Chapter 18
Laurel
We manage to stay away from each other until Thursday, when he stops by my office after everyone’s left for the day. He stands in the doorway like he’s afraid to enter. Which would be smart.
He looks as bad as I feel. Tired. Tense. Beautiful in that unfair, expensive-suit kind of way that makes me want to throw a stapler at him and then climb him like office furniture.
“I looked over the launch notes,” he says. “Looks good.”
I smile. “Thanks.”
There’s a beat. Then we both speak at the same time.
“I—”
“We—”
I smile. “You first.”
He drags a hand over his jaw. His left hand. Bare. Still bare. My stomach flips at the sight of it, because apparently I am now the kind of woman who gets emotionally compromised by missing jewelry.
“I was just going to say we should go get a drink to celebrate.”
“A drink?”
“Yes. To celebrate.”
“Like coworkers?”
His mouth tightens. “Laurel.”
“Sorry. I’m just clarifying the fantasy.”
His eyes darken. “It wasn’t a fantasy.”
“No?”
“No.” He steps inside. “It was an excuse.”
That single sentence changes the air in the room. My pulse kicks.
“An excuse for what?”
He closes the door behind him. Doesn’t lock it and walks toward me now, slow and controlled, and I’m already useless.
“For this,” he says.
Then his hands are on my face, and his mouth is on mine. There is no soft start. No professional distance slowly melting into something else. It’ s immediate and desperate like the last three days have been starvation and we are both done pretending hunger is noble.
I grab his tie and pull him closer. He groans into my mouth, one hand sliding into my hair, the other closing around my waist as he backs me toward my desk.
“This is a terrible idea,” I breathe.
“I know.”
“We were doing so well.”
“No, we weren’t.”
That makes me laugh, but it breaks into a gasp when he lifts me onto the desk with one strong movement. Papers scatter. My pen rolls off the edge and clatters to the floor.
His mouth moves to my throat, and I tip my head back, giving him more because I am apparently an idiot with survival instincts made of wet tissue paper.
“Sin.”
He freezes for half a second then his teeth graze my skin.
“Don’t say it like that unless you want me to forget where we are.”
I slide my hands into his hair. “Maybe I do.”
His eyes lift to mine. There he is. Not Mason Sinclair. Not my boss. Not the man at the head of the conference table pretending we are only work. Sin. Mine in every way that counts and none of the ways that matter.
His hands slide beneath my skirt.
I suck in a breath.
“Door,” I whisper.
“What?”
“The door.”
His mouth is on my collarbone now. “Closed.”
“Locked?”
He goes still. For one second, we both look toward it.
A very responsible person would fix that.
A very responsible person would also not be on her desk with her skirt around her thighs and her married CEO between her legs, so clearly, that ship boarded, sailed, and exploded somewhere off the coast of Seattle.
Sin looks back at me, but neither of us moves toward the lock.
“Five minutes,” he says.
“That is optimistic.”
His mouth curves, dark and wicked. “For you or for me?”
I smack his shoulder. He catches my hand and kisses my palm. Then he presses it flat to his chest, over his racing heart, and somehow that is hotter than if he’d said something filthy.
Which is rude. I had defenses against filthy. I have absolutely no defenses against his heart pounding under my hand.
He kisses me again, deeper this time, and I stop thinking about locks. I stop thinking about everything. His fingers find me, and my entire body jerks.
“Quiet,” he murmurs against my mouth.
I laugh shakily. “You first.”
His thumb moves. My laugh dies. The office is too silent around us.
The building mostly empty but not empty enough.
Every breath feels too loud. Every soft sound my body makes feels like it could carry through the walls and announce to the entire company that Laurel Cross has absolutely no common sense when it comes to her boss’s hands.
He knows exactly what he’s doing.
That’s the problem.
His fingers move with devastating confidence, slow enough to make me ache and precise enough to make my thighs start shaking.
I grip the edge of my desk. “This is why I don’t like celebrating.”
His mouth brushes my ear. “You’re lying.”
“Constantly.”
He laughs under his breath.
Then he pushes two fingers inside me, and I have to bite down on his shoulder to keep from making a sound that would ruin both our lives.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
“Language, Mr. Sinclair.”
His free hand closes around the back of my neck, bringing my face to his.
“Say that again.”
I swallow. The look in his eyes is dangerous.
“Mr. Sinclair.”
His kiss is brutal. The kind of kiss that makes my spine go soft and my better judgment leave a strongly worded resignation letter.
He works me open with his fingers until I’m clinging to him, until my heels hook behind his legs, until I’m panting against his mouth and trying desperately not to come apart too loudly.
Then he stops and I make an actual offended sound.
He looks pleased with himself.
I hate him.
I might love him.
No.
Absolutely not.
We are not doing that in the middle of a locked-door-adjacent office hookup.
His hands go to his belt and my mouth goes dry.
“Hurry,” I whisper.
“I thought five minutes was optimistic.”
“It is. Move faster.”
He does. Thank God. His breath catches under my attention, and that little break in his control makes heat curl low in my stomach. Then he steps between my thighs again and pushes into me with one deep, controlled thrust.
I clap a hand over my mouth and he stills immediately. Our eyes lock.
The stretch is perfect.
The kind of perfect that makes my chest hurt because my body recognizes him now. Wants him. Opens for him like this is not reckless and wrong and likely to end in disaster.
He pulls my hand away from my mouth.
“Use me,” he says. “Not your hand.”
“What?”
His mouth lowers to mine. “If you need to be quiet, kiss me.”
So I do.
I kiss him as he starts to move, swallowing every sound, every gasp, every broken little breath he drags out of me. His hands grip my hips, holding me steady as he takes me on the edge of my desk, and it is messy and frantic and not at all the careful distance we promised each other after Seattle.
I dig my nails into his shoulders, and he makes a sound against my mouth that I feel everywhere.
“You feel too good,” he says. The words are rough.
I would laugh if I could breathe. Instead, I wrap my legs tighter around his waist and pull him closer.
His control fractures and the pace changes.
Still quiet, but only barely. The kind of quiet that feels more obscene because every sound is trapped between us.
Skin against skin. Breath against mouth.
My desk creaking beneath me. His name breaking in my throat and dying on his tongue.
I’m right on the edge when there’s a knock at the door.
Both of us go completely still.
My heart stops. Sin’s body locks against mine, still buried deep, one hand gripping my hip, the other braced beside me on the desk.
“Laurel?” Wilder calls from the hallway. “Have you seen Sin?”
Oh.
My.
God.
I stare at Sin with wide eyes. He stares back. For one deranged second, neither of us moves because our brains have apparently short-circuited from panic and poor choices.
Then the door handle turns.
Sin moves faster than I have ever seen him move in my life. He pulls out, turns, and crosses the room in two silent strides, catching the lock a split second before the handle fully depresses. The click is tiny. Deafening.
I yank my skirt down and slide off the desk so fast my knee bangs the drawer.
Ow.
I slap a hand over my mouth.
Sin stands at the door, one palm flat against it, shirt open, belt undone, breathing like he just sprinted across the city. Technically, he sprinted eight feet.
The handle jiggles again.
“Have you seen him?” Wilder asks.
Sin closes his eyes. I clamp both hands over my mouth because if I laugh, cry, or scream, it is over for us.
“Give me a minute,” Sin says. “We’re on a call with Tokyo.”
His voice is calm. Mostly. A little rough. The kind of rough that makes my entire face catch fire because there is absolutely no way Wilder doesn’t hear it.
There’s a pause.
Then Wilder says, “Is this a bad time?”
Sin looks back at me. His eyes move over my flushed face, my messy blouse, my skirt that is technically down but definitely not innocent, then lower to the floor where his tie is lying like evidence. His mouth twitches. The bastard.
“Yes,” he says.
My eyes widen.
Wilder laughs once. “Okay. Weird answer.”
“Email me.”
“I did.”
Sin drags a hand over his face. “I’m handling something. I’ll check my phone after this call.”
I mouth, Handling something?
His gaze drops to my mouth. Bad idea. Terrible idea. Especially with his brother outside the door. And yet his eyes darken again because apparently we are both hopeless.
Wilder clears his throat. “Right. Well. The supplier from Denver is pushing back on the updated schedule. I need your sign-off before I call them.”
“Tomorrow.”
“They need it tonight.”
“Wilder.”
“Fine. I’ll email you again.”
“Good.”
Footsteps move away from the door. We both stay frozen until they fade down the hall. Then the elevator dings. Only when the sound disappears does Sin turn the lock fully and rest his forehead against the door.
For three seconds, neither of us speaks.
Then I whisper, “We forgot to lock the door.”
His shoulders shake once. I don’t know if it’s a laugh or a breakdown. Possibly both.
I grab his tie from the floor and hold it out. “You almost let Wilder walk in on us.”
He turns around slowly. His shirt is open. His belt is still undone. His hair is a disaster. He looks like sin made flesh, which is deeply inconvenient considering the circumstances.
“I managed to lock it.”
“At the last possible second.”
“Still counts.”
“It absolutely does not.”
He crosses back toward me. My pulse, traitorous and stupid, starts up again.
“No,” I say, pointing at him with his tie. “No. We are not resuming.”
He stops in front of me. “No?”
“Your brother almost caught us.”
“He didn’t.”
“You told him you were handling something.”
“I was.”
I stare at him. His mouth curves. He takes the tie from my hand, tosses it onto the chair, and sets both hands on my waist.
“Sin.”
“I know.”
“We should stop.”
“I know.”
“Someone could have walked in.”
“I know.”
His hands tighten and my body responds immediately because it is a faithless, reckless disaster.
He lowers his mouth to my ear. “Tell me you don’t still want me.”
I close my eyes.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” I admit. “I really don’t.”
His mouth brushes my neck. That’s all it takes. All that panic, all that adrenaline, all that terrifying almost, and suddenly I’m right back on the edge of wanting him so badly it makes me stupid. He lifts me onto the desk again.
This time, before he kisses me, he looks toward the door then back at me.
“The door is locked now,” he says.
I should point out that Wilder is probably somewhere on this floor forming very valid suspicions. Instead, I grab Sin by the open edges of his shirt and pull him between my thighs.
“Then you’d better be quick.”
His eyes go dark.
“Quick,” he says, kissing me hard, “is how we got interrupted.”
And because I am apparently determined to ruin my life with enthusiasm, I laugh against his mouth and let him finish what we started. Twice.