AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What?”
“I just like hearing that word from your lips.” He shifted in her chair, drawing her attention to his lap, and the fact that his sweatpants hid none of his excitement. What was it about an erection under gray cotton that made her thirsty? Good Lord, she wanted him without any of these barriers between them. She’d been angry and frustrated, but the combination of his caring actions and his gorgeous body were quickly eroding her determination to keep things all business at the office.
He hitched his hips again, and she knew she’d been caught staring. Chuckling, he put his hands on her hips and rolled the office chair over so he was seated directly in front of her, deliberately in her space.
“You know, I’m still a little hungry. I did have to smell that goodness all the way over here. Can I have a little taste?”
She searched for the perfect piece, intending to tease him. She held the morsel of chicken suspended in front of her mouth.
“Come and get it.”
He stood and leaned into her space, his lips open to receive the bite, his eyes full of laughter. She grinned and popped it into her own mouth, chewing with dramatic appreciation. She’d expected him to laugh. When his eyes narrowed to focus on her lips, she was toast, slowly roasting in the heat of his gaze. She dropped the fork back into the plastic bowl and barely managed to swallow before she moved in to give him his taste fresh from her own lips.
Adrian followed her lead and kissed her senseless. The only place they touched was lip to lip, and it wasn’t nearly enough. So when Adrian paused just long enough to remove the fork and Tupperware from her limp fingers and boost her up on her desk so she was fully supported, she didn’t complain. She let go of her good intentions and held on tight to his hips instead. He smelled deliciously clean from his shower, and she had a moment’s worry over her own scent after a full day of work. But only for a moment, before he drove every thought out of her head.
Framing her face with his hands, he tasted her cheeks, her forehead, her eyelids, before returning to her mouth. Her hands were free to roam, and she let them explore the impressive muscles that lined his spine, all the way down to his very fine ass, which she gripped to pull him flush against her between her spread legs. Even through layers of clothing, feeling his hard erection pressed against her clit sent waves of heat through her belly. After months of self-service, she was ready to hand over control. She wrapped her legs around his hips, trapping him against her while she rocked her hips toward his. This had escalated quickly, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Keeping herself from mounting the man was taking all of her restraint. He moaned and slid his hands around her waist.
Sofia cringed and reached her hands under his, raising his to her upper back. She tried to lose herself in the kiss again. He pulled her in close, making her feel cherished and protected. When he slid his fingers forward to graze the sides of her breasts, her awareness of her body focused to that narrow point, allowing her to ignore the parts that she wished she could hide. But when he slid his hands down her sides again to grip her hips and lift the hem of her shirt, her focus shifted with them. She wished that the desire this created would be enough to shout down her self-consciousness, but it wasn’t. She reached down to block his upward momentum, and this time he definitely noticed. He stopped kissing her altogether and stepped back.
“Why did you stop?” she asked.Please, let it be any other reason…
“You keep pushing my hands away when I touch you. I didn’t think you wanted me to keep going.”
“No. I… That’s not…” She sighed. “Never mind. Let’s just finish so we can go home.”
He reached for her again, one hand heading for the space between her legs, and she clenched them shut tightly, trapping his hand on the edge between heaven and hell. She’d taken care of unwanted advances since middle school when she’d gotten breasts ahead of everyone else. She hadn’t needed her brothers or her cousin then, and she didn’t now.
She gritted her teeth and corrected his assumption that she wanted him to finishher. “I meant the purchase orders.”
“Right. Sorry. Of course.” He raised his hands in the universal sign for surrender, before gesturing to her chair.
She sat and struggled to find the offending papers and her outrage to go with them. He stood stiffly, arms crossed, behind her. He was frustrated, and she couldn’t blame him. She was too busy berating herself for screwing up a hot-as-hell kiss to remember why she was supposed to be mad. All she could find was the sad. The shame of her reaction. The remorse over losing something she’d never had in the first place. That loss of potential pinched her heart harder than she expected, but she had to protect herself. Once he got his hands on her, once he saw what she was hiding, he wouldn’t want her. And when he backed away, it would hurt even more if she’d let him get closer. The sadness and pain she’d bundled up in her weight gain threatened to break free, so she clamped down on it hard. Tears in her eyes, she turned back to the form he’d tried to fill out before they’d gotten distracted.
“Okay. This…is better. Please, just…fill it out…next time.”Damn it.She was losing the battle to keep her tears out of her voice. His hand brushing down the back of her hair, offering comfort even after she’d pulled away, broke her.
All of her combined stresses poured out of her heart and down her face. She dropped her head onto the desk and gave up the fight.
Adrian continued to smooth his hand over her hair while making a shushing sound, as if she was a child with a skinned knee instead of a woman with a bruised heart and a stressed mind. Her pains were not easily fixed with a Band-Aid and a kiss. She couldn’t deny that it brought her comfort though. How long had it been since someone had cared enough to comfort?
She turned in to that comfort, and he was there, kneeling next to her, arms open wide. His strong shoulder caught her tears as she let herself be wrapped up in his hug. She’d been so strong for everyone for so long… She’d borrow some of his strength for a while and put herself back together.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you. Let it all out.” His deep voice rumbled through her, breaking the last walls around her heart. So she did.
“It’s just…everything. I hate this part of the job, but I do it because my family needs me to, and if I don’t nothing gets done and no one gets paid. Now that I’ve got the designs, too, and the show, I resent the time it takes away from doing what I love. And then I started missing Gabe, and then I got mad at him for leaving me with this mess, but that gets me nowhere. It’s not like he can come back and fix it. This crap takes even longer when the order forms are only half filled out, and I know more are coming tomorrow. And I still haven’t gotten the show budget back on track. I really don’t want to screw this up. I need this, and Mom and Dad need this, and you need this…and…and then I argued with Dad because he was being Dad, and then I blew things with you… I just… It’s been a bit of a day.” As her words ran dry, her embarrassment swamped her and she reached around him for the peanut butter cups in her candy drawer. Adrian must have thought she was reaching for her work, because he intercepted her and pulled her back in close.
“Just leave it a minute. I don’t know what to say to most of that, but you didn’t blow things with me. I don’t know what I did to make you back away, but I’d like to. I don’t want to screw up whatever this is either.”
“What exactly is ‘this’?”
“I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”
Could she trust him? Did she dare hope that he would still want her once all of her walls were opened up, revealing her hidden flaws? He’d risen to every challenge she’d thrown in his path so far. The caress of his rough fingers down her arm tempted her, but the gleam of truth in his eyes convinced her.
She summoned her courage and met him out on that ledge, ready to take the leap alongside him.
“Me, too.”
Chapter 12
