Page 23 of Jealous Boss

He doesn’t repeat it. He doesn’t even look at me—just keeps chewing, like he didn’t just drop a bomb at the dinner table and step clean over the wreckage.

But I see the tick in his jaw. The flare of heat in his eyes when he finally glances over at me.

He felt it, too. Whateverthatwas.

And now I can’t stop watching his hands. His mouth.

The way his fingers wrap around the glass, the way his tongue traces the corner of his lips when he eats the food I cooked for him.

The way he leans back in his chair like a man too large for the space, like he was never meant to fit anywhere neat and tidy.

That’s the problem. Ethan Sharpe is not tidy. He’s a churning vortex—barely bridled, brutal and dressed in a three-piece suit with scowl lines etched into his brow.

And I want him.

I want his hands on my thighs and his voice in my ear and his weight pressing me into the mattress and?—

“Pia?”

I blink, cheeks burning. “Sorry—what?

He raises an eyebrow. “You’ve been stirring the same bite of pasta for three minutes.”

“Oh. Right. Um… lost in thought.”

He smirks. But there’s nothing friendly about it.

It’s knowing. Predatory.

I bite my lip, and his eyes drop to my mouth like I just whispered a sin.

And stepped over a line of my own.

* * *

The restof the week is no better.

If anything—it’s worse.

At work, he’s my boss. Stern, precise, brilliant.

But his eyes still track me.Constantly. And, heaven help me, I’ve taken to walking past his door every chance I get just to feel the electricity of his gaze buzz over my skin.

I wear my hair up so I can feel it against the slope of my neck.

He finds reasons to talk to me, I think.

Extra tasks. Quick questions.

“Need anything else?” I ask one afternoon, my voice too high, when I drop a file he requested on his desk.

His gaze skims down my blouse, not lingering, and yet I feel him right there... brushing against my nipples. “Oh, I definitely need,” he mutters under his breath. “But not things I’m allowed.”

I choke on my breath.

He dismisses me before I can reply, and that buzz ratchets up a dozen notches.

At home? That’s become a minefield of its own.

---