“That does sound like Camille,” Emma mused. “Stiletto’s her life. I don’t know how she’s lasted this long away from it.”
“Well,” he said, standing. “For some people there is no separation between professional and personal. They don’t want it that way.”
“I suppose,” she said, watching him warily as he came around the desk toward her.
He stopped several inches away from where she sat, leaning against the desk and crossing his arms as he looked down at her. From the way his eyes heated, she knew that he had a very, very good view down her barely buttoned shirt.
“Emma.”
Her throat was dry. “Yeah?”
“I’m trying really hard to remember that I’m technically your boss.”
“But…” she prompted.
He stared at her. “But I really want to bend you over this desk, pull up your skirt, and fuck you.”
The pit of Emma’s stomach dropped out and she felt an immediate empty ache between her legs.
“Cassidy,” she breathed. “We can’t.”
“I know.”
“This morning, we agreed, that was the last time,” she continued, the explanation sounding like a horribly pathetic excuse considering that the sexual energy in the room was rapidly nearing its boiling point. “We can’t do this…casual sex thing. Not with our past.”
Not without one or both of us getting hurt.
“I know,” he said again, uncrossing his arms and putting his palms on either side of his hips on the desk.
Emma ran her palms over the fabric of her gray skirt, needing to do something with them other than reaching for him. And if his white knuckles were any indication, he was facing a similar struggle.
She wanted him. They wanted each other.
And it was stupid and reckless and probably maybe a little bit forbidden, which made it all the more tempting.
Emma closed her eyes. “If Camille’s back next Monday, you’re only my boss—”
“For five more days,” he said slowly. “And if I weren’t to read your story, if I left it for Camille to edit, then I’d only be your boss on a technicality, and not in a way that could represent a conflict of interest.”
Emma gave a low laugh. “There wasn’t a concern over conflict of interest when you assigned me the damn story—”
“Which I’ve apologized for,” he said calmly.
“And which I forgive you for,” she said equally calmly.
The silence in the room grew. So did the sexual tension.
When Emma spoke again, her voice was a husky whisper. “The door—”
“Locked,” he interrupted.
Then he reached down with one hand, hooked it behind her neck, and pulled her up. His mouth claimed hers in carnal possession.
That extra button Riley’d undone didn’t end up making a damn bit of difference. Not when he roughly pulled her blouse out from where it was tucked into her skirt, tugging her clothes apart with the same frantic urgency that she tore at his.
There was no suit jacket today, no tie, just a navy button-down dress shirt that Emma all but ripped from his body before sinking her teeth into his shoulder.
Cassidy swore, one hand wrapping around her back, the other tangling in her hair as he pulled her mouth up toward his. He spun them around then, so now it was Emma whose hips were pinned against the desk.
Then his hands slid under her butt, lifting her so she was sitting on the desk, his hands roughly pushing her thighs apart so he could step between them.
He shrugged out of his shirt before removing hers, and they both moaned when his palms closed over the light pink fabric of her bra.
“When I watched you put this on this morning, I dreamed of taking it back off again,” he said as he pulled back and ran a finger over the small bow between her breasts.
“So why don’t you?”