Forbidden - Karla Sorensen Page 0,41

as I curled my fingers around her hand, that numbness was absent.

Pushed aside.

Completely erased.

In its place was ferocious need.

I pulled her to standing, and it was the closest we’d stood all night. She was taller than average, and when she lifted her chin to stare at me, I noticed that her inhale was a little unsteady. And her eyes, they dropped to my lips.

There was no one around us.

No one to see.

And for the first time in two years, I wanted to slide my hands over a woman’s body to see what her skin felt like under my fingertips. No, not just any woman. Isabel. She’d be warm and soft. She’d hold the evidence of how hard she just worked, and it made my skin tighten and my heart pound.

This woman, with all that banked fire inside her, had me holding my breath to see what she’d do next.

Because I would not, could not, be the first to move in closer.

Even if I wanted to. Even if I’d think of her like this later, imagine what we’d be like together, no matter how much I shouldn’t.

Not just because she was too young, because she was.

Or because she worked for me, which she did.

Because in two years, no one had ever made me want anything, and in a single interaction, she redefined everything, had me imagining her split wide underneath me, sharp nails, soft lips, wet tongue, and the taste of her in my mouth.

That was when Isabel licked her lips, eyelids fluttering. I sucked in a breath.

Then she yanked on my arm, sweeping her leg under mine, and I landed like a giant fucking boulder onto the ground.

She leaned over me with a grin, black braid falling over her shoulder. “You’re right,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t want that job.”

I exhaled a laugh as she walked away.

“See you tomorrow, boss,” she called over her shoulder.

Chapter Eleven

Isabel

My confident exit—which I was very proud of—lasted as far as the parking lot.

“Holy shit,” I whispered, hands shaking as I unlocked my car and slid in the front seat. For all I knew, Aiden was still lying on the gym floor because I’d put him there. “Oh, what did I just do, whatdidIdowhatdidIdo?”

But for as much as I wanted to dissolve into panicked laughter in that parking lot, a naughty little voice in my head was patting me on the fricken back because I’d had a glorious twenty minutes where he and I existed in this strange little suspended state of sexual tension.

Was it training? Foreplay? I wasn’t even fucking sure.

All my awkwardness gone.

He was talking.

I was talking back.

He knew exactly what I needed to settle the snarling angry version of me that I hated so much.

It wasn’t the boss and the manager. There was no awkward version of me on display. It was something else entirely. It wasn’t something that just played out in my vivid imagination. It had been real.

Because Aiden Hennessy stood over me, staring at my lips, and I swear on the benevolent spirit of Muhammed Ali, I almost died on the spot.

He was so big and tall and strong, his hands so broad and capable-looking, and if he kissed even a fraction as well as he did anything else, I’d never survive it. Forget sex, I’d perish from his tongue in my mouth.

I couldn’t even start the car because I wasn’t sure I was steady enough to drive home. Adrenaline let down or something. Whatever the comparable version was when you had unrequited lust pumping through your body instead of blood.

My phone was in my hand before I could blink, words crowding my throat before I could even make sense of what I wanted to say.

Paige hardly managed a hello.

“I need your advice,” I interrupted.

“Holy shit, finally,” she breathed.

Under my breath, I laughed, but really, I was still just … freaking out.

“Have you ever like”—I paused, running a hand through my hair—“wanted something, but you never thought you’d have it.”

Paige didn’t miss a beat. “Your brother when we first got married.”

I folded my arms on the top of my steering wheel and laid my forehead on them, staring down at my lap. I couldn’t do this. I closed my eyes and blurted out the first thing that came to my head. “Cake. There’s a cake you imagined eating. You know exactly what it looks like, you had every part of that cake’s existence memorized, and you dreamed about it for a really long time, even before you knew what