“Shit!” Jeremy cursed as he rounded the corner, rubbing his elbow. “Well I’m definitely awake now.”

  Mallory cleared her throat and softly mumbled an excuse to leave. She paused in the door to shoot me one last little smile before disappearing out of sight. Jeremy was still rubbing his elbow, muttering about a bruise.

  “You good?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “How about you? Have a good weekend?”

  “It was fine,” I said dismissively. I poured myself a cup of coffee and tried to ignore the feeling of his eyes glaring holes into the back of my head. “I’ll catch you later.”

  He said nothing as I left, so I assumed I was in the clear. I entered my office and let out a long sigh, placing the coffee on my desk as I started to pull off my suit jacket. I was due for a long morning of phone calls so I figured I may as well be comfortable.

  The feeling didn’t last long. Just as I was draping the jacket over the back of my chair, my office door burst open. I frowned as Jeremy pushed the door by and stalked in. He stopped in front of my desk and spread his arms out.

  “Reporting for duty.”

  I didn’t know what game he was playing, but there was a hard edge to his eyes that unnerved me.

  “Janice has your assignments today. Check in with her.”

  I hesitated at the back of my chair, waiting for him to turn around and leave. When he merely stood there and stared at me with a sneer of disgust, my irritation rose.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “You know, I believed you when you said your interest in Mal was just to be sure there wouldn’t be trouble in the office. You really had me going, man.”

  I bristled. “Excuse me?”

  “Come off it, Uncle B. You know, I flirted with her a bit those first few days. So when she came in all dolled up, I thought it was for me. But it wasn’t, was it?” he let out an incredulous laugh and stuck out his finger. “It was for you. Fuck. No wonder you got so bent out of shape that day in the hall.”

  The last person I expected to put it together right away was Jeremy and he was the worst damn person to be the first to know. I was hoping to find a delicate way to bring it up with Janice and some of the other higher-ups at the company before going public.

  This was not the plan. So I did the first thing that came to mind.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied. “I warned you about harassing—”

  “I never had Mal pegged as a girl with Daddy issues. Makes sense, though.”

  He was baiting me. It was so fucking obvious and yet I couldn’t stop the instinctive urge to defend her.

  “You don’t know shit about her so stop pretending like you do,” I hissed. “Now get the hell out of my office.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said as he stepped around the chair and slid into it. My eye twitched when he propped his feet on my desk. “I think I’ll stay right here.”

  “This isn’t high school, you little shit. I’m not going to call your mother and tell her about your behavior. Do you want to get fired?”

  “It’d be better than working for a sick fuck who takes advantage of young girls,” he said dryly. “So how hard did you have to work for it?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” I said in warning.

  My mind was moving a mile a minute, trying to stay calm given the circumstances. I knew he was only baiting me for a reaction because he was jealous—that much was a given from both his attitude and his expression.

  It’s just jealousy. Just let it go. Do not engage.

  “What was it like when you popped her cherry? Did she scream? Bite your neck? I always imagined she’d be a biter.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” I yelled, undoubtedly drawing a ton of unwanted attention to my office. “Get out!”

  He rose from the chair and met me on my way around the desk, getting up in my face as he hissed, “Just fucking admit it. Admit that you fucked her.”

  The professionalism I was struggling to hold on to evaporated when he stabbed me in the chest with his finger.

  I grabbed the lapels of his shirt and hauled him close as I hissed, “Fine. Yes. I did what you failed to do and I fucked her. Are you satisfied?” As soon as I finished speaking, I shoved him away from me and pointed to the door. “You’re fired. Get out.”

  He stumbled back and pursed his lips together in a hateful stare. “You only did it because I told you she was a virgin, didn’t you?”

  “You’re just mad that you didn’t get there first.” I narrowed my eyes at him and grinned. “Sorry, kid. She needed a man. She begged me to take her.”

  Jeremy’s eyes didn’t leave mine as he slowly backed to the door. I was watching him like a hawk, which was why I caught a glimpse of dark hair moving in the hallway. He pulled open the door and fled from my office and my mouth fell open as Mallory came into my field of vision.

  The expression on her face was all the confirmation I needed that she had heard way too much of the conversation. For fuck’s sake, her eyes were glassy.

  The breath whooshed out of me like I took a punch to the gut.

  “Mallory, I—”

  “Don’t. Just don’t.”

  She turned and ran. I raced after her, stopping when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Whipping around, I locked eyes with Janice.

  Only then did I notice the swarm of people as they rushed back to what they were doing, pretending like they hadn’t been eavesdropping. Shit.

  “Let her go,” Janice said slowly.

  “But I—”

  “She’s hurt and embarrassed. You need to give her space, Brian. Let. Her. Go.”

  Giving her time was the last fucking thing I wanted to do. What if she spent the rest of the day twisting what I’d said into something I didn’t mean? Or worse—what if she thought I had used her?

  “Shit,” I said with a long exhalation. “Shit! What am I supposed to do now?”

  “My advice? Go to your office, get your work done, then go to her,” Janice said as she stepped away. “You also might want to consider pulling together a meeting to discuss the fact that you’re breaking one of your own rules. Some of the older employees might not be too happy about that.”

  I scrubbed my hand over my jaw and nodded to myself. Janice took that as a dismissal, turning to walk away.

  “What about you? How do you feel about it?”

  She shrugged. “You can’t help you who you love, Brian.”

  Love. Was that what this was?

  “I don’t—”

  She held her hand up to stop me. “Lie to yourself all you want, but don’t try it with me. You wouldn’t have gotten so enraged if you didn’t feel strongly about her.”

  With that, she turned on her heel and walked away. I stared after her for a long while, attracting some sympathetic stares from random employees.

  Just as I was convincing myself that the best thing I could do was follow Janice’s advice, one of the new hires hesitantly approached.

  “Mr. Wolfe?”

  “Vanessa, right? What do you need?”

  “Um, Mallory—Miss Jones—she asked me to give you this before she left.”

  It was then I noticed the slip of paper she was holding up toward me and I felt my heart constrict at the sight of it. Deep down, I knew what it was going to say long before I snatched it out of the girl’s grip and opened it.

  ‘I quit.’

  “Fuck no, you don’t,” I growled. Vanessa’s eyes widened and I stifled the urge to curse again. “What did Janice tell you to do this morning?”

  “I’m supposed to assist Mark—”

  “Tell Mark to fuck off.” Her mouth fell open, no sound coming out as I gently gripped her shoulders and led her into my office. “Your new task is answering my phone all day and rescheduling all my meetings. Okay?”

  “O-Okay. What will you be doing?”

  I balled up the piece of paper and tossed it into the garbage can beside my desk before I grabbed my coat and hastily pulled it on.

  “Fixing my fuck-up before it’s too late.”

  13

  Mallory

  For a solid hour after it happened, I was completely numb. I left the building, waited for the bus, then stared out the window on the way home like some kind of zombie. I even marched up the steps in my building without the usual grumbling to myself about the lack of an elevator.

  I shut my front door, clicked the lock into place, and turned around to lean against it.

  The sound of my head thumping against the wood was what finally broke me. The humiliation came rushing back along with hot tears.

  This time, I didn’t try to stop them. Not that I could have. They rolled down my cheeks as I struggled to understand what I’d overheard.

  Had I been played? Was every moment I spent with Brian a lie? I certainly hurt like I’d been betrayed. I was so damn embarrassed that I couldn’t resist the urge to ask Vanessa to give him that paper.

  I rolled my eyes and wiped at my tears. What a way to hand in one’s resignation. God, I was even more embarrassed thinking about my childish gut reaction.

  I wasn’t sure how long I stood there replaying what I’d heard over and over again, but it was long enough to take me so far out of reality that I screamed when a series of loud bangs sounded right beside my head.

  I pulled away from the door—frozen in shock. I waited for another bang, but instead heard a soft, “Mallory?”

  “Brian?” I croaked, cursing the tears lodged in my throat.

  I could hear the relief in his voice as he said, “Open the door, sweetheart.”

  “N-No! Go away.”

  Great. Another childish reaction to be embarrassed about later.

  His voice got low and I had to press close to the door to hear him as he said, “Your neighbors are starting to come out because of your scream. Please open the door.”

  Sure enough, I heard a door down the way being opened along with some quiet murmuring. No matter what he had said in his office, I didn’t want anyone calling the police on him.

  I hurriedly unlocked the door and stepped out, ignoring Brian as I waved down the hall to Harold.

  “I’m fine. Sorry.”

  He looked between the two of us a few times before nodding and ducking back into his apartment. The silence in the hallway was thick as I steadfastly refused to look at him.

  Much as I wanted to keep my eyes on the floor, I didn’t bother to fight when his fingers hooked under my chin and tilted my head up.

  “I made you cry,” he said softly.

  I might have been having doubts about him, but there was no mistaking the real remorse in his voice. I stepped out of his grasp and whispered, “Come in.”

  There was a flash of hurt in his eyes that made me angry as hell. After the door was shut and locked, I turned to him and pursed my lips together.

  “How dare you.”

  “Let me explain, please—”

  “No. How dare you show up here with that kicked puppy look? You have no right to be the one who’s hurt here.”

  He held his hands up in surrender. “No argument here. I’m so sorry, Mallory.”

  “Just tell me what was real.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I was waffling between my anger and my sadness, horrified when I felt the tears coming back again.

  “Just—” I tried to start, my voice breaking. Brian’s eyes flashed in alarm and he reached out, but I stepped back before he could try to console me. “Just tell me what was real. Do you care about me at all?”

  His hands lowered to his sides as his throat bobbed with a rough swallow. “It was all real. Everything. What you saw was just... Fuck. It was me falling for the oldest trick in the book. He was jealous and he baited me.”

  “And you took it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you realize how bad it sounded? How many people were listening?” I asked, throwing my hands up in the air. “Ten bucks says half of those people would tell me that I’d be crazy to trust you right now. So why should I?”

  Brian came closer again and I tried to dodge, but he wasn’t having it. He followed me until my back was against the wall and reached out to gently rest his hand on my chest, right above my heart.

  “What’s this tell you?”

  The tears fell harder as I admitted, “That you care about me.”

  His free hand came up to wipe my tears away as he hoarsely said, “I won’t lie to you, Mallory. Ever. I care about you more than you know. Trust your heart.”

  He was right. It felt like a safe bet for me to trust my heart—to trust him—because I was absolutely certain that he was the one. Whether I was embarrassed or not, he was still the one.

  More than ever, I needed to feel close to him. Not just to wipe away some of the lingering sadness, but to reassure myself that I was right. I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him, sighing when he instantly hugged me back.

  “Thank you,” he whispered into my hair.

  “For what?”

  “Forgiving me,” he said with a sigh as his hands flattened on my back and rubbed soothing circles. “Is there any way I can convince you to retract your resignation?”

  “I wouldn’t mind pretending like that never happened. But if you want to really convince me, my bedroom is through there.”

  He pulled away to follow the direction of my finger, his eyebrows raising at me in surprise. He looked torn for a moment before he abruptly bent down and lifted my feet from the floor.

  “I’m not going to ask if you’re sure this time,” he told me as we crossed the threshold and he walked straight to my bed and gently deposited me on top of the blankets. “But I do want you to know that if you ever told me to stop—I would.”

  “I know,” I confirmed, pushing myself up on my elbow and reaching for him with my other hand. “No more talking.”

  Brian nodded and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, tossing it on the bed beside me before coming down on top of me.

  It was hard to say who removed what article of clothing considering we barely stopped kissing to do it. But after what felt like hours of foreplay, I could feel every inch of his naked body pressed against mine and I blindly reached for his wallet.

  My searching fingers touched his and our kiss paused—our eyes popping open at the same time. We smiled as we separated and he pulled the packet out, sheathing himself as I pulled myself up to rest my head on the pillow.

  “How long has that been in there?” I asked, wishing I hadn’t broken the silence when he sharply looked up.

  “I put it there this morning. Not that I was planning to...” he trailed off with a frown. “I’m honestly not sure why I did it. I just wanted to be prepared for anything.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  He pushed my thighs apart and settled between them as he murmured, “So am I.”

  While we kissed again, his cock probed at my entrance and slid in without resistance. I hitched my legs around his hips as he started to move, the slow rolling motion making him grind against my clitoris on every upstroke.

  I had no idea how long he continued like that. He eventually broke the kiss as our breathing became labored, but he still didn’t increase the pace. After long moments of turning my head back and forth on the pillow while I whimpered, I opened my eyes, prepared to beg him to go faster.

  When I caught sight of the look on his face, all the words I was going to say left my brain. He was staring down at me with a look of quiet adoration—one so tender that I could feel the pleasure beginning to reach a peak even without the extra speed I thought I needed.

  I thought that he was holding himself back again—denying the passion in fear of hurting me. But this was passion of a different kind.

  He was showing me how he felt about me without words. My fingers clutched his shoulders as I shakily said his name and he adjusted the angle just enough for him to reach his and between our bodies to stroke my clit in time with his thrusts.

  He didn’t ask me to come. He didn’t tell me how good it felt. He just gazed at me adoringly and smiled when he felt my walls beginning to tighten. My eyes rolled back and I moaned loudly as I came harder than I ever had before. Brian muttered a curse and lowered his head to mine, kissing me softly as I came down from the high of my orgasm.

  But his hips didn’t stop moving. He kept going until I could see the strain on his face. Right on the edge, he managed to hold on until I came again and I let go of his shoulders to fall back against the bed while he roared his release to the ceiling.

  He didn’t remove himself from my body right away. He snaked an arm beneath me and rolled us over, holding me on his chest and shaking his head when I tried to scramble off.

  “Stay,” he breathlessly commanded. “Just... stay.”

  I rested my ear over his heart, sighing with contentment as I listened to it pound. But instead of being lulled to exhaustion by it, I felt more awake and alive than I ever had before. I tipped my chin up and smiled at his peaceful face. Everything was startling clear.

  “I love you.”

  His eyes opened and he looked down at me with surprise. I watched his mouth open and close a few times before his brows began to furrow.

  “Mallory—”

  “You asked me to trust my heart and I did. Now it’s your turn to trust yours.”

  His confused frown deepened, but he didn’t protest when I slid off his body and clutched the sheet to my naked form. He must have been able to sense what I was about to say, because he sat up and fixed me with a pleading look.

  “I need you to go.”

  “It’s not that I don’t—”

  “Brian,” I cut in, interrupting his panic with a smile. “It’s okay. We’re okay. But I need you to go now.”

  He still seemed confused as he bent down and reached for his pants. He watched me as he got dressed like he was waiting for me to reveal that this was all some sort of test.

  It wasn’t. I knew once he had time alone to think, he would realize what I had. He lifted his eyebrows in a silent question and I pointed to the doorway to my bathroom, rushing over to grab my bathrobe while he cleaned himself up.