Then I can’t even bear to think that way.
I’m inhaling his scent, which changes as we continue, the heat in the air between us altering the space. Like alchemists, we’re taking words with specific meanings, fixed characteristics that do not change, and turning them into something wholly forged anew.
His heat is melting me, and I’m not certain what I’ll be like when I reform and take on the new element I’m in the process of becoming.
“Depends on what?” he asks. The game is on, and while the rules aren’t defined, the outcome most assuredly is. We both know exactly how to score points. The only question that remains is how can we both win?
“On whether you enjoy being slapped. Some men do.” I lift one shoulder and bite my upper lip, the look meant to tease, to taunt. I inhale slowly and let him watch me. I’m not a woman you hide from the world in closets, or one you smother with kisses to keep her quiet.
Not anymore.
Bridging the distance between us, he extends a hand to me. I take it and he pulls me up, into the space between those toned thighs. Even though my hips don’t touch his legs, I can feel the hardness of those thick muscles, the coiled power in them calling out to be touched.
Without invitation, I reach down, palms on his knees, and watch my own hands ride up to his belt line. Slowly, with a maddening pace that makes seconds feel like lifetimes, I look up.
I never see his eyes, but oh, how I feel his mouth. Unlike all the other kisses we’ve shared, this one is planned. Seductive. Intentional. Andrew is in no rush, and we’re not taken off guard or hiding from anyone—especially ourselves.
His hands circle my waist and mine slide up the hard contours of his back, the soft cotton of his business shirt so smooth it’s like silk. My fingertips touch the base of his neck as he bites one of my lips, sucking with just enough intensity to make me wish I were the kind of woman who kept a spare pair of panties in her purse for occasions like this.
Funny how they never covered this topic in Girl Scouts.
He pulls back, then tightens his arms around me, holding on as if he were touching me for the first time, as if we’re discovering each other with a serendipitous joy that should be savored and that requires constant contact. The room disappears, the past two years fade, and all my worries and insecurities about this man who kisses me in closets and who is so mysterious and aloof dissolve like the boundary between our bodies as we just let go.
“Four,” he whispers against my ear as he pulls back, the soft rasp of his cheek against mine just ticklish enough to make me shiver.
“Four what?” I gasp as he nuzzles my neck, those warm arms staying wrapped around me. The longer he holds me, the more I can believe this is real.
“Four kisses. For our database.”
“Right. Four,” I say weakly. My knees tingle and the feeling travels up. This is real, all right.
“Let’s make it five.”
“Five is a good number.”
A telephone rings in the distance. I twist in his arms and look behind us. To my surprise, his office door is open. He is kissing me in public. That’s twice now.
And his arms are still around me.
“Six is even better.”
And with that, he adds so many entries to the database that I lose count.
Chapter Nine
The sound of a man clearing his throat is the next conscious event that pierces my psyche.
“Excuse me? Eleven-thirty meeting?” It’s Declan. I step out of Andrew’s arms and close my eyes in embarrassment, like a child who thinks if they can’t see the world the world can’t see them.
Andrew looks over my shoulder. I feel the movement rather than see it as his palm slides down from the base of my breast to my hip. “Give us a minute. We’re wrapping up our meeting.”
“You’d better wrap it,” Declan mutters. “Shannon and I are having the first grandchild. You don’t get to win that one, too—”
“Hey!” Andrew barks, moving swiftly across the room and shutting the door in Declan’s smirking face. I watch his body, my mouth buzzing with his taste, the lingering sense of his kisses making me giddy with the sheer nonsense of being in a different layer of life for a few minutes.
How can a kiss (or nine) do that?
Andrew stands at the door, his back to me. He squares his shoulders and begins nodding to himself. I imagine, if he faced me, he would be silently preparing himself for the moment he turns around and tells me this is nothing. We are making a mistake. A kiss (or nine) are enough, and let’s just part our separate ways and stay friends.
He turns around, looks at me, and says, “Lunch?”
Not what I expected to hear.
“Excuse me?”
“We’ll have lunch. I’ll cancel my meeting with Declan and we can continue this database discussion over lunch.”
I really, really hope database discussion is code for kissing.
My stomach flip flops. Lunch. Lunch. I look at the clock.
11:32.
“I...can’t.”
He looks utterly shocked. “You can’t? Why not?”
“Because I have a date.”
“A what?”
“A date.”
A fake date. I can’t say that part, though. First rule of mystery shopping: never, ever reveal your true identity. I can’t admit the DoggieDate dates I’m going on are fake. I can’t tell him the truth. Some part of me wants to break every professional rule right now, and my body is screaming at me to make an exception.
But I can’t.
I just...can’t.
He scowls. “A date. You’re dating? You have a boyfriend?”