Chapter Eight
My body jostled, the sensation both foreign yet familiar.
I lifted up, hovered for the barest of seconds, a strong pressure under my knees and across my upper back.
My side pressed up against something strong and warm.
I turned my face and was met with material and a faint smell of spicy cologne and just… manly musk.
I rubbed my cheek and sighed, slowly making my way toward consciousness, my brain and body objecting, but drifting awake anyway.
“Didn’t figure you for the snuggle sort,” Sawyer’s voice said, lower than usual, like he was trying not to startle me.
“Sawyer?” I heard my voice mumble as his body started moving.
“Shh. Go back to sleep.”
“Why are you carrying me?” I asked instead, eyes fluttering open. My head tilted, and I looked up into his deep green eyes.
“You didn’t look comfortable,” he said, stopping walking suddenly.
He looked different to my tired eyes, a little softer but rougher at the same time. There was scruff on his face, and his hair was in disarray.
I liked him messy.
“Careful,” he said oddly.
“Hmm?” I asked, my voice a little dreamy.
“Keep looking at me like that, and we’re going to have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“The kind where I lose what is left of my self-control.”
“And do what?”
“What your eyes are telling me you want me to do,” he said, his voice getting a little husky.
“You want to kiss me?” I asked, always being the type to prefer clarification over assumptions.
“I want to do a lot more than kiss you, babe. But it’s a bad idea.”
Even half-awake, I understood what he meant.
It was never a good idea to mix business with pleasure.
That being said, I wasn’t in the mood for rationality. My world just got turned on its ear. I was lost and confused and, yes, scared. And alone. I was so, so alone. I just wanted to feel something other than all that negativity for a change. I needed a break from it all.
My hand slid up over his chest, slipping up the column of his neck, then traced over his scruff, his short hair scraping across my palm as I laid it on his jaw. My eyes found his, heavy-lidded and heated.
“Riya…”
“No more talking,” I said, pulling him down toward me.
He didn’t object. He didn’t even hesitate.
His head lowered.
His arms tightened around me, crushing my body to his as his lips descended on mine.
With a man like him—so controlled, I had expected to be kissed with precision.
But his lips were surprisingly hungry, wild, demanding, completely lacking restraint.
I whimpered against his mouth, my hand crushing into his skull, holding him to me, as my other hand dug into his shoulder.
His arm moved slightly, his hand moving down to grab my behind at the lowest point, pressing until I realized he was trying to get me to move my leg.
My arms crossed around his shoulders as I allowed him to help coax my legs to either side of his body, wrapping around his lower back.
His hands stayed planted on my ass as he walked a few feet.
My back slammed against the wall in the hall.
His hands slipped from my butt and both moved up to frame my face, his fingers pressing in just shy of bruising as his tongue thrust forward and claimed mine.
A low, tortured moan escaped me as my legs tightened around him instinctively, desire sparking like a live wire through my system, making my breasts swell, my heart pound, my skin get almost alarmingly sensitive, and my sex clench hard as a rush of wet met my panties.
A rumbling growl came from deep in Sawyer’s chest, vibrating into my own as he shifted his hips, and I could feel his hardness press against the heat of me, making my body jolt at the unexpected contact.
My thighs tightened again, and my hips rose and dropped, grinding against him shamelessly, beyond caring that we had just met, that he was working with me, that I was living in his place, and this would only get complicated, that I was likely only doing it because I was emotionally fragile.
All that mattered was the need clawing inside me.
Sawyer took over, his hips pushing in hard while rising and lowering, pressing against where I needed him most as my teeth nipped into his lower lip and he let out another rumbling growl.
His cock slid up, pressing hard into my clit, making me jolt as I let out a loud, throaty moan.
Then I suddenly felt his hands press into my hip bones, holding me against the wall as he pulled roughly against my hold of him, making my legs fall from around his waist and drop. The second my feet hit the floor, he released me completely.
“Fuck,” he hissed, moving away from me and walking into his bedroom, closing the door with a firm click.
Completely unprepared for the sudden need to use my legs, I slowly slid down the wall until my butt hit the floor, my knees tight against my chest, trying to take deep breaths to calm my rapid heartbeat.
“Fuck,” I agreed quietly.
Mistake.
That was a huge, epic, stupid mistake.
What was I thinking?
So what if I woke up in the strong arms of a guy who made my disastrous situation tolerable? So what if he gave me sexy eyes and a sex-rough voice? So what if I was attracted to him?
I was a grown goddamn woman.
I should have been able to control myself.
I certainly shouldn’t have melted into him, pulled his face to mine and demanded to be kissed, or dry-humped him.
Jesus.
I totally dry-humped him.
Then he dry-humped me right back.
Until he stopped just as suddenly, leaving me high and dry. Or, in a more literal way, low and wet.
And really, really regretful.
It was one thing for things to get out of hand and for both of us to realize it in the middle of things, pull away, laugh it off, and move on. It was a whole other to be ready to keep things going and have the other person pull away and then stalk off.
It wasn’t that I felt rejected. I wasn’t rejected. I had felt just how much he wanted it. And let’s just say… Sawyer had a lot to offer.
It was that he had gotten to his senses first, leaving me to look weaker and less in control of myself.
I didn’t like that.
I rested my elbows on my knees and cradled my head in my hands, trying not to overthink it, trying not to worry about the consequences.
“Hey,” Sawyer’s voice said, surprising me enough to jolt back and slam my head against the wall. “Really,” he said, and when I looked up, his lips were twitching, “I really don’t think you need any more memory loss. Ease up on that head of yours.”
I let out my breath. “What do you want, Sawyer?”
“Alright, well,” he said, squatting down beside me. “You don’t know me, but I am not the kind of guy who hides away from or avoids confrontation. So when shit happens that needs to be discussed, no matter how uncomfortable, I discuss it. So we made out…”
“Really, this doesn’t need to be a conversation. We’re both adults. We made out. It meant nothing. We can move on.”
“Making out almost never means nothing. Especially when it’s not some random drunk make-out. So let’s be adults here and be honest and admit there is at least a small attraction here.”
“Fine,” I said, nodding a little tightly, making an effort to visibly uncurl from myself so I looked less like I was trying to keep myself from falling apart.
“Come on. Put on your big girl panties and say it,” he said, and I got the feeling he was deliberately trying to goad me.
“Fine. I’m attracted to you.”
“Of course you are,” he said with a cocky smirk. “I’m attracted to you too. But that being said, we both see that giving in to that is a shit idea.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Good. Then we can move on,” he said, standing suddenly and reaching down to offer me a hand.
Perhaps it seemed mildly petty of me, but I refused it, taking my feet without any assistance.
It wasn’t some bullshit ‘prove a point’ move.
I just really thought not touching him when my lips were still tingling from his and I could still practically feel his cock rubbing against me was a good idea.
“So this isn’t going to get weird?” he asked as I stepped over Slim to get into the guest room.
“Not at all,” I said, giving him a fake smile that I was sure he saw right through. “Goodnight, Sawyer.”
I closed the door, but I heard him wish me a goodnight as well and, if I wasn’t mistaken, his voice sounded amused.
I moved toward the bed, feeling my clothes—heavy and itchy on my oversensitive skin. On a resigned sigh, I undressed, getting under the covers in only my panties, rolling onto my side, closing my eyes tight, and trying to ignore the almost painfully insistent throbbing between my thighs.
But that proved impossible.
And, well, sometimes a girl had to do what a girl had to do to be able to think straight.
My hand slid down my body and against my panties, stroking myself in hurried circles, not wanting to drag it out, just needing a release so I could stop fantasizing about going back across that hall and telling him to hell with the consequences and finish what we started.
The fact of the matter was, for my mind, it had only been a couple of months since I had been touched by a man. But in reality, to my body, it had been a year and a couple of months.
So when my fingers found my clit, it was a matter of only a couple short minutes before an unexpectedly fast orgasm coursed through me, making me let out a low whimper that was uncharacteristic of me when going solo.
I came back down just as quickly, always finding self-satisfaction a little hollow, a little less, a little bit like an itch getting scratched instead of an experience the way sex was for me.
So that was the main reason that, literally two seconds after I came, I heard the barely audible whisper of Sawyer’s voice in the hall right outside my room.
“Come on, Slim, up.”
I heard the clip of the leash on Slim’s collar. Then I heard the jingle of his tags down the hall, into the living room, and then past the kitchen. Lastly, I heard the front door slam.
“Oh my God,” I groaned, rolling to my side and burying my face in the pillow.
Because, really, there was no way to deny that he had heard me. And being a very attractive and likely quite sexually experienced man, there was no way he would mistake what, exactly, that sound I made was.
Great.
That was just lovely.
I jumped out of bed, dressed, ran to the bathroom to get ready for bed, then threw myself back into my room a mere two minutes before Sawyer came back with Slim.
I listened as Sawyer got ready, then as he went into his room.
Seeing as there was no way I was going to sleep after that whole incident, I listened as he got up right before the sun did, took Slim out, made coffee, left to, I assumed, work out, then came back to shower, make breakfast, and then leave.
I waited a good twenty minutes after that before I ventured out, finding Slim in the hallway watching my door as if he had been impatiently waiting for me.
When I walked out into the kitchen, I not only found fresh coffee, but a plate with dry rye toast and an egg over easy.
But that wasn’t all.
Oh no.
What I found was a pair of my panties that I must have left in the dryer and a note that said “Big girl panties,” along with the door alarm codes.
The bastard.
He knew I was avoiding him.
The worst part about the whole situation was he was right. Avoiding him was immature. I needed to get it together.
If things were going to work with him working for me, we needed to be able to, at the very least, be in the same room without me melting into a pool of embarrassment.
I took a deep breath, grabbed the panties, but left the note.
I wanted him to see that I put them on.
And maybe a small, petty part of me wanted him to know exactly what those panties looked like, to imagine me in them.
Which should have been all the proof I needed that this whole professional relationship thing was totally not going to work.