Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 81281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
I fall prey to the kiss—just as electric and consuming as it was last night standing outside his truck. It shamefully takes me several seconds where I want to roll over and submit before I put my hands on his chest and push against him.
He releases me immediately, casually leaning back but still perched on the edge of my desk.
“What are you—” I press my fingers to my mouth. “What are you doing?”
He looks at me with an expression that is completely level. “You were going on a while, and frankly, I didn’t feel like hearing it.”
“I was apologizing,” I snap. “The polite thing would be to listen and accept.”
“I know.” He rises, takes a step back, and puts his hands in his pockets, easy as anything. “I don’t need the apology.”
I stare at him. “Locke—”
“Here’s what I’ve figured out,” he says, like I haven’t spoken. “You kissed me first. Last night, outside your parents’ house, you kissed me.” He tilts his head slightly. “And you weren’t exactly pushing me away when I kissed you back.”
My mouth opens. Closes. Like a fish out of water, gasping for oxygen.
“So I’m trying to understand,” he continues, “why I’m sitting through a speech about professional boundaries when we both know what happened and we both know you didn’t hate it.”
“That’s…” I straighten. “That’s not the point. The point is that it was wrong and it can’t—”
“Did you hate it?”
“That is completely beside the—”
“Livia.” His voice drops just slightly, hypnotizing and mellow. “Did you hate it?”
I might be many things, but I try never to lie when asked an honest question. “No,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean—”
He reaches down, frames my face with his palms, and as if I were nothing more than a feather, he coaxes me to rise from the chair. I have no will of my own, and next thing I know, I’m standing toe to toe with him as he kisses me again.
This one is slower, more deliberate, if that’s possible, his fingertips gentle on my jaw. My traitorous hands, which my brain specifically instructs to push him away, refuse to obey. They find the front of his shirt instead and somewhere in the back of my mind the professional part of me that has been running this apology speech since seven this morning lowers its head in defeat.
What the hell is happening to me? Never in my life have I been rendered ineffectual in controlling my own destiny.
He lets me go and the mere fact I stumble tells me that I was completely in his thrall.
The expression on Locke’s face is one of pure male satisfaction and I’m deeply annoyed.
“See,” he says.
“Don’t,” I say.
“You wanted it.”
“Locke—”
“Same as me,” he says without arrogance. Just fact. Two people, same situation, same result. “So the professional boundary argument is getting harder to make.”
I take a breath. Smooth my shirt even though it doesn’t need it. “It doesn’t matter what I want.” I meet his eyes and hold them because this part matters and I need him to hear it. “I work for this organization. You’re a player on the roster. What I want is completely irrelevant because as soon as this becomes personal, my professional credibility is gone and everything I’ve built to get here goes with it.” I pause so that sinks in. “That matters to me. You might not understand why it matters to me, but it does.”
He’s quiet for a good while.
I can see him thinking, waiting to see if he even cares.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he says.
I go still and I don’t want to hear what he has to say. The fact I would consider any arrangement that might allow me to kiss him again without consequence is too tempting.
And yet, I find myself asking, “What kind of deal?”
“You want to know about my family, where I came from… what it was like growing up in that environment.” He holds my gaze. “You want to try to figure me out and you’re smart enough to know, we’re all a product of our past. So, I’ll give you a single, devoted session on that.”
I don’t say anything, because I can’t. He’s offering a very tempting carrot.
“One real session,” he says. “You ask what you want about my family. I’ll answer honestly.”
My pulse skitters. He’s offering a window into what made Locke Donovan who he is before everything else happened, and that is more professionally valuable than anything I’ve gotten from him so far. It’s exactly what I need to actually help him. And he knows that, which means he’s offering it deliberately—but also means he’s got his terms.
“What do you get out of this?” I ask.
“Haven’t figured that out yet.”
I blink. “You haven’t figured that out?”
“I know what direction I’m headed.” Those blue eyes, not looking chilly at all, hold mine with a steadiness that interrupts my ability to think clearly. “Just haven’t landed on the specific terms.”