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“I thought that was your job,” she shot back with a challenging lift of her brow.
Ithad beenmy job, back when I was still in control of my desire. Back when I could lie to myself about how attracted I was to this woman. But now that she was inches away from me, looking at me like I was the only man in the entire world, I couldn’t care less about the fact that I was supposed to be keeping myself away from her.
“We’re in the laundry room, Jessa,” I said, turning the bottle over and over in my hands. Because if I didn’t, I was liable to grab her by the waist and press her flush to my body. “The line only exists downstairs.”
“And in the gym?” she prompted.
My heart rate picked up as I realized she’d probably been aware of my struggle to do the right thing since the beginning. “I think the line has been totally erased in all areas of my penthouse.”
“Now I’mreallycurious what your plan is to make it up to me.” She cocked a hip, every part of her body challenging me. Luckily, I knew how to rise to the occasion.
“I’d have to take you off my payroll to answer that question,” I said smoothly.
Her eyes went wide, a blush coming to her cheek. I could have kissed it until it went away—or it grew even brighter. “So in order to have all my high school fantasies come to life I’d have to quit, huh?”
Now I was the one to blink in surprise. A laugh escaped me. “Wait, what?”
She clamped a hand over her mouth. “Just kidding.”
“High school fantasies? Let’s circle back to that part.”
Her blush grew as she covered her cheeks with her hands. “We don’t need to circle back.”
“Jessa, you’re blushing. We need to circle back.” I could have needled her like this all day. Or at least until it finally led us into the bedroom.
She groaned, looking up at the ceiling. “I hate my cheeks.”
“I’m a pretty big fan of them.” I didn’t even care anymore that I was officially crossing the line. The line I myself had drawn. I reached for a different spray bottle. “Let’s rinse this stuff off while you tell me more about these high school fantasies.”
“Damian, I’m so embarrassed,” she said, fanning herself. “I was such a geek back then, and I—”
“You were fine,” I assured her. “Though you’re lucky seventeen-year-old Damian didn’t know about this.”
Her eyes went even wider. “Say what?”
“There was a time that I was pretty sure Jeremy was going to hate me for life because of what I wanted to do with you,” I admitted with a laugh. Inside my head, my mind was rioting. Why was I saying this? How had we gotten this deep, this fast? Yet I couldn’t pump the brakes. Not even a little bit.
Her throat bobbed, and she clamped her hands over her mouth again, looking up at me with saucers for eyes.
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“I would havedied,Damian.” She started fanning herself again. “I would have died and gone to Heaven."
“You were too young, anyway.” I lifted the bottle, and she slid her hand beneath the fabric again as I doused the spot. “You were a sophomore, I was a senior. Then I went to college and became properly distracted.”
But that wasn’t the whole truth. The distraction was temporary. And now that she was back in front of me, within arm’s reach every day, I could barely control myself.
She nodded, the blush fading. But her chest still rose and fell heavily. And I was inches away from cinching my arm around her waist and never letting go.
“Yeah. Those high school crushes never last, huh?” she said.
I disagreed. My infatuation with her had lasted longer than any other romantic relationship in my life, much to my dismay. But I didn’t want to admitthat. It seemed somehow sad. After all these years, after so many women in and out of my life, why was my high school crush still the one that had sunk the deepest?
“Here. Dry this off.” I reached for a dry hand towel behind Jessa. “I think you narrowly avoided a permanent stain.”
She clutched the hand towel to her chest, her gaze searching my face. We’d opened a can of worms here, and I knew better than to think we could stuff them back in. Which meant I needed to retreat. Because anything with Jessa, or anyone else for that matter, was a non-starter.
