Chapter Twelve

 

Upside #12: The only awkward kisses that happen are on TV. Or, you know. With your boss.

 

I hovered awkwardly outside the hotel. It was seven-thirty in the morning, and I’d only been able to sleep because I’d popped a couple of Benadryl pills to knock me out.

I’d kissed my boss.

Technically, it was an accident. Much like most of the things that had happened since we’d “met” last weekend.

I hadn’t even told my best friends. If I said the words out loud, it made them real. I could almost go to work today and pretend it never happened if I never actually vocalized the fact I’d kissed Jacob.

Did it count, though? We didn’t mean to do it. It was that awkward half-kiss you see in the movies where nobody meant to do anything but say goodbye and go.

How I’d gotten this far and not been run over was anybody’s guess.

I took a deep breath and finally walked into the hotel. It was so quiet since it was still early, and that gave me a chance to wander to the front desk and the concierge desk to check on the staff there before heading back to my office.

I put the key in the door, but it was already unlocked. Frowning, I pulled the key back out of the keyhole and pushed open the door.

The room was empty.

I glanced around the office like the silence was deceiving me. It wasn’t. There was nowhere for anyone to hide, and I even checked under the desk just to make sure. I quickly peeked behind me to make sure nobody had witnessed that moment of idiocy.

Seeing the coast was clear, I pushed the door shut behind me and quickly scurried to my side of the desk.

But that wasn’t my chair.

I jerked my head to Jake’s side.

That wasn’t the ugly velvet chair.

They were the nice chairs from the store. The ones I declared were so comfortable I could feel an orgasm coming on.

Why were they in my office? And why were there boxes on the—

The delivery. From when I was dragged kicking and screaming shopping with Jake. Alright, I was dragged whining and bitching, but they’re practically the same thing where he’s concerned.

It still remained as the shopping trip from hell, and it’d take another round of prom dress shopping to top it.

I wasn’t doing that again. I didn’t care if it was my daughter, my niece, or whoever else crawled out of someone’s vagina. Twice was enough, thank you very much.

The bathroom door opened.

I screamed. My foot got caught on the fancy new bottom of the swirly, twisty desk chair, and I stumbled backward, my life flashing before my eyes in a cascade of two-second video highlights, right before I grabbed the shelf on the bookcase behind me.

The weak wood cracked.

The shelf shattered, I fell backward, hitting my tailbone on the very bottom shelf, and a paperback book bounced off the top of my head to the floor.

Just when I thought I was safe, a vanilla Yankee Candle slid off a top shelf, hit the back of my new chair, and smashed onto the floor.

“Ohhh,” I moaned, rubbing the top of my head. And my back. How did I not twist my ankle on my travel down to the depths of Hell?

“What the…” Jake stopped in the doorway, his hand still clutching the doorknob. His gaze surveyed the damage my ass had created in the office.

Silence.

My butt hurt. My tailbone hurt. My hands hurt. And hell, everything hurt.

Mostly my pride.

Almost all my pride.

And my dignity.

And given the fact my skirt was halfway up to my hips…

I needed a big old rock to crawl under and come back out of in a few months.

“Now, spitfire,” Jake started, his eyes finally landing on me. “I know you’re Calamity Jane and capable of falling over thin air, but how the hell did you manage this?”

“Will you shut up and help me up? My ass hurts!”

He moved quickly across the room and not only lent a hand—he wrapped one of his strong arms around me and literally scooped me off the floor, only to deposit me into my apparently new office chair.

“This is quite something,” he said.

I clutched my tailbone and pointed my finger at him. “You! Oooh.”

“The hell did I do?”

“You hid in the bathroom?”

“I peed in the bathroom. I wasn’t exactly undercover.”

“You scared me!” I kicked my foot in his direction with the strength of an uncooked sausage. “You need a bell around your neck so I know when you’re coming!”

Jake didn’t say a word. His eyes, though? Those lips, though? The roguish glint and the wolfish upturn told me everything I needed to know about what was going through his mind.

“Don’t even—”

“A groan would be more appropriate, don’t you think?”

“—think about it!” I grabbed a lime-green highlighter from my pot and threw it across the room at his head.

He ducked, batting it to the side with his hand. “Woah, woah! Calm down! I’d ask if you hit your head, but I know you’re just this feisty.”

“I am not feisty!”

Two gentle knocks sounded at the door.

“Come in,” Jake said, ignoring my current predicament of my skirt still being halfway up to my hips.

Lillie edged her way in. She took one look at me and raised her eyebrows, meeting my eyes for a fleeting but serious moment before she turned her attention fully to Jake. “Mr. Creed, there’s a Mr. Decaux on the phone for you. He says its real urgent.”

The contractor. I knew that name.

“Thank you, Lillie. Will you tell Mr. Decaux I’m in the middle of a meeting with my manager and I’ll call him back at my earliest opportunity? As you can see, we need a clean-up.”

Lillie’s eyes swung from me holding my back with my hiked-up skirt to the broken shelf to Jake’s mussed-up hair. She fought a smile. “Of course, sir.”

“Oh, Jesus, no!” I shouted as she shut the door. “What did you say that for?”

Jake looked at the door then at me, blinking as if he genuinely had no idea what I was talking about. “What?”

Oh, God. He didn’t.

“My skirt! The shelf!”

He didn’t say a thing.

“Your hair looks like I’ve been running my nails through it in the heat of passion!”

“In a wild make-out session, you mean.”

“Does it matter? Oooh!” I threw another highlighter at him. Orange, this time. If anyone was keeping count. “She thinks we’ve been getting it on when all that happened was you scaring the ever-loving shit out of me so I wrecked half the place!”

He dropped his eyes to my feet. “Talking of…Those are high heels. Did you hurt yourself?”

“Only my ass and my pride!”

“After the boob thing, the bra thing, and the cobblestones, I didn’t know you had much pride left where I was concerned. Oh—and don’t forget the gin.” He grinned.

The bastard.

“Now, you listen here.” I stood up and pointed my finger at him. “All those things were accidental. They were not my fault. I’m a sucker for a dare, and that’s why you know what my boobs look like.”

“Not unfortunately.”

“You are the one who showed up at my house unexpected and uninvited, and that’s why you know what my bra looks like!”

“A very nice bra. Victoria Secret?”

“The cobblestones last night were wet, and that was a freak accident.”

“That had you landing in my arms.”

“And the gin! Ohh, the gin. That’s your fault for scaring the life out of me!”

“Like the shelf, right?” He grinned. A shit-eating, cocky as fuck grin that said he was playing along.

Unfortunately for my big mouth, I was on a roll.

“Like the shelf! And that kiss last night? Not my fault, either. Nope. You went for the cheek, and I went for the front door. That kiss was all your fault, buddy!”

I froze.

All the fresh air seemed to be sucked from the room. My playful tantrum had turned into something more. Something more real. Something that wasn’t funny or brushed off with a bit of sarcastic banter.

Something I hadn’t intended to bring up.

My grandma always said I had a big mouth and it’d get me in trouble one day…

Jake’s eyes shone brightly, swirling with attraction and amusement, lust and frustration. “Did I go for the cheek?”

My mouth opened, and there were words in my mind, but nothing happened. I was forcing out air because there were no words.

There was nothing more than six feet between us, and he closed that distance in what seemed like seconds.

Then he was there. In front of me. Eyes blazing gray and lips pursed and stubble ready to be touched by my fingers.

My heart thundered.

I couldn’t look at him, but I couldn’t look away. Every second my eyes stayed trained on his was almost painful, from the goosebumps to the hairs to the way my stomach tightened whenever he got close.

He set me on fire.

He wasn’t even touching me.

There were inches between us, but I could feel him anyway. I could feel how every exhale filled the air between us and how every inhale took away from it. How he gave and took away with each breath he took.

How he gave and took as he came one step closer.

Gave me butterflies.

Took any rationality.

Gave me wildness.

Took sensibility.

He reached for me. His fingertips ghosted along the side of my face, tickling across my temple until they reached my hair. He tucked the loose, wispy locks behind my ear, using the intimate touch to close the very final inches between us.

His breath.

I could feel it.

His heartbeat.

It beat hard enough that I could feel its vibrations on me.

His touch.

It electrified me.

“Oh, Mellie,” he murmured, bringing his face closer to mine. His nose. His lips. The taste of his tongue. Always closer. “You think that was a kiss, spitfire? That wasn’t a kiss. This is a kiss.”

His fingers slipped into my hair. His lips found mine like he had a map from him to me, and my eyes fluttered shut at the pure ecstasy that spread through me at the simple yet intimate touch.

Slow, at first. Then more probing, but still not too forceful. That was how he kissed me. He kissed me like I was a treasure chest worth exploring. He kissed me like I was worth millions of hidden gold.

He kissed me like he’d never kiss another woman again, and I reveled in his touch.

One hand in my hair, fingers fisting the loose locks and tugging them against my scalp.

One hand circling my waist, tickling against my skin and digging in to hold me as close as possible.

Hands. Fingers. Hips. Chest. Lips. Tongue.

Soul-deep. I felt his kiss soul-deep, and it wound around my soul and latched onto a piece of it.

My hands slid up his chest and one cupped the side of his neck. I was against the wall now, my lower back still throbbing, but I barely cared. If it didn’t feel as good as his tongue teasing mine into battle for dominance, I didn’t care.

I could barely breathe through it. Nothing mattered other than the way he kissed me.

Like he meant it.

Which was ridiculous, but here I was, against the wall, kissing him like I meant it.

Hell.

Maybe I did.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

It cut through the kiss like a hot knife through butter. But he didn’t jump away. He flattened his hands on the wall and turned his face in the direction of the door.

“Who is it?” Jake snapped.

“Lillie,” she said. “It’s Mr. Decaux on the phone for you again, Mr. Creed.”

“Fucking hell,” he said under his breath before he pushed off from the wall. “Co—”

I shook my head. His mouth was covered in my lipstick. Clearly, I hadn’t bothered to wear anything long-lasting, today of all days. I motioned to my mouth, hoping he’d get the message.

“Hold on,” he called.

I opened my drawer and pulled out a make-out wipe packet. Tearing a wipe from the packet, I raised my eyebrows to tell him to shut up. He obliged, and only looked at me strangely once when I wiped every last remnant of my make-up off his mouth.

“Bathroom,” he whispered, shoving me in that direction.

I didn’t argue. I went. My heart beating furiously and my entire body wanting more than just that kiss.

I shut the door behind me and leaned against it.

Holy. Shit.

What did I just do?