Bad for You (Sea Breeze #7)(13)

This infatuation I had with him was only getting worse. When he’d come down to my apartment and asked my opinion on two different shirts, he’d stripped off one to try on the other. I had lost my voice. The sight of his well-defined chest covered in colorful tattoos and the desire to touch them made my face heat up. I had felt flush and slightly off center. When he had left I felt so guilty. He saw me as his friend, not another girl that wanted something from him. Krit didn’t make me uncomfortable by gawking at my body, so doing that to him was wrong and unfair. But then I didn’t have a body like his. The kind that stops traffic.

This was where my head was when Linc showed up at work with a box of chocolate cupcakes. I pushed thoughts of Krit to the back of my mind and focused on Linc. If I could only look at Krit like I looked at Linc, my life would be so much easier.

“Break time? I have it on good authority from my sister that cupcakes don’t get any better than these,” he said with a serious expression and a sparkle in his eyes.

I glanced back at his dad’s office door. He had just gone in there with a married couple, and if the phone rang and I wasn’t there to answer it, then it would interrupt him. “Can we have the break in here so I can get the phone if it rings?” I asked him.

Linc nodded and pulled a chair up to my desk. “No problem,” he replied. “Dad has a counseling session?”

“Yeah, and it just started,” I explained.

“Then I have an hour of your time to waste.” He winked at me and handed me a cupcake.

I was going to gain weight with all the sweets he brought me. But then I decided it didn’t matter. I had gone most of my life without sweets, and I really liked them. The buttercream icing melted on my tongue, and I let out a small moan. So good. How I had lived my life without these kind of treats, I didn’t know.

I opened my eyes to tell Linc thank you, but the intensity of his gaze stopped me. He wasn’t eating his cupcake. His eyes were locked on my lips as he sat frozen. The only movements were the pupils in his eyes as they grew, and the vein pulsing in his neck.

“Blythe,” he said in a deep voice that startled me.

“Yes?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. His eyes lifted only briefly to meet mine before they went back to my lips. I lifted my hand to touch my mouth to make sure there was no icing clinging to them that he didn’t want to tell me about and risk embarrassing me.

He reached over and pulled my hand away from my mouth gently, then moved in closer. His eyes never leaving my lips. My heart rate picked up and I nervously bit my bottom lip wondering if I should move or say something.

“I’m going to kiss you,” he told me, and before I could let what he said register, his mouth was on mine.

It was my first kiss. His lips were warm and tasted like the mint of his chewing gum. I wasn’t sure what I should do. I was curious about kissing, and I liked Linc—he was nice—but he was my boss’s son. We were also in a church.

Mrs. Wilson would hate that I was kissing a man in a church. She would call me filthy and dirty. But she was dead. I slipped a hand into Linc’s hair and decided that I liked doing something that that woman would hate. When Linc’s tongue ran across my bottom lip and pressed between my lips, I opened my mouth and let him inside.

“Told you those cupcakes were good,” a female voice said, and then Linc’s mouth was gone.

I dropped my hand back into my lap and turned around to see a female version of Linc standing in front of my desk, a knowing grin on her face. This was his sister. I had seen the pictures in the pastor’s office. She hadn’t stopped by in the two weeks I had been there, even though Pastor Keenan had said more than once that she would love me.

“You couldn’t stand it, could you?” Linc said in an annoyed tone as he stared at his sister.

She cocked an eyebrow at him and shrugged. “You spend all your free time coming to visit here, and I knew it wasn’t Dad you were bringing treats for. So I thought I would visit the new secretary and introduce myself.”

Linc’s hand moved to clamp down on my thigh.

His sister’s eyes saw it, and she laughed and shook her head. “Seems you’ve got my brother all kinds of worked up,” she said, then smiled at me. “I’m Lilah. Sorry I haven’t been here to meet you yet. I’ve been busy getting things moved into my dorm, and I knew Linc was keeping you company every chance he got.”

Lilah had the same dark hair as Linc, but it was longer and curled around her shoulders. She also had the same green eyes and long eyelashes. But she had a dimple in her right cheek that Linc didn’t have. “It’s nice to meet you,” I replied. “And the cupcakes are amazing.”

She beamed at me. “I know, right?” Then she shifted her attention to Linc. “You weren’t exaggerating,” she said to him.

I glanced at him, and he was covering up a grin with his hand and trying to make it look like he was casually rubbing it over his mouth. The laughter in his eyes told me differently.

I was missing something here.

“I have to go. I’ve got a lunch meeting in thirty minutes. I’ll be back to visit when I’m in town next time. Be careful with him. He isn’t as nice as he looks.” Lilah winked, spun around, and then left the office.

“I would like to say she’s not normally so annoyingly dramatic but I’d be lying,” Linc said.