The tip of her tongue brushes mine, and when she moans into my mouth, I am instantly hard. Too far. This is going to only end one way if I don’t put a stop to it now, and while part of me is eager to be inside her again—to remind myself what it feels like—I can’t. Too much is on the line, and I need to be the sane one, for both of us.
Breaking the kiss, I lean away, and reposition myself in my seat, my heart thudding against my rib cage. Blondie does the same, her soft, panting breaths filling the space between us. I don’t think either of us intended forthatto happen, but I am relieved to see I’m not the only one affected.
“Well?” She swallows loudly, adjusting her glasses. She’s nervous again. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips slightly swollen, her gaze hazy. It takes everything in me to stop myself from leaning over and resuming our kiss.
This is a business agreement only, Damian. Keep it professional.
“It was…adequate,” I manage, hoping she doesn’t notice that my voice is hoarse.
Her left eye twitches. “Adequate?”
“I mean, I’d rate it up there with being kissed by my abuela?—”
“You are such an asshole.”
She pushes open the passenger door, and then slams it behind her, glowering at me through the window before walking to the trunk. Suppressing a laugh, I climb out of the car as well to help her with her bags.
“Hey, for what it’s worth, I adore my abuela.”
Blondie’s cheeks flare dangerously hot, and her brow dips into a deep, angry vee.
“God, I’m joking, Dornan,” I say, nudging her shoulder. “You really do need to relax.”
Ignoring me, she glares down at the bags, her temper on the verge of boiling over. “Am I to assume these clothes were my payment for this month?”
I open my mouth to say something, but think better of it since she may actually kill me, then fish my phone out of my pocket and tap open my cash app. After typing in her name, number, and the amount I want to transfer, I hit send and wait. Her own phone beeps a few seconds later, and when she sees the notification, her face goes slack.
“I—This is?—”
I grin at the startled look on her face. One perk of being a billionaire is having access to higher sending limits than the normal people of Earth. “You said you wanted to be paid upfront, yeah? Well, there’s your fifteen grand for September, plus a little bonus for a job well done today. As for the clothes…well, a lot of jobs have uniforms, right? Consider those yours.”
Scooping up the bulk of the bags, I brush past her, and stride up the stairs of her porch, then deposit them on the wooden boards just beside the front door. Blondie follows behind me holding the rest, her steps languid, that stricken expression still ruling her features. Though the thought occurs to me, I don’t ask her how she’ll explain all the new clothes to her parents, or her aunt, or whoever it is she lives with because, honestly, I don’t really care so long as whatever lie she spins doesn’t jeopardize our agreement. Anything done on Blondie’s personal time is her problem.
“Remember, Monday,” I remind her, patting her on the shoulder like one might pat the head of a snarling dog beforeretracing my steps down the stairs. Blondie just nods, her eyes unfocused.
Once back at my car, I shut the trunk, and I’m about to climb into the driver’s seat when I find my gaze straying back toward the house. Blondie remains on her porch, looking…well, kind of shell-shocked, actually, her eyes glued to the phone clutched in her hand. It dawns on me that the twenty thousand dollars I just sent her is probably the most money she’s ever seen at one time. That puts things into an uncomfortable perspective, so I steer away from that thought, redirecting my mind to another.
“Hey, Dornan,” I call, and her head jerks up at the sound of my voice, her glasses slipping an inch or so down her nose. “About that kiss…”
I draw out the suspense for a moment, relishing the conflicted expression on her face. She looks like she’s not sure if she should be worried I’m about to insult her again, or if she’s secretly hoping I’ll ask her to pick up where we left off. To her possible dismay (and mine), I do neither.
“It was good,” I say instead.
And with that, I climb back into my car, turn on the ignition, and drive.
Today’s lesson: add an unpredictable fuckboy to the equation, and the result will likely be chaos.
“It was good.”
I frown as Damian’s voice enters my thoughts again, tormenting me for at least the hundredth time since Friday afternoon. I don’t know if he said it to mess with me—to get under my skin—or if he genuinely meant it, like some sort of reluctant confession, but those three words have been rattling around in my skull without pause for the past 2.73 days (even invading my dreams), distracting me from far more important matters. Like my Applied Discrete Mathematics lecture, which I really need to focus on. I already missed class last week; with my scholarship dependent on my academic performance, I can’t afford to fall behind this early in the school year, genius-level IQ or not.
Pushing up my glasses, I rub my eyes, and flip my pencil between my fingers, straining my ears to make out ProfessorBensen’s masculine baritone past the unwanted memory of Damian’s.
“—by finding the shortest path from your starting source to all other vertices in a graph with non-negative edge weights. Of course, it works for both directed and undirected graphs, but only if the weights are non-negative…”
His words quiet to a hum in the back of my head as my attention threatens to once again drift. Except, this time, it isn’t just Damian’s voice rising from my hippocampus like a tidal wave to drown me, but the recollection of the kiss itself.
Seriously, what the actualfuckwas I thinking? While I could see the logic of where he was coming from with the whole touching thing, I didnotneed to let what was meant to be a simple peck on the lips escalate the way it did.
