The cool marble against her cheek registered just as she remembered where they were.
Her panties were around her thighs, her engorged nipples against the table and her skirt hiked up as high as it would go.
“Shit.” Some paragon of feminism she was turning out to be. Could she make it through one work day without getting seduced into fucking him please?
Still panting, he pulled out of her slowly, retrieving a napkin from the sideboard and cleaning himself off before he zipped his pants.
She did the same, wiping between her legs, and straightened her clothes. The smell of sex permeated the air, and they didn’t meet each other’s eyes.
“I meant for us to talk when I locked the door,” he finally said softly. “I did. I didn’t mean for us to—”
“I know. With us, it just…happens.” He seemed to tense, zipping his briefcase, as if waiting for the “but.”
She was shaken by how quickly, how heedlessly it had happened, in a conference room, in the middle of the business day, with an entire law firm only one wooden door away. Her emotions and actions when she was with him seemed increasingly at odds with her words, with what she knew was the right thing to do for now. Her head was waging a powerful war with her heart. She needed to get a hold of herself, of both of them, no matter how much it was going to hurt.
“But for that very reason, this isn’t going to work, me staying in this job. I knew it and we just proved it. I resign, Mason. Effective immediately.”
He nodded. “This whole meeting was a trap, wasn’t it?”
“What?”
“I made a jealous ass out of myself and then you kissed me and I, I lost control. Not once, but twice.”
As ridiculous as all this was, fucking on a conference room table—geez, she hoped they cleaned it pretty thoroughly at night—without protection no less, again, she liked the way he said that. He lost control. But she couldn’t let him take all the blame.
“It wasn’t a trap. And we both lost control, for the record. I wanted it. I’m not denying that. I want you.”
“Then stay with me.”
She shook her head. “I need some time alone, and I don’t want you to try to convince me otherwise this time. Okay?”
“Three days?” he suggested.
She placed a palm on his hot cheek. “Let me get myself together and we’ll see. We need time, both of us, Mason, to get some perspective.”
“How long?” he persisted.
She kissed him lightly. “As long as it takes.”
Like so much of her life now, she had to take a step back and go from there.
Chapter Eleven
Twenty-nine days. Mason could name the hours, but he didn’t want to seem obsessive. It had been almost a full month since Camilla had walked out of that London office and out of his life, and he’d been a wreck ever since.
“This is not the fucking file I wanted!” he shouted at Marcia.
Ignoring him, she continued typing on her computer.
“Are you listening to me?”
“No, I’m not.”
He stopped, shifting from foot to foot. “You just answered me, so you are, right?”
“Don’t try to blind me with your stunning intelligence, boy.”
“It’s not the right file.” He dropped the manila folder on her desk, sullen about it but at least quiet.
“Why should I give you the right file when we both know you won’t be reading it? You’ll just be staring out into space with that hangdog look on your face.”
He ignored the hangdog comment. “I was reading it. How else would I know it was the wrong one?”
“There you go, putting a poor little secretary like me in my place with your high IQ.”
“Poor little secretary, my ass,” he muttered. “Can I have the right file please?”
She stopped typing and walked over to the door to the outer hallway, picking up his jacket from the coat rack on the way, and stood there, holding it out to him. “No, you cannot have the right file. You are going to go home and turn on the TV—”
“I don’t have a TV.”
“Yes, you do. You know that mammoth dark screen in your living room? It makes pretty pictures and sounds when you use that little remote thing to turn it on. So you are going to go home and turn it on and watch some mindless sitcom or rerun or whatever and just relax. You’re driving me absolutely insane.”
He tugged her out of the doorway, then slammed it shut. “I’m driving myself insane, too.”
Collapsing on the couch in the waiting room, elbows on knees, he rested his head in his hands, registering the weight of it as pounds too heavy since he’d last seen Camilla.