Page 74 of Work with Me

I groaned. It. Was. Heaven.

“You’ve got to relax your shoulders while you’re typing. You carry all this stress in your neck.”

I hung my head to give him better access. “I carry a lot of stress, period. Less talking. More neck massage.”

“Yes, ma’am.” There was a smile in his voice. He stepped behind my chair and put both hands on me, rubbing my shoulders. The muscles loosened under the pressure and the warmth of his hands.

I lifted my head to resume my review of the code, but it was no use. The letters and numbers swam together on the screen. His thumbs wandered to either side of my spine, between my shoulder blades. Magical.

“I’m going to put one hand in front of your shoulder and use the heel of my hand to—”

But the second he put his big hand below my collarbone, his sneaky little finger caressing the upper slope of my breast, I rolled back my chair, bumping into his boot, and stood.

“Ow! Why’d you—”

“Not here,” I whispered. I was standing too close to him. So close, I felt the heat of his body. My nerves still tingled from his touch and cried out for more. In my heels, I was eye-level to his lips. Those soft, pink lips I’d kissed last week on the shore of Lady Bird Lake. All I wanted to do was reacquaint myself with them.

His lips parted. “Where, then?”

I turned and strode to the main hallway. Not sensing him behind me, I turned. I beckoned toward myself.Come here,I mouthed.

He blinked and jogged to catch up.

I turned left into the smaller hall with the restrooms. When I pushed open the door to the ladies’ room, the motion-sensing lights flicked on. I reached out and tugged Jackson in behind me, then I flipped the bolt on the door.

He looked around. “Hey, we don’t have a couch in—”

Pushing him against the door, I rose up on my toes. “Less talking, more kissing.” I pressed my lips to his.

After a second of shocked stillness, Jackson’s arms came around me, and his lips softened under mine. Like we’d kissed at his place on Halloween, butmore.The tang of beer on his tongue. The leather and pine on his skin. The roughness of his beard chafing my cheeks and my nose. Plus the heightened sense of urgency because we were kissing at work where someone might bang on the door any minute. I gripped a double handful of his T-shirt. What was the band today? Didn’t matter. All that mattered was the slide of his tongue against mine, the press of his solid chest into my hard nipples, the tingles that told me my panties wouldn’t be dry for long.

He broke from the kiss to run his lips down my neck and bury his nose in my collar. “Fuck, Alicia, I—I want to pick you up and carry you over to that couch.” His thumb flicked open the top button of my blouse, and he nosed deeper into my cleavage, his beard scratching the swell of my breast over my bra. “I want to tug up your skirt, rip off whatever you’re wearing underneath, and taste you.” He flicked his tongue over my skin, and my knees went weak.

Yes yes yes.My brain had become a cheering section for Jackson Jones’s dirty talk. He wouldn’t have to pick me up. I’d sprint over there willingly, sprawl over the couch, and let him rip away.

“But.” He dropped a closed-mouth kiss in the shallow valley between my breasts and then fastened the button he’d loosened. “I’m not tasting you for the first time in the ladies’ room.”

“You’re—you’re not?” The cheers inside me turned to boos.

“No, baby.”

The last thing I needed was for him to call mebabyin Monday’s code review. “Don’t—”

He put a finger over my lips, and then he kissed the corner of my mouth. “You’re not some bathroom hook-up. I want more.” He rubbed his thumb under my lower lip. His own lips were stained the same pink as my lipstick. “You deserve more. All night.”

The throb between my legs repeated it.All night all night all night.

“Promise?”

He kissed me one last time, a closed-mouth brush of his lips. “Promise.”

I tried to straighten up my kiss-slacked mouth. “I’ll hold you to it, Jones. After we finish the project.”

“After we finish the project.” His hands caressed my hips and then dropped to his sides. “That code is fucking perfect. Check it back in and go home.”

He was right. It was done, and the last thing we needed was for someone—me—to inadvertently introduce a new bug. “No touching it over the weekend, right, cowboy?”

“Not the code. I can guarantee I’ll be touching something else.” He shifted his hips, and a ridge pressed into my belly.

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