Deliciously Obedient (31 page)

His
own fucking heart.

“
I
left,” she huffed, “because you arranged for a sham job for me in
Iceland.”

“
Not
a sham.”

“
Not
a sham,” she taunted. “Tell that to Siggi. His grope wasn’t
exactly part of the Bournham Industries HR manual.”

Possessiveness
stripped him of rational thought. “Who’s Siggi?”

“
A
coworker who put the basics together and figured out I was the woman
in the video.”

Groan.
“Fuck.”

“
That’s
what he wanted!” She drank another glass, cheeks pinking, showing
the alcohol’s effect. “Turns out when you’re caught on camera
fucking Michael Bournham, even people who live in the middle of
nowhere know you.”

“
And
he….did he hurt you?”

“
Only
when Jeremy punched him and I was pinned under the body.”

Frowning,
Mike reached for his glass and found it empty. Lydia grabbed the
pitcher and poured a shot glass’s worth of sangria in it, which he
drank without thinking.

“
Pinned?”
And
punched
? Jeremy wasn’t the type to use his fists. His
mouth? Sure. The guy could use that as a weapon with pinpoint
precision. But a physical fight? What the hell had really happened in
Iceland? Disappearing was turning out to have been a huge mistake.

Possibly
insurmountable.

She
made a puffing sound with her lips. “You sent Jeremy to protect me.
Which he did. You sent him in your stead.” She shook her head and
her posture loosened as she leaned across the table. “I know you
sent him to watch out for me, but you had to know he’d come on to
me, too. Jeremy was at a nightclub with me when Siggi tried to coerce
me into sex.”

“
And
he thought you were interested because…”

“
Because
I’m the corporate whore on the payroll for any employee’s
pleasure, Mike. Didn’t you get the memo? Oh, that’s right….you
wrote
that fucking memo.”

The
Lydia who said those words wasn’t angry; in fact, she said what she
said with a monotone that worried him more than overt rage would
have. Tight control was needed to defer so much pain.

He
knew that all too well.

“
That
was never my intention.”

“
Then
what was your intention?”

“
I
tried to explain before the story broke.”

“
And
you failed. Miserably.”

“
I
own it.”

“
Good.
At least you’re not casting blame on anyone but yourself.”

“
I
never did.”

“
No,
you just left all the pieces for someone to pick up.” A quick
signal with her wrist and the server delivered a second pitcher.
Liquid courage.

The
sound of his own breath through his nose and mouth felt like
sandpaper, the touch of his fingertips against the cotton tablecloth
like frostbite. Lydia wasn’t bitter, but she was loosening up, and
for someone so tightly wound that meant he was about to have a
snowball’s chance in hell at learning her true feelings.

She
didn’t look tightly wound with Jeremy
, said that ever-present
fucking asshole voice that had appeared the second he found them in
his bed.

As
she drained the sangria and chugged it down like iced tea, her eyes
were angry and passionate, giving him the kind of look only a woman
with a shared past could give a man.

“
Why
did you invite me here?”

“
I
heard the food was good.”

Smirk.
“If you want more than five minutes with me, you’d better drop
the act, Mike.” The last word seemed to trouble her. “Or Matt. Or
Michael Bournham. Or whoever you’re masquerading as these days.”

Double
ouch. When he told her what he’d done at Escape Shores, she’d
blast him out of her life forever.

So
be it. Enough lies. Time for a flood of truth that might wash his
sins away.

Or
drown him.

The
way she leaned across the table, how her lips worried a little
umbrella that stabbed the orange garnish in the new pitcher, how her
tongue licked and teased—her actions weren’t as angry as her
words.

That,
too, was a tell.

Mike
was all too good at reading tells. Like a high-end poker player, he
could size up a person’s emotional state with a few glances and
enough time. Collect data by just sitting next to someone and you can
profile them, inventorying their internal emotional state and how it
will affect their actions.

Right
now, Lydia’s body said
want
.

And
so did her mouth.

When
the words matched up, he’d be in heaven.

Too
bad he had to go through hell to get there.

“
I
have a question for you, Mike.” Razor-sharp eyes, untouched by the
alcohol, bored into his.

“
Yes?”

Curling
two fingers, she beckoned him to come closer. Ah, the scent of
vanilla and musk, something sweet and dangerous. Rock hard in under a
minute, he now ached with the need to be in her, buried and
enveloped, making her his.

Leaning
across the table, he opened his mouth to catch more oxygen,
temperature rising. How hot could Lydia make a damned room?

“
Tell
me,” she whispered.

“
Tell
you what?”

“
Tell
me why Jeremy thinks it’s fine for me to sleep with you.” Those
two hooked fingers rotated slowly and pressed against his open mouth,
silencing whatever instinctive reaction he had, the cool chill of her
skin against his ajar lips driving all reason from him.

“
And
not the party line. Tell me why I should violate every rule
convention dictates and do this.”

“
I—”
Her fingers still pressed into his lips, his cock pushed against the
fine cotton of his slacks, blood shoved through his body like a
waterfall, and if the universe had split in half with a rift in
dimensions that revealed every second of his life to this very point
to be born of the imagination of a strange, dull writer on a distant
planet, he’d have accepted that on blind faith.

If
only to stay in her orbit.

“
Shhhh.”
Her lips spread out like a rose petal as she made the sound. “That’s
not an offer,”

He
found his voice. “Not an offer?

“
No.”
The swell of her breasts beckoned to him. He closed his eyes,
inhaling her scent slowly, letting it infuse and direct him, as if a
potion she made from her essence.

“
Then
tell me why you shouldn’t.”

This
had gotten out of control. Fast.

Rather,
she had lost her bearings. A pitcher of sangria may have been the
gun, but her own wanton need was the bullet. And Mike could pull the
trigger any moment he wished, if only he knew it.

Maybe
he did.

Please
let him.

The
war of thoughts and fears and confusion and need—blinding, driving
need—made her mind and heart a battlefield. Her body, though…where
did it fit in the metaphor? She had full agency to use it at will, on
her own terms, and without judgment or regret when it came to these
two men.

Was
she a weapon?

Of
mass destruction?

Mike’s
challenge hung in the air between them, her face inches from his,
palm resting on his face, his lips ready to take her fingers in his
mouth and show her what he could do to her. She would let him, if he
dared. Thin restraint, weakened by a few drinks, was no match for the
craving inside her, but she also knew that sex would never quench it.

What
she truly needed was closure.

Beyond
that?

Love.

The
first time she’d met him, at that insipid orientation back during
her first days at Bournham Industries, she’d been drawn to him.
Trying to climb the corporate ladder had subliminally involved a
swooning desire to climb
him
. Add in meeting Matt Jones and
the love-hate tension that might as well have made her belly tighten
from its taut pull, and you had one Lydia Charles in love with a man
who very much existed, who was so real she could still taste
yesterday’s kiss…

And
she had the open permission—nay, encouragement—to make love with
him in every hedonistic, primal way possible, from her boyfriend. Her
Jeremy.

Her
something.

What
they proposed, though…

“
What?”
she asked, addled and caught in her own flash of thoughts. Her finger
now pulled back and drew a slow, wet circle around the rim of her
glass, like the early stroke of a clit in foreplay.

“
Tell
me why you shouldn’t sleep with me.”

“
Different
question.”

“
Same
premise.”

“
I
object!” she called out, slamming her open palm on the table,
feeling the slow burn of that unnamed, molten-lava heat that
threatened to turn every movement, every word, every thought into one
long inhale of Mike, and exhale of restraint.

“
We’re
not in a courtroom.”

“
Then
why do I feel like I’m on trial?” she rasped. “It’s my life
we’re talking about, Mike. You seem so willing to forget that.”

“
I’ve
forgotten nothing.” His eyes meant it, raking over her with a
precision she should have found maddening but, instead, couldn’t
turn away from, inviting him to look, to catalogue, to admire and
want.

Had
she misjudged him? Perhaps the horror of the camera had made her
blind to something that her heart wanted so desperately to believe:
that
the
Michael Bournham really did want her. Rejecting the
notion had been a protective measure, designed to blunt the damage,
like breaking the windows of a burning home in order to escape,
priorities triaged into life vs. death.

Her
heart had died a little the day she watched her body move against his
on video, the jokes and quips from newscasters detailing her—her
passion, her naked need, her wholly unveiled heart beating without
the case of her chest, all resting in Michael Bournham’s hands.

And
he’d thrown it aside like a piece of offal.