Chapter Eight #2
back in the box, no longer hungry. “Aside from being mortified that I treated a public bathroom stall like my own personal
confessional?” She shrugged. “I’m okay.”
“You shouldn’t be. Mortified, I mean. What you told me? Won’t ever leave that bathroom stall if that’s what you’re worried
about,” she promised.
The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind. “I’m not. But I appreciate that.”
Rosaline pressed her lips together, pausing for several seconds as if weighing her next words. “You know that you don’t have
anything to be ashamed of, right? Not for what you said and certainly not for saying it.”
She lowered her gaze to her lap. “Not everyone would agree with you on that.”
Most people looked at any kind of dependency as a weakness, a personal failing. Her parents did.
“Yes, well, not everyone’s as brilliant as I am.” Rosaline tossed her hair over her shoulder with a sort of casual confidence
Poppy couldn’t help but find attractive. “We all have our crosses to bear.”
The weight on her shoulders lifted, leaving her lighter than she’d felt all day. “Thanks. Not just for saying that, but I
didn’t get a chance to thank you for everything you said earlier. For, you know, talking me off the proverbial ledge.”
Rosaline’s lips quirked at the corners. “Don’t mention it. This is a stressful job and, after a while, that stress can take
its toll. I’ve watched a lot of people in this industry burn out, seen a lot of people come and go because they didn’t have—”
“Whoa, I haven’t always had the healthiest of coping methods, sure, but if you’re suggesting I can’t handle this or that my freak-out
earlier was because of work—”
Rosaline pressed a finger to Poppy’s lips, silencing her. “If you’d have let me finish,” she said, glowering softly, “you’d
know I wasn’t suggesting that at all. I mean, God, did you not hear a word I said in that bathroom?”
She lowered her hand, giving Poppy permission to speak.
It took a moment to make her mouth work, her lips tingling where Rosaline had touched her. One touch and she was right back
in that stadium, dazed and confused courtesy of the woman currently studying her like she was the puzzle and not the other
way around. “No, I did. I heard you. I just—sorry, what were you suggesting?”
“Honestly?” Her plump bottom lip disappeared between her teeth, a look on her face like she was gearing up to say something. “I was about to propose a mutually beneficial way we could both blow off some steam, but now I’m wondering if I’ve read this entirely wrong.”
Her mouth dried up instantly. “What?”
She waited for the penny to drop, for Rosaline to burst out laughing and take the words back, say it had all been a joke.
Only, for the second time today, Rosaline looked utterly discomposed, as lost as Poppy felt, a deep furrow forming between
her brows as she stared uncertainly at Poppy. “Am I? Reading this wrong?”
The words mutually beneficial and blow off some steam echoed through her brain on an endless, maddening loop. “To be clear, when you say reading this wrong, you mean . . .”
“Oh my God.” Rosaline scrubbed a hand over her face and sighed. “You know what? I’m going to go.”
She latched on to Rosaline’s wrist. “Wait. You just—you took me by surprise, okay? I wasn’t even sure if you—earlier, that
thing you said about jocks not being your type . . .”
“Not unless they play powder puff.” Rosaline smirked.
“Huh. Okay.” Those times she’d wondered whether Rosaline was flirting hadn’t been the product of her overactive imagination
after all. “To be honest, until today, I kind of thought—I didn’t think you thought of me like—well, I didn’t think you thought
of me much at all.”
Rosaline looked at her like she was crazy.
“Hey, in my defense, you’re hardly an open book, Rosaline. You’re like the—I don’t know, like the fucking ‘Epic of Gilgamesh.’
One second, you’re staring at my mouth, and I can’t figure out if you want to kiss me or for me to stop talking forever. The
next you’re asking me what my angle is. You can’t blame me for being confused by what you want.”
Rosaline scoffed. “Well, suffice it to say, I think of you plenty. It’s honestly irritating how often I do.”
“You know,” she huffed. “If you keep throwing around words like irritating, you’re going to make me wonder if I’m the one reading this wrong.”
“Something you need to know about me,” Rosaline murmured, low and with purpose, making Poppy’s blood hot, “is that I don’t
like wanting what I can’t have. Hence my irritation.”
Her breath hitched at the intensity of Rosaline’s gaze. “So, when you say blow off some steam . . . I think I’m going to need you to be really explicit here.”
She wasn’t entirely convinced Rosaline wasn’t talking about playing a rousing game of paintball at this point. Maybe duking
it out in some ring. She needed it all spelled out for her, to avoid any sliver of doubt that this was actually happening
inside her head.
“Explicit is sort of the whole point.” Rosaline smiled sharply, teeth flashing white against the dark pink of her mouth. “I’ve got a capacious
imagination and a list as long as my arm of things I’ve been thinking about doing to you since the moment you stepped through
my front door. But if you want me to be specific? Most of them involve stripping you down, laying you out, and taking you
apart until you’re strung out and shaking.” She reached out and, with two fingers, tucked a strand of hair behind Poppy’s
ear, grazing the bolt of her jaw. “Is that specific enough, or would you like a demonstration?”
Holy shit. She fought the urge to squirm and pressed her knees together, an unignorable ache settling hot and heavy between her thighs.
“At least buy a girl dinner first,” she joked, a little breathless.
Rosaline looked pointedly at the pizza box, then back at Poppy.
“Oh.” She flushed. “Prepared really is your middle name, huh?”
“Look, this job eats up ninety percent of my time. I don’t have time to date. Even if I did, do you know how hard it is to find someone who checks even half my boxes?” The question was obviously rhetorical. “Discretion is vital considering what I do and who I work for. Then there’s
the fact that work comes first for me, and most people don’t understand that. Or they’ll say they do, but they really don’t.
Factor in my personal preferences—”
“Is this where you tell me your desires are very singular?” Falling back on humor was sort of Poppy’s go-to when she felt
overwhelmed and this? Was very, very overwhelming.
Rosaline rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to do anything to you that you don’t beg me for. What I actually meant is that I’m
not looking for anything serious. No strings. I like you, Poppy. You’re smart and you’re funny and I don’t hate spending time
with you.”
“That’s a real ringing endorsement,” Poppy murmured.
Rosaline continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “More importantly? We both have skin in this game, and I trust you not to run
and blab my business or Lyric’s, which is my business, to the press. Most importantly?” She placed her hand high on Poppy’s thigh, thumb slipping under the soft flannel
of Poppy’s sleep shorts. “I’m really, really dying to hear what you sound like when I make you come.” Rosaline’s thumb swept an arc along the bare skin of her inner thigh
and Poppy couldn’t suppress the shudder that rolled through her despite the mild irritation still simmering in her veins.
“Does any of this sound like something you might be interested in?”
She was no stranger to the occasional one-night stand, even if that kind of sex usually left her unsatisfied, with an unresolved
ache between her thighs and an itch under her skin she couldn’t quite scratch. But none of those hookups had ever made Poppy
want like this. Want so badly she could barely breathe, barely think, her hands shaking, and fingertips tingling with the need to touch and be touched in turn, skin hungry and desperate after only a few heady promises.
Rosaline had made it clear what was—and wasn’t—on the table. Even if Poppy wanted more, a year ago her life had been in shambles
and today she was still facing the consequences of her choices, still piecing her life back together. Besides a cargo hold’s
worth of baggage and a full-size bed in a house that wasn’t hers, what did she have to offer anyone right now, let alone someone
as exceptional as Rosaline Sinclair? At least Poppy was self-aware enough to recognize her own shortcomings.
There was only one problem that made her hesitate, that kept her from blurting out an enthusiastic hell yes and launching herself at Rosaline, eagerly accepting everything she had to offer.
“Wouldn’t this sort of be a conflict of interest?”
Rosaline’s hand went still. “How?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. You work for Lyric and I work for Cash and—”
“You’re not going to be thinking about work while I’m fucking you, Poppy.” A violent little shiver slithered down Poppy’s
spine when Rosaline grazed the crease of her thigh with the edge of her thumbnail. Rosaline smirked and did it again to the
same effect. “If I’m doing it right, you’re not going to be thinking very much at all.”
Fuck it. Poppy spread her legs, silently asking for more. “I just don’t want you to think I don’t take my job seriously.”
“Don’t worry.” Rosaline withdrew her hand from the bottom of Poppy’s shorts and reached for the drawstring at her waist. “I
promise I’ll still respect you in the morning, Peterson.”
She had to be able to hear how hard Poppy’s heart was beating. Hell, people down in Clackamas County could probably hear it
thundering inside her chest as Rosaline’s fingers flirted with the scalloped lace at the top of Poppy’s panties.
“That’s—that’s a relief,” she stuttered.
“So, are we good?” Rosaline’s eyes flitted from where Poppy’s sleep shirt was slightly rucked up her stomach to her face.
“Because I really want to touch you now.”
“Please,” Poppy breathed.