Anna
I kissed him back.
That’s the part I can’t get around. He closed the distance, yes. He said I was driving him mad, yes. But when his mouth found mine against the wall with the Miami night pressing in around us and the bass from the gala still pulsing through the brick, I kissed him back.
My hands found his shoulders and I pulled him into me. His mouth opened against mine and everything after that was heat. Tongue met tongue, and an involuntary sound broke from deep in my chest.
His hands moved from my waist to my hips and pulled me closer. My back met the brick and he pressed into me, all of him, solid and warm and trembling in a way that didn't match how sure his hands were. I could feel his heartbeat through his chest, rapid, heavy, tangled up with mine until I couldn't separate them.
His teeth caught my lower lip and I gasped. My fingers tightened on his shoulders and I pulled him deeper.
It went from desperate to reckless, all heat and teeth and his breath ragged against mine, and I felt it everywhere. In my fingertips, in my spine, in the base of my throat where my pulsehad climbed so high I could taste it. The city, the music, the noise of everything I carried with me went distant and small, and all that was left was his mouth on mine and my hands pulling him closer. Just this.
Then common sense showed up. Late, as usual, but it showed up.
Every reason I shouldn’t be doing this arrived at once. He was my boss. I was his assistant. I’d been in Miami for three months and I was broke and broken and carrying baggage that could fill a cargo plane.
The last time I let a powerful man get close to me, he took apart my entire life and smiled while he did it.
I wasn’t built forthis. I wasn’t ready forthis.
I pulled away. His hand followed, fingers grazing my hip, reaching, and I stepped back before he could hold on.
"Don’t." I held up my hand between us. "Just don’t."
He stood there with his arm still out, his fingers in the space where my body had been a second ago. His breathing was ragged. His tie was crooked from where I'd grabbed it and twisted it, and there was a smear of my lipstick on his mouth.
His hand lowered. Slow. His eyes gleaming with confusion, then acceptance.
Whatever he was about to say would make this real and I needed it to not be real. I needed it to be something I could fold up and put away and never look at again, the way I’d put away a lot of things, because that was how I survived.
Something moved in the shadows past the valet lights. A shape. A person. I blinked and it was gone. My skin prickled. Paranoia, or someone really there—I couldn’t tell.
The car ride home was three feet of leather seat and silence so heavy it had its own gravitational pull. The Miami night slid past the windows in streaks of neon and palm trees and I stared at the glass and saw his reflection more than I saw the city.His gloved hands resting on his thighs. His posture rigid. His breathing controlled in that way I recognized now.
There was a smudge of my lipstick on the corner of his mouth. He either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t wiped it away and I didn’t know which possibility was worse. Both made my heart ache, asking for permission to do things I wasn’t ready for.
The driver asked me for directions and pulled up to Miley’s building. The car stopped.
"Goodnight," I said.
"Goodnight." The word sounded wrong in his accent. Too formal. Like he was reading it off a card instead of saying it to the woman he’d just kissed against a wall.
I got out. Miley was waiting at the door. Jace’s gaze held mine, and this time, it was unreadable.
The door closed and the car pulled away. I stood on the sidewalk and watched the taillights disappear. I could still feel his mouth on mine, and I knew I was in serious trouble.
Miley took one look at my face and grabbed my arm, and she pulled me inside before I’d finished crossing the threshold.
"Tell me everything." She had me on the couch before I’d kicked off my shoes. "All of it. Right now."
"Let me change first."
"Change later." She followed me to the bedroom anyway and was sitting on the bed with her legs crossed before I’d opened the closet door. "Talk."
I took off the blue dress, then hung it carefully on the back of the door because it cost more than anything I’d ever worn, and I stood there for a second with my hand on the fabric before I made myself walk away.
I put on pajamas. Miley was already vibrating with excitement.
