by Jenn Hype
Selfishly, I wanted some of her lightness to chase away my own shadows. I had nothing to return. Even if her spirit mended some of my internal wounds, it would drain her. Just like it did me when I was first deployed. I was young and naive, eager even, to help the helpless. Though we carried weapons and though I realized a war wasn’t about charity, I still held the hope that our presence would make a difference. That we’d be doing more good than harm. And slowly, day by day, bit by bit, the hope was drained out of me.
Not that we weren’t still doing good or making a difference. From the outside looking in, where you get the whole picture and see the results instead of the pain and suffering that can only be viewed from someone on the inside, it’s easy to convince yourself that it was all for the greater good. While I don’t regret my time served, and while I proudly stand behind our country, I can’t deny that every bullet fired from my gun, every life taken, every child caught in the crosshairs of a mission gone awry…all of it came with a price.
A price I gladly paid with no regrets. But then Blake unlocked the parts of me that I’d kept safely buried where no one could reach them. I’d shut myself off because allowing myself to feel only served as a reminder of all the things I’d lost. I refused to be bitter about my experiences in the military, but there was no denying it had affected me. Greatly. So keeping the bitterness out meant keeping everything else out, too.
And if I wanted to keep that darker side of me buried, then getting rid of Blake was my only option.
Fuck. Internally warring with myself was getting old.
“We went to an early lunch because there’s this new place that opened up a couple streets over that serves an amazing brunch. Your mom told me your favorite thing to eat for breakfast, so I grabbed you something since you almost always skip lunch.”
Ignoring her thoughtful gesture, I took the box and grunted out, “Can I see you in my office for a minute?”
I retreated to my office without checking to make sure she was following. Whatever was in the takeout container smelled amazing and my stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten yet today other than a protein shake that I always drank before my morning run. But my mind was on something else, so I tossed the box onto my desk none-too-gently, turning around in time to see Blake walk through the door warily.
She stepped aside when I took long strides to reach my office door, and when I looked at her after locking the handle, her eyes were wide and questioning, but not fearful. My muscles were coiled tightly, my fists clenching, my teeth grinding. I watched her take it all in. I was barely holding onto my self-control, and it was showing. I towered over her and probably weighed twice as much. Anyone else would have been at least a little nervous when trapped in a room with a man my size whose knuckles were turning white from clenching his fists.
Not Blake. I kept waiting for apprehension, nervousness or any form of unease to take over. The only reaction I got from her was a look of concern. I probably could have pulled my fist up like I was going to hit her - which I would never do - and she wouldn’t even blink. She trusted me. Maybe part of it was naivete on her part, but mostly she just wasn’t afraid of me. Not even a flicker of doubt.
Pushing her away, keeping her at a distance, was damn near impossible when she looked at me with those big brown eyes with nothing but concern and affection. The tug of war going on inside of me came to a halt when the damn rope snapped in half.
Blake stood before the wall-to-ceiling window of my office. The midday sun was high, pouring light and warmth into the room, yet as I took a slow perusal of Blake’s body, I couldn’t help but notice her nipples hardening and goosebumps spreading over her skin. She enjoyed having my hungry eyes study the way the light blue dress she wore wrapped around her body, dipping low between her cleavage and flaring out around her hips, stopping a few inches above her knees. Her nude heels made her legs look long and slender, and I envisioned what her skin would feel like as I kissed my way from her ankles to the sensitive skin under her knee, not stopping until I reached the apex between her thighs. From there my imagination turned much more vivid. I wanted to lift the skirt of her dress, run my nose along the seam where her panties met her thighs and skim my hands over her hips, around to cup her ass.
Her breath hitched, and I knew she was picturing a similar scenario. My dick was so hard it hurt, but the ache in my chest overshadowed my physical pain. Blake made me ache for things beyond my reach. She was dangerous, and my survival instincts pleaded with me to turn away. To put a stop to the quiet moment of intensity. To just open the door and walk out.
But I couldn’t. I needed to feel her in my arms, to taste her mouth against mine, more than I needed my next breath.
So before I could talk myself out of it, I closed the distance between us in three easy strides. Without giving her time to even think about it, I bent my knees, grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her mouth to mine. If she’d hesitated or frozen up for even a fraction of a second, I would have pulled back. I wasn’t going to force myself on someone. Her lips immediately moved with mine, her body going so lax to the point where I had to use my other hand to keep her from falling, and I couldn’t help letting out a groan of satisfaction.
I slipped one of my legs between her thighs, pressing my hardness against her stomach. Blake moaned when I pressed up against her center, parting her lips and greedily accepting my tongue. She matched me, stroke for stroke, in a kiss that rocked my fucking world. It was both slow and sensual, yet heated and bruising. Using my grip on her neck, I tilted her head to the side for better access. With each passing second, Blake was turning into putty in my hands.
We were quickly approaching the point of no return, so I forced myself to break the kiss. Making out in my office was bad enough, but anything more than that would be beyond inappropriate.
I racked my brain, trying to think of what to say. I needed her to go, but I didn’t want to be a dick. I just needed a minute to compose myself, and I didn’t know how to ask for it without hurting her feelings.
Turned out, I didn’t have to ask her to leave. For someone who seemed to live just to annoy me, she also somehow knew when I needed space. With a quick peck on the cheek and pat to the chest, Blake left my office without saying a word. I was grateful, really, but couldn’t help noticing that she had a tendency to easily walk away from me without so much as a goodbye or a backwards glance.
And I didn’t like that at all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BLAKE
“Dispute not with her: she is lunatic.”
- William Shakespeare
CJ avoided me for two days after the kiss.
And let’s just be real here. It wasn’t just a kiss. It was the kiss that made all other kisses look pathetic.
It was perfect and amazing and just…wrong.
I had been nothing but myself around CJ. Even though his mom had asked me to get under his skin, I hadn’t done anything I wouldn’t do normally. But his mom’s involvement added a layer of guilt over my good-natured fun. I wondered if he put up with me only because he had to out of loyalty to his mom. It shouldn’t matter, really. My initial goal was to get a friend out of the situation. Friends are a lot less complicated. And friends didn’t kiss each other like the world is about to end and they were making the most out of their last few precious seconds on earth.
Until he kissed me, I truly didn’t know if he even liked me. As a person, not sexually. I was almost positive he couldn’t stand me. Yeah, I noticed a little sexual attraction, but I wasn’t naive enough to think that could be the product of anything other than a basic physical reaction. You could hate a person yet still find them attractive. In fact, hot hate sex was pretty awesome.
I didn’t want hot hate sex with CJ, though. From the day we met, I could see how much he was holding back. Not from me, from everyone. He wasn’t the first person I attempted to ‘fix’, but he was the first person I found myself truly and personally invested in. His happiness mattered to
me, even if that made no sense at all. I barely knew the guy, so I know it sounds crazy that I already felt so attached to him, especially since he had only ever acted annoyed when I was around. But the heart wants what the heart wants, right?
My heart being involved made me grateful CJ broke the kiss. I’d been so deep into the moment, it took . It meant something to me, but I had no idea what it meant to him. I wasn’t the type of person to sacrifice myself and accept only being half-happy because I was settling for pieces of someone. If I was willing to only give half of myself, that was one thing. But even though I couldn’t explain why, I knew already that I didn’t want just half of CJ. Not until I understood him better and knew the reason I felt so drawn to him would I consider sleeping with him. I could do casual sex, but sex with CJ? That would be anything but casual. And not just because he was my boss. He just…mattered.
Which was why even though I knew it was probably a good thing CJ was avoiding me…again…it still frustrated me. How was I supposed to get through to him if he was always hiding?
The result was me being in a bad mood. Something that didn’t happen often and generally not in public. However, I was giving myself a pass. I finally - finally - had a desk. It took a pan of brownies, a box of donuts and Starbucks coffee to bribe two of the guys to help me assemble my desk. Pretty sure the jerks would have still done it if I’d have laid on the guilt, but I was trying to make friends, not enemies. Plus, anything I could do to keep the guys on my side of the war with CJ (which he still didn’t know was happening) the better.
The first part of the war was setting CJ up on social media. The second part was placing my brand spanking new desk, courtesy of Jade Securities (another thing CJ didn’t know about) right in front of the boss man’s office. It took up half the hallway and was completely in the way, but since the guys were in on what I was doing, they didn’t mind having to go around me. Boss-man on the other hand would most likely lose his crap when he saw I’d set up in the most ridiculous place to put a desk ever.
The downfall to having a desk was having to learn to tackle the phone system. Never in my entire life had I ever felt so stupid. It was a damn phone. It should not have been so complicated. But there was like, a thousand buttons and most of them weren’t labeled. Even the ones that told you what they were for didn’t work without secret cheat codes. For example, you couldn’t simply hit ‘transfer’ and then someone’s line to send the call to their phone. No, that would be too easy. Instead there was a sequence of buttons that needed to be pushed to accomplish said goal, none of which I knew.
It didn’t help that all the guys found it so hysterical that they refused to teach me how to use it. And they kept calling my extension constantly just to annoy the piss out of me. Though I wasn’t blaming it all on the lack of training. I was convinced my phone in particular had become self-aware and was plotting my demise. No matter what I did, the damn phone wouldn’t do what it was supposed to.
CJ finally made an appearance. The timing wasn’t great, since I was trying to murder my evil desk phone. Destruction of company property was the last thing on my mind when I yanked the cord out of the wall, banged the receiver on my desk a few hundred times and then proceeded to throw the base of the phone onto the floor where I beat it to death with my stapler.
By the time I finished, the phone was in pieces and the guys were unabashedly staring at me with mixed emotions of humor and horror. When I sat up, my chest heaving harshly as I looked around with crazy eyes, everyone scattered like little bugs. Except for CJ. He stood there with his cell phone out, turned sideways while he smiled at his screen.
“What are you doing?”
Oops. That came out a little more annoyed sounding than it was supposed to.
“Uploading this on Facebook,” he explained casually. So casually, in fact, that it took me a second to realize exactly what he’d said.
“You’re doing what?” I asked, chasing after him. I hesitated a little, somewhat wary to revisit the scene of the crime, aka The Kiss, but when he took a seat behind his desk I figured it was pretty safe to enter. “You don’t have Facebook.”
One of CJ’s eyebrows quirked up. “Don’t I?”
My head fell back and I growled. “I am going to kill Liam.”
“I never agreed to keep it a secret!” Liam, now deemed The Little Shit, yelled from somewhere nearby.
“Secrecy was implied, jerkwad!”
“Sticks and stones, Blakey-poo!”
Our teasing was in jest, but I was still pissed he ratted me out so soon. I had big plans for those social media accounts, and he just thwarted them. But then I looked back at CJ and found him laughing. A small laugh, mostly under his breath, but it was enough. My heart did that stupid pitter-patter thing that happens when your seventh-grade crush finally notices you for the first time after months spent pining after him.
Instead of fist-pumping the air in victory, because I’d achieved the unachievable - getting CJ to participate in social media - I narrowed my eyes and tried like hell to keep from smiling.
“Game. On.”
CJ laughed louder as I walked away. And even though I was already plotting ways to torture him, there was no denying the smile that was taking up permanent residence where CJ was concerned.
-
The next day I made sure to beat CJ to the office. I wasn’t even discreet about it. My phone was aimed at him and already recording when he walked through his office door. He looked at me funny when I smiled brightly, and I could tell he was starting to sense something was off. A few seconds later, he sat down in his chair and immediately tipped backwards, his legs sticking straight up into the air. Watching him struggle to get off the floor was almost as funny as the fall itself. I took off running once he got to his feet.
I didn’t think he’d come after me, but I wasn’t risking it, so instead of hiding behind my desk I ran straight to the break room. It was a good thing, too, because he did chase me. He tried to snag my phone out of my hands to stop the video from uploading, but I curled myself into a ball, completely blocking him from being able to reach my hands. His long arms wrapped around me from behind, and of course my mind went to incredibly dirty places. And he gave me dirty, but in the most annoying way possible. Instead of bending me over the counter and doing unspeakable things to me, he played the dirtiest trick in the book.
Tickling.
His hands wrapped around me from behind. Then the bastard used one hand to tickle my sides while the other grabbed for my phone. I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt. I could feel CJ laughing since his chest was pressed up against my back, but the sound was drowned out by my squealing. Someone clearing their throat froze us both in place. It occurred to me just then how unprofessional we were being. We. As in CJ not only was goofing off, but he was doing it at work. I was officially the Olympic Gold Medalist at getting people to slack off and be ridiculous.
The throat clearing had come from Momma Rose.
“He started it!” I yelled, yanking out of his hold and ducking to hide behind his mom.
“Coward,” he muttered as he stalked past his mom and walked away.
Once he was out of earshot, I stepped away from Rose and tried to catch my breath. “I might need you to spend the day just hanging out with me. You make a great bodyguard.”
Rose was quiet behind me as I reached into the fridge and snagged a bottle of water. When I turned around, she was looking at me funny. My nose scrunched up, but she didn’t explain. I waited for her to bring up our ‘arrangement’. The one where I continue to poke at CJ and she continues to give me job security by abusing her use of what I like to call “Mom Guilt”. You know, that special way that moms have about them that can make a kid feel bad, apologize and immediately start doing things to get back into her good graces. My mom was a big fan of Mom Guilt and I could tell Rose was the same way.
But she didn’t say anything. She just smiled wistfully and walked out.
Well, that was weird.
I stopped off at the bathroom before going back to my desk. Partly to check how I looked after that damn tickle fight, but mostly to give myself a second to recompose. This playful side of CJ was going to be my undoing. He was all parts sexy when he was doing his brooding and stoic routine but the smiling, laughing, teasing side of him was getting to me. I’d always felt a sense of humor on a man was attractive, and CJ being so serious and difficult had made it easier (fractionally) to keep my attraction to him restricted to physical only. But the more he loosened up and let himself relax, the harder I started to fall. It made me wonder which was the real him. If he forced himself to be quiet and distant, or if the lightheartedness was a glitch that would repair itself soon.
It kinda broke my heart to think of CJ going back to his non-smiling self. A man as good as CJ deserved happiness. Though I had a feeling he wouldn’t agree. Depriving himself of said happiness almost seemed like a way of protecting himself. Or punishment. Maybe a little of both.
When I finally dared to approach my desk, I frowned when I found CJ’s door closed. Not really sure what I was expecting from him, though based on my disappointment, I’d venture a guess that I was hoping to continue our tickle fight.
“Heads up,” Malcom muttered under his breath as he walked-slash-sprinted past my desk. He was out of sight within seconds, so he didn’t get to see the what the hell face I was making at him.
“I need to speak with Christopher,” a prim and snotty as hell voice said, pulling my attention away from the spot where Malcom had seemingly morphed into a cloud of dust.
I took a second to take in the woman before me. She was stupidly gorgeous. Like, seriously flawless. Her dark hair was pin straight, glossy and long enough to reach past the middle of her back. She had a perfect hourglass figure that made me want to hate her immediately. All curves but still thin. Bitch.
