Page 79 of A Deal with the Devil

“Hey,” he says. “Can you shut the door?”

My jaw grinds, but I do as he’s asked. He comes to my side of the desk and takes one of the two seats there, turning it to face mine.

His tongue darts out to tap his lip, searching for words. I’m half inclined to tell him not to bother.

“I was performing what is possibly the most complex surgery I do,” he begins haltingly, staring at his hands, “and I spent the whole time thinking about this. The thing with us. It’s stressing me out.”

My eyes close. “I never expected anything from you,” I say between my teeth. My throat swells, and I swallow hard. I refuse to cry in front of him, because really, it’s entirely my own fault. I gave him so much grief about the way he treated women, the way they might expect things from him, but they were all fine. I’m the only idiot he’s had to give this speech to. “I thought I made that pretty clear yesterday when I went back to my own place.”

“Exactly!” he says, pushing his hands into his hair. “You’re acting like I’m some creep you can’t get away from fast enough.”

I blink. I was expecting complaints about the way I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve and how uncomfortable it is for him...but not this.

“You didn’t say a word on the way to the airport,” he continues. “You wouldn’t even let me touch your bag. I ask you to come back to my place, and you say you’ve got to do laundry. I have no idea what you actually want. Based on the way you’re acting, I assume you want nothing at all.”

“Does it matter what I want?” I whisper. “You don’t want anything.”

“What have I ever said to lead you to that conclusion?” he asks. “I’ve spent every free moment I’ve had with you for months, Tali. I’ve gone out of my way to find excuses to spend time with you any chance I get. I’ve taken four days off this calendar year, and I spent all of them with you.”

I place my hands in front of my face. “I’m the person you hired to get rid of girls like me,” I whisper. “I was just trying to make sure you didn’t have to ask me to go. I knew what this was going into it. I didn’t want to put unrealistic expectations on you.”

He pulls me onto his lap, and I go willingly—straddling him, finding his mouth. And I don’t know how I can miss something I’d barely had until two days ago, but I know it deep in my gut: I’ve missed this. I’ve missed him, as if he’s a critical organ I was failing in the absence of.

“I can’t believe you’d still lump yourself in with them after this weekend,” he says, leaning back to grasp my face in his hands. I don’t answer, but simply pull his mouth back to mine. His lips slide, then, from my mouth to my neck, with soft, adoring kisses that wind me up in ways he can’t even imagine. We’ve barely begun and already I’m craving more—the scrape of his unshaved jaw against my thighs, him inside me.

I want him so tight against me that not a whisper of space can exist between us, and he is throbbing under his scrubs, which suggests I’m not the only one. I reach for his waistband.

“You were stressed about your talk. I had no idea if it had anything to do with me at all.”

“I don’t get nervous before speeches,” he says, sliding my skirt up my thighs to my waist, his fingers slipping inside my panties. “You said it, and I let you think it when really, I’d been tied up in knots over you all day.” His thumb moves in circles over exactly the right spot. “Shit. I don’t have a condom.”

“I do,” I say on a gasp, reaching for my purse without leaving his lap. He raises a brow—wondering why the girl who sleeps with no one has a condom. “Don’t judge me. I like to be prepared.”

He tears the wrapper with his teeth and rolls it on. “For now, I’ll just be grateful.”

Pulling my underwear aside, he lifts me enough that he can free himself from the scrubs and his boxers. I reach between us and grasp him. He’s heavy in my hand, hard as nails. My thumb brushes over that vein pulsing down his length, and his eyes squeeze shut. “I’m not going to last,” he says. “Again.”

I’m not quite recovered from the weekend. The fit is so tight it hurts as I slide down him, but it’s the best possible kind of pain, the kind that has you thrusting your hips forward for more.

His eyelids lower as if drugged, but beneath them, his eyes are fever-bright. His mouth falls open. “I’ve thought about nothing but this for twenty-four hours,” he says between his teeth.

Obsession like this is a fleeting thing, but I’m not going to worry about how long his interest will last. I’m just going to relish every minute of it while it does.

32

Rats die after nine days without sleep. Even allowing for the longer lifespan of humans, I figure Hayes and I have only a few more days before we change or perish. At least I’ll die happy.

For five days now, we’ve been like this. Barely eating, definitely not sleeping, abandoning work the first minute possible. We don’t really discuss the fact that I’m leaving. One day he asks if I want to go, as if what I want is even relevant. When your family needs you, you step up. He lets it drop after that. He never mentions what happens to us after I leave, but why would he? A guy who hasn’t been monogamous in a decade isn’t going to suddenly try it long-distance. Which is fine, I remind myself. We are having fun, living in the moment. I’m simply enjoying it while it lasts.

I am in nothing but a T-shirt, making him a smoothie, when he gets downstairs. His eyes run over me from head-to-toe, no longer subtle the way they used to be. Under normal circumstances, me wandering his kitchen half-dressed leads to sex on the counter or couch or even inside the pantry, during one especially interesting round. Except today he’s already running late.

“You’re trying to torture me,” he groans.

I laugh. “Is it working?” I turn on his fancy coffee maker—the upside of fucking the boss is that he doesn’t want me getting up early to make his Starbucks run anymore—with some excessive leaning over so my ass is on display.

His eyes go dark. “Fuck,” he groans. “I’m going to be out of a job if this keeps up.”

“You should be out of a job.” I stir the sugar into his latte—weirdly, I now like doing this for him—and cross the kitchen with it. “Yours makes you miserable.”