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“You’re sadly mistaken if you think that, by inviting me to your tiny tree house, I’ll give up all my reasons for staying away from you.”
Except that was exactly what I’d been thinking about ever since he texted me and told me to come over. I had known that coming here was a bad idea, and I had done it anyway. I had known this would happen, and I’d wanted it to.
Stupid fucking conscience.
“That’s not what I think. I think you came over to talk to me about why I’d missed work. Then, you looked at my mouth and licked your lips, and I couldn’t sit next to you and lie to myself about wanting you. I can’t do what you’re capable of.”
“Yes, I want you. But I can’t have you. That’s it. Full stop.”
“I don’t accept that,” he told me.
“Learn to.”
“Are you just blind? Is that what this is? Do you think you can really avoid this forever? Because I’m not going anywhere, and what we have isn’t just going to go away.”
“What do we have, Landon?” I asked in desperation. “Some phone calls, a New Year’s mistake, and two whole kisses? That’s not much as far as I’m concerned.”
“You’re joking, right?” His eyes were round and hurt at my accusation. “We’ve been friends for, like, fifteen years, Heidi. You’ve helped me more than you could possibly know during the last year. The only reason I stopped talking to you was because I was so into you, and I knew that I had to put distance between us. But let me be clear,” he said, stepping dangerously close to me, “there is no distance between us any longer.”
“Maybe there should be,” I said.
But I’d lost my fire. My back was pressed up against the wall in his apartment, and he was towering over me, even in my high heels. And I felt anything but threatened.
I felt so fucking turned on. Like heart-pounding, legs-shaking, skin-tingly, wet turned on. I could hardly control my own body. All it wanted was to grab him and say screw all my misgivings about the situation.
“No, you’re wrong. You are fighting this because of work. But I was yours before that, and I’ll be yours after it, too.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you’re my boss though. Fuck, I don’t even know why you’re my boss,” I cried.
“Well, you refused to listen to me.”
I held my arms wide and tried to tamp down my growing desire. “I’m listening now. I came here to listen to you. For you to tell me why you’d missed work. Not for you to kiss me!”
Landon quirked a smile. He was only a hairbreadth from my mouth. So close that, if I even breathed heavy, I would brush his lips. My eyes were wide with panic, and my fingers were itching to grab on to his shirt. He was teasing me. And it was working.
“Okay, Heidi,” he said dreamily. He moved his mouth, so he was grazing it along my cheek and down to my neck. “We’ll play it your way. I won’t kiss you.”
His breath was hot against my skin, and I suddenly felt feverish.
“Then…we’re not doing anything wrong.” He slid over to my collarbone and to my shoulder. His hands were pressed into the wall on either side of me.
I couldn’t keep it together. This was torture. Plain and simple. Perfect, sweet torture.
“This isn’t helping,” I managed to get out.
“You mean…even when I’m not kissing you,” he said, finally planting a kiss on my shoulder and then another one up my collarbone, “even when I’m not touching you…”
He thrust his body against mine, pinning me completely to the wall. I could feel every inch of his rock-hard body under his clothes. His skin was on fire, and every inch of me he touched flamed.
“You still have feelings for me? You still want me? You still want this?”
I stiffened under his scrutiny and those bottomless dark pools.
“Because, if you still want me, then it’s not going to go away. It’s just going to build. Until it explodes.”
And I was an active volcano at his words.
“Tell me you want this as much as I do,” he said with earnest. “Tell me this isn’t a lost cause. I can see you don’t want me to stop. Just tell me you want this. Stop telling me to stop.”
