Chapter 25
25
I back up until my spine hits the column in the arched aperture. It’s surprise, not displeasure, driving me—I’m unsure what Scott is doing, despite how his eyes burn with his intention. Fighting or flirting? Rivalry or romance?
His paces toward me pose another riddle. Desire or diversion? I no longer know where we stand with each other. Is this a game? A rebound? Is it…something more?
He walks all the way up to me, to where I’m flat against the unyielding stone. Water slick on his face, he reaches up and places his hand on the wall beside me. He presses forward.
I feel my breath halt in my throat.
Because Scott— my Scott, the man intertwined with my every ordinary workday, the regular life I use fantasy to escape from—has just done “the lean” perfectly.
Only the cold of my waterlogged clothing confirms I’m not literally dreaming right now. You’re stuck in a dream, Jennifer . His words return to me. Yes , I could reply under the stone arch. And right now you’re the one holding me.
I find myself looking up at him, my chest heaving. Exactly how “the lean” is designed. Scott dips his head, following the choreography like fantasy fulfillment is hidden instinct for him. His chin waits millimeters from my temple.
“You should never underestimate me, Jennifer,” he whispers.
The rasp of his voice sends shivers racing over my skin. I don’t know what he’s referring to, honestly. The scavenger hunt. The lean. Or everything else. Fantasies I can’t name.
I just know he’s not wrong. Drops of water from the ends of his hair drip onto my collarbone—caresses, explosions, kisses.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” he informs me.
I’ve read hundreds of words depicting characters in scenes just like this one. Yet I can find no words of my own. “Why?” I croak out. Honestly, Kethryn’s eloquence in such moments is one virtue my queen possesses and I don’t.
“Because I need to,” he says.
The desperation in his eyes leaves no doubting his intention. It’s written everywhere on his face, urging my pulse faster. I’m no longer shivering—with Scott over me, promising what he is, looking wrecked the way he does, heat rushes into me. The arch supporting me is welcome when the warmth weakening my limbs and dizzying my head has me ready to collapse into him.
I could unravel right here, I really could. Here lies Jennifer. Her coworker flirted her to death.
He lifts his other hand. He moves his fingers, exhilaratingly gentle. His hand . It’s a thing of wondrous possibility. My out-of-control thoughts picture everywhere I’d like it. Of course, for the moment he only grazes my cheek with his fingertips.
I’m ridiculously attuned to his every movement. I’m watching the Pride & Prejudice hand flex over and over in real life in front of me. I could lavish whole Wintersian passages on every stretch and pause of his fingers.
Except, not right now I couldn’t. Right now I remain without words.
His hand runs over the curves of my face, his fingers splaying against my neck, my jaw. Pinpricks of fire in every fingertip. Their caress props my chin up to his.
He looks into my eyes. I exhale, practically shuddering, staring into his.
“W–ell,” I stammer, “let’s see what you’ve got, then.”
He doesn’t waste a moment. No, he does—one moment, the perfect moment, the perfect prelude. His lips kick into a smile before they close over mine.
And under shelter from the rain, Scott Daniels does exactly what he promised. He kisses me. He kisses the fuck out of me. It’s difficult to reconcile him with the man who ignores me in the office coffeemaker lounge, who reads itemized conference requirements and deadlines out of his notebook at meetings, in the real world hundreds of miles and endless infinities from here. Never, ever would I have imagined this . He isn’t just kissing like he wants me. He’s kissing like he wants to destroy me. He’s kissing like he’s wrestling with a dream so he can hold on to it forever.
Like I’m the dream, instead of stuck in one.
His body presses into mine, pinning me to the wall. I practically hear my heartbeat ricocheting on the stone. The archway holds me firmly in place. The clenching cold of Scott’s wet clothing on my skin pairs with the heat of his mouth devouring mine.
I want to be devoured. I never want it to end.
I’m utterly lost in the feeling of him. The wanting in his lips, the way he’s wrecking me right now, is limitless. For once, I dare to wonder whether he wasn’t just performing, not just plying me with romance-hero rhetoric.
With pummeling clarity I recognize—like I never could, even when he’s been feet away from me this week, because even feet away from me, he wasn’t touching me like this —how much I want him . I want him like I never even knew to.
It’s right out of a fantasy, possibly the greatest kiss ever to happen.
Except it’s real , and it’s happening with Scott .
He doesn’t stop. While our mouths collide in frenzied passion, I’m unable to imagine him overwhelming me more. It’s how overwhelming works. I can’t get over -overwhelmed, right?
Wrong.
Scott’s hand leaves my face. His grasp ventures down my damp neck, my wet collarbone. His fingers are magic, at once keeping me right where I am and flinging me into faraway realms. When he reaches my breasts, the gentle pressure has me arching forward to meet him. My unprepared knees nearly drop me to the flagstone. He uses the wall to his advantage, letting the rock hold me in place while he caresses me hard, opening up something dark and desirous in the depth of my stomach.
Ever demanding, he moves his hand lower. He finally has his fingers exactly where I want them—or, almost where. I damn the flimsy interception of my leggings. I need him, with a yearning, pounding pulse I can feel.
No longer satisfied with Scott writing my fantasy, in the penmanship of passion on my lips and chest, I lower my hands. I’m not just the reader of my own life. I don’t have to pull the feelings off the page into my imagination, lavishing in invented lust. I’m living the fantasy. And I’m going to reach for what I want.
Clinging to his waistband, I pull him closer, which lets me feel the firmness in the front of his pants. Pushing hard, rubbing against me.
For the first instant since he dashed me into oblivion with his mouth, he falters. I feel his moan deep within his chest.
It’s like finishing a chapter on a cliffhanger. I need more.
Writing in my own language of lust now, I slip my hand under his shirt. While I have cold fingers from the rainstorm, I doubt it’s why he shivers when they meet the flat surface of his stomach. I leave my hand there—just over his belt—tempting and daring myself to reach down.
Urgent with frustrated desire, Scott moans into his kiss. He clenches firmer on me in retaliation, and I nearly gasp.
We push further. After he’s dragged his lips to my neck and then returned to my mouth with new intensity, after his hands have roamed over my clothes everywhere he can given our state of dress, after I’ve panted into his neck while his leg parts mine, pressing into me—after I’ve swallowed his moan with my lips—only then do I decide it’s not enough. In plain view in the graduate college archway, it could never be enough for what I need.
It’s then that Scott withdraws. He looks smug, which, okay, he has every right to.
He raises his hand, in which he holds—the clue.
My clue. I reach on instinct for the pocket where I had hidden the scroll, finding it predictably empty.
“I told you. Never,” he says, “underestimate me.”
I’m half-outraged. Half, unfortunately, very turned on.
Scott looks all too aware of the effects of his ruse on me. He glances out of the archway. “Appears it stopped raining,” he remarks, pocketing the scroll. “I didn’t notice.”
I say nothing, knowing my reply would come out gibberish if I attempted speech right now. He’s right. Sun shines into our corridor instead of the pounding rain. Of course I hadn’t noticed. Dragons could have flown down into the quad and I wouldn’t have fucking noticed.
“Ready to return to campus?” Scott inquires. “Or would you like to try to steal this back?”
He slides the scroll into his front pocket, right near where I know he’s still hard.
Part of me genuinely considers opening doors until we find an empty classroom. He would follow me in a heartbeat. Ruse or not, the desire I felt from him is impossible to fake.
I imagine ending this chapter of my fantasy the way it deserves. Shedding our wet clothes so I can take my revenge, and more.
He watches me, and I notice the same familiar cunning I’ve seen in his eyes whenever he contradicts me in a marketing meeting with some devastating detail, or his idea prevails over mine with our supervisor—the same Scott Daniels savvy, with new hidden stakes.
Which reminds me, merciless and swift, of why we can’t do what I’m envisioning.
This isn’t a fantasy. This is a guy I compete with every day at work. I don’t even know what it is we’d be doing. Rebounding with each other? Redirecting the passion of our hatred into something new? I don’t know which possibility worries me more.
I just know the choices have left me with none. I meet Scott’s eyes coolly. “I’d say you earned this one,” I reply.
While he smiles, disappointment flickers on his features, like I’ve managed to hand him a defeat hidden in victory. Saying nothing more, he walks past me out the entryway, commencing a walk to the Experience campus I anticipate we will make in silence.
I hunt in my heart for anger at his deception, or stress at how I’ve just made him only one clue from winning the Val prize.
Instead, with the clouds clearing over the storm-ravaged ground and the memory of Scott’s hands on me—his mouth on mine—I feel only desire.