8. Meg
8
MEG
I dare you to walk in on your absurdly good-looking co-worker sans his shirt and pretend that no lascivious thoughts would erratically sift through your mind.
I mean, if you looked past all the bruises, which I totally could, Byron’s naked torso was a toe-curling sight for sore eyes.
There was the sprinkling of hair on his chest with a faint trail down his stomach that disappeared into his casual pants…and that was just for starters.
Not that I meant for my breathing to pick up, or a tingly feeling to slither from my chest to my belly where it settled way too comfortably.
But it did, and the way Byron was holding my gaze with a glint in his eye told me he had an inkling of what was going through my mind.
“Oh,” I blurted out. “Hey…uhm…”
“Damn, did I give you the black flash drive,” he said hastily, fishing in his pants pocket, hauling out a red flash drive. “That’s mine, this is yours.”
I emptied the space between us to grab the drive and go, since exchanging the two flash drives should’ve been a very simple procedure. And basically, I should have been on the way back to my office in two seconds flat after said exchange.
Away from the danger.
Away from this man with his delectable chest and way too sexy smirk.
But as you know, nothing worked out in real life as flawlessly as it did in our imagination.
There was that one millisecond when it was all going so well, when even as my professionalism was stretched a little thin, it seemed I could escape the hazardous situation unscathed.
That was before both flash drives dropped to the ground.
It was unnecessary to point fingers as to who was to blame for that, but when I took the responsibility to bend down and pick them up, my head crashed onto Byron’s desk, and I blacked out for a second and a half.
Byron was there to catch me and before I knew it, my face was an inch from his bare chest, and I was close enough to pick up on his scent which, if I had been a wild animal, would have indicated to me that he was a prime specimen and ripe for the mating game.
“Holy shit, this hurts,” I cried out when the pain fought its way through my lecherous thoughts.
All the while, Byron’s one hand was curved securely around my waist (I suppose to steady me or whatever), and the other hand was gently cuddling the back of my head.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and there was no mistaking the worry in his voice.
And when I looked up, our eyes met and the most euphoric sensation whirled through me, like what in name of Santa’s hairy nipples were the damn butterflies doing back twerking in my stomach like it was payday at the club.
To say nothing of the angel choir trilling pathetically in the distance, heralding this catastrophe. And worse was that when we were gazing at one another, I saw nothing of the bastard he was supposed to be.
And why didn’t he look away first, because this was getting beyond weird, and now I was imagining that sexy mouth taking possession of mine and letting nature take its course.
INSERT HERE – Random thoughts of a single aroused female.
So maybe Byron wasn’t such an asshole as I initially thought but it would still be a total betrayal to Isabel if I was to start liking him.
Anyway, the guy had been what, only a few days into his leaf-turning metamorphosis, and who’s to say he won’t tumble off the wagon and go all Wicked Byron again?
Lest I forget, we were also going to be working side by side for as long as Roman needed me close by to spill the beans on where Isabel was hiding out.
Besides, I would bet my precious law degree that I wasn’t the type of woman Byron was into. At a guess, he was into high-society women, the snooty wenches with more plastic in their faces than a Barbie doll.
Women who you just knew picked out and discarded the four croutons in their tiny salads and declared themselves stuffed after two bites of green leaves.
The ones who could spot the difference between a real Louis Vuitton bag and a good fake from fifty yards away.
Yeah, no, that wasn’t me. Not even one tiny little bit. My LV was as good as thirty bucks could buy.
“I’m fine,” I stammered, severing myself from him before I did something rash. Like say, brush my lips over his naked chest.
The struggle was real.
He combed a hand through his thick black hair, apparently as uneasy about our close encounter as I was. And the only conclusion I could draw from that was that he might be concerned I would become this lovesick damsel falling for him.
But oh, did I have news for him. Breaking news, to be brutally honest.
Whatever this bullshit feeling was making every nerve ending in me perky and ready to party, was going to be snubbed like flesh-eating bacteria.
Byron picked up the fallen flash drives and held the red one out to me. Such a small thing causing so much unnecessary drama. I grabbed it carefully because we all knew how it turned out the last time when I wasn’t paying attention.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked. “Maybe we should have a doctor check you out.”
“I’m two hours into my first day at the job. I’m not going to the ER for a little bump on my head.”
“Actually, we have a medical team on the estate.”
I scoffed. “Of course you do.”
“Listen, not to cast a shadow over your day, but epidural hematoma is a real thing,” he continued. “Even the slightest bump to your head can cause some damage you won’t know about until it’s too late. I’m just trying to help.”
What would really help was if you put a damn shirt on, I was thinking but at least I didn’t say it out loud because that would mean I was bothered by his naked chest, and the last thing I needed Byron to think was that I was drooling over any part of his body.
Which, if you hadn’t noticed, I was.
I seriously needed to get it together. This feeling was as welcome as a dead fly inside a steaming slice of apple pie. Not to mention unprofessional.
Then it struck me. “I’m sorry, but why are you in your office without a shirt? If you ask me, it’s kinda unprofessional to tool around naked in a workplace. Wait until HR finds out about this. You have an HR here, right?”
Sure, I was provoking him into an argument, hoping for a distraction, any distraction. Instead, he laughed, and it was such a great laugh. It was so deep and genuine, and it was the type of laugh that was contagious.
Imagine what it took me to fight off a fit of giggles myself.
“I had to take my shirt off because it’s somewhat difficult to rub pain-relieving cream on my body with my shirt on…?” he explained. “But let me fix that before you’re scarred for life.”
He turned around to grab his shirt from where it was tossed on the couch. And that’s when I saw his back, covered in angry-looking bruises and clumps of cream that he failed to rub into his skin successfully.
“Holy shit, that doesn’t look good…” I lamented. “It looks like it really hurts.”
And if this guy doesn’t glance at me like a warrior getting his pain on during a battle to the end and braving it all like a champ.
Which triggered some crazy hormonal glitch inside me, and without thinking twice about what I was going to suggest, I suggested it. “Wait, don’t put your shirt back on. Let me help you with the cream.”
If I was surprised at my own suggestion, he was doubly so.
“Oh, okay,” he muttered, clearly unsure what exactly I was proposing. “Let’s hope HR doesn’t make the rounds,” he said teasingly. “Oh wait, there is no HR here, we can swing stark naked from the chandeliers if we want. Not that I suggest we do.”
If it was a joke, it didn’t land because I had instantly come to my senses and was trying to think of ways to get out of the verbal agreement to rub his boo-boos with cream.
But unless I wanted to come across as rude, I was committed, and he was looking at me expectantly as if I held his pain-free future in my hands.
I put the red flash drive on his desk for safekeeping.
And now it was super awkward with him not knowing where and how to stand, and me insanely nervous because I was about to make full-on skin contact with the man who had me panting like I just crawled over the finish line at a triathlon.
Despite all that, rubbing the cream into his back went relatively well.
That was if you ignored his satisfied moans and the tiny drops of sweat breaking out on my face as I desperately tried to keep my breathing under control.
Let me just mention here quickly that, unlike some women, washboard abs didn’t make me go gaga.
Give me a guy who didn’t obsess over sporting the perfect six-pack, and who didn’t lecture me at every meal about fat and carbs and how they are basically the Grim Reaper’s grand plan to lure you into his web of doom.
I liked a man with a nice body, who was also comfortable in his own skin, and who you knew would be all-in on a Friday night to order pizza with garlic sticks and a cheese dip to wash it all down.
Seeing Byron without a shirt, I could report back and attest that he had a very nice body. No in-your-face washboard abs in sight. This was a man who would scarf down a burger and not feel an ounce of regret.
So, this reality was what I had to deal with on top of everything else.
Feeling sorry for me yet?
And on that nervous note, I mentally zipped through my contact list to figure out who’d be up for some late-night fun tonight.
But it turned out this funny feeling I had wasn’t just me being in the mood for a quick, sexy fling. No, this funny feeling was directly linked to the man I had only known for two hours and whose back I was currently rubbing instead of tending to my new high-powered job.
“You’re really good at this,” Byron growled softly, his voice a timbre that made me feel all loose inside, and lines that were not supposed to be crossed started to blur at rapid speed.
I bit my lip until I tasted blood. This was stupid. I needed to get a grip. Commencing right now.
“Well, not that anyone can really mess up rubbing cream into someone’s back,” I said with a professional pitch. “But while I have you here, I put up a list of rules in the kitchen. I suggest you familiarize yourself with it.”
“Kitchen?” he asked, clearly in a daze from the cream soothing his pain.
“The one in the secret passage between our offices.”
“Secret passage?” he said with a satisfied moan.
“Are you just going to repeat everything I say? Yes, secret passage. Behind the door I just came from. This is your house, your office, how do you not know that?”
He moaned again. And that sound buzzed right down my spine and sent my thoughts careening in a direction that I was trying my damnedest to avoid.
“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” he said after his latest moan simmered down. “But this is a big place. There are rooms here I forgot existed or never knew of. Like my new office here. So, maybe give me a break?”
“Well, surprise, surprise, we share a kitchen. Brush up on the rules. So, we won’t run into problems. Last place I worked, someone kept stealing the lunches my mom or Isabel made me every day.”
“Dare I ask what happened to the guilty party?”
“Let’s just say they’ll never steal anyone’s lunch again.”
“We get meals catered here every day,” he said. “It’s really unnecessary to bring your own.”
“You’ll sing a different tune once you taste my mom’s lasagna.”
“I’d love to taste your mom’s lasagna…is that a dare?”
“Steal it and suffer the consequences. But be warned, it will not end well for you. If you want, I can give you references to back that up.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I believe you. Guess I’ll just stick to my measly catered meals from the Belmont Hotel.”
By now, the cream had been sufficiently absorbed into Byron’s skin, and who the hell was I kidding, there had been zero cream left to rub in for a while now. And still I continued to rub while he indulged in the occasional moan.
Finally, I tore myself away.
He turned toward me, and we were still close, oh so very close.
“Why don’t I rub a little of the cream on that bump on your forehead?” he said amiably. “That should help with the pain.”
“Like quid pro quo,” I muttered, mesmerized by my body so blatantly betraying my mind.
“Yes, like quid pro quo…”
Why did he have to say it like that? I could swear there was a shade of indecency in his tone.
Or maybe it was my imagination.
For all I knew, that was what happened when you banged your skull on a desk – your imagination took a deep dive into the shallow pool of lust.
Or maybe it was the way he anchored his hand to my waist and then proceeded to very gently rub a small blob of cream on my goose egg.
Sure, it felt nice.
Well, nice might be understating it a little.
But was I going to go on a moaning spree? No.
Then, of course, the smell of soap and man on his skin was wafting up my nostrils, and I could literally hear my hormones scream for mercy.
I shut down their cries for help because by now, it was super obvious that the sad effort to douse the flames of desire threatening to override my sense of integrity was useless.
I was now all about letting it play out spontaneously.
Someone cleared their throat. Byron and I spun around like the Devil just asked if we wanted fries with that soul.
Nelson stood halfway into the office, holding an iPad, eyes glazing over us as his eyebrows hit the ceiling. “Well, pardon me,” he said formally. “I’d hate to interrupt this…whatever this is.”
No one had ever prayed harder for a hole in the ground to open up and swallow them whole than I did right then.
None of this was looking even remotely like I was taking my new job seriously, and the last thing I needed was for any of this to get to grand dame Emily.
Something told me she swung the scepter at Belmont Manor, and I’d better behave, or I’d get the boot prematurely. And who would want that?
“Hey Nelson!” I said, a little too loudly. “Mr. Belmont and I just had a quick meeting going over some rules for our kitchen. But we’re done now.”
Sure, it was a rocky explanation, but I handled it far better than Byron did—though that’s not saying much. But at least I didn’t look like I’d just been caught fondling the chambermaid on his fancy desk.
“Yes, thank you, Miss Belfiore,” Byron replied stiffly. “I appreciate you letting me know about the kitchen rules.”
Nelson hadn’t moved a muscle. “I’ll say, it will certainly take some getting used to the casual way meetings are being conducted now, but in any event.”
So, Nelson’s sarcastic lilt irked me a bit, and I felt the desperate need to defend myself immediately.
“Oh my God, Byron needed me to rub some pain-relieving cream on his back, okay? That’s all!”
Byron looked at me like I had just stabbed him in the back with a rusty knife. “Needed? I was about to call the nurse. Then you offered.”
“You could’ve said no.” I snapped back.
“And hurt your feelings? I don’t think so.”
“Oh, how thoughtful of you.”
“I know, but that’s just the new man I am now.”
Instead of getting pissed off at his backtalk, the tingly feeling that had nested inside me was suddenly escorted by red-hot lava pumping through my veins.
I had to defend my honor. “Well, nobody asked you to rub cream on my head.”
“You’re so welcome,” he said.
“Hope it wasn’t too inconvenient.”
“Your gratitude makes it worthwhile.”
A smile threatened to curve my lips. “Oh, go to hell.”
“Sure, I’ll save you a seat by the fire.”
When I threw him a frosty glare, he volleyed back with a little smirk that I wanted to scrape off his face and stomp onto the floor.
Nelson waited patiently for the contentious vibe to settle down and punched a button on his iPad. “Anyway, if I can steal a moment from your hectic schedule…I’m here to take your orders for lunch.”
And then to drive the unmitigated disaster all the way home…
“I hear we have our own private little kitchen,” Byron said, cheerily. “Maybe we could—.”
“I have to work,” I interrupted. “I prefer to have lunch at my desk.”
“—get a pet to make the place feel even more homey,” Byron finished his thought.
That was my cue to just get away because if it seemed like it couldn’t get any worse, you were not paying attention.
“This is me going now,” I offered lamely. “Lots of work to do.”
I shimmied toward the secret passage to make my escape.
“You forgot the flash drive,” Byron called out. “Which contains all that work you have to do.”
I made a sharp U-turn and marched back to where Byron held out the little red bastard of a flash drive.
While still shirtless. Still fueling my unwanted desires.
“Hopefully this is the right one now,” I hissed as I plucked the drive from his fingers.
A smile was stealthily tucked away in the corners of his mouth. “I don’t doubt for a single second that you will let me know immediately if it isn’t,” Byron said.
I could feel his gaze trail me until I shut the door to the secret passage behind me with a delicate thud.
When I finally got back into my office, I took a moment to ponder what the hell just happened.
Never had so many things gone so wrong in such a short amount of time, and on the first day of a new job, no less. I blamed the dress. It had to be cursed.
And then there was the other problem raising its ugly head. My entire body was humming with need, and apparently not the kind of need a casual hookup was going to take care of. Oh no.
There was only one person who could take care of this stupid feeling, and he was the last person I would look at to do that. Ever.
It left me wondering who was in charge of allocating offices in this joint because I needed one as far away from Byron as possible. As in the sooner, the better.
Preferably like yesterday.