Page 49 of Maneater
There is enough complicating everything in my mind, enough shit on my plate right now. I don’t need to add a beautiful woman—a guest—who seems hellbent on getting under my skin to that pile.
But I want my fingers on her skin.
I want to feel her warmth, her softness, to hear her breath hitch. It’s becoming an all-consuming desire, a distraction, and I know she’s the only one who will ease it.
My hand moves once more before I touch the strands of her hair, and her breathing stops, suffocated by the promise we can both feel in the air between us. When my fingers graze her skin as I push the hair behind her shoulders, my cock stirs.From my fucking fingers grazing her skin.
When my hand moves back to her neck, grazing the skin there, my thumb presses along her thrumming pulse. My mind blanks on all the reasons I don’t blur lines. I can’t think of a single reason I shouldn’t press my lips to hers.
“You can kiss me,” she whispers, those wide green eyes nearly begging me to do as she offers. I let out a shaky laugh, my thumb starting to swipe along her neck.
“I think that’s the worst idea I could have, kissing you,” I whisper back.
“Now, why is that?” I should stop, but as seems to be the case when Josie is around, I can’t seem to find my filter.
“Because everything in my life is already a mess, and you seem like the kind of woman who thrives off of chaos.”
With that, she smiles. Some people might be offended by my words, but not Josie. No, she seems to take it as a compliment. A challenge, even.
“But that’s the best kind of way to live. Spontaneous. Chaotic. Life is too short for neat and orderly.”
It’s a reminder that my life is just that and has been for some time: neat, orderly, and utterly boring. Empty. That night in the bar with her, I felt a void I hadn’t realized existed begin to fill, and having her close once more, I’m desperate to repeat it.
But before anything more can happen, my phone rings, and for the second time in just a few days, I’m pissed about it. I don’t know where this was going to go, and any of the dozen images I’ve created in my mind are terrible ideas, but I can’t seem to convince myself that I wouldn’t have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of them.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to bring those in here?” Josie asks as I pull away, standing and. As seems to be the way when Josie is near, I smile wide.
“I’m the boss. I get to make and break the rules.”
“I wonder just how many you’d actually break, Rowan,” she whispers before reaching for her own bag and standing.
“I’ve got a meeting in fifteen. That was an alarm.”
“Well, work calls, I suppose. Thanks for breakfast, Rowan.”
And before I can even prepare myself, she’s leaning forward, moving to her tiptoes, and pressing a kiss to my cheek. I stand there dumbfounded as she smiles wickedly at me before walking away, hips swaying, that ass a target for my eyes. And when she turns to look back at me over her shoulder a few yards away, she smiles again, confirming that she once again caught me staring at her ass.
I am so completely screwed.
TWENTY
JOSIE
The next day and a half are uneventful, and after our chaotic morning and intimate breakfast, Rowan does everything in his power to avoid me. In fact, I don’t see him for the rest of the day after our breakfast, nor do I see him the following day. We also seem to be hitting wall after wall while trying to further narrow our suspect list.
This is why tonight’s cocktail party is important: it’s a great opportunity to mingle and watch employees work. We’re both in full Mavens’ attire, and I’m finishing up my dramatic smoky eye makeup for the evening while Rory sits at the small desk and continues to jot down thoughts and ideas, trying to find connections.
“There was another leak,” Rory says, a pen behind her ear, scrolling on her phone. “Mentions of Gene rubbing sunscreen on his new girlfriend. No photos, fortunately, but they seem to be from the same day we arrived here.”
“The same day, we saw Regina Reynolds on her phone.” I think about that contemplatively. I have my own gut instinct on it, but I pose the question to Rory all the same. “Do you think she could be our guy?”
She thinks on it for a moment before shaking her head, confirming my own thoughts. “Regina? No.”
We’d already determined that Regina is probably the leak, though, from Rory’s hacking; she hasn’t been to other resorts, so we can’t be completely sure just yet. But she’s not responsible for the sabotage.
“Look at the data. The leaks span too long and over multiple resorts. Whatever is happening here is a centralized issue. The leak is a problem, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not our issue for this assignment. The problem just happens to be here at the same time.”
I tip my head, thinking. “Okay, that makes sense. The leaks started, what? A year ago?”
