Page 32 of Our Little Cliche
Me:
Hilarious. On my way. C-ya soon, mate.
I punch send and quickly throw my phone into my tote bag to get rid of the problem. If he found out how screwed up I am in the head for what I did last night while thinking of him, I’m a goner.Straight to jail.
That damn book.
Shame trickles over my face, thankfully the driver can’t see me in his rearview mirror as I’m snuggled under my coat. The drive to Cyrus’s place is all of twelve minutes. And of those twelve minutes my brain is entirely consumed by a vision caused bythesceneinthatbook.Twelve whole minutes of biting my lip as a distraction from my jeans rubbing the sensitive area inthatway, all because I didn’t have it in me to move and let it stop.
Ouch, maybe I bit too hard.
“Good morning, Miss Ca?—”
Cyrus stiffens, cutting his words short as I stand at the door. His eyes dart between mine, then to my lips in a speedy motion. With a frown, his facial expression splits from his regular sexy, nerdy, smiling, hunk of Canadian heaven, to a look that I’ve never seen from a man before.
“What?”Is there something on my face?
Do I look that bad?
Am I that tired from last night’s… activities?
Without warning, my body is a mere hair’s gap from his at a speed that sucks my breath away… again, sending an immediate signal to where my jeans were rubbing.
Is this how it’s always going to be? Will he always be this unpredictable?
Wait, where is his hand going?
Seconds, or a lifetime later I can’t be certain,a soft, large hand lands on my mottled, winter bitten cheek. Immense heat takes up the entire side of my face but I don’t unlock my gaze from his.
The way Cyrus is holding his palm against my skin has me wanting to lean into it, but for the purposes of needing to peruse thefriend zonefor the sake of my career, I don’t. He’s looking at me as if I’m broken. Am I broken? Am I dying or something? I didn’t know. All I knew is that I never want to move from this spot.Ever.
Ouch.
A slight, weepy breath falls from my mouth as his thumb brushes just under my bottom lip. “You’re bleeding.”
I am?
Ouch, I try to repeat the word aloud this time, but my voice is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps it’s still lost in his eyes somewhere. He softens, the dreamy blend of blue-grey irises behind thick, black glasses bleed through my soul, drawing me in like I’m a fish on a hook.Were they always this dreamy?
Yes.
Yes they were, Holly.
This is far too intimate for two strangers, and way,waytoo intimate for a boss and employee, yet I’m not stopping it. “What happened? Are you okay? Um, I’ll get some ice,” he sounds flustered.
I stay by the door not knowing what the frick just happened, feeling like I’m stuck in a washing machine cycle: my emotions going up, down, left, right, round and round. Which way is what? Which emotions are what?
“I’m… fine,” I try reassuring him, but he’s already fumbling at the freezer, attempting to collect ice from the tray. He drops a few chunks of ice on the floor and sends some flying in the air.
Butter fingers.
It’s hard to hold in my laugh, but not even putting my hand over my mouth stops it from escaping. “I’m okay, really. I um, I-I must have just bitten my lip in the car.”I did bite my lip in the car.
Yeah, and why did you do that, then, hmm?
Because my brain is corrupt!
This man somehow already has my mind, body, and soul stuck in some kind of delusional, nymphomaniac aphrodisiac trance, and I cannot think—nor evenwantto think—of anything else other thanhim.
