Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LIAM
Some madness must have possessed me.
That’s the only explanation I have for why I asked Briar if she wanted me to kiss her. The only explanation I have for why I’m kissing her now, even though I know what it could cost me.
But the price doesn’t feel so urgent right now, with Briar’s warm lips on mine and her fragrant hair gathered in my fist. The first kiss is soft, tentative, but I press in closer, needing to feel every inch of her mouth.
I want her tongue, her taste. She gives it to me, slanting her head and making a needy little sound in the back of her throat.
Like maybe she’s been thinking of this too, ever since we were at the gym together and she threw her first punch.
It feels good in a way so few things do, and at this particular moment, I only care about getting closer.
With my free arm, I tug her into my lap, still kissing her.
I sigh into her mouth at the sensation of her weight settling on my lap, her legs tucked on either side of me.
Fuck, she’s so perfect there, and I hope to hell she’ll want to stay awhile, even though she must feel how I’m reacting to her.
I’m prepared for it to wake her up, out of this haze of closeness that’s descended around us.
But instead of getting up, she weaves her hands behind my neck and rocks closer to me, her tongue moving with mine. My hand finds her hip, and I pull her even closer, the feeling of her against me nearly annihilating my brain.
I suck on her bottom lip and then kiss my way down her cheek to her throat, sweet smelling and soft—and then shove her sweater down to kiss the swell of her breasts.
God, they’re pretty, and I’ll bet they’d be even prettier if she threw off her sweater and bra to let me suck on her nipples.
I want to know what shade of pink they are.
I want to know what she’d taste like if she took off her pants and spread her legs for me.
I’d like it all to happen here, so she thinks of it every time she sits down in that rolling chair. So she can’t catch a glimpse of this couch without remembering the things I did to her here.
“Liam,” she says, her voice breathy as she writhes against my needy cock, every movement of her hips making me crazy. “The movie’s over.”
I press another kiss to the curve of her breast, then look up at her in disbelief. “I couldn’t give a fuck. I’m right where I want to be, doing just what I want to be doing.”
Her hips are still making tiny rotations she might not even be aware of, but I know from the look in her eyes that this is about to end.
“You’re going to say this was a mistake,” I muse. The thought makes my dick feel like it just got dunked in ice water, because she’s right. What the fuck am I doing?
I wasn’t supposed to touch her. That’s not what this was about.
I put on the movie because she needed a boost, and I wanted to be the one who delivered it.
While I couldn’t give a shit what most people think of me, I’m starting to care a lot about what this one woman thinks of herself.
But I knew the movie was a mistake the minute the opening credits started.
Because she was just a whisper away from me, sitting in that office chair.
All I saw was her.
If I hadn’t seen the movie before, I couldn’t have told you a single thing that happened. I was only paying attention to her gasps, her sighs, and the way she leaned forward slightly when something intense was happening on screen.
So, yes, it was a mistake. A stolen moment that should never have happened, but I still don’t move her off my lap. I can’t make myself do something that’s so counter to what I want.
Peering into my eyes, she asks, “Wasn’t it a mistake?” She’s looking at me with such earnestness. She’s pretty when she’s earnest, her eyes big and brown. I get suckered with the need to protect her whenever I look into those eyes, whether she needs or wants it or not.
I tuck her mussed hair behind her ear, then run my fingers along her delicate jaw before leaning in to kiss her sweet mouth one more time.
“Yeah,” I say, inches away from her lips. “But I wouldn’t mind making this particular mistake again.”
“We can’t,” she says, her voice threaded with worry.
At least she sounds sad about it.
I think about Hannah, and how hard it was when the most important person in my life wouldn’t talk to me for months. No, I can’t let that happen again.
“No,” I agree with a sigh. “I guess we can’t.”
Briar finally crawls off my lap, leaving me with a huge hard-on tenting the front of my athletic pants.
She looks at it like she thinks it’s going to wave hello to her, which is actually exactly what it’s doing. She bites her bottom lip, which felt plump and delectable in my mouth. “What are you going to do about that?”
I lift my eyebrows, amused. “Well, I’m glad you asked. You see, I was blessed with two hands—”
She gasps as if she wasn’t riding my dick through a few layers of fabric ten seconds ago. “You’re going to do that in here?”
Heat ripples through me. “Wasn’t planning on it, but are you offering me the use of your office?”
She glances at the door again, and then she shocks the hell out of me by nodding. “I’m not going to be in here, though.”
“You want me to?” I ask incredulously—and also because the thought makes me hot.
Her cheeks burn, but she nods before leaving, then closes the door with a click behind her.
I don’t waste any time before I tug myself out and glide my palm over my flesh, thinking about the little noises Briar made and the way her lips and tongue felt. Thinking about those little rotations of her hips and how badly I wanted to tear her clothes off and take her here in her office.
Thinking about all the things I want but can’t have.
I clean up afterward and leave the office.
There’s no sign of her anywhere, only a little Post-It note affixed to one of the tables in the tasting room—
I’m going home. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Before I leave, I look for our list of rules for success and write down a new one, the taste of her still in my mouth.
I’m on my way home when my sister calls me. A sick feeling creeps over my skin. I did exactly what she asked me not to do, and if she finds out I made out with her friend and then jacked it in her office…
She’s not going to find out. Briar and I agreed it was a mistake that can’t happen again, end of story.
Plenty of people kiss without it meaning anything.
Of all the kisses happening now, at this exact moment, at least eighty percent of them are meaningless.
Sure, I pulled that statistic out of my ass, but that doesn’t make me any different than most people.
There’s only one problem: it was more than a few kisses.
I can still feel Briar’s soft lips against mine and the brush of her hair on my neck. Her little moans are echoing in my chest.
The call cuts off, but my phone immediately starts ringing again, because my sister has never been patient.
On edge, I answer it on my Bluetooth.
“Hey!” Hannah says. “Want to grab dinner with Travis, Ollie, and me? We’re going to that place in West Asheville where they let kids make their own pizzas. Ollie already sketched out the design for his.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say, well aware that I wouldn’t be getting an upbeat dinner invitation if she knew how I’d spent my afternoon.
I’d tried to do what my sister had asked for. I’d done my best to ignore Briar. If she were only beautiful, it would have been easy enough, but she’s interesting. She’s got so many damn good ideas…
I head home before dinner and find an impossibly long golden hair attached to my shirt. Idiot that I am, I wind it around my finger. I leave it like that for a moment, smiling at the golden sheen. The soft perfection.
Yeah, no question. I’m in big trouble.
“That’s it,” I say out loud. “Quit it now.”
I force myself to throw the hair away, instantly feeling a pang of loss in my chest.
Fifteen minutes later, I grab the Christmas gift I got for Travis’s son, Ollie, because I’m not sure I’ll see them again before they leave for New York next week. I’m about to exit the apartment when I pause and pull my phone out of my pocket.
It takes me approximately thirty seconds to reactivate Tinder.
Do I want to sleep with a random woman?
No. I don’t have the slightest desire to even look at the app.
But it feels like I’m proving something to Hannah, and maybe myself, by having the app on my phone. If I’m on Tinder, then I’m definitely not interested in fucking my boss.
I get to the pizza restaurant right on time—and I’m shocked to find Hannah, Travis, and Ollie actually beat me there.
Hannah’s giving me a smug little wave from the side of a booth across from the front door.
My sister, who’s so chronically late that everyone in our family always tells her to meet us fifteen minutes before we need her.
Then again, Travis is an on time is late person, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
As I approach their booth, positioned beneath an oversized chalkboard listing the restaurant’s draft beers, I grin at Ollie, who’s wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sweatshirt, and hold up the present I brought for him.
“Is that for me?” he asks, his eyes fixed on the green-wrapped box as I sit down beside him and set it on the floor next to the booth.
I bump his small fist with mine, feeling a rush of warmth.
Otis reminds me of my little brother when he was a teenager, but Ollie reminds me of him when he was this age, just seven—a kid old enough to want independence but too young to have much of it.
“Nah, man, I just carry it around everywhere I go to confuse people.”
“Really?” he asks with wide eyes. “It’s a box for pranks?”
Hannah laughs. “Yeah, there’s a teeny-tiny hole in it, because it’s for his—”
“Hannah,” Travis says in his oh, Hannah tone, fond and exasperated.
She laughs harder, pressing a hand to her mouth.