Page 30 of Operation Annulment
I lift my chin. “Yeah, I’m not interested in sharing. Been there, done that, and gotten the emotional baggage as a souvenir.”
Nate moves around to sit on the coffee table in front of me before reaching for my hands. “Give me another chance. Let me prove to you that there’s no one else.”
He nudges my legs apart with his knees, forcing my skirt up toward my hips. Instead of putting some distance between us or calling for a time-out, I close my eyes and breathe in his scent.
I pride myself on my ability to stay in control, yet I feel like a ship caught in a hurricane he’s around—entirely at the mercy of his waves.
His hands move over my arms as if trying to warm me up. The proximity is making my brain short-circuit. All the reasons for staying away from him seem ridiculous and petty when his face is inches from mine.
My downfall comes dressed in a suit and smelling like sandalwood. I try to remember what I’d planned to say to him when I first walked in, but my mind goes blank.
I wrap myself around his torso, pulling him closer. “I want you.”
No. Bad Kate.
“Is that a yes?” he asks, tracing my knuckles with his thumbs.
“Yes.” My tongue darts out to lick my dry lips, and his eyes narrow in on the movement.
“Fuck, Katy girl,” he murmurs. “It’s taking everything in me not to spread you out across your desk.” His lips curve into a sly grin. “But that would be wrong.”
The image of him taking me on my desk short-circuits my brain and leaves me aching with need. I wrap my fingers around the end of his tie and tug him forward to whisper, “Show me.”
fourteen
COMMANDMENT #15: THOU SHALT CATCH FLIGHTS, NOT FEELINGS
Kate
“Remind me never to get involved with someone I met at a gym again,” I snap into the phone while gnawing on a hangnail.
“Ooookay,” my sister, Dakota, says, drawing every letter of the word out. “Seeing as to how Nate is technically the only person you’ve ever picked up at a gym and, like, the only relationship you’ve been in, not counting Ben?—”
“Ben is completely irrelevant to this conversation,” I cut in, about as eager to discuss my ex-boyfriend as I was to discover him in bed with the head of the finance department hours before he’d planned to propose to me. One year later, it was still too soon.
“Right, so why are you and Nate calling it off this time?” Dakota asks, a note of boredom creeping into her tone. Given that I’ve supported her through a break-up, helped her move, and then bailed her out of jail—all within two months—she owes me one.
Or a thousand.
“For starters, we havenothing in common.”
Well, almost nothing. We seem to share an interest in having sex with each other.
On my desk at work.
At my apartment.
In the hot tub at his place.
But, obviously, I’m not about to admit any of that to my sister.
I clear my throat and thoughts before moving on to my next point. “Not that it would matter if we did after last night. I felt like he’d been off lately, but I thought maybe he was just busy with work or something. I should have listened to my gut, though, because do you know what I found in his bathroom cabinet?”
“Um, towels?” Dakota guesses, not even bothering to mask the sound of her yawn.
“Yes,” I admit before taking a second to unclench my jaw and breathe. “But next to the towels was a bottle of perfume and a pretty pink toothbrush. How do you explain that?”
“Maybe the perfume belonged to his sister or mom, and they accidentally left it after coming for a visit? And there are a lot of men who like pink, so the toothbrush can hardly be considered evidence.”
