Liz

“I take back every bad thing I ever said about Sabrina,” Grace says. “I might not like her, but I like the company she keeps.”

I follow Grace’s gaze and see Sam standing in the hallway just outside the call room. My heart does a couple of cartwheels at the sight of him then spins and adds a back handspring for good measure.

Sam’s in jeans that are slung low on his hips, and a fitted tee that hugs his biceps. I’m sure he has every woman in the building drooling. Grace certainly is.

He’s talking to Sabrina and has a very serious look on his face. Just then, he catches my eye, and his entire expression changes.

“Girl,” Grace says, “I hope Sabrina doesn’t see him looking at you like that. She’ll crucify you.”

I force my gaze away from Sam and busy myself stacking fliers for the volunteers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mmm-hmm. Just watch yourself. I don’t know what kind of complicated love triangle you three are involved in, but it would be messy if it came out. Did you see we’re up in the polls this morning? Up. Like, higher than pre-sex-tape numbers.”

I swallow. “I saw that. Everyone loves a love story, I guess.”

“And yet he’s heading over here,” she says, walking away before I can reply.

Sure enough, seconds later, I sense him behind me.

“May I have a word with you, Miss Thompson?”

“Sure.” I paste on a professional smile and avoid Grace’s gaze as I follow Sam out of the call center and into an empty office in the back hallway.

“What do you need?” I sound nervous. I am nervous.

He locks the door behind me and pulls the blinds on the big windows separating the room from the hallway.

He turns back to me, his eyes hot, intense, and when he leans in to kiss me, I don’t try to stop him. I let his lips sweep against mine. My eyes close as I inhale his scent and allow myself just for a minute to live in this moment.

My entire body buzzes with adrenaline. We shouldn’t be doing this here. We probably shouldn’t be doing this at all, but I don’t just miss him when we’re apart. I miss him when he’s next to Sabrina. He can be in the room with me, but when Sabrina’s by his side and he’s acting as if she is his girl, I feel more alone than I have in my whole life.

Maybe it’s masochistic to revel in these moments I get alone with him, but only in the way it’s masochistic to breathe the little air in the room when suffocation is inevitable.

“You know what this room reminds me of?” he asks.

I never thought of it until being in here with him now, but it’s very similar to the conference room where we snuck away at that wedding our first night together. “What?”

He stalks toward me, and I back up until my thighs hit the edge of the conference table. “That wedding.” He lifts me onto the table and steps between my legs. “I met you in that conference room, and you told me your rules. Do you remember your rules?”

“I said sex couldn’t change things between us. And you said . . .”

“Sex changes everything.” He brushes his knuckles across my breasts. My nipples tighten under the lace of my bra. He finds them and pinches them through the fabric.

I have to bite my lip. We can’t make any noise. There are probably two dozen people at headquarters tonight, and if any one of them finds out what we’re doing in here, we’ll both be in trouble.

He cups my breast in his hand as his mouth skims down along the side of my neck and he nibbles at the juncture of my neck and shoulder. When he opens his mouth against the skin and sucks, I gasp. He groans softly, his fingertips sliding over my stomach until his hand settles between my parted legs, cupping me through my jeans.

“I told you you’d never be able to look at me without thinking of the things I did to you.”

I swallow. This is insane. “You were right.”

“What was the other rule?” His fingers dance against me with just enough pressure to make me desperate for more.

“We couldn’t tell anyone.”

He grins. “Yeah, I screwed that one up when Connor came to your place. I wanted him to know you’d spent the night with me. I wanted him to know you were mine.” He slides his hands under my shirt and slips his fingers into the waistband of my jeans.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

“Something I wanted to do in the conference room that night.”

“What’s that?”

“Put my face between your legs,” he says. “Taste you.”

“You did that later,” I say. “Don’t you remember the shower?”

His touch is so light it’s making me crazy. I want him to rub hard against my jeans and give me what I need. If we were somewhere else, anywhere else, I would press into him, tell him what I want, but the voices of other staffers in the hall remind me there’s only a locked door between us and disaster.

“I remember the shower,” he says with an appreciative groan. “But in the shower, there wasn’t the risk of getting caught. And I love how wet you get when you think we might get caught. Let me taste that.”

He unbuttons my jeans and tugs them and my panties from my hips, throwing them to the floor before I can even decide if I can do this.

Then he’s sinking to his knees and—“Sam,” I hiss. But God, his mouth is hot and open against me, and his lips . . . “Just . . . oh, God.”