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HER HEART WAS thundering in her ears. Had she really just told her boss that she wanted him?
Had she really just assumed that he wanted her?
But the way that he had touched her...
Luca was a great many things, but subtle was not one of them. And the last week had felt like an assault. Like suddenly all that was sensual in him had been turned on to her, with the full force of a tractor beam.
It had been the most exciting, delicious, terrifying week of her life.
She had done her best to ignore it. But every moment of every day had only ramped up her arousal. Had only made her desire more insistent.
She was leaving him.
He was the only man that she had ever wanted like this.
She was sure every therapist in the world would say that that was not how you dealt with your daddy issues. She didn’t care. She didn’t want healthy. She wanted something that felt good. She wanted something for herself.
Because her feelings for Luca were a complicated tangle and she was never going to be able to work through them.
She was taking another job. She was moving across the country. She wanted him in a way that blotted out any potential need for other men.
She wanted him.
It was a terrible thing. A great and terrible thing.
“Be explicitly clear in what you mean,” he said, closing the distance between them. They were surrounded by people.
Everyone would know.
But then, the fire that had burned in Luca’s dark eyes these past few days had been bright enough, hot enough for anyone to see it.
In fact, one of the female scientists had said something to her just last night.
“I thought he was your boss. I didn’t realize the two of you...”
“We aren’t.”
“He certainly wants to.”
“It would be inappropriate,” she had replied.
“Sometimes inappropriate is the most fun.”
She didn’t think she wanted Luca because it was inappropriate. Rather she wanted him because...
Because she had never known anyone else like him. Because she had never seen a man so beautiful and remote. He was like a lost gem, and he would hate to be compared to a gem but it was true. He was hard, all angles and brilliant light.
He was painful to look at. Painful to care about.
She did care about him. That was the worst part.
How could you not care about a man this brilliant? This singular?
And it had never been easy. It had never been anything half so simple as having a crush on her boss.
She knew every inch of Luca’s life. Every brick that comprised who he was. And she knew that there was not a single space for another person. Not as a partner. Not as anything other than a useful tool.
But she knew also that this was the only way that she could ever purge that need for him.