Her hand ran down the front of my suit, and I leaned into her.
“Yes,” I agreed. “You tell me to go away yet ask me to come here. What exactly do you want?”
Even though she wanted me, her head was warring with her body. Tension and desire mingled in the space between us. I could move in and take her lips with my own. I wanted to. But I didn’t want to take. I wanted her to offer. Like she had offered to come back here with me.
“I don’t know. This is a bad idea,” she whispered.
“Seems like a good idea to me.”
She released a breath. “I’ve had a lot to drink.”
“Me, too,” I said, taking a step closer.
“And, now, I really want to kiss you.”
I chuckled. I liked her blunt honesty a lot more when it was directed toward me positively rather than negatively.
She practically glowed at my laugh, and her eyes darted down to my lips. “But we can’t.”
“Can’t?”
She shook her head a miniscule amount and then tugged me a little closer. “Nope.”
“You want to kiss me,” I said, stepping into her personal space and glancing down at her lips. “But you can’t. Or won’t?”
“Oh, I will,” she breathed. “But I shouldn’t.”
Then, she dragged me against her, and her lips landed on mine with a tenacity that was enthralling. Our lips touched, and the world ceased.
I ran my hands around her waist and pulled her flush against my body. My tongue licked along her lips, begging for entrance. She opened up to me at once, and our tongues met as we flat-out made out in the back of the building.
And she was a fucking amazing kisser. I could do this all day. Even though my dick was telling me to move faster, my brain was saying that this was incredible. Her body against mine. Her lips on mine. Her heartbeat ratcheting up to meet mine in tempo.
It was a life-shifting kiss. One of those that came only once in a lifetime. The kind that you didn’t want to mean more. You wanted it to be a lust-induced kiss in the dark, but you couldn’t even fool yourself. This one was everything.
I didn’t know how long we stayed there, kissing. It could have been hours or days. My brain could not function beyond that moment.
But, eventually, she was pulling away, stepping back, shaking her head. And I had no idea what any of those motions meant.
Hadn’t she just had the same kiss I had?
She touched her lips. They were swollen and red. “Jensen…I…we…”
“Em,” I whispered, reaching out for her.
But she slipped through my fingers and disappeared into the night. I tried to follow after her, but one minute, she was there, and the next minute, she was gone.
My own fucking Cinderella. Great.
Seven
Jensen
My head pounded the next morning as my phone blared on the nightstand. I grabbed it and pressed Accept without looking at who it was. Fuck, how much had I had to drink last night?
“Hello?” I said.
“Hello, Mr. Wright,” my receptionist Margaret said. “I hope this is a good time. I got the paperwork in that you need to look over, and you told me to contact you as soon as it arrived.”
“Yes. Thank you,” I said as I tried to crawl out of bed.
Work. Of course, it’s work.
I listened for a few minutes more as Margaret continued to discuss the paperwork.
I stumbled into the bathroom and downed a pair of Tylenol. I appreciated Margaret’s enthusiasm for the merger, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the logistics of the paperwork until I got rid of this headache.
“Do you need me to come into the office today to go over this with you, sir?” she asked.
“No, thank you, Margaret. I’ll look at it in my home office and get back with you about it on Monday.”
She hesitated on the other line. “I think they’re going to want an answer today, sir.”
“They’ve kept me on the line for five days about this. And I’ll have to fly there to finish off the negotiations with Tarman. We have another day to wait. Plus, if I can lower their offer, we’ll all have bigger bonuses this Christmas.”
“Make them wait all you like then, sir.”
“Thank you, Margaret,” I said.
I hung up and then looked at myself in the mirror. I’d had way too much to drink last night. With a wince, I hopped into a scalding hot shower to try not to think about Em any longer. I’d tortured myself enough with it last night. Patrick, Austin, Morgan, and I had finished another bottle of whiskey while I was thinking.
By the time I completed my daily routine, I felt like a new man. Still a fucking confused man, but more like myself at least.
I checked the time as I changed into a pair of jeans and a button-up. It was still early. The alarm I had set for this morning hadn’t even gone off yet. I could probably still get in at least an hour of work before I needed to meet everyone for church—Sunday morning tradition for as long as I could remember.
With the added time on my schedule, my office beckoned. I walked into the first-floor office and took a seat at my mahogany desk. The sun was just rising through the giant floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the swimming pool that was closed for the season. I booted up my iMac and drowned myself in legalese that I would have to go over again with my lawyer. My eyes felt like sandpaper, and my throat was raw from all the alcohol and the sleepless night.
I thought my body would at least be used to not getting any sleep. Insomnia usually did that to someone. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a full night’s sleep. It was one of the reasons the company was flourishing. If you never had to sleep, then you could do double the amount of work.
My thoughts were so focused on the project at hand, I didn’t even notice Landon standing in my doorway until he cleared his throat.
“Bad time?” Landon asked with a wry grin.
I finished typing up the memo I’d been working on and then stood from my desk. “Of course not. Just got bogged down in work.”