Page 60 of For the Plot
She turns… Slowly. Brows lifted. “What are you doing?”
I lean closer. “Let’s have a little talk.”
She blinks. “About what, exactly?”
I reach out and place my hand on her thigh. My palm spans the warm, bare skin above her knee. I feel the way her muscles tense beneath my touch. A small, involuntary shiver rolls through her. I drag my thumb in a slow, careful circle but she doesn’t move away.
Her voice is tight. “This isn’t talking.”
“No?” I ask, tracing another circle. “Seems like we’ve been avoiding it all day.”
She swallows. I keep my tone low. Controlled.
“You’ve been walking around that office with your chin up, your eyes everywhere but on mine. You keep pretending nothing’s changed. Like I don’t notice the way you breathe faster every time I pass your desk. Like you didn’t tell methis is dangerous.”
Her breath hitches. Her hand curls into a fist against her thigh, just above mine. “Maybe I meant it,” she says.
I shift closer, letting my leg press into hers. “You did. And you’re right. This is dangerous.” Another beat passes between us. Heavy with every wrong thought we haven’t let ourselves say out loud.
She leans back against the leather, tilting her face up to meet mine. “So what are we doing, Reece?”
I smile, slow and dark. “Talking.”
Her breath stutters, the kind of inhale that betrays nerves she doesn’t want me to see. But I do. I see everything. The quick pulse in her neck. The faint tremble in her thigh under my palm. The fact that she hasn’t moved away.
I slide my hand up her thigh just a little bit higher, my fingers softly grazing the inside of her thigh. Her skin is warm, soft, and impossibly smooth under my hand. I drag my thumb in another slow circle and feel the tension coil tighter in her body, like she’s either going to slap me or beg me to move just a few inches higher.
“I think,” I say, my eyes never leaving hers, “you like this game more than you admit.”
She scoffs, a sharp little sound in her throat that doesn’t match the way her legs squeeze together beneath my touch. “Please.”
“Please what?”
“That’s not what this is.”
“No?” I lean in until my mouth is a breath from hers. I don’t kiss her. Don’t even graze her lips. I let them linger. “Then tell me what it is.”
She licks her bottom lip, her tongue so close to touching my lips and my cock jerks against the zipper of my slacks. She knows what that mouth does. She knows what she’s doing now. But she’s still lying to herself.
“I work for you,” she says.
“You work for my company.”
“I fucked your son.”
I arch a brow. Her attempt to piss me off or scare me won’t work on me right now. “Are you telling me that’s why you haven’t been able to stop looking at me all week? Are you worried you’ll like it better with me?”
Her face goes still, but her body doesn’t. Her knees inch farther apart, just slightly. Just enough. Her blouse is loose, thetop two buttons undone, and from this angle I can see the slope of one delicate collarbone, the faint curve of her breast. Her bra is lace. I know that now. I noticed it this morning when she dropped a pen and bent to pick it up.
I’ve been on the edge ever since.
“God, you’re arrogant,” she says, but her voice doesn’t carry the same conviction it did just a moment ago.
I don’t blink. “You make me that way, Skye.”
She laughs again, but this time there’s no fight behind it. She can’t keep fighting it.
“Why now?” she asks. “Why tonight?”
