“Try to make me feel better. Give me a boost or whatever. Because, seriously, I don’t need your pity.”
He laughed. This sharp bark of a thing that echoed through the empty parking lot. “Pity? Are you kidding?”
Her teeth clamped together, anger rising. “You—”
But he moved so fast it made the rest snag in her throat. Both of his hands landed on the car behind her, caging her in and bringing his face close to hers. “Ready for completely and wholeheartedly inappropriate?”
He wasn’t touching her anywhere but he may as well have pressed his entire body against her for the way her blood went hot. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. All she could see were those dark eyes and she inhaled the scent of him, spicy food and man.
“I reeled myself in tonight. I asked you to dinner for selfish reasons. But once we were there and got to talking, I had a crisis of conscience. You’re working with me. You’ve been through hell this week. You didn’t need me complicating that. I forced myself to play by the rules. I made myself be good.” He leaned close to her ear, his breath coasting along her neck. “But don’t think for one second that I didn’t want to talk you into my bed tonight, that I didn’t want to show you that side of myself you saw in the hallway, and that I haven’t been thinking exactly how good it would feel to have you beneath me.”
All ability to breathe ceased inside her, her body going still as stone and melty as lava.
“So you can accuse me of a lot of things, Cora. Crossing lines. Being selfish. Acting inappropriately. Because I’m doing all of those things right now. But one thing you can’t accuse me of is pity.” He pushed off the car, freeing her from the invisible hold, and took a step back. “I’ll see you on Monday. And if you decide not to show up anymore because of this, I’ll make sure you’re paid through the next two weeks.”
He turned and strode toward his car, leaving her standing there trembling and breathing hard and . . . way too turned on.
She wet her lips, a surge of bravery welling in her. “You never told me your breaking-the-law story.”
The words rang through the distance between them, and she t
hought he might keep walking, but he stopped and turned around. “We’ll need to schedule a seven-course meal to get through all of that.”
“That long of a list, huh?”
His mouth kicked up at the corner. All bad boy and charm. “Yep, you game?”
She swallowed past the dryness in her throat, knowing what he was asking was about way more than a dinner. She was so damn far off the reservation. “I might be . . .”
His gaze heated, slid over her with open appreciation. “It’s a date, then. Good night, hallway girl.”
She sank back against her car, watching him go. Good night, blow job guy.
ELEVEN
Cora rolled over in bed, too restless to sleep. After getting home from her dinner with Ren, she couldn’t stop replaying every moment, vacillating between analyzing the night to death and then getting warm all over again every time she thought of him bracing her against her car. She almost couldn’t believe those things had actually happened. The way he’d looked at her when he leaned in, the things he’d said. God.
She’d never had a man be so blatantly sexual with her. Or made her feel so wanted—like he was truly fighting to hold himself back. That kind of focused attention was like a drug.
Guys usually stumbled into a hookup with her. Men didn’t ask her on romantic dates. They didn’t flirt with her in bars. It almost always started as a casual friendship that turned R-rated because it was convenient. She could earn a degree in Friends with Benefits. She’d long ago accepted that guys didn’t think of her in that way until they knew her, and even then, it was contextual. Yeah, we’ve had a few beers and watched a few TV shows and wow, it’s late and hey, we might as well since we’re both horny and have nothing else to do.
But Ren hadn’t played any of those games or made any of those excuses. He’d just put it out there. I think you’re hot. I’d like to have sweaty, kinky sex with you. You game?
And she’d basically said yes.
She pressed her face into her pillow and groaned. Shit.
What the hell had she gotten herself into? She’d already decided that she wasn’t meant for real-life kink that night at the party. But when Ren had looked at her with all that open want it’d been too potent of a rush.
I want you in my bed. I want you beneath me.
Those hadn’t been his exact words but that’d been the meaning. For the first time in her life, she’d felt not only desirable but powerfully sexual. Not because she looked like Lenore. Not because she’d put on some phony act to impress a guy. But by being who she was. Without planning to, she’d shown Ren the version of herself that was most authentic, peeling back the curtains and showing the tender spots. And she’d seen it in his eyes. Ren Muroya had wanted the tomboy geek girl in the combat boots. It hadn’t been an act. That attraction had rolled off him like a heat wave, making the air between them ripple with awareness.
And in that moment, she’d felt that gut-level ache to give in to it, to give him the control, to see where all that charged desire led them. She’d wanted to stick a white flag in the ground and surrender.
She could see it then in her head. Her saying yes. Ren pushing her into the backseat of her car, pinning her down, telling her exactly what he was going to do to her and how much she was going to like it.
Guh. She shifted onto her back in bed, her body restless and way too warm all of a sudden. What would have happened if she’d invited him home tonight? Would he be here now, putting her on her knees or bending her over the bed? Would he tie her up? Spank her? How would it feel to have that beautiful body of his draped over her, his cock sliding into her?