Once Upon A Time(38)
“I can’t lose my job,” I replied sharply, trying but failing – miserably – not to enjoy his touch. “I will fight against you at every turn.”
“You won’t.” His lips grazed the sensitive skin of my neck and I had no doubt he could feel the thundering of my pulse beneath it. “Are you really going to deny what this is because of your job? I don’t know what this is, Payton, but the moment you stumbled into my office at Omega, I knew you’d never really leave.”
“I slapped you.” I gasped as his ran his tongue from the base of my neck, slowly moving to behind my ear. “I walked out.”
“Tell that to my cock. I've been hard ever since you told me you weren't wearing panties.” I felt him smiling against my skin as he pressed himself further into me, giving me a glimpse of just how turned on he really was. “So tell me, are you wearing panties right now? Are you wet for me, princess?”
The pen fell from my fingers and all I could hear was the sound it made against the black flooring beneath my feet, the white noise around me deafening. It was as if a bucket of ice cold water had been thrown over me, shocking me out of my own stupidity.
Turning, I smirked at a smug Gabriel; before I could unleash the venom coursing through my body, his lips were on mine.
He tasted like mint and smelled like autumn rain and sin, a exhilarating combination that had me weak at the damn knees. I was too shocked to react at first, but the moment he ran his tongue along the seam of my lips, I moaned and opened for him. His arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me impossibly close as my tongue tentatively grazed his. All the venom I had only moments ago had morphed into something else, something only he could make me feel.
Desperation.
The moment that thought entered my mind, the moment I realized he was doing things to me I promised I would never feel again, the venom reappeared.
My hands moved to his chest and with as much force as I could muster, I pushed hard, breaking our kiss and, in some way, sealing our fates.
I gasped as I placed my hands on my knees, bending at the waist as I tried to get my breath back.
“Can't you see it, Payton?” He growled. I refused to look at him; instead I kept my eyes on the floor and tried to block him out. “Can't you feel it? Why are you denying it?”
Standing at full height, I rolled back my shoulders and steadied my gaze.
“No. No, I don’t feel it, Gabriel. There is nothing to feel, nothing to see. This is a business relationship, I’m here to do my job.” I was seething as I took a step towards him. “I’m not doing this with you. We weren't all born with a silver spoon in our mouths, Gabriel. Some of us had to work hard to get where we are, to change who we were. You’re not worth the risk.”
“Okay.” He paused, his gaze very much steely and unreadable. “I'll stop. I won’t touch you, I won’t breathe you in, I won’t think about how you screamed when you shattered around me, I won’t remember how sweet your lips taste or how that Southern accent you try to hide beneath turns me on ten-fold when you’re angry. I won’t picture you when I’m taking a shower, I won’t run over every line, every curve, every contour of your body in my mind, I'll push away the thoughts of you whimpering as I imagine sliding back inside your body.”
He reached out, gripping my wrist in his hand and placing my hand on his suit-covered abdomen. “I'll stop my mind drifting to you when I smell fresh roses and sunshine. You smell like fucking sunshine.” His hand descended, pulling mine along with it until he stopped at his crotch. “I'll try and stop my dick from being permanently hard from just the mention of your name. Is that what you want? To starve me, not only of something I crave, but something I unequivocally need just to fucking function?”
“You’re delusional. You don’t know anything about me other than what you assume you do.” I gasped as I ripped my hand from his vice-like grip. “This is the real world, Gabriel. People have jobs for a reason; we have them to keep a roof above our heads, clothes on our backs and food in our stomachs. That is what my job means for me and so much more. If I lose it because I want to have a good time with some guy who has an ego bigger than my salary, then I’d be crushing every dream I've had since I was in high school.”
I straightened my skirt and rolled my shoulders back before picking up the pen still on the floor between us.
“Now, if it isn't too much trouble, can we please discuss the opening event for Alpha so I can actually start doing my job?”
His hard stare was followed by a hard nod. I had no doubt Gabriel was used to women falling at his feet. I wasn't one of them. I wasn't the damsel in distress and he certainly wasn't Prince Charming; in fact, I was quickly coming to the conclusion that he was the fairy tale villain and I was just some poor bystander who was going to be caught in the crossfire.