Page 10 of I Love You, I Hate You
Victoria climbed out of her car and smoothed down her skirt. She was a solid half hour early, largely because she found she could slightly throw off her opponent’s game if there appeared to be a ticking clock. She could amuse herself just fine in whatever drab conference room he shunted her into, but Owen would be feeling the pressure of the deposition bearing down on him all the while. It was petty, perhaps. But effective.
Besides, she was annoyed and looking to leave the office, thanks to the higher-ups roundly rejecting her request that they help sponsor Reproductive Justice’s Uterus-Havers 5k.Just a bit too liberal; wouldn’t want to upset the red state customershad been their response after only a couple of weeks of deliberation, and no amount ofpeople in red states deserve access to health care toocould change their minds. Sometimes she hated working for Smorgasbord, but then she would get her paycheck and remember why it was worth it.
The deposition was on the fifth floor of a nondescript building out in the suburbs, and the structure slung dark and imposing across her line of vision. Heat radiated off the asphalt parking lot in shimmering waves. A sign indicated the building housed a dentist office, a packaging company, two independent law firms, and a consulting company with a garishly pink logo. Apparently Owen Pohl could not be bothered with anything so uptight as an actual office, preferring to rent conference room space from one of the firms as needed. The thrifty side of her that had grown up counting every single penny might have admired that, but this wasOwen Pohlshe was talking about there. He got no credit for anything, ever.
Except for perhaps the ability to give her knee-shaking orgasms, but that was utterly irrelevant at the moment.
The elevator doors hadout of ordersigns taped on both of them and Victoria sighed. Five flights in three-inch heels was not her idea of fun, but at least she’d given herself plenty of extra time. She could duck into the bathroom and pat away any sweat and still have time to be obnoxiously punctual.
The stairwell door clanged shut behind her. The hallways had been the standard office park beige, but the stairs were industrial grey. Harsh fluorescent light made her squint, and an AC unit hummed in the background. Victoria hiked up her skirt to her thighs to make this marginally easier on herself and started up. Her footsteps echoed and somewhere several floors up, another door opened. Steps thundered down towards her and she smoothed down her skirt and made sure to tuck back the lock of hair that tended to slip out of her bun before she came face to face with anyone.
He had his head ducked down as he barreled towards her and if it were anyone else, she probably would have stepped aside. But one glimpse of that chin-length red hair and she decided not to bother, forcing Owen to draw up short and nearly lose his balance one step away from crashing straight into her.
It was remarkable, really, how quickly Owen’s face could go from handsome and pleasant to curdled with annoyance. “Deposition isn’t for another half hour, you know,” he said. His stubble was longer than the last time she saw him but it did nothing to hide the sharp line of his jaw.
Victoria drew herself up to her full height on the landing, acutely aware that this was the first time they had met since the night they were in his bedroom. This close she could breathe him in, the scent-memory doing something completely absurd to her stomach. “I was unaware there was a law banning me from arriving early,” she said evenly, even though blood was roaring in her ears so loudly she could barely think. Owen had that effect on her, and even more so when he looked at her like that, like he was remembering the exact same scenes that were flashing behind her eyelids right now.
“You’re trying to throw me off,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “You think because you’re going to be sitting in the conference room, ready and prepared, I’ll feel pressured.” He stepped toward her and she took an unconscious step back, more than a little surprised he’d twigged to her game so quickly. Her back bumped the grey cement wall and the chill of the bricks drove home just how heated she suddenly was. Owen licked his lips, looking her up and down predatorily. “Nice try.”
She lifted her chin and looked down her nose at him. “Oh?” she said, but much to her chagrin, he didn’t back away. She felt the warmth radiating from his skin, saw the way her presence was raising goosebumps on his arms. She dropped her voice to a low, sultry purr. “If it’s not working, then why are you panting?”
Owen’s lips curved into a smirk and his eyes darkened. He leaned forward, his lips almost grazing hers. He skimmed his nose over to her jaw and his lips went to the shell of her ear, his breath hot. He didn’t speak, but his breath stirred a few loose tendrils of her hair and she curled her hands into fists to keep from touching his face.This is not happening. This is not happening. This is a hallucination or a dream, and in a minute, I will wake up in bed, annoyed and horny. You don’t want to kiss him, that’s unprofessional and unethical. Don’t kiss him. Don’t. Do. Not. Kiss. Him.
His hand dropped to the hem of her skirt, playing with the fabric, his fingertips sparking against the thin skin on her thigh.Dammit, definitely not a dream. But still, no kissing, her brain admonished. Her lungs lost the ability to work and her mouth went dry. Owen inched the fabric up and against her better judgement she let her knee fall open. He found the top of her stockings and traced the edge so lightly she whimpered. This was not in her game plan, at all, ever, and she tried desperately to get her liquid limbs to move. But they stubbornly refused, too eager to feel his fingers skate higher and seek out the dampness between her thighs. His thumb tucked into the hollow of her hip, so close to where she needed him and yet so far. The rest of his hand spanned the inside of her thigh and she considered rolling her hips in search of the friction she needed. Her underwear was nearly ruined and her self-control right along with them.
Owen’s other hand came up to cup her cheek and he dragged his eyes up from her mouth. “Seems like I’m not the only one out of breath,” he growled and abruptly stepped back.
It was like being doused with cold water. Owen grinned at her and resumed his race down the stairs, leaving her swallowing hard with the somewhat embarrassing urge to rub her thighs together to relieve the ache between them. The door slammed at the bottom of the steps and she collapsed back against the cinderblock, stunned.
This was not at all what she planned to have happen. She was supposed to unsettle him, not the other way around. Her body vibrated with the memory of his presence, but she had to get ahold of herself, and fast.
Her underwear was uncomfortably damp but there wasn’t anything she could do about that right now. She dug through her bag and found a blotting sheet to control the light sweat prickling her forehead, and determinedly finished her climb. She stopped in the ladies’ room to check her makeup before she went to the conference room. She was breathing heavily at first, but by the time she sat down and pulled out her list of questions, she had stopped thinking about the way Owen’s lips would feel on her neck.
Mostly.
Unbelievable. The woman was a goddamn robot. Owen couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw her sitting primly at the conference table, not a hair out of place. There was maybe a slight flush to her cheeks, but he unfortunately knew from personal experience it was nowhere near the deep, enticing pink she got when Victoria was really worked up.
He, on the other hand, had needed a solid five minutes’ breathing deeply and glaring at himself in the men’s room mirror to get himself under control. He didn’t know what had come over him, but the desire to see her flustered and turned on had overridden literally every rational thought in his brain. He wondered if Victoria understood just how close he was to losing control with her, or if this was all just a stupid game to her.
He really wished she didn’t have that effect on him, and he sincerely, devoutly wished he hadn’t picked her up in the bar that night. It would be so much easier to ignore his body’s reaction to her if he didn’t know exactly what it felt like to be inside her. He could still feel the texture of her nipples on his tongue and hear the way she moaned in his ear, but those were massively inappropriate things to be thinking about his opposing counsel, even if he happened to know that her flinty grey eyes could go soft and hazy if he kissed her long enough.
But nothing—and he meant nothing—could shake Victoria. It was like he was a complete stranger when he walked in, client at his side, and throughout the deposition she gave no hint she had ever even met him before, much less that they had come close to tearing each other’s clothes off less than thirty minutes ago.
Owen did his best to focus, and the deposition went well enough. His client was well-prepared and they had an airtight case, because Smorgasbord was clearly violating their own contracts with their required off-the-books overtime for managers. Owen was damn good at his job and he refused to let the way Victoria clicked her pen with her perfectly manicured fingernails drive him to distraction, remembering how she dug them into his back when he kissed her just under her jaw.
On second thought, maybe he was just a goddamn disaster. He shouldn’t have risen to her bait in the stairwell, and he certainly shouldn’t have brought them so close to the edge. She wasn’t just someone he ran across sometimes anymore, she was the opposing counsel on the biggest case of his career.
Victoria lifted a perfectly arched brow at him. “Unless you have anything else, I think we’re done here,” she said in that icy, throaty voice of hers.
“We can be finished for now,” he agreed. There was a flurry of papers as the court recorder stood up and Victoria began gathering her things. Owen pulled his phone out of his pocket—it was almost time for his lunch date with Nora—and set it on the table, turning to Amina to answer a question she had about their next step in the process. Victoria set her bag on the table near his phone and said something to him, but he pretended not to hear her and she swanned out without another word.
It wasn’t until he’d walked Amina out to her car, Victoria already roaring out of the parking lot, that he looked down at the phone in his hand. He frowned at the lockscreen. His was of his half-sisters, grinning with ice cream cones at the State Fair, and this was a nondescript standard wallpaper option. For half a second he wondered if his phone had restarted, but then he flipped it over and looked at the case. He definitely didn’t have a rose-gold outline of a bee on the back of his, which meant that, somehow, he and Victoria had swapped phones.
Sighing angrily, he walked back up to the conference room and opened his laptop.
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