Page 13 of The Wrong Boss

I couldn’t help my answering smile. “You mad about it?”

“No,” he replied. “Especially considering I really was here for a business meeting.” He laughed and added, “Don’t look so disappointed. I’ve been headhunted for a job.”

“Congrats,” I said. “What do you do?”

He shrugged. “Right now I work for an advertising agency. But this would be a step in another direction.”

We’d shared a bit about our pasts: His adoption and his conflict about reaching out to his birth family. My breakup, my own mother’s death, and all the little trinkets and memories I’dlost because an addict saw my car full of belongings and decided he could steal my junk and sell it to get high.

But this was different. Finding out about his job wasnow. The present. It was somehow more real than the scars of our past, and it felt like a taboo subject we weren’t supposed to touch. We existed in this hotel bar, suspended in time, and the real world was something distant and hazy that we weren’t supposed to talk about.

Still, I asked, “Sounds like you’re not sure you want to take the job.”

“I want the job,” he told me. “But I don’t want to hurt the people who have helped me get where I am.”

The sincerity in his voice, coupled with the way his eyes shuttered when he finished speaking, made me think he was telling the truth.

And just like that, the solid ground that I’d tried to find fell away beneath my feet. He wasn’t just a dark, brooding hero who’d come to my rescue. He wasn’t an overbearing jerk who thought he knew what was right for me despite my protests. He had a core of decency. Loyalty to the people who did right by him.

Ilikedthat. My attraction to him mushroomed as I sat there, squirming on my barstool, unable to come to grips with the fact that the worst thing I could do for my own mental health would be to sleep with the one man I really, really wanted.

“Well, things could be worse,” I pointed out.

His dark eyes lifted to meet mine, brows arching. “Oh?”

“Yeah. You could be single, homeless, and have a busted back window in your rust bucket of a car.”

His grin intoxicated me more than my mojito had. “True,” he said. His thumb made a long, slow sweep over my thigh, inching a tiny bit higher between my legs. “What’s your plan?”

“I have no plan,” I said, and it came out breathy.

“You going back to the wedding?” His eyes were on me, and there was an unspoken question in them. A question about tangled sheets and sweaty skin, and whether or not I was brave enough to step through the door he’d just cracked open a little bit wider. A door I’d knocked on when I’d slid onto the barstool next to his.

So I gave him an unspoken answer: “Eventually,” I replied.

Time stood still. When Cole finally spoke, his voice was low. “Did all your stuff make it to your room okay?”

My heart thumped. I wondered if he could see the pulse pounding in my neck, if he could feel it beneath the press of his palm on my leg. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I haven’t been up there yet. I was thinking, maybe…” I licked my lips. “Maybe I should go check.”

“Yeah?” His fingers pressed against the outside of my thigh, and his hand slid another fraction of an inch higher. I shifted—hardly enough to even be perceptible, but I knew he noticed the movement. His hand clenched ever so slightly against my leg, like he was holding himself back from reaching higher up the open slit of my dress.

I wished he would. I was so far gone that I didn’t even care that we were sitting in public, at a bar, with people all around. I wanted his hand between my legs so he could feel how wet he made me.

I was so attuned to him that I sensed when his breathingchanged and deepened. His cologne smelled like heaven, and I wanted it embedded on my skin. “I might need help,” I said, hearing my own voice as if from a distance as I explained, “with the boxes.”

It was a brazen invitation. Completely out of character for me. I hadn’t had sex in months, and I hadn’t wanted sex in even longer. But it felt as if some other being had inhabited my brain, because all I could think about was Cole’s hand on my leg and the dampness of my underwear between my legs. Desire lashed me like a whip, urging me to be reckless. To take what I wanted and damn the consequences.

It didn’t have to mean anything. It didn’t have to go any farther than this hotel. This evening. This one time.

Cole’s eyes flicked between mine, and nothing else needed to be said. He turned his head and nodded to the bartender, who had our bill printed and ready for us within seconds. Cole barely glanced at it before slapping some cash down and flicking the leather bill holder closed.

On shaking legs, I stood and grabbed my clutch. Vague embarrassment burned my cheeks at the thought of the staff seeing us leave together, but I was so far gone that the feeling only served to stoke my desire. I liked feeling like I was doing something wrong and that everyone could tell. Gone was the woman who’d made herself smaller for the sake of a man who didn’t deserve her. I was someone different now.

Cole pressed his hand to my lower back, over the crisscrossing straps that held the dress up, and gently guided me out of the lounge bar and toward the elevators. His fingertips dippedbelow the straps and eased down my spine, sending warmth flooding through my middle.

I glanced toward the thumping music of the wedding and breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t see anyone I knew.

“How’s your foot?” Cole asked, drawing my gaze back to him.

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