Obsession (Magnetic Desires Book 4) (2 page)

Mellie

Ass dragging, I juggled the phone between ear and shoulder while swigging piping hot coffee from my travel mug and stumbling to the car. God, I’d been too drunk last night to agree to start working for Orion and Mike today. What the hell had Mike been thinking?

The phone kept ringing, and I gritted my teeth while I searched through my glove box for painkillers, or a hammer, either of which might put me out of my misery, at least for a while. I’d damn well loved my job, and I’d been good at it.

Finally Darcy’s sweet voice came through the other end of the line. “P&C Stylists, Darcy speaking.”

“Darcy?” I winced and shoved the coffee into the cup holder so I could clutch my head.

“Mellie?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “What the hell did you do?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I mumbled, sliding down in my seat and wishing the world would swallow me up. “I need to get my stuff.”

In the background Petra’s squeaky sharp voice punctuated the quiet office. Obviously the P of P&C was in fine form. I wondered if the C was still alive. Stupid bastard should have had his balls cut off for cheating on his wife. She hadn’t deserved it. No one deserved to go through the pain and humiliation of finding out they weren't enough, never mind that he’d made me the other woman in my boss’s nightmare. My chest ached, and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the whiplash echo of finding out I could never be enough.

“Well…” I almost couldn’t hear her, and I was nearly certain Darcy was probably hiding under her desk. “Whatever you did, Petra’s given strict instruction not to let you in the door, ever.”

Groaning, I dropped my head into my hands.
Hurricane Mellie, you’ve done it this time
. “I need to clear out my office. What am I supposed to do?”

“I’ll pack it up and drop it off to you. What are you going to do? Are you going to be okay?”

“I always land on my feet, Darcy. Don’t worry about that. Keep out of Petra’s way until she calms down, yeah? Don’t let her know you’ve spoken to me.”

“Whatever you did…” She clicked her tongue. “...must have been bad.”

“Yeah. It was.” Hanging up on her, I dropped the phone on the seat beside me and gave up on the mess in the glove box. Already ten minutes late, I raced across town toward Lance Starr Construction. How many stupid decisions had I made last night?

The worst of it wasn’t that I’d managed to break up a marriage or lose my job. No, the worst lay in the fact that I’d picked up the guy at the bar for no other reason than I hadn’t wanted to be alone. There’d been no deep, hot tremble in my core, no ache for his touch. The alcohol helped create a buzz under my skin and stopped my mind from voicing her opinion, but the truth was I didn’t look for anything deeper than meaningless, mind numbing sex. What was the point when I’d already found that deep, intense connection I craved? And lost it.

Too bad I’d had enough of making bad decisions before Mike made his offer last night. Or perhaps, I should thank God, because heaven knew the two of us together was a recipe for a shit storm.

Turning down the side street, I slowed down as I entered the car park behind Lance Starr and swung into an empty spot. It took me two seconds to get my boots on before I jumped out of the car and bolted for the back stairs. Headache forgotten, I pushed last night and the way Mike had looked at me when he suggested we sleep together to the back of my mind. It stuck on repeat like one of those animated gifs of Tom Hiddleston’s hips undulating. It was hard enough to be his friend. If it weren’t for our small group of friends who were much more like family, I would have cut the strings between us and disappeared into the ether. But even when he’d spent so much time away from Reverence I hadn’t been able to forget him, hadn’t been able to leave what we’d had in the past. He said sex, but it could never be just sex with Mike. It would be opening up a can of worms I’d struggled so hard to put the lid on.  

“Morning.” Mike stood at the top of the stairs, his arm held in front of him as he checked his watch. “Only fifteen minutes late.”

My gaze ran up from the worn steel capped boots, over muscular, tanned calves and thighs, to work shorts that made me think of that gif again. I darted my tongue over my lip.
Don’t let the undulation hypnotize you.
Okay, so he wasn’t circling those hips the way I saw it in my imagination, but I knew what he had under those shorts and... Damn! Racing my gaze up to his face, I caught his eyes, and the subtle one-sided grin. God, I missed that cocky grin when he knew he had my attention. “I should have said I’d start tomorrow.”

“Should have, but didn’t. I’m heading out on site. I need you on your game today. Think you can manage it?”

“Of course.” I sidled past him, and he turned, our bodies brushing in the narrow hallway. And there was that zing, that buzz I searched so hard for and couldn’t find with anyone else. This was the closest I ever got to it. I straightened, pulling back my shoulders and crossing and uncrossing my fingers. “I have a rule about mixing personal and business. You know I’m good at this.”

“A new rule, huh?” He brushed a stray hair from my jacket, his throat tensing as he fought back a chuckle.

My breath caught in my throat. How easy it would be to forget why he and I hadn’t worked out. I pushed the thought away. “Get out of here. I can do this job with my eyes closed.”

He bounced down the stairs, glancing back as he hit the bottom step. “You’ll have Chelsea for company.”

Turning, I pushed open the interior door and entered the brightly lit office to find Chelsea pounding the poor keyboard into oblivion. Each keystroke, a hammer to my head. Wincing, I crossed the room to the other desk and sank into the leather chair. It enveloped me as it rocked beneath me, making me imagine how good it would feel to hold a cigar in one hand and rare scotch in one of those big ass glasses in the other.

The pounding stopped, silence crashing around me when Chelsea realized I was in the room. “Good morning, Mellie. I haven’t seen you in years.”

“It’s been a while.” I nodded, making no effort to move more than that and conserving my energy for customers. “I’m doing a favor for Mike and Orion.”

“Oh, right. Well, let me know if you need anything.” She slid her earbuds in and went back to making an infernal racket.

Locating scrap paper in a box under the desk, I scrunched a piece up and threw it at her. She glanced up and popped out an ear bud.

“When do you expect Mike to be back?”

“Not until after lunch.”

Letting her get back to work, I shuffled through the papers on my desk. Well, it used to be my desk. And then I left, so it wasn’t, but at least temporarily it seemed to be my desk again. And quite frankly it looked like a shredder and a photocopier had gotten together and spoofed all over it. With a swipe of my arm I cleared the surface, the papers falling like confetti to the floor. Chelsea didn’t look up. The action brought little relief to the tension in my shoulders and neck, but it was a damn good start at getting my work space closer to something I could deal with. Sliding from the all too comfy chair, I sat cross-legged on the floor and began sorting the papers into piles.

***

“What are you doing down there?”

Shit! I jumped at the sound of his deep, masculine voice, right behind me. “I’m organizing my desk. How you guys could find anything in that mess is beyond me.”

Unfolding my legs, I stood up with a stack of papers. “Do you ever put anything away?”

Arms crossed, teeth clenched, a small tick started where his jaw met his ear. “I can always find exactly what I’m after. But now…” He darted a glance at the paper towers I’d constructed on the floor. “Do you have any idea where the Kinsley contract is?”

“You mean this one?” I handed him the paper clipped copy from the top of the pile.

Flicking a finger against the paper, he nodded and stalked off toward his office. “If you plan on reorganizing the office, you’re going to be stuck here, because I’ll need you to find everything.”

I dumped the papers on the desk, straightening them out, and then went after him. “Not one person has walked through those doors this morning, not one.” I held up a finger. “If you are going to pay me, even temporarily, then I am going to work. If that means I get this office organized and efficient again, then I’m going to do it. I won’t just sit there and let you pity pay me.”

He leaned on the desk, his legs splayed out in front of him, his chest rising and falling before he raced a hand over his head. “No one pities you.”

“You do.”

“I don’t pity you. Never have.” He covered the space between us in a couple of strides. “I know where you come from, remember? Your past and mine aren’t that different. You don’t need pity, Hurricane.”

I sucked in a breath and the crisp woodsy spice of his aftershave. My heart flipped and my lips tingled while he stared at them. “Then why give me a job that obviously isn’t needed?”

“Because we’re friends. Friends help each other out, because they care. Christ, you should know that by now.”

“I do, but…” I tread closer to him. Maybe I wanted pity. If he pitied me he’d probably let me make a gif. Or maybe I wanted to see if he’d kiss me the way he used to, when I’d meant something to him. “Thank you. I guess I figure I ask too much of you already.”

“When have I ever told you that you asked too much of me?”

“Never.”

“Then put it out of your head.”

“Okay.” I glanced around his office, my desk immaculate compared to his. “I’m still going to reorganize the office.”

“Good.” He dragged a knuckle over my arm, and I fought the instinct to move closer. “It always did run smoother when you were here.”

Everything had been smoother when I’d been here, with him. I couldn't help the creeping nostalgia, not after our conversation last night. Trying to shake off the need to get closer, I crossed to the door.

“Did you think about what I suggested?”

“What?” I glanced back at him, lingered on those sexy lips and the dark depths of his eyes. Of course I had thought about it, apparently couldn’t stop thinking about it. At the rate I was going with the sex, and the ex, and the gif, I’d spontaneously combust before the day was through.

“Never mind.” Was there a slight gruffness in the way he dismissed me? As though he had wanted me to agree. I closed the door behind me, unable to get the idea that he had been serious when he told me we should sleep together again from flashing a montage of our most erotic moments through my mind. And that kiss, bare weeks ago. I’d tried to dismiss it, but it haunted me. It had sent me tumbling into another man’s arms, trying to erase the ownership of Mike’s lips on mine.

Sleeping with him would be the stupidest idea ever, wouldn’t it?  Even if it did have me feeling the rub of my thighs against one another in a supercharged way. Even if there was nothing I wanted more than to rip away the past four years and be his again. Because I was beginning to believe I would never feel that deeply, that intensely about anyone else, ever.

Nope. It wasn’t going to happen. Couldn’t happen. We'd destroyed what we'd had. Shredded it into a thousand tiny pieces that could never be put back together. No, it would be too easy to fall into bed with him and never want to get out, and my heart couldn’t handle the bruising that would come when he inevitably tired of me. I’d barely kept it together the first time.

Seven years ago…

“So you’re Mellie?” He glanced at me as he shifted the truck into gear and backed out of the driveway.

“And you’re Mike. You work with Orion?” I squirmed in the seat, trying to pull last night’s dress down over my thighs, where his gaze singed my flesh. I didn’t need confirmation on his name, normally wouldn’t have cared, but that one little word had been rattling around in my head since he’d stuck his head around the partition of Orion’s kitchen and caught me wearing nothing but a shirt that didn’t even properly cover my ass. When he’d ran his gaze over me, my body had burst to attention, my ovaries exploding in a cacophony of ‘Take me, I’m yours.’ And then he’d darted his tongue over his lip as his gaze flicked to the hem of the T-shirt and I’d had to get out of there before I came from only the heat in his gaze.

“We’re business partners, best friends. Hell, we’re practically family.” He interrupted the pleasant trail my mind had wandered off on, where he wasn’t talking to me about his friend, but instead had his face buried between my legs. Hot damn! What the hell was wrong with me that my entire body pulsed to the sound of his voice?

Winding the window down, I let the cool breeze blow over my face. “That must be nice.”

“Fuck this,” he said, yanking the car over onto the shoulder. “I’m going to be straight here. I hope you’re the kind of girl who can handle that.”

I shifted in the seat, letting the dress ride up my legs as I crossed them, completely aware of his gaze landing on the sliver of panty I intentionally gave him an eyeful of. All the words I would have said last night, or any night, to any man, died on my lips. “I can handle you,” I said instead.

“Can you now, sexy legs?”

My heart skittered like a frightened bunny caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. The tug between him and I blocked out everything but the intensity in his eyes, and the slight curl of his lip. They were the kind of lips I’d only dreamed about. Ones you could get drunk on. A nirvana of sinful pleasure, built only to bring a woman to her knees, preferably over his face. He released his seatbelt from its clip and leaned toward me, one hand coming around to stroke a knuckle over my cheekbone. “You want to handle me?”