He sighed, so soft I could barely hear. “That wasn’t my intent.”
“Well, that’s certainly what happened.” I finally abandoned my frantic copying and turned around to face him. “You know, it’s just my second week here, Tom. I can’t afford to have any kind of scandal with the boss. So we kissed. Who the hell cares? Why couldn’t you just have acted normal about it instead of treating me like some kind of pariah?”
He rallied defensively. “I was trying to treat you just like everyone else.”
I folded my arms sarcastically across my chest. “Really? Do you up and leave the room whenever Jamie walks inside? How do you think that makes me look, Tom?!”
He threw up his hands in frustration. “Well, what do you want me to do?”
“Just be normal,” I emphasized each word. “Treat me normally, look at me normally!”
“How am I supposed to look at you normally?” he shouted back. “How am I supposed to look at you at all, when all I want to do is—”
He was on me the next second, mouth coming down hard over mine before I had the chance to refuse. I jumped up onto his waist as he slammed me back against the wall. He held me there with one hand, lips trailing their way down to my collarbone, as the other hand fumbled with the belt on his pants. I beat him to it and ripped it off, pulling down the zipper as I simultaneously hiked up my skirt. His hands were everywhere—in my hair, in my shirt. They’d just found their way down to slide off my thong when I pushed on his chest as hard as I could.
It wasn’t strong enough to move him, but it certainly caught his attention and he immediately stopped. We stared at each other, panting before I spoke.
“What the hell are we doing?”
He took a step away, and I slid to the floor. The door wasn’t even locked. He wedged his foot against it as a precaution as he pulled his pants back on and I straightened up my blouse.
“This...is not working.” His heated eyes raked over every inch of my skin as he smoothed back his hair and pulled himself together. “I can’t focus. I can’t think—”
“So what do you suggest we do about it?” I demanded breathlessly. I was just as out of sorts as he was, only I didn’t have my own floor of the building to run away to afterward.
He looked at me intently, choosing his words with care, before he finally made up his mind. “I have a cottage in the woods—upstate.”
“A getaway?”
“Spend Christmas with me.”
I blinked. “You want me to spend Christmas with you? And how exactly is that supposed to help this attraction, this chemistry we both can’t deny?”
A flash of dark mischief flickered deep in his eyes, and the corner of his lips turned up in an anticipatory smile.
“We’re going to fuck it out.”
Chapter 9
I can’t believe that I went. But I went.
The last thing Tom told me before we left work on Friday was to be ready by nine a.m. the following morning. Apparently, he didn’t want to waste any time. So, less than twenty-four hours later, I was standing on the curb, tapping my foot nervously and watching for his car.
I’d packed rather chaotically. My first instinct was to prepare for colder weather—according to Google, Upstate New York was a virtual snow globe right now—but then I realized, the entire purpose of the weekend was for sex (thus negating my heavy woolen sweaters). In the end, I’d stuffed my hiking boots side by side with my lingerie and simply prayed he wouldn’t notice. Truth be told, it was my first ‘sex weekend,’ and I didn’t really know what to expect.
Other than sex.
I hadn’t done a very good job of explaining it to Rose the previous night. When she’d asked me where I was going, I told her that I was headed out on a company retreat for the weekend. Of course, I didn’t take into account that Rose actually worked for the same company and saw through the lie the moment I said it. When I’d finally admitted that it was a ‘getting it all out of our systems’ weekend with Tom, she had been temporarily speechless. (If you’d ever met Rose, that was a very big deal.)
“But Jen, you don’t do emotionless sex,” she’d said with concern.