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I don’t want this. I don’t need this. My chest feels too tight, the world seeming to shrink in until I don’t have any other sensation except this feeling. I slap at his chest, not really hurting him, but he’s the one who woke up this awful emotion inside me. “I told you what I want.”
I want to walk away. I want to bury my damn head in the sand after I help Ye Joon and Ria get new jobs. I can walk away and not come back this time.
I do not want to stay here with him. The idea of letting this man love me is too scary. It’s too much. If I fail him…
He doesn’t say a thing, merely stares down at me with those soulful freaking eyes of his.
He’ll never be in this position. No one is ever going to accuse him of being too hormonal to be a reasonable boss. He’ll never have his board talk over him to the point that he has to shout to gain control and then know every single one of them is calling him a bitch behind his back. He doesn’t have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good. He doesn’t have to be made of steel. He can get mad. He can show everyone how he’s feeling and they’ll shrug it off as all part of his creative genius.
I hate him.
Not Heath. Never Heath, but I do hate that part of Heath who gets all the things I’ll never have, the respect I’ve worked for that can all be snatched away because a man decided he didn’t want to take the blame for his own failure.
I scream. It’s a sound that’s been building since I was a child. A sound that started the first time Mr. Collins told me he wouldn’t waste tutoring time on me because I was a girl and math was just a passing fancy for me. A sound that built when none of the guys on the robotics team would work with me. A sound I kept inside when I realized the guy I liked in college spiked my drink and only Ani’s quick thinking saved me from something that could have destroyed me. A sound I shoved down the first time I had to let a man take credit for my work because I needed to be a “team” player. A sound that Nick has amplified until I can’t hold it in a second longer.
I scream and I hear the door open, but Heath is moving to close it again. He swears he can handle it and I need time, but I don’t care because I scream again.
How fucking dare he?
He thinks he can break me.
“He can’t break you, baby,” a calm voice says.
I hadn’t realized I said the words out loud. Heath is standing there, his back to the door, barring anyone from entering. He’s there, a grim protector who watches me with tears in his eyes as though he feels my pain.
And suddenly it doesn’t matter that I’ve sworn to keep our relationship professional. There’s nothing professional between me and this man. I walk straight up to him. I need more from him. The scream was satisfying, but I need more.
His eyes flare and then his hands come down from around his chest, and he gets in my space. I feel savage as I go on my toes and wrap my arms around him. I kiss him, but it’s not a soft, sweet thing. It’s carnal. I’m running on pure emotion, and I realize it’s because I can. It’s because I can let out all this poison with him in a way I can’t with anyone else in the world. Not even my friends who I love.
I love Heath in a different way. I can acknowledge that in all its scary glory. I don’t know how brave I’ll be in ten minutes, but in this one I feel a fierce love for him. He gets a side of me no one else will ever see.
A side of me I didn’t understand existed until this moment.
I don’t stop kissing him as I drag his shirt overhead and my greedy hands find his skin. I can’t think of anything but him in the moment, how much I need him. How fucking much I will miss this man if I leave him.
“You don’t have to miss me,” he says, and now there’s something savage about him, too. My always laid-back boy genius sinks a hand in my hair and twists. I gasp because I feel that everywhere. “I won’t let you miss me, Ivy.”
He holds me still, and I feel his tongue surge inside as he takes over the kiss. The world tilts and I’m whirling along with it, running on emotion and the feel of his body against mine.
