Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 15

OCEANS.

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It was already past five in the evening and it felt like I’d had one of the longest afternoons of my life.

I stepped out of bed carefully, moving slowly enough not to disturb her. Not because I was

I wasn’t. I just didn’t see the the kind of man who concerned himself with things like that point in waking someone up when they were sleeping fine on their own. –

That was all.

I stood at the edge of the bed. Not that I was looking at her. I was just–standing there. In my own bedroom. Which I was allowed to do.

She was on her side, her hair completely taking over my pillow.

Not that I was looking at how her plump lips were slightly parted as she drew in small, steady breaths. I wasn’t looking at how unreasonably small and fragile she looked, sleeping on her boss’s bed without a care in the world.

Fuck, no.

I was just putting on my pants while making sure a human being sleeping in my house was still breathing fine.

That was it.

My gaze traveled to the scar on her back again, just above her right shoulder. It looked really rough and jagged, even though it wasn’t a very big scar. But… It somehow made me wonder what she must have been doing as a child when she got the scar. Did it hurt so much? Does she remember the pain?

Shit.

–

I was doing that thing again – cataloguing everything about this woman whether I sanctioned it or not – every small detail, every imperfection, every thing that had no relevance to anything I actually needed to be thinking about.

I pulled on my shirt and went to my office just next to my room.

The KenVary files were waiting on my desk exactly where I’d left them before Kiss had arrived and detonated the rest of my afternoon. I had to finish it up before six PM.

I pressed two fingers against the bridge of my nose, forcing my distracted self to look at the figures properly without seeing Kisarel’s face all over the paper.

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I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath.

Kiss…

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This was not a complicated situation, by the way. I needed to be honest with myself about what this actually was.

–

I was a man who had, on more than one occasion over the course of my career, slept with a subordinate. It happened. It was human. It didn’t mean anything beyond what it was two consenting adults in proximity, tension with nowhere else to go, a release valve that worked efficiently and then was closed and moved past.

I had done it and moved past it before.

This was the same thing, and nothing more.

The fact that she was my fiancée’s cousin was a significant complication – I acknowledged that. But Moonie and I were not a real couple and hadn’t been since the moment it was arranged. It was a business.

So that particular complication, on examination, wasn’t as complicated as it appeared.

As for Kiss, she was not an unwilling participant. In fact, she approached me for this first. And today, she had responded to every single thing I did without hesitation, without pulling back, and without once suggesting she wanted to stop.

Kiss was many things I had spent three years pretending not to notice. Unclear about her own desires was not one of them.

So.

Two adults. Clear terms. No confusion on either side.

I was not feeling anything that required examination.

I signed the last page of the KenVary file and forwarded everything to Jeremy at five forty-

seven.

I went straight to the kitchen to get a glass of water for myself, but ended up pouring two glasses instead.

Shit.

I had done it like it was muscle memory. Didn’t even realize I just did.

For Kisarel.

She’d been asleep for almost two hours, anyway. She’d probably be dehydrated when she

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woke up.

I had fucked her harder than I had fucked anyone in recent memory, and the least I could do, as the person responsible for her current physical state, was ensure there was water within reach when she came around. Wouldn’t want her passing out due to dehydration in my bedroom.

That was basic human consideration, and I was a considerate employer.

I carried both glasses back down the hall, pushed my bedroom door open, but stopped immediately.

The bed was empty.

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Something happened in my chest in that moment that I had not experienced in years. It was a sharp, immediate lurch. Not really a skip, but something more violent than a skip. Something that started behind my ribs and radiated outward.

But it was a half–second reaction to an unexpected visual. Nothing more. Anyone would react to walking into a room expecting to find something where they left it and finding empty space instead.

I set both glasses down on the nightstand.

“Kiss.”

No answer.

My eyes moved to the chair by the window, and her handbag was still there with her shoes on the floor beside it. I hadn’t heard the front door. I had been in the kitchen for four minutes at the most, and there was no way she had gotten past me and left the building without me knowing.

She was still here.

I exhaled at the thought.

Not that I was relieved. Fuck, no. I was just making sure my employee didn’t get disrespectful enough to leave without my permission.

The muffled sound coming from the bathroom caught my attention and propelled my legs toward it.

Her voice was low and bright in a way I almost didn’t recognize because I had never heard that specific quality in it before.

She was fucking laughing in a way that made me go very still.

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Chapter 15

Who the fuck was she talking to?

And why did she have to go to the bathroom to make the call?

What? She thought I’d care if she spoke to her so–called fiancé in my presence?

Why the fuck should I care? What did she think this was? A fucking secret relationship?

Fuck.

I made to push the door open when I heard the words she was saying, and the rightness in my chest curdled into something else entirely.

“I’ve missed you so much—”

Something shifted in my jaw. Not because of what she said. I didn’t care what she said. She was an employee taking a personal phone call in my bathroom, which was mildly inconsiderate but not something I was going to lose sleep over.

“-it feels like forever since I’ve seen you-”

What the fuck?

That was definitely not Jace. She was cheating on Jace with another man?

My hands were loose at my sides. Then I noted, with the detached clarity of a man

monitoring his own reactions, that they were closing into fists. I opened them intentionally, but they closed again.

“I can’t wait to see you again-”

There it was. The specific, quiet, icepick feeling of something I had absolutely no claim to and was feeling anyway rage. And it moved so fast.

“I’ll see you tomorrow-

”

–

That was it. I pushed the door open before I had finished deciding to open it, and she spun around immediately.

The laughter died the moment her eyes found my face, and whatever she saw there made

her go very still very fast, with the phone still against her ear.

“Who the fuck are you talking to?”

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