LITMIR.BIZ

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      That did not add up. It was bad math.

      And right now, he didn’t care.

      Slowly, he slid his other hand up and cupped her breast. He had been right. It was exactly the right size to fill his palm. He squeezed her gently, and Poppy let out a hoarse groan, then wrenched her mouth away from his.

      Her eyes were full of hurt. Full of tears.

      “Don’t,” she said, wiggling away from him.

      “What?” he asked, drawing a deep breath and trying to gain control over himself.

      Stopping was the last thing he wanted to do. He wanted to strip that dress off her, marvel at every inch of uncovered skin. Kiss every inch of it. He wanted her twisting and begging underneath him. He wanted to sink into her and lose himself. Wanted to make her lose herself too.

      Poppy.

      His friend. His assistant.

      “How dare you?” she asked. “How dare you try to manipulate me with... wth sex. You’re my friend, Isaiah. I trusted you. You’re just...trying to control me the way you control everything in your life.”

      “That isn’t true,” he said. It wasn’t. It might have started out as...not a manipulation, but an attempt to prove something to both of them.

      But eventually, he had just been swept up in all this. In her. In the heat between them.

      “I think it is. You... I quit.”

      And then she turned and walked out of the room, leaving him standing there, rejected for the first time in a good long while.

      And it bothered him more than he would have ever imagined.

      * * *

      Poppy was steeped in misery by the time she crawled onto the couch in her pajamas that evening.

      Her little house down by the ocean was usually a great comfort to her. A representation of security that she had never imagined someone like her could possess.

      Now, nothing felt like a refuge. Nothing at all. This whole town felt like a prison.

      Her bars were Isaiah Grayson.

      That had to stop.

      She really was going to quit.

      She swallowed, feeling sick to her stomach. She was going to quit and sell this house and move away. She would talk to him sometimes, but mostly she had to let the connection go.

      She didn’t mean to him what he did to her. Not just in a romantic way. Isaiah didn’t... He didn’t understand. He didn’t feel for people the way that other people felt.

      And he had used the attraction she felt for him against her. Her deepest, darkest secret.

      There was no way a woman without a strong, preexisting attraction would have ever responded to him the way she had.

      It had been revealing. Though, now she wondered if it had actually been revealing at all, or if he had just always known.

      Had he known—all this time—how much she wanted him? And had he been...laughing at her?

      No. Not laughing. He wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t cruel, not at all. But had he been waiting until it was of some use to him? Maybe.

      She wailed and dragged a blanket down from the back of the couch, pulling it over herself and curling into a ball.

      She had kissed Isaiah Grayson today.

      More than kissed. He had... He had touched her.

      He had proposed to her.

      And, whether it was a manipulation or not, she had felt...

      He had been hard. Right there between her legs, he had been turned on.

      But then, he was a man, and there were a great many men who could get hard for blowup dolls. So. It wasn’t like it was that amazing.

      Except, something about it felt kind of amazing.

      She closed her eyes. Isaiah. He was... He was absolutely everything to her.

      She could marry him. She could keep another woman from marrying him.

       Great. And then you can be married to somebody who doesn’t love you at all. Who sees you as a convenience.

      She laughed aloud at that thought. Yes. Some of that sounded terrible. But... She had spent most of her life in foster care. She had lived with a whole lot of people who didn’t love her. And some of them had found her to be inconvenient. So that would put marrying Isaiah several steps above some of the living situations she’d had as a kid.

      Then there was Rosalind. Tall, blond Rosalind who was very clearly Isaiah’s type. While Poppy was...not.

      How would she ever...cope with that? With the inevitable comparisons?

       He hates her. He doesn’t hate you.

      Well. That was true. Rosalind had always gone after what she wanted. She had devastated Isaiah in the process. So much so that it had even hurt Poppy at the time. Because as much as she wanted to be with Isaiah, she didn’t want him to be hurt.

      And then, Rosalind had gone on to her billionaire. The man she was still with. She traveled around the world and hosted dinner parties and did all these things that had been beyond their wildest fantasies when they were growing up.

      Rosalind wasn’t afraid of taking something just for herself. And she didn’t worry at all about someone else’s feelings.

      Sometimes, that was a negative. But right about now... Poppy was tempted—more than a little bit tempted—to be like Rosalind.

      To go after her fantasy and damn the feelings and the consequences. She could have him. As her husband. She could have him...kissing her. She could have him naked.

      She could be his.

      She had been his friend and his assistant for ten years. But she’d never been his in the way she wanted to be.

      He’d been her friend and her boss.

      He’d never been hers.

      Had anyone ever been hers?

      Rosalind certainly cared about Poppy, in her own way. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have bailed Poppy out when she was in need. But Rosalind’s life was very much about her. She and Poppy kept in touch, but that communication was largely driven by Poppy.

      That was...it for her as far as family went. Except for the Graysons.

      And if she married Isaiah...they really would be her family.

      There was a firm, steady knock on her door. Three times. She knew exactly who it was.

      It was like thinking about him had conjured him up.

      She wasn’t sure she was ready to face him.

      She looked down. She was wearing a T-shirt and no bra. She was definitely not ready to face him. Still, she got up off the couch and padded over to the door. Because she couldn’t not...

      She couldn’t not see him. Not right now. Not when all her thoughts and feelings were jumbled up like this. Maybe she would look at him and get a clear answer. Maybe she would look at him and think, No, I still need to quit.

      Or maybe...

      She knew she was tempting herself. Tempting him.

      She hoped she was tempting him.

      She scowled and grabbed hold of her blanket, wrapping it tightly around her shoulders before she made her way to the door. She wrenched it open. “What are you doing here?”

      “I came to talk sense into you.”

      “You can’t,” she said, knowing she sounded like a bratty kid

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