“Oh, shut up. You cuss worse than a drunken sailor tossed overboard into a swarm of tiger sharks.” Unfolding my arms, I walked over to the wine.
He raised an eyebrow as I took a drink from the bottle and then murmured, “You’re going down that route again? If so, I am so glad I’m here.”
Eyes narrowed, I clutched the bottle to my chest. “Okay. It’s time to get real. What was the purpose of tonight, and don’t tell me it’s because of Thanksgiving. You had ample opportunity to talk to me about that. There was no reason for you to hunt me down on a date, interrupt it, and ruin it.”
“I ruined your date?” He laughed as he straightened, facing me. “That guy didn’t have a chance in hell with you.”
“How would you know?” I fired back.
He took a step toward me, and I stepped to the side, keeping a safe distance between us. He kept coming in a slow, measured approached, causing a dizzying flutter in my chest. “I just do.”
“That’s laughable.” I kept inching away from him as he slowly followed my movements. “You even admitted that you didn’t know me anymore.”
“That’s not exactly what I said, Jillian.” His eyes glimmered as he lowered his chin. “You tell me one thing about little Grady that excites you.”
Excites me? My pulse was all over the place at the moment, and it had nothing to do with Grady or the wine I’d just guzzled. “I’m not having this conversation with you.”
“Why?” One more step and he was about a foot from me.
My apartment wasn’t that large, so I found myself with my back almost against the wall. “Because it’s—it’s inappropriate!”
“Inappropriate?” His laugh was deep and rough. Sexy. A fine series of shivers danced down my arms. “Why in the hell is this inappropriate?”
“Because—because you’re my boss.”
“I am not just your boss. Have you forgotten that I literally had to carry you upstairs and put you to bed after you got into your dad’s liquor cabinet and drank for the first time?” he asked. “Or the fact that you’ve been there for me, for some of the darkest moments of my life? Helping me change into clean clothes because I was too fucked up on pain meds and alcohol to even know what year I was in?”
I drew in a stuttered breath. Oh my God, we never talked about that time—about those months after his chest wall injury.
“Or let’s talk about how not that long ago you were riding my fingers until you came? Just a boss? Come on, Jilly, you can do better than that.”
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped, thrown off-balance. I struggled to breathe as Brock left what remained of the space between us behind. He towered over me, so close that his right leg brushed against my left one.
“It has nothing to do with me being your boss. Us working together isn’t even a drop in the damn bucket of our life,” he said. “You don’t want to answer the question, because you know there is none.”
“That’s not true,” I swore, and then stiffened as he pried the open wine bottle out of my hand and placed it on the small table beside us. “What are you doing?”
Placing both of his hands against the wall, on either side of me, he leaned in and lowered his head so we were nearly eye to eye. “Tell me one thing that excites you about him.”
“Why?” I whispered, my chest rising and falling sharply as my gaze dipped to his mouth.
“Because I want to know . . .” One of his hands left the wall and curved over my shoulder. I shuddered, and his head tilted to the side. “I want to know why, after what happened between us, you’d actually go out on a date with another man.”
My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in every part of my body. Senses overwhelmed, I had no idea how we’d ended up here, him slipping his hand down my arm, to my hip. I had no idea how his other hand was suddenly on the other side of my waist. All my being zeroed in on the warmth of his hands burning through the thin dress. A sharp ache hit low in my stomach, throbbing and intense.
“Jillian?” he said my name in this soft way that did crazy things to my brain cells, melting them together like they were nothing more than butter.
I wet my lips. “He’s nice. Grady is really nice.”
“Nice?” His hands glided up my sides, and my body reacted without thought. My back arched and my breath hitched as he lowered his mouth to my ear. His breath was hot against my skin as he said, “You don’t want nice. Nice doesn’t excite you.”
My hands found their way to his chest. I pushed at him at the same time my fingers curled into the front of his sweater, holding him in place.
“I’m sure Grady is a nice, little man,” he went on, and his hands were on the move again, one coasting back down to my hip. The other stayed over my ribs and each swipe of his thumb brought him into contact with the lower swell of my breast. “I don’t have anything against him, but if he excited you, if he brought this very same blush to your cheeks?” His hot mouth coasted over said cheek. The coarse hair of his jaw elicited a sharp gasp from me. “If he excited you, if you were really into him, then I wouldn’t have ruined your date. You’d be with him right now. And I sure as hell wouldn’t know what it felt like for you to come.”
I wasn’t sure that logic worked, but my mind seemed to have checked out, because it was all about the way I felt. A languid heat invaded my bloodstream. The throbbing increased in certain areas of my body. My breasts grew heavy and achy, and those feelings only intensified when I felt his breath on my lips, turning my blood to molten lava.