Page 60 of His Good Girl

“Enough,” I said aloud to myself.

I loosened my collar, then stopped with my fingers at the second button of my shirt because that was another mistake. My skin still remembered the restaurant, the closeness beneath the awning and the brush of my hand against her back as she stepped into the car. It was a simple, polite touch, but she had reacted.

She had gone still as if I had done far more than guide her into a car.

I closed my eyes.

I should have wanted that less because of who she was. I could not simplify her into temptation and excuse myself from care. I could not simplify her into obligation and pretend my cock had not hardened half a dozen times over dinner from the way she looked at me.

I walked out of the study before I could sit back down and lie to myself for another hour.

Upstairs, I stripped off my jacket and hung it carefully over the chair in my bedroom. The room was dark except for the city glow at the windows, faint silver light catching the edges of furniture, the clean white sheets, the low dresser where my cufflinks sat in a shallow tray. I unbuttoned my shirt slowly.

I wanted to be good to her.

That was the truth.

I wanted her to trust me. I wanted her to walk into Rowe Tower tomorrow and find a workplace that welcomed her with no strings attached beyond the normal expectations of employer/employee. I wanted Benjamin to be fair, Dana to be sharp but not cruel, the work to push her, and the company to teach her the difference between healthy pressure and abuse. I wanted to honor Robert. I wanted to give Avery a chance without making it feel like charity.

And beneath all of that, I wanted to put my hands on her and find out whether she sounded the same when she was coming for me as she had over dessert.

The thought came so vividly that my cock throbbed before I could suppress it.

I stood very still beside the bed.

“No,” I reprimanded myself sharply. “I can’t do this.”

I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I made sure the water was ice cold.

For three minutes, I stood under the freezing spray and thought of structural reports, bid schedules, Benjamin’s disapproving face, and Dana’s voice sayingsentimental hirelike an accusation. I thought of Robert, which worked for a while. Robert at thirty. Robert laughing. Robert passing me a beer on a deck half-framed in Maine. Robert saying, “You’ll look out for her if I’m not around, right?” and me telling him to stop being dramatic because he was forty-two and sunburned and had no right to sound mortal.

Then my thoughts shifted to her.

The moment she looked up through her lashes when I told her to order whatever she liked. Her throat moving when she swallowed. The length and curve of her neck above the navy dress. The soft place under her jaw where my mouth had no business being.

The water ran colder.

It did not matter.

By the time I got out, my skin was chilled and my cock was hard enough to make the whole exercise completely useless.

I braced both hands on the marble vanity and looked at myself in the mirror. My expression looked controlled, which was almost funny.

The truth was that I wanted Avery Hale with an intensity that made me feel less like a man and more like a failure of engineering.

I went to bed anyway.

That was another lie to myself. I did not sleep. I lay on my back in the dark with the sheet pulled to my waist and the house silent around me. My phone was on the nightstand, face down. I did not reach for it. I did not text her. I did not ask if she got upstairs safely, because that would be too much after waiting at the curb. I did not ask whether she was nervous about tomorrow, because I already knew she was.

I closed my eyes.

The fantasy found me immediately.

At first, I tried to keep it clean, which was ridiculous, but true. I tried to think of just kissing her. I imagined stopping her at my office door, my hand on the frame above her head, giving her every chance to leave. I imagined her not leaving, then I imagined lowering my mouth to hers and feeling the first soft shock of contact, her breath catching, her hands coming to my shirt.

That should have been enough.

It was not.