“Can you promise me it won’t happen again?” Her eyes met his, searching them as he replied out of instinct.
“It won’t happen again, Charlotte. You have my word. Things between us are strictly professional. I just don’t want you to throw out the good things we have going because I made a stupid mistake.” He was being as sincere as he could be. She clearly didn’t want anything to do with him in any other way besides being business partners and maybe friends. He could live with that. Preston would be able to keep her at arm’s length and make sure he didn’t do anything unwelcome again if it meant he was still going to get to spend his Friday evenings with this young woman sat across the desk from him. Helping her make her dreams of owning a bakery come true was the part of her life she was willing to let him be a part of and he should be able to settle for being satisfied with that.
Charlotte nodded, leaning against the door frame as she took a deep breath.
“One more chance, but if anything else happens, I’m gone. I don’t know how I’d make this work without you, but I’m not the girl who’s going to let herself get used to get what she wants, Preston.”
“I didn’t think you were. I should go.” Preston took a step back, putting a little more distance between the two of them. “See you Monday?” He hadn’t forgotten that the two of them had an appointment with the real estate agent on Monday to look at another location.
“Monday… Yeah.” She sighed and began to close the door. “Goodnight, Preston.” It was the last thing she said before the door clicked into the latch. He could hear her locking it behind her, leaving him standing alone out here in the hallway.
Preston stood there for a moment, unsure of what he should do next. He’d never felt like this about anyone before. He’d had the urge to dominate a woman before, though it had been easy to push down and work past, but with Charlotte there was so much more to it. He wanted to have her. He wanted to own her completely and he wanted her to want it as much as he did. It was clear that that was never going to be the case. Instead, he was just going to have to satisfy himself with being in her presence and fighting against the urges he had with everything that was in him. It was going to be a test of his will. One he wasn’t entirely sure he was going to be able to pass, but he had no other option than to try because his life without Charlotte in it wasn’t something he wanted to experience again.
Once Preston got his thoughts in order, he headed for the stairs, making his way back down and out into the rain where his driver and car were waiting. He instructed the driver to take him back to the office. He didn’t want to go home tonight. Home seemed like far too lonely and empty a place to spend a night like tonight. Maybe throwing himself into his work until he passed out was going to be the thing to get all of this off his mind.
Chapter 11
The first time Preston and Charlotte had met each other, after the kiss, was strained and awkward. The two of them avoided each other and focused all their questions to the real estate agent as the walked around the building. It was actually perfect, the first place the two of them had seen that had everything that both of them were looking for. The location was ideal, in a part of the city where it was going to get a lot of foot traffic and business from the skyscrapers beyond. It was within walking distance of the Pierce Building which meant it was fairly close to her apartment and the business she’d built up there would still be able to a access her new business quickly.
It also had room for her to expand. There was going to be space to put up the display cases she’d chosen and to put in ovens in the back with room left over for some tiny cafe tables in the front for customers who wanted to eat in the bakery. Preston had thought that adding in a small coffee bar on one side of the bakery would be a great idea and give customers a place to get a coffee and pastry on their way to work in the morning. It just meant that they were going to be expanding their business plans and that she was going to need to hire someone to take the spot at the coffee bar while she manned the bakery, but if things went according to plan, this business was going to expand enough that she was going to have to hire more than one person before all was said and done.
Charlotte was nervous about the idea of being anyone’s boss, no matter how much Preston told her that he knew she was capable of it. Standing up to him had given her a little more confidence there. She’d had the strength and self-reliance to walk away from him that night even if it meant losing the funding on her business, so maybe she had it in her to run a business and be a good leader for a group of employees too, even if she felt like she was too young to do it properly.
Preston always had this air about him that made people respect him. Charlotte could see why he was a good leader and able to be in charge of so many other people. She knew why she’d wanted to spend so much time with him too. She’d been watching him carefully as much as she could when the two of them were working together. He was taking care of the business side of things like buying the property and hiring contractors to do the improvements that were going to be necessary before they could open, but she was intent on learning to do this for herself. He was far more experienced and she’d have been a fool not to learn from him.
In the meantime, the work between the two of them had gotten more or less back to normal after a few strained days of Preston being so careful not to touch her that he’d refused to even hand her things directly. He’d promised her that he was going to keep the relationship between the two of them strictly professional. So far, he’d been absolutely true to his word.
Except, Charlotte now found herself wishing he wouldn’t be. She’d known he was attractive since the first time he’d walked up to the bakery stand in the lobby, but it had been in a purely objective way before now. He might have been older than her, but he was better looking than any of the men her age she’d ever met. His dark eyes and hair gently graying at the temples fit him perfectly. He was in great shape and he dressed impeccably. The other women around the building stared when he walked past, though until recently, Charlotte had been immune but she’d started to notice it a lot more since she knew what having his lips on hers felt like.
As much as she might try to fight it, she found herself thinking about that night whenever she wasn’t busy at the food cart. Her day dreams were nothing compared to the ones that came at night though. She couldn’t get Preston out of her thoughts. She could almost feel the way his hands had felt against her skin. They were stronger than she’d thought they would be from looking at him and the way he’d grabbed her just a little roughly like he wanted to own her was imprinted on her skin.
Charlotte couldn’t remember feeling that way about another man in her entire life. She hadn’t woken up from dreams about anyone else breathless and panting with her skin on fire. She’d never caught herself fantasizing about anyone else draping her across one of the desks upstairs as they slowly removed every stitch of clothes she was wearing. It was bad when they were apart, but it was even worse when the two of them were together. She had to fight the urge to just go and wrap herself around him and be completely consumed by him every time it was just the two of them in the room. Friday evenings were beginning to be absolutely excruciating.
It was almost so bad that she was about to throw all her previous fears and warnings to the wind and just beg him to touch her one more time, to kiss her until her lips were burning and swollen, maybe even to take her across his desk. There was just one problem with all of that.
She was a virgin and she didn’t want to tell him that. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed by it, most of Charlotte’s friends had already had sex by the time they were in college. The rest of them lost their virginities to their college boyfriends, but Charlotte had never found a man who made her feel tempted to do much of anything beyond a kiss or two or holding hands. It was part of the reason that she’d never dated anyone more than casually in her entire life. No one before Preston had ever made her want someone that bad.
She was terrified to tell him
. She could imagine Preston pushing her off him and refusing to touch her again when he found out. He was noble enough to not want to take that from her, not to mention he wouldn’t have wanted someone so inexperienced and childish in his bed, no matter how much she might want to be there. So all she could do was try to push away the urges she felt every time she was around him.
It was getting steadily harder, especially on Friday nights. If they were meeting with suppliers or contractors, then it was more simple. The presence of another person in the room meant she could put all her focus on them. When it was just the two of them alone in the office, it was something else entirely. She had to fight off the urges to just do what ever popped into her mind, and lately, what had been popping into her mind had been more and more daring.
She felt like a bit of a hypocrite after the way she’d made Preston beg and promise not to do anything beyond what was strictly professional. Maybe she’d been a fool. She’d had a man who other women would have killed to have just a single night with standing outside her apartment door and begging her to let him back into her life just as a friend. He’d wanted her, that much was abundantly clear and she’d gone and thrown it all away because she thought he only wanted her for one thing. He’d been working hard to prove otherwise to her but was he strictly going to keep to his promise to be nothing but professional?
Tonight was particularly bad. He was over there working on the other side of the desk with his tie loosened and jacket draped across the back of the chair. This was the most laid back she’d seen him in weeks. He was halfway through his second glass of scotch for the night and relaxed enough to actually laugh at her jokes. There had been a couple of weeks there where she was pretty sure he wasn’t ever going to joke around with her again. She’d almost lost her friend and her business partner in one night. Now he was back and she was seeing things in him that she hadn’t let herself see until now.
Charlotte wasn’t sure why she had blocked it all out before. Maybe it was fear of the unknown, maybe it was her drive to get this business off the ground without a hitch, or maybe it was sheer stubbornness. Probably a combination of the three. But now, she saw him loud and clear and she wanted him even if she didn’t know how to go about it.
His fingers were drumming on the desk between them, and what she really wanted to do was crawl over that desk and let him use those fingers on her. She had no idea what she was doing but finally she gave up on trying and stood up, walking around the desk. Preston’s eyes shot open in surprise as she walked around to where he was sitting and slowly crawled into his lap, draping her arms over his shoulders.
“Charlotte? What are you doing?” Preston kept his hands planted firmly on the arms of the desk chair, even though the look in his eyes told her that was exactly the opposite of what he really wanted to do.
“What I should have done a long time ago.” She set her jaw and moved in closer, brushing a kiss across Preston’s lips. He had tensed as soon as she approached him in his chair but she felt him melting beneath her the moment her lips came into contact with his.
His hands left the arms of the chair and found their way around her body, gripping her waist to pull her in closer and deepen the kiss. This was just like the first time, except now Charlotte wasn’t fighting it. She gave in to the urges she felt rolling through her body. A warmth curled out from the core of her stomach and unfurled as it poured through her veins and made it’s way through the rest of her body. This was the place that she’d wanted to be for awhile now, ever since she’d realized what an idiot she’d been for refusing to allow Preston in closer.
By the time he broke the kiss, her lungs were burning for air and her chest was heaving with the effort of pulling in oxygen. She didn’t care, though. She’d have drowned in that kiss if he hadn’t moved at just the right time.
“Charlotte… we shouldn’t.” He was giving her the chance to get out of this if she wanted to, but she’d gone into this full steam on her own. If she stopped now, she was only going to let the doubts that were swirling at the back of her own mind take hold and persuade her from getting what she really wanted.
Charlotte leaned forward, taking another kiss and running her fingers through Preston’s hair. She needed to be up front with him. If she hid the truth from him then it was just going to make her feel guilty about anything that happened between the two of them and that was the last thing she wanted. She just had to figure out a way to tell him about everything that was going on with her and why she’d reacted the way she had about the last kiss and hope that it didn’t completely change the way he saw her.
“Preston, I know what I said before. I know I made you promise that things were going to be strictly professional between the two of us from now on, but I want this. I’ve been wanting this ever since I woke up the next morning. I just had no idea how to tell you…” Her voice trailed off and she took a deep breath in an attempt to calm her nerves.
His eyes were locked on hers, and she took a bit of comfort from the way he pulled her in even closer as she started talking. Thank goodness he didn’t interrupt her as she tried to gather her thoughts. She needed to say this at her own space. He could have pushed her out of his lap and refused to touch her, instead he kept his fingers gently pressed into the small of her back and let her remain curled up in his arms. It helped her to remain calm as she found the courage to admit the last thing she’d wanted Preston to find out about her.
“I’ve never done this before.” Charlotte looked down at the slight space between their bodies, suddenly too shy to look him in the eye as she admitted to being a virgin.
“This?” She glanced up at him, noting the confused way his brows knit together while he processed what she was telling him.
“This. I’ve never, you know, been with a man before.” She didn’t know how to explain it to him without just spitting it out and she hoped he would take the hint.
His hand moved to cup her chin and bring her eyes back up to meet his. His expression had softened and his grip on her back had eased up a bit. Charlotte was terrified that he was about to let her down. At least he would do it more gently than she’d done to him earlier and she could go home with some of her dignity in tact after throwing herself at a much older man.
“So you’re telling me you’re a virgin?” He raised one eyebrow and Charlotte felt the blush rise in her cheeks. Her face was hot. She was wondering why she’d ever thought she was grown up enough to put herself in this situation. Now, she was curled up in the lap of an intimidating and powerful man, who was a billionaire business mogul with more women coming on to him than you could shake a stick at and telling him that she was a virgin. She had no idea what she was thinking.
“Yeah. That’s what I’m telling you, Preston. Maybe I should just go home.” She tried to pull away, but his hands pressed even more firmly against her back, keeping her in place as he answered.
“No, don’t go. I just… I was just surprised. That’s all. I didn’t expect that.” It wasn’t what she’d expected him to say at all. She didn’t really know what he was going to do — laugh at her, tell her to go, anything but ask her to stay.
“It’s fine if it changes things between us. I just wanted you to know before it got any further.” She was being entirely honest, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if he treated her differently after this.
“It doesn’t change anything, Charlotte.” She had been looking back down at her hands again, but his reply brought her attention up to his face once more.
“No?” She was surprised. Her eyebrows shooting up as her eyes widened.
Preston pulled her back in for another long kiss, digging his fingers into her skin as he drew her in close. Her body lost all the tension it had gained in the short conversation between the two of them as she melted back into his chest and forgot to be embarrassed about the entire situation. Her arms twined around his shoulders and neck and she got lost in him again. This was nice, exactly what she’d been dreaming about since the
night the two of them had kissed for the first time.
Charlotte let go of any of the hold ups she had about Preston in that kiss. It was different than any of the ones they’d had before. It hadn’t lost any of its urgency, but he was a little more gentle than he had been before, like he was aware of how scared she’d been of this particular situation. Now, it was just a matter of seeing what was going to happen next.
Chapter 12
Preston had thought he’d lost his mind when Charlotte had gotten up to walk around the desk and crawled into his lap. He half wanted to pinch himself and see if he was dreaming but when she stopped and told him that she was a virgin, he knew that he wasn’t dreaming.
He should have stopped right there. Charlotte was absolutely innocent and perfect, but she wanted him. She’d made that much clear. She was inexperienced, but if he was completely honest with himself, there was something intoxicating about that. It made the part of him that wanted to own her roar out loud and clear. Those urges to consume her entirely were irrepressible now that she was here, curled up his lap, pressing those innocent but somehow need filled kisses to his lips. There was no way he was going to be able to fight them off. Knowing that he was claiming her in ways that no man had ever touched her was exhilarating.
At best, he could simply take control of the situation, moving Charlotte to rest on the edge of the desk. He let his hands slide up along her thighs, her skirt following as it caught on his wrists. He looked up at her face to see her eyes following the path of his hand. He hesitated for a moment, giving her one last chance to get out of this situation if it was what she really wanted. Instead, she moved into his touch, letting out a soft whimper when his fingers slid over the soft skin of her inner thigh.
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