Page 110 of Boss of the Year

The kiss was soft and sweet, nothing like the desperate hunger of the onsen or the surprised intensity of the conservatory. It was a kiss born of affection, not just passion, full of the tenderness I hadn’t known I’d been craving.

I couldn’t help but return it.

I would have kissed him like that forever if he let me.

When he was finished, he set his forehead to mine. “You’ll have to excuse me. I just couldn’t help it.”

God, he smelled good. The ink and leather fragrance mixed with his unique musk that I couldn’t seem to get enough of. I could bury myself in that scent for days.

“We only have a week and a half,” I murmured against his lips, enjoying the way he kept feathering them over mine. “Before we go back to New York.”

I felt him still, felt the subtle shift as he processed what I was saying.

When we returned to New York, this would end. Daniel would be there. His family would be there. We would return to the real world, where I was the cook and Lucas ran a multi-billion-dollar empire, and in no universe would that ever make us compatible.

It wasn’t just the difference in station, either.

It was the facts of our lives.

I preferred—no, needed—a life of quiet predictability. While I wanted the chance to step out of my shell every so often, I knew what kinds of things were required of a man like Lucas Lyons every day because, for ten years, I had been behind the scenes making the food for every part of it. Meetings. Dinners. Social functions with two-hundred-person guest lists. Daniel had the luxury of choosing these things, but as the head of the family, Lucas did not.

Even if, by some miracle, we could make it work, I didn’t fit in that life. I could cater it just fine. But I was no billionaire hostess, no lady of the manor.

And I didn’t want to be one either.

Lucas’s hands dropped as he stepped away. The loss of contact was a punch to the gut.

“I’m sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t…not like that. Not unless you really wanted it.”

The distance in his voice made my chest tight. I did want him. He had no idea how much.

But it was only going to break my heart, and his brother’s too.

Right?

“Lucas—”

“It’s fine.” He rounded the bed and pulled back the covers on one side. “We should get some sleep.”

I watched him settle into the bed, his back to me, and felt tears prick my eyes as I rolled onto my side and turned off the lights. This was what I needed, wasn’t it? A return to the careful distance that protected us both from wanting things we couldn’t have.

So why did it feel like I was losing something precious?

The space between us felt like an ocean. I wanted nothing more than to be back in that mountain spring. In calm waters I could easily cross.

“Marie.” Lucas’s baritone was a soft burr through the darkness.

“Yes?”

“Can I—would you let me hold you? Just for tonight.”

His voice was vulnerable in a way I’d never heard before. It shattered my reserve.

Without a word, I shifted toward the center of the bed.

Lucas turned, slipped one powerful arm under my neck, and wrapped the other around my waist to hold me against his chest with a sigh that sounded like relief. We really did fit together like two puzzle pieces, his larger body spooned around my smaller frame, my head tucked under his chin, his warmth surrounding me like a cocoon.

“Just once,” he murmured into my hair, “I want to fall asleep with you in my arms.”