by Pam Godwin
I spun in a circle, scanning the floor around my Chucks. No snakes. Releasing a breath, I took in the rest of the office, the couches, the potted plants in the corners, and the bookshelves at the far end. A few slithered at the edges of the room, but they weren’t pouring out of the vents or anything.
The wriggling black bodies concentrated on and around the desk. Maybe three or four dozen, each about a foot long and thin as a pencil. I could imagine her dumping them all right on the desk and lifting that daring chin as she marched out.
More fell onto the floor, slithering beneath the desk and disappearing to God knew where. It was insane, spectacularly immature, and I really kind of adored her for it.
A smile pulled at my lips. “Well played, Kaci.”
Now the question was, how much did she hate me? In other words, were they venomous? I slammed back the rest of the coffee and dropped the cup in the wastebasket. Then, while keeping an eye on the snakes, I used my phone to search the Interwebs. A few minutes later, I determined they were ringnecks. Only slightly venomous.
Did that mean she only slightly hated me? That was comforting.
Online sources said they could be handled by humans due to their tiny fangs and non-aggressive nature. I plucked one off the floor, pinching just behind the head. Given that she considered me a snake, if I died from a snakebite, it would be a poetic way to get even. I suspected she thought of that. Probably while she was talking to my other self Saturday night. If she only knew.
I needed the papers in the messenger bag, so I kept it on my shoulder as I carried the snake to Alicia’s desk, holding it out of sight.
She blinked up at me, pushing out her chest in a comically obvious way. “Can I help you, Mr. Flynt?”
I’d inherited Trent's assistant along with his office. She was probably well-used by him, but I hadn’t found any illegal behavior during my two days of monitoring her activities. Nevertheless, I only approached her when I needed something insignificant. “Need you to call in animal control.”
Her over-plucked brows pulled together. “Sorry, did you say—?”
“Got a pest problem.” I held up the snake.
She screeched, her chair rolling back and hitting the wall in her scramble to stand.
“There’s an infestation.” I gestured toward my office. “Make the call.”
With a hand over her gaping mouth and her eyes locked on the snake, she blindly reached for the phone.
The thin, scaly body coiled around my fingers as I crossed the building to Kaci’s wing. I brought the snake as an icebreaker, but the documents in my messenger bag would be the pivotal point of our conversation this morning.
If she truly wasn’t involved in her family’s debauchery, the details of my blackmail would break her heart. I licked my lip with cautious hope, wanting so desperately for her to be innocent. But at the same time, I loathed seeing her hurt again.
Jenna looked up from her monitor as I approached. I held the snake at my back to avoid another ear-splitting scream.
Her round face grew even rounder with a smile. “Good Morning. You’re Mr. Flynt, right?”
I’d investigated Jenna, as well. She e-mailed those files to Kaci, but didn’t appear to be involved in any suspicious activities. I gave her a short nod. “Is Kaci in today?”
“Yes. Right through there.” She pointed, her husky voice matching her large build.
I didn’t knock. I was her boss, after all. I moved the snake forward so she wouldn’t miss it and opened the door.
My breath rushed from my lungs. The woman before me, with eyes of the darkest blue and silken blonde hair in waves around her arms, reclined in one of the big leather chairs in the sitting area beside her desk. Her creamy skin glowed against her black slacks and short-sleeve sweater the color of her eyes.
With a leg thrown over the armrest, her hair down, and feet bare, she stared at the laptop on her lap. She looked collected, in control of her entire being. Not tightly composed like she’d been when she watched the video.
Nothing on her face indicated strain or concealment. Her soft expression and the fluidity of her breaths seemed natural, effortless, almost at peace. It was a desirable look on her, underscoring her vivid beauty without trying. Fucking breathtaking.
She glanced up at the snake in my hand. “Now there’s something you don’t see every day. A carnivorous, cold-blooded reptile holding a snake.”
My jaw clenched at her meaning, but my chest lifted at the sound of her lilt. I wanted to hate her for being so goddamned beautiful. I wanted to kiss her for the same reason.
I wanted to know how many times Collin had fucked her since our night together. No, fuck, I didn’t want to know that.
I wanted to demand she leave him, which was ridiculous. She fucking hated me.
My muscles tensed to fix what I broke, to fight if I had to. It was a powerful need, shooting a tingle across my lips, a tingle that burned to take her mouth.
Even as I despised her for being unfaithful. I looked away, and my eyes ached with an overwhelming urge to pull back to her as my heart hammered to close the distance.
I sucked in a long, deep breath. Jesus, how could there be so much contradiction contained in my body?
Because you want her, and you know you can’t have her.
The snake coiled its tail under my sleeve as I locked the door and strode toward her. Holding it by the head, I dangled the squirming body in front of her face. “I see you’ve been thinking about me.”
She slowly closed the laptop, without a single twitch at the snake wriggling inches from her nose. “Did you know snakes have two penises?” She reached beside the chair, raised a tall wastebasket, and held it beneath the snake. “And some have spiny hooks on their dicks. You know, so they can anchor themselves inside to extend the duration of the fucking.”
Her tone was calm. Too calm. I wanted her to scream at me.
I dropped the snake in the basket, a creature I would never look at the same way again. “Two penises?”
“It allows the snake to go from one mate to another without a period of latency in between. Which makes me wonder.” She set the snake aside and leaned back, staring up at me. “How many people are you screwing to get want you want?”
I gripped the back of my neck, my stomach hardening with frustration and guilt. Tell her. Tell her everything.
Then what? At what lengths would she go to escape the threat Trent used against her and Collin? After what I did to her, she’d sell me out in a heartbeat, and who could fucking blame her?
I lifted the strap of the messenger bag over my head, dropped it on the floor, and looked her in the eyes. “You’re asking the wrong questions. You don’t even know what I want.”
Pulling her bare feet onto the cushion and bending her knees against the armrest, she turned her head and gazed through the wall of windows beside us.
The broad shoulders of Chicago’s skyline stretched over the horizon, its architecture and height spread out with room to breathe in the fiery sunrise. It was a hypnotic picture of elegance and strength, like the profile of the woman watching it.
Without moving her eyes, she said, “You want the same thing they all do. Money. Sex. Control. Life in the fast lane.”
That last one was incredibly accurate, jabbing at my childhood dream of racing professionally and legally. But she hadn’t meant it in the literal sense.
I crouched beside her chair, our faces a foot apart, and waited for her to give me her eyes. When she did, I filled mine with honesty. “You’re wrong about me.” Which contradicted the motivation I’d given Trent, but I didn’t want her categorizing me with the assholes who controlled her. “I’m not them.”
For a long moment, she studied my face. Roaming over my jaw and lips, flitting to my eyes, lingering on my right eyebrow, she blinked away, only to return to my brow again.
I stifled a smile, holding as still as possible. I seriously loved her quirky fascination with that part of me, loved that she
noticed the natural arch so quickly. Other than my mother, she was the only person who’d ever looked close enough to detect it.
Something shifted in her gaze, latching on to whatever she saw in mine. “I believe you. Just like when you gave me your word in the hotel room.” Her lips formed a flat line. “Why are you here?”
Christ, her expression was a heart-wrenching mix of anger and hurt. If she was innocent, she deserved to know that I planned to kill her family. But if she shared that knowledge, it could get me killed. Her, too.
I shifted back in my crouched position, needing to clear my head of her intoxicating proximity and think through this.
She slouched against the chair back, interpreting my caution as refusal. “I got your resume from HR. Is that shit legit? MIT with honors? Physics, Engineering, and Business Management?”
“Yeah.”
She stared at me intensely. Despite the glow of dawn gilding her eyes in gold, her pupils dilated, a silent indicator of the complexity of her thoughts.
I needed to redirect the focus back on her. It made me nervous, her analyzing my motivations and searching for the truth. I leaned forward. “What did your husband say?”
She blinked, her eyebrows gathering.
I knelt in front of the chair and placed my forearms on the armrests, trapping her in. “Does he know about us?”
Her spine straightened, her arms wrapping around her bent knees and pulling them to her chest. “Of course he knows.”
Something was missing. Something she wasn’t telling me. “And?”
“And nothing. He knows I was set up.”
Why hadn’t the bastard hunted me down and smashed my face in? I gritted my teeth. “Does he know how much you loved it? Did you tell him how many orgasms I gave you?”
Her face hardened, and her eyes narrowed.
I was a bastard, but dammit, I needed to understand the nature of their relationship. “Did you tell him how I licked your insatiable pussy for hours?”
“I told him you licked it with a forked tongue.” She smirked, but I didn’t miss the shift in her breathing and the clench of her fingers on her legs.
Maybe she hated herself for enjoying our night together and would never remember it in a fond way. But I knew, I knew, she still wanted me as painfully as I wanted her. She was fighting it. The wounds I’d inflicted were too raw.
I could mend the damage. I would mend it.
Careful not to touch her, I bent over her folded frame until my chest hovered an inch from her knees. “I get that you’re pissed, but you know as well as I do there is nothing hotter or more intense than the way we fucked that night.”
Her head tilted to the side. “You’re a world-class dick.”
God, I wanted to kiss her sassy mouth. “And your soaking wet pussy loved me.”
Anger tightened her eyes with a quickness that told me that was the absolute worst thing to say.
Fuck. I was going about this the wrong way. Our connection wasn’t just a sexual one. There was an emotional current flowing through it, a searching kind of energy that fused on a level I didn’t comprehend.
I needed to stop thinking with my cock and do the brave thing. I needed to open up my insides. Let her have a good look around. Maybe I’d learn something, too, because right now, I was operating on gut and backbone, both of which belonged to a Neanderthal.
I shifted into her space, my eyes and face exposed for her scrutiny, and infused my voice with the sincerity of my words. “It was real, Kaci. I shut off the cameras before we removed our clothes, and everything that happened after was just you and me. No bullshit.”
“Fuck you.” The venom in her voice sliced through the tension, a contradiction to the softening of her pretty mouth and the wet sheen forming in her eyes.
I was really mucking this up. I didn’t know how to communicate what I didn’t understand. But my body knew. It shook with the urge to drag her to the floor, spread her beneath me, and show her exactly how I felt.
Use your words, dumbass.
I drew in a strengthening breath. “I don’t know what I’m saying here, knowing you’re married, and I don’t have a chance in hell.” I stuffed that miserable notion into a tiny corner where it couldn’t distract me. “But goddammit, Kaci, if you weren’t married, I’d fight for you.” I rubbed my face, felt my jaw hardening beneath my hand. “Fuck that. I’m fighting for you anyway.”
Eyes of fathomless blue studied me with a fierceness that said she was listening, that she very much wanted to believe me. But her voice lashed with angry suspicion. “You started a fight against me. How in the hell are you going to fight for me?”
I wasn’t in the habit of stealing other men’s wives. I wouldn’t fight Collin, not if she loved him. What then? What was I fighting for?
Searching her eyes, I looked past the confident glow she held at the surface and probed deep beyond the liquid blue. She stared back, seemingly content with letting me explore. I lost track of time, my bearings, and a part of my soul in the soundless intimacy of her gaze. When her arm lifted at the edge of my vision, the spell shivered.
The light touch of her hand on my cheek silenced my breaths. My heartbeat sped up. Sweat slicked my palms. And there, in the deepest reaches of her eyes and in the warmth of her hand on my face, I found what I was looking for.
It had been there all along, staring up at me in the elevator, reaching for me on the dance floor, wrapping around me in the hotel room, and right now, touching my face. Her loneliness fused into every cell of my body and made me want things I had no business wanting.
I moved my hands to the seat back behind her head. “I’m going to fight for your forgiveness.” I pressed my chest against her legs, pinning her knees between our bodies. “And I’m going to fight for your happiness.”
Wonderment illuminated from that lonely place behind her eyes, and a sad smile quivered at the corner of her mouth. She dropped her hand from my face and slid her legs out from between us, her feet lowering to the floor beside my knees. “Why?”
My pulse hammered wildly as I pushed her thighs to the side, keeping them together, and bent over her lap. “I don’t know how to tell you. I can only tell you what it feels like.” I grabbed her wrist and returned her palm to my face, holding it there.
She pulled on my grip, but I refused to let go as the sudden, desperate need for her to understand opened my mouth. “This is real. So real I feel it everywhere, like a million tiny vibrations under my skin. This…this urgency to protect you…” My breath burst in and out, and my voice thickened with the messy, unfiltered truth. “It’s a crazy need inside me, driving me to be near you, to watch over you, to undo the hurt I put in your eyes. I don’t fucking know what it is, but I feel it now, spinning me around—around you—and knocking me way the fuck off track.”
Talk about ripping myself open. The sentiment that had come out of my mouth scared the shit out of me. What must she think? I sounded like a fucking creeper.
The real kicker was, these feelings weren’t new. I’d buried them for nine months, pretending the silver Ducati at the finish line wasn’t the reason I raced faster and harder to get there. But I couldn’t tell her that.
Her fingers, now relaxed in my grip, stroked the sensitive spot beneath my ear, the movement a subconscious one that made me sigh deeply, happily. Which only added to my confusion.
I dropped my forehead to her thigh and spoke against her knee, my heart thundering. “I can’t not fight for you.”
She moved her hand through my hair, gliding her touch around the back of my ear. “You stole my job, Logan. You videotaped us having sex and gave it to my father-in-law.”
Her tone was as soft and rhythmic as her touch, but the weight of her words crushed my windpipe.
She dropped her hand to her lap. “And in case you missed my reaction in his office, I hate Trent with every fiber in my body. The fact that he, of all people, saw that video—”
I jerked to my feet and paced to the windows,
eyes on the glowing glass and concrete metropolis. “I’ll regret that till the day I die.” Which would be soon if I gave into this reckless urge to tell her my secrets.
My betrayal, her marriage, my revenge, all of it pressed down on my shoulders and crawled its way through me. My body itched with it, my mind pushing against the binds of our situation, searching for hidden solutions, and testing for weak areas.
I turned to face her. “Do you love your husband?”
“Yes.”
Her immediate and unwavering response threatened to buckle my knees. What did I expect? That my mutilated confession of feelings had changed her heart? Didn’t matter. She could sit there and watch me suffer. I wasn’t going anywhere.
“The broody glare is back.” She stood and closed the gap between us.
Her hands moved along the lapels of my suit jacket, straightening the creases. She seemed to be torturing me intentionally, sliding her fingers over my collar, so close to my throat I could feel the heat from them, and retreating without touching my skin.
She lowered her arms to her sides. “There are different kinds of love, Logan.”
That small, unexpected addendum made it easier to swallow the knot of pain in my throat. “Okay.” I strengthened my voice. “Like what?”
She stepped to the window and flattened a hand against the glass, staring into the sunrise. “There’s the sparks-flying, emotionally-volcanic kind of love. You know, short-fused, explosive sex that fizzles as quickly as it ignites?” She gave me a pointed look and returned to the window. “Some might say that’s not love at all.”
I swallowed. “It’s lust. Desire.”
Was that what she thought this was between us? Fuck that. A fizzling affair wasn’t what I was fighting for.
Her sigh billowed through the silence. “Desire is a form of love, however fleeting. You feel it in the moment, and holy hell, you feel the emptiness when it’s gone.” She breathed in, out. “It’s the weakest kind of love.”
She wouldn’t be standing here, giving into Trent’s threat, if her love for her husband was weak. The notion constricted my throat, but I pushed it away and clung to the implication that she and Collin didn’t have explosive sex. “That’s not how you love him.”
