Chapter 42 Chapter Fourty Two
ADRIAN’S POV
The deal that initiated this trip fell through right about the time I showed up outside Candy’s apartment to pick her up but for some reason, I couldn’t talk myself out of showing up, acting like everything is still on track and getting on the fucking plane to New York just because she’s looked ready for an escape all week.
I don’t know what it is with her that has me acting out of character but I don’t exactly loathe it. I shouldn’t give a fuck, she’s my employee and there are professional lines I’ve made a rule of not crossing, ever, but every time she looks at me with all that fury like she really hates my guts or when she just stares helplessly like her life is torpedoing and she needs rescue, the lines blur and I do stupid shit like keep reservations I should have cancelled and travel with her so she can get away even if for a day.
I’m not sure what’s really going on with her, she has formidable defences against letting me any closer than I currently am but I can tell she’s hurting and running from something. She flinches every time I mention her family and the light goes out of her eyes whenever she has to go home.
Funny because that’s a far cry from the girl I met that night at the Jeremy Kane charity gala all those years ago clinging on to her father like a second skin. She doesn’t remember because there’d been nothing spectacular about me in the sea of start up CEOs begging shamelessly for even the scraps of her father’s attention at the gala but she’d snapped up mine.
I’d watched her with the kind of curiosity that gets you in trouble but with zero intention of ever closing the distance keeping our world apart.
Some unfortunate dude did though when she finally peeled herself away from daddy dearest, feeling larger than life only to end up giving the rest of us a front row view of what to expect from the ice Princess.
She was so cold it made my blood curl to watch her act like he was something beneath her.
Immediately after, she ran back to daddy and stayed glued to him until I walked out the same way I came, wiser on the fact that I had more chances making it on my sheer will than on waiting for a man who didn’t care.
Our paths didn’t cross again until that day she walked into my office, strong willed and asking to be employed.
I thought it was interesting seeing as her father’s company is still sitting at the pinnacle of his industry so I took her on. I’d love to believe I treated her the way I did after because I hated her after that night but the truth is it was mostly because the woman whose only favour to me was giving birth to me probably read off the news that I’m doing well now and decided to reappear in my life like all the years between us didn’t happen.......
I tried to remind myself every day she was in my space how cruel she can be but it’s an impossible feat to achieve with how different she is now and that difference is the problem.
It’s morphing daily and now she’s almost a ghost of herself and it worries me. It’s why I go out of my way sometimes to do stupid little things like get her favourite ice cream just so she can smile at it like it’s the best thing to ever exist.
“Adrian........” She whispers, staring up at me, bringing me back to the room with her.
She’s drunk, I can see it all over her and drunk Candy is quite something.
“I couldn’t sleep either.” I say solemnly.
It’s the reason I was out here in the first place trying to work myself into a fucking coma before she stumbled in, slightly unsteady on her feet. The only part of it I’m not being honest about is why.
That small, innocent kiss she’d pressed against my cheek with her honeysuckle, vanilla scent flooding my senses has had me on edge. I’m fucking lusting after my assistant, a thought that should be forbidden and now here we are, with her standing in my arms and looking at me like she can’t decide between falling into my arms and running away.
Taking a deep breath, her hand drops to the belt holding her robe in place but it’s too unsteady to actually get the job done. Without thinking, I let my hand cover hers, taking the rope from her.
I tug once before the damn thing loosens and whatever I was expecting, it definitely wasn’t a sliver of skin in the parting of the robe that confirms the absence of any piece of clothing over her breast.
“Candy....” I try to stop her but for once her eyes has this light in them that stalls my reflexes.
She steps back, dropping the robe from her shoulders as she goes.
She turns like she knows what she’s doing even though it’s mostly the drink. I know the difference though and it’s the only reason I’m not doing something stupid and regretful right now.
Against my better judgment, I follow her into the Jacuzzi, settling opposite her so I can torture myself with watching.
“You’re shaking.” I say because I can see it from here.
“I had a drink.” She responds with a pout like that explains everything.
“I know.”
She makes a sound in her throat that shouldn’t even exist, so soft and sultry it should be a crime, then asks out of nowhere,
“Why did you say that?”
“Say what?”
For some reason, I know exactly what she’s talking about but hell, there’s no way this ends well.
“On the plane, why did you say you’d kiss me if I apologized again?”
“Candy.”
“Do you want to kiss me, Mr Cunsulo?”
She slumps back against the Jacuzzi when I don’t answer, her shoulders falling from her imagined rejection.
“Is that what you call me in your head?” I ask with a small smile, steering the conversation back to safe grounds.
She nods, looks at me with what’s supposed to be a stern look and then pouts.
“You didn’t answer.” She says, her voice almost breaking on a cry.
“Because it’s the drink asking not you. You don’t want the answer to that because you don’t think of me that way.”
“I don’t.......hate you.” She says looking down at her hands.
“I dunno, you’re confusing.”
“Am I?”
Getting off her position, she makes her way to me, slow and unsure, water sliding off her collar bone and trailing in rivulets between her bare, perky breasts that have these fantasies building fast in my head.
Putting her hand on my thigh to keep balance, she uses it to push herself closer until she’s practically kneeling between my legs, my pulse betraying my hunger for the one girl I have no business wanting this much.
Coming here was a bad idea.
It takes a lot to keep me in place and unmoving, my eyes following her every move instead like a predator stalking its prey. I can see her next move stark in her eyes but I’m too ensnared to stop her from making it.
“I’m sorry.” She whispers before covering my lips with hers in a kiss that snaps my last restraints in a blink. There’s an urgency in the glide of her soft, supple lips against mine like this is more out of rebellion and a need to forget more than anything else, but the moment I feel her fingers slide into my hair, the tip of her tongue brushing my lip, none of that mattered anymore.
I kissed her back the way a starving man eats, my hand sliding from her waist to her lower back to anchor her to me. She tastes like I imagined she would, fruity and inebriating, both wrapped in the essence of her.
Her hard tipped breasts graze my chest as her fingers go wild in my hair, my tongue ravaging every crevice of her mouth, committing it to memory. If this is a one off event, I want to remember it for a long time.
She let’s out a sound I think is a moan but that thought vanishes the moment I taste the tears in my mouth.
She’s crying.
I pull back immediately so I can look into her face.
“What happened? Did I do something wrong? Did I hurt you?”
She shakes her head no but the tears keep coming, spiking my concern.
“I.......I can’t.......this is not me.” She finally say, her head dropping against my shoulder to hide her face from me.
“I keep trying to get over one man with another first Brent, then Nikandr and now you. I shouldn’t put you in that position, I was vulnerable and wanted to feel something, I’m sorry.”
The two names she mentioned left a bitter taste in my mouth, the thought of them having had her like this fucking up my mood but for her sake, I hide it behind a smile, lifting slightly to peck the corner of her lips and then I say the words I know she wants to hear, even though I don’t give a fuck about being used.
She can use me if that’s what she needs.
“If that’s what you want, Candy.”