Page 42 of For the Plot

I’m starting to think working here might be bad for my health.

And not in the normal, I-stare-at-a-screen-for-eleven-hours-a-day way. No, this is more of a full-body, soul-level, emotional whiplash kind of threat. Like my nervous system’s been put in a microwave and someone keeps hitting reheat every time Reece Blackwood walks by.

Which he just did… Again.

Wearing a suit that probably cost more than my entire student loan balance and smelling like cedar and heartbreak. He didn’t say anything. Just nodded at me, eyes unreadable, jaw tight, like the air between us wasn’t crackling so loud it could short out the office Wi-Fi.

It’s been two days since the client meeting. Two days since he walked around that massive table and stood so close I could feel the heat of his body. Since he took my iPad out of my hands like he was about to pick me up, throw me down onto the table, and devour me and then… didn’t.

Instead, he backed away like I was the one about to burn him. And yet here we are. Still pretending like we’re not dancing around a very dangerous precipice. Still pretending like every exchange doesn’t feel like a match being struck.

I sit at my desk, fingers resting on the keyboard, rereading the same line of an email I’ve been trying to send for twenty minutes.

Please let us know if the revised language aligns with your timeline and expectations.

My brain adds,Also, please advise how to stop picturing your boss’hands gripping the edge of a table while you sink to your knees.

Yeah. That part I don’t type. I delete the sentence. Type it again. Hit send before I can talk myself out of it.

“Working hard or hardly working?” Maya’s voice chimes in through my AirPods, and I flinch, completely forgetting I was on the phone with her before he walked by and distracted me.

“Shut up.”

“Ooh, testy. Let me guess—he wore the navy suit again?”

“The gray one,” I say grimly. “With the black shirt. No tie. Top two buttons undone like he knows exactly what he’s doing.”

Maya lets out a low whistle. “Rude.”

“Criminal,” I agree. “If he wants to destroy me, he should at least have the decency to do it in sweatpants. Or Crocs. Something that gives me a fighting chance.”

“You could just quit.”

I snort. “And miss the chance to gradually combust from unresolved sexual tension? Where’s the fun in that?”

She pauses. “You sure it’s just sexual?”

I hate how quiet that question makes me. Because it’s not. Not really.

Sure, I want to climb him like a tree and make questionable decisions involving office furniture, but it’s starting to feel like a little bit more than that. It’s the way he listens. The way he softens, just slightly, when he’s talking to a junior staffer who’s nervous. The way his voice lowers when he asks if I need anything, like the offer means more than what it sounds like.

It’s the way I feel around him, seen and invisible, steady and off-balance, all at once. It’s thrilling and exciting, a forbidden temptation that only drives me more wild the more I resist it.

“I don’t know what it is,” I admit.

Maya makes a sympathetic noise. “Well, that’s terrifying.”

“Tell me about it.”

There’s a long pause on the other end, then her voice drops into that deadpan tone she saves for when she’s about to throw emotional grenades.

“You know damn well what it is, Skye. Stop pretending.”

“Nope,” I lie, spinning in my chair again. “No idea. Not a clue. Just a girl out here trying to do her job while her disturbingly hot boss refuses to look and act like a normal crotchety old CEO.”

“Skye.”

“What?”