So I did what any normal, red-blooded human would do.
I arched up and I kissed him.
22
Oliver
Holy fucking hell I had forgotten how good her lips tasted. She was sweet and soft and everything that my body ached for. I wanted her then and there, on the floor. I wanted to slide inside of her the way my tongue slid in her mouth, exploring every inch of her perfect body.
Elizabeth let out a soft moan and I knew she wanted it too.
But I couldn’t have her. Not like this. Not when she was my employee, and I’d already crossed so many lines with her. I was committed to getting through the rest of the renovations with as little difficulty as possible. Why else would I have offered her a shot at my face?
I certainly couldn’t have sex with her now. Not when we’d been so close to making things right between us.
I kept a tight hold of her wrists, afraid of what I would do if she touched me. She didn’t try to pull free, apparently just as lost in the kiss as I was. But I needed to get unlost—and quick.
We parted and her eyes fluttered open. Neither of us said a word for a moment. We just stared at each other and exchanged breaths. Finally, I let go of her and sat back on my heels.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She chuckled. “Why are you sorry? I’m the one who kissed you.”
“I’m sorry that I had to stop,” I replied.
Elizabeth came up on her elbows, face reddening. I rolled onto the floor next to her, but didn’t stand up. I couldn’t yet. Not with a cock as hard as my new granite countertops.
“Well, I’m sorry that I started it,” she said. “I guess I just got carried away in the moment.”
“Don’t apologize,” I told her. “I think that was just another thing we needed to get out.”
And god, how I wished we could get a little more out.
Elizabeth furrowed her brow thoughtfully. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I feel a bit better now.” A smile blossomed on her face. “You know what? I feel a lot better.”
“I do too.”
And I did, minus the intense sexual frustration. We’d been totally silly and over the top, and somehow it had helped. It was as if the air had finally been cleared of tension that had been building so heavily between us.
“Except now that we’ve got the beating the shit out of each other thing out of the way,” she said, “we’ve got a whole new thing to be awkward about.”
I laughed. “Easy solution to that, darling.”
She raised an eyebrow inquisitively.
“We just don’t get awkward.”
“Ah.” Elizabeth sat up and crossed her legs in front of her. “So, what? We just don’t talk about it? Forget it happened?” Again.
I exhaled through my teeth. “Do you see yourself forgetting about that anytime soon?”
I knew I was going to be thinking about it often. On purpose.
“Good point,” she agreed. “So what do we do then?”
What I wanted to do was pick up right where we left off. I wanted to say “fuck the rules” and spend the next few hours enjoying every inch of Elizabeth’s body. But I didn’t trust myself to have her again. I already found myself thinking about her far more than I should.
“I think we needed that kiss to help give some closure to our sexual past,” I said.
She smiled and nodded along. I tried to search for the lie in it, wondering if she felt the same disappointment at the thought of sealing up that part of our relationship. But she seemed to agree with me.
I wish I agreed with me.
“I feel like that was some good closure,” Elizabeth said. “But I mean, what now?”
“Well, we tried being professionals, and that didn’t work,” I said. “And we tried enemies, and that didn’t work.”
“So… friends?” she asked.
“Friends,” I agreed.
Elizabeth smiled. “I’m surprised your kooky plan worked.”
“It wasn’t kooky,” I defended. “Why do you think people get into fights so much?”
I stood and offered Elizabeth my hand. She took it, and I tried not to think about how I’d been holding her only moments before as I pulled her to her feet.
“I guess that’s true,” she shrugged. “But I still don’t think it would have worked if I’d just punched you in the face.”
I grinned down at her. Her hair was all rumpled, and she had smudges of black under her eyes, either from laughing so hard or from the scuffle.
“You don’t know that for sure,” I replied. “And you never will. Do you know how many people would kill to be given an opportunity like that?”
“I think you think very highly of yourself,” she teased. “Most people probably just want to kick you in the balls.”
“I left that teambuilding option off the table on purpose.”
Elizabeth tipped her head back in laughter. My eyes dragged along the creamy expanse of her throat. She was so beautiful. So carefree. So bright.
Had I made a mistake in trying to become more friendly with her? Just because I wanted things to be pleasant between us, didn’t mean that was the best idea. But being angry with her hadn’t helped either.
“I hope none of the guys overheard us,” Liz said. She made a beeline for the ensuite, clucking in distaste once she caught her reflection. “I look like…Well, you know.”
Oh, I did know. I’d seen her after sex before.
Elizabeth emerged from the bathroom looking a little more put together, but she still wore that gigantic grin. The sight filled my heart, which, ironically, also convinced me that being friends with her was never going to work either. But I was too much a glutton for punishment to want to worry about it now. I liked seeing her smile. I liked having her around. I would deal with the rest later.
“I should get back down there,” she announced. “They’ll be wondering what happened to me.”
“Off you go, then.” I waved her away, settling back down at my desk with a suppressed smile. “If anybody gives you any lip, just send them up here and I’ll deal with them the same way.” I paused for a moment when she raised an eyebrow at me. “I mean the pillow fight, of course. Not… the way it ended.”
Elizabeth’s laughter floated out into the hallway. I committed it to memory, knowing there would soon come a day when I’d never get to hear it again.
23
Elizabeth
“I’m home!” Arms laden with my design binders, I tried to shake off my shoes by force. Normally I would have taken the time to put the binders down somewhere, but I was so giddy that my mind was working a million miles a minute.
Cressida must have taken my giddiness for distress. She rounded the corner, eyes wide, trying to assess the damage. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why are you having a seizure in the foyer?”
“First of all, this isn’t a foyer.” One of my shoes went flying, smacking into the wall. I started work on the other one. “This is the section of the hallway we keep our shoes in.”
“You can’t be that upset if you’re arguing semantics.”
“I’m not upset. And, to be fair, you wandered right into my territory with that one,” I defended. “I’m sure you would have the same reaction if I called my diary a blog.”
“Well yes, because you’d be mixing up your medias and that’s a whole ‘nother bag of fish,” she replied.
“Are you going to help me or not?”
Cressida rushed forward, grabbing the binders from my arms. “Are you planning on telling me what’s the matter?” She froze. “Wait, I have a slice of cake left over from work.” She darted away, calling back to me from the kitchen, “It was Marco’s birthday.”
I followed her and came to lean against the fridge. “I don’t need any cake.”
She’d already put it on a plate and clicked her tongue at me. I took it without further protest.
“Go sit down,” she shooed me toward the table.
A moment later
she deposited a healthy-sized glass of wine on the table and sat across from me, sipping her own. I stabbed at the cake with my fork. She stared disapprovingly.
“So, what happened?” she asked. “Did he break the truce?”
Even Cressida had begun to warm up to the idea of Oliver when I told her how much better he’d been recently. Not just better—good.
Great.
“No,” I replied, shoveling a bite of cake into my mouth. I was in chocolate paradise. “I told you; I’m not upset.”
“Well there’s something off about you.” She took a big mouthful of wine. “Just tell me, Liz. I’m dying of suspense over here.”
“Oliver and I made out today.”
“What?” Her eyes flew wide open.
“Just a little bit!” I said. “And we’re not making a big deal out of it, and it’ll probably never happen again. It was just part of some tension relieving, closure process thing.”
“Oh, you seem real invested in that,” she said dryly. “And boo on you for lying to me!”
“It only just happened!” I defended. “It wasn’t like I was keeping it from you.”
“Not that,” Cress replied. “You told me you weren’t upset multiple times. If you didn’t know you were lying to me, then you were lying to yourself.”
Holy truth bomb, Batman.
I went quiet, fork hovering over my plate. Cressida smiled knowingly.
“Do you want to tell me, or do you want me to guess?” she asked.
“You don’t need to guess,” I replied. “You’ve already got all the facts. You know I like Oliver, you know we kissed, and you know it wasn’t supposed to mean anything.” I laughed bitterly. “So, of course, it meant something. Big time.”
“So, you know what I’m going to tell you, then?” she asked.
“I think so.”
I knew what I needed her to tell me. I needed her to tell me to snap out of it. I needed her to reignite my fury, to remind me of all the reasons why Oliver was a horrible contender for my affections. If she did all that, it would certainly help me keep from obsessing over all of my Oliver-related insecurities.
“Your job’s over soon, right?”
I nodded.
“Well…” She furrowed her brow thoughtfully. “Then if that’s really the way you feel, then I think you should go for it.”
*Record scratch*
“I’m sorry, go for what now?” I frowned. “I don’t think I heard you correctly. Or maybe you didn’t hear me correctly.” I tipped my head back and studied her. “But there’s definitely been some sort of miscommunication.”
Cressida gave me a flat look. “Oh, come on Liz. Did you really think I was going to tell you to take a cold shower and stop being stupid?”
I nodded. “That’s exactly what I thought you were going to say.”
“You really must not know me at all,” she rolled her eyes, letting out an overly dramatic sigh of disappointment.
“Hey!” I protested. I didn’t care that my mouth was full of chocolate and I probably looked disgusting. “I do know you! I know that you usually have my best interests at heart.”
“You’re damn right,” she said. “Especially now.”
I eyed her suspiciously, taking a sip of my wine. “I’m not seeing how urging me to pursue a man who clearly regrets having ever met me is in my best interest.”
She sighed. “Liz, I don’t even know the guy and I know there’s a lot more going on under the hood than that.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “What’s going on under his hood is a whole lotta pity.”
“You are selling yourself so short,” she replied. “You guys had rocky beginnings, but that’s how I know this is possible.”
“I’m still not following.” I took another sip of wine to see if it would help.
It didn’t.
“You despised him, too, at first,” she reminded me. “And now you don’t. Who’s to say he doesn’t feel the same way?”
“Him, actually. He’s the one that stopped the kiss today.”
“Like I said, there’s more going on. But he also participated in the kiss, and something tells me it wasn’t just a quick peck.”
I conceded that point by ignoring it for fear of getting distracted if I started to think about that kiss again. Instead, I moved onto my next insecurity. “He’s rich and powerful, Cress. And I’m not saying I’m not awesome in my own way, but I’m not… I dunno. His type.”
“He picked you out of the crowd that night at Repeat. And apparently, you guys still can’t keep your hands off each other.” Cress reached across the table and pulled the remainder of the cake toward her. I was too stunned to stop her.
“Cress,” I groaned. “Can’t you just tell me I’m being stupid? For old time’s sake?”
She smiled. “You are being stupid.”
“Thank you,” I said, leaning back into my chair.
“You’re being stupid for thinking you don’t have a shot with him.”
I glared at her, resisting the urge to give her the finger.
“I’m serious!” she insisted, waving the fork at me. “And as someone who has your best interests at heart, it’s my duty to push you toward this.”
“But if it blows up in my face I’ll only be more upset!” I argued. “How is that good for me?”
Cressida swept her hair back from her shoulder. It had been hanging a little too close to her food.
“Listen,” she said. “If it blows up in your face, it’ll suck. We’ll get shitfaced and dance around to Gloria Gaynor. Maybe we’ll even burn an effigy of him. We’ll see how jazzy we feel.” She tapped her fork against the plate for emphasis. “But if you don’t follow your heart on this? You’ll end up wondering about it for the rest of your life.”
“Maybe not the rest of my life,” I replied.
She locked her eyes onto mine with steel focus. “For the rest of your life,” she enunciated. “I know you, Liz. It was a miracle you were able to walk away from him the first time.”
I gulped. She was right. I could pretend all I wanted that I was saving myself by not revealing my vulnerability, but I was only saving myself in the short-term. I’d inevitably end up face down in a pile of Cheeto dust, wondering why I had been such a coward.
“It’s easy for you to say all this though,” I said quietly. “You’re always certain about everything. You’re like the angel of self-confidence. If this were a movie, they’d send you off to live in some teenage girl’s mirror.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m going to look past that creepy mental image and tell you a story.”
I sighed and settled into my chair, holding the wine close to my chest.
“Remember the night at Repeat when I went off with Oliver’s friend? Damien?” she asked.
“Yeah. The asshole.”
“Exactly. Except I didn’t tell you the whole story.”
Well now I’m interested.
“Go on.”
She sighed, taking a big gulp of her wine. I may be the one upset here, but she was certainly drinking faster.
“You and Oliver went up to the VIP area, and Damien and I went outside to get some air,” she said. “We ended up talking about the most random stuff. He told me about how he has worn a different tie to work every day for the past year, which I thought was crazy.”
“It is.”
She smiled. “Just let me tell the story, okay?”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway, it is a bit weird. But it started because his grandmother has Alzheimer’s and kept buying him ties. He ended up with a ton of them in his closet, but he never wore them because they weren’t really his style.
“Then she died. And he had all these ties, and she’d never seen him in a single one. So he started wearing them. All of them. He wore a different one every day for two months.”
“That’s a lot of ties,” I commented.
“That was what he thought. Too many ties. And so he donated them to a men’s s
helter.”
“That’s quite noble of him,” I said, eyeing her warily. “I’m beginning to wonder if he’s really a dick at all.”
“Listen to the story,” she reminded.
“Okay, okay.” I put my hands up in surrender. “Go on.”
“Well people, by this point, had started noticing that Damien wore a different tie every day. People he knew started giving him ties as a joke. He kept wearing them. He kept donating them.”
“Where is this story going?”
She ignored me and continued. “As Damien put it, he couldn’t just donate a tie without donating a matching suit.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “Wait, so because people kept giving him ties, he’d end up donating an entire outfit for each one? That’s funny.”
“It turned into this big thing,” she said. Her face was more animated, her eyes brighter. Now I was really curious what happened that night at Repeat. “Businesses started getting on board. They would make a donation to a charity if he wore the ridiculous ties they sent him. And he did.”
“He’s still doing it, then?”
“No, actually.” Cressida’s smile slipped into something a bit more wistful. “A couple weeks ago I saw an article he was featured in. He stopped wearing the ties and founded a charity instead. It supplies men and women from lower incomes with clothes for interviews and new jobs.”
“That’s super nice.” I furrowed my brow. “But it’s a weird thing to bring up at the club. I’m guessing you rejected him because he was clearly full of himself for telling you all of this?”
Cressida’s smile fell and she drained the rest of her glass. “No.” She looked down into the bottom of the glass, as though ashamed. “All he told me was the different tie every day bit. He laughed it off as some random joke. I think it only came up because I made a comment about the one he was wearing that night. I only read about the rest of the story in that article I mentioned.”
I dropped my mouth into a silent “O”.
“I don’t get it then,” I said a moment later. “What did you guys talk about that put you off? When was he a dick?”
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