The moment he put his phone down, she set her laptop on his desk and asked if he could come around to view the screen. Standing up, he walked around to the front of the big, mahogany desk—grateful for the way she kept her attention on her computer, since it meant she didn’t notice his raging hard-on—and settled himself into the second leather chair.
“Okay, let’s see what you’ve got,” he told her, and with only a slight edge of nerves to her husky voice, she talked him through the software and completely blew his mind. It was more than impressive, it was fucking genius, and he knew he had a bit of a dazed expression on his face when he finally looked at her.
“What?” she asked with a bit of wariness, catching that succulent lower lip in her teeth again.
With his own lips twitching as he tried to hold back a smile, he said, “It’s just that you don’t look anything like a geek.”
She laughed as she shook her head. “I hate to break it to you, but we look just like everyone else.”
“Not all of you,” he disagreed, smirking at her.
Her green eyes twinkled with humor. “You’re being a geekist, Mr. Cartwright.”
“Is geekism even a thing?” he asked, rubbing his chin. “And call me Jonah. Please. That whole last name thing makes me feel old.”
This time, she was the one who smirked, but she didn’t argue with his request. Instead, she said, “Okay, Jonah. And if geekism isn’t a thing, then it should be. Someone has to stand up for the rights of geeks. After all, we’re going to take over the world one day.”
He threw back his head and laughed, enjoying her wit, then jerked his chin toward her laptop. “So how did you get into computers and programming?”
She fiddled with her charm bracelet as she said, “It’s just something that always fascinated me.”
Wanting to learn as much about her as he could, he kept up the questions. “You weren’t interested in going to college? In getting a degree?”
“I was going to study computer science,”—that long-lashed gaze finally came back to his—“but had a change of plans.”
“Why?”
“Um…just life,” she hedged, before taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders. “But it was for the best. The best thing that ever happened to me, actually. And I enjoy my job.”
“But you don’t love it,” he murmured, getting his answers from her face, rather than her words. “It’s not your passion.”
She tilted her head a bit to the side as she told him, “Work doesn’t have to be a passion.”
He wanted to ask her if the guy who so often texted her was her passion, but didn’t. Jonah honestly didn’t know what was holding him back, unless it was the fear of what he might learn. Was she serious about the bastard? Were they exclusive? Did he make her happy? Did he know that Jonah had kissed the hell out of her last week, and that she’d fucking loved every second of it?
All good questions, with important answers—and yet, what he really wanted to ask her was if she’d have dinner with him that night. Just the two of them. Alone. At his apartment.
And that… Yeah, that scared the ever-loving hell out of him.
As if she sensed his mounting tension, she swiftly reached into her bag and took out a small purse, looping its thin leather strap over her shoulder as she moved to her feet. “Would you like a coffee?” she asked, barely meeting his eyes as she looked at him, the pulse at the base of her throat fluttering like the wings of a little hummingbird. “I’m going to run down to the lobby and grab a latte from the coffee bar, before we start going over the reports that the Fillmore team sent over.”
“Sure,” he said, moving to his feet as well. “A latte would be great.”
Her gaze skittered away from his face, and she started toward the door. “I’ll, um, just be right back then.”
As Jonah watched the door close behind her, he exhaled a frustrated breath, irritated at himself for letting her bolt, instead of just asking her to have dinner with him. But he’d started thinking about that one incredible kiss, and how it’d left him feeling like his goddamn skin had been peeled back, exposing all the screwed-up shit inside him, which was why he’d lashed out afterward like a jackass.
Jesus. If kissing her when it was just the two of them had that kind of effect on him, then what would happen when he took things further? If he laid her out on his table, after they’d finished their meal, and ate out her hot little cunt for dessert, would he have a fucking breakdown?
Shit! Why couldn’t he just take her to the club and screw her brains out in the Diamond, where the crowd’s avid gaze would ground him, keeping him from falling…right into her…so far and deep that he couldn’t ever get back out? Why did he have to change for her? It was bullshit! Motherfucking bull—
“No!” he roared, wondering if he’d lost his bloody mind, now that he’d apparently taken to shouting at himself. But he knew the mental path he’d been barreling down wasn’t going to lead to anything good. It wasn’t Jocelyn’s fault that he’d become so screwed-up he needed a fucking crutch to get close to a woman he cared about. And in that low moment, Jonah could see the truth in one of Gabe’s frequent arguments about his growing reliance on the crowds at Vane. That somewhere along the way, it’d stopped being about sticking it to his old man, and more about creating emotional distance between him and his partners. A distance that became more dangerous each time he relied on it.
Christ, what a dick he was. All those times he’d thought of Gabe as the “Ice Man,” when he was just as bad, if not worse.
Freeze something down enough times, and there would always be permanent damage. If he wasn’t careful, Jonah had a feeling he was going to wake up one day to find that he had frostbite all the way down in his bones. In his fucking soul. And while that might have appealed to him at one time, it was no longer what he wanted. Not now. Not after that blinding, beautiful smile that Jocelyn had given him. What he wanted was more of those. A hundred of them. A thousand!
His only hope was to stop resisting and just give in, letting Jocelyn melt him down and reshape him. But how? How was that even possible, when he was still the same screwed-up jackass with the same goddamn hang-ups? He didn’t know, but he was tired of being ruled by his fear. He might not have all the answers, but at least he could take a step in the right direction and ask her that one simple question.
“Jace, would you do me the honor of having dinner with me tonight?” he said out loud, wanting to know how the words would feel on his tongue. He frowned, wondering if they were a bit too formal. Shit, this was what happened when you limited your sex life to filthy scenes that played out for a kink-thirsty crowd. You forgot how to do the normal things, like asking a pretty girl to sit down and share a meal with you.
But he wasn’t going to let his lack of practice hold him back. And I’m not going to wait for her to come back to me either, he thought, shoving his hand back through his hair as he headed toward the door. He needed to get this done now, before he lost his nerve.
Jonah made it downstairs not two minutes later, his eyes already scanning the spacious, high-ceilinged lobby for Jocelyn’s golden hair. He started toward the coffee bar, thinking he’d find her in the throng of customers waiting for their orders, only to stop in his tracks when he caught sight of her by the central indoor fountain that he thought was ugly as sin, but had been designed by some big-time architect.
She didn’t appear to be waiting for an order, and she wasn’t alone. She was with Lucas, and something ugly and slick slid through his insides as Jonah watched the two of them together. Something that made his hands curl into fists, his heart pounding to a jarring, painful rhythm.
She was laughing at something the smiling bastard must have just said, and her cheeks were pink. She was fucking blushing, just like she always blushed for him, looking so beautiful that all he wanted to do was throw her over his shoulder and steal her away. Just carry her off to someplace where he could have her all to himself—and wasn’t that a godd
amn mind-fuck.
Then Lucas reached out and placed a big hand on the bare skin of her upper arm as he leaned in a bit closer, obviously saying something he didn’t want anyone to overhear, and Jonah saw red.
Blood. Fucking. Red.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he turned his back on them and made his way back up to his office, completely blanking the people who tried to talk to him, his jaw clenched so hard he was surprised his teeth didn’t crack.
With each minute that went by, as he paced in front of the long glass wall, his anger grew, twisting deeper and sharper, while his imagination ran wild. Was Lucas making a play for her? Had he already? Had they been screwing around behind his back? Was that who kept texting her, putting those little smiles on her face whenever she read the messages?
Christ, talk about a fucking wake-up call!
Ever since that damn day in the conference room, when Jonah had first gotten his hands on her, his phone had been blowing up with messages from people wanting to know when he’d finally be back at Vane. But like an idiot, he’d ignored them, too obsessed with Jocelyn to go and pound his frustration out in the Diamond. He’d been living like a fucking monk—and all the while, she’d been doing God only knew what with one of his closest friends!
Son of a bitch. This entire thing with her was a mistake. A fucking massive one. He didn’t want to feel like this. It was too raw. Too real. Too much like he’d been when—
No! Hell, no!
Scrubbing his hands down his face, he thought, Yeah, I’m not going there.
Not today.
Not ever.
Which meant there was really only one answer. One logical way to play this. It was time to get his fill, on his terms, and then move the fuck on.
Hell, at this point, he might even take a month of vacation after today and spend every waking moment of it at Vane, buried in constant pussy, just to get the goddamn taste of Jocelyn Brenna out of his mouth, purging her from his system.
Grabbing his cell phone off his desk, he shot a message off to Nic and Jack, and within a minute they were both walking into his office. Nic’s short, dark hair looked like he’d been repeatedly jabbing his fingers through it, which was always a telling indication of his mood, while Jack had that cool, calm, and collected air that never left him, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his elbows, revealing the colorful ink that decorated both arms. Nic’s ink, on the other hand, was concealed beneath his black suit, but Jonah knew it covered a significant amount of skin. And he knew why.
“What’s up?” Jack asked with a lift of his brows, after he’d shut the door behind them.
“I need you both to hang around for a bit,” Jonah replied, the gruffness of his voice causing his friends to share a brief look, before turning their attention back to him. “Can you do that?”
“Whatever you need, man,” Nic murmured, his dark brows drawn with concern. “But what’s going on?”
Jonah took off his jacket and started loosening his tie. “You’ll figure it out soon enough,” he muttered, jerking his chin toward the leather chairs in front of his desk. “For now, go ahead and take a seat.”
Nic frowned, and Jack started to open his mouth, no doubt to press him for an answer, but the door opened before he could say anything, and Jocelyn walked into the room looking flushed, with two cups of coffee in her hands. “Sorry that took so long,” she was saying, her attention focused on the cups as she used her elbow to keep pushing the door open. “I ran into Lucas and he told me about this great art festival that’s taking place at Golden Gate Park this weekend.”
The second she said Lucas’s name, he could tell that his friends took a guess at where this was headed. Jack cursed under his breath, while Nic shot him a “Don’t do anything stupid” look—but Jonah ignored them both, knowing they would stay for as long as he needed them. Even if they thought he was making a mistake, they wouldn’t bail on him. Not these two. They were as loyal as they came.
She looked up when Jack cursed, her brow creased with momentary confusion as she took in the two men standing just a few feet away from her. “I’m sorry,” she said to them, sounding a little embarrassed. “I didn’t realize you were here.” She shifted that pretty green gaze over to Jonah. “Do you need to meet with your friends? I can work downstairs and then come back up when you need me.”
“No.” His low voice was little more than a guttural rasp. “Just set the coffee down on the bureau. Then come here.”
She went completely still, reminding him of a little rabbit, a thousand emotions rushing over her face as she worked his words through her mind, those green eyes wide and bright. “Jonah?” she whispered, and he noticed the cups were beginning to shake a little in her grip.
He pulled in a deep breath, then slowly let it out. “Do it now, Jace.”
She caught her lower lip in her teeth, her face on fire, and slid a nervous look at the guys, who were watching them with tense expressions, before she turned and walked over to the bureau. He stared at the delicate line of her spine as she set the cups down and placed her purse beside them, then pulled in a couple of slow breaths, before running those delicate hands of hers over her hair, the nervous actions making him ache to touch her. Hold her. Comfort her.
Yeah, Nic could worry all he wanted, but Jonah knew this wasn’t stupid. It was necessary, because this woman held some kind of power over him that was ripping him to shreds. Breaking him down. And it had to stop.
He needed to break free. Needed to get his fill and finish it, so that things could go back to the way they’d been before. He needed to get his fucking life back!
Who gave a shit if it’d been cold? At least it’d been his to control and command. At least he hadn’t felt like a goddamn puppet on a string.
At the soft sounds of Nic and Jack finally settling their long, muscular bodies into the two leather chairs, Jocelyn squared her feminine shoulders, then slowly turned around. Jonah could see her pretty pink lips moving as she started walking toward him on her nude-colored heels, but couldn’t make out the silent words she was saying, her gaze flicking between his blistering stare and the gleaming hardwood floor.
When she was finally close enough, he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her against him, crashing her into the front of his body. Her hands clutched at his upper arms, her head tilting back, and he leaned down to brush a tender kiss across her lips, their pillow-like softness making him want to groan.
“What are you doing?” she gasped, blinking up at him, her face so warm he could feel its heat. Holding her was like having pure sunshine in his arms, and there was a dank, dark place inside him that wanted to throw back its head and howl like a gutted animal, because it knew just how fucking cold he was going to feel when this was over and she was no longer burning for him.
Lifting his hand, Jonah cupped her delicate jaw and pressed the callused pad of his thumb against the plump center of her lower lip. “I’m doing what I’ve wanted to do since the moment you walked into my office this morning.” And longer than that. So much longer than that.
Her voice was achingly soft. “We’re not alone, Jonah.”
“I noticed,” he ground out, before lowering his head and taking that sweet, pink mouth again, losing himself in the pure, exquisite taste of her. It was so fucking good it made him hurt. Made him desperate.
Christ, it was even better than he’d remembered, which only strengthened his resolve as he lifted his head and looked her right in the eye.
“Trust me, Jace. You’re going to enjoy this. The entire point of it is to make you feel good.” So good that she wouldn’t ever forget him, no matter how many times Lucas took her to his bed.
“The point of what?” she asked, a thousand more questions burning in her beautiful eyes, demanding answers that he wasn’t going to give her.
But she didn’t run. She wasn’t afraid. She didn’t need to be. She knew she was safe—knew that nothing would happen that she didn’t agree to.
She was wary, yes. But she was also curious. She wanted to know what he was up to. Wanted to know what carnal game he’d decided to play with her now…and why he needed Nic and Jack there to do it.
“Seriously, Jonah.” He could tell by the firm edge to her voice that she was trying to sound in control, but her short nails were digging into his biceps, and he could feel the tiny shiver moving through her limbs. “What exactly is going on?”
With a slow, wicked smile, he cupped the side of her face in his big hand, then lowered his greedy mouth back to her soft, sweet, quivering one.
He didn’t intend to spell it out for her.
No… Jonah planned on showing her in filthy, explicit detail instead.
Beneath the hungry, watchful eyes of his friends.
To be continued…
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Next in the Play Series
Part Two of Jonah and Jocelyn’s scorching, emotion-driven romance is now available for pre-order!
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About the Story
HOW DEEP?
After Jonah pushes her too far, Jocelyn has no intention of letting him get close again. Their shocking encounter in his office has only confirmed her initial belief that casual sex isn’t her thing…and a relationship clearly isn’t his.
But she soon learns to never underestimate this sexy playboy, because Jonah’s about to tear her misconceptions to shreds.
Within one intensely passionate, emotional week, Jocelyn will find herself in deeper with a man than she ever imagined…and have so much more to lose than just her heart.
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The Next Play: Part One Page 11