Page 103 of Lessons in Heartbreak

“Work is overrated,” he said, leaning up against the headboard and devouring me with those I’m-going-to-eat-you-alive eyes. “I think you should call in sick since it’s my last day.”

At the reminder, my eyes slammed shut. “What time do you have to be in Denver?”

“Doesn’t matter too much,” he answered. “Steven said his cleaners will get here around five, so I just need to be packed up before then.Come on, birdy. Let’s play hooky, and we can have a Jane Austen marathon. I’ll even let you paint my picture again.” He grinned—crooked and playful and so freaking attractive that I felt like bursting into tears.

A thick sob threatened to crawl up my throat, but I swallowed it down.

The suggestion was a nice one. A really nice one. But when it played out in my head, all I felt was sick to my stomach. Like playing house when I damn well knew that nothing was going to come from it.

Nothing was going to come from this. From us. The more I forgot that, the worse it would be.

His phone dinged on the nightstand, and he made a growling sound under his breath when he read the text. “Fucking Steven,” he muttered.

“Something wrong?”

Griffin smacked his head against the headboard in a brief show of frustration, his jaw clearly tight. “He wants me at the facilities at ten. Shit. I need to hop in the shower. Marketing department wants me to do some social media stuff, and I had ... I had something I wanted to do before I left.”

“Oh.” I wrung my hands together and fought the clammy sensation of panic as it dug its claws into my skin. This was it, then. My entire life felt like it had been upended, someone sneaking in when I wasn’t looking and ransacking the perfect order of things. I’d say goodbye to him and try to figure out how to pick up the pieces.

Naive. So very, very naive.

Increasing the distance between our bodies wasn’t erasing the powerful grip that the sex chemicals had on my brain. It was a helplessness that made me imagine myself getting sucked into a dangerous current in a dark-blue ocean. The kind that looked smooth and straight and was incredibly dangerous. My head was hardly above water, and no matter how hard I thrashed to get free, the allure of this man snaked me right back in, like a hook to my waist.

I gritted my teeth and pulled up my metaphorical big-girl panties.

It was just sex, and I was capable of leaving it that way. I’d better be, since the entire arrangement was my idea anyway. “Maybe that’s for the best,” I told him. “I have to get home and let Bruiser out.”

Griffin nodded, his eyes flitting over my face. My back teeth were clenched tight, and the beginnings of a headache bloomed behind my eyes as I struggled to decide what a more experienced woman would say in a situation such as this. Someone who wasn’t naive. Someone who was confident and clear about the stakes we’d laid at the beginning of all this. Someone who promised that the feelings would stay safe and out of harm’s way.

“Last night was fun,” I told him lightly. The words felt like lead coming out, reducing our incredible night to something so small and insignificant. Over and over, he’d reminded me that fun was what we had. Fun was what he could offer. But saying it felt like the worst sort of betrayal to how he’d actually made me feel. To what he’d become in my life. “Thank you.”

Griffin’s chin dropped to his chest, a muscle jumping in his jaw, and for a moment, I worried that I’d offended him.

“Fun,” he said quietly. When he looked up, I almost lost my breath at the intensity I saw there.

Clutching the sheet around his waist, he prowled off the bed and strode toward me, not stopping until he was towering over me. Without the help of my heels, I had to tip my face up to look at him. At this proximity, the clean, spicy scent of his skin had my head swimming, and I fought the urge to sway into his chest, press my nose against his sternum and just breathe.

“That wasn’t fun,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.

I blinked a few times, my throat going tight. “It wasn’t?”

His hand shot out and gripped the back of my neck, and the sheer possessiveness of it yanked the breath from my lungs. He dipped his head down, speaking against my mouth. “That was fucking phenomenal.” When he didn’t kiss me, I exhaled shakily. Unmoving, he held there, hiseyes locked on mine. “Don’t think it’s always like that, baby. Because I promise you, it’s not.”

My chest felt like it was going to explode, and I struggled to pull in a full breath. There was no possible way he could know what those words did to me, how thoroughly they wrecked me. Hollowed out the space between my ribs until the beat of my heart echoed against absolutely nothing.

Somehow, I managed a nod, my nose brushing against his as a tear slid down my cheek.

Not kissing him felt like a crime, so I cradled his jaw and pushed up on the balls of my feet to seal my mouth over his in a possessive kiss that came from somewhere deep inside me, someplace secret I’d never tapped into before this man. His hand tightened on the back of my neck, his jaw opening as he brushed his tongue over mine and let out a small, pleased grunt.

My arms tightened around his neck, and his arms banded around my waist to lift me up against his chest. I didn’t even dare stop to breathe, thankful for the way he shared oxygen with me during that endless, searing, world-altering kiss.

He broke his mouth away from mine, resting his forehead against my own before carefully setting me back down. Griffin licked his bottom lip while he stared at me.

“You’re right,” I told him. “It wasn’t fun. It was ... it was perfect, Griffin. You were exactly what I needed.”

For the briefest moment, there was a breathless sort of heartbreak in his eyes. I set my hand on my stomach and stared down at the ground, unable to look him in the face for much longer.

No.

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