“Good. I was just checking.” His eyes swiveled over to Colette’s face again and he couldn’t imagine enjoying any other flavor but her now.
She was a wrecking ball, except instead of wrecking his life or his company, she’d come in and wrecked him, in ways so subtle, he didn’t realize it was even happening over the years.
She wrecked him just by existing.
“Checking?” Her tone was beyond exasperation. It bordered on pissed the fuck off.
“Yeah.” He forced a grin.
He’d found that the best way to deal with his pain over the years was to shove it down and pretend it didn’t exist. He didn’t like to feel sadness. He didn’t like to feel much of anything. The yawning gulf inside of his chest would have torn him clean in half if he’d given it even a foothold. So, he didn’t. He rammed that shit down into the point of no return and closed the lid so that it couldn’t escape.
“Checking?”
“Yeah. Because I was thinking about inviting you over to my place for that cup of tea when we touch down. Seeing as I fucked up the rest of the date. I thought I could make it up to you.”
“T-tea?” Colette stammered. She glared at him like he was trying to trick her. Like what he really wanted to do was slip cyanide or some kind of horrible drug into her drink and have his evil way with her.
“Yes. Tea.”
Her brows knitted together in confusion as the anger bled out of her face. “You have tea?”
“Yes, I have tea. If I didn’t, I’d stop on the way and buy some. I promise not to do anything horrible to you and be on my best tea toting granny behavior.”
“I’ve heard that line before.”
“Seriously? I didn’t realize that was the kind of thing guys said to a lady when they’re trying to pick her up.”
“It’s not,” Colette said while she did her best to skewer him with the glower of all glowers. “Just you. You promised you’d be on your best behavior, then you staged getting soap in your eyes just because you knew I’m a sucker.”
“That was not staged. That burned like hell. I promise you, sweetheart, the soap had nothing to do with it. If I would have walked out of that bathroom naked, you would have-”
“See! This is exactly what I mean! You ruin everything, Blaze. Everything.” Colette swiveled forward again, her arms tucked around her like she could ward him off with her pouty anger.
Fat chance. That just made her hotter. His cock stood to attention like she was whispering sweet nothings to it. If only she knew how hot she was when she was being petulant. When she was trying not to look at him because she knew that he’d see how badly she wanted him.
“I wasn’t trying to ruin anything,” he admitted, letting the honestly bleed into his voice, turning it soft. Softer than he’d ever been with anyone. He could tell that she was listening by the way her spine stiffened. “Seriously. I wanted this to be a nice, fun getaway. I tried to think of something you wouldn’t have ever done before. I didn’t mean to ruin it. All of it. And as for what happened at the hotel- if you never want it to happen again, I’m not going to pretend that I’m okay with that, because I’d very much like it to happen. Regularly. I didn’t send those flowers as some kind of joke. I know I’m an asshole. That I’m cold and impossible and you hate me. But maybe, under all the layers of perversion and evil, maybe I’m just a person too. Maybe I have a heart. Maybe it’s lonely.”
Colette snorted. “I doubt it. Any of it. As for the tea, you can take it and shove it up your-”
The plane hit a pocket of turbulence before she could finish her sentence. Colette screamed and gripped onto anything she could find, which just happened to be his arm. He didn’t try to make his muscles bulge under her hand. They did that all on their own, while he rode out the wind pocket and piloted them out of the turbulence safely.
“What the hell,” Colette panted. “This was the worst date I’ve ever been on.”
“Let me make it up to you. One cup of tea. Just one. Then I’ll burn the contract right in front of you. I swear it.”
“And you’ll give me a promotion,” Colette huffed.
“Resorting to blackmail now? I like it.”
“Go to hell.”
He felt his lips twitch. “You did promise me today. I promised you the contract. Maybe we can talk about a promotion later.”
“Not if it means doing what you think I’m going to do for it.”
“The whole office probably thinks you’re doing it anyway, ever since I sent those flowers.”