Page 10 of Handle Me

I smashed my lips into a thin line, gathered up the shreds of my dignity, and made my choice. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” he repeated. “So, you don’t know who touched who first?”

It was physically painful to shake my head. I hated ignoring the facts, but what choice did I have?

Anders leaned closer, and I caught my breath, waiting for him to kiss me. Instead, he brought his lips to my ear. “Now, who’s lying, boss?”

CHAPTER FIVE

ANDERS

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to kiss Lola or kick her out. She stared up at me with wide, brave eyes that refused to back down, and I knew the answer instantly.

Kiss her. I definitely wanted to kiss her. And then I wanted to carry her back to my bed and finish what she had started. But doing that fell clearly into the rewarding bad behavior category. I wasn’t sure what pissed me off more: that she was trying to pin this whole situation on me or that she couldn’t admit to the truth. She wanted me as much as I wanted her. Sure, it was entirely physical and probably fueled as much by our total contempt for each other as any attraction we felt. And yeah, what I wanted to do to her could only be described as a hate fuck.

But I saw the same naked desire staring back at me from those blue eyes. Lola wasn’t satisfied with our stolen encounter. She wanted more. She wanted to climb back into bed and pretend that she was asleep while I delivered a few more orgasms. She wouldn’t admit that, of course. She couldn’t. That would make her look weak, and I was beginning to suspect that she hated vulnerability more than she hated me.

Still, I was certain of a few things.

Lola had started things in bed.

She was never going to admit it.

I’d never wanted a woman so much in my life.

(Or 3a) To clarify, there was no way I was giving her the satisfaction of acting on it.

“Look, let’s just forget this,” she said, surprising me. “If you say you were sleeping—”

“I was sleeping,” I interjected. We could forget it if that’s what she wanted. At least, we could try to forget it.

“So was I,” she said hotly. “I guess you must just be more physically active in your sleep.”

Lola Bishop had thrown the gauntlet, and I wasn’t about to back down. I should have known she wouldn’t just let us drop this, not if it meant admitting she might be even a tiny bit responsible. “I wasn’t the one with my hand down my pants, boss.”

“That…is…just so unfair!” she spluttered, stomping across the room.

The physical distance helped, but not much. “Yeah, well, I call it like I see it.”

“It wasn’t like you were innocent. I felt that.” She pointed an accusing finger at my erection. My poor dick hadn’t softened at all since we’d broken physical contact. In fact, it had gotten harder.

I grabbed it through my boxers. “I’ve got news for you. It’s like this every morning, even when I don’t have a horny, bossy snob begging for it in her sleep.”

“I did not beg!”

“That’s what you take offense to?” I couldn’t help laughing. I shoved a hand through my hair, wishing I could grab her by her perfect ass and take her over my knee. “So you admit to the horny and bossy bit?”

“I’m the horny one?” she hedged. “That thing is like a heat-seeking missile!”

“Yeah.” I tossed my hands in the air. She was just now getting this. I’d been saying it the whole time. “Look, when my brain is turned off, my dick is in charge and it translates the situation according to the only language it speaks: fucking.”

Lola crossed her arms over her chest, her nostrils flaring, but rather than feigning disgust, she cleared her throat. “And you think that’s different for women?”

I blinked. Had I heard her wrong? “What?”

“Do you think that women don’t have dirty dreams?” she pressed, tilting her chin up as she spoke. “Just because we don’t wake up with a bloody sausage roll sticking out of our pants, doesn’t mean we don’t get aroused while we sleep. So why don’t we both just chalk this up to what it was: biological impulses outside our conscious control and nothing else?”

I’d wandered into a sodding biology seminar.