Page 26 of Never Say Yes To Your Boss

He glances around the kitchen like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t, and then he nods.

“You’re one-upping me,” I assure him. “I would probably eat it with a spoon and not tell anyone and put both jars back. Then again, if I lived alone, it wouldn’t be a big deal.” I let my eyes scour the kitchen furiously again because it’s either that or start ogling my husband, who is way too hot at two in the morning, haunting this kitchen like a scruffy, sexy, tall, dark, broody, jam-cussing ghost. “There has to be something in here that opens jars. Like an actual opener or a freaking garlic-peeling mat. Those are grippy, and they work amazing.”

“I looked. But I didn’t find anything.”

I blow air out past my lips. “Well, that sucks. I guess peanut butter it is, then. Is there bread? Or wait, bananas? I could make us peanut butter banana sandwiches!”

“There are bananas over—” Darius goes to point, but his breath hisses out in a rush at the end, and he grasps his shoulder. “There,” he finishes with a gasp as he rubs the spot, rolling it and pretending like it’s not so bad.

“Your arm hurts. Did you wrench it trying to get that stupid jar open?”

I can tell he hates that question. Of course he would. He’s a dude, but I have to say, if someone asked me if I hurt myself trying to open a jar of jelly, I’d be pretty mortally offended, too. “Here.” I reach for him before I can tell myself it’s a bad idea. “It’s probably just locked up. Let me massage it. That might help make it feel better.”

“No, that really won’t—oh god.” My hand slides up his arm to his shoulder. I try and mentally remember where the worst of the scars were, but I can’t, so I just cup his big muscular shoulder blade in my palm and then slide my fingers over his muscles, looking for a knot. When I find something by pressing in and searching, I massage it using slow, even strokes. “Wow, that feels pretty good,” he groans. I watch what I’m doing, paying close attention. I can see a few of the scars sticking out from under his shirt sleeve, twisting like road lines on the map of his perfect skin.

He’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans, so I fully take that in for the first time. I was too fixated on his glorious, godlike face when I first walked in, but now I’m not so fixated on that anymore because I have a brand new part of his body to focus on. Yummy biceps, huge shoulders, cut muscles galore, and a tight tush in jeans. Jeans. I haven’t seen him wear those before.

His skin is hot. It’s not feverish hot, but it feels that way to my fingertips. They’re flipping out, along with the rest of me,and that includes all my lady bits. They’re having quite the good, unexpected two in the morning, not a big mouse but a sexy man in the kitchen, hurrah.

The noises he’s making are way too sexy. Little grunts of pleasure as I work the muscles of his shoulder and bicep. “You should go for massages more often. I’m no professional, but if it feels okay, maybe it would help.”

I get a long, low sigh in response. “They want me to have another surgery.”

I momentarily stop because I’m shocked. “Another one?” I make my hands work again, getting the other one in on the action.

“Yeah, another one. There’s always some cutting-edge this or that that’s supposed to work miracles, and of course, it never does. Plus, the recovery time always sucks. It’s always painful, getting cut open and stitched back together. I’m just…really tired of it.”

I hear the resignation in his tone, and I can hear how wounded he is. How he has very little hope of ever getting back to whatever his normal used to be.

“Even if they can fix my arm, they can’t fix my head.”

“Hey, don’t say that. Your head doesn’t need fixing.”

“You’ve seen me sit in a car. It definitely needs fixing.”

I take his chin in my hand before I register the fact that I’m moving up from the massage, literally, to touch him somewhere else. I don’t have any right to be doing this, but he doesn’t shrug me away, so I cup his face and make him look at me. “You don’t need to be fixed, Darius.”

“Yeah, you could have married worse.”

I grin, dissipating the tension. “You’re right. I could actually be stuck with Bradford.”

It only takes a second before his serious facade cracks down the middle. “You could have.”

“Him and his pet donkey.”

“I’d pity that donkey, that’s for sure.”

I decided on a universal truth when I was away. I missed him, and I can admit it. Furthermore, he’s lovely. From his brown eyes with the gold flecks, which remind me of those chocolate bars with hard caramel pieces in them, to his upturned lips, which are still kind of gnawed on from when he was concentrating on that jar, to his hard, darkly shadowed jawline, he’s pure beauty. His goodness and kindness, his generosity with me, and his desire to help my family only make him more attractive, and that’s on top of the deep inhale of intoxicating male cologne I’m getting.

God, I really wish he would kiss me right now.

My nipples and hoo-ha echo that sentiment, doing a double down, tightening up, and throbbing.

His smile is so lazy and sweet. He looks so good in that T-shirt with all his muscles on display, and it’s a crime those jeans aren’t edible because I’d like to peel them off his body with my teeth and consume them before I lick him from head to toe. His hair is mussed just a little on the one side as if he rolled out of bed and threw on some clothes to come down here because he was starving too.

My heart clenches up and beats faster and harder, knocking the wind out of me because it’s a little too out of control. I can feel my eyes closing in aplease, for the love of god, kiss me nowgesture. I don’t actually expect he’ll go for it because we’re friends, and he probably doesn’t want to jeopardize that by taking things up a notch that we’ll both likely regret when it’s not two in the morning, and we’re not fueled by hunger, which can make people do crazy things, but I’m wrong.

Oh god, I’m so wrong, and it’s so, so good.

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