Page 56 of Pride and Privilege

She pulled her wrist free of his grip. “You don’t want this?”

“No, I do. God… I really do. But I can’t take advantage. I can’t ask you to…do anything for me. This is the only way we can do this,” he said, voicing the thought that was still hazy in his lust-addled brain. “It’s still wrong, but if I only give, don’t take…”

She struggled to sit up. He moved back, taking his weight from her, shifting so they were sitting side by side, turned towards each other, regret and embarrassment and guilt clanging through him.

Her cheeks were flushed. “You don’t want to have sex?”

He wasdesperateto have sex. Wanted basically nothing else in the world right then. Wanted to fuck her senseless. Have her in every way. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t cross that line. That’s what his brain had been trying to tell him. What he had been desperately trying to ignore.

“Let me do things for you,” he said, trying to find a way through the tangle in his mind. “Let me give. But I won’t take.”

“So, what…? I’m not allowed to touch you? We can’t…”

He looked down, gaze falling helplessly to her breasts. Lower. He could taste her on his tongue. “It’s not that I don’t want to. Believe me.”

“Then why?”

“You know why.”

She said nothing, but there was anger simmering in the blue of her eyes. In the colour on her cheeks.

Crap. He was a fucking idiot. But still… “We can’t have a relationship, Poppy. It’s unethical.”

“Nowyou decide that?”

“You already knew it. Remember? This is just a lesson.”

Her mouth twisted at the reminder. “You know I was joking.”

“Yes.” He couldn’t help it, he reached out, stroked the back of her hand, needed to touch her, even now. “Yes, we both knew you were joking. And that you weren’t.”

She shook her head slightly at that, but she didn’t pull her hand away. “This is stupid.”

“Almost everything I’ve done recently is stupid.”

She huffed a laugh. Didn’t argue.

Hemustbe stupid. Mad. She was right there, impossibly beautiful. If he moved his hand a few inches he could be cupping her breasts, the swell of her silken flesh filling his palm. He could be kissing her, making her moan with the touch of his tongue, making her soften and melt and mould her body to his. He could let her touch him, let her wrap her hand around him, feel her hot lips around him. He could lay her down and spread her open and sink himself inside her, look into her eyes and kiss her mouth as he filled her, as she took him, deep and warm…

Instead, he sat there, one finger tracing the side of her thumb. He was definitely mad. He’d never wanted anyone so much in his life.

He let out a breath, went to stand up. Poppy’s fingers briefly curled around his, but she let go, reached down and snatched her blouse from the floor.

“If I was someone else,” she said, hurriedly shrugging into her blouse. “Someone more like you, you wouldn’t be like this.”

Her hasty fingers were fumbling with the blouse buttons. He itched to help, but she wouldn’t want that. He dragged his eyes from the sight of her breasts in the faintly transparent fabric, her nipples dark, gauzy shadows. Her bra was still on the floor.

“What do you mean?” His thoughts felt slow, slipping and unsure. Hardly a surprise when he’d just done something so catastrophically stupid as telling Poppy Fields he could never have her. As catastrophically stupid as kissing her in the first place.

“If you saw me as an equal, you wouldn’t care about who took and who gave. It wouldn’t matter.”

“I’m your boss,” he said softly. Sadly. “In the eyes of the world, we aren’t equal.”

And not just her boss… He had everything. His wealth, his position. Even his gender gave him power over her. And he could not, would not, make her more vulnerable than she already was.

She picked up her bra, her knickers. But the look she fixed on him was frank, unabashed.

“And in your eyes, Roscoe? Are we equal inyoureyes?”

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