Page 31 of Start With A Slap

—And yet... I can almost smell how much you want me

She closed her eyes, feeling his hands on her all over again, his buttery kisses on her neck.

What’s wrong with me? Am I evil too?

“Babe?” He peered at her through one sleepy eye. “What are you doing over there? C’mere.”

She smiled at him, let out an unsteady breath, and crawled into his embrace.

“Is he gone?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good.” He kissed her lips, her ear, and paused. “You smell like his cologne.”

“Ew,” she said, pulling back. “Sorry. He hugged me goodbye.”

“Wow,” he laughed, hand on her hip. “He really loves you.”

She steered his hand away from the ribbons on her panties. “Uh, no he doesn’t.”

“You’re not afraid of him; he fuckin’ loves people who aren’t afraid of him. And I gotta say, seeing you put him in his place, it’s... pretty damn satisfying.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s good foryou,” she said, sliding a strand of his sandy hair out of his face. Then: “I’m not gonna go to that conference, though.”

“Why not? It’ll be fun.” He’d closed his eyes and was drifting off again. “Give him hell and tell me all about it.”

She couldn’t go. Sever had made a grave mistake tonight: he’d turned weeks of flirtation and innuendo into something real. She could admit now that she’d gotten an illicit thrill out ofthe possibility while it was still a concept, but there was a strong, tangible divide between thought and action, and he’d pushed her over the edge.

She would give him hell, all right—by never giving him an in again. Let him do his worst, tell Jason everything, even the moaning. She could handle the fallout.

She studied Jason’s sleeping face.

…Couldn’t she?

CHAPTER 10

Fill You In

“The fuck was Idrinkinglast night?”

Ivy glanced at her husband in the mirror, spit out her toothpaste. “Lots and lots of whiskey?”

Rubbing his eyes and facing the toilet to lift the seat, he said, “Must have been adamnlot for me to ask my dad to take you to Paris.”

Toothbrush in her mouth, she froze.

“I don’t know what got into me,” he said, mainly to himself. “He tells me he’s accepting some award there next week, so I’m all, ‘Ivy’s been dying to go back there for years’...”

Ivy blinked at her reflection.

The ‘little conference’? The ‘awards thing’ Sever had tried to invite her to? They were one and the same. And they were inParis.

Jason was still puzzling out his rationale: “...then he says he’s between assistants, so I start talkingyouup — I don’t even knowwhy. I mean, yeah, he had a point, you don’t want to be a paralegal all your life; maybe meeting people in tourism could be good for you, but still...” He flushed the toilet. “It’s like I forgot who I was talking to.”

Wow. He really is an evil genius.“He said I don’t want to be a paralegal all my life?”

Their eyes met in the mirror. “Well, do you?”

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