Chapter 18
Elliot’s words had played on a loop in my head all night, leaving me restless and confused and very, very turned on.
Suddenly, I couldn’t stop imagining just how bad we’d be together either.
All that my mind supplied me with were images of him on top, below, between my thighs—and the way he’d sound, right by my ear.
It was unheard of for me to fantasize about a man.
For me to want—really, truly want—him in my bed.
So badly, I’d played with the thought of walking the few steps over to his room until my hand slipped into my panties, and I was a frustrated mess because nothing I did came close to the thought of actually being with him.
At three a.m., I set my alarm for six as some form of masochistic punishment and got to the office at seven. I had a fuckup to compensate for and an Elliot to get out of my head.
When Camila popped into her office, I was already slouching over her table, drafting a pattern for a design out of my sketchbook she’d distractedly smiled at last week. A start, she’d called it. See what it can become.
So, with heavy eyes and sleep still in their corners, I was. The mild surprise on her face made it worth it. The approving smile did, too.
And after weeks of administrative tasks and playing the role of a glorified servant, my fingers buzzed in excitement. Maybe that was just the fourth cup of coffee making itself noticeable, though.
Pattern prep, fabric cutting, construction.
The atelier was vast. A long table sat in the middle of the room, fabric samples lined one wall, and tools and color palettes covered the other.
A large arched window provided enough natural light not to need a lamp for the basics, but each workstation still had one beside it.
The mess here should irk me, but it felt beautiful in its own way.
Every forgotten pair of scissors or spread-out piece of tulle told its own story.
At least the base layer, I thought. Let me get that done before Camila leaves. To show her that I could do things Elliot would never even consider attempting.
Unfortunately, between silk and chiffon fabrics, I had to admit that wasn’t the first and only time his name, face, and piercing blue eyes made an appearance in my head.
Ever since I’d stepped foot inside the office, Elliot Ashwood had haunted me.
We hadn’t run into each other yet, but every time I rounded a corner, I was scared we might.
Not hooking up with your coworker is, like, the first rule of Workplace 101.
With a groan, my head fell against the table.
I’d been on autopilot the past ten hours, and I was a little surprised to feel the resemblance of a finished dress in my hands.
The fabric wasn’t particularly comfortable, nor was the table below it, but I was sleep-deprived and had my last coffee too long ago.
I needed to check if Camila was even still there or if she’d already called it a day. But I couldn’t move. Promised myself five minutes of eye rest, got comfortable on my folded arms, and was out like a light ten seconds later.
Five minutes, my ass.
The atelier was dark when my eyes fluttered open again, someone’s knuckles gently rapping against the table.
For a second, I thought I had hallucinated Elliot standing on the other side of the long table.
Blond hair falling into his face, blue eyes watching me, apology and kindness in them.
“Hey, sleepyhead. It’s ten. I thought I should save your neck from a night on the atelier table. ”
I mumbled something I couldn’t identify either, sat up, but still hadn’t quite comprehended his words. Or the way he said them—like he was talking to a skittish animal.
It’s ten. A night on the atelier table.
Consider the animal officially scared. I shot out of my stool, eyes wide as they flickered through the atelier. The only light came from one of the small lamps on the table, partly illuminating what I’d been working on all day.
What I’d meant to show Camila before shamelessly falling asleep at work.
“Fuck.”
“It’s okay,” Elliot said. “Camila was impressed by your dedication.”
My head shot back in his direction. I stopped pacing. “She saw?!”
The small smile on his lips made it worse. “Well, not the dress. You were sleeping on it.”
Another groan echoed through the vast space.
“It looks good, though.” He nodded toward it, and I hated the small sense of pride fluttering through my chest. I didn’t care if Elliot Ashwood liked the dusty-rose color, the ruched design cinching the waist, or the gathered draping down the skirt that was supposed to reference the wind ruffling the ocean’s surface.
I shouldn’t care what Elliot thought, and I stirred away from that feeling. “And why are you still here?”
He shrugged. “Well, you decided to fall asleep.”
His fault, I reminded myself.
With his looks and flirting and wish to be honest with me in the middle of a poorly lit kitchen. If he hadn’t looked at me that way, if I hadn’t felt his breath on my lips and his touch on my cheek, I could’ve just gone to sleep like normal.
If he hadn’t invited me to spend a week in his shoes and made sure to show me sides of him I didn’t want to see—the ones that laughed properly, opened up, and bought me shoes worth more than I had ever owned—we wouldn’t have found ourselves in that compromising position in the kitchen at all.
I would’ve gotten my eight hours, and Camila would’ve never seen me drool all over a design I’d wanted to show her today.
“I didn’t decide anything,” I muttered. “The falling asleep part just kind of . . . happened.” Another yawn drove that point home.
“I’m sure. I’ll add getting you to bed on time to my daily tasks.”
At his words, those same thoughts—dreams?
nightmares?—of him in my bed that had haunted me all of last night flashed in front of my eyes again.
I’d managed to push what I’d done into a far, far, far away corner, burying it in patterns and designs and my urge to impress Camila.
But it was back now—my hands between my thighs, his name on my lips, and the vicious desire to feel his touch instead of my own when I silently came in the dead of night.
I turned off the small light by my workstation and rushed past him out of the atelier. Embarrassing. I’d never touched myself to the thought of anyone I knew, and staring straight at him less than twenty-four hours later was practically electrifying.
“I can get to bed on time by myself, thank you very much.” Don’t come anywhere near my bed at all, I silently added.
“Alright, Miss Independent.” He raised his hands defensively, amusement on his lips, in his tone, and in the way his eyes crinkled. I averted my gaze and repeated to myself how much I hated it. This comfortable, friendly air he was creating between us.
I hated it. Most of all that I didn’t hate it.
We walked home in silence, side by side, and I caught myself hoping we’d find ourselves in a situation like last night again. Low lights, my breath mingling with his, lips nothing but a single word away from each other.
Fuck, Maeve. Stay focused.
I kept a respectable distance between us to avoid a whiff of the cologne that hung in the air last night too.
When he rushed to catch a green light, I made sure to stay on the other side of the street.
If Elliot looked at me, I admired the city at night, the pizza place we passed, the groups of people we shuffled through.
As if there was a private investigator following us, specifically hired to catch the tension between us, I made sure to suppress it. Elliot complied, at least until we were climbing the stairs to our apartment.
“You were pretty out of it all day,” he noted on the first floor. Only three more to go before I could hide behind my door.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You were working a lot,” he amended, but I still wasn’t sure where he was going with it.
“I always work a lot,” I reminded him, watching every stair I climbed.
“You were talking to yourself. Aimlessly scurrying through the hallways, peeking around corners. Falling asleep.” I could feel his eyes on me. I watched my feet harder. A futile attempt to brush off the fact he’d actively seen me trying to avoid him. Apparently, I’d failed miserably at that.
Color shot into my cheeks. “Just tired. Long night.”
Two more flights of stairs and I could scream into my pillow.
Elliot hummed beside me, amusement in the sound. “Really?” he asked. “We were home before midnight. What kept you up?”
I froze, and I didn’t even mean to. He couldn’t know.
About what I’d been thinking and doing in the privacy of my own sheets last night.
That I’d tried my very hardest not to think of him, but the second my hand had slipped between my thighs, it had become inevitable to think of his hands between them, and him, a few walls over, maybe thinking about the same thing.
He couldn’t know about any of it, and yet his tone suggested he did.
At least, when my head finally snapped in his direction, he looked pleased to have rattled me.
The corner of his mouth curled, and his tongue flicked across his pink lips.
One hand ran through his blond hair, as if he’d been waiting for my attention but wasn’t quite sure what to do with it now that he had it.
The bottom of my stomach hollowed out. In dread and embarrassment, not at the fact that he looked too good in our stairwell.
I don’t want him, I reminded myself. Not only was he the reason Camila was mad at me; he was why I’d fallen asleep on top of my design. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d told Camila where to find me.
Elliot Ashwood was behind every single one of my problems, and yet I couldn’t help my body’s reaction to him. A reaction my body had never had before.
He doubled down. “Six hours of sleep can’t seriously be the reason you were napping on the clock, Maeve. I know you better than that by now.”
“You don’t know me at all.”
But why, then, did it seem like he interpreted the step I took back perfectly? I was flush with the railing now, and it still wasn’t enough space. Something below my skin was chanting his name, and maybe he heard it. Maybe that’s why he followed.
“You say that . . .” His head tilted in an unspoken challenge, voice barely above a whisper. “But I know you got up earlier this morning so you didn’t have to walk with me. I know you checked around those corners to avoid me. And I know it’s because you’re still thinking about last night.”
My head shook. “Nothing happened last night.”
Not entirely a lie. We didn’t kiss. We didn’t hook up—physically, we were still coworkers, rivals, archnemeses who’d learned to live with each other. But my perception of him had changed, which meant something did happen last night.
He’d turned from the big red no way into a what if too intriguing for my own good. And Elliot was looking at me like he knew it too.
“Oh, come on,” he muttered under his breath, reaching out to tuck a loose strand behind my ear.
My stomach fizzled in anticipation, just as it had last night, and I pointedly ignored the alarm bells in my head, blaring.
Stupid, they sang. So, so stupid. “Nothing had to happen. All it took was both of us wanting it to—”
“Elli?”
Our heads shot up, following the high-pitched sound all the way to our floor. He lowered his hand at the sight. Of Allegra, leaning over the railing, mascara-streaked face popping into our field of vision.