number.” He clicked the phone off. There. Obligation satisfied.
Ten seconds after he hung up, the phone rang.
*
Em sucked in a long breath and poked her head into Jax’s office, stealing a glance of him staring at his ringing phone. “Can I borrow a minute of your time?”
She’d come with hat in hand, after a long weekend of contemplation, wherein she’d mentally flogged herself and decided he deserved an apology. Had the roles been reversed, she couldn’t swear she wouldn’t have been offended.
Working together, asking him such a forward question, put him in an awkward position. She had to make that right. For the sake of Call Girls. She was the GM, not the femme fatale.
Jax grinned, dropping his cell phone to the surface of his desk. “If you’d said pen, I would have said not on your life. Pens are supersacred to nerds like me. But time? Got plenty of that to spare. I was hoping to see you anyway.”
Who hoped to see the person that had treated them like a slab of baby back ribs? “I just wanted to...” Em licked her lips, tugging at the scarf around her neck, letting the smooth fabric soothe her hot fingertips. It was symbolic—black, the color of her unforgivable shame.
Wait. He’d been hoping to see her? “You were hoping to see me?”
When Jax rounded the corner of his desk, filling the space between them, his footsteps held determination, solid and steady. He stopped just shy of a foot or so between them, reaching over her head to close the door. “I was. So about your question at Dixie and Caine’s party—”
Em’s hand went up in a protective gesture—to his chest—because that’s where all hands went when they were in protective mode. “That’s why I’m here. I want to apologize for my behavior—”
Jax pulled her to him, wrapping a hand around her waist, and kissed her hard with delicious force.
He wasn’t asking permission, either. He was demanding she kiss him, angling his mouth over hers, coaxing her lips to his will with a tongue that tasted like peppermint and sex.
Em’s bones melted, became all floaty and light. She found her favorite anchor, the collar of Jax’s shirt. Her fingers clutched either side of it, clinging to it to keep her legs from crumbling.
The rush of the memory of his fingers between her legs came back full throttle—and she wanted. Instantaneously, she wanted him. Wanted him naked, tight against her body, wanted all of the naked, sweaty naughty she’d played like a movie reel in her mind’s eye.
His kiss got hotter, more urgent, until her back was to his office wall, his rigid thighs straining against hers. Her nipples tightened, achy, needy, crushed against his broad chest, leaving an imprint of Jax all over her. One she wanted to roll around in, inhale, devour.
Em’s fingers went to his shoulders, flattening her palms against them, admiring the ripply feel of hard flesh.
Then he was pulling his mouth from hers, his breathing harsh on her face, just as she was mentally shedding her restrictive clothing and doing more un-Em-like things.
Right there in the office while phones rang and the night shift was just getting settled in.
Flirty Em, the one who seemed to take over like a possessed Linda Blair, made an appearance. “Wow.” She heard her voice, an unfamiliar husky, just-been-kissed voice, and fought not to frown. How unusual. Had she sounded like that with Clifton? Smoky and kittenish?
Jax put his hands on the wall, planting them on either side of her head, and stared down at her, his eyes with the thick fringe of lashes teasing. “Name your terms.”
“My terms?”
“For this no-connection, sex-only deal. Let’s negotiate.”
“Negotiations never occurred to me.” When a woman made an offer like this, didn’t men just show up and shut up? “We have to have terms? Do we need a written contract, too?”
Jax nipped her jaw, still keeping his body from totally reconnecting with hers. “Yeah, like rules. I figure, we work together, and you probably won’t want anyone here at work to know. Plus, you seem like the kind of person who likes order, so there must be rules. Name them.”
Right and right, but before her thoughts landed on work, her first concern was for the boys and what more gossip would do to them. “Discretion,” she blurted out, making herself look up at him. No one could ever know Emmaline Amos was having an indiscretion.