For the life of me, I still can’t figure him out. Rough and abrasive one minute, then smooth and suave the next. There are two things I feel when I’m around Owen: turned on and pissed off.
Right now, pissed off wins. Shooting up out of my chair, it screeches behind me. The loud noise calls the attention of my friends who are on the dance floor. In a slow-motion haze, it seems as if everyone’s attention is on me, especially Owen’s. A playful look dances in his eyes as he waits for my explanation.
“You’re unbearable. You know that?” My voice is rising in volume, silenced only when Owen stands from his chair and moves right in front of me.
“I highly doubt that,” he smirks, standing in my personal space.
I poke him in the chest, not at all shocked by the rock hard pecs that meet my finger. “Well, you are. And frustrating, and annoying, and…” I pause, looking for the right word.
“And what, Elle?” He leans in closer, infinitesimally so. Regaining my composure, I pull back from him.
With a final poke to the chest, I add my final insult, “You’re an ass.” Of course, as I turn away from him, I stumble slightly, finally feeling the effects of the alcohol. His strong hand steadies me, pulling me upright next to him.
“Come with me,” he nearly growls as he walks me out of the bar.
Normally, being led by the arm out into the dark alley of a bar would scare the crap out of me but with Owen doing the leading, I’m anything but frightened.
Turned on and excited is more like it.
Dragging us into a dark recess, he pushes me up against the brick wall. “I won’t deny I’m an ass, but let’s be honest…” he pauses, leaning against me. His thigh slides in-between my legs, the denim scratching against the exposed skin of my legs. It takes everything I have not to close my eyes and revel in the feel of his body pressing up against mine. “You’ve been an ass, too.”
“Have not!” I defend, my voice bordering on a shocked squeal.
He laughs as he cups my jaw, pulling my face back to meet his persistent stare. “You have been,” he counters with finality. “But I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” he adds, moving his lips within an inch of mine.
Like a fish gasping for air, I open and close my mouth, searching for the right words. When they don’t come to me, I huff in frustration.
“Do you like it?” He dances his lips over my cheek and down to my jaw and my eyes roll back in my head.
A mumbled, “hmmm” is all I’m capable of in response.
“This,” he answers my incoherent question, “me kissing you?” My eyes fly open at his words just in time to see his lips descend on mine, capturing them in a slow, tentative kiss. Like melted caramel, his lips move against mine. His tongue licks at the seam of my lips, but he’s not begging for entrance. It’s a claim he’s staking on me, branding my lips in a heat they’ve never felt before. Willingly, I open to him. Our tongues slide together. Moans fill the non-existent space between us.
When his hand knots in my hair at the nape of my neck, pulling my head back for more access to my mouth, I can’t stifle the groan of delight that passes my lips. “I’ll take that as a yes,” his words swirl through my lust-filled brain as his lips dance down my neck.
“So sweet, Elle. You taste so…” he pauses, licking a sweet and hot path down my neck, stopping just at my exposed collarbone. “So fucking good,” he finishes, looking me right in the eyes.
“There she is!” Crystal and my other friends call out from the end of the alleyway. “Hey!” They misread the situation, a frenzied sense of worry creeping in their voices. Owen throws his hands in the air, the ultimate white flag that he’s not doing anything wrong.
Still completely incapable of making any sense of what the hell just happened, I walk away from him and toward my waiting friends. “I’m fine, girls.” Chancing a last look over my shoulder, I add, “Let’s get out of here.”
Like the ass he claimed me to be, I walk away from him, his hot kisses, and angry look, trying desperately to make sense why the hell he affects me so much.
***
By the time Monday morning rolls around, I’ve cleared my head enough to develop a plan. It struck me as odd last week, as Owen sat at my desk, talking about profit and loss statements, and quarterly bank accounts as if he’d actually had experience with them. But since Ethan was here, picking me up for a business meeting slash dinner – one for which he gave me no notice whatsoever – I didn’t do much with it.
Sitting at my computer now, I’m ready to finally get to the bottom of the enigma that is Owen Carmichael.
Thank you very much, Google.
Why I hadn’t thought of a basic internet search on the man with whom I’m currently running a company is completely beyond me. All I can think of as an excuse is that Vincent’s death was so sudden. The legal proceedings that followed completely screwed with my head. Knowing that I needed to get the meeting with Ethan in before Owen could find out about it, I buried my nose in financial statements, figuring out the most fail-safe business plan I could come up with. In between all of that, figuring out who the hell Owen Carmichael really is, was way on the back burner.
But with the feel of his lips singed into my memory, I type his name in the search bar, determined to get to the bottom of this. The first thing to come up is a Newsday article outlining his recent inheritance of half of Bella Luna’s Estate. Nothing new there, so I scroll down.
When his Linkedin profile shows up, I click on it, immediately intrigued by his clean-cut and professional picture. What the hell? Owen Carmichael graduated at the top of his class at Boston College. He holds an MBA and according to this profile, he had recently signed on as an intern at a prestigious financial firm.
The little fucker. He knew everything he was talking about when he was looking at those papers. Angrily, I hit print, and wait not-so-patiently for the printer to spit out the evidence of his deception.