Chapter 5 #2
My hands clutch at his t-shirt, bunching the fabric so tight my knuckles ache, because if I don’t hold on, I might drown in him.
It’s desperate. Hungry. The kind of kiss that should come with a warning label, because nothing about this is safe.
“Jake—” I gasp when he tears his mouth from mine long enough to drag a ragged breath.
“Fuck, Stella.” His voice is gravel wrapped in want as he backs me toward the desk. “You have no idea what you do to me.”
His hands are everywhere. Rough palms skating down my sides, gripping my hips like he wants to leave fingerprints there. He hauls me up like I weigh nothing and places me on the edge of my desk with a sharp grunt that vibrates through my bones.
I wrap my legs around his waist before I can think better of it, my skirt riding high. My pulse is thundering so loud I swear it’s echoing in the room.
He kisses me again, slower this time, dirtier. His tongue sweeps deep, claiming, teasing, promising things my body already aches for.
Then he shifts, dragging his mouth down my jaw, my neck, leaving a trail of heat in his wake. My head tips back on instinct, exposing more skin, and his low groan rumbles against my throat like he wants to fucking bite me.
When his teeth graze the soft spot beneath my ear, I nearly come apart right there.
“Jake,” I breathe, helpless.
He freezes for a fraction of a second, then mutters a curse like my voice alone broke his last thread of restraint.
“Say it again,” he growls, lips brushing against my erratic pulse.
“Jake.” His name comes out all shaky, but it pulls a sound out of him that makes my insides clench. Dark, guttural, like something feral just snapped its leash.
He slides a hand up my thigh, slow enough to make me want to beg. I open my mouth to tell him to do just that when his fingers slip under my skirt and find my panties. One touch and he stills, lips curling against my skin.
“Soaked,” he rasps, dragging the damp fabric aside and pressing a finger to my slick clit. The first stroke has me bucking into his hand, nails clawing at his shoulders.
Pure bliss threatens as Jake circles the engorged bud faster.
“Fuck,” he mutters like a prayer. “You’re dripping for me, aren’t you, darl? Sitting at your desk and watching me work, while I’ve been losing my goddamn mind thinking about this pussy.”
My hips jerk against his hand without permission, a whimper leaving my throat.
“Please—” I know I should stop this, but all rational thought flew out the window when he kissed me.
“Please, what?” His voice is sharp steel now, and he’s playing my clit with lazy precision, like he’s got all the time in the world. “Please fuck you? Please make you come, or please stop?”
I swallow hard, pride bleeding out of me with every slow stroke of his fingers. “Please... don’t stop.”
His laugh is low, vibrating through my bones. “Darl, I’m not fucking stopping until you are screaming my name, and I get to taste your sweet juices coating my fingers.”
And then—FUCK—his other hand moves. Up my chest, sliding along the column of my throat until his palm cradles it, thumb resting on the hollow just beneath my jaw. The black noose inked into his skin stares back at me like a promise.
He squeezes. Not hard, just enough pressure to make my breath hitch, to make my pulse hammer against his thumb like it wants out. My whole body goes molten.
“Oh, fuck,” I gasp, hips bucking against his hand like a shameless addict.
“That’s it,” he purrs, voice dropping to something dark and velvety. “Take it for me, Stella. Take my fingers and this pretty little hand necklace. Because that’s what you need right now.” His grip tightens a fraction, just enough to make my head spin.
A broken moan tears out of me, my walls clenching as he slides a finger inside, then two, stretching me just enough to make my breath stutter.
“Fuck, you’re tight,” he snarls, pumping slowly, his thumb replacing his finger and working ruthlessly on my clit. “Gonna ruin my fucking hand on this cunt before I ever get to sink my cock in it.”
“Jake,” I sob, the sound muffled when his mouth claims mine again in a kiss full of so much passion, I feel it down to my toes.
“Come on then,” he whispers against my lips, his hand firm on my throat, fingers driving me higher with every thrust. “Come for me like you did that night. Show me no one else makes you feel this way. Because no one fucking will. Ever.”
My whole body bows, breaking apart around his hand. The orgasm rips through me brutal and fast, shoving a cry from my lungs that he swallows greedily with his mouth. His grip on my throat stays steady—gentle but inescapable—holding me in that edge-of-control bliss as I convulse around his fingers.
“Good fucking girl,” he growls, kissing me through the aftershocks, his voice rough. “Every goddamn time, darl. You break so fucking sweet for me.”
By the time he eases his hand away, I’m trembling, vision hazy, thighs slick and shaking against the edge of the desk. He strokes my jaw where his hand just claimed me, thumb soft now, almost tender.
“That was...” My voice is shredded, barely a whisper.
“Just like I remembered,” he finishes, eyes burning into mine like a brand. “And next time, darl...” His mouth curves into a sinful grin as he presses one last lingering kiss to my lips. “Next time, I’m not stopping at my fingers.”
“There can’t be a next time, Jake. We can’t do this again.” The words scrape out of my throat like sandpaper, brittle and dry, even as every nerve ending in my body screams the opposite. Screams for me to grab him by the collar, drag him back in, and beg him to finish what he started.
Hell, finish what we both started.
Jake doesn’t move. Doesn’t even flinch. Just looks at me with those dark eyes, lips still swollen from the kiss that destroyed my entire week of carefully built self-control.
“Why not?” His voice is maddeningly calm, like he’s giving me the chance to admit the truth neither of us can ignore.
“Because...” I swallow, smoothing down my skirt with shaky hands, trying to gather what’s left of my composure. “Because we work together. Because it’s unprofessional. Because...”
Because if you touch me again, I’ll let you do anything you want. Because my body is already yours, and that terrifies the shit out of me.
But I can’t say any of that, so I just let the words die in the space between us.
“Because you’re scared,” he says as if reading my mind, and it’s not an accusation. It’s gentle. Understanding. And that makes it worse.
“I’m not scared.” Lie. Big, fat, neon-lit lie.
“Then what?” His question hangs there, sharp as a blade and just as dangerous.
I slide off the desk, forcing myself to put space between us before I do something stupid—stupider than what we already did.
My thighs ache where he gripped them, my lips still tingling from the way he kissed me like he wanted to consume the breath in my lungs.
I smooth my skirt again, pointlessly, because I can still feel the ghost of his fingers underneath it.
“This complicates things,” I mutter. My voice sounds thin even to my own ears. Pathetic compared to the pounding drum of want in my chest.
Jake’s laugh is soft and humourless. “Everything’s already complicated, Stella. Has been since the moment you walked into this place.”
God, he’s right. It was complicated the second I saw him leaning against that garage wall with that cocky grin.
“I’m serious,” I say, because it feels like I should, because someone in this room has to play the responsible adult.
“So am I.” He tilts his head, studying me like he can peel away every layer I’m trying to hide behind. “Is that what you really want?”
No. No, it’s not what I want. What I want is him—his mouth, his hands, that noose tattoo pressed to my throat while I shatter all over again. What I want is to feel that rush of reckless abandon that only he seems capable of giving me.
But I can’t say that either. So I lie again.
“It’s what needs to happen,” I say instead. My pussy is still throbbing from the orgasm he dragged out of me like it was his personal mission. My body doesn’t give a single shit about professionalism right now, but my brain is clawing to keep control.
Jake studies me for a long moment, his jaw ticking like he’s fighting a war I can’t see. Finally, he nods once. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is.” The words taste like ash, and I wonder if he can hear the crack in my voice that betrays me completely.
He takes a step back, giving me the space I demanded, even though every cell in my body is screaming for the opposite. His hand hovers near the doorknob, but he pauses, turning just enough to look over his shoulder at me.
“But Stella?”
“Yeah?” My voice is barely more than a whisper.
“When you change your mind—and you will change your mind—you know where to find me.”
Then he’s gone, and the room feels bigger, emptier, colder without him in it. My legs wobble like they forgot how to work, and I sink into my chair because it’s that or slide to the floor in a boneless heap.
The scent of him lingers—motor oil, clean sweat, and that sharp masculine note that’s all Jake. It’s in my hair, on my skin, in the fucking air, haunting me.
I try to focus on the spreadsheets scattered across my desk, but the numbers blur into meaningless black smudges. After ten minutes of pretending, I shove them aside and start packing up. Monday, I can deal with it.
The drive home is a blur of headlights and thoughts I can’t outrun. The ghost of his mouth on mine. The feel of his fingers buried inside me like they owned me.
By the time I’m in my driveway, I’m already dialling, and Megan answers on the second ring.
“Please tell me you’re calling with good news about the hot mechanic,” she says instead of hello.
“How do you—never mind,” I mutter, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Yes, it’s about Jake.”
“I knew it! Spill everything.”
“He’s the guy from Grumpy’s.”
There’s a sharp inhale, then: “Are you sure?”
“Completely sure. We... well, let’s just say he confirmed it tonight.”
“Oh my God. You didn’t!” She squeals so loud I jerk the phone away from my ear.
“No sex. We made out in my office, and he... well, he made me come.”
Megan shrieks again, and I’m ninety percent sure my speaker will never recover.
“I’m so proud of you! How was it?”
“Amazing. Incredible. Everything I remembered and more.”
“So what’s the problem? Because I can hear it in your voice—you’re doing that overthinking thing you do.”
I sigh, letting my head thunk back against the headrest. “I told him it can’t happen again. That we need to keep things professional.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Megan—”
“No. Seriously. You find the best orgasm of your life working in the same building as you, and your first instinct is, ‘Let’s file a damn HR complaint against ourselves’?”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s only complicated if you make it complicated,” she fires back with zero hesitation.
She’s probably right. Hell, she’s definitely right. But knowing that doesn’t make it easier. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I do. You march your cute arse back in there on Monday and tell him you changed your mind.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It’s exactly that simple. Stella, when was the last time you were this excited about a guy?”
I think about it. About how long it’s been since someone made me feel this alive. This reckless. “Never,” I admit softly.
“Exactly. So don’t fuck it up by overthinking it.”
After we hang up, I sit in my driveway like a statue, the night air pressing in through the cracked windows.
My fingers drum on the steering wheel, restless, while every second replays in high-def clarity.
The way his breath felt hot against my neck, the possessive edge in his voice, the weight of his hand on my throat like a brand.
Maybe Megan’s right. Maybe I’m already past the point of no return.
As I finally head inside and peel off my clothes, Jake’s parting words echo like a prophecy: When you change your mind—and you will—you know where to find me.
I do know where to find him. In the place where we both work.
And there lies the problem, because I think I already changed my mind.