Chapter 22
I kissed Elliot Ashwood and I don’t regret it. I kissed Elliot Ashwood and I don’t regret it. I kissed Elliot Ashwood and I don’t regret it.
In case it wasn’t obvious, I was also spiraling. Hard.
The elevator had gotten stuck due to a block-wide power outage that somehow only lasted ten minutes, and not, say, sixty. As soon as I was hauled out, I bolted before Elliot had even managed to lift himself out too.
For the past seven hours, I’d been hiding in the fourth-floor atelier. Stitching, ruffling, detailing that first idea of Daphne’s dress.
For nothing, it turned out.
For me to sit elbow to elbow with Elliot, trying my best not to burst into tears as Oliver Sheffield critiqued a dress meant to be seen and judged by his wife. Camila would get me, I thought as he went on.
Too plain.
Too pink.
Pretty, but not enough.
“But pink is her color,” Elliot tried to argue on my behalf, but even that didn’t help. Not even the fact that our knees were touching under the table could make me think of anything other than Oliver Sheffield telling me my design sucked.
The mannequin had been rolled into a corner five minutes ago, and I was still staring at it. Oliver went on like he hadn’t just crippled a part of my confidence beyond repair, flicking through the pages of my notebook.
“I like that elemental idea. Water, fire, earth . . . but should they do the same one? Have opposing looks or ones that complement each other? Water and fire? Water and earth? That sort of thing.” Oliver nodded in my direction.
“Your sketches are fine, Maeve. Much more elaborate than what you actually . . . conjured up.”
Another stab to the heart. I’d be leaving this meeting with twenty wounds if he kept this up. Judging by the look on his face, Elliot might be leaving it with a murder case on his hands.
“How long did it take you?” Oliver gestured to the dress in the corner.
“Around forty-eight hours.” I cleared my throat. “I meant to show Camila—”
But he cut me off. “Right.” An understanding nod. “Give yourself a bit more time for the next one, why don’t you?”
Another stab. This time, I couldn’t fully focus on it, though. Elliot’s hand had dropped to my bare thigh, and it took everything in me not to react to the scowl on his face and his touch pressing into my skin.
“What about sand?” he asked from beside me. Sounding as unbothered by our touching as I wished I was.
“Sand?”
At least we weren’t discussing my failures anymore. “You don’t like the design, fine. Next idea. There’s naturally pink sand on beaches all over the world. If we could import—”
“You want to fly in sand?” Oliver’s brows rose, almost mockingly.
Defensively, Elliot said, “Maybe.”
Then his hand disappeared below my skirt. I straightened, gasped, and then coughed until the involuntary sound was wiped from both their memories. Judging by the smirk Elliot was suppressing now, it hadn’t worked.
Thinking What the fuck are you doing? at him as hard as I could wasn’t helping. Telling myself Don’t let him do this wasn’t either.
Those five minutes in the elevator had been playing on a loop in my head all day. Eight hours later, it felt like I could still taste him on my tongue and feel him against my lips. Multiple times, I’d had to overcome the urge to march down to his office to see him.
And now he was here, almost touching me where I’d wanted him just a few nights ago. Distracting me from a failure so grand, so embarrassing, it was impossible to resist. So, I let him.
No reaction from Elliot as his hand drove higher up my thigh, rubbing circles on my bare skin.
“Whatever happened to sustainability, Elliot?” Oliver laughed, which meant Camila must’ve told him about the ambassador debacle, and he wasn’t a fan of it either. “Can’t just fly some sand back and forth without leaving an ecological footprint the size of a small country.”
Instead of throwing a rash comment at Oliver that surely was on the tip of his tongue already, Elliot’s fingers dug into my skin. The rough touch was so unexpected, scandalous, and nice, I didn’t manage to hide my gasp this time.
Immediately, the look on his face dissolved into something else. Amusement, pride, hunger. Like I was his personal stress ball, and he’d just successfully used it—me—to avert another crisis.
“Maeve, you alright?” Oliver’s voice pulled me back to reality, color shooting into my cheeks and neck and ears. I was glowing bright red, judging by how hot I suddenly felt. And not just because Elliot’s hand stayed below my skirt.
Safe to say I wasn’t thinking about my dress anymore.
“Sorry, yes,” I stammered. “Just . . . a cramp.”
“Anyway.” Oliver continued. And I meant to listen. Really.
But it was so hard when everything in me was just focused on Elliot. His teasing touch brushing along the lace of my panties but never moving them for more access. How big his hands felt between my legs. How I was so close to squirming in my seat, it took physical restraint to keep myself in check.
My knuckles were white around the armrest.
I didn’t expect it to feel this different. That someone else’s touch could feel so good. That someone I didn’t know that well could read my body so perfectly.
My eyes threatened to flutter shut, and only the bored cadence of Oliver’s tone reminded me that I needed to see this through before I got fired for public indecency and lewd conduct.
Maybe that had been Elliot’s plan all along. Camila did say he’d do anything to win.
“Not bad, overall,” Oliver finally concluded, sliding my sketchbook back across the table as he got up. “I’ll give you a few more minutes to wrap things up here.”
I startled so hard Elliot’s hand fell away. “Wrap things up?”
He couldn’t mean—
“Yeah.” Oliver gestured to our notes, sketches, and mood boards sprawled across the table. “If you think anything I said was worth your while . . .”
“Of course!” I shouldn’t have jumped out of my chair, and the way Elliot calmly followed my lead only underlined how nervous I was acting.
“. . . You should probably put some notes in the margins, then. Before you forget.” Oliver’s brows furrowed, like he knew something was off, too, but couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
Thank God for that, or he’d know where Elliot’s fingers had just been.
“Feel free to take your dress home. I think it’ll be good practice to fix the cinching and flow when you get a free minute.”
The door fell shut behind Oliver, and the last thing I wanted to think about again was my failure of a dress. “Alright.” I cleared my throat. “So, the sand idea is off the table, I guess—”
It didn’t seem like Elliot wanted to think about his failed idea, either. Because his lips were on mine before I could finish the sentence, leaving me no time to remember how stupid we were being.
How I probably shouldn’t have kissed him, shouldn’t have let him touch me, and definitely shouldn’t be going back for seconds of either scenario. But here we were. Touching, kissing.
Not regretting it.
Ten minutes ago, there’d been nothing but a simple slipup between us and detection. We were deep in ass-on-printer and sex-in-supply-closet territory—with nothing I could do about it.
I should tell him. That having sex in a meeting room wasn’t a great idea. But his hand slipped below the hem of my skirt again, and a single swipe of his finger against my core drew worse sounds out of us. Needy, breathless, and entirely surprised in the best way. “You don’t waste time, do you?”
Oliver had left the room barely a minute ago, and Elliot was already pressing me against the table.
“You’d rather small-talk a little?” he asked, nudging me on top of it. “Talk about how you can’t look at me without thinking about this?”
His teeth along my skin. His hands all over my body.
“We’re in the office,” I tried to reason.
“We are.”
“Anyone could walk in,” I added.
“Nothing scheduled after six.”
I wanted to protest. The door wasn’t locked, and it was only just six. But he continued exploring, and I didn’t have it in me to complain. With his hands between my thighs, his mouth sucking my skin, the embarrassment of my design was wiped from my memory again.
Two minutes was all it took.
My hands had slipped below his shirt, greedily tracing up and down his abs, noticing what sounds and words and touches would make him tense.
Realizing, with some sense of finality, that this was happening. For real and actually happening, and I needed the spinning of nerves in my stomach to stop and tell him—
“Not to ruin the mood,” I said.
Between one kiss and the next, he shook his head. “You couldn’t.”
Laughing against his mouth only encouraged him. His lips traced down my neck, back to a spot behind my ear that made me moan. Hooking up in public places and kissing necks until his partner was sighing against him must’ve been casual for him. But it wasn’t for me.
Now. I needed to say it now, before we were both too far gone.
“I’m—” Just that I didn’t know how. His fingers tracing up the inside of my thigh, lips along my neck. “I’ve never—”
In the pitch of my voice or the way I stuttered, he must’ve realized it was serious. Somewhat, at least. His hand stilled right by my core, and he emerged from the crook of my neck to look at me. Pupils wide, panting. “What is it?”
“This,” I said, then trailed off when I added, “I’ve just never . . .”
“Had sex in an office before?”
“Had sex.”
He was waiting for me to finish the sentence. For me to confirm I’d never had sex in an office, or with a billionaire, or that I’d never been this turned on before.
All of those things would’ve been correct. But I had finished my sentence already.
I’d never had sex. Had never really felt the need or desire for it.
“What?” he asked, smiling in that confused but adorable way. Still not quite sure he’d heard me correctly, still waiting on the end of my sentence.
“I don’t know if there’s a way to say it more plainly.” I shrugged. “I’m a virgin.”
He blinked at me, hand tracing down my leg until I could see it emerge from below my skirt. “What?” he repeated.
He probably wasn’t aware of the way he retreated. He never took a step back, but his hand was firmly on top of my clothing, his face far enough to see all of it again.
“You really need me to repeat it?”
“No.” Finally, he shook his head, snapping out of it. He was no longer looking at me through a haze of lust and want and need. Not in the way I was still looking at him. “God, no. I’m sorry. I just—”
Now he was stuttering. And it was more satisfying than I wanted to admit, seeing him actually flustered for once. Like a small win in itself, despite the fact that we were discussing my virginity.
“You just . . . ?” I asked with a smile so self-satisfied that it reminded me of his.
“I didn’t—” When he cut himself off this time, I actually snorted in amusement.
He gestured down my body, still sitting on the table, legs spread enough that he fit between them.
“Sorry. God,” he repeated. His brows pulled up, a crease between them filled with worry and awe and confusion. “We shouldn’t be doing this, then.”
“What exactly is this?”
“I was about thirty seconds away from bending you over that table, Maeve,” he deadpanned, finally finding his footing again. Disbelief still played on his face, but the rest of his confusing emotions were gone.
I didn’t know what reaction I’d expected. Hesitancy? Judgment? A bad, tactless joke that would’ve immediately killed off any attraction?
But Elliot’s confusion was sweet, and his plan more than that.
Have me bent over the table then, my body—naive and unknowing—was screaming.
“Sounds fine by me.”
I think. How would I know?
A low sound reverberated off the walls, but he shook his head. The hand resting on my thigh squeezed, then let go when he took a step back, taking all his warmth with him. “That’s not how—”
He was probably right. That’s not how it should happen.
In an office, over a table. But by now, I was having too much fun to drop it.
I was a grown woman with newly discovered wants and needs.
He’d just teased the daylights out of me when Oliver had still sat opposite us.
No harm in giving him a taste of his own medicine.
“I shouldn’t let you fuck me right here, right now? ”
Elliot took another cautious step back, something behind those blue eyes burning feverishly. “You definitely shouldn’t.”
“Why? You don’t want me?” Lashes batting against my cheek, head tilting, I knew I had him.
He groaned. So loud and unapologetically, I feared someone on the other side of that door might hear him. “Maeve,” he said in warning, eyes locked on mine.
“What is it, Elliot?” In my sweetest voice, I added, “Are you alright? You seem . . . tense.”
“You need to stop.” Look how the tables have turned. Hadn’t I told him to stop looking at me that way just a few hours ago in a broken elevator?
His usually perfectly tailored pants looked tight now, and the image solidified something I’d already guessed. He was as close to that point of no return as I was. And I was seriously considering letting him take me right there, on a table typically used for meetings and covered in sketches.
It might’ve been divine intervention when someone walked toward the room with footsteps as heavy as Bigfoot’s.
We had about five seconds to pull ourselves together. I pulled my skirt back in place, and Elliot did something about that obvious bulge in his pants. He flew back into his chair and, in sync with the door opening, rolled it as far under the table as physically possible.
“Sorry.” Oliver. Obviously. “I forgot my phone.”
And if I’d been a little less distracted, I would’ve noticed it, screen up, right beside me. Buzzing once, as if to make a point. I gave Elliot a look that said, So much for nothing scheduled after six.
A few minutes later, and God knows what Oliver would’ve walked into.