by Nana Malone
There was silence on the line for a moment and Jaggar was worried she'd hung up. But then she finally spoke and her voice was soft. "Fine, meet me at the benches in front of the Smithsonian. Main entrance. Monday at 2."
Jaggar breathed a sigh of relief. "I'll be there. Thank you."
She might have made a miscalculation with Griffin, but this, this she knew. She could trust her gut. And she was going to get to the truth. With or without her partner.
12
Jaggar cut it close, but in the end made it into the office just in time for her meeting. She'd practically stalked Serena to get an in back at the club. And she'd worked another dancer to get Elsa's schedule. Griffin was already in the conference room when she walked in; he'd completely ignored her. For a second, she could only stare at him.
He wouldn’t even look at her? No acknowledgment. No indication to anyone that they'd had one hell of a Sunday. Nope. Total blank. Talked to Ryan, talked to one of the PAs, talked to Barbara. Basically, everyone but her.
Really, asshole? But honestly what did she expect? All that stuff he’d said to her, she'd known was just bullshit. She was kind of surprised that he wasn't proclaiming to everyone, ‘I've done the impossible, fucked Jaggar Jakes and this is my incontrovertible proof.’
You are a moron. That's what you get for thinking with your vag. Bad vag. Maybe you'll let the brain do the thinking from now on?
She took her seat and her notes and started to piece together a segment on Randall while she waited for them to get started. She'd spent the last twelve hours with her contact pouring over public records looking for a connection between Elsa and the family and she'd found it in the most unlikely of places.
She wanted to corroborate the story with Elsa first before she shared it with this group. Though Ryan would likely flay her. It didn't matter what she did. Barbara might be on her side, but she had better have excellent proof. Who knew what Griffin was going to do? He had more moods than a PMSing teenager.
For the duration of the meeting, she listened to everyone talk around her and she had the realization that they really didn’t need her. Not that she'd be heard over Ryan's booming voice.
It didn't sit well with her. She felt like freaking window dressing. Wasn't she here to do a job? Or was she sitting in this room simply because she and Griffin had chemistry?
And what made everything worse was no one seemed to notice that she didn’t contribute. No one. Hell, not even Barbara.
When the meeting was over, she dipped out the south entrance to take the stairs back up to her office to prep for Elsa. The woman was her final shot for a stand out story.
Oh yeah, like you had such a rapport yesterday. But, it was worth a shot.
Griffin walked in a few minutes after her and despite an intense glare or two, completely ignored her. And that was fine by her ... Or so she told herself. Not like she couldn’t still feel his hands on her, couldn't still feel his body pressing into hers, making her crazy.
Nope, it was all about the lies they could tell to each other. She texted the number she'd found for Elsa and kept an eye on her phone while she did show prep for the shows following the first one. If she even made it that far. Maybe Ryan would have her fired any moment.
Her messaging app dinged and she jumped.
Yes, I’m still willing to meet. The Mall. The twin benches in front of the Smithsonian?
Jaggar hurriedly typed out a message back.
Two o'clock still work?
Yes.
At one, Jaggar grabbed her phone and keys and Griffin looked up, pinning her with an indifferent glance. Like he hadn't spent half the morning yesterday worshiping her body. What she should have done was walk out. What she should have done was pay him no attention at all, but she couldn't do that. "You're seriously going to ignore me right now?"
He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. "You have something to get off your chest? I'm all ears."
"You know what? Not worth the breath to talk to you."
"Yeah, but I was worth the breath to fuck yesterday morning, right?"
She flinched as if he'd shouted. Given his reaction, she'd been nothing more than something to do in the early morning hours. "Well, considering that the pussy came to you instead of you going to it, I guess that was a lazy man win for you."
His brows snapped down and he opened his mouth to speak, but she was way past the point of listening and walked out, leaving him slack jawed.
On the way to The Mall, body still vibrating with anger and irritation and ... need, she called Andrea.
And as is the way with best friends, her friend listened diligently, even though this was her only day off all week.
"Honey, I’m sorry, I know you like to take your days off and catch up on all your shows, but I just can’t take it."
"Dude, this is better than Netflix any day."
"He's just so infuriating. I hate him."
"Uh, from what I saw at happy hour the other night, you don't hate him, and he certainly doesn’t hate you."
"Well, you should tell him that, the way he's strutting around pretending yesterday morning didn't happen, like I'm the crazy girl making the whole thing up."
"Okay, so what happened?"
"All right, so we were chasing this story. It'll be for our first show in a couple of weeks. We went to Club Prestige Saturday night so I could talk to a lead."
Andrea whistled low. "Wow, that place is legendary. I heard membership is so expensive they won’t even tell you how much it is."
"Yeah, pretty much. So anyway, we go chasing this story and he's flirty and sexy and all this shit. I went home that night and started piecing together pieces for the story. I get some info I needed corroborated and I went to his place for help. It might have been a little early in the morning."
"How early?"
Jaggar winced. "Oh you know, like just before six."
There was a pause on the line and Jaggar wondered if her friend had hung up. "You went to the man's house at six in the morning? That might as well be the middle of the night."
"Well, you know how I don't sleep and he doesn’t usually sleep much. I mean, nature of the job." She charged down the street toward her car, hitting the unlock button as she approached. "Anyway, he opens the door shirtless and—"
"This is the part where I need you to slow down. Every detail please, because just knowing his face, I know his body must be something to fuel fantasies."
"Yeah, you wouldn't be wrong. I mean, the abs. Damn. And he's not like muscle bound or anything. Lean. Real lean. But muscled like a soccer player. Broad shoulders. And Andrea, he has tattoos."
"Shit, pretty much pussy crack."
"I know!"
"I must know if you cataloged them all. Next time take a picture. I mean, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy at all that would have tattoos but maybe he's a secret bad boy."
"Great, just what I need."
"Okay, continue on. I assume you jumped him as soon as you walked in?"
"No. Not quite. It actually didn't happen like that." She explained the circumstances and Andrea added the appropriate holy fucks. She also glossed over just what he’d done to make her so hot. No need for Andrea to know all her shit, good friend or not. When she was done, Jaggar lay her head back against the headrest and started the car.
"Wait, so you saw the text and you bailed?"
"Well, yeah. I mean, he's obviously an ass. I mean he got sexted by some chick not an hour after he’d been inside me. If that doesn't say, 'leave this one alone,' I don’t know what does."
"You didn't talk to him?"
Jaggar opened her mouth then closed it. "Well. No. But what was I gonna say? Your phone buzzed then I saw a picture of this girl's tits and it pisses me off even though we're not even a thing? I figured I was doing him a favor not having to do the morning after thing."
"Oh Jaggar," Andrea sighed.
"What? Why are you 'Oh Jaggaring' me? I was right. Today he was aloof a
nd pretending he doesn’t know me. So clearly he doesn’t A.) want a repeat, or B.) that's what he wanted. To hit it and quit it."
"Honey, I love you, but you're a moron."
"What? How?" Jaggar scoffed.
"You bruised his ego."
Jaggar laughed. "You really think I could hurt pretty boy's feelings? He's a total manwhore."
"Look I know. Hell, I saw the women circling him at the club. But you said it yourself, that first time he kissed you, he stopped it from going too far."
"Yeah, but that was the bait. So he could make me so crazy I ran back for more."
Her friend laughed. "Look, if it were me, and me and some guy had some really hot sex and I worked with him, but then after, he vanished and expected to talk to me like everything is cool, I'd be pissed."
“You mean basically every time you pick up someone at a bar."
Andrea groaned. "One time that happened. And I was really drunk. I didn't recognize that he was the new substitute teacher at the school. We were both mortified."
Jaggar smirked. "So mortified you still bone him in the parking lot?"
Her friend’s voice went shrill. “We are talking your boning action. Not mine.”
“Fine.”
“Just talk to him, Jaggar. Especially if you want to be able to work with him. You said before he was on your side and stood up against that asshole, Ryan. Don’t alienate him.”
“How is it I am so bad at this?”
“It’s because you would rather focus on work than your feelings.”
“Fine. I’ll talk to him. But first I need to chase down this lead.”
“Okay, get it done,” Andrea said. “Oh, and Jaggar?”
“Yeah, Dre?”
“If there is a repeat, can you send a girl a photo?”
Jaggar hung up with a smile. It looked like she and Griffin were due for a long talk.
Griffin knew he was being an ass. Outside the morning meeting, he’d barely seen Jaggar all day. And he'd known she wanted to talk to him yesterday morning. That's why she'd come over. So why hadn’t she talked to him? Why hadn't she stayed? Why did she leave like that? Like you've never left someone's house in a hurry to avoid an awkward morning?
He’d done it plenty of times. But he didn't figure Jaggar for the type. Something had spooked her. Maybe it was you. There was a reason he didn’t sleep with girls at the office. He liked to keep his shit separate.
"Hey, you want to head to happy hour?"
Ryan's voice at the door had him bringing his head up.
"Oh, nah. I'm still working on some stuff."
“Come on man. We haven’t gone out in ages. I need your cast offs. How the hell else am I going to score the prime selections?” He laughed.
There it was again, that needling warning bell. He shoved it aside. He did not have time for that shit right now. “You do fine all by yourself.”
“Yeah, but you know what I mean. I can pull an eight. But, you. You can pull tens. Friends who can pull tens, don't let friends pull eights.” Ryan chuckled as he angled his head toward Jaggar’s desk. "I see the princess has already fucked off for the day. Did she have an important appointment with her manicurist or something?"
Griffin ground his teeth. He may have encouraged Ryan's annoyance with her in the past, but the way Ryan talked about her, it irritated him. She might be a giant pain in his ass, but she worked hard. And she was good at her job. And she was tenacious and smart.
She didn’t deserve half the shit Ryan gave her. She didn’t deserve his ribbing over the last year. What the hell was wrong with him? Maybe it sucks having someone not fawning all over you. Yeah sure, that stung but it was more than that. You bought that connection shit?
“Dunno.” His voice was clipped and curt.
Not that Ryan noticed. “Okay, be a spoil sport. But heads up, the plan is in motion. Just a little bit longer and tits and ass will be begging us to quit.” He tapped the door jamb, then pointed finger guns at Griffin before heading down the hall.
Seriously, how were the two of them friends?
At a quarter to seven, Jaggar stormed in with her characteristic take-no-prisoners march, only freezing when she saw him. "Oh, you're still here?"
"Been avoiding me, have you? Sorry to disappoint," he muttered.
She bit her lip. "I haven’t been avoiding you, Griffin. You’re the one who acted like you didn’t know me this morning. For your information, I’ve just spent the last several hours waiting for Elsa, who was a no show. After I left the Smithsonian because she never showed, I went by the club to talk to her again, but she wasn't there either."
She slid her laptop onto her desk and slipped off her fuck me shoes. God, he’d envisioned her a thousand times with nothing but those shoes on. It must have started to rain outside because wet drops of mist still clung to the strands of her hair. She was so damn beautiful, and she had zero idea what she was doing to him. Why had she walked out on him?
Knowing he should let it go didn't change that he couldn’t do that. Now that he'd finally had her, he couldn’t get her out of his head. Time to do something stupid.
He rounded his desk and stormed into her half of the office. "I didn't really have a choice yesterday morning. You were the one who turned up at my house. You said you had something to talk to me about. And then you fucking left."
Jaggar folded her arms and glared at him. "Look, I know it was no hardship, hell, Amber was waiting on deck. You expect me to believe you didn’t make your morning appointment with her?"
Heat crept up his neck. She'd seen the text. "Is that why you bolted?"
Her chin tipped up, but her gaze didn’t meet his. "Does it matter? You and I both know it didn't mean anything. It's fine."
"You didn’t talk to me. You didn’t cuss me out, you didn’t do anything. You were just gone. Considering that we're digging into Randall together, I thought we were a team."
Her voice was soft. "I know what you think of me. Just a hot piece of ass right? Who's not good enough to even grace the same stage as the great Griffin Styles."
"No. That’s what Ryan thinks. You don’t give me a chance. I know how good you are. I know you bust your ass. It's why I stood behind you on the Randall story. You’re smart. A pain in the ass, fun when you let yourself be and I—"
Jaggar threw up her hands. "What? What do you want from me?"
This was a mistake. Totally a mistake. He shouldn't. But right now, he couldn’t give two fucks. "Fuck it."
He closed the gap between them and slammed his lips over hers.
13
Fuck. Jaggar tasted like heaven and sin and everything he needed but shouldn’t want. With a muffled groan, she slid her tongue over his questing one and he shuddered. His brain went completely numb as the blood roared in his skull.
Why wasn’t he supposed to want this again? Why wasn't he supposed to do this again? Fuck, what the hell did the word forbidden mean again? Shit, he'd Google that later. Now, though, right now, he wanted to soak up more of this buzzy, skin tingling bliss.
Griffin wrapped his arms around her, lifting her until she sat on the edge of her desk. He dug his hands into her damp hair, angling her just so, as he delved deeper, taking more of her, demanding more from her.
Yes, God. Yes. As he coaxed her tongue into a dance with his, he stepped between her parted thighs, making them splay wider as the fabric of her dress shifted higher, exposing her garters.
The need was swift and desperate. Thinking was now impossible as all his objections gave way to sensation and memory and desire. His cock, knowing just what waited for him on the other side of the fabric, pulsed. Wanting access to her sweet center.
They might have been pissed off with each other, but their bodies certainly weren't. Their bodies needed to assuage the ache. Needed to race toward the bliss. Only after that could they maybe return to normal brain functioning.
Need driving him, he shifted a hand into her trench and helped tug it off her shoulders, exposi
ng the cobalt blue fabric of her wrap around dress. The damn thing had had him hard all morning as he mentally willed the front to open and expose the lush curves he knew were beneath.
He might have succeeded in keeping his eyes mostly to himself during the meeting, but that didn’t mean his brain had been with the program. Oh no. His grey matter had been busy concocting fantasies of him dragging her forward over the conference room table. And then her untying the sash of the dress to offer her spectacular breasts to him.
And in his happy dreamland he’d driven her mad, making her come just by teasing and sucking on her nipples. Then he'd pulled her onto his lap and watched the ecstasy on her face as she'd slid down his cock. In his fantasy, of course she hadn’t been wearing panties. Because …why?
And then the favorite part of his fantasy... when she'd leaned back over the desk, he'd held her legs wide and driven home again and again until, her smooth as silk pussy; had drained him of all his come. Because in his fantasies, why was there a need for condoms? Yeah, that little fantasy was also the reason Ryan and Barbara had had to repeat themselves
several times today.
Then, Zane, from marketing had had to re-explain a concept to him twice because Griffin could barely think with all the blood in his body rushing to his then raging erection.
Like a horny teenager, he'd had to use his laptop to mask just what he'd been thinking about. And now, well now, Jaggar tasted sweeter than anything Griffin could think of and all he wanted to do was keep touching her. So, yeah, Jaggar Jakes was a problem. And constantly on his mind. He just needed to get her out of his head.
He placed open mouthed kisses along her jaw and neck as his fingers fiddled with the sash of her dress. Just as he got it open, she slid her hands into his hair and his name escaped her lips on a whispered moan.
With the dress open and her bared to him, he leaned her back, so he could access her breasts better. Oh hell yes. Front clasp today. With a simple pinch of his fingers, her breasts spilled free.
