Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 103030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
“It is true.” I remove a chunk of hair that’s stuck to the side of her face. “Can I tell you something?”
She nods.
“I have trust issues too.” Admitting my weaknesses feels like a huge mistake, but it’s the only way I think I can get through to her. “When your fiancée leaves you for a much older, much richer man and you realize she never really loved you at all, that stings. No, it hurts like a motherfucker.”
“She’s an idiot.”
I smile at her. “I’ve been fucked over in a hundred business deals. My parents are now divorcing, which isn’t about me, I know, but it does feel like … if you can’t trust your parents to stay together at our age, is anything even sacred anymore?”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Oliver.”
“Thanks, but that’s not the point.” I lace our fingers together again. “The point is that this thing with you makes me worry too.”
Her eyes search mine. “Why?”
“Because this … us … feels like it has the potential to be infinitely more important to me than Kendra or a business deal or my parents’ marriage.”
Her brows raise toward the ceiling, but she doesn’t say anything.
“I’ve laid here all night and couldn’t sleep because I was trying to wrap my head around you. Me. This.” I tug her close to me again. “I thought about last night at the gala and seeing you with Marius. I thought about having you in my house and in my bed. I thought about waking up and making breakfast and …”
I peer down at her. She looks up, my apprehension reflected in her eyes.
“I don’t know what we’re doing, Shaye. And we both have every right to be scared as shit. But I don’t want it to end. I want this to be the beginning.”
“Of what?” she asks softly.
“Of whatever it becomes. To hell with your ex-husband and your mother and Kendra and—”
“And the fact that I work for you?” She sighs. “I love working for you. But if we … if this is the beginning of something—”
“Don’t you want it to be?”
A slow smile slips across her face. “Without a doubt.”
I bend down and place a chaste kiss on her lips. “Then you work for me.”
“Should I work for Wade?”
I flinch, making her giggle.
“Do you really fucking think that it would be easier for me to get anything done knowing you were in another office that I could just barge into?” I scoff. “Please.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “Okay, that I will try not to overthink this. And … I’ll try to trust you.”
A lot of women have said a lot of nice things to me in my life. Funny things, sexy things, interesting things. But no one has ever said anything as important as Shaye is saying right now. Because trust comes with a price that both of us have paid before. And lost.
My heart pulls in my chest as if I’ve just been deemed worthy of some great responsibility. It’s baffling and a little disconcerting, but also, it’s amazing.
“Come here, you,” I say, pulling her on top of me again.
I hold her as close to me as I can. She wraps her arms around me and holds me as if her life depends on it.
Maybe it does.
Maybe they both depend on it.
“I have a question,” she says, smiling against my chest.
“What’s that?”
“What does level three look like?”
A band of heat uncoils in my groin as I flip her over in one swift movement. Her laughter pierces the air as she bites her lip.
“You want level three, baby?” I ask.
She nods.
I jerk the blankets off her and let my gaze feast on her naked body. The sweet curve of her hip, the roundness of her stomach, the fullness of her breasts—it’s all mine.
A few things in the last twenty-four hours have struck me as odd. The fact that her dancing with Marius made me insanely jealous. Hearing her call herself my EA annoying me. Enjoying her in my personal space not shocking my system.
But the one thing that tops them all is this fierce, instinctive need to make her mine. I don’t know where it comes from, and I don’t know why. I only know that I’m powerless against it.
I just hope that I can figure out how to deal with it.
“What are you waiting for?” she asks, reaching for my cock. Her hand wraps snugly around it.
“I’m just trying to figure out what to do with you.”
She leans up and kisses me. “Let’s start here and figure out the rest together.”
I roll her onto her back and do as she suggests.
We’ll start here and figure out the rest.
Together.
Twenty-Five
Shaye
Me: Famished yet satiated. Interesting morning over here.
Lis: Squee! Details!
Me: As soon as I get home. *winking emoji*
Lis: GIRL
Me: Ha!
I yelp as Oliver slips behind me and nips at the back of my neck. I turn around to swat him, but he’s already retreated to the other side of the kitchen.