Why, Jayne?
Why are you not yet dead?
Why do you still have to be alive long enough to listen to Patrizio Steele read your secret shame out loud in his sinfully attractive voice?
“Now, tell me, darling.”
I have no words. I’m just waiting for lightning to come out of nowhere and strike me. I need to die before hearing Annie’s older brother call me ‘darling’ again and again pushes me into doing even more stupid things.
“When you read scenes like that—” He closes the book but doesn’t put it down, just holds it like evidence of my complete lack of professional dignity. “Do you think about the psychological motivations? The power dynamics?” His eyes lock with mine. “Or do you think about how it would feel?”
“I think—”
I think...this conversation has gone so far beyond inappropriate that I can no longer breathe.
“—this meeting is over.”
“Do you?”
But Mr. Steele obviously believes otherwise, with how the words only make him take a step closer, and I’m effectively trapped between him and my bookshelf, surrounded by academic texts and the lingering scent of his aftershave and my own complete mortification.
“Because I think we’re just getting started.”
“Stop it!” I want to sound firm, but the words come out shaken. “This...this is...everything’s completely inappropriate, and you c-can’t just—”
“Can’t just what? Make you think about what you really want?”
Yes! I mean, no!
Because what I really want is, um...
What I really want is for him to stop!
Yes, stop!
Like...stop looking at me like he can see straight through my professional facade to the woman who spends her evenings reading about alpha males and innocent academics and all the deliciously inappropriate things that happen between them.
Just stop looking at me, period.
Because right now, I’m this close to forgetting who I am, and who he is, and why...why...oh, I can’t even remember what I’m supposed to think!
Focus, Jayne!
I clear my throat and straighten my spine while wishing I could do something similar to my brain, which is currently lost in a world of all things...inappropriate.
“May we please focus on what’s most important?”
“By all means.”
He reaches up while speaking, and I jerk involuntarily, but his fingers only come into contact with the spine of a book next to my head.
“Right now, our main concern—”
“—is you.”
Me?
“I want to know what you’re thinking.” His hand drops, but he doesn’t step back. “Because you’ve been reading about men like me. How does it feel to meet one in real life?”
