slo-mo, he leaned down. His lips brushed against hers—not a fierce kiss of possession, but something that was closer to a request for permission.
Serena took a deep breath in satisfaction. Chadwick’s scent surrounded her with the warmth of sandalwood on top of his own clean notes. She couldn’t help it—she clutched him more tightly, tracing his lips with her tongue.
Chadwick let out a low growl that seemed to rumble right out of his chest. Then the kiss deepened. She opened her mouth for him and his tongue swept in.
Serena’s knees gave in to the heat that suddenly flooded her system, but she didn’t go anywhere—Chadwick held her up. Her head began to swim again but instead of the stark panic that had paralyzed her earlier, she felt nothing but sheer desire. She’d wanted that kiss since the very first time she’d seen Chadwick Beaumont. Why on God’s green earth had she waited almost eight years to invite it?
Something hard and warm pressed against the front of her gown. A similar weight hung heavy between her legs, driving her body into his. This was what she’d been missing for months. Years. This raw passion hadn’t just been gone since Neil had left—it’d been gone for much longer.
Chadwick wanted her. And oh, how she wanted him. Wanted to forget about bosses and employees and companies and boards of directors and pregnancies and everything that had gone wrong in her world. This—being in Chadwick’s arms, his lips crushed against hers—this was right. So very right. Nothing else mattered except for this moment of heat in his arms. It burned everything else away.
She wanted to touch him, find out if the rest of him was as strong as his arms were—but before she could do anything of the sort, he broke the kiss and pulled her into an even tighter hug.
His lips moved against her neck, as if he were smiling against her. She liked how it felt. “You’ve always been special, Serena,” he whispered against her skin. “So let me show you how special you are. I want to buy you all three dresses. That way you can surprise me on Saturday. Are you going to refuse me that chance?”
The heat ebbed between them. She’d forgotten about the dresses—and how much they probably cost. For an insane moment, she’d forgotten everything—who she was. Who he was.
She absolutely should refuse the dress, the dinner, the way he had looked at her all afternoon like he couldn’t wait to strip each and every dress right off her, and the way he was holding her to his broad chest right now. She had no business being here, doing this—no business letting her attraction to Chadwick Beaumont cloud her thinking. She was pregnant and her job was on the line, and at no point in the past, present or future did she require three gowns that probably cost more than her annual salary.
But then that man leaned backward and cupped her cheek in his palm and said, “I haven’t had this much fun in...well, I can’t remember when. It was good to get out of the office.” His smile took a decade of worry off his face.
She was about to tell him that the champagne had gone to his head—although she was painfully aware that she had no such excuse as to why she’d kissed him back—when he added, “I’m glad I got to spend it with you. Thank you, Serena.”
And she had nothing. No refusal, no telling him off, no power to insist that Mario only wrap up one dress and none of the jewelry, no defense that she did not need him to buy her anything because she was perfectly able to buy her own dresses.
He’d had fun. With her.
“The dresses are lovely, Chadwick. Thank you.”
He leaned down, his five-o’clock shadow and his lips lightly brushing her cheek. “You’re welcome.” He pulled back and stuck out his arm just like Mario had done to escort her to the dais. “Let me take you to dinner.”
“I...” She looked down at the droopy green dress, which was now creased in a few key areas. “I have to get back to work. I have to go back to being an executive assistant now.” Funny how that sounded off all of a sudden. She’d been nothing but an executive assistant for over seven years. Why shouldn’t putting the outfit back on feel more...natural?
A day of playing dress-up had gone right to her head. She must have forgotten who she was. She was really Serena Chase, frugal employee. She wasn’t the kind of woman who had rich men lavish her with exorbitant gifts. She wasn’t Chadwick’s lover.
Oh God, she’d let him kiss her. She’d kissed him back.
What had she done?
Chadwick’s face grew more distant. He, too, seemed to be realizing that they’d crossed a line they couldn’t uncross. It made her feel even more miserable. “Ah, yes. I probably have work to do as well.”
“Probably.” They might have been playing hooky for a few hours that afternoon, but the world had kept on turning. The fallout from the board meeting no doubt had investors, analysts and journalists burning up the bandwidth, all clamoring for a statement from Chadwick Beaumont.
But more than that, she needed to be away from him. This proximity wasn’t helping her cause. She needed to clear her head and stop having fantasies about her boss. Fantasies that now had a very real feel to them—the feeling of his lips against hers, his body pressed to hers. Fantasies that would probably play out in her dreams that night.
She couldn’t accept dinner on top of the dresses. She had to draw the line somewhere.
But she’d already crossed that line.
How much farther would she go?
Chadwick did not sleep well.
He told himself that it had everything to do with the disastrous board meeting and nothing to do with Serena Chase, but what the hell was the point in lying? It had everything to do with Serena.
He shouldn’t have kissed her. Rationally, he knew that. He’d fired other executives for crossing that very same line—one strike and they were out. For way too long, Beaumont Brewery had been a business where men took all kinds of advantage of the women who worked for them. That was one of the first things he’d changed after his father died. He’d had Serena write a strict sexual harassment policy to prevent exactly this situation.
He’d always taken the higher road. Fairness, loyalty, equality.
He was not Hardwick Beaumont. He would not seduce his secretary. Or his executive assistant, for that matter.
Except that he’d already started. He’d told her he was taking her to the gala. He’d taken her shopping and bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of gowns, jewels and handbags for her.
He’d kissed her. He’d wanted to do so much more than just kiss her, too. He’d wanted to leave that gown in a puddle on the floor and sit back on the loveseat, Serena’s body riding his. He wanted to feel the full weight of her breasts in his hands, her body taking his in.
He’d wanted to do something as base and crass as take her in a dressing room, for God’s sake. And that was exactly what Hardwick would have done.
So he’d stopped. Thankfully, she’d stopped, too.
She hadn’t wanted the dresses. She’d fought him tooth and nail about that.
But
