Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 18

Chapter 18

OCEANS.

I tossed the paperwork on the upcoming Venzela project her way, and she picked it up without even looking at me.

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way into That frown had been living on her face since last night and had followed her all the this morning without any sign of vacating. I didn’t particularly mind it. As long as she was here with me… Working.

Her phone had been ringing nonstop all night, through this morning.

Two calls from Elgin and the rest from Jace.

I asked her to turn off the phone and focus on work. On me.

“Can I please return some calls?” She finally looked up at me, and I took the opportunity to gaze into her eyes. I swear it felt like an addict getting the first taste of their addiction after a long, grinding stretch of starvation.

The color of them against my light blue shirt – the one I’d given her to wear after she showered this morning- was complete perfection.

–

Yeah. She was wearing my shirt. Not that it mattered, right? Because what else was she supposed to wear when all she had were the office clothes she’d bought downstairs? That was the only reason it had happened. Purely practical. The fact that it fit her like I’d bought it with her in mind was completely irrelevant.

Her eyes were tired, with small dark circles sitting underneath them. She was stressed. She needed rest.

“Everyone will be worried at home,” she added, when the silence I was giving her stretched a beat past comfortable.

“Your family knows you work, Kisarel. It’s normal to work during the weekend,” I replied and turned back to the files I had in my hands.

“Is it also normal to spend the weekend in my boss’s house?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Yes,” I said. “Working.”

She pressed her lips together.

“Mr. Stark…”

“Oceans,” I corrected.

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“What the hell do you want from me?” She flared up, stood up, and threw her arms in the air. I watched the bangs move on her forehead.

“This minute you want me to call you Oceans, the next minute you warn me never to dare it, and then the next second, next second I’m back to calling you Oceans. What-” She pressed her palm to her forehead and exhaled.

I watched her quietly, leaning back on my couch.

She lowered her voice. “Look.” Her composure came back quickly, like she’d reached for it with both hands. “Please. We need to stop. Whatever this is. DC was a mistake we both admitted to. But this? Yesterday?” Her hand moved through the air between us. “I don’t even know what to call it, and it doesn’t sit right.”

If she knew I’d spent the better part of last night having a very thorough conversation with myself and arriving at the firm, unambiguous conclusion that she was staying and that I was only getting started, she probably wouldn’t have bothered with the speech. I let her finish it anyway. I liked watching her give it.

“Why doesn’t it sit right?” I asked, after a pause that was long enough to make her replay her own words. “Am I so much of a bad person that having sex with me doesn’t seem right?”

“No. Not that. Mr. Stark…”

“Oceans.” I calmly corrected. “Whenever we’re alone, I am Oceans to you. But in public, I am Mr. Stark.”

She scoffed, “Why? No.” She shook her head.

“That’s an instruction. From your boss.”

She paused and looked at me, and I swear, the way her lashes framed those eyes of hers sent a very direct message to a part of me that shouldn’t be up right now.

I was starting to think her eyes were becoming my second–favorite part of her body.

“Oceans,” She took a calming breath, “My wedding is less than four months away. Yours and Moonie’s, also. This isn’t right. I am not a cheat.”

“But you are with a cheat,” I replied, enjoying where this conversation was headed.

“That doesn’t make it right,” She argued.

“No,” I agreed, standing up. “But it makes it even.” I crossed to her side of the table slowly, only leaving a small, breathable distance between us. “And I’d swear by anything that this thrilling. Every bit of it.” I held her gaze. “You can’t even hide it, Kiss.”

you

find

She didn’t move away when I reached up and touched her face.

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That was the first thing I noticed. My thumb grazed her cheekbone, and she stood there and let it happen, which told me everything the speech she’d just given hadn’t.

I traced down the side of her neck and felt her draw in a breath that she was clearly trying to keep quiet.

“I love Jace,” she said. Her voice came out steadier than her breathing. I gave her credit for

that.

“I know.” I said simply.

“Then—”

“That’s fine, Kiss.” I kept my voice even, kept my thumb moving in a slow line along her pulse point, and felt it jump under the pressure. “You love Jace. I’m not asking you to stop.” I paused. “People have a thrill before they tie the knot all the time. It’s not as uncommon as you’d like to think.”

She looked at me like she was trying to decide if I was serious.

I was completely serious.

“I noticed you before any of this,” I continued. “Before DC. Before the promotion. You were at the front desk for three years, and I noticed you from the first month.” I let that settle for a second. “When you were transferred to my office, I already knew this was going to happen eventually. I just didn’t know when.”

“That’s-” She started.

“I stopped fucking people who work for me a long time ago,” I said, before she could finish whatever that was going to be. “I made that rule, and I kept it. Until you.” I tilted my head slightly. “You’re the exception I decided to make.”

My hand left her neck and found the hem of my shirt where it sat mid–thigh on her, my fingers brushing the skin just beneath it, and I felt her breath change.

I kept my palm flat against her outer thigh, sliding upward with absolutely no pretense about what I was doing. I felt her whole body react. The small involuntary sound she made shot straight to my cock.

“Here’s what I’m proposing,” I said, watching her face carefully while my hand continued its path.

“We keep this going – just this, exactly this, no emotions attached, no sentiments, nothing complicated until we both walk down our respective aisles and marry the people we’re supposed to marry. And then we stop.”

—

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Chapter 18

Her lower lip parted slightly when my fingers grazed her upper thigh, and I reached up and touched it with my thumb, just the edge of it, watching her eyes go wide for half a second before she caught herself.

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I found the button on the shirt and worked it open while I spoke, watching the fabric loosen, then moved to the next one.

She swallowed. “I’m still not comfortable with this arrangement, Oceans.”

“I know,” I said, without slowing down. “That’s why I’m going to make you something very simple.” I held her gaze. “If at any point you tell me no – if I come to you and you look me in

and say no that’s the end of it. I won’t push you.” The next button gave. “You have that power. You’ve always had it.”

the eye

She was quiet for a second, processing what I’d just said, before she added, “What if someone finds out? Do you understand how catastrophic that would be? For both of us?”

The corner of my mouth lifted. I couldn’t help it.

“There’s a thrill in that, too, Kiss.”

Her hair was still up in a bun. I reached past her ear and pulled the band loose, let it fall over her shoulders in one slow cascade, and ran my hand through it once because I had been thinking about doing exactly that since she walked out of my bathroom this morning.

Another argument was assembling behind her eyes – I could see it forming. I could see her pulling together every reasonable, sensible thing she still had left, and I was done waiting for it.

I cupped her face in both my palms, tilted her head up, and kissed her slowly, my mouth moving over hers until I felt the exact moment her body stopped arguing with the rest of her and she kissed me back.

Her hands found my shirt.

And whatever she’d been about to say was gone.

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