12

PITCH BLACK SURROUNDED HIM ONCE AGAIN. Ethan waited for Brooke by the revolving door with the intention of leaving if she was even two minutes late. It was hard enough getting her to agree to meet “Roger” in the darkroom with the string of texts he’d sent her from the man’s phone.

Roger: Meet me in the DR in ten minutes.

Brooke: Drop dead.

Roger: I’ll be there this time, I swear.

Moody little shit: Enjoy the crickets.

Roger: Just one more chance. I need to explain.

Enough time passed to leave him steeped in doubt. Then finally: Last chance.

Ethan was ready to get this over with. Let the competition between them continue without any more drama. The thought that this was the wrong way to go about it entered his mind more than once, but it was the quickest way. Once she could no longer deny the truth, he’d reveal it in a very calm, rational manner.

Bullshit. You just want to prove that she has no effect on you.

Yes, that too. He’d been just as wronged as Brooke, so why shouldn’t he get some closure?

The conference room was empty this time, which meant that they could whisper without drawing attention; however, raised voices and screaming were out of the question, so they would be forced to handle things with some measure of civility.

When he heard a noise beyond the darkroom, he briefly considered that it might not be Brooke. Then the revolving door began to spin. He braced himself as he waited for the opening to come around. When it did, he searched her out, pulled her into the darkroom and into his arms. The silky mass of hair in his hand confirmed that it was indeed Brooke, so he pulled her head back and kissed her.

As soon as their lips met, she pushed him away and whispered, “I don’t want this anymore, Roger. You said you’d explain.”

Frustration shot straight into his groin. “So, let me,” he whispered hoarsely. Before she could argue, he crushed his mouth to hers and kissed her with desire and demand. Within moments, she let him in and he tasted the sweet flavor of her mouth.

Not sweet, he reminded himself. Venomous, that’s what she is, full of venom.

But then she moaned and softened in his arms, erasing all bad thoughts from his mind. When she brought her hands up to his chest, his body instantly rose to the occasion, filling him with a kind of alarm that was completely and utterly foreign to him.

Come on, you have more control than that.

It must be the heightened emotions. Yes, that was it. Their natural propensity to tear into each other was a turn-on and the reason his dick was so hard right now. It wasn’t the way her body molded against his in a perfect fit. It wasn’t the soft sounds that came from deep within her throat. It wasn’t the feel of her inner thigh touching his own.

He squelched the urge to reach down and explore that bare inner thigh with his hands. Her skirt was short and would have been easy to reach under, but that wasn’t what he’d asked her here for.

Suddenly in a desperate hurry to confess, Ethan broke their heated kiss. “There’s something you should know,” he whispered.

“I don’t care, just keep going,” she whispered back.

It wasn’t until he felt the cool air on his chest that Ethan realized she’d unbuttoned his shirt. What the hell, a few more kisses would only strengthen his case. He dove into her mouth one more time, claiming her with a breathless kind of urgency. Somehow, his tie came off. Then his shirt was peeled down his arms. Her soft hands roamed his naked skin, sending goose bumps all over his body.

Fuck! Why the fuck did she feel so good? This needed to stop before—

Ethan ripped his mouth away from hers, regaining enough sense to see that he’d already undone the first three buttons of her blouse. The urgent need to feel the weight of her bare breasts in his hands had put him on autopilot, which would only end up with her bent over that chair again.

“Brooke,” he rasped in desperation, “you don’t want this.”

“If you stop now, I’ll implode,” she whispered back. Her soft palm skimmed across his belly and then moved downward to cup his aching erection in a firm hold.

Well, he couldn’t let her implode. That would be…ungentlemanly. His zipper went down.

No!

He grabbed her wrist, backing away with a groan. “I’m not who you think I am.”

“I know you aren’t Roger.” Her fierce admission stunned him for a moment, long enough for her to move in again. “But we’ve done this before, right?”

“Yes,” he hissed, arching back when her teeth clamped onto his nipple.

“Then you’re who I want you to be.” She whorled her tongue around the sensitive spot, sending him deeper into that sea of pleasure. Her words were like a drug. They meant she wanted him. She didn’t want Roger; she wanted what only he could do for her.

And he wanted her more than anything, which was why he pushed her away in a desperate bid for clarity. He found the light switch and flipped it on.

“I’m the last person you want me to be,” he panted, hating himself for depriving them of the opportunity they both craved. But he had a feeling, despite her words, that he’d be branded the villain if he didn’t.

When he opened his eyes, it was in time to catch her look of horror. “I don’t believe this!” she whispered, buttoning her blouse with trembling hands.

Ethan yanked his shirt up over his shoulders, fumbled with his own buttons. “I tried to tell you—”

“Well, you should have tried harder,” she hissed.

“I couldn’t get a word out with your tongue down my throat,” he argued.

“You hate me as much as I hate you! How could you let it go that far?”

Ethan’s anger rose at the implication that he was the only one at fault. “A man has no sexual integrity when a woman has her hand on his dick. As an adult, you should know that by now.”

“You have no integrity of any kind, do you, Ethan?” She jabbed the bottom of her shirt into the waistband of her skirt. “You tricked me into thinking you were Roger, you piece of shit.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t expect you to get so violently aroused.”

“Oh, please, you attacked me as soon as I walked through the door.”

He grabbed his tie off the floor. “I was trying to tell you the truth.”

“An email would have sufficed!”

His fly went up. “You would have never believed me and you know it!”

“You could have tried me! It would have been better than…” she gestured toward his crotch, “that!”

“From what I hear, you’ve been dreaming about,” he gestured toward his crotch, “this since we did it the first time!”

A vivid color of mortification stained her cheeks. Brooke walked up to him and punched him in the gut. As he doubled over, she stormed over to the rotating door, stepped through it, and spun it closed. So much for civility.

Ethan took a deep breath, straightened his hastily donned tie, and followed her.

AFTER STORMING INTO THE CREATIVE DEPARTMENT, Brooke heard the storage room door open and close behind her. Ethan was hot on her heels, but the last thing she wanted was to give him an opportunity to defend himself. All she wanted to do was march right into Ken’s office and scream sexual harassment so loud that all eight floors would hear it.

Whispers followed her into the hallway along with the sounds of hurried footsteps. “Brooke!” Ethan hissed behind her.

He was too close, so she made a quick detour into the ladies room. Three women chitchatted at the sinks and she pushed through them in a sudden, desperate need to wash her hands. The door flew open behind her. The women gasped. Brooke spun around, scattering water and soap as her eyes widened in shock. Ethan loomed in the doorway, an imposing figure of stormy rage.

The women gawked and watched in fascinated silence until Ethan finally ordered them to get out. Without question, they filed past him and into the hallway.

As the bathroom door slowly closed, Brooke yanked out paper towels, her chest heaving with fury. “Of all the vile…low… awful things to do to a person.”

Now that they were alone again, he turned the lock and faced her in a clear effort to pull it together. “I didn’t plan for things to go that far,” he murmured as he approached her. “And that first time, I thought I was with Shannon. I didn’t know it was you until later.”

“Shannon?” She tossed the paper towels in the trash and grabbed her breasts. “You confused these with Shannon’s?”

He closed his eyes and swore. “It was dark enough for you to confuse me with Roger, so let’s not go there.”

God, he was right. Still…, “You and Roger aren’t that different. Shannon and I are nothing alike.”

“Well, it’s quite clear you haven’t been feeling Roger up lately, so I’ll let that pass.”

“You expect me to believe you’ve never felt Shannon up before?” she scoffed.

Ethan straightened up at the implication. “For your information, I haven’t. All I know is what I see outside the clothes.” His eyes moved downward and locked right onto her chest. “Except for you of course.”

As if on cue, her nipples hardened, remembering the pull of his mouth on them four days ago. She groaned, turned around, and headed for a stall. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “No, we’re going to talk this out, something I should have done last Friday.”

Friday? He’d known since Friday? “But you didn’t,” she reminded him, yanking herself out of his hold. “Instead you let me believe…” All of the dots began to connect until she put her face in her hands. “Roger knows about this, doesn’t he?”

Ethan inhaled deeply and moved toward a sink. The water came on. When Brooke peeked between her fingers, she saw him staring at his reflection while he washed his hands. It was clear then that he was suffering as much as she was. “Roger was told not to say anything.”

“Why?” she sneered at his back. “So you could mess with me? Set me up and humiliate me like you did with those flowers?”

He turned the water off and looked for a paper towel. “That wasn’t me.”

“Oh really? And I suppose the texts weren’t from you either?”

“The flowers were from Shannon. The texts were from me.”

Even worse! “You two are in on this together,” she concluded with a short laugh.

“No! “ Ethan tossed the paper towel and ground his palms into his eyes. “Let me start from the beginning.” He took a deep breath. “Last Friday I was in pretty bad shape. Shannon was mad at me for something I did to her before, and she used the opportunity to get even. She set us both up in the darkroom, letting us think we were with other people. When I found out, I was every bit as mad as you are right now.”

More dots fell into place. Brooke crossed her arms, remembering a certain conversation that had left her in a resentful mood. “Is that why you were such an ass when I tried to extend that olive branch?”

“Pretty much. At that point, I was determined to keep the truth to myself, which I admit was wrong. Then I found out that Shannon sent you those roses and I realized she wouldn’t stop harassing you unless I did something about it. The darkroom, the bucket of water, Roger keeping quiet…that was all her.”

The humiliation of being played so easily by that pretentious bitch was almost worse than being the only one in the dark for so long. “So, Roger just agreed to play along?” she asked with narrowed eyes. “You expect me to believe that?”

Ethan produced a sound of disdain. “Oh, come on. The wimp wouldn’t know what to do with a hooker, let alone a willing woman. There you were all lovesick and clingy—”

“Lovesick? Don’t be absurd!”

“—pining after the man, it was getting pathetic.”

“I was not pining. The sex wasn’t that good.”

The moment the words left her mouth, Brooke wished to take them back. Ethan squared his shoulders and closed the distance between them with a challenge in his eyes. “This isn’t grade school, Brooke, and I’m not a fool. I know when a woman loses control, especially when it’s for the first time.”

He wanted her to try and deny it again, to give him an excuse to prove her wrong. The intent was written in the hard lines around his mouth as he watched her. “How—” Brooke cleared her throat and tried again without a tremor in her voice. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I practically had to gag you before someone heard your screams of pleasure.”

She gasped at the insinuation. “I was faking. Women do it all the time.”

Ever so slowly, his head dipped a little bit more. She watched his mouth as it hovered close, threatening to descend on hers at any moment. The breath froze in her lungs as she struggled to keep her anger alive.

“You’re a terrible liar,” he said with a touch of humor. Then he headed for the door. Halfway there, he threw out, “And, according to Roger, you think I’m a god in the sack.”

Brooke could only blink at him, speechless for a horrified moment. When he flipped open the lock and walked out, she managed to find her voice. “I just said that because it’s what men like to hear!”

“Liar,” he said calmly as the door swung closed behind him.