Page 53 of Dirty Rich Cinderella Story

“Yes,” he says sounding irritated. “Bring her. This afternoon.”

“What time?” I ask.

“Three o’ clock.”

“Well see you then.” We disconnect, and I set my phone down. “I know the party is tonight, but he said he’d see us today, and I didn’t want to talk myself out of it. Three o’clock.”

“You’re brilliant,” Cat declares.

“Which is why we hired her,” Reese says, joining us and quickly stepping to Cat’s side.

A tingle along my skin tells me Cole is behind me, and I twist around in my seat to find Reese headed toward Cat, and Cole leaning one shoulder on the archway, and Lord help me, my adrenaline spikes and my heart starts racing. He’s gorgeous. He’s here. He’s intensely focused on me, his expression unreadable, but there is an edge to him, a cutting undercurrent I’ve seen in him before now, just not directed at me. It’s definitely directed at me now. “Walk me to the elevator, Lori?”

Our phone call is here and now, in person. Somehow, that’s so much more intense. “Yes. Of course.”

Cat gives me a knowing look before I turn away and slip off the barstool. Cole straightens and steps out of the archway to allow me to pass. He joins me immediately and once again we walk down the hallway, but this time we don’t stop in the foyer. He motions me to the door, and I walk that direction. He’s there by the time I’m there, opening it for me to pass through.

I don’t hesitate to follow his direction and we don’t speak but I have never been so aware of any other human being in my life. I step into the hallway and Cole joins me. For a moment, he’s towering over me, and we’re facing each other, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to melt from the heat we’re radiating. Cat’s right. How does anyone fight something like this? Everyone wants to feel this, they wish for something this intense, and maybe it’s just physical, but it’s no less fierce.

“Come on,” he says, taking my hand, and I let him. I can’t stop him. I don’t want to stop him. I want to go where he’s leading me.

We round the corner to the elevator banks and instead of punching the elevator button, he heads for the stairwell. He opens the door and in a blink, we’re inside the corridor, and his fingers are slicing into my hair and his mouth is closing down on mine. I don’t even consider resisting. I need this. I need him, and when his tongue touches mine, I feel it everywhere. My sex. My nipples. My entire body. I moan into his mouth and grip his shirt, while his hand molds me close. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to have to think or be logical or cautious.

His hand slips under my shirt and mine under his, that spicy familiar scent of him a drug seducing my senses. I need more. I want more, and I don’t realize how much that is true until right here and now. His hand slips under my sweats, and he cups my backside. The same hand that spanked me. Because he makes the forbidden sultry and sexy and necessary.

***

Cole

The only sound in the stairwell is the moan that escapes Lori’s lips when I mold her hips to my hips, my erection pressing against her belly. It echoes inside the concrete walls, a sound meant for my ears and only my ears, like I believe she’s meant for me and no one else. It’s the jolting moment that pulls me back to the present. I press Lori against the wall and tear my mouth from hers. “We have to stop before I forget we’re in a stairwell, and finally find my way back inside you again.” And now it’s a mix of her breathing and my breathing that fills the small space, both of us on edge, both of us needing what we’ve been denied for months. What should have been. What I won’t let her run from again.

Her chin lifts and she grabs fistfuls of my shirt. “You make me crazy, Cole Brooks,” she hisses. “You make me do things I wouldn’t do with anyone else.”

I lean in and press my cheek to hers, my lips by her ear. “The feeling is mutual, sweetheart,” I whisper.

“You’re still doing it,” she bites out.

“So are you,” I assure her.

She presses her hands to my chest. “Stop.”

I lean back to look at her. “I can’t stop. You can’t stop, and what’s crazy about that is that I don’t lose control. I don’t think about a woman when I should be thinking about other things. I don’t fuck people I work with. And yet here I am and here we are.”

“Exactly,” she says. “I don’t risk my future over a man.”

“You think I’d let you get hurt?”

“Not intentionally, but we’re in a stairwell, all over each other, Cole. Cat said we’re glaringly obvious and she’s clearly correct. Which, by the way is why I asked to talk to you, but I couldn’t remember that fact until this moment. And why is that? Because we were too busy doing everything but talking. I had to tell her that we met on the street that day and that you asked me to coffee.”

“And she said what?” I ask.

“If we’re obvious to her, we can be obvious to others.”

I narrow my eyes on her. “Did she say that, or did you say that?”

“I’m saying that.”

“Cat and Reese are friends. They’ll see what others do not.”

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