12. Locked Doors
LOCKED DOORS
COLE
I kissed Juniper Mercer last night, and she thanked me for it.
Then she locked herself in my bathroom.
But fuck. The sound she pulled from deep in my chest—that broken, gutted sound… And instead of pushing me away, she pulled me closer.
She pulled me closer.
I need to sit with that because my brain keeps trying to reclassify it as something it wasn’t. A mistake. A storm-induced lapse in judgment. A momentary failure of the six-year freeze I enacted to protect her from the catastrophe of being loved by me.
Think about Nolan.
Think about rebuilding the framework—the sacrifice, the carefully maintained distance that keeps Natalie from detonating and my entire life from unraveling, but…
It’s too late for that. I knew it the moment my lips crash-landed against hers.
Because I meant everything I poured into that kiss that was unlike any other I’ve ever experienced. I…devoured, claimed, demanded. That’s not something a man does when he’s committed to reinforcing boundaries.
I stare at the ceiling. Thinking I could ever be just friends with Juniper Mercer is the real lie.
Friends don’t kiss like that. Friends don’t grab fistfuls of shirts. Friends don’t make the sounds she made.
Fuck me. The sounds she made.
I drag both hands down my face and groan into my palms.
Nolan will kill me. Actually kill me. Not metaphorically. Hudson will represent him, and Fen will livestream the trial to sway the court of public opinion in his favor.
The threat of Nolan isn’t even what’s keeping me up though.
Of all the things keeping me from Junie, Nolan barely makes the list.
It’s something so much worse.
She couldn’t handle the truth at eighteen.
But the woman who kissed me back last night? The woman who pushed me past my limit and demanded answers? That woman? She’s not a broken teenager anymore.
Could she handle the trauma now?
Because what if I can’t go back? What if kissing Junie Mercer is the thread that untethers me completely? I don’t know how to stand in the wreckage of that without burning all our lives to the ground.
The answer comes to me with the sunrise. There is no going back.
I know it the way I know a structural integrity analysis is required—instinctively, inherently, with the kind of certainty that doesn’t require a calculator.
The wall is coming down, and I’ll learn how to manage the fallout before it does.
I’m at the stove making eggs when she walks in. Eggs are the only thing I can cook right now that doesn’t require emotional bandwidth because mine was obliterated ten hours ago by a woman who tasted like bourbon and ruin.
She’s in jeans and a T-shirt and not a swipe of makeup. I love her this way. There’s no armor between us. She looks like Junie—the real one.
And she’s carrying two cups of coffee from Grounds for Celebration.
She sets one on the counter next to me without saying a word. Just slides it into my space like a woman who’s been playing chess her entire life.
I look at the cup. Then I look at her.
“It’s the real stuff,” she says, meeting my eyes for the first time since my favorite thank you left her lips. “Consider the decaf war officially over.”
This isn’t just a coffee. She’s handing me a ceasefire, a recalibration of whatever we are now that we’ve crossed the unthinkable line.
I take a sip and stifle a groan. It’s so fucking good.
“Thank you,” I say. And then, because I’m incapable of leaving well enough alone, I add, “For the coffee.”
The tiniest twitch appears in her upper lip. It’s not a smile, but it’s not not a smile either.
“For just the coffee?”
My spatula slips from my fingers and clatters to the stovetop. She did not just—
I turn to face her, but she’s already walking toward the conference room. Junie Mercer just made a joke about kissing me, and I’m comprehensively, irreversibly fucked because those walls are not going back up now.
We don’t talk about it all day Monday. Not when I rearrange my entire office so my desk now looks out the doorway that faces her instead of the window.
Not when she glances up and notices that I can now stare directly at her from my place of work.
Not when she gets up for a drink and her bare feet sound on the hardwood floor.
When did bare feet become the barometer of home?
We don’t talk about it on Tuesday when she sends me the tax assessment and signs it Viper instead of Junie or Juniper, and I stare at those five letters for so long I go cross-eyed.
We don’t talk about it on Wednesday when she sets a cup of coffee down on my desk so hard it sloshes over the side and leaves a ring on the hardwood, even after wiping it away. That circle is now a permanent reminder of her—as if my mind would ever allow me to forget.
And by Thursday, I realize my mistake.
What the actual fuck is going on with my inbox?
Message from BendyWendy94.
Message from JustTheTits00.
Message from PleaseDaddyMeNow.
I scroll down, but there’s no end in sight. My entire inbox is flooded with messages I don’t dare open. I hover over one of the senders and the entire link shows up. Be my daddy dot com.
I’ve been in meetings since seven a.m. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to check email, and as I scroll, I begin to sweat.
This is Viper at her best. Slowly, I lift my gaze and stare out my open doorway to find her sitting at the conference table, nervously tapping not one pen, but two.
It’s unfortunate for her that I’ve memorized all her tells. And I understand her spite better than anyone.
Viper wants to talk but refuses to initiate the conversation. I want to skip the talking and go straight to more kissing but can’t—for reasons that are escaping my mind at the moment.
Lifting the last file she dropped on my desk, I rise, my chair gliding out from under my desk in near silence, but it’s as though it shifts the air from me to her, and pretty blue eyes track my movements.
Her swallow is visible as I stalk closer. My little Viper signed me up for a dating site that doesn’t appear to care much about the date portion of the evening.
She must know she’s playing with fire.
I don’t stop until I’m close enough to lean against her table. She sits tall, with her hands hovering over her keyboard now, and she never breaks eye contact, even as I lower the file to the table.
Even as I invade her space.
My fingers brush hers as I hand her the file folder. The air charges with intent. It’s a visceral thing, physical in the strength of it as my pointer finger runs over the smooth edges of the oval-shaped diamond on her finger.
Then my gaze snags on her lips. The way her breathing intensifies and her chest works hard to keep up.
The difference between her first day and today is that now I’m allowing myself to look because looking is a reminder of what I tasted, and what I tasted is a reminder of what I want, and what I want is the one thing I’ve spent years telling myself I can’t have.
Now, the one thing I can’t have is the only thing I need to survive, and my single goal in life is to find a way out of the mess my life has become.
I’ve been existing because I feared what would happen. Now, I’ll fight because I’m scared of what will happen if I don’t.
My control is at a breaking point. Blowing up my life seems to be my only option as my thumb and forefinger grip the diamond on her finger—not to remove it, but to say a silent prayer of thanks that it’s still stuck.
Then I lower my head so slowly that she can pull away at any time. But my Viper—she won’t back away from a challenge.
When my cheek grazes hers, I inch my lips toward her ear, then close my eyes and inhale her. Sweet and crisp, like freshly fallen snow. A rumble of a memory works through my chest. Junie’s the same as she’s always been, but better too.
Because now she smells like mine.
“If you want to call me daddy, little Viper, all you had to do was ask.” My teeth snap out and clip the soft flesh of her lobe, then I suck it into my mouth to taste as much as to soothe.
She gasps.
I press my luck.
Junie moans when my teeth graze the pulse point in her neck.
I leave a trail of moisture with my tongue.
“C-call you daddy?” She scoffs. “I—I don’t know what—”
I bite down on her. Hard. Right where her neck and shoulder meet. It’ll leave a mark, but it’s low enough she can hide it if she wants to.
“Tell me your game plan, Viper.” My lips leave her skin, but I don’t pull away. I stand, placing my hands on the armrests of her chair, hovering over her with my chest invading her space, the scruff of my jaw pressed to the softness of hers.
“Did you want me to reply to JustTheTits? Or how about BendyWendy?”
The sound that seeps through her clenched teeth is not a happy one.
I lower my voice even more. “Did you think about the consequences, Viper? Because I don’t think you did.”
She scoffs, but she starts tapping her pen against her thigh now. Tap, tap, tap.
“Tell me, my little ball of fury. Did you want to call me Daddy, or was Viper…frustrated?”
I’m going straight to hell. Nothing has changed—so why do I suddenly not give a fucking shit about anything but her and me and now?
“Yoo-hoo. Junie, you in here?” Katie’s voice rings through my home like a hurricane warning in a strip mall.
Junie shoves her chair back as I sit my ass on the ledge of the table and clasp my hands in front of myself to cover the erection I have no chance of hiding.
Junie swings her chair to the right, putting some space between us, but not before her gaze catches on the tent in my pants. I unclasp my hands to offer a what am I going to do gesture.
Her cheeks flame red before she jumps out of her chair and rounds the table to intercept Katie.
“Oh, there you are.” As if Katie didn’t know exactly where to find my Viper. “It’s time for S&S. Are you ready?” I lift one leg higher on the table and angle myself toward the door. “Are you okay?” Katie presses a hand to Junie’s forehead. “You look flushed.”