“That’s where you’re wrong.”
I’d been keeping a safe distance between us so I didn’t do anything stupid. But now I had a point to prove.
In two strides, I was standing right in front of her. She opened her mouth to speak, but I lifted my finger and placed it over her lips. “Let me show you something,” I murmured.
Dropping my hand, I eased close enough that when she took in a gulp of air, I could feel her breasts rise and brush against my chest through the thin silk of her blouse. When I lifted my hand to slide it around and cup the back of her neck, her hair was just as silky as I imagined. She took in another breath, and I dipped my head, silently telling myself to keep this quick and not let it spiral out of control.
I waited just long enough for her to step back if she really didn’t want this. But she did want it. I knew she did. The chemistry between us was creating its own electrical storm.
Her dark eyes held mine. I dipped my head and brushed my lips over hers—once, twice, and then, her lashes swept against her cheeks and her eyes closed. Tangling my fingers in her hair, I finally fit my mouth over hers, telling myself I could have just a little bit more. She smelled like flowers, and her mouth tasted sweet. She let out a little sigh, followed by a whimper that caught at the back of her throat.
When her tongue darted out to glide against mine, I groaned into her mouth, diving into her warm sweetness and taking our kiss deeper. I lost my mind when she arched against me and let out a breathy moan. My hands slid through her silky locks and down her spine to cup her bottom and pull her against me. She gasped.
The sound of a car door slamming on the street filtered through the fuzz of lust in my mind. I scrambled for control and tore my mouth away, pressing hot open-mouthed kisses along her jaw before dipping my head and breathing her in.
This was plain crazy. There I’d been, judging the guy who took her to a BDSM club on a first date, and now I was kissing her senseless on her porch. Maybe I could talk myself into thinking it was sensible because I’d known her before, but it wasn’t. Not really.
I did not want to leave, but I would. Grasping onto my control, I slowly lifted my head and stepped back reluctantly. Eva stared at me, her cheeks pink under the soft light cast from above her door. Her lips were swollen, and I wanted to see her undone.
“Dinner next Friday.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
Chapter 3
Eva
“He took you where?” Sarah asked, her eyes wide.
“Club Temptation, a BDSM club. Which I have no issue with,” I said with a shrug. “But it was a first date, so he had no way of knowing if that was okay with me. Plus, he was an asshole.”
Sarah, the very friend who’d persuaded me to check out the dating app, popped the lid on her coffee and reached for another packet of sugar. As she tore it open and added it to her coffee, she replied, “Wow. I wanted you to get out of your comfort zone, but not with a jerk.”
I leaned back in my desk chair, spinning to check my email on my laptop when I heard the distinct ping sound. It was nothing I needed to deal with at the moment, so I closed my computer and spun back to face Sarah. “I wouldn’t have liked him even if he hadn’t taken me there. He was too cocky for me. You’re not gonna believe this, though.”
She took a swallow of her coffee before lowering it and eyeing me. “What?”
“I ran into Zane Maddox there. He insisted on giving me a ride home.”
She’d just taken another sip of her coffee and sputtered before setting it down and reaching for a tissue from the box on the corner of my desk. “You are freaking kidding me.”
Sarah had also been an intern at Zane’s company. Our journey as friends had started as roommates in college. We became besties through our shared love of gaming, and we were blessed to be able to work together. Sarah had zero interest (her words) in running a company, so she had chosen to come work with me even though she had other offers. Our working relationship was made even better because I trusted her completely, and she didn’t mind disagreeing with me.
“Not kidding.” My cheeks flushed. “He also invited me to dinner.”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the kiss. Somehow, it felt too private. I didn’t feel right gossiping about how insanely hot and intimate it had been. That happened on Friday night. It was now Monday morning, and I must’ve replayed that kiss a hundred times in my mind. Mathematically, it couldn’t have lasted more than sixty seconds, yet it was burned into me.
“You said yes, right? You better have agreed to dinner,” Sarah demanded.
“Of course, I did.” The moment I spoke, all my insecurities started clamoring inside. “I don’t know what I was thinking, though. Zane is way out of my league.”
“He is not out of your league. You run a company too. You won an award just this year for women’s entrepreneurship in Seattle. You’re a fucking badass,” Sarah said, being the good friend she was.
I drummed my fingertips on my desk. “I don’t know. I’ll see if I have the nerve to go to dinner with him by the time Friday rolls around. Funny side note: he’s an investor in that dating app. He was none too happy to realize that Chad took me to the club for a first date without telling me where we were going.”
“Forget Chad. I think it was meant to be,” Sarah said, her blue eyes wide. “I mean, you ran into Zane there, and now, you’re having dinner with him.” She held her palm over her chest as she spoke in a breathy voice.
Sarah was a total romantic. She’d been casting her net far and wide to find her forever after. Lately, she’d been trying to rope me into her project because I hadn’t gone on a date in three years. It was for a good reason. I’d been busy building my business.
“Oh, for crying out loud. It wasn’t meant to be. Zane just happened to be there, and I just happened to dump my date right in front of him.”
Sarah cocked her head to the side, her blue eyes twinkling. She was the kind of pretty that would be annoying if she wasn’t so freaking awesome. She was truly the blond-haired, blue-eyed kind of cute I used to avoid. As friends, that was. We ended up paired together for a research project in a coding class and then became roommates. Behind her beauty, I discovered the heart of a brilliant brain and a bubbly soul. I adored her.
She wrinkled her nose. “But he asked you out to dinner, didn’t he?” she teased in a sing-song voice.
My cheeks were getting hotter by the second. Needing a distraction, I rolled my eyes and flipped my laptop open again. “We’ll see if I go. Meanwhile, I need to work. We’ve got a slew of applications to go through. You’re going to sit with me for the interviews, right?” We were interviewing for a new assistant position for one of our projects.
Sarah stood from the chair where she was sitting on the other side of my desk, smoothing her hands down her jeans. “In case I need to remind you, you’re my boss. If you want me to sit in on the interviews, then I’ll be there. I’d like to because we’re both going to be working on this project.”
Every now and then, I forgot I was actually her boss. I’d started this company by myself after I made a single game that took off by chance. A simple word scramble game that was “crazy addictive with a waterfall flow of words on the screen.” Or at least, that was how the online gaming site review described it. The steady sales from that game had given me the capital to expand and make more gaming apps.