Page 11 of Contracted and Claimed By The Boss

She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘What did you want?’

‘When?’

‘Then. You called my name.’

‘You said to tell you when I’m ready to go.’

‘Oh.’ She cast one last, longing glance at the beach. ‘And are you?’

He hesitated a moment, eyes raking her face, expression impossible to read. And then, ‘Yes. We should go.’

Disappointment unfurled in Paige’s chest. What had she been hoping? That he’d suggest they go swimming together? He was working, and she wasn’t his houseguest. She was an employee in his home, that was all.

‘We should,’ she agreed, her voice tinged with glumness. But still, neither moved. The air between them crackled and hummed and Paige’s lips parted, warmth spreading through her as she imagined what it would feel like to be kissed by him. Out of nowhere, an image of him doing exactly that assailed her and she trembled all over. What on earth was happening to her?

He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to pull her against his body and taste those sweet pink lips, to feel her curves hard against him. He wanted to know the touch of a woman again, to know the heady rush of intimacy, and he wanted that, particularly, with Paige. She’d stirred something to life inside his chest, something he’d been fighting since the moment she’d arrived. He’d blamed her.

He’d accused her of instigating it but that was wrong.

The moment he had seen her he’d felt re-energised, reborn, a red-blooded man again, fully aware of his needs and desires.

He wanted nothing more than to act on them.

But how could he?

He was going around in circles here, knowing he couldn’t take advantage of this situation even when every cell in his body was demanding he do something about this desire. She felt it too. He might have been out of practice with women but he understood people and the way her eyes lingered on him, stuck to his lips, or his body, when she thought he wasn’t looking... She was as much under siege as he was.

So wouldn’t he be doing them both a favour if he acted on this?

And then what?

Frustration whipped the base of his spine. Desire unfurled in his belly.

‘Don’t you need to go?’ she whispered, her voice soft, curling around him like the waves of the ocean.

Didn’t he?

Shouldn’t they?

‘Is that what you want?’ His voice was made hoarse by desire.

‘Max.’ Her word was a sigh and then her hand lifted to his chest, almost as if she couldn’t help herself. The second she touched him, sparks exploded in his gut. Heaven help him, he was stirring to life—with a vengeance. Every part of him was energised and hyper-charged, hyper-aware of Paige. ‘We can’t—’

Her voice trailed off and he closed his eyes, trying to latch onto sanity, to his legendary self-control. He did so, but with monumental effort.

‘No.’ He took her by the wrist and removed her hand, swallowing hard at the simple, possessive contact. ‘We can’t.’ Now his voice was flint, as if the simple act of asserting dominance over his desires had rendered him stone. ‘Let’s go, Paige. We both have work to do.’

CHAPTER FOUR

THEY ATE TOGETHER that night, the three of them. It was Paige’s suggestion, but the moment they sat down Max wished he’d had an acceptable excuse to leave. He’d become used to the awkward, prickly silences when it was just him and Amanda. He’d learned how to zone out to ignore his own deficiencies, and to drown out the proof that his daughter was starting to hate him. But with Paige in the room, he felt every single one of those thoughts banging into him until he wanted to scream. Worse, the air between him and Paige seemed to hum with all the power of an extremely localised electrical storm, so there was no refuge from tension, no respite. He should have avoided this like the plague.

Amanda sat on one side of the table, opposite Paige, with Max at the head.

And for all Paige had orchestrated this happy little scenario, once they were seated, she made very little attempt at conversation, so he found himself wondering almost obsessively about what she was thinking, what she wanted, noticing all the small details, like how she held her fork and shifted her water glass when she was lost in thought.

Max ground his teeth, forcing himself to focus on his daughter, to ask Amanda the staple round of questions she generally liked to ignore:

How was school?

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