He hated her more for the way she lifted her chin, giving him her attention but making it very clear she wasn’t going to soften by so much as a blink. She said nothing. She simply waited for him to speak.
And Elliott, tongue-tied, unable to find the words and cursing himself for it, simply shook his head. The elevator doors bumped against his hand again. Soon the alarm would start to buzz , but he couldn’t move.
Simone licked her bottom lip. Slowly. Deliberately. Then she took her gaze from his and made herself very busy with her paper bag.
Elliott stepped out of the elevator and let the doors shut.
In his office, he threw himself into the work. E-mails, phone calls, meetings. He drank a pot of coffee all by himself and ate a doughnut instead of a real lunch. None of it helped him to forget about her, but it gave him something to focus on besides going to her office and …
And what? He wasn’t even sure, exactly, what office she worked in. He’d never asked her, and this, more than any of the rest of it, settled into his gut like he’d swallowed a handful of rocks. He’d fucked her. He’d slept with her. But he’d never bothered to ask her exactly where she worked.
He’d been called an asshole a lot of times before, and there’d been plenty of times he’d earned it. Some times he hadn’t. But this time, Elliott knew for certain he’d been a Class-A prick. From his drawer he took the leather binder and the pen. Sometimes he hated these lists, but now … now he needed to make one in a way that made him finally understand why Molly had always insisted they were necessary.
He thought of Simone, waking from sleep with that smile on her face the moment she looked at him, as though no matter how good her dreams had been, they were never as great as seeing him next to her. He thought of the way she sang in the shower, always off-key but knowing all the words. How she’d stolen his clothes from the closet, all of his shirts too big on her, and how she’d padded around his kitchen in her bare feet, making him breakfast without ever once needing to ask him how he liked his coffee.
Fuck.
He loved her.
Oh, fuck, he loved her, and knowing it was like a great, crashing wave of grief and relief and shame all at the same time. He loved her, and he hadn’t been able to tell her, even though she’d given him everything he’d ever wanted in another person, and things he’d never known to ask for but knew he could never again live without.
“Fuck,” he muttered and pulled his phone from his pocket.
He hadn’t erased her number. He pulled it up as easily as anything, just a few taps on the keyboard. A couple swipes of his fingertip. He could’ve sent the call through with as little effort. Even less. One second, two, and he could have it pressed to his ear, listening to the sound of the ring and waiting for her voice. He didn’t know what he could say, but Elliott knew he had to say something. Anything.
But before he could, his phone rang.
* * *
Simone didn’t want to be working late, but the truth was that she’d been so distracted with her own mopishness that she’d fallen behind. Mountains of paperwork, dozens of e-mails, phone calls to follow up on. Reports to file. Meetings to schedule.
She ought to quit, she thought as she rocked back in her chair and looked out the windows to where the sun was going down. She didn’t need this job. She could do the same thing for half a dozen other companies in Philadelphia. More than that if she wanted to take the plunge and move to New York. It would make her mother and Tree happy if she lived closer and could visit more often. Aidan would have a fit, but maybe it was time she broke away from him even more than she already had. Put some distance between them to give him and Corrina a real chance to make things work without any complications from her.
Get away from everything that reminded her of Elliott.
“Fuck,” she muttered.
“Every chance I get,” Jimmy said from her doorway.
Simone spun in her chair to face him. “Ugh. What are you still doing here?”
“Same thing you are.” Jimmy held up a pile of folders. “Making copies. Putting out fires.”
She grinned. “How’s the new position working for you?”
“Let’s just say that every day’s an adventure.” Jimmy grinned, too, leaning in her doorway. He jerked his chin toward the windows. “How’s your favorite office exhibitionist?”
“He’s not an exhibitionist,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “He’s just too dumb to pull the blinds.”
Jimmy came into her office and set his pile of folders on the edge of her desk to look out the window. He glanced at her over his shoulder. “You moved your desk.”
“Yes.” Simone made a show of clicking her mouse and doing something that looked busy at her computer, but Jimmy wasn’t fooled.
He laughed softly, then whistled, low, under his breath. “You and him?”
“It wasn’t a secret.”
“It wasn’t like you put out a memo about it, either.” Jimmy crossed his arms, looking down into Elliott’s office.
“I didn’t know I had to!” Annoyed, Simone rattled her keyboard and slammed a drawer, pinching her finger. With a shout, she stuck it in her mouth and gave Jimmy a scowl.
Jimmy held up his hands. “Sorry. Of course you didn’t.” He paused and looked out the window again. Then back at her. “Didn’t end well, huh?”
“You,” Simone said with a stab of her finger at him, “are too nosy.”
“So, what happened?”
“Nosy,” she repeated and with a sigh, admitted defeat and logged out of her computer files. No more work tonight. She couldn’t concentrate on it, and didn’t want to be here, anyway. She eyed him, looking him over. The shined shoes. The new haircut. The shirt that matched the trousers. Simone’s brows lifted. “Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. Who’s the lucky lady?”
To her surprise, he blushed. Crimson. No hiding it. His answer to her came out on a stutter of wordless syllables.
Simone sat straight up in her chair. “No. Fucking. Way. Not the Ice Queen. No!”
“Don’t tell anyone!” Jimmy said hastily, crossing to her door and shutting it tight. “Shit, Simone. How’d you know? Nobody knows. Nobody can ever know.”
“No kidding.” Simone propped her feet on the desk and shook her head. “Jimmy, honey, that’s going to lead to trouble.”
Jimmy frowned and went back to the window to sit on the sill, his arms crossed. “Listen to you.”
“Technically, we don’t work together. Just in the same building. And,” she added, “it still sucks. But Tasha’s your boss, man. Both of you could be fired. Or she could just make your life a living hell here and at home.”
Jimmy’s grin told her a lot. A whole lot more than she’d ever suspected, actually, and Simone considered herself pretty astute when it came to sniffing out the kink in other people’s closets. She sat back in her chair with a stunned shake of her head. Jimmy laughed out loud at her expression. Then he shrugged, blushing again.
“Wow,” Simone said.
Jimmy ran a hand through his hair, then straightened his shoulders. “It’s not why I got the job. I got the job first. The other thing came after.”
“Because she saw you could go after something,” Simone said.
Jimmy looked embarrassed, but also pleased. “She said she’d never seen anyone work so hard to make her happy, ever, and she had to find out just how far I’d go to keep her that way.”
“You’re playing with fire.”
“Better to risk getting burned,” Jimmy said, “then to never let yourself get close enough to be warmed by the flame.”
There was silence, a long one, in which the sudden ping of Simone’s phone from her purse startled them both. She laughed. Jimmy did, too.
“So deep,” she told him, mocking, but gently. “Such a philosopher.”
Jimmy buffed his nails elaborately on the front of his shirt and gave her a smarmy grin. “What can I say. Ladies love it when a guy gets deep.”
“
Perv.” Simone rolled her eyes. Her phone pinged again. She looked at her bag with a sigh.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
“No. It’s a voice mail from my mom or maybe from Aidan. Or from my friend Teresa. I owe her a call.” Tree had called Simone every day, trying to get her to have lunch. Dinner. To sleep over, have a girls’ night. Simone had declined, but there was only so long Tree could be put off.
“You hanging out here any longer?”
“I should. But no. I don’t want to. I’m tired and it’s late and, sorry,” she gave him a wink and a grin bordering on wicked, “I don’t have the motivation you do.”
Jimmy laughed and gathered his files. “You want me to walk you to the bus stop?”
“No. I’m good.” Simone made sure her computer was off and stood to sling her bag over her shoulder. “And Jimmy … really, congratulations on the job. And the other stuff.”
He nodded, then after a second or so, blushed again. “I can’t tell anyone else about it, you know? Not just because she’s my boss. But because of the other stuff. My friends don’t get it. They’d think I was pussy whipped.”
He walked with her to the door and Simone shut it behind them. “Your friends have kinks of their own. What you like isn’t so strange, Jimmy. Believe me.”
“My dad would shit a brick. He’d disown me if he thought I was letting a woman boss me around. I mean, he already thinks I’m an asshole for taking the job with an actual woman boss. If he knew about the other stuff…”
“Your dad’s a Neanderthal,” Simone said as they walked the dim and quiet hallway to the elevator. She turned to him and put a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place until he looked her in the eyes. “Giving yourself up to another person isn’t wrong or sick, and it doesn’t make you an asshole to like it. It doesn’t make Tasha a bitch to want a man on his knees for her, either. People like what they like, and when you find that person who can give you what you like, you shouldn’t let anyone get in the way of that.”
Jimmy nodded. “Is that what happened with you and that guy? Anderson?”
Simone frowned, wishing she could find a smile, a breezy reply. Instead, she had to swallow against another one of those fucking rushes of emotion that kept threatening to send her to her knees. When would that stop? When would it feel better?
“No. It wasn’t someone else. It was all him.”
“I never liked that guy,” Jimmy said.
Simone shrugged. “What can I say? I got close to the flame. I got burned.”
“I’m sorry,” Jimmy said as the elevator doors opened. “That sucks.”
“Hard and mightily,” Simone agreed. On impulse, she pushed onto her toes to kiss his cheek. Into his ear, just to make him blush again, she whispered, “You’re a good boy, Jimmy.”
Then she got on the elevator and let it take her down.
* * *
Elliott was just getting in his car when he saw Simone. Walking with purpose, keys bristling in her fist, she scanned the parking garage back and forth with such determination that anyone who even had a passing thought of jumping her would be a fool. It made him smile, the way she walked, like she was ready to kick the world’s ass for crossing her. When he stepped out from behind his car and said her name, he was lucky she didn’t drop-kick him.
“I have a bus to catch,” she said without slowing. “If I miss this one, I have to take a cab.”
“Let me give you a ride home.”
She flicked a glance at him, that lush mouth lifting in a small sneer. “No.”
Not even a No, thank you. Shit, she was still pissed off. No wonder she hadn’t answered his texts. Elliott frowned.
“C’mon, Simone. I need to talk to you.”
That stopped her, but only for a second. Then she shrugged her bag higher on her shoulder and kept walking. Faster now. Her heels click-clicked on the concrete.
“Simone!” His shout echoed in the parking garage, but she didn’t even turn her head. In three strides he caught up to her. He grabbed her elbow so that she had to stop or yank herself from his grip. If he’d been a betting man, he’d have picked the second, but Simone let him turn her.
“I’m not getting in your car or going anywhere with you, Elliott.” She lifted her chin. In the harsh, orange-white light, she looked very pale. Her eyes, very blue. Shadows feathered beneath them and in the hollows of her cheeks.
He’d put them there, though he knew her well enough to know she’d never admit it to him. But he knew it, and it was another stab inside him. “Please. I want to talk some shit out with you, Simone.”
“Text me.” She took her arm from his grasp.
He didn’t point out that he already had, and that she’d blown him off. “Too much to text. Simone, c’mon. Wait!”
She paused and hiked her bag higher again, clutching it against her. “You need to talk to me?”
“I want to, yes.”
“Need would be okay, too,” she told him with another of those chin lifts that meant he’d managed to hurt her feelings again.
Elliott softened. “Okay. I need to talk to you.”
“Fine. Talk.” She crossed her arms.
But now that she’d given him permission, Elliott discovered he didn’t know what to say. He’d been ready to talk to her earlier, but his father’s phone call had derailed him. Now everything he’d so carefully planned to say had disappeared behind the red-hot filter of his frustration.
He wanted to say he was sorry.
He wanted to say he wanted to try again.
He wanted to tell her about his dad, and Molly, and the woman who’d birthed him but who’d never been much of a mother. He wanted to tell her about why he didn’t want to let her in. He wanted to ask her what he should do about his father, who’d said he wanted to see him. Most of all, he wanted to tell her about the list and her place on it.
Instead, he fucked it all up with a sigh and a shrug.
Simone stared at him, long and hard. Unblinking. Then she turned her face, her jaw clearly clenched. Her fingers had gone white-knuckled on the strap of her bag. She seemed to get a little smaller in front of him. To fade.
“Forget it, Elliott,” she said in a low voice without looking at him. “I don’t need your sympathy or whatever the fuck you’re trying to do.”
He let her get a few steps away from him before he found his voice. “Is that what you think?”
She kept walking. He caught up to her again, this time grabbing too hard. She did yank away from him, eyes blazing.
“Get your fucking hands off me,” Simone snarled. “Don’t you touch me!”
“You used to like it when I touched you,” Elliott answered in a raspy voice. His heart thumped. His cock stirred, and he cursed himself for it.
Simone caught her breath and took a step away from him until her hip nudged a parked car. Her head fell back, just a little, exposing the line of her neck, where he swore he could see the throb of her pulse. Her lips parted with a sigh.
“Fuck you, Elliott,” she whispered.
He was on her a moment after that, one hand on her hip. The other going to the hem of her dress. Lifting it. Fingers sliding along her thigh to press the marks he’d seen earlier that day. The ones that made him want to hunt down whoever had been with her.
“You used to beg for me to touch you.”
“Fuck you,” she repeated, this time with a shiver and a moan breaking the words in half.
His fingertips pressed. “Or maybe someone else has been taking my place. Maybe you don’t need me anymore.”
She twitched, eyes going briefly closed when his hand moved up higher. Above the garters. His fingers slid along her clit and the seam of her pussy through her silky panties. His cock was rock hard, straining in his briefs.
“Someone else has been where I should be,” Elliott muttered.
Her eyes flew open. She’d have pulled away, but the car behind her and him in front prevented her from going anywhere. “Where you d
idn’t want to be. Don’t you dare fucking judge me, Elliott. You don’t get to be jealous. You don’t get to care. You gave all that up, remember? You chose.”
He couldn’t stop himself from pushing aside the leg band of her panties and finding her heat inside. She jerked when he did, muttering a curse, but didn’t pull away. She opened for him, hips pushing upward as she put a hand behind his neck and pulled him close to her.
She didn’t kiss him.
She turned her face at the last second when he tried to kiss her mouth, so he dragged his lips along her jaw. He found the sweetness of her neck and feasted there, biting and sucking as his fingers fucked deeper into her. She was so beautiful. So wet. Elliott shuddered as his thumb found her clit, rubbing as he pushed inside her.
“Did he make you come?” He breathed against her throat.
Simone twisted beneath him, her lips going to his ear. “Yes.”
The thought of it made him want to break something. His teeth caught her flesh, instead, and she cried out. Writhing. Her pussy clenched on his fingers. Her nails raked the back of his neck. She said his name in a voice like she was making a threat.
“Not like I do,” Elliott said. Fingers moving faster. Thumb rubbing, rubbing. He bent her back over the trunk of the car, his own hips rocking, grinding, anything he could do to get his cock against her.
Simone let out a long, low moan.
“Not like me. Say it, Simone. Say it wasn’t like it was with me.” He fucked himself against her harder, his cock like iron, like granite, like diamonds. It was nothing like her hand or mouth on him, nothing like the wet, slick welcome of her pussy, but he couldn’t stop himself.
She opened wider for him, rocking her hips to get him even deeper inside her. Her breathing, harsh and ragged, broke into a series of stuttering groans. She was close. Fuck, so was he, just from this. Hot fluid gushed around his fingers, and it sent him over the edge. He hurtled into orgasm. Mindless to anything but the pleasure ripping through him.
They came together, his hand clamped over her mouth to keep her cries from echoing throughout the garage. It lasted forever. Waves of it washing over them until finally she quieted. So did he.
Elliott opened his eyes to look into hers. They still looked bright blue, but now he was ashamed to see the sheen of tears. This time when he kissed her, she let him. Elliott let his forehead drop to hers, holding her close while he withdrew his hand from between her legs. Her grip softened on the back of his neck, soothing the sting her nails had left.