My breath came out low and smooth before I kicked open the door with a grunt.
There was an ear-piercing scream. Delilah jumped from her seat, her drink flying and splashing against the wall behind her. “What the hell?!” she screeched, clutching her heaving chest.
My jaw bobbed, momentarily speechless. “What-What are you doing here?” I forced my breathing to steady.
“What areyoudoing here? It’s four in the fucking morning!”
I straightened, feeling guilty for scaring her. And admittedly uncomfortable after avoiding her for a week. I cleared my throat. “Working out. I heard you up here…didn’t know it was you. Sorry.”
“Say that to my last Diet Coke, you asshole,” she grumbled and grabbed some tissues off her desk to clean it up.
My eyes raked over her body with her back turned. She was wearing yoga pants and a tank top, her hair piled on top of her head. My mouth went dry. “You didn’t answer my question.” My voice sounded deeper than I’d intended.
Fuck me. Would I ever be able to act normally around her again?
“Didn’t know this was twenty questions.” She bent over to get the last drops on the floor, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
She’s Savannah’s best friend, I repeated over and over again. And I was a god-fucking-awful brother for wanting to know what it’d feel like to have her pinned beneath me. To see a woman like her cave and beg, to have all that fierceness at my mercy… It reminded me of breaking a stallion.
So fucked.
“If you must know, I’m going over applications for Freedom Reins.”
I opened my eyes at that moment. I didn’t know what she would say, but it sure as hell wasn’t that. She was sitting back at her desk now, rifling through papers. I moved further into the office, frowning. “You’ve been here all night?” I hadn’t even noticed her Jeep when I walked over from the house.
“Yep. I was actually pretty tired and thinking of going home until you nearly gave me a heart attack, so thanks, I guess.”
“Uh-huh,” I replied absentmindedly, coming towards her desk. I couldn’t believe it. I knew she was dedicated to this program she was starting, but I didn’t know it was like this. As confusing as it was, I…admired her for it. It made me wish I had something I cared about like that.
She glanced up at me, doing a double-take. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
I shoved my hands in my pockets, my spine snapping straight. “Like what?”
She leaned back in her chair, her eyes narrowed at me in challenge. “Like you’re shocked.” That wasn’t how I’d describe grappling with the fact that I wanted to bend her over the desk, but okay, call it shocked for all I cared.
“No reason,” I lied. I needed to leave right fucking now before she started something I wasn’t sure I could finish. I spun on my heel. “I’m gonna?—”
“You’ve been avoiding me all week.”
I froze. My jaw tightened.Shit.
I turned back around, my heart in my throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She rose from her chair, a gleam in her eyes that shouldn’t make my pulse kick, but it did. Light from her desk lamp spilledover every curve of her body as she stood. The body I’d been desperately trying and failing not to think about for days.
I needed to leave. Nothing good could come from my staying.
But I didn’t want to go, no matter how much staying terrified me.
“I call bullshit.” She rounded the desk, her fingers trailing along the oak. “You’re freaking out about what I said, aren’t you?”
There was humor in her voice, and it pissed me off that she found amusement in my situation. It was exactly why I hadn’t told her. But there was something about her that got under my skin easier than anything else. Maybe it was the amount of time we’d known each other, so she knew exactly what button to press and how hard to press it to get me to snap.
She was pressing a lot of them right now. Ones I didn’t even know I had.
I swallowed roughly. “You say a lot of shit, Delilah. I’ve learned to tune most of it out over the years.”
Her eyes ran over my body slowly. A brazen perusal if I’d ever seen one. But it wasn’t just my body she was stripping bare. It was every weak spot she knew I had, every secret I tried to bury. I shifted on my feet, hating feeling this exposed. I couldn’t even hide how badly I wanted her, and worse, I couldn’t hide how badly I wanted to give in to it, just this once, and forget everything else.
