Without any other movement, he nodded.
His gaze had a weight to it that I had memorized, and I could feel his eyes on me as I walked to the door.
Just as I was about to leave, he called after me, “Sabrina?”
I turned back to look at him, and the thing was, whatever he had to say, even if it was decent and not terrible, I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready to hear it.
I put my finger to my lips. “Shh.”
Then I pivoted and left, surprised I could walk as high as I was from the erotic scene.
But even dazed and confused, there was one thing I did know—the next move was on him.
Twenty-Two
I quickly learned the downside of having the ball out of my hands—Donovan was patient. Me—not so much.
Every day Donovan left me wondering anxiously if he’d make contact. And each day that passed without seeing him, I felt on edge. More and more, I worried he’d decided he wasn’t interested in pursuing anything further.
And then what the hell would I do?
I was into this now. He’d made me choose. I’d chosen to play. And then he’d made me wait.
And wait.
Goddamn motherfucker made me wait until Friday before he made his move.
I’d just returned from a working lunch with my team. I’d been distracted through the whole thing because I’d caught a whiff of Donovan’s cologne in the hall beforehand, and all I wanted to think about after that was how good he smelled when he was hovering over me. Somehow I’d gotten my head together, but I still felt dizzy when it was over, so I’d rushed back to my office. I’d barely had time to stow my purse in my locked drawer when Ellen, my assistant, called from her desk.
“Is my one thirty here?” I asked in lieu of greeting while trying to look at my teeth in my cell phone. “If he is, he’s early, and he can wait.”
Before she could answer, my door opened. And there was Donovan. Striding in like he’d been invited.
Guess Ellen hadn’t been calling about my one thirty.
I dropped my cell. Thank god, my teeth had been clean.
Because, damn, Donovan looked hot. Wicked hot. Hotter than last time I’d seen him, which wasn’t saying much because he always looked hotter than the last time I’d seen him. His suit today was light gray, his tie thin and black, his scruff thickening as afternoon rolled in.
But it was never what he wore or how recently he’d trimmed that made him sexy. It was how he stood, how he moved. Like he owned every inch of space that he took up. Like he deserved to own it.
It was how he looked at me. Like he owned me. Like he deserved to own me.
“I’m sorry,” Ellen rattled on through the receiver of the phone I was still holding. “It’s Mr. Kincaid. He just walked in. Obviously.” She sounded flustered, but she couldn’t possibly feel as flustered as I did with him in my office.
I mean, I got it. To her, he was The Big Boss. He held power over her.
That was nothing compared to the power he held over me.
“It’s okay, Ellen.” I started to tell her to hold my calls and cancel any appointments because, after four long days and nights of carnal thoughts about the man, I needed this encounter to get naughty. Just seeing him had ruined my panties.
But on the other hand, he’d put me through those four long days and nights of torture, and he didn’t deserve to be greeted with me falling at his feet.
“Buzz me when Mr. Hoder arrives,” I said instead. Reluctantly. Then hung up.
Without an apology for the intrusion, Donovan shut my door, fastened his eyes on me, and advanced to my desk.
“We need to have dinner.” His tone was harsh, and the energy surrounding him felt heavy and dense.
“Dinner or dessert?” I teased with a grin, throwing back the same question he’d asked me when I’d invited him out. I was relieved he was there. Excited, even.
“Dinner,” he said emphatically. “We need to talk. I’ll send my driver to pick you up at eight.” He turned around and headed back toward the door.
“Tonight?” I called after him. He was blustering around so fast I couldn’t quite keep up, and the air he was blowing in his path was chilly. My excitement was starting to fizzle into confused agitation.
He stared at me sharply. “Tonight.”
Everything about his delivery said there was no arguing.
“Fine. I’ll be ready.” As anxious as I’d been to see him all week, now I just wanted him out of my office and gone. Whatever was up with him, he’d better be over it by tonight.
“My driver will text you when he’s there.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill.”
“You don’t,” he said sternly. “But you’ll learn.”
The hair at the back of my neck prickled. It was a clearly pointed statement. There was no way I could ignore that his annoyance was directed at me.
“Hang on a second,” I said, stopping him before he stormed out. “Are you sure there’s something you don’t want to say now? It seems you aren’t really happy with me, and if that’s the case then maybe you should just tell me.”
He only barely hesitated. “You told Weston about us.”
Oh, that.
I hadn’t considered that Donovan might not have been happy about that. “I did tell him,” I began slowly. “He’d admitted—”
Donovan interrupted, taking an intimidating step forward as he did. “You told Weston about us, and you shouldn’t have told him about us. You should never tell anyone about us because there is no us.”
His speech hit like it had been a heavy sandbag that he’d thrown instead of a combination of articulated sounds. I felt the blood drain from my face, humiliated. Hurt. “There is no us” already stuck on a repeat loop in my brain.
“We have had sex a couple of times, Sabrina,” he continued, as if I hadn’t already been wounded sufficiently. “That’s all. Nothing more. And since we are both decent people, I’m sure we can concur that it’s no one’s business but our own.”
I blinked back threatening tears. We hadn’t defined what we were, and I hadn’t made any assumptions about what kind of relationship we’d have. I’d never thought we would be more than lovers. But it stung to have that confirmed outright. Quite a lot more than I would ever have expected, for no reason I could figure out. Probably because he was so fucking condescending. Because he was so self-righteous. Because, despite not being what I’d even wanted, it was rejection.
That was it—he’d diminished something that had been important to me. Maybe this relationship was just sex, but it still mattered. To me, anyway. It mattered a lot. For the first time in my life, I was beginning to see how I could feel comfortable in my body, comfortable with my desires, and it was only because of Donovan. It hurt to realize that it didn’t mean anything to him the way it did to me.
Which was probably dumb and immature and a stupid girly emotion—exactly the thing he was trying to avoid dealing with by giving his there is no us routine.