Page 9 of Tangling with the Boss

“Anything,” I say, squaring up to her in the narrow bar space. “Anything at all. Name it and it’s yours.”

Hazel’s lips press together in a thin line. And she keeps working, keeps lining up booze bottles like it’s the most important task on earth, but I catch her elbow the next time she straightens up and hold her in place.

“Tell me.”

String lights wink from the temporary roof above us. This whole rooftop has been transformed into a sea of twinkling lights, and they sparkle in my assistant’s honey-brown eyes.

She juts her chin. “No. I mean—I can’t. There’s nothing.”

“Tell me,” I say again, squeezing her arm softly. Her bare skin is warm and soft beneath my palm, and the way my body reacts to the contact, you’d think I’d stripped Hazel bare and spread her beneath me.

My gut clenches.

My pulse throbs in my throat.

My temperature climbs and my throat bobs, swallowing nothing.

Want her.Need her.

“I don’t… I mean, there’s not…”

My assistant trails off, her chest rising and falling beneath that purple dress. We’re closer, somehow. Gravitating nearer. My hand is on her bare arm, and her flyaway hairs dance on the breeze, and those soulful eyes flick down to my mouth and stay there.

Slam. Slam. Slam.

If my heart beats any harder, it’ll punch clean through my rib cage.

Hazel is still looking at my mouth.

Is that—does she want—?

“What if I kissed you?” My voice is hoarse, but I make the offer. Need to know. “What then? Would you stay?”

All the other sounds of the rooftop—the clatter and calls of the catering staff, the slosh of the pool, the flap of gazebos in the breeze—it all fades away to nothing.

Hazel’s gaze shoots up to mine. Her pupils are blown.

And my common sense screams in the back of my head, begging me to think this through, but I smother that voice with an imaginary pillow. Not now, damn it.

Body thrumming, I close the distance between us. Her dress brushes against my shirt, and Hazel lets out a soft whimper.

This can’t be real.

But when I bend my head, going slow, she doesn’t back away. No: Hazel pushes onto her toes and flings both arms around my neck, like she’s been longing for this for years. Like it’s been exhausting her tiny frame, trying to hold all this passion back.

Her mouth finds mine. Our lips brush, and our breath mingles in the twilight, and it’s like a punch in the gut.

Need curls through me, buckling my knees and stealing my air. Don’t care if swarms of hired staff can see us here; don’t care if they gossip. Don’t care about anything except the maddening woman in my arms.

Cupping the sides of Hazel’s throat, I slant our heads and kiss her again, harder.Harder.Long and deep and desperate, tongues sliding, teeth nipping, and I’ve never felt anything like this before in my whole lonely life.

She’s just so fuckingsweet.Warm and perfect, like a mug of hot cocoa, with her needy whimpers and her clinging arms and the way she arches against me, silently begging for more. It’s so much more than I bargained for and so much less than I need, and I’ve lost track of the sky above and the ground below. Lost track of everything except Hazel’s lips on mine.

What was the plan here, again? How will this work?

“Mmph.” She gives as good as she gets, kissing me eagerly. As though I’m a man she could truly desire; as if this is shaking her world apart too. But that can’t be right, because of all people, Hazel knows what I’m truly like.

The moods. The surliness.

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