NATALIE’S POV
“What are you doing here?” She asked, looking down at the sheets of paper in front of her.
“I needed to talk to you,” I replied, shoving my hands in my pocket.
“You could have waited till I got home. There was no point in coming here.” She kept her eyes glued to the paper.
“It couldn’t wait.” I moved closer to her.
The next moment, she simply glanced at me without a single word, fixing me with those bright eyes of hers. Then she rocked backward in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “About what? You and your ex-girlfriend showing up at my workplace, trying to remind me of your history together? Your ex-ex-girlfriend already filled me in, so you don’t need to waste your time telling me again.”
“No, Nat.” A bitter fierceness underlined her words; I winced. “I do know you have every right to be angry, but whatever Arlys said – it is a lie. She and I broke up years ago; there is nothing left between us.”
Her eyes turned back to me, filled with hot anger. “Then why did I walk in on you kissing her in your office? If there is nothing between you, then why was she there in the first place?”
I exhaled wearily, raking my hand through my hair and sucking in a breath. “She was helping me with a business deal that we already concluded. She showed up unannounced. I didn’t ask her to come over here, let alone to do what she did. She literally threw herself at me; I didn’t respond in any way before you walked in. I swear, Natalie, she meant nothing.”
It was some moments before she said anything, and she looked very sternly at me with those cutting eyes of hers, undetermined as to whether to believe or not.
At length, she spoke, in a very low tone, and with great heartache. “You know, Brandon, I don’t know anymore what to believe. This marriage, well, it wasn’t ever supposed to include feelings. It was something good for the business, an arrangement good for the both of us. Now…,” Her voice faltered, unsure, and some of that vulnerability she rarely let bleed through glittered in her eyes. Her standing there, knowing I was the one who had allowed her to have to endure this, tore something in two inside me.
I took a step closer and cupped her cheeks with my hands.
My heartbeats were nothing but running drums inside my chest. “Natalie, I know this wasn’t how we planned things, but I can’t help how I feel. I have tried to back off you, and keep things strictly professional since we got married. The thing is, I can’t help myself. You do something to me when near, something I’ve not felt in years and it bloody well scares the living hell out of me, if I’m to be honest.”
She lifted her gaze upon me once more; her eyes literally widened with shock as if she could hardly believe what she was hearing. “W-what… what are you saying, Brandon?”
I moved a step closer still, near enough this time to feel it, to smell the warmth off her body, and I looked into her eyes-saw in her eyes the heaving up and down of her chest in quick succession as she scrambled to glue two and two together and make some sort of sense out of my words.
“Natalie, seriously, I’m falling for you. With every look, every time I look, it gets harder and harder for me to not be feeling like work is just a business I have to do in order to sustain the lifestyle that you well deserve, actually. I care for you a lot more than I really should, and I never really wished or planned on that growing.”
With every unspoken word, that air grew thicker between us. She locked her eyes into mine, searching by all means for something that would reveal to her that I was the worst kind of player in this game of truth with her. But I am not. Never had I told the truth and exposed my heart like I did that time.
At last, she spoke; but it was in so very low a whisper that the words seemed no more articulate than if they had been breathed. “Brandon, what are you doing to me?”
It was there, with an unbearable amount of questioning and desire, for me to bear. I had no answer to her question, so I did what I could on my part: I moved that one-inch distance between us and kissed her.
Desperate, raw full of emotions I’d been holding and didn’t let be tender or for grace. I cupped her face in my hands and tried to pour everything out: frustration, wanting, fear of losing her. The first came hesitations and tautness of each muscle against a feel of mine, and then she started kissing me back, with her hands around my neck.
I smiled into the kiss and placed my hand on the back of her head before deepening the kiss with my tongue exploring every inch of her mouth.
It was as if the walls that we had worn ourselves out trying to erect around us all just came tumbling down right there in that one moment. The tension, the anger, the confusion it was all just gone. This here now was it: binding us together with a burning, glowing connection neither one of us would shut our eyes to.