Page 18 of Overnight Inheritance

She took the last step to close the gap between them and looked up into his eyes, with less than an inch separating their bodies. “I wanted things too.”

He swiped a thumb along her bottom lip. “Whatever it is, you can have it.”

“That’s a hell of a promise. You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”

“With you looking at me like that? I don’t care.” His voice was deep and smooth, and she started to sway as if hypnotized, and then she was being lifted and placed onto the counter, and he was standing in the V of her legs, his uneven breath on her mouth. “Tell me what you’ve been wanting.”

“I want...” She had to fill her lungs to make a sound. “I want...”

“Tell me, Mae.” His chest rose and fell, rose and fell, working overtime. “Tell me what you want, and I promise—”

“To touch you,” she said on a whisper. “And I want you to touch me.”

A groan was ripped from his throat and he leaned in and kissed her. It was hard and it was hungry and it was everything she’d dreamed it would be. She lifted her legs and locked them together behind his hips, holding him against her and spearing her fingers into his hair. His mouth was hot, decadent, and he held the sides of her face in his hands as if she were precious.

Then his hands roamed down, undoing the buttons on her jacket and slipping underneath it, sliding over the smooth cotton of her shirt, leaving a trail of fireworks despite the barrier to her skin. She felt his fingers spread out on her back as he leaned her backward. She’d never had a kiss go from zero to one hundred so fast, and she was trying to keep up, wanting more, wanting everything he had. His erection pressed against her, and an insistent pulse beat at her core as she started thinking about where they could move to, and how far away his bedroom was. Then she was struck by the thought that the bedroom would have been his and Ashley’s...

She looked around the kitchen with new eyes, spotting a collage of photos on the refrigerator—Sebastian with a tiny Alfie, Sebastian and Ashley, the two of them with Alfie... She was in another woman’s kitchen, another woman’s apartment. It had been long enough for Sebastian to move on, but this still felt...wrong. And then she remembered everyone else who would be upset by this kiss, including her own family, and it was as if the whole world had crowded into her brain, and the moment, their connection, was lost.

She pulled back, dragging in air to fill her lungs, needing a moment to think things through. This wasn’t a random hookup; anything they did together had consequences for a range of people. If this was going to happen, it couldn’t happen on impulse, when he’d been feeling vulnerable and she’d tried to cheer him up. The whole thing was a hot mess on so many levels.

“What’s wrong?” He dipped his head to meet her eyes. “Hey, did I do something wrong?”

“No, no. I just...” Her gaze drifted to the fridge again. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

He eased back, then cocked his head to the side. “Why not? We’re consenting adults.”

She bit down on her lip, wondering how a person should bring up a dead wife with a man she’d just kissed. “This might sound weird to you, but this feels like Ashley’s home, and...”

He laid a finger over her lips and sighed. “That doesn’t sound weird. In fact, I haven’t brought another woman here to the apartment for that reason. This kiss...” He looked up at the ceiling. “This was unexpected.”

“Definitely unexpected. And possibly unwise.”

He winced. “Now that the blood is starting to return to my brain, I think you might be right. Unwise.”

“My brother, my aunt, your father, they’d all be horrified that we were blurring the lines,” she said, pushing the point home. “Even Alfie’s grandmother commented on the company being Alfie’s future inheritance. This situation is bigger than the two of us.”

“You’re right. One hundred percent. And yet...” He cupped the side of her face and she leaned into the touch. “It’s hard to make myself care about any of them right now.”

She pressed her palm against his chest—the solid muscle, the heat emanating through his snowy white shirt—maybe instinctively, to hold him at bay, but found herself gripping his shirt in her fist and pulling him down again. He came willingly.

This time, when he captured her mouth, it was slow, gentle, honoring her, tempting her. And after only a few moments, he broke the kiss, leaning his forehead against hers, his warm breath fanning across her cheeks.

“I can’t think of anything I want less than to end this kiss, but if we’re going to stop, we probably should head back to the office. We need some sort of impediment, like being in an office with no privacy, to stop us from taking this further.”

Everything inside her rose up to object. It felt wrong to be kissing him here, now, at all, but it felt just as wrong to not be kissing him. This was a lose-lose situation and was really just about picking the lesser of two evils. Which meant they had to stop.

She slid down from the counter and began straightening her clothes. “And if we’re serious about not taking this further, then we need to go now. Like, right now.”

His expressive eyes filled with regret, and he nodded. “Let’s go.”

As they walked out the door of his apartment and headed down to the sidewalk to hail a cab, she’d never wanted to throw caution to the wind more in her life and turn right back around.

Six

For the rest of the day, Sebastian focused on his work and nothing else. Or he tried to. Mae was sitting at her desk. In the same room. Lighting up the space as if she were the midday sun. He could walk over there and kiss her if he wanted to.

And he wanted to.

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