Page 30 of More Than Words

“Ass?” he smirked, his smile suddenly seeming less aggressive and more passionate as his eyes flickered down, an eyebrow rising as he looked right down the front of my blouse.

Throwing an arm over my chest, I blocked out his view, but he took his time, returning his gaze to mine, seeming to fixate on my lips. A surge of heat licked between us as I remembered what it felt like to have his hands on me. His long fingers and slightly rough palms, how his stubble had tickled the insides of my thighs.

“If you’d just pull the stick out of that tight ass of yours for a little while, I think this collaboration could be mutually beneficial.”

“I already told you I wasn’t sleeping with you.”

An amused chuckle rang out into the air between us as he brought the backs of his fingers to my cheek, brushing them against my heated skin. “Not where my head was, but good to know you’re thinking about sleeping with me.”

“You’re infuriating.”

“And you’re intoxicating,” he whispered as he leaned in, his lips softly ghosting over where his fingers had traced. I sucked in a surprised breath, my hand pressing into his chest, the muscles flexing as I wavered between pulling him closer and shoving him away from me.

“Stop.” Tilting my head to the side, I tried to push away the sensations that his warm breath on my neck was invoking, and stop imagining what it’d feel like if he kissed my lips instead of my cheek.

He backed up a few steps at my request, straightening out his tie and buttoning his open suit jacket. “I should be around until six tonight if you get me the list of names. I’ll get on Evan first thing tomorrow to get the ball rolling.”

As he turned, picked up his discarded briefcase, and descended the stairs back toward our floor, I tried to calm my racing heart and figure out what the fuck was going on between us.

ADRIAN

Boston

After our little blow-up in Sloane’s office and subsequent confrontation in the stairwell, I thought Isobel would continue to resist working together on this consultation project. I should have known better.

Like the professional she was, within an hour, she had a list of authors in my inbox, and someone from marketing dropped off a box of paperbacks a few hours later that I prepared to send express mail to Evan first thing in the morning.

As much as I wanted to think she was being intentionally difficult, I knew I just brought out that part of her personality. I respected she had no qualms about putting me in my place when I stepped out of line. Which I’d done with my cheap crack about her authors writing porn.

Ma was the same way as Isobel, taking life by the balls and putting herself through nursing school when she was left with two unruly five-year-old twins and a Marine widow’s pension that didn’t cover the bills. I was certain she’d have my balls in a vise grip if she knew how I spoke to people—Isobel especially—and acted in the office. I knew it was toxic as fuck, but I couldn’t seem to break the cycle. I really should know better, but it seemed I’d never kicked the habit I’d adopted twenty years ago. Inside the office, I was Dickhead. Outside the office, I was the well-behaved, devoted to his family, boring older twin, Ad.

The dichotomy of my life had never bothered me before, but I’d never dated a woman I wanted to take seriously. Although, I was far from the dating part with Isobel. She could barely stand to be in the same room with me. That didn’t stop me from getting turned on every time I pissed her off, and the claws came out.

“You can take off, Sam,” I told my copy-editing intern while he sat at the small table in the corner of my office, intently staring at his tablet. “I’m gonna stick around and head to the gym after I get these PDFs ready for Isobel. Is the last draft of Evan’s manuscript on the server?”

He stared at his tablet for a moment as he held a finger up. I hated when people didn’t acknowledge me, but I knew he was trying not to lose his place in the proof he was going through.

“Yeah. I swapped out all the docs with the latest version, and I emailed you a list of the chapters that Sloane thought needed an extra set of eyes.”

“Great, thanks for getting it to this point. Hopefully, whoever Is sends to help can pull him out of this funk. We can’t afford to have another shitty first draft like this coming out of him. I think he’s been jerking off alone in the woods too long.”

Sam shook his head at my borderline inappropriate comment, but he’d long ago stopped trying to make me see the error of my ways. He didn’t know I probably hated the things I spouted off more than he did.

Verbal diarrhea was a bitch. But I probably wasn’t wrong. Evan rarely left the house and never spoke to anyone besides me when he was forced to come into the office, so I doubted he was pulling from fresh source material on these sex scenes. Watching internet porn was hardly accurate research to write a semi-realistic sex scene in a novel.

“Go ahead and take off. I won’t be too far behind you.”

“If you’re sure you’ve got everything handled,” he hedged, but I wasn’t in the mood. I knew he was trying to help, but my frustration from this afternoon didn’t need to be taken out on Sam. The fifty-pound weights on the floor would do the job, or angrily beating off to the memory of Isobel smirking at me with my dick poised at her lips. But I could hold off on that until I returned to my apartment. Alone. Because despite my reputation, it’d been a while.

“I’m good. Go home. Do whatever it is you young people do on a Thursday night.” That made me sound old as fuck, but my bar-hopping weeknights were firmly in my past. I was too old for this shit. And according to my ball-busting brother, not getting any younger. Even though most of his life centered on physical therapy and co-parenting a surly twelve-year-old part-time, his social life was booming compared to mine.

After Sam packed up and left, I scrubbed my hands over my face, running my hands up into my hair and tugging, just for the rush of adrenaline that accompanied the pain. I needed to get my mind off the shitshow of this rough draft and whatever minefield I’d placed myself in the middle of with Isobel.

Running the last month through my head, I still didn’t know where that stolen afternoon at the conference had come from. Isobel hated me, and regardless of my intense attraction to her body, I wasn’t exactly the president of her fan club either.

Despite my inability to keep the inappropriate thoughts in my head, I didn’t like it when people didn’t like me. Ironic, I know, but knowing that Isobel harbored an intense dislike bothered me. I respected the fuck out of her, and she couldn’t care less if I died in a fiery bus accident. She’d probably be the one driving the bus and pouring the gasoline on my decimated body with how much she didn’t like me.

Deciding there was nothing I could do about our current animosity toward each other, I grabbed my gym bag and headed toward the elevators, knowing that if I tired myself out, I’d stop obsessing about the situation.

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