The Design(37)

“I said I’d make it!” I snapped.

Grayson laughed. “I’m not drinking your spit. Now, move.”

I hadn’t had the confidence to tell him how I felt a moment before, but now his attitude made it all too easy.

“So, which of your two faces are you wearing today, Grayson?” I snapped, spinning around and pressing my hands onto his chest to push him away from the counter. “All of that bullshit about not dating employees and then you invite Hannah to get drinks with you? What the hell is that?”

“What are you talking about? And can you keep your voice down?” he hissed.

He slammed the cabinet door closed and moved around me to turn on the fancy espresso machine.

I hated that he was ignoring my outburst so he that he could continue on making his damn coffee.

“Let me speak slower for you,” I dragged out. “You. Invited. Hannah. To. Drinks.”

He narrowed his eyes, but didn’t speak.

“I understood the whole Nicole thing, but seriously, Hannah? Is this all just a game to you?” I asked.

Grayson slammed his mug onto the kitchen counter, practically shattering the ceramic in the process, and then he grabbed my arm just above the elbow and dragged me out of the kitchen. His grip was tighter than necessary and his fingers pinched the back of my arm so that I had no choice but to follow him. He pulled me after him as he walked to the side stairwell near the kitchen, an exit hardly anyone ever used.

As soon as the heavy metal door closed behind us, he let go of my arm. We were standing on a small concrete platform with stairs leading to the floors above and below us. Out of the thirty-odd floors in the entire building, there wasn’t a single person using the stairwell. It was as private as we could get inside the building.

“I didn’t invite Hannah anywhere. Are you clinically insane?”

I reached up to slap him, but he caught my wrist two inches away from his cheek.

“What in the world did I ever see in you?” I asked, yanking my wrist away from him.

He growled and turned back toward the door, rubbing the back of his neck to calm his nerves, no doubt.

“There’s an office happy hour Monday night. Everyone’s invited. Hannah must have overheard the conversation and embellished it. I don’t know what to tell you, but you’re acting like a child.”

He didn’t invite Hannah?

I’m acting like a child?

I was still trying to connect the dots when Grayson moved toward me, so quickly that one second he was a few feet away from me on the platform and the next he was pressed against me, pushing me back against the wall and caging me in against the cold concrete.

“I’m not dating any employees.” His breath hit my neck. “I'm not f*cking any employees. But if I were… it wouldn’t be Hannah.”

His lips touched my skin just beneath my ear, a sensitive spot that interrupted my breathing and forced me to squeeze my eyes closed.

We paused there for a moment, on the precipice of something more. Just as I fluttered my eyes opened, prepared for him to walk away, his mouth collided with mine. The force of the kiss would have slammed my head into the wall had his free hand not reached up to cushion the blow. I gripped his arms, residual anger still burning inside of me. Then his hands found the hem of my skirt and my anger dissolved in an instant, replaced with an emotion equally as compelling: lust.

I gripped his arms tighter, but that didn’t warn him away. His hand slipped beneath my skirt until he was touching the bare skin of my upper thigh.

We were in the middle of an office building at the start of a busy work day. There might not have been anyone in the stairwell yet, but there would be soon. Grayson didn’t seem to care about that fact. His tongue slid past my lips as his hand pushed my skirt up higher. I was about to pull away, to warn him about us getting caught, when his finger skimmed the edge of my panties.

My grip tightened on his arms, but there was no way to warn him of the consequences. My warnings couldn’t develop past fleeting thoughts. There was only Grayson. Grayson’s mouth as he gently bit down on my lower lip. Grayson’s hand as he gripped my hair, keeping me pressed back against the wall. Grayson’s finger as he stroked the hem of my panties.

Instinctively, my leg wrapped up around his waist, easing his access. He moaned against my lips and then pulled back to watch me. For a moment, I kept my eyes squeezed shut, gripping onto the sensation of his touch, but then I opened them and my world lit on fire.

Grayson was touching me, stroking me, in a stairwell in the middle of our office building. At any moment someone could walk out and spot us with my leg tangled around him and his hand hidden deep beneath layers of clothing.

“Someone is going to walk out and see us,” I spoke through soft moans. I hardly got the sentence out before pleasure rattled my spine. I let my gaze settle on his stare and focused there as his touch grew harder and harder to ignore. He was enamored with me, with my body pressed against his.

He bent low, circled his finger again, and then whispered in my ear. “Let them.”

That’s not right. That’s not professional. I should have argued with him, but my mouth wouldn’t move. The words wouldn’t even form in my thoughts because, the truth was, as my body shook from an earth-shattering orgasm, I knew that I’d liked being with Grayson in a public place. The desire to be with him at that exact moment, where anyone could have interrupted us—it spiked my veins with adrenaline in a way that made it so easy to lose control.