Chapter Thirteen #2
Her fingers spread along the back of his neck, urging him closer. Not that he needed an invitation. Nothing could tear him away from this fountain of pure bliss as he indulged himself for the first time in ages, taking what he wanted, giving back tenfold.
Zero heard a growl and then a sharp bark, but it wasn’t until Delilah broke off the kiss he realized Captain Jack Sparrow had wiggled between them. The moment fragmented into a million unrecoverable pieces, and unwelcome reason returned.
Cold rushed into the spot where Delilah had been when she stepped back with a laugh.
“I guess the Captain has spoken.”
“That dog is the devil,” he muttered and shoved his hands in his pocket before he reached for her again. “He was right to interrupt, though. That shouldn’t have happened.”
“For once, we agree.”
Stung for reasons he couldn’t fathom—since he’d been the one to say it first—he searched her face for some clue as to why she thought it was a bad idea to get involved.
Probably it would be best to just ask, if he really wanted to know, but he couldn’t pull at that thread right now, regardless of her answer.
She’d be out of his life in a week anyway, and besides, they’d never work with her allergy to schedules. It would be ridiculous.
“My fault,” he allowed. “I’m probably not on your agenda for the day.”
“Yeah, I can say for sure that I have no appointments on my calendar titled kissing my boss,” she said with a tight-lipped nod. “Though I am strongly considering penciling you in for this afternoon. You know, if I had a calendar.”
“I’ll buy you one.”
Stupid. Why had he said that? Now he just sounded like an overeager teenager. What he should be saying was more along the lines of “It shouldn’t have happened and won’t happen again.”
But as her kiss-roughened lips lifted up in a smile, he couldn’t make that promise, not even to himself. He wanted to fall into this place with her where he could kiss her whenever he wanted and not feel enormous guilt about taking some happiness for himself.
“Maybe we skip calendars and just wing it,” she suggested with a wink.
Something that felt an awful lot like relief flooded his chest. Along with a good dose of that guilt he couldn’t avoid. No matter how much he wished he could.
His Delilah-starved insides strained against the notion of not having a neat box to frame what had just materialized between them, but winging it felt like a really good cop-out to the other part of him who knew he shouldn’t be letting himself indulge in her.
If he didn’t plan to kiss her again, and it just happened, then he couldn’t really blame himself, could he?
“I can get on board with that,” he told her, which did nothing to fix the self-condemnation burning a hole in his stomach.
“What was that blasphemy you just uttered?” she asked and threw up both hands in mock dismay. “Did I just hear the master of the spreadsheet say he was okay with not having a set plan for the next time he drags me into a spontaneous kiss?”
Self-conscious about the entire conversation, he ran a hand through his hair. “I wouldn’t say I dragged you.”
“Oh, sorry. My bad. Poor choice of words. You annihilated me. Seduced me into oblivion.” She started ticking the points off on her fingers. “Slayed me with a thousand sharp swords. It was a massacre.”
“Uh, that all sounds bad?”
He shouldn’t be asking for qualification. What he should be doing was leaving. Right now. He’d already made everything a mess, especially his self-control, which he’d managed to get back in check and didn’t relish testing a second time.
She slanted him a look. “I’m talking about my ability to resist you. Which vanished about the time you leaned in.”
How she managed to make him feel like a million dollars and alternately like he’d done something very, very wrong escaped him. This wasn’t one of those times when he could afford to pretend none of this was happening. “So it wasn’t horrible. Just bad timing?”
Delilah laughed, but the sound had an edge he didn’t particularly like.
“Such bad timing. Especially considering you’ve threatened to fire me if I don’t get the dogs trained. Next thing I know, you’re distracting me to no end by hauling out your best A-game. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to sabotage me into losing.”
“Why would I do something like that?” he growled, bothered she’d think he’d do something reprehensible like that—never mind he’d vowed to disrupt her training sessions enough to ruin her chances.
Not like this, though. He didn’t think so, anyway. Dang it, now she had him questioning his motives, and that did not fly.
She shrugged. “Because you can’t stand the thought of me winning? Then you don’t get to dictate everything, and that gives you hives.”
That did sound like him, not that he’d admit anything to her at the moment.
How did she understand what made him tick so well?
He might have her number, but she had his, too.
She probably wouldn’t believe him if he told her that he’d kissed her because he couldn’t stand to be in his skin a moment longer without knowing what it felt like.
Not because he’d been trying to unbalance her.
Though that should have been his agenda. Instead, she’d unbalanced him, no doubt.
She already had so much of the upper hand, he might as well declare her the winner right here and now of whatever stupid game they were playing.
“We should forget any of this happened,” he told her grudgingly, mystified why that sounded like the worst idea ever.
“I’m pretty sure that’s impossible,” she said cheerfully. “But going back to the boss-employee excuse seems like it might be for the best.”
“Excuse?” he repeated instead of nodding his agreement, like he should have.
“There’s no HR department around here,” she explained. “Who’s really going to care if we’re dating? No one. Except us, apparently. As excuses go, it’s a pretty flimsy one, but it’s been working thus far, so why fix what’s not broken?”
He scowled, thoroughly confused as to why he felt like he should be protesting when in reality she’d handed him the perfect way to reform the boundaries between them. “Fine. We’ll go with that.”
It wasn’t fine. But what choice did he have?
Later that night, while lying in his cold, lonely bed, it finally occurred to him why he had the strongest urge to smash all of their boundaries into oblivion.
He’d turned some kind of corner, one that had him testing out in his head whether he could take a chance on something.
On Delilah. Whether that would be so bad at the end of the day, especially if they stuck to winging it, as suggested. No expectations, no harm, no foul.
What was the worst thing that could happen if they did try for something approaching a normal relationship? One with a few caveats so he had an out if need be. Better question—would she want to?
There was only one way to find out.