Page 63 of Bad & Bossy

“I think I can find enough here to eat,” she said, her eyes still catching on the cocktail shrimp as she helped herself to one of the salads and a massive scoop of rice and beans.

Drew seemed entertained enough with a handful of toys and a bottle at the ready in case he kicked off. We ate, drank the sparkling grape juice, laughed and teased. I didn’t even find myself wishing that the aforementioned juice was something else. All I wanted was to be present in the moment with her, to not be startled when time slipped away, to remember every little detail from the way she hummed around the foods she tried and liked to the way she giggled when I called her baby.

I didn’t want it to end. And it didn’t have to.

“Why tonight?” she asked, leaning back in her chair after devouring a small plate of chocolate cake. “We still have another three days. What’s so special about today?”

“Why does it have to be special?”

She leveled a glare at me that said cut the shit.

“Alright,” I chuckled, sitting back in my seat and trying to relax. In truth, the nerves had kicked up again, once forgotten about in the peace she brought me but now screaming at me again in full force. “You got me.”

She motioned with her hand to continue, her glee from being right barely hidden.

I took a deep breath, trying to work out what I wanted to say, how I wanted to sell it to her. But it wasn’t another product I was offering, wasn’t a financial investment. She was Dana, and I was me, and Drew was a tiny human shaking his toy keyring about with reckless abandon.

“Tell me,” she said, her voice a little softer.

“I know you said that it isn’t what you want,” I sighed, already hating the way I’d started. “That you didn’t want to consider it after what had happened between us last year.”

I could see her body stiffen, her hand half outstretched toward the martini glass of cocktail shrimp. She hesitated before retracting it.

“And I know it hasn’t been that long since then, but so much has changed,” I continued. “And fuck, Dana, I can’t pretend this is just casual. I can’t keep pretending like I don’t want more with you because I do. I’ll keep going like this if it’s what you need, but I wanted to lay my cards on the table. I wanted to tell you because it’s getting so much harder to keep it in every time I touch you.”

She swallowed, her throat bobbing. She glanced at Drew as he babbled, his little noises so easy to tune out when it mattered, but I knew this wasn’t something that only involved her. She had to consider him, too. “What are you saying, exactly?” she asked.

“I want a relationship with you,” I rasped. “I want everything with you.”

Chapter 22

Dana

Drew slept so deeply I wondered if he’d ever wake up.

I turned off the light to the small spare room in Cole’s penthouse after setting up the nanny cam I’d brought up just in case. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d made a mistake, if I hadn’t thought it through enough, if I’d made my decision on a whim. But how could I have? I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the positives and negatives for weeks. I’d thought it through.

He was on me the second I shut the door to the master.

His arm around my waist, his hand cupping my cheek, his lips just a hairsbreadth from my own. I leaned into him, drinking in the scent of his cologne and the hint of ocean spray, the smile far too strong to try to hold back.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said casually, as if he genuinely believed it but couldn’t give a shit.

“You do, though,” I breathed. Our noses touched as I looked up at him, a lone, dusty blonde curl falling forward into his face. “I wouldn’t have said yes if you didn’t.”

His fingers tightened around my waist, so hard they were almost bruising. “It still doesn’t feel real,” he chuckled, his lips pressing against mine briefly before pulling away, only to kiss me again. And again.

Somewhere between the fourth and twentieth kiss, I deepened it, holding him to me instead of letting him back away. A stifled groan of relief seeped from his throat, his body springing into action. He fisted the fabric of my dress so hard it nearly tore, and with any other garment I wouldn’t have cared, but Lottie had spent too much on it and I didn’t want to ruin it.

“Off,” I mumbled, reaching around my back for the zipper. Cole’s hand followed mine, grasping the dangling piece of metal before I could and pulling it down. He pushed the straps of my dress off my shoulders, and within seconds the soft, dark green fabric was on the floor, leaving me entirely bare before him.

“You fucking tease,” he growled, the words guttural as he walked me backward toward the wall. “You spent the entirety of dinner wearing nothing underneath that?”

I giggled, gasping as his mouth met my collarbone, his teeth baring down on me. “Maybe,” I said. I watched him as he devoured my skin, still fully clothed with a bulge between his thighs. Being this exposed when he wasn’t made me feel even more naked.

“You’re lucky I haven’t had my dessert,” he mumbled, and before I could even blink he was on his knees. “Yet.”

He kissed up and down the inside of my thigh, making my breath hitch as he looked up at me. His fingers dug into my hips, his free hand pushing my legs apart. I leaned against the wall for balance, watching as patches of my skin turned red from his nibbles and nips. His mouth moved higher, dangerously close to where I could already feel a pool of liquid heat forming.

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