Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
MICHAEL
“What do you think you’re doing?” Azara snapped, her tone accusatory. She slammed the door shut after we were both inside and whirled around to face me. She stared up at me like she was about to murder me.
“What am I doing?” I asked with a perplexed raised brow. “You’re the one who took me hostage into your father’s old office.”
She slightly jerked back, her fingers slipping from my wrist, her touch lingering, as she took in our surroundings. Realization of where we were washed over her features, but she quickly brushed it off and narrowed her eyes at me.
She inhaled a sharp breath, as if she was trying to reign in her frustration. “Answer the fucking question.”
I shoved a hand in my trouser’s pocket and replied, “I’ll need you to be a bit more precise.”
She gave a dark, brittle laugh. “Of course, you’d play the innocence card,”
“Darling, I can assure you there’s nothing innocent about me. But I can’t plead guilty if I have no clue what you’re accusing me of.”
“Ms. Thompson.” She’d said the name with such venom in her tone, it took me by surprise. She usually reserved her abhorrence for me. Before my thoughts could conjure what the COO’s wife had done to her, Azara’s voice brought me back.
“Why were you talking to her?”
I frowned at her question. “Didn’t know it was a crime to talk to other doctors.”
“This is just a game to you, isn’t it?” She brought her finger to her temples, shaking her head. “You know exactly what you were doing. There was nothing professional about that conversation. If you think you can win the position by charming your way up, you’re sorely mistaken.”
Her brown eyes found mine again. Her frustration was clear in them, but there was something else there. Something much more potent than just her annoyance at me talking to Michelle or her assumption that I was in fact trying to warm the board member up to me.
I needed all the votes I could get, sue me.
I took a moment to take her in. Her posture was stiff and a flush darkened her tanned skin. She always looked beautiful, but something about her in scrubs seemed to be a weakness of mine.
Especially when she was furious at me.
My lips curled up in a perverted satisfaction. “Azara… are you perhaps jealous?”
She scoffed in disbelief. “Are you serious? From everything I just said, that’s what you came to the conclusion of?”
I took a step toward her. “You are, aren’t you?”
“This is ridiculous,” she argued, taking a step back, but she already had her back to the door so there wasn’t much space where she could escape to. “This is just like you. You’re just finding twisted excuses to dispute the validity of what I just said.”
I’d only been meaning to rattle her, but the way she was combatively answering everything but what I’d asked, made me think that I was correct in my assumption.
“And you’re avoiding my question,” I fired back, taking another step forward.
She craned her neck and glared at me. “Do you ever just stop fucking talking?”
The animosity she held against me should have deterred me, but it only fueled the burning desire I’d been harboring for what felt like ages.
“Are you offering to keep my mouth busy in other ways?”
I was well-aware I was playing with fire with what I was implying with my question. But I was tired of fighting her, fighting whatever had been brewing between us over the last eight months.
The air around us stilled. Her lack of response to my question should have brought reason back into my mind, but I ignored it. My pulse beat with a frantic rhythm as I advanced into her space.
“What are you doing?” she asked. Her tone was hesitant but she wasn’t doing anything to get away or stop me.
“I’m closing the distance between us,” I whispered, my breath fanning across her skin. My hand slowly trailed up her arm, the pads of my fingertips lighting on fire everywhere my skin connected with her.
Azara faltered, but her tone still carried an undercurrent of bite to it. “Why?”
This was leading to a path of self-destruction, and it was confusing the hell out of me, but once again, I found myself not caring for the consequences. Not even a little bit.
The persona I’d spent years building to be ready for my Ascension disintegrated into dust when it came to her. I loved that she fought me and I wondered if it would translate into what I was about to do.
My palm reached the nape of her neck. “Because I’m about to kiss you.”
Her eyes widened. “God, you're so full of yourself. I knew the moment I saw you that you were trouble. You’re so bloody infuriating, it makes me want to?—”
I didn’t let her finish.
With no hesitation, I shoved my hand into her wavy brown hair and kissed her, taking everything I’d been dreaming of taking the moment she yelled at me for running into her at the park.
There was a split second where the only response she gave was a shocked gasp but then any resistance simply melted away and her body softened against mine, a soft sigh slipping past her lips.
I roped an arm around her waist and pinned her harder against the door, using the opportunity to deepen the kiss. I slid my tongue inside and leisurely explored her mouth.
She fisted her hand in my shirt, tugging me closer, and met every stroke of mine with her own. Nothing about the way we devoured each other was gentle.
She was fucking addicting and I willed time to never end so I could go on forever. I wanted to curse myself for waiting this long to discover what she tasted like, but her small whimpers mingled with my own dissipated any other thoughts but one.
More.
I wanted—no needed —more. Of this. Of her.
She sank her teeth into my bottom lip and I groaned when a faint copper taste flooded my taste buds to mix with her. If I was already this addicted to just the taste of kissing her, god what would it be like to taste all of her?
Images of my head between her legs, my mouth spending countless hours discovering every singular inch of her body crashed in waves. But before I let myself drown in them, I broke away from her, and a disgruntled whimper fell from her lips as her head fell back against the door.
I know.
My heartbeat was erratically beating against my chest, my hand still buried in her hair as I slowly peeled my eyes open. I took in her face, commemorating it to memory because I knew that I’d never get a chance to have her like this again and stored it into my little library of moments of her that I’d been keeping tucked away at the far back of my brain.
Where it was safe to dream of her.
Fuck me she was beautiful with all her flushed skin and puffy lips.
All of it because of me .
It was taking everything in me not to slam my lips to hers again and take even more than I already had. But my stupid sense of duty had reared its head back up and I knew that I didn’t have enough willpower left to stop myself again if I succumbed to my need for her.
Our kiss was short-lived, and yet I knew there was no going back. This memory would be engraved in my brain forever and nothing could ever top it. Because whatever she’d made me feel over the past few months—feelings that I’d done my best to ignore— exploded in technicolors the moment my lips met hers.
She still had her eyes closed when she asked breathlessly, her chest heavily rising and falling. “Why did you do that?” Her eyes slowly peeled open and her lust-filled gaze finally met mine.
“Because you infuriate me just as much,” I rasped before slipping out of the office and leaving her behind before I let all of my inhibitions go and did way more than just kiss her again.
After coming back to my senses—at least some of them—I got the hell out of the hospital, completely forgoing passing by the doctor’s lounge and grabbing my things before I headed home.
By the time I got to my flat, completely soaked from the battering rain outside, I was still trying to catch my breath after what just happened.
I’d given myself one very simple rule when she came into my life.
Stay the hell away.
Clearly, I wasn’t a great listener because how could I stay away now that I knew what she tasted like.