“I just didn’t want you to miss the opportunity to try out. That’s all.”
Charlotte’s expression was filled with regret. It wasn’t my intent to make her sad. I just wanted to call her out on her lie. But God, the look on her face was making me want to just forget everything and . . . kiss her.
I wanted to kiss her.
I wanted to taste her lips and suck away that sour look on her face, yet I knew that if there was one set of lips on this earth forbidden to me, it was Charlotte Darling’s. She wasn’t just a pretty face and a hot body. She was someone who wanted inside my soul, and that was never going to happen.
I should have just walked out. Instead, I was completely lost in this moment. The most spectacular skyline may have been visible from right behind her, but there was nothing more spectacular than Charlotte’s heaving chest, the sweat beading on her forehead, the reaction she was having toward me. Her attraction to me was palpable.
We were standing about a foot apart, and her damn scent was all I could smell anymore.
A long moment of silence passed.
“What are you doing to me?” I muttered, the words exiting me like a hiccup I had no control over.
“What are you doing to me?” she whispered.
I looked down for a moment, and that’s when I noticed the pink-striped Victoria’s Secret bag on the floor by her desk.
My voice was gruff. “What’s that?”
“Iris made me take a break in the middle of the day to clear my head. It was the last day of the sale, so I went shopping.”
“Why did you need to clear your head?”
“Because you pissed me off.”
God, she was sexy when she gritted her teeth in anger. I wondered what else those teeth could pull on.
Fuck. Stop.
Yet I moved in closer. “Show me what you bought yourself on company time.”
Charlotte swallowed, then walked over to the bag. She bent down and took out the contents, removing a sticker on the tissue paper. Returning to the spot in front of me, she opened it up to show me several pairs of lace underwear in a rainbow of colors.
A black lace thong with a tiny silk rose sewn on the top of the waistband caught my eye.
Picking it from the pile, I held it in my hand, relishing the feel of the soft lace and imagining the black against Charlotte’s creamy skin. Running my finger along the back string, I also imagined what it would look like inside the crack of her perfectly curved ass. Folding my fingers over the thong, I enveloped it, gripping it in my hand in the same way I wanted to swallow her up whole.
Charlotte was watching me, almost as if in a trance.
And I knew I’d taken this too far. I was her boss, and I’d just demanded to see her underwear. I was fondling it. And if she looked down, she’d also see I was hard. I’d officially lost my fucking mind when it came to her.
A voice of reason inside my head warned me. Leave!
I chose to listen to it.
“Good night,” I said as I handed her the panties and swiftly exited her office.
Taking the elevator down, I seriously considered heading to a bar and getting piss-ass drunk, even though I rarely drank anymore.
Instead, I drove around for a while and somehow ended up on the Brooklyn Bridge.Auditions were already halfway over when I slipped inside. Same as last time, I took a seat in the back row by myself and looked around. Over the years, I’d done a lot of business in this part of Brooklyn, so I knew the area well. I’d been a teenager when the church moved to this particular building—the former Loew’s Metropolitan Theatre. I must’ve been about thirteen or fourteen when they started a big restoration on the place. Iris and I had passed by once during that time. She’d pulled over to tell me all about the building. My grandparents had come here on their first date, when it was still a theatre. The way she told the story, how impressed she’d been that he’d taken her to a theatre that had thirty-six hundred seats—the biggest in the country at one time—you’d think my grandfather had built the thing. I smiled at the memory.
Looking up, I could see why she’d been so impressed. Ornate, intricate designs were hand-restored on the multilayers of ceilings, and a mezzanine soared stories high above the orchestra. I sat in awe of the architecture and all the grandeur of the building, something I hadn’t stopped to do in a long time. Until my attention was diverted to the front of the stage. A woman with the most incredible, powerful voice sang onstage. Damn. She could hold her own against Aretha Franklin. It made me question my sanity for even considering trying out. I was nowhere near as good as these people. Yet I sat there, content to at least watch the show.