Page 140 of His Good Girl

“There’s my girl,” he crooned.

My knees nearly gave.

“That’s unfair.”

“Yes.”

“Callum.”

He kissed me again, harder this time, then caught both my wrists and pinned them above my head against the door. The movement was so fast, so clean, so utterly him, that a soundslipped out of me before I could stop it. His gaze dropped to my mouth.

“Still with me?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He held me there, just making the point that he could pin me with his hands alone. I could have moved. I knew that. He knew that. What made it hot was not that I couldn’t. It was that I didn’t.

“You are a smart girl,” he said, voice low. “You proved that last week. Dana saw it. Benjamin saw it. I saw it. You read a room well. You write clearly. You listen. You can become very successful here if you decide to stop apologizing for taking up space.”

My heart twisted. Then his mouth came closer to my ear.

“And you are also twenty-five,” he continued, “and sometimes you need an older man to put his hand under your skirt, bend you over, and remind you to stop testing the edge of every rule just to see whether someone will hold you to it.”

The words set me on fire. My thighs pressed together in a tizzy. Callum’s eyes dropped, then returned to mine, dark with satisfaction.

“I saw that,” he smirked.

“Of course you did.”

“I saw it Friday too.” His grip on my wrists tightened a fraction. “When I pointed out that you were twenty-five and I was old enough to know better.”

“You didn’t say how old.”

“I’m forty-seven, Avery.”

My breath caught. There it was. The age difference said plainly, dragged into the room and set between us like a centerpiece.

His eyes searched mine. “And there. You bit your lip.”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

“I’m processing information.”

“You clenched your thighs.”

“I have legs. Sometimes they move.”

“Your pulse is racing.”

“That could be fear.”

“No.” His mouth hovered near mine. “It isn’t.”

I should have been ashamed. I was, a little. But the shame was threaded with heat, with the strange relief of being seen in what I was most ashamed to desire and not being mocked for it. Callum knew. He knew the age difference fed some awful, hungry part of me. He knew the forbidden pieces had not frightened the desire away; they had intensified it. He knew, and instead of pretending to be horrified, he held my wrists above my head and watched me blush.