Page 45 of Forty, Flirty & Framed

Because Karina’s body is flush against mine, and all the air between us evaporates.

I brace myself with one hand on the back of her chair, the other landing too close to the curve of her waist.

Her breath catches—barely a whisper—but I feel it everywhere.

"Callum," she says, voice trembling just enough to make my restraint snap taut.

I should step back.I should apologize.I should remember all the reasons this can't happen—the company, the scandal, the fact that I have no right to want her like this.

But she’s staring at my mouth like she’s thinking the same damn thing.

And when her tongue flicks out to wet her bottom lip—nervous, instinctive—any thought of self-preservation dies.

I close the distance and kiss her.

Not tentative.Not polite.

A rough, hungry claiming of her mouth, like I’ve been waiting for this longer than I even realized.

She gasps against me, and for one wild second, she doesn't pull away.

Instead, her fingers clutch the front of my shirt, tugging me closer, as if she needs me as badly as I need her.

Her lips are warm, yielding, but there’s fire beneath the softness—an urgency that makes my blood thrum and my cock harden in my slacks.

The kiss deepens, spiraling fast from tentative to desperate.

My hands slide up her back, fisting in the silky fabric of her wrap top, and she arches into me with a soft, broken sound that shreds the last of my control.

She tastes like something forbidden, something meant to be savored and denied in equal measure.

A part of me dimly registers that this is a line we can’t uncross.

That I should tear myself away, before it’s too late.

But when she makes a small, involuntary whimper into my mouth—a sound so raw, so wrecked—I’m lost.

I shift, pressing her back against the edge of the table, crowding her body with mine, needing to feel her, needing more.

Her hands skim up my chest, tentative at first, then bolder, threading into the hair at the nape of my neck as she kisses me back with a recklessness that mirrors my own.

Christ.

Karina Peters is unraveling me.

Right here, in the middle of a hotel suite filled with laptops, conspiracy maps, and bagpipes that play Céline Dion.

And I don’t even care.

Not when she’s kissing me like this.

Not when she tastes like defiance and desperation and everything I’m not supposed to want.

It’s madness.It’s suicide.

It’s inevitable.

She pulls back first—abrupt, shaky, her chest heaving as she stares at me with wide, stricken eyes.