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“Is that how you want to start?” she asked, opening the door and gesturing with a sarcastic flourish for him to enter first. They stood at the entrance together, and she found herself wondering why they’d even gone inside if they were just going to stand. But she wasn’t going to sit first.
“I wanted to thank you for your help.”
“Mmm.” Her eyes were on the wall above his head. A thanks was quite late in her eyes.
“I know it’s a little late.” Her eyes snapped to him. The way he always knew what she was thinking still irked her—not in a bad way but in a comforting one, the way her mom had always seemed to have baked something before she’d even said her day was bad. Or the way he'd appeared in the twenty-minute window she’d been outside. Still, it felt strange having him in her house. She thought she’d never see him again, and now he was so close she could smell him—that leathery, old wood smell that was distinctly his. “I’m sorry for how I acted, how I treated you. I thought I was better than that.” His jaw jutted outward, and he continued, “I am better than that.”
“Okay. Well, it’s okay.”
He visibly untensed, relieved. “It is?”
“I mean. Not, like,okay. It’s just what people say.”
“You mean that you forgive me.”
Lainey started playing with the corner of the rug with her toe, rubbing the edges of it at a ninety-degree angle. “Not exactly.”
Frustrated, he threw his hands in the air. “Then why are you saying it’s okay? Just to make me happy? To make me go away?” His eyes were pleading with her for clarification, and she ran through how many “it’s okays” she’d thrown Josh’s way. She’d forgiven so much with that simple statement while communicating nothing. Bradley reached out to touch her, and she shook her head, letting him fall back in defeat and lean against the wall.
“Because I want it to be okay,” came her answer finally, and he lifted his head in acknowledgement.
“Why don’t you just come back to the office? It can be okay again. I can make this up to you.”
“I’ve decided biomedical engineering isn’t for me.”
“You’re back to doctor?”
“No, I don’t think so. Maybe a vet?” She looked up to gage his reaction, but he didn’t have one at all. His eyes were steady, his breathing even. He checked his watch, and that simple act gutted her. “Somewhere to be?”
“No, it’s just something I do when I’m—nervous.” A little tinkle of a laugh escaped him, and it clicked for the first time that that’s what he felt. Thathewas nervous. Bradley Arnault of Arnault Enterprise was in her house, and he was nervous. “If you want to be a vet, you go ahead. But I really think you should come back to the office. I think it’d be a waste of your great mind.” He reached out, and she allowed him to take hold of her head with two hands. She laughed quietly, and he kissed her hairline.
“Is that the only reason?” she asked bashfully, looking up at him through her eyelashes. He twisted a strand of her hair, winding it around his finger.
“No. I’d miss . . .seeingyou around the office too.” She laughed wryly, and he pulled her chin up. His hands were holding her cheeks firmly, and her cheeks burned at his touch. “I’m serious, Lainey. You’re special and brilliant and weird, and we have a connection that I haven’t had with anyone before. Sometimes, when I’m with you, it feels like you’re reading my thoughts off a teleprompter. I would miss you. Idomiss you. That’s why I’m here asking you to please reconsider. It’s up to you what you do, but I do want to give you all the information available.”
“And what’s all the information?”
“That you’d be breaking a heart you helped put together.” He tried to keep staring at her, but his eyes flitted down intermittently at her lips. She held a smile back at his apparent weakness. “Kiss me first, Miss Crane.”
Chapter eighteen
LaineywatchedBradley’seyesbetray his desire for her over and over. His breathing was heavy, his chest rising and falling. She covered his heart with her hand and let her lips drift along his skin, playing with him. Finally, she gave in and fit her lips onto his. He moaned primally, urgently, and hooked her under the thighs, spreading her legs around his hips.
“Which one’s yours?” he whispered though they were alone, and she pointed to her bedroom.
It wasn’t the same as before, the taboo and dirty encounter they’d had the first time. This time, he lifted her shirt over her head and kissed her while her arms were trapped until she shooed him away. This time, he wiggled her out of her underwear, throwing them on the ground while she unbuttoned his pants, yanking them off of him. This time, he held her breasts in his hands and told her what a marvel they were, his fingers circling her nipples while he sucked her bottom lip. He lowered his tongue to her left nipple while his fingers playfully ran up and down her inner lips. She whimpered, and he nibbled on her nipple and moved to the other in response.
“Please,” she begged him.
“Please what?”
“Please touch me.”
“I am touching you.”
She bucked against his fingers, hoping he would get the message and comply, but he pulled away, trailing them down her inner thigh instead.
“No,” she whined.
