Asking For A Friend

by Parker, Ali

  “And you rose to it.” A ghost of a smile touched his lips, but he didn’t say anything more. In that glimmer of a moment though, I realized something about him.

  “You’re not as tough as people think you are, are you?” The question was out before I could stop it. I wanted to stuff it back into my mouth as soon as it was out, but I also didn’t. I wanted his answer. I needed to hear it, actually.

  The air between us thickened, and an awkward tension clung to every molecule. Layton didn’t react at first. Then, ever so slowly, the corners of his mouth started rising into something between a smirk and a smile.

  “I’m very tough, Marissa,” he said, humor creeping into his tone and shining in his eyes. “I am the boss, after all. It’s in the job description.”

  My ears perked up. Was that a little joke I heard? “I’ve heard that. Bosses must maintain a tough exterior at all times, lest their subjects realize they’re actually only human.”

  “What makes you think I’m human?” He shot back without missing a beat. “I could be a robot.”

  “Good point.” With an office as neat as his, it was entirely possible. “I think it’s a bit of an act. Am I right?”

  “A gentleman never tells,” he said, then pushed off the wall. “I’d better get going. Thanks again, Marissa. You did a good job.”

  How many times could I almost fall off my chair in one conversation? There was clearly more to Layton Bridges than met the eye. The more I found out about him, the more I wanted to know the man behind the handsome face and sexy body.

  Though I was certainly also curious about the sexy body. I definitely wouldn’t say no to getting to know him more—personally. To lick all those hard lines hidden by the designer suits, to find the places that made him moan, and to see what he looked like when he lost that control he held onto so tightly.

  But I also wanted to know what he thought when his lips quirked up or his eyes shone. I wanted to climb into that big brain of his and find out what made him tick. Why it made him tick and how.

  I wondered whether I would ever get to know any of that, though. As my boss, I was sure I was going to get to know him better. I kind of wished I could get to know him as something other than my boss though, just as a person.

  He intrigued me, and the fact that he’d left his pride behind and came to say thank you, even when he didn’t have to, brought a smile to my lips. He moved to the door, pausing with his hand on the doorjamb to look at me over his shoulder.

  “Bye Marissa. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a good evening,” he said, and then he was gone.

  I sat in my office alone, staring at the door with a stupid smile stuck on my face. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

  Chapter 11

  Layton

  It was dark outside, the city lights twinkling beyond my office windows. Everyone else had long since gone home, but I was still in the office. The blueprints I was working on weren’t coming together to my satisfaction, and I was staying put until I was happy. I would never be able to switch my mind off otherwise.

  My pencil scratched against the heavy duty paper, the only non-electrical sound in the office. The lights hummed, creating a low droning in the air.

  For some reason, I was having trouble focusing on my work. Usually I got so completely immersed that everything else faded away, but that wasn’t happening for me tonight. Every line I drew seemed off, wrong somehow.

  Images of a certain buxom blonde kept creeping into my brain. A few times, I even caught myself sketching her flowing curls or the curve of her eyes. Marissa and I had spoken a few times since that day in her office more than a week ago, but our conversations were trivial. Seemingly unimportant. Yet every time I saw her, every time we spoke, I found it harder to dismiss her from my thoughts after she was gone.

  The attraction I felt to her was undeniable. It was pure lust. Desire in its most primal form. Nothing I did by myself seemed to sate it. My body wanted hers, craved it. The feel of her soft curves beneath the hard planes of my body, even if only conjured up by my imagination, occupied too much of my time.

  I gripped my pencil harder. Focus, Bridges.

  Looking down at the sketch in front of me, I saw I had drawn her again. Not her, exactly. But aspects of her. Grabbing my eraser, I rubbed the images away until there was nothing but a smudge where they used to be. I wished it could be that easy to erase them from my mind.

  Lowering my head, I blew away the rubber shavings and sighed, narrowing my eyes at the dark smudge on the corner of the page. Lust wasn’t something I had found myself hung up on in a long, long time. With Marissa though, having her around my office day in and day out made it more difficult to forget about how much I wanted her.

  Even sitting at my desk with half completed blueprints in front of me and a silent office around me didn’t afford me any peace. Thoughts of imagined images swirled around in my mind, keeping me right on the cusp of getting hard despite my surroundings.

  It was damn frustrating. I spun my chair toward the view behind me, deciding to take a break to refocus my mind. These blueprints needed to get done and no amount of procrastinating, or whatever it was called when you had sex on the brain, was going to get the job done for me.

  I slid my eyes to the far left where the tower of one of the first buildings I’d designed for the city was barely visible in the dark. Only the multicolored sign that now resided on top of it gave the location away in the darkness, but I would always be able to find it.

  Had the sign not been there, I still would have been able to pinpoint the exact location of that tower. I was still able to sketch it from memory. It was a significant design for me, the first that made me believe I had a real future as an architect. The first contract I knew without a doubt I’d gotten because of me, not because of my last name.

  Eyes rooted to the tower, I willed the kind of focus I’d had while designing it to come back to me. I’d been a fucking rock star on that project. In what had been a fledgling firm at the time, my staff went so far as to take bets on how many days straight I could work without taking a break.

  I outlasted even the most optimistic of the bets, sleeping on the uncomfortable couch in my office for no more than a couple of hours at a time before a dream about the building would wake me and compel me to keep going.

  So why the hell couldn’t I dream up so much as one perfect line for the facade of the building I was in the process of designing? It was ridiculous.

  Get your head in the game, Bridges. Now. Determined to get to a place on the blueprints where I could head home to grab at least a little sleep before our Friday morning staff meeting—less than twelve hours from now—I turned back to my desk.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when I caught movement at my door from the corner of my eye. Startled, I snapped my attention back from where it was lingering between lust and the past, then narrowed my eyes at my door. Marissa appeared in the doorway, striding through without a care in the world, just as she always did. A frisson of annoyance traveled down my spine.

  For all the world it would look like she belonged in this office. She didn’t. The further away she stayed from it, the better. My concentration was suffering enough because of her as it was. The last thing I needed was to have to deal with her lingering floral and vanilla scent in my office once she left.

  Even the way she smelled drove me wild, and it was never completely the same. In the few times I’d been alone with her in an enclosed space, I’d determined that she had to have an array of shampoo or body lotions, or whatever it was she used.

  There was always something new, something different about the scent, yet it was also always familiar. Something sweet that was obviously her.

  “I’m not the only one burning the midnight oil, I see.” She smiled, her full lips curled only a little at the edges. There was hardly any makeup left on her face at this hour, which somehow made her even more alluring. “What’s keeping the boss himself at the office so late?”

&nb
sp; Tearing my eyes away from the deep blue of hers, I looked pointedly down at the paper spread out in front of me. “Blueprints. What about you? Why are you here so late?”

  Marissa shrugged, the upward movement of her shoulders slightly lifting the hem of her bright purple dress. The temperature in the office was mild despite the bitter cold outside. She seemed intent on taking advantage of it, dressing in clothes that revealed more than any winter attire had the right to much less than I was partly hoping her summer attire would.

  “There was too much work just sitting there on my desk and staring at me when the others left,” she said. “I couldn’t leave it all until tomorrow. I’m here to do my job, so I couldn’t leave when there was so much left to do.”

  Something we had in common. It wasn’t a welcome realization that we might share the same work ethic or anything else, for that matter. It was bad enough that she was so physically appealing and appeared to be smart and dedicated. I didn’t need another reason to actually like this woman who had been thrust at me.

  Despite that thought, I gestured for her to take a seat. “Since you’re here, want to take a break for a minute?”

  What the fuck was I doing? This was so unlike me, but it was like my mouth and my hands were moving without my consent. A surprised grin spreading across her face, she accepted my invitation by lowering herself into the seat across from me.

  Fuck.

  “What are you working on?” she asked, leaning forward to get a peek at my design. A lock of golden curls spilled over her shoulder as she bent down, the strands seeming to glow as they clung to the rich purple material.

  Intrigue darkened her eyes as they moved across the lines of the drawing. “It looks impressive.”

  I shook my head decisively. “It’s not, that’s why I’m still here. It’s just not coming together the way I want it to.”

  “I understand completely.”

  My turn to be surprised, I frowned at her. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “It’s a different kind of design, obviously, but I like it. It’s interesting. I’m a designer too by the way,” she said. Great, that’s just fucking great. Another thing we had in common. Apparently not noticing my cringe, she continued. “And I just love doing it. It’s the kind of creative outlet I desperately need after working with numbers all day.”

  “What do you design?” I couldn’t help but ask, my interest somehow piqued.

  “Clothes,” she said. “Dresses mostly. I don’t do it as much or as often as I’d like, but it’s a side gig I adore.”

  A side gig? I knew what she’d been getting paid while she was working at my father’s and I knew what I was paying her. The woman didn’t need a side gig. Supporting one person on what we paid had to be a breeze. It was more than enough to get by, enough even to save and live in relative luxury while still having money left over at the end of the day.

  As if she could read my mind, she said, “I do it because I’m passionate about it. Sometimes, I sit up until nearly sunrise working on a design that caught my interest, trying to see it done. Sometimes just to get it out of my system if nothing else. That’s what I meant about understanding when something’s not coming together the way you want it to. It gets frustrating, doesn’t it?”

  Among other frustrating things in my life at the moment. “Yeah, it sure is.”

  Standing up, she smoothed out her dress and flashed me another smile. “Want me to take a look? I might not know much about designing buildings, but a fresh pair of eyes couldn’t hurt much, could it?”

  My back stiffened. Not enough for her to see, just enough for me to recognize that my natural aversion to taking advice on my work was still alive and well in my gut. She was already rounding the desk though. As always, not bothering with waiting for my assent.

  Forcing my spine to slacken, I sighed internally and moved over an inch. “Sure. It couldn’t hurt.”

  Genuine joy sparked in her eyes. Curiouser and curiouser.

  She came to stand next to my chair, leaning down low. This close I could detect whiffs of jasmine in her floral scent of the day. I could feel the heat radiating from her soft skin. Motherfucker, the things she did to me.

  With sharp eyes, she surveyed the drawing in front of her. She extended her finger gracefully and pointed at a line that was in the process of becoming a balcony, her nails freshly manicured and painted. “What’s that?”

  I could barely think with her this close, but outwardly I remained aloof and collected. “It was a balcony, but now I don’t think it fits there.”

  She squinted as if she was trying to imagine it, then nodded. “A balcony doesn’t fit there, you’re right.”

  Tilting her head, she let out an excited sound. “Oh. Wait. I think I have an idea.”

  Fast as lightning, she reached for a pen from a stack in a holder on my desk. It moved over an inch out of place, angling totally off center. The familiar tingling to move it back, to snatch the pen from her hand and replace it in its designated place zapped through me.

  Automatically, I moved my hand to the edge of my desk and started tapping. If she didn’t leave soon so I could right it, I was going to start twitching, it was so out of place.

  Unperturbed, she drew a line on the complete other side of the drawing and straightened out to survey her handiwork, a broad grin lifting the corners of her lips. “There. Don’t you think it fits better there?”

  The tapping got louder. In the back of my mind, I recognized that what she’d done on the drawing made sense, but I was too focused on the pens to pay much attention.

  Frowning when all I did was give her a tight nod, her gaze dropped to my tapping finger. Almost as if it were a reflex, she reached out to place her hand over mine. As soon as I felt her warm skin on mine, all bets were off.

  It was taking all the restraint I could muster to keep from straightening the holder. To keep from pointing out that she’d drawn on my blueprint with a pen when it was only in the pencil stage.

  Fuck it.

  Her mouth was right there as she peered down at me, still frowning. Her pink tongue darted out between her lips and wet them in a swipe that was far too brief. It left behind a glisten that made them impossible to ignore.

  My nerves were already frayed, my restraint non-existent. I sat up straighter, lessening the distance between our mouths. Marissa’s lips parted just enough that I could hear the sharp intake of breath.

  For a moment, I expected her to step back. She didn’t. I thought she might straighten all the way up, putting distance between us again. She didn’t do that, either.

  Instead, her gaze on mine held steady. I saw the same hunger there that I was sure was present in my own. Having given her a fraction of second to change her mind, I was done waiting. I wanted those lips on mine and I wanted it now.

  Chapter 12

  Marissa

  I barely had time to make sense of what was happening. One second, I was looking over Layton’s design, acting on an impulse to move the balcony that he appeared to be struggling to position. The next, he began tapping again and my hand shot out on reflex to soothe him.

  All of a sudden, out of absolutely nowhere, the kind of heat I wouldn’t have imagined he had in him jumped to the surface of those green eyes. It burned with an intensity I couldn’t quite fathom in a man who was usually as cool as a cucumber.

  But I couldn’t deny it either. It was definitely there and it took my breath away. With one look, he got me wetter than I’d been in a very long time. A testament to my current sex life, or lack thereof, that a freaking look would get me hot, bothered and throbbing in an instant.

  The insistent need between my legs came on as suddenly as his lips moving toward mine. Before I could overthink the situation, before I could convince myself that this was a bad idea, Layton had sealed his lips over mine.

  Sealing though, was a bit of an understatement. It was more like—claiming. He kissed with the same confidence he exuded in every other aspect of his l
ife. There was nothing hesitant about the press of his lips against mine, though the skin was much softer than I would have expected.

  The faint stubble on his beard scraped against my skin, reminding me that this really was happening. It wasn’t just another fantasy, he was kissing me. For real.

  It was firm and demanding, expert and precise. He kissed like he drew, with sure strokes guaranteed to get the job done. What the job was, I didn’t know yet. But I was putty in his very capable hands at the moment. Whatever he wanted to do with me, he could do.

  Fierce and surprisingly passionate, he wound his fingers into my loose hair and gripped the nape of my neck until it almost hurt. Almost, but not quite. Instead, it brought with it a kind of pleasure I wouldn’t have thought I’d be into. The kind where the brink of pain elicited a pleasurable response. Fifty shades, much?

  I would’ve rolled my eyes at myself if I wasn’t so absorbed in his kiss. Trying to catalog exactly what each sensation he brought to me felt like.

  This was the kind of kiss I wanted to remember. The kind I could take out and dust off to replenish my spank bank for years to come.

  I’d always been an all-in, ride-or-die kind of girl. If I ordered ice cream, I got at least two scoops with hot fudge and two cherries. From the second my lips touched Layton’s, two very clear choices presented themselves.

  The first choice was the logical one. The man was my boss, he had a definite propensity for dickishness, and returning this kiss was a recipe for—at the very least—some major awkwardness in the morning. Stepping away from him with a surprised giggle and hauling ass out of there—after smoothing things over with a stammered apology—was probably what I should have done.

  But that second scoop of ice cream—it was always so good. The first was never totally satisfying. The spoon always scraped the bottom of the bowl just before you were ready for it to happen. The richness of the hot fudge only melted into my very soul once I was on the second scoop.