“Okay. I’m sorry,” she grumbles. Then a couple of seconds later, “But she is.”
Since I pretty much agree with her, I decide to let that go, counting her apology as a win.
“You’ll have to take Rose home for the rest of the day, and since it’s Friday, she’ll start the suspension Monday morning.” I rise from my chair, ending the meeting. “Have a good weekend, Rose.”
She shoves herself out of the chair and turns wide, glistening eyes on me that would’ve made Puss in Boots look like a rank amateur. “He’s going to ground me.” She jerks a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of her uncle.
“You got that right.” Asa frowns down at her, even as he lays a gentle hand on the back of her head. “Do me a favor. Go outside and sit down in the office. I need to speak to Ms. Roberts for a minute. And Rose,” he says, when she trudges past him, “don’t move from that chair.”
“Yes, Uncle Asa.”
He walks over to the door and doesn’t close it until her butt hits the chair right outside my office. But when he does shut it, my stomach bottoms out, panic clawing at me like a wild thing. Perspiration springs under my arms and on my palms, and I so desperately want to rub them together, but I refuse to reveal any kind of weakness to that hooded, silver gaze. I’ll be damned if he even suspects that he affects me.
Because, dammit, he does affect me.
I want to slap the shit out of my heart for pounding against my rib cage just because that big body is ambling back toward me with that loose, unconsciously sexual gait. A man that large should lumber, plod, lurch. Instead, he… stalks. And my heart and vagina approve.
Traitorous bitches. Both of them.
Asa stops in front of my desk, staring at me. And I stare right back.
At the dark auburn waves that glance his cheekbones and caress his jaw. At the scruff that’s about an hour past a five o’clock shadow. At the tattoos crawling up his neck and down his wrists from under the cuffs of his shirt. At the perfection of his mouth that carries this almost cruel slant, but I know for a fact can be gentle as well as bruising.
Oh, I stare. Because I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him if Jesus Christ Himself rode down here with a train of cherubim in His wake declaring, Have thou some damn dignity.
“Was there something else you needed to discuss with me about Rose?” I finally ask.
“Where’ve you been?”
The blunt demand doesn’t brook anything but obedience, an answer. That angers me. And damn, it excites me. That tone brings to mind how those huge hands gripped me down on his lap, held me still to take the roll and thrust of his dick over my jeans-covered clit, clasped my head and fucked my mouth like it was my pussy.
Heat, hot and throbbing, echoes between my legs like a tiny heartbeat, and my nipples tighten under my bra. I ache. Thank God for the suit jacket I didn’t take off when he arrived. It’s my only saving grace, sparing me from utter humiliation.
“Where I’ve been has nothing to do with Rose,” I say, impressed that my voice is all I’m a professional, instead of None of your fucking business. “Now if you have any questions about the suspension or would like to set up a meeting with her guidance counselor—”
“Where. Have. You. Been?” A muscle ticks along his jaw, and it’s a flashing warning sign that his patience is running out.
“My. Business.”
He’s part of my past, and I never invited him into my present or my future. Besides, he has zero right to ask me that question. He’s Jessie’s friend; he was never mine. We just lip-locked for one crazy-ass moment in time.
That muscle jumps harder, faster, and his mouth almost flattens into a grim line. Almost, because curves that full could never completely thin out.
“Do you know how fucking worried I was when you ran out of the house that night?” The low, rumbling thunder in his voice vibrates right through me. It’s that kind of threatening thunder that heralds one hell of a storm. He slaps his palms down on the desktop and leans forward, his large frame nearly stretching across the width of the piece of furniture. His eyes are molten with barely concealed anger, his dark brows arrowing down over them. “I tried calling to make sure you were okay, and you didn’t answer. I went by your house the next damn day, but you’d cleared out. No trace of you, India. It was like you vanished off the face of the damn earth. So where in the fuck have you been?”
“Why would you come looking for me?” Bewildered and more than a little shocked, I search his face with its strong bones and elegant slopes. Meet his narrowed glare. “Why did you care?”
Anger rolls off of him like sinuous, steamy waves off a sidewalk. Since he walked into my office, he somehow managed to keep this rage under wraps, but now, with his niece out of room, he unleashes it.
“Are you shitting me right now?” he snaps.
But no. I’m really not. I really don’t understand why he cared. I was his best friend’s ex. A woman he kissed and immediately regretted doing so. I thought now, as I did then, that he was relieved to be rid of me. I started that whole inappropriate snowball rolling.
Icried on his chest.
Iclimbed on his lap.
Ikissed him first.