frozen, watching me with wide eyes as I turned and opened the door, pulling it firmly shut after me. On the front step, I halted and took a deep breath. Damn. This woman was already causing me to lose it. Get it together, Lucas. Eyes on the prize.
With stiff determination, I pulled my bike out of the garage and got on, speeding down the street like a bat out of Mordor. The ride would take longer and I hadn’t planned on using the bicycle this morning. But it had been a handy excuse to avoid sitting in the car with Kat.
I didn’t see Kat again until lunchtime because I was in team meetings most of the morning. Thankfully my headache had let up. But my thoughts—my quick obsession—over this morning’s reaction to that innocuous text was really shaking me to my core.
And I knew, as the day wore on, that I couldn’t put myself in that position again no matter what. And no matter how much I wanted to fuck her.
And I really really wanted to fuck her.
But I had to stop thinking about that and about the night before, when I’d had her spread out across my piano, silky smooth legs open for me…
Goddamnitfuckinghellstopitnow.
I barely looked at her when she sidled up to me at my workstation, sinking into an empty chair beside me. “How are you feeling? Headache gone?”
I stared fixedly at my monitor, logging bug reports as they came in. “Never had one in the first place,” I lied.
A pause. “Is everything all right? You aren’t… you aren’t upset about what happened last night are you?”
My eyes dropped to my keyboard, then back up to the monitor. I wish I could close my nostrils as easily as closing my eyelids because she smelled amazing, as usual. That coconut and nutmeg scent was pure intoxication—possibly quadrupling the world-turning effect of Scotch. She bent forward and her silky hair tickled my arm. I yanked it back as if she’d burned me. Then she pulled away.
“Oh okay, so the answer is yes.” As it was lunch hour, hardly anyone was in the Den and those that were all headphones on. Her voice was still low enough that anyone around us, even without headphones, would have trouble hearing us.
Still, she paused and when I said nothing, her tone turned icy. “Wow, Lucas. Never thought I’d say this to you, of all people, but you are such a cliché.”
I bit my lower lip but like an asshole, I still said nothing. Didn’t even spare her a glance.
With an indignant huff, her chair scraped back against the floor and she stood, stalking out of the Den. Once the door flipped closed, I put my face in my hands. God, I was such a massive dick. I owed her the barest minimum of an explanation, at least. But all in all, this was for the best.
This would be for the best. By keeping her at a distance I was protecting her. Yes, and almost myself.
When you played with lava, you were extremely likely to get immolated. And Kat? She was pure molten magma right down to the color of her hair.
The day became a long slog after lunch. I hadn’t brought the dog with me to work because of the last-minute switch to my bicycle as a mode of transportation. I texted Michaela to have her check in on Max. She’d replied that she was already on her way to the house for some piano practice, so that was fine. When I left, it was almost dinner time. There were no plans for dinner and I couldn’t find Kat before I left. I assumed she’d already gone home.
So when I walked in my front door, a fistful of the daily mail in my hand, I wasn’t surprised to see people in the front room. But I expected those people to be Michaela with Kat. Instead, Michaela sat across from two guys I’d never seen before. Shutting the door, I set down my backpack. Max trotted over from where he’d been hitting up the newcomers for attention. As I bent to scratch him in greeting, I studied these dudes.
Not friends of Michaela’s, from the nervous way she was sitting on the edge of the couch. And one of them looked a little rough, like the cliché’d poster child for the kid who’d dropped out of school because he did too much pot every morning. He wore a black ‘80s metal band t-shirt, ripped jeans, chains