Page 74 of When Hearts Ignite
She shrieks in my ear, her voice sounding more desperate, because she knows it’s true. “Listen to me, Steven. You can’t cavort with Grace Peyton. And yes, before you ask, I know all about her, about how she was an intern and now a dancer,” she spits out the word like it’s a curse, “and her background in the slums. You aren’t allowed to be with her, Steven Kingsley, or I’ll—”
I cut her off and hang up. No time for her bullshit when my life is literally in tatters.
Then, to add fuel to a roaring fire, my sources told me Hancock met with Voss early this morning and Hancock subsequently stormed out of the meeting in a fit of anger, his face purple as he sped away in his town car. I’m livid, pulling my hair out in trying to figure out what Voss is doing to get the board members of TransAmerica to dance to his tune.
I should be working, concocting my counterattack, getting on a plane to fly to LA to talk to Hancock and ask him what the hell he’s thinking. But instead, I’m here, restless, unease swirling my insides, permeating every cell, every atom of my body. My mind is filled with fragments of her, twisting, resurfacing, coming together and falling apart again.
Everything is her.
Her smell. Her taste. Her touch.
The way she sauntered toward me, her tight body swaying in a sensual rhythm only innate to the opposite sex. The way those little pearls did the bare minimum to hide her smooth flesh from onlookers, each movement from her earning us a perverse peekaboo of those full tits and curvy hips.
How she felt against me, soft and silky, her scent of jasmine driving me crazy as my lungs clamored to draw in deeper inhales, to commit this sweet fragrance in memory, in case I didn’t get to smell it at the source again.
The clang of our foils draws me back into the match as the heated blood circulates in my veins, carrying traces of her inside me, a high that has never waned with time or distance, an addiction that has only gotten worse with time.
My arm and wrist work in unison, my body lunging forward as I flick the sharp foil toward Ryland, my aim missing, and he easily parries away before counterattacking, a series of moves hitting me in the torso, the neck, the back. Each attack adds to the frenzied circus of my mind and my focus temporarily shatters into fragments as memories from last night force their way back into the forefront.
How my cock was as hard as a steel pipe when she unlatched the top of her dress, letting it pool around her hips and I got my first view of those heavy, tear-drop breasts, the outlines of her nipples beading into tight buds protruding from the sparkling stickers she had on.
The spicy smokiness of her arousal and the wet mess she made on my pants when she rubbed that hot little pussy on my dick like it was her favorite toy. How I nearly died on the chair from the need to pin her down and fuck her until we were both delirious from pleasure.
The way I came in my pants like an untried teenager after watching her eyes glazed over, her head tossed back in passion, her body spasming and melting against mine as she came with the sound of my name on her lips.
Then there was the glint of hurt and sadness in her eyes. The heartache in my chest when she said we were never friends.
And I recognize she’s right.
How can we be friends when all I want to do is kiss her, taste her, sheath myself inside her until the end of time?
How could we be friends when I want to see her fall into pieces beneath me, coming apart at the seams from pleasure?
How could we be friends when my heart, this organ I thought was long charred and dead, reawakens in her presence, the thumping, fluttering, beating, rendering me into an incoherent mess, slicing the chain mail of my armor into pieces and scattering them onto the ground in her presence?
No. I want her. All of her. I want her to be mine.
Spotting an opening, Ryland lunges forward and jabs his foil in a series of moves, variations of high and low outsides, high and low insides, and before I knew it, the referee calls the match.
We perform a salute as a sign of respect before I rip off my mask and hoist it under my arm even though I want more than anything to fling it across the room, but that would be bad form in the sport.
“Fuck!” I mutter under my breath.
I should’ve taken up boxing like Adrian, Parker, or James. I used to make fun of them for how barbaric they were, wanting to use their fists to inflict bodily pain like savages, but now I see the wisdom, because this restrained sport with all the fucking rules and manners don’t even make a dent in obliterating the swirling chaos inside me.
Ryland walks alongside me toward the locker room and showers. “What’s going on with you? And don’t tell me you’re fine because whatever that performance was just now, that spoke volumes. Is it Genevieve?”
“Grace, her fucking name is Grace,” I growl as I hurl a blistering stare at him.
He raises his hands and mimes backing off. “Fine, fine. Grace. That’s the same girl from your company, right? The one you did the impromptu serenading for?”
At my silence, his brow arches. “Why is she working here, then? As a dancer? And why do you care?”
“I don’t know why she’s here. She didn’t fucking get the offer from us because of some internal BS and then she disappeared without a trace. I bumped into her a few weeks ago at Jack’s promotion celebration, and this whole fucking mystery has been haunting me ever since.”
“And yet, you still deny having feelings for her.”
Feelings don’t even begin to describe the rabid obsession I have toward her, the craving to have her by my side again, as my woman, my partner at work, my…everything.
