She was signing up for some online classes in using graphic design software, which she would need to create promotional graphics, when Malik wandered into the room.
“Oh.” He stopped short. “I thought you were in your room.”
“Nope,” Dani said cheerfully. “But I can go if you want—”
“No, no. I was just going to grab some research.” He picked up a manila file of printed notes from his desk. “I hope I haven’t said anything that made you feel like you had to work right away,” he said, frowning.
“Not at all,” she assured him, logging in to his email account. “I’m just excited about the job and couldn’t wait to get stuck in.”
He regarded her silently for a moment, a crease between his brows. “Okay,” he said finally. “If you need anything, just ask.”
Dani grinned and agreed, and when he left, she sagged in her chair. For fuck’s sake, who knew a frown could be sexy?
Chapter Nine
The closer it got to the day Malik needed to leave for his sister’s wedding, the tenser he got, and it broke Dani’s heart. Weddings should be joyous occasions, or at least not unhappy ones. Worse, she didn’t want Malik to think that she and Ben had been gossiping about him, so she couldn’t say or do anything to make him think that she knew it wasn’t going to be a happy trip. So she mostly avoided talking about it unless it couldn’t be avoided—like when she made his travel arrangements—and then she kept it strictly to the matter at hand, not letting herself ask questions like she would have with anyone else.
For the most part, working for Malik was a dream. She’d gotten over the initial hurdle of logging in to all his accounts, reorganizing his files, and establishing contact with his agent, editor, and lawyer within the first few days, and had spent hours going through his books to pull out lines that could be used for teasers. She’d combed through the social media profiles of authors within his genre, noting what got great responses and from whom, and she’d introduced herself as his assistant on his accounts. She and Malik had decided from the beginning that it would be best for her to post as herself, rather than trying to pass off her voice as his. He’d promised to sit down with her once a week to compile a few posts in his own voice for her to schedule on his behalf. Dani had scheduled the time in both their calendars, beginning last week and stretching on into perpetuity. Already, activity on his accounts had picked up, and she was planning some interactive contests and giveaways that would hopefully bump things a bit more.
Malik himself had sighed with relief when she took over his email inbox, and then again as she began taking on the administrative duties he hated. Anytime she suggested something or asked for something, he agreed immediately, and he’d gladly handed over his credit card details so she could set up advertising accounts. “Whatever you think best,” he’d told her. “Just keep track of it all.” So she’d created a spreadsheet that she could input everything into until she had time to research appropriate bookkeeping software.
The only downside, apart from Malik’s current gloomy mood, was that every time she looked up from her laptop, he was there. Handsome, focused, a little crease between his brows as he typed industriously, writing his latest sure-to-be brilliant book. Or if she was working elsewhere in the apartment, he’d come and politely offer her a coffee, or tease that she was working too hard and coax her away from her computer for a break. He was a terrible-yet-endearing cook, a tidy and considerate roommate, intelligent, funny, and driving her utterly mad with want.
Unfortunately for her, it seemed that having her work for him had flipped a switch in his brain. She no longer felt any kind of interested vibe from him. He was friendly in a way that crossed most employer-employee boundaries, but that was to be expected given their previous friendship and connections. But he never indicated by word, deed, or look that he wanted more.
And even though Dani had made the decision not to pursue her feelings, knowing that he no longer wanted her sucked. Which made her feel stupid, because she was an adult woman, not a sappy teenager who thought angst à la Romeo and Juliet was romantic and exciting. Far better that they both moved past the attraction and got on with their lives than that they moped in forbidden longing.
Right?
Ben was utterly frustrated that his grand plan was not working out, though, and that gave Dani a certain amount of satisfaction.
She finished replying to fan mail and switched over to check social media. Earlier she’d scheduled the next few days’ posts, but she wanted to get on top of the notifications.
It didn’t take long to go through and like or love people’s posts and comments, leaving comments where necessary, and she was nearly done when she got to one that made her laugh out loud.
“Malik!” she called. He was in the kitchen, making coffee. “You’ve gotta see this!”
She heard him moving around, and a moment later he came into the room. “What is it?”
Grinning, she waved a hand at the laptop screen. “Come and see.”
With a faintly curious expression, he crossed the room and came to stand behind her, bending to see the screen… and laughed.
“That’s fantastic! Who is that?” Delight rang in his voice.
“Duh, one of your fans. I’ll bet you never expected to see one of your characters cosplayed.” She clicked on the image, enlarging it, and marveled at the level of detail in the costume.
“Never,” he agreed. “But now that I have, I want to see it all the time. Can we print that picture? Have you responded to him yet?”
“Not yet. Do you want to do it?” She turned her head to look at him just as he leaned in and reached for the keyboard and ended up with her face far too close to the smooth skin of his neck. Inhaling, she breathed in his scent—some ridiculously expensive cologne that was worth every cent, plus whatever it was about him that appealed to her on a base level. Pheromones, maybe? God, just the smell of him was enough to make her girly bits sit up and take notice.
He drew back, and their gazes met. Held.
Heat flushed up from her chest.
Her lips parted on a pant.
She should look away.
She should move back.
She should have never taken this job, because if she hadn’t, she’d be free to lunge forward and climb him like a monkey would a tree.
That thought was what broke the spell, and she rolled her chair far enough away to stand without touching him. “Here, you should sit while you reply. I’ll… uh, go finish up the coffee.”
“Dani—”
She didn’t hear whatever he’d been about to say, already out the door and moving down the hallway. By the time she got to the kitchen, she felt more in control.
For about five seconds.
Because Malik followed her.
“Dani, this is ridiculous.”
Er… what?
“What’s ridiculous?” she asked as innocently as she could manage, really hoping that he didn’t know about her crush.
Pffft. Crush. The truth was, she was more than halfway in love with him.
“This. The two of us pretending that we’re not… pretending that we’re friends.”
Ouch.
“We’re not friends?” She wasn’t able to keep the hurt from her voice.
“Of course we’re friends,” he replied impatiently. “You’re one of my best friends. But that’s not all we are.”
Warmed by the knowledge that he valued her friendship as much as she did his, she was tempted to gloss over his last comment… but Malik wasn’t stupid, and this tension between them wasn’t going away.
“We’re friends,” she insisted. “And you’re my boss. That’s all.”
Sighing, he leaned his hips against the kitchen counter, and she tried not to let her gaze drop. That position put his entire groin area into prominence.
“I don’t want to be the creepy employer who hits on his assistant,” he began, “but this thing between us is getting out of control. I can barel
y concentrate on what I’m doing when you’re in the room.”
Dani jerked. “I… I can work in here,” she declared. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t reali—”
“Stop, Dani. That’s not what I mean. That won’t fix things. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Originally I decided things had to be platonic between us because you work for me and live with me, and I would be the worst person in the world to start something up with you in those circumstances. But you’re not subordinate to me at all—”
“I bloody well think not!”
He grinned. “If we were together, you wouldn’t let the fact that I pay you impact our relationship. You wouldn’t let the fact that I pay you pressure you into a relationship with me. Right?”
“Right. But all that presupposes that I want to be in a relationship with you. I don’t,” she lied.
His dark eyes studied her, and then he smiled. It was a charming, mischievous smile, and it filled Dani with dread.
“So you don’t feel any attraction to me? No sexual tension?”
Unable to lie in the face of the evidence, because it was pretty obvious, Dani said, “Of course I do. But it’s just… curiosity.”
What.
What the hell had she just said?
“Curiosity?” Malik raised a brow in a supercilious way that made her want to slap him.
“Yes.” She forged on. “You’re hot. There’s a spark between us. And because you’re off-limits, my imagination has blown the spark out of proportion. It would never come to anything. Surface attraction.”
“Surface attraction,” he repeated, and she nodded vehemently.
“Yes. We both feel it because we know nothing can ever happen between us. Like when you’re on a diet and you really want a triple-fudge cupcake with a huge swirl of icing. Normally, you would never eat it because it’s too rich, but once you can’t have it, that’s all you want.” Dismally, Dani wondered if she was setting herself up to fail, because she’d never met a triple-fudge cupcake she hadn’t eaten. And licked the paper it came in.
The wicked gleam in Malik’s eyes told her she’d said the wrong thing.
“Well, this should be easy to resolve, then,” he declared, and butterflies took flight in her stomach.
“Oh?” she croaked as he straightened.
“Yes. It’s simple. If this is just surface attraction, if we really don’t want each other but are being drawn together by some form of reverse psychology our own brains are imposing… then we should kiss.”
What?
“What?” Kiss him? Oh no. That would be bad. Very, very bad.
But oh, so good.
“Kiss me. If you really don’t want me, you’ll know immediately. This tension between us will go away. But if not….”
His words hung in the air.
Dani hesitated.
He sauntered closer, until he was standing in her space, barely a breath away, surrounding her with his scent and heat. “Come on, Dani. Bite the cupcake,” he whispered.
Bite the…?
She laughed.
And he swooped, taking her mouth in a kiss that made her forget about cupcakes and friendship and any reason she might have had for not wanting this.
Not want this? Was she crazy?
By the time they came up for air, there was no pretending she didn’t want him. Her arms were around his neck, hands dug into his gorgeous soft hair, body draped full-length against his. He smiled down at her, lips slightly puffy, eyes heavy-lidded.
“Surface attraction?” he murmured, and she roused herself from her kiss-induced stupor and pinched the back of his neck. “Ow!”
“You deserved that,” she said, pulling away and running a hand through her hair. She was hot and flushed and couldn’t say she was sorry. “This is not good.”
“I think that hurt more than the pinch,” he muttered. “Not good?”
“Not the kiss.” She waved that idea away. Nobody in the known universe could say that kiss wasn’t good. “The situation. It’s so messy, Malik.”
Sighing, he took her shoulders in his hands and stroked his thumbs over her bare collarbone. She shivered, unable to help the response.
“It’s messy,” he agreed. “But it’s also not. We’re both strong people, correct? Neither of us is likely to let the other bulldoze us?”
She thought about that for a moment. Malik was her boss, true, but she’d never let a boss bully her before. She’d certainly never let a boyfriend bully her. It was unlikely she’d let anything like that happen now. And she wasn’t the type to use her personal influence with her boss to change things at work—or to use what happened at work as leverage against her boyfriend. Plus, it wasn’t like she could use sex with the boss as a way to get ahead in the office. She was the office. There was no career progression in this job unless she left it and went to work elsewhere.
“Correct,” she conceded finally.
“Do you have doubts about whether we’d be good together?”
It was a serious question, but she could tell he already knew the answer.
“No.” She’d long ago had to admit that Ben was right—she and Malik would be perfect for each other.
“So as long as we respect each other at work, what’s stopping us?”
She lifted her hands and cupped his cheeks, feeling the faint bristle of his five o’clock shadow. “I’m afraid,” she said bluntly. “I… feel so much for you. It’s easier if we’re just friends and colleagues, because if it’s more, I could fall in love with you so easily. And if you broke my heart, it would hurt worse than anything ever before.” The brutal honesty left her bared and vulnerable in a way she did not like, but she needed Malik to know how serious this was for her. And she knew, deep down to her soul, that he would never use her honesty to hurt her. If he didn’t see this becoming a serious, long-term relationship, better that they both knew that now.
He swallowed hard.
“Dani, if things go bad between us, it could potentially damage my relationship with Léo. Definitely with Ben. If someone had told me three months ago that I would risk that, I would have laughed at them as I booted them out the door. You are the only person, ever, that I would consider taking that risk for.” His gaze on her was steady, and having seen the connection between him and Léo, she understood what he was saying.
He was in this.
She nodded.
The smile that broke out on his face was so beautiful, it made her heart ache. A matching grin stretched her mouth, and then she shrieked as he bent and lifted her in a fireman carry.
“Malik! What are you doing?”
He put her down. “I thought that was obvious.”
Suddenly, she felt shy. “I’m… at work,” she stammered, and then wanted to kick herself for being such an idiot.
He seemed to get it, though, and his wicked grin flashed again. “It’s break time,” he declared. “Want to make out in the break room?”
She shouted with laughter as he closed in, and gladly went into his arms.
By the time they’d cleaned up their dinner dishes, Dani had been kissed in the “break room,” in the office, in the living room, and in the hallway. She’d kissed Malik on the terrace while he was grilling steaks, and he’d liked that so much that he’d nearly burned their dinner. Her mouth was swollen and tender, but she didn’t care. Kissing Malik was her new favorite thing to do.
“Want to watch a movie?” he asked, and something in his tone told her they wouldn’t see much of the movie. That was okay with her.
“Sure. You pick; I’m going to change into my pajamas.” She wandered off toward her bedroom with seeming casualness, but as soon as she was out of earshot, she ran.
In her room, she went directly to the drawer that held her underwear. When she’d gone shopping with Ben, right after arriving in Monaco, she’d fallen in love with an entirely impractical and absurdly overpriced silk nightgown. It was completely unsuitable for sleeping in—it really only had one purpose, and that
was to be taken off. Ben had nearly choked when he’d seen the price tag, and it had made her hesitate for a long time, but in the end she’d been unable to resist the whisper-soft hand-painted silk, reasoning that it was a once-in-a-lifetime splurge. Now, she was glad she’d given in to temptation, donning the cerulean nightgown with the satisfaction of knowing she wouldn’t be wearing it for long.
“Dani! I’m starting the movie!” Malik shouted. Dani smiled smugly. Not that long ago, he never would have shouted across the apartment, instead coming to find her. She credited herself for loosening him up, at least when he was with her.
“I’m coming!” she called back, checking her reflection one last time before turning off the light and leaving the room.
The movie that was playing when she returned to the living room was an action flick she vaguely recognized—one with a loose plot and a lot of macho explosions. The kind of movie it was easy to zone out if you planned to not watch much of it. Grinning, she strolled over to the back of the couch and rolled over it directly onto Malik, who was stretched out along the length.
He yelped.
“What are—” His eyes went wide as he actually looked at her, hands automatically lifting to hold her waist. “Oh.”
“Oh?” She arched a brow.
He swallowed, his gaze tracking down her body.
“Oh,” he croaked.
“How much did you want to watch this movie?”
He breathed deeply. “Right now? Not at all.”
“Good answer.” She leaned down and captured his mouth with hers. This kiss went from zero to a hundred in milliseconds, hot and wet. Malik’s hands on her waist burned through the barely there silk of the nightgown, but it really wasn’t enough—she wanted them on her body.
She pulled back from the kiss, ignoring Malik’s murmur of protest, and sat up, being careful not to maim him.
“Dani,” he began, his dark, slumberous gaze locked on her.
“Shh.” She grasped the hem of the nightie and slowly drew it up, keeping her eyes on his for as long as she could before pulling it over her head. Finally naked, she tossed the silky garment aside—although the part of her that remembered how much it cost made her check to make sure it hadn’t landed on the floor.
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