Chapter 8 #2
"You moved my magnets."
She looked up from her yogurt. "What?"
"The magnets." He pointed. "You moved them."
"Oh." She glanced at the refrigerator. "Yeah, I was looking for a grocery list. Thought you might have one under—"
"They were organized."
"They're magnets."
"They were organized in a specific order. A chromatic sequence designed to—"
"Tarmek." She grinned at him. The grin that made her eyes crinkle at the corners and dimples appear in her cheeks. The one that meant she was enjoying his suffering. "They're tiny decorative objects. On a refrigerator."
"They have a system."
"A system." She set down her yogurt and walked back towards the refrigerator. "You have a system for your magnets."
"Yes."
"That's..." She reached up and deliberately moved one of the red magnets into the blue section. "That's unhinged, you know that?"
His eye twitched. She moved another magnet. Green into red.
"Edie."
"Hmm?" She was fully facing the refrigerator now, her back to him, her fingers rearranging the magnets with chaotic glee. "What was that? I couldn't hear you over the sound of your organizational system collapsing."
Blue into yellow. Purple into orange. The Emerald Enforcers logo moved to the far left corner, upside down.
Something inside him snapped. Not broke. Not cracked. Snapped—the way a rope snaps when you've pulled it past its breaking point, all that tension releasing at once in a single violent instant.
He crossed the kitchen in three strides. She must have heard him coming because she started to turn, started to say something, probably some teasing comment, but he didn't give her the chance.
He gripped her waist and lifted her up onto the counter in one smooth motion. She gasped, and her eyes went wide.
He stepped between her knees.
"Tarmek—"
"Stop." His voice came out raw, unrecognizable even to himself. "Stop talking."
Her eyes went even wider, and for possibly the first time since he'd met her, Edie Anderson was silent.
He stood there for a moment, breathing hard, still gripping her waist through the thin fabric of his shirt—his shirt on her body—and tried to remember all the reasons why this was a bad idea.
She was a colleague. She was temporary. She was chaos personified and the antithesis of everything in his carefully controlled life.
She was also looking at him with huge brown eyes, her lips parted, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her hands braced on the counter on either side of her hips.
Waiting.
"You," he said slowly, "are driving me insane."
"I noticed."
"You move my things. You leave cups everywhere. You sleep upside down on my couch—"
"That was one time—"
"—and you wear my clothes." His grip tightened on her waist. "You wear my clothes and you smell like my soap and you sing while you do it, and I cannot—"
His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard. Her expression shifted. Some of the surprise melted away, replaced by something warmer, and she put her hands lightly on his forearms.
"Can't what?" she asked quietly.
He closed his eyes. "Think. I can't think. I can't concentrate. I can't do my routine or eat my meals or sleep in my own bed without wondering if you're—"
The words wouldn't come. They stuck in his throat, all the things he wanted to say, all the things he'd been trying not to feel for days. Weeks. Since the moment she'd looked up at him from that chaos-strewn arena floor and smiled like sunshine.
"Tarmek." Her voice was gentle. Her hands slid up his forearms, over his biceps, and came to rest on his shoulders. "Look at me."
He opened his eyes.
She was so close. Close enough that he could count her freckles. Close enough that he could see the golden flecks in her brown eyes and the slight flush spreading across her cheeks, the way her pulse fluttered in the hollow of her throat.
"You could ask," she said.
"Ask what?"
"What I want."
He went still, searching her face for any sign of reluctance, any indication that he'd misread the situation and that his desperate wanting had conjured something that wasn't there.
But she was smiling that soft, private smile she got sometimes when she thought he wasn't looking. The one that made his chest ache.
"What you want," he repeated.
"Mmhmm." Her fingers traced along his collarbone. "Instead of just standing there looking like you're going to explode. You could ask me."
"Do you want—" He stopped. Started again. "Can I—"
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him forward.
He kissed her like he'd wanted to for weeks.
Since the first moment she'd smiled at him and upended his entire existence.
He kissed her like a man drowning, like she was oxygen and salvation and chaos all wrapped in one maddening, freckled package.
Her fingers twisted in the fabric of his shirt, tugging him closer, closer, like there was still too much space between them.
Like she wanted to crawl inside him and make a home there, the same way she'd invaded every other part of his carefully constructed life.
And then she made a little sound against his mouth that went straight to his cock, and suddenly there was nothing in the world but the taste of her and the feel of her body against his.
He'd intended to go slowly, but the moment her lips parted and her tongue touched his, his control vanished. He yanked her hips forward until his erection was cradled against the heat between her legs, his hands sliding up her sides to find the bare skin where his shirt had ridden up.
She gasped into his mouth when his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts, and her hands fisted in his hair, pulling him deeper into the kiss. She tasted like everything he'd been missing his whole life—sweet and wild and utterly uncompromising.
"You drive me crazy," he said against her lips. "You're in my head all the time. I can't stop thinking about you."
"That's generally the idea," she whispered back, then nipped at his bottom lip, making him growl.
He should stop. He should slow down. But she was everywhere—in his arms, on his tongue, her scent filling his lungs until it was all he could breathe. He slid one hand higher, palming her breast through the thin fabric of his shirt, and her head dropped back with a moan that vibrated through him.
"Yes," she whispered, arching into his touch. "More."
He rolled his thumb over the hard peak of her nipple and she shuddered, her hands tightening in his hair. The friction against his cock was driving him insane, her heat seeping through his clothes and teasing him with the promise of more.
Then her stomach growled, loud and embarrassingly audible in the quiet kitchen, and she started laughing—a soft, breathless sound that shook her whole body against his. He managed to step back, creating distance between them with a force of will he didn't know he still possessed.
Her lips were swollen. Her eyes were glazed. His shirt had slipped even further off her shoulder, revealing the upper swell of her breasts, and he had to physically restrain himself from investigating further.
"Well," she said, slightly breathless. "That was..."
"Adequate?"
She laughed again and the sound echoed off the kitchen walls.
"Yeah," she said, grinning up at him. "Adequate."