Chapter 27
Mari
I impatiently tap the key card on my door handle.
“I really love this job, I love the people, I love our friends. I don’t want it ruined because of horniness,” I say, partly referring to his self-satisfaction the other night too.
Kas follows me into my room and his hand catches my elbow. He spins me to face him, his eyes—still the brightest of blues—are partly obscured by his half-lidded gaze. “If you could read my mind, the thoughts I have of you would set a priest alight.”
I push his hand away from my arm. It remains raised, so I place my purse on his fingers as if they’re a coat hook.
“How am I meant to respond to that?” My words are unbelievably strained. “I should’ve never answered your question earlier.”
He disposes my stuff on the chair and follows me into my bathroom where I make a start on erasing my makeup. I use a washcloth to aggressively scrub over my eyelids, willing Kas to disappear when I open my eyes again.
I sigh when he makes no effort to move. “Kas.”
“Mari.”
“What is this?”
“You avoided me out of embarrassment, and now I’m trying to convince you that you don’t need to be embarrassed about your book.”
I pry my eyes away from his, filled with languid intensity. They make him appear far from sober. I don’t know how that’s possible because he didn’t touch a drop of alcohol all night.
“It means nothing,” I lie. “Besides, why are you watching what I read? It’s weird, you’re weird ... weirdo,” I ramble.
“I didn’t mean to look.”
“At no point did you stop and think, ‘Hm? Maybe I shouldn’t pry into what my employee is reading’?”
There’s a quick flicker in Kas’s eyes, a guilty flicker. One I recognize because Quinn’s eyes hold a similar look when she lies about stealing my clothes.
“You’re not my employee and I got a notification about a receipt.”
“Then why allow me, your coworker , to buy books using your card if you can’t stop being intrusive?” I snap my head toward him and get in his space. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you weren’t being intrusive. Go on.”
“Sorry for being intrusive. I apologize that the title Claimed by the Rugged Fighter took my interest, S?oneczko,” he whispers.
I search his gaze, horrified to find amusement lingering in its depths. I’m too frustrated to even consider what the hell he’s nicknamed me.
“I’m telling Davina,” I reply just as hushed.
This is a playground argument that has resulted in me threatening to snitch on him. If I relayed this specific situation to Davina, she’d probably say something along the lines of “sort it out between yourselves” or “I’m already dealing with one child, I don’t need two more” and gesture wildly at her stomach.
Kas knows it too. It’s why he regards me with an expression so infuriatingly smug, I want to smack the smirk clean off his face.
“Tell her then.” He lowers himself to me until he’s a hair away from my face. “Or are you too embarrassed?”
“You’re my boss,” I whisper, our foreheads now pressed together.
“I’m not your fucking boss,” he mumbles, pushing against my skull with his.
He is so close to me that I feel his tongue wet his lower lip because it dampens mine in the process. My sharp, shuddering exhale is cut short as he gives in first. Kas joins our lips with a force so strong, I whimper and grip his biceps to avoid falling backward.
This kiss isn’t a peck, it’s a firm pressure filled with unexplainable hunger; it’s a hunger that spreads from his lips to his hands as they grapple to feel every inch of me. I tangle my fingers into the thick strands of his hair and pull hard enough that he groans into my mouth.
Kas responds with gentle fingers and his rough, callused hands brush my waist, my lower back, my ass, my neck—everywhere. His tongue swipes over my lips like it’s his sole mission to remove any and every bit of product from them, until the only shine left on them is from his mouth.
With a rough nip at my bottom lip, he detours to my heaving chest. “Relax,” he says, pressing a kiss to the clothing separating him from my pounding heart.
I am as relaxed as can be given the current situation. He knows that. It’s why I can feel him smile against the curve of my breast.
“Shut up,” I say, pulling him back up to my lips.
His cotton T-shirt is soft under my palms juxtaposed with his hard body underneath. I’ve never touched Kas this much, ever. I push against him, ushering him backward out of the bathroom until we somehow switch places and he’s the one urging me back until my legs fold against the edge of the bed.
“Kas,” I gasp.
I bounce onto the mattress, and he looks down at me for a beat. His eyes trail down from my face to my waist and linger on the gold body chain decorating my torso.
Kas positions himself so that his thigh sits perfectly between my legs, close to the one spot that aches to be touched by him. His silver chain dangles like a pendulum above me, and I bring his lips back to mine.
“Fucking perfect,” he breathes.
Kas is gasping at my every touch, and he watches me like I’m the finest thing he’s ever laid his eyes on. I roll my hips, pausing at the fluttering sensation it emits in my lower abdomen when my clit grazes his thigh.
Kas kisses down my cleavage, nibbling lower down my navel and biting along my body chain until he presses his lips atop the same place the fluttering occurred only moments ago. In one quick motion, he flips up my skirt and sucks on my clit through my lace panties.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, my voice reaching a barely audible pitch.
I anticipate more, but he replaces his mouth with his upper leg again.
“Go on,” Kas says, repositioning his thigh firmly between my legs. “I know you want to.”
He holds my eyes, daring me to move. Whatever disappointment was lingering after Kas’s small suckle on my clit is quickly replaced by pleasure. Without looking away from him, I rock my hips once and moan when the roughness of his jeans bump against my clit again.
He grips my hips with his hands to assist my gyrations against him. “Look at me,” he prompts. I fight against the need to squeeze my eyes shut so I can focus on his touch. “That’s it,” he praises while smiling down at me.
He reaches forward to stroke away my necklace and finds a spot to kiss. A wave of pleasure encompasses me, and I palm the back of his head so his lips stay adhered to my neck. Kas manages to work one hand under us so that he grasps my ass underneath my skirt.
“Use me, Mari,” he demands, his voice bordering on a growl.
It must’ve been the utterance of my name that allows my remaining sanity to push through the thick haze of arousal because instead of bringing him closer, I’m pushing him away.
“Get off,” I whisper. Kas freezes and then immediately removes himself from me. “Get off,” I repeat louder.
He’s already a few meters away, and the repeated order is more for my own sake, so I can hear myself verbally rejecting whatever the hell is happening.
There’s a rhythmic pulsing between my legs, and I’m so sensitive that I have to sit down gently on the bed in case the motion rekindles my dissipating build to release.
“I’m an idiot, we’re idiots.” I point at him. “Are you my boss? Because I swear to god if I’ve just edged myself on my boss’s thigh, I’m going to scream.”
Kas’s tongue swipes along his lower lip, tasting remnants of me. “I told you I’m not your boss. I’m nobody’s boss.”
“But you pay me.”
“Davina pays you, I did the one check on her behalf.”
“God! If I hadn’t purchased that book, this would’ve never happened.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” I don’t. “Am I fired?”
“You’re not fired.”
“This is my job at risk, and if this got out to the public? Reputation? Gone. Ethics? Nonexistent.”
Getting cozy with a coworker? It’s a carelessness Auntie will find similar to the behaviors of my mom.
Kas starts toward me, and I hold my hand up to halt him.
He drags his hands down his face and then rubs the side of his strong nose. “It’s me and you in this room, nothing is getting out. Now tell me, are you still embarrassed about the book?”
“Fuck the book!” I shout. Kas watches my outburst from hooded eyes. “We both know it’s not about the book, it was never about the book.”
“Chapter four,” he utters.
His lips are swollen, and he touches them lightly like he can still feel me on them.
“Chapter four?” I ask.
He regards me with one last heated look before turning and leaving through the adjoining door, shutting it quietly behind him.
I swallow several times before reaching over to the bottle of water on the bedside table. A glance at the drawer has me revisiting Kas’s words.
The book.
I scramble to fish out the e-reader from its concealed fort inside the drawer.
There’s probably an easier way to find the chapter, but in my haste, I tap the right side of the screen like a mad woman.
Pages flicker past until the bold typeface appears: Chapter 4
I tap ahead a couple more pages and there, in a serif font, is a kiss scene in all its glory.
Kas encouraged me to do almost exactly as the scene is written, from an argument, down to the thigh placement.
“There’s no way,” I whisper.
That book must’ve been cursed because the man who left my room was not Kacper. I don’t know who it was, but it wasn’t the blunt-mouthed fighter I’ve been interacting with on a day-to-day basis.
I’m unable to fight the small smile that works its way onto my face.
Kas has not only read the book, but he’s acted on it. Now I’m much less embarrassed because unbeknownst to him, I haven’t finished the book. I didn’t get anywhere near chapter four because I DNF’d at chapter two. Erotica is not my thing at all, even if I was curious about this very specific title.
Only one person has read the book in its entirety, and it sure as hell wasn’t me.