On My Knees (29 page)

She spun and looked at me like I had three heads, her brows knitted tightly together. “You work me to the brink of death, then lure me to a bakery offering mouth watering desserts and tell me you’re just getting coffee?”

“I have to watch my figure,” I joked. “Can’t have my clients giving me a hard time.”

“Whatever, you’re holding them accountable. Not the other way around.”

“Does that mean I should be holding you accountable too?”

“I’m not your client, but I’m humoring you. You can torture me with your workouts, but don’t get between me and my chocolate. It could get ugly.”

I laughed. “Warning noted.”

“In fact, to make this point, I’m going to get two.”

I nodded with raised eyebrows. “Ambitious.”

She smiled broadly, and I got a small thrill out of her obvious excitement. We took our desserts and drinks to a small round table in the corner of the bakery. She wasted no time tasting the first dessert. She moaned quietly.

“That good?” I teased.

“You’re really missing out.” She dangled a spoonful of chocolate mousse in front of me.

“Looks amazing, but I’m good. Stop taunting me.”

She airplaned the spoon into her mouth and moaned so loud, my mouth watered, but for all the wrong reasons. She opened an eye to catch my reaction. I was gawking, slack jawed.

“What?”

I slid my chair closer, taking the spoon from her. “Here, let me.” I scooped out another helping and held it to her lips.

Slowly she parted for me and took it in her mouth. She licked the spoon clean, her throat working on a swallow. I suppressed a moan of my own. I wanted to be that spoon. Christ, did I ever. I licked my lips and shoved a vision of her licking chocolate mousse off my cock out of my head. How did we get from dessert to dirty so fucking fast?

I lifted a fresh scoop to her lips. She took it and closed her eyes, a quieter moan punctuating the finish. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to drive me crazy on purpose. I was too fixated on feeding her dessert to care. We could do this all night, except I was already getting hard and we had a long walk home.

“It’s really good, Cam,” she said, breaking me from one of a dozen visions blooming from my now suddenly vivid imagination.

“That good?”

She nodded, slowly licking the frothy substance from her lips. “Delicious.”

Delicious.
I let the word roll around in my mind, letting it dance over the fantasies that were playing out.

I leaned in slowly until our lips nearly touched. “I’ll need to try some of it then.”

She sucked in a breath but gave no resistance. I angled slightly and licked the sweet curve of her lower lip. Catching her face in my palm, I held her still and kissed her gently.

The clatter of a couple situating themselves nearby broke the moment. She pulled back quickly. I studied her reaction.

“Delicious.”

“See, don’t you wish you’d gotten it?” Her voice was breathy, our gazes fixed on one another.

“And miss sampling it off your lips? Not for the world.”

She paused and contemplated the as yet untouched tiramisu for a second.

“Give me that fork.” I took her fork and scooped off a corner of the dessert. I ate it, noting that it would taste far better when I was licking it off of Maya.

She grinned broadly. “I’m corrupting you.”

“That’s okay. I’ll make you pay for it tomorrow.”

She slapped me on the arm. “That’s not fair. You cheat and I pay?”

“My rules.”

“Why are they always your rules? Maybe next week should be my rules. No exercise and I’ll have you on a strict diet of chicken fingers and gummy bears.”

I grimaced at the thought. “That shit’s terrible for you, Maya.”

“I know, and I have the ass to show for it.”

I frowned, not liking her implication. “I love your ass,” I said with total seriousness.

Her eyes flashed to mine and then back to her dessert, which she was systematically mangling with her fork. “Quit,” she mumbled, tucking her hair behind her ear and revealing the sudden blush in her cheeks.

The color emboldened me. I leaned in closer, ensuring only she could hear me. “Don’t make me prove it right here.”

“Yeah right.”

I sat back and grinned. “You have an amazing body, though. You shouldn’t feel insecure
at all
.”

“I don’t believe you, but thank you.”

“Believe it, or you’ll force me to keep complimenting your ass. It could get really awkward. Like, a lot more awkward than this.” I gestured discreetly to the occupied table and the couple who may or may not have been overhearing our ass banter.

She laughed, and I joined her. I loved her laugh, a natural throaty sound that took me back to another time, when we laughed all the time. I resolved to get her to do this more, for her sake and mine.

Contentment flooded me, in a way I couldn’t remember happening since...well, since the last time we’d been together.

MAYA. “Are you mad?”

“I’m not exactly thrilled with how the other night went down, if that’s what you’re asking. I thought you’d be more receptive.”

Jia dropped her napkin on the table, resting back into her seat casually. Even as I struggled to make sense of this situation she’d dropped me in, I couldn’t help but be captivated with her simple grace. How far had it taken her to this point, luring people in with that easy confidence, that air of power and control? I’d succumbed to it so easily.

“You blindsided me, Jia. How the hell was I supposed to know that he, and you, expected me to spend Christmas Eve fucking in his office?”

“You seemed pretty open-minded when we went out to the club. I figured after a drink, you’d loosen up and you’d be fine with it. Is it this thing with Cameron?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t find the words. I didn’t want to admit how he’d utterly freaked out on me after our rendezvous. “He wasn’t impressed.”

She frowned. “You should be careful with him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s obviously controlling.”

“He cares about me. I don’t think he’s
controlling
.” My tone was sharp, surprising even me with how quickly I defended him. I didn’t like the idea of someone thinking anyone controlled my life. I also didn’t like her attacking the man I loved.

She rolled her eyes. “Right. They wait until you’re hopelessly in love with them, and then they start telling you how to live your life. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

I swallowed hard. I couldn’t really argue with the picture she painted. Being with Cameron had changed my life, turned everything upside down. Not that I would have been on board with fucking my boss to get a promotion otherwise, but Cameron’s better judgment colored a lot of my decisions lately. Falling in love with him had played no small part in that transformation.

As if reading my mind, her eyes softened. “Maya, what happened? I thought you said you wanted to focus on your career. That you weren’t interested in a relationship?”

“I wasn’t, but…we were in love once. We fell back into it so easily.”

She sighed quietly. “Anyway, we have to figure a way out of this mess with Dermott.”

The pit in my stomach grew. My job was very likely on the line. Being jobless wasn’t how I wanted to ring in the new year. “How bad is it?”

“He’s freaking out that you’re going to file some sort of sexual harassment claim with the company and he’ll get heat. I promised him you wouldn’t, that you weren’t like that. I had to blow him just to get him to calm down.”

She gave me a look that said,
Thanks for that.

I wanted to feel guilty that she’d been put in that position, but I fought a wave of nausea with the thought that it could have been me.

“How can you do that, Jia?” I asked, unable to hide my disgust. Dermott wasn’t totally repulsive, but his personality was. The idea of giving him access to any part of my body for sexual gratification seemed unthinkable, even more so than it had the other night.

She frowned as she studied my obvious reaction. “Don’t look down your nose at me, Maya. Start with that, and any semblance of friendship that we had is over. I told you I’d show you how to get ahead, and that’s what we needed to get ahead.”

“You fuck people to get ahead?” I threw my hands up, unable to accept her suggestion as remotely normal. “Doesn’t it bother you that people think that about you anyway? What kind of role model are we for other women in this company if that’s how we get ahead?”

She softened slightly. “Listen, I don’t habitually do that, but I saw an opportunity and I took it. But you couldn’t sacrifice a few hours of your life for a promotion that would have put you light years ahead of your colleagues.”

“I’d sooner fuck the mailroom guy than Dermott.”

She grimaced at the suggestion.

“I’m not spreading my legs to prove I can do my job, when I can do it well enough.”

She narrowed her eyes. “So that’s how it is.”

Defending myself and insulting her behavior were one in the same, and that fact wasn’t lost on her. I fought the wave of panic that crept over me. I had no idea how this would play out or what she expected me to do from here. I’d let her take the lead, but I couldn’t trust where that took me anymore.

I took a deep breath, trying to recover the tone of the conversation. “All I’m saying is you should have more respect for your body…for yourself, than to let someone like him demean you that way.”

She let out a sharp laugh. “Respect? Plenty of people respect me. Who respects you, Maya? You were nothing but a cubicle drone until I put the spotlight on you. You let people pass you over every day, take advantage of your talents and your mind so they can take all the credit. What’s that if not demeaning?”

I clenched my teeth, hating the absolute truth that spewed from her lips. “You’re right, Jia.” I held her in a hard stare, seeing her clearly for the first time. “And that’s exactly what you did. Or what you would have done, if I’d been stupid enough to let you.”

“What?”

“You spelled it all out for me, remember? You told me yourself that you weren’t here to make friends, that you were here to get ahead. That it was all about finding out what people wanted and capitalizing on those desires for your benefit.”

“This was for
our
benefit.”

“Did you really think I’d let you pimp me so you could get a promotion, Jia? This wasn’t about me. This was about
you
. But what shocks me is that someone as smart as you couldn’t come up with something more original than blowing our boss to get ahead.”

Her eyes grew dark, dangerously so. “You’re going to regret this.”

“Maybe I will. But I’m sure I won’t regret it as much as I would have regretted letting Dermott fuck me.”

I stood and grabbed my purse, throwing a fifty on the table. “This one’s on me.”

“That won’t help you keep your job.”

“I don’t need this job, so do what you want, Jia.”

I walked out, trying to keep my legs steady and fighting the tremble that coursed through me.

CAMERON. Darren called to me on my way in. He said something unintelligible to the pretty blonde he was training and followed me down the hall to the office. Shutting the door behind us, he stood silent while I shoved my things in my locker.

I circled the desk. He stood awkwardly in front of it. Something was up. He didn’t have a smart-ass grin on his face or anything sarcastic to say. In fact, I’m not sure I’d seen him this serious…ever.

“What’s up? Everything okay?”

“Do you want to talk to me about anything?” he asked calmly.

I frowned. “No?” I dropped down into my chair, pulling up the schedule on the computer.

“Not anything at all?”

My eyes went wide. I had no idea what the hell he was getting at. “Spit it out, Darren. I have an appointment in ten minutes.”

He walked up to the desk, put his hands on the edge, and leaned in close.

“A ring, Cam? You bought her a fucking ring?”

My eyes shot to the locker where I’d stashed my bags the other day.
Nosy bastard.

“Stay out of my locker.”

“I knew something was up when you came in. You can’t hide that kind of stuff from me.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Really? I’m your brother and best friend. And you weren’t going to run that by me? When I was giving you shit about getting her into bed, I wasn’t suggesting you run off and marry her. Have you lost your goddamn mind?”

I reclined back in the chair, gaining some distance from Darren’s decidedly aggressive line of questioning.

“I don’t understand why you care so much. Relationships aren’t exactly your forte.”

“They’re not, but this is insane. Even I can see that.”

“You think calling someone back after you sleep with her is insane. No offense, but you’re out of your depth here.”

“You really think she’s going to marry you now after she’s already shot you down once?” His voice was strained and bordered on hysterical.

I suppressed a smile. He was genuinely concerned.

He’d voiced a valid point though. I’d asked myself the same question roughly every twenty minutes since I’d purchased the ring. I was nowhere close to presenting it to her, but it would only be a matter of time. I’d made up my mind.

“I have no idea when I’m going to ask her, but when I do, I’m not taking no for an answer.”

He let out a short laugh. “Sounds promising. Great plan.”

I blew out a breath. I wasn’t sure how to make Darren understand this situation, or if he even could. We didn’t have many heart to heart conversations about anything, let alone women, and he wasn’t the most intuitive person in that department.

“I know this is probably going to fly right by you and get filed under
touchy feely chick shit
, but I’m in love with her. I’ve been in love with her since the day I left her. Nothing’s changed, except now I love her more. What I did…it was a mistake. We both made mistakes, and we both have regrets. I’m not letting her go again.” My heart twisted with the declaration. The familiar pang of regret gripped me as I thought about how I’d let her go. Like an immature jerk, I’d never given her a chance to change her mind.