He’d been keeping her close? Did that mean… She gasped as another betrayal loomed in her mind. “Oh my God. My job. You didn’t hire me for my ability, but to fu—”
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He slapped a hand over her mouth. “Stop there. I didn’t hire you to fuck you. I wanted you on staff for your ability. I know you’re wholly capable of your job, and you’ve proven it time and again. Danson and Martin both have said more than once they wished they’d hired you first.”
Lauren stewed. Maybe that was true. Likely, even. She was damn good at her job and she knew it. “But the whole set up was awfully convenient for you.”
“I won’t deny that. I got a fabulous, hard worker and to spend my days with the woman I knew I wanted to spend my nights with, too.”
It was overwhelming, so much to digest—if she could believe him.
“How am I supposed to trust anything you say?”
He clenched his teeth. “I'm not the enemy.”
“Are you sure? Because most of my pals don’t deceive and manipulate me.”
“Do any of them want to love you forever?”
She didn’t answer that, and Noah cursed.
“This is bullshit.” He vaulted off the bed with a snarl. “You know I’m not out to hurt you. My only goal was to make you realize something you were too fucking scared to realize for yourself: we belong together. And now you’re going to dismiss everything between us because you don’t like the way I went about it?”
“Did you think that manipulating and lying would make me believe that you love me and are ready to give up your collection of women for some happily ever after with me?”
“I thought we’d have a much better shot if you stopped deceiving yourself,” he muttered, his voice rough-edged. “I still think that. I wouldn’t have had to invent a non-existent woman to ask you advice
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about or dress up as Mr. Mysterious if you were willing to be honest with yourself.”
“You’re going to blame me?” Was he for real?
“Why are you upset? You wanted a lover, and we wanted each other.
Oh, you made a great show of pretending you wanted our relationship platonic. I just found a way to let you feel how good we are together for yourself and stop denying the pull between us.”
What he said made sense…in a twisted way. But that didn’t make it all right. “And you thought deceiving me would do that? That’s insane!”
That comment pissed him off, if his thunderous expression was anything to go by. “It’s using the resources at your disposal. And it worked. You responded to me every time I sneaked into your house and made love to you.”
“I didn’t know it was you.”
“Doesn’t matter. You pretended it was me.”
Noah had her with that fact. She’d moaned that very confession mere minutes ago.
Lauren pulled the sheet tighter against her breasts. Noah’s logic was firing on all cylinders. It wouldn’t be long before he started putting two and two together and coming up with something other than five. He was going to figure out that she more than liked him, more than wanted him.
He'd take advantage of her tender feelings—until he got bored and left.
He might think he was ready for happily ever after, but he had no practice in staying beyond the orgasm, not in a real relationship.
“That’s a small point in the larger scheme of all your lying. I admit, I pretended it was you once or twice, for a moment or two. It doesn’t mean anything.”
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“Now you’re lying, too. You responded to ‘a stranger’ because you were thinking of me. I know how that game is played. And why it’s played. It means something, sugar. Own up to it.”
“It means I hadn’t had sex in two years.”
“But not just that. If you were thinking of me and wanting me, but avoiding me, there’s a reason. It means you care.”
“I do care. You’re a good friend. But I feared sex would screw everything up. Turns out I was right.”
“Friend?” he spat. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what you were feeling when your pussy gripped my cock like a vise and you came.” His eyes narrowed. “What we have, it’s more than friendship. If it wasn’t, why did you start dressing sexier on days you knew we’d be together in the office?
Why did you wear that perfume you know drives me wild? Was that all for Gary in Accounting? I used to believe that, but you know what? I think now you did that to get my attention. You wanted me to think of you sexually.”
Oh, hell, He’d noticed her attempts to dress for him? He’d done a damn fine job of pretending oblivion. “Did I dress sexier? I don’t recall that.”
“Yeah, so fucking sexy, I could hardly look at you without salivating and attacking. And you just told lie number two.”
He was right. She tried not to squirm under his direct stare. But that icy blue gaze told her that if she lied again, she wouldn’t like the consequences. It also told her that he wanted her again.
Grabbing the sheet, Lauren drew it up to her neck and covered herself completely. Noah, on the other hand, stood beside the bed without a stitch on—and it was distracting the hell out of her. Every time he moved, golden skin and heavy ropes of muscles moved in fluid harmony. Hell, even when he took a breath, those corrugated abs of his
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undulated. And the longer her eyes stayed on his body, the more his cock engorged and rose until he was nearly at full staff.
Damn! All this mooning…it had to stop. But she couldn’t deny that she wanted him again, that her body warmed and ached at the thought of inviting Noah deep inside her again.
No, no, no. Bad girl!
Noah was a friend, her boss.
Yeah, and the man who knows every square inch of your body and
can make you scream in unbridled pleasure. Even if you're afraid he'll
crush your heart, he's the man you love.
Not a helpful realization.
Noah edged closer. “You dressed sexy for me. Admit it.”
Reluctantly, she nodded. “A mistake on my part. Being attracted to you doesn’t make having a relationship a good idea, however.”
He merely grunted at that. “Just attracted? Tonight, you made love with me, not some pretend stranger.
Me
. You’re not the kind of woman to respond with such abandon to someone you don’t care about.”
Oh, hell. He was on to her. “Noah—”
He moved so fast, he was like a blur, suddenly on the bed, in her personal space, pinning her to the headboard in the cage of his arms.
“Look at me.”
Lauren did, right into those blue eyes that always captivated her.
There she saw worry and pain and a growing edge of anger. She couldn’t have looked away for anything.
“Tell me you don’t care about me as more than a boss, more than a friend. Tell me you don’t love me.”
She opened her mouth but couldn’t say it. She couldn’t look at him and lie. But admitting her love would only throw open the door to her heart and let in pain she could only imagine.
“Noah…”
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“C’mon, you’re on this honesty kick. I honestly love you. I have for years. I wanted you the first time I saw you. I was honestly willing to do whatever I had to do to make you mine.”
“The ends justifies the means?” she asked tartly.
“Yeah. Don’t change the subject. Look at me and tell me you don’t love me.”
Oh, she wanted to. Really wanted to. It would save her heartache and sanity. But she wasn’t sure it was possible.
With a cry, Lauren pushed against his chest and tried to shove her way out of his embrace so she could escape to the bathroom. He grabbed her shoulders and held firm, pinning her to the headboard.
“Answer me.” His gaze caressed her mouth in a hungry stare. Blood flowed through her body, engorging her nipples. The slightest look in her direction and she got all hot for him. Bad sign. Very bad. Her only consolation was that his cock swelled as well, rising full stuff and ready.
When he met her stare, he growled, “You get me hard. Just one look.
And every time, I’m ready in an instant. You do that to me. Only you.
Because I love you.”
The demand in his voice made her tremble. God, it would be so easy to just give in and admit she loved him, too. But if she did that, she’d only be opening herself up to a broken heart from which she might never recover.
“You say that…” She frowned, trying to keep tears at bay.
“I mean that.” He shook her, glowered, intent and determined.
Lauren shook her head. “Soon, your wandering eyes will follow someone shiny and new.”
While her emotion would last way beyond an introduction to the next slick female who caught his eye. And his abandonment would kill her.
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Better to end it now and start healing than wait until she fell much deeper.
It just didn’t feel that way.
He cursed, the word blunt and ugly. “We talked about this. I told you, everyone else has been a substitute for you. I can’t even tell you how many women I dated because they looked like you. How many times I fucked someone with my eyes closed so I could pretend she was you.”
Lauren gasped. The image of Noah with someone else made her stomach curdle. But to know that he’d pretended those women were her… She couldn’t think, couldn’t comprehend… As if he knew her incredulity, he kept talking.
“You told me earlier that pretending wasn’t enough for you anymore.
It hasn’t been enough for me for years. You want me to be honest, here it is. I love you, I’ve always loved you. I want to marry you, grow old with you. I want to spend my days devoted to you, every night inside you—”
“No, you don’t. You think that, but you’ve never been faithful to one woman in your life.”
“Because you were married, and nobody else mattered. Answer the question: do you love me?”
Lauren swallowed.
Yes. God, yes.
“It’s not that simple…”
“Yes or no.”
He wasn’t going to leave until she answered. The firm grip of his hands and the demanding glint in his eyes told her he planned to be an immovable mountain. She’d seen him in business. In a game of corporate chicken, he never flinched, never gave in once he was determined to have his way.
And giving him the truth would only give him the power to keep pursuing her, until he cornered her, wore her down, and claimed victory.
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The moments with him would be sublime. Dizzying happiness. Full of wild satiation and smiles. Incredible. Unlike anything she’d shared with Tim. Even more intense than fantasies.
But it wouldn’t last. Noah was as domesticated as a Bengal tiger.
Hoping she could housebreak him into the role of suburban husband was beyond insane.
It was emotional suicide.
In the fight between honesty and self-preservation, she surrendered her ideals and whispered, “No, I don’t.”
Shock passed over Noah’s face before it hardened into something cold. He backed off the bed and reached for his pants, his cock hard—his eyes harder. “Damn it! You condemn me for lying so I could prove you have my heart. But you’re quick to lie right to my face in order to protect your own.”
Guilt and shame showered over her in a hot wash. He was right.
Totally.
But that didn’t change a thing.
She watched with stinging watery eyes as he thrust on his shirt and shoes, then stalked toward her again. Lauren tried to back away from the fury on his face. She didn’t fear that Noah would hurt her. He wouldn’t.
She was terrified that he would touch her, overwhelm her. And he wanted to; it was stamped into the hard angles of his face.
He reached her, and with a sweep of his arms, he laid her flat on her back, directly beneath him. In an instant, his hard mouth slanted over hers, his harder body enveloped her, pressing her into the mattress, leaving her no question how badly he wanted her or how angry he was.
His rough kiss dominated—her senses, her resistance. His tongue swept through her mouth with familiar abandon, filling her with the flavor of his determination and need. His lips molded against hers. A low
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groan from his chest rumbled through her body and ripped through her self-control. Against her better judgment, Lauren melted into him, opened her mouth to him, and arched against the furious rise and fall of his hard-slabbed chest.
Desire didn’t just spark inside her; it ignited into a firestorm. The blaze overtook her in an instant. Noah knew just how to hold her, kiss her… He’d learned her body too well. Touching him was exhilarating, terrifying—like she imagined skydiving would be—scary and stupid and a rush like no other.
As she reached up to sink her fingers into his hair and raise her hips to his, Noah tore himself away.
Staring with accusing eyes, he backed away to the foot of the bed as his chest heaved. His fingers worked into fists.
“Fuck! You’re willing to throw everything we could have away, every bit of the fire and need and love between us—”
“Noah.” She reached for him, regardless of the fact she dropped the sheet, exposing her breasts.
His gaze dropped to the bared mounds, still swollen and berry-tipped.
His nostrils flared, and he swallowed. But he didn’t succumb.
“It wouldn’t last,” she said, cutting into the thickening silence.
“You’re going to throw us away because you’re too fucking scared to believe that I love you. Forever. You’re telling me the crazy tactics I used to win you meant nothing. You think I’d do all that just to conquer a challenge or get laid? You think I’m too stupid to know what’s been in my heart for ten years, or that I would jeopardize our friendship and working relationship just to get off? You’re out of your fucking mind if you do.”
Lauren didn’t know what to say. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t since he’d never been abandoned or endured a divorce.
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She’d wanted a fling, was too jaded to believe in fairy tales. And what he seemed to be offering was an illusion. It was too much, too sudden, too unreal.