Craft (The Gibson Boys 2)

I just hope there’s peanut butter icing involved.

Two

Mariah

“Let me be clear about one thing …”

“No, let me be clear about one thing,” I say, whirling through the doors of my office, my voice leading the way. “Get out of my office, Lance. Now.”

Shoulders thrown back, lips pressed together just as firmly as my arms clench across my breasts, I say a silent prayer my demonstration is enough to convince him I mean business. Then, I do what I always do: brace for his attack.

His free hand clasps the back of his neck, toying with the edges of his hairline, which is sharp from a fresh cut at the barber shop. He runs his palm around the side of his throat as he releases a low, amused chuckle. “Jessa, I’m going to have to call you back.”

“You don’t have to call her back,” I say, aware my voice is projecting a few octaves louder than usual or necessary. “You just have to take it somewhere else.”

Three.

Two.

One.

The bastard turns to face me, his full lips twisted into an undeniable smirk.

Bingo.

His shot is fired.

“I’m at work,” he says into the phone. He may be talking to her, but there’s no doubt his attention is set on me. Gaze searing into mine, the heaviness making it hard to breathe, he swipes his bottom lip with a slow, single stroke of his tongue. The wetness left in its wake seems to somehow make its way between my thighs.

Damn it.

Every morning when I pull into the staff parking lot, I tell myself it’ll be different. This is the day I won’t let Lance Gibson’s patented way of getting to me work. That he won’t quiet me with his smirk, immobilize me with his big green eyes, and twist me into a knot with his crude words delivered with the punch of a professional.

Of course, I’m also saying these things while balancing a tray of baked goodies I think he’ll love. I hate myself for that almost as much as I hate that I’ll be stripping myself of my panties in the ladies’ room between study halls because he’s so goddamn sexy and I can’t bear to feel them soaked between my thighs for the rest of the day.

Needless to say, I fail before I even walk in the door. I’m only a mortal. Silver lining? I’m a smarter mortal than I used to be. Nowadays, I can see what Lance is and ascertain what a disaster this intelligent, beautiful, smoldering book loving man would bestow upon me. After I spend the walk from my car to the high school library’s doors imagining every way he’d touch me, I also visualize the heartbreak that would coincide with the ache elsewhere.

No, thank you.

“Do you think I fuck women while I’m working, Jessa?” he continues, amusement laced in his tone as he watches me with a perfectly quirked brow. “What kind of an animal do you think I am?”

“Oh, for the love of God,” I mutter.

Setting my refrigerated lunch bag down, I cast him a narrowed glare as I make my way around my desk. The water in my purple Librarians Are Cool cup is room temperature, but I take a sip anyway. It’s a futile attempt to redirect my attention away from Lance and the vivid imagery of him with his fist in my hair as he bends me over this desk. This vision will be useful later, but not right now.

His games are frustrating. Listening to him make plans with his bevvy of bimbos is more than annoying, even if I’m conscious they may not be bimbos. It’s possible they’re just sexually satisfied and able to separate love from sex. Good for freaking them. I hate them.

As I watch him lean against the wall and his tongue sneak out between his perfectly straight teeth, I realize: I can’t blame him. At least he owns his philandering. Unlike my good-for-nothing, no-balls-having ex, Eric—Lance owns it. I can respect that.

I wish I could hate him. But how do you hate something that aesthetically pleasing, especially when he dampens his crass with just enough charm to soften you up? You can’t. I can’t, anyway. I can only remind myself to look through the smolder well enough to see the Y-chromosome. That specific chromosome, after all, carries the “master switch” gene, SRY, which decides whether an embryo will be a male or a female. It’s like men are apologizing from the start.

“Eight o’clock. See you then.” With a flourish, he drops his phone into the pockets of his pants. “How are you today, Ms. Malarkey?”

“My office is not a phone booth for your … whatever that was.” My cup hits the desktop with a thud, the chair beneath me squeaking as I relax onto its leather cushion. He leans forward, hands planted on a stack of papers, a grin digging deep against his chiseled cheeks.