Another deep pulse inside me and I tremble, closing my eyes. Waiting for the kiss I know I ought to resist but have already surrendered to. Waiting…
Waiting?
I peek open one eye and find Hank just where I left him, a breath away, his eyes locked with mine. And a smile so suggestive parked on his perfect lips, I nearly moan.
Hank winks. “Talk to you tonight, Abby.”
HANK
“YOU’VE GOT ZERO game face. You know that, right?”
Abby’s warm laughter filters through the line.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Bullshit. She knows exactly what I’m talking about, but I’m more than happy to remind her. In fact, I couldn’t be happier. “I’m talking about the way you were checking me out back at school today. It was like being mauled by your eyes. I feel dirty.”
I feel fucking fantastic.
She coughs, making a bunch of indignant noises that have me grinning ear to ear. I black the windows in my office and walk over to the couch with plans to stretch out for the next hour while we talk. I’d rather be in a bed like she is, but there’s still a shit-ton left to do tonight, and late hours are the tradeoff for missing the early ones… So the couch in my office is as good as it’s going to get.
“I was surprised, is all. That BHS T-shirt was like a time warp. Only with your cover-boy body still in play.”
I close my eyes, laughing.
“My cover-boy body? Jesus, you did not just say that.”
She says my name and I groan hearing it. And then because I’m not thinking, I say, “Let me come back to your place.”
“Don’t.”
I shake my head, feeling that buoyant sense of elation from this afternoon draining away. “What are you so afraid of?”
“Nothing,” she answers quietly. “I just don’t want more than this.”
And now, because I am thinking and I don’t want the rest of our call to have this sullen, sorry feel, I say, “Pretty sure you wanted more than this when you were checking out my junk back at school.”
“Hank!”
And we’re back on track. Just not the one I hoped.
“MR. WAGNER, JACK Hastings is in the lobby. He said you’d see him?” There’s a smirk on Sheila’s face because she knows I’ll see Jack. But I’m going to groan about it first… and inevitably after too.
I’m overbooked and already behind on my day, but I tell her to send him in. Unnecessary, as the asshole is already maneuvering past her.
“Jack, you ever hear of a phone?” I come up from my desk to greet him with a clap on his shoulder.
He rolls his eyes. “So you can blow me off. No thanks.”
Says the one guy I make it a rule not to blow off. The drama. “What’s up?”
“I heard this insane rumor that you, the head of one of the world’s largest tech conglomerates, who barely has time to breathe, who keeps a complete wardrobe in your office because going home takes too long, and who hasn’t taken a full day off work since sophomore year of college… have just picked up a new hobby playing teacher at BHS. Something you’d like to share with the class, Mr. Mogul?”
Ah yeah. That.
“Didn’t I tell you?” I know I didn’t. I haven’t seen him since the pizza night when Greg gave me the idea to give Abby what she wanted. “Yeah, so I’m excited about this.” I tell him about the robotics program, since the press hasn’t gotten more than rumors so far. “You wouldn’t believe all the kids who stopped by when I was getting set up yesterday. They’re amped about the program and even though it doesn’t actually start until January, they’re already asking if they can help with the setup.”
Jack raises a brow. “How many moms have contacted you offering the same thing?”
I don’t tell him too many because all I need is to give this guy any more ammunition. “You should get in on it, Jack. We need as many mentors as we can get, and it’s not all tech. There’s fundraising, marketing, business—”
“Yeah, that’s great, Hank. I’m glad you’re into it.” He walks over to where Sheila keeps a pitcher of water and pours himself a glass. “But how long do you think you’re actually going to be able to stick with this before having to pass it off to someone else?”
It’s the question everyone is asking—almost everyone. The question that’s got them all pissing themselves when they hear the answer.
“The season goes through spring. It’s a few hours, a few days a week out at BHS. I’m committed to this year, but obviously we’ll have to see how it goes before I commit to next. The biggest thing, though, is getting the program up and running, so whether I’m the head coach or someone else is, the kids won’t have to worry about whether they’ll have a team. I’m not going to leave these kids high and dry, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He shakes his head. “Not worried about anything. Just making sure you’ve thought it through. When kids are involved, it changes things. Know what I mean?”
“I do.” But I’m surprised to hear that Jack does. He’s a good guy, sure, but sensitivity isn’t always his thing.
“Good. And since I’m sure you’ll be hitting me up for a donation any time, you can repay the favor now. My mother’s involved with another benefit.” He tosses the heavy cardstock invitation on my desk. “Read it if you want to know what it’s for, but either way, I’m going to need you to buy a table.”
“Just a table?” I ask him, jotting a note to Sheila to get it done. “No surprise speech? I’m not listed on the program, right?”
He shoots me a look over his shoulder, cocky smile at the ready, and I scowl.
“I’m serious, Jack. You’re not screwing me like that again.”
He kicks back on my couch, stacking his hands behind his head. “Any headway with Abby? You could ask her to go. Make it about the cause so her conscience won’t let her say no.”
“Jesus, you’re a piece of work.”
He laughs. “Like you hadn’t already thought it.”
“Please.” I rub my hands together and look out over the city, strung with holiday lights. What I thought of is infinitely better.
ABBY
YOU ASKED MY mother on a date?” I demand Wednesday afternoon when Hank strolls into my room just as my last student is leaving.
I’ve been watching the seconds tick by since lunch when I started getting bombarded with one breathless, delighted account about that wonderful Hank Wagner stopping by after another.
He holds up a wagging finger, amusement glinting at me from behind his dark frames. “I asked you on a date. I asked her to be my date. Big difference.”
“Hank!”
“Abby,” he counters, walking past me to sit on the edge of my desk like he owns it. “Sweetheart, if you’re jealous, I’ve got invites to these things coming out of my ears. I’d be more than happy to bring you as my date sometime.”
“I am not jealous.” That would be absurd considering he’s only taking my mother in an effort to get closer to me. “And get off my desk.”
“So jealous,” he practically purrs. He removes himself from my desk and then has the gall to walk around it and park himself in my chair. “Not going to lie, Abby—I love seeing you all possessive of me.”
He’s trying to get a rise out of me, and, for as much as I don’t want to give him the satisfaction, it’s working.
I snatch a pen up from my desktop and start wringing it in my hands. Anything to keep from having to look too deeply into Hank’s eyes. “That’s not what this is.”
“Then what’s the big deal? I’ve always cared about your mom, and I realized I had the perfect opportunity to catch up with her.”
“Oh, it sounds like you two caught up, all right. She couldn’t stop talking about you.” For seventeen minutes straight. “How long were you even there?”
“Long enough for her to open a fresh sleeve of Oreos for me.” He leans forward, crossing his arms. “But again, Abby, what’s the big d
eal?”
“I don’t want her to get her hopes up about us, Hank.”
“Hmm. Couldn’t have that.”
I peer up at the shrewd look he’s giving me, and my pen flips out of my fingers and lands behind my file cabinet.
Hank raises a brow and starts to get up. But I wave him off, not wanting any of it. I’m being unreasonable and I know it, and it’s all his fault. This man has gotten to me like no man in my life and it’s frustrating the heck out of me. I’m not sleeping. I’m not focused. And now I’ve gone and lost one of my favorite pens behind my cabinet because he distracted me and I let him.
The cabinet is heavier than I expect, and I’m struggling a bit when Hank steps into the space behind me, his hands closing around my hips.
I freeze, painfully aware of his nearness. Of how my skin tingles when he’s so close.
His thumbs brush soft, maddeningly slow circles over my hipbones. Around. And. Around. Each revolution stirs the need inside me. Warm breath caresses my ear, sending chills skirting down my sensitized skin. “Here, baby, let me.”
And then he’s guiding me out of the way. Taking me to my desk and pressing me into it so for one fleeting second my thighs meet the edge. His fingers flex once, hard, and my body clenches, spilling liquid heat through my center.
“Hank.”
I’m waiting for him to pull my hips back, for the steely pressure of him against me. But instead he releases me, and when I turn around, he’s muscling my cabinet back from the wall. Saving my pen like the total hunk hero he is.
“BABE, ARE YOU okay?” Hank asks the next day, an urgency and concern in his tone that chips away at the anger I’ve been working up all week.
“Not really, Hank. I’m actually pretty steamed about—”
“Wait.” He cuts me off with a gruff laugh I feel deep in my belly. “You’re calling me for the first time in two months. Make that the first time in ten years, because you’re too mad to wait the extra eight and a half minutes for me to call you at nine… like I do every night?”
I blow out a long breath, but it doesn’t help. “Yes.”
“Okay, good to know.”
There’s the sound of papers shuffling in the background and then the soft thud of him dropping into his couch. His release of breath.
“Ready. So let me have it. Though in all honesty, Abby, I’m having some trouble figuring out what I’ve done in the last five hours since I saw you. Unless you’re miffed because I left too fast, and I did apologize, but I’d already pushed that meeting three times—”
“Enough, Hank,” I bite out. “It’s not because you left too quickly today.” He did come and go pretty fast. “It’s about what you did while you were there. What you’ve been doing more and more every time I see you.”
“Hmm.” It’s another one of Hank Wagner’s low rumbly sounds and damn it, I can feel my body reacting to it like I have no control whatsoever. “Explain.”
“You’re crossing all the lines, and you’re doing it on purpose.”
“I am.”
“Yes, you are.” My brow furrows. “Wait, are you agreeing with me?”
“It seems like a good strategy, but go ahead and lay it out for me so I can decide if maybe I shouldn’t.”
I blink at the phone, then shake my head.
“Last Wednesday it started with the hair-touching business. You know I told you I don’t want us to date again, but you have to take that one little step over the line of platonic anyway.”
“Yes.”
Again I’m looking at the phone because… yes? Just yes?
“Thursday, you carried my bag out to my car and then ran your fingers down my spine in that super-light way that ends way too low to be called friendly contact.”
“I did.”
Again, no question, no denial.
“Saturday, you touched my lips.” My brain short-circuited so fast with that soft graze of his fingertips, I don’t even remember how he managed it.
“You have an incredible mouth and I was missing it pretty bad.”
“Then yesterday with the pen business and that… that… way you had your hands on me.” Cripes. Already I’m getting wet thinking about it.
“Pretty sure that was legit. Wait, no, I did want to bend you over your desk… a lot. So there’s a good chance I wasn’t quite as good as I should have been.”
“And this afternoon? The smudge on my neck.” My belly’s tensing tight from thinking about the way he licked his thumb and then stroked it over the pulse point, rubbing back and forth, turning my knees to jelly and my mind to mush.
“Yeah, there wasn’t any dirt.”
“Hank!” I stalk from my living room into the kitchen and then back through to my bedroom. “How would you like it if I showed up at your work and started touching you like that?”
“Okay, Abby, let’s get a couple of things straight. You’re right—I have been taking liberties at your place of employment. But I would like to state that I am always cognizant of who is or, more importantly, isn’t around. Additionally, while I might hint at the bad behavior I’m aching—and Abby, I do mean aching—to indulge in, I never actually do anything that could get you in trouble. Even though every… single… time, Abby, you’ve given me those big blue eyes begging for just a little more.”
“I have not!”
All I get back from him is laughter, knowing and sure.
When he’s caught his breath and I’m a hairsbreadth away from driving into the city so I can strangle him, he adds, “But for the record, if you showed up here at my place of business, looking for any excuse you could find to touch me”—he sighs, and I can hear the hint of a smile behind it, feel the desire—“I would be ecstatic.”
I drop onto my bed as all that anger and indignation drifts away.
“You wouldn’t care if anyone saw us?”
“I’d care. But only because you do. Which is why I’d hit the switch to black the windows in here before I had the door locked behind you.”
I’ve seen pictures of Hank’s office from nights we were talking late. Texts he’s sent when I’ve asked about the space that he’s in. It’s incredible. Modern and sleek. Expansive and luxurious. It’s everything you’d expect for a man in his position.
So I have an idea of what it would look like to have him closing us into that room.
“Is it really that private? No one can see in… at all?”
“No one can see.” There’s a beat of silence. “Do you want me to tell you what I’d do with no one watching, beautiful?”
Do I? The pulsing heat between my legs says yes, but I know this is a dangerous game. It’s just another way to cross the next line between us, only this time he’s asking me if I want to do it. I know better, but— “Yes.”
Hank groans and I can’t tell if it sounds tortured or satisfied, or maybe a little of both.
“If you came to me, Abby, I’d forget about all the lines. I’d touch you like you belonged to me, kiss you like I never had to stop. I’d want to have you on my desk, but after waiting all this time, I need to get my mouth on you. So I’d press you against the wall by my door.”
My heart is pounding, my body on fire. It’s getting harder and harder to resist him. I’m not any closer to feeling comfortable with the idea of putting my heart out there again, not when I know Hank isn’t staying in Chicago. That his life is going to continue to take him to all the places I’m afraid to go. But that doesn’t mean the betraying organ hasn’t started beating its way closer to Hank’s way of thinking.
Pounding just a little harder every time I hear his name. Pumping all that extra blood into my cheeks every time I think about the way he looks at me. Skipping a beat when I turn around and find him standing there in the doorway to my classroom, like he was this afternoon. Making me wonder and, worse yet, wish—
“You’ve made me wait so long, baby, I’d need you to feel it. I’d kiss you hard, Abby. Wrap your hair in my fist, pull your head back so you were op
en to me. So I could take all the things you’ve been telling me I can’t have. All the things I’ve been going insane thinking about each night, too often during the day.”
My head drops back and my fingers tremble as they brush my lips. I can practically feel that hard pressure, the possessive claim. Maybe because his fantasy isn’t so far off from my own.
“But kissing you wouldn’t be enough, not by a long shot.” He pauses. “Are you still wearing that dress you had on today?”
I swallow, fingering the soft jersey. Wondering how far to go along. Wondering if it was even possible for me to pull back. Then a breathless “Yes” escapes before I find the answer.
“If you were at my office now, I’d be gathering up that skirt, sliding my hand up the back of your thigh and smoothing it over the curve of your perfect ass. I can practically feel your panties beneath my palm, baby. Feel how easily they slide out of the way so I can get to the wet heat beneath.”
“Hank.” This is going too far. I’m starting to squirm, but he doesn’t stop.
“You used to be so shy, but you aren’t so much anymore. So when I ask you to spread your legs for me, what will you say?”
“Y-yes,” I whisper, so far out of my comfort zone I can barely see my way back, so turned on I don’t even want to.
“Spread your legs for me and pull your panties to the side.”
I know we’ve taken a turn. The game has changed and what he’s saying is not in the abstract. It’s for him, for me, right now.
My legs part and I lie back, doing as he says.
“Are you open for me?”
Barely able to find the air for the words, I answer, “I am.”
“Christ, that’s so nice. I can imagine it and it’s driving me fucking crazy.” His voice is deeper, teasing me with every word he says. “If you’d come to my office, I’d be running my fingers across your lips, testing to see how wet you are. How ready.”
Oh God. I don’t know if I can do this.
“Tell me what you feel like.”
“I can’t,” I gasp, aroused and embarrassed and overwhelmed by what this man is doing to me.
“I think you can. I think you want to.”