Page 62 of Not Safe for Work

“We’ll take turns,” he counters. “A compliment for a compliment.”

I huff out a breath. “I couldn’t have just matched with some random person and faked my way through this?”

“You’re stuck with me now, Trishara.”

There’s an implication in that statement, his words settling between us like a triangle squeezing itself into a circle.

I scan him from head to toe, searching for the most innocuous compliment I can deliver. I will not fluff up his ego any further. But wow, he looks good today. Then he runs a hand through his thick, shiny hair, and my brain turns to mush. “You have fantastic hair.” The words slip from me of their own volition, hanging in front of me and slapping me in the face.

Rafe’s eyes dance as he moves a little closer. The surrounding cacophony surges as everyone engages in animated conversation. But we have entered a bubble. All the noise and the distraction melt away until it feels like we are the only people left in the room.

“I think you smell good, too,” Rafe says, his voice low, his mouth close to my ear. “Last night in bed, it felt like drowning in strawberries and creamy vanilla frosting.”

His voice drops to a rough growl on the last three words, causing a pulse to throb low in my stomach. We both look around the room, making sure no one heard. I’m pretty sure this isn’t what the HR department had in mind when they set us on this exercise.

It’s my turn again, and I swallow. Hesitating. But caution is for suckers, and I take a running leap off this cliff. “I love your forearms,” I say, my voice breathy as I steal a glance down. “They’re beautiful.”

He follows my gaze and raises that soul-destroying eyebrow. “Is that your kink, Trishara? I would never have guessed.”

My throat is so tight that I have to suck air through my nose. He makes a fist, and my breath explodes—the dusting of hair and the way his veins pop against the golden color of his skin. I hate how much I think about those arms.

Only a few inches separate us as we cast more guilty looks about the room. Everyone has found their pair and are chatting like long-lost friends.

But Rafe and I don’t need to get to know one another. We’ve spent years in orbit moving like planets, parallel but never crossing. I already know what I like about Rafe. Until a few days ago, I swore it was nothing, but now I’m not so sure.

“I love the way you charge through life as though you don’t give a shit what anyone thinks,” Rafe says, and those words find a secret place where all my fears and insecurities fester.

Rafe moves closer, his lips so close to my ear that I can feel his heat and smell his skin. I reciprocate, standing up on my toes as I take my turn. “I think your drawings are the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, and I had no idea you were capable of such… depth. You are bold and confident and have this way with people that makes them feel important, and I think someone must have told you that your art wasn’t special because how could you think it was anything but extraordinary?”

My thoughts surface unbidden, but as I stand there with the recollection of those pages, I’m struck with certainty that’s what I saw in his art. They were pencil sketches rendered from yearning and desire. All these years, I’ve been entirely misjudging some fundamental facet of Rafe. He is deeper and wider than the Grand Canyon. I might make fun of his ego, but the truth is that I’m drawn to his self-assurance. I admire the way he can charm a room.

He goes completely still, and I feel his breath catch.

Then his gaze finds mine, and the corner of his mouth turns up into yet another new smile I memorize for safekeeping. A smile that tells me the next words from his mouth have been carefully, painstakingly designed to destroy me.

Soft lips brush the shell of my ear. “Your ass is so fucking hot in that skirt, I want to fall to my knees and worship it.”

My heart stops. Literally stops. I hold my own funeral on the floor of a hotel ballroom covered in threadbare carpet, hideously patterned to hide a decade of coffee stains.

Rafe Gallagher just told me my ass is hot. I know it is. I bought this skirt expressly for how hot it made my ass look. But he just said it out loud, and the result is an exhale on the tightly knotted bow we’ve been keeping on this wrapped package.

We are so far over the line of the rules I set for myself that I have to squint to see them stretching in the distance. But maybe I don’t mind.

His hand lands on my hip, gentle but firm, fingers digging in with the barest pressure. He turns his head ever so slightly. His mouth brushes my cheek, and I stand perfectly still like I’ve been turned into marble through a spell cast by a meddling fairy godmother.

Screeeeeee!

Whistle Mouth blasts through our suspension of time, and I have never wanted to take that plastic whistle and shove it down her throat more. Rafe and I snap apart, turning to face the front of the room with everyone else. I feel like a lighthouse, my face so flushed and hot I could signal ships in the night.

I feel Rafe standing behind me. My elbow and shoulder brush his chest and his stomach, and then there is the barest touch of the edge of his hand. It ghosts over the curve of my ass, and every cell in my body is dedicated to the relentless pursuit of imagining his large palm cupping and kneading and… I want it so badly that it becomes the first tier on my hierarchy of needs. If I can have this, I’ll never need food or water again.

Whistle Mouth is saying something, but I can’t hear anything over the roar in my ears and the pounding in my heart and the ache between my thighs. I’m going to faint here in front of everyone.

She claps her hands and blows her whistle again. “Okay, everyone move!”

The room breaks apart, and I look behind me to find Rafe looking at me with the whisper of a knowing smile.

It takes all my willpower to turn away and proceed to the next activity.