Page 14 of The Wrong Boss

“It’s fine,” I answered. “Ankle’s a bit sore, but it’s been okay to walk on.”

“Good,” he said, and the elevator doors slid open. His palm was warm against my back as he guided me inside, and he didn’t move away as I fumbled with my purse to find my key card. I swiped it on the reader and mashed the button for the sixth floor, where my room was located, then stood utterly still while the mirrored doors slid closed in front of us.

The music cut off, along with the ringing phones of the reception desk and the clinking of glass and cutlery from the bar and restaurant.

I sucked in a hard breath as Cole slid his free hand over my jaw, tilting my face up to meet his gaze. Circling my face with a look, he arched a brow. “We don’t have to do this,” he said.

“I know,” I replied, and I licked my lips. “But I want to.”

He let out a puff of breath, like my words slapped him with relief. Then his hand slid around my back and beneath the silky side of my dress so his palm was pressed against my ribs. He pulled me tight to his chest as his thumb stroked my cheek. “I’m not sure if this is a good idea,” he admitted.

I knew what he meant. There wassomethingbetween us, but indulging in this chemistry could blow up in our faces. Itwas more than probable, judging by my recent string of bad luck.

But I was dizzy with need. The gusset of my underwear clung to me, chafing against all the areas I wanted him to touch. His eyes were dark as they drew me in, and his grip on me was strong and sure. I wanted to melt against him, wanted to give myself up to him.

I didn’t want to care about the fallout.

“It’s a terrible idea,” I rasped, sliding my hands up his chest to toy with one of the buttons of his shirt. I bit my lip—and flicked the button open.

That’s all it took. One little ivory button sliding against the wrapped threads of the buttonhole. That’s all that had been keeping us sane—because the moment it came free, I found myself lifted and pressed up against the side of the elevator, pinned by the bulk of Cole’s body with no choice but to wrap my legs around his waist. Then he kissed me like the world was ending.

FIVE

CARRIE

I felt drunk,even though I’d nursed my drinks and eaten enough to know I wasn’t. It was the touch of Cole’s hands over my hips that did it while I pressed my key card against the door reader. The brush of his lips against my neck. The heat of his body as he guided me inside the room.

“Oh, look,” I said. “My stuff. It’s safe.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied with a grin as he spun me around and walked me backward into the room. I’d succeeded in unbuttoning his shirt halfway down his chest between the elevator and the room, and I returned to the task as his lips carved a hot path down the pulse throbbing in my neck.

His fingers brushed the edge of my dress at the back, teasing the crisscrossed straps as he slid his hand down and back up again. Calluses on his palm caught against the silky fabric, and a desperate urge to feel that roughness against my skin sweptthrough me. When he kissed me, I wrapped my arms around his neck and leaned into the feeling of his body against mine.

This was reckless. I couldn’t stop. I was dizzy with the scent of his skin, high with the need for more. The comedown would flatten me. I didn’t care.

“I think we might be making a mistake,” I mumbled against his lips.

“Probably,” he agreed, hands sliding down to cup my ass. A groan rumbled through his chest as his lips found mine again.

My head spun. It was the feel of him all around me and of his coarse chest hair beneath my fingertips. It was the way my hands smoothed over the carved, warm, hard lines of his shoulders as I pushed his shirt out of the way to trace the shape of him. It was the taste of his skin on my tongue when I kissed his neck, and the way his hand slid up my spine to dig into my hair.

I’d never been kissed like this before, in a way that was all-consuming and overwhelming. I’d never had my mind go so still while my body rioted. Need had never felt so insistent, so urgent. I thought I’d die if I didn’t feel him inside me to heal that insistent, throbbing ache of emptiness in the core of me.

With one hand tugging at the hair I’d so carefully fixed and pinned at the back of my head after my jaunt outside to the parking lot, Cole used his free hand to find the fastening of my dress’s straps at the base of my spine. He tugged one of them, and the knot came free. The fabric loosened from my torso, and it only took the barest of urging from his fingertips to get my dress to slide down to my hips.

That’s when the backs of my knees hit the bed and I realized we’d moved deeper into the room. Cole’s warm handswrapped around my waist, and he leaned back to get a better look at me.

“You’re beautiful,” he rasped. When his palm slid from my waist up to my chest, I closed my eyes at the possessive touch he used to shape the breasts I’d always worried were too small. “Look at you,” he said, and his thumb brushed my sensitive nipple. “Rosy and pink and perfect.”

It felt so good to touch and be touched like this—like nothing else in the world existed except exploring each other’s bodies. Like the universe had conspired to bring us together right now, just like this. How could it be a mistake when it felt so good?

Cole’s thumb brushed over my nipple once more, and a shiver of delight went through me. He must have been utterly focused on my reactions, because he immediately did it again. A moment later, he had my spine arched over his arm and my breast in his mouth. I gasped at the feel of his tongue against my pebbled nipple, my fingers digging into his thick, dark hair.

His answering moan sent pleasure tightening between my thighs. He plumped my breast and sucked it into his mouth, scraping his teeth over my sensitized flesh. I panted, clinging to him like a life raft in a storm. He held me with the same desperation.

Moving to the other breast, Cole let out a hot breath and said, “So fucking perfect,” before licking at my neglected nipple with a groan. Pure, white-hot lust forked through me, lighting all my nerve endings on fire. Derek had never paid any attention to my chest. My breasts had been too small to bother with, and I’d been too embarrassed to ask for what I wanted.

As soon as my ex entered my thoughts, a thin thread of rationality wove its way through my lust-addled mind. I didn’t want to stop this—I wasn’t sure Icouldstop this—but I didn’t want it to turn into a train wreck, either. Sex had always meant more than just an itch being scratched to me, but this was on another level. It was more intense than dalliances I’d had in the past, before Derek. I needed to make sure at least a part of me was protected from the aftermath.

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