Page 90 of Failure to Match

He was undeniably perfect. Even with the afternoon stubble covering his sharp jaw and the light shadows etched underneath his eyes, he wasdevastating. I understood why so many tearshad been shed over him. Now that the anger had ebbed and the burnout wasn’t so overwhelming, I could understand how he could be so easily destructive.

The urge to push myself away warred with the one begging for touch. I wanted to run my fingers over his cheekbone, his jaw… wrap his tie around my fist and force him to look at me.

I did neither—just lingered in the in-between like an indecisive coward.

An indecisive coward who loved her career and couldn’t justify risking it for a kiss.

“I don’t want any of these on the record,” Jackson muttered in his smooth accent, blissfully unaware of the havoc he was wreaking on my insides. “This section or the next two.”

“Then we just have the check-in... left…”

My words died when he met my gaze. It was like my brain shut off and I couldn’t find the switch to bring it back online.

Alarming.

On so many fundamental levels, this was alarming.

“I still think we should go over it.” He said it quietly. Like that, too, was only meant for me.

“Why?”

“You can still use it. When you’re... picking my next match, you can still keep this stuff in mind. I just don’t want it fed to a machine.”

I couldn’t even tell if that made sense, I was so distracted. As soon as he mentioned being set up with someone else, my fingers balled into fists and my gut clenched again as something in the deepest depths of my soul snarled possessively.

Extremely alarming.

“All right,” my mouth said as the snarling Thing grew bigger, developed claws, fangs, and the ability to spit fire. “I’ll just... you share whatever you want me to keep in mind for your next match. Since, um, you’ve already read over the questions.”

My voice lost the last bit of professionalism I’d tried so hard to maintain when it quivered. Then again, the proximity of our faces wasn’t exactly respecting any professional boundaries. Neither was the way he was looking at me. Like I was something to be devoured.

“And what about you?” he asked gently. “Are you comfortable getting into all this?”

“It’s my job.” I’d spent years discussing these topics with clients. This shouldn’t have been any different.

“How about this.” His head tilted to where the red and green macarons were sitting on the table, though his gaze never left mine. “If at any point you want to stop, just say ‘strawberry.’”

A whole lot of the muscles south of my professionalism clenched. “You’re assigning me a safeword?”

More clenching.

“I don’t care if it’s your job. You want to stop, we stop.”

“Okay,” I whispered back.

And that was the moment my brain chose to remind me that it’d been a year since I’d had sex. I slipped my hands underneath my thighs and cleared my throat, indicating that he should go ahead instead of staring at me. He took the hint.

“As far as my relationship history is concerned, blank is accurate.” He paused. I blinked. “I’ve never been in one.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Maybe that should have made sense, given what I knew about his distaste for romantic love.

Still, it caught me off guard and, for a single deer-in-the-headlights moment, my face went slack. I’d dealt with other clients who’d been single all their lives, of course. It really wasn’t as uncommon as you’d think. However, that information was disclosed at a very early stage in the process.

And also, none of those other clients had been Jackson fucking Sinclair.

“Okay.” I managed to school my expression with impressive reaction speed, considering how close he was still sitting.

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