“That’s not how it goes,” I said.
“It’s fine. It doesn’t have to be perfect, Madam Lei Tyrant.”
I got up from behind the desk and walked over to him. “Despite your obvious insinuation, I’m not some kind of craft control freak. And you’re doing it wrong.”
“You’re really proving that whole not-a-control-freak thing,” he said as I reached for the lei.
He looked up at me and my heart started doing cartwheels. I’d been so busy avoiding making eye contact with him that I’d forgotten how beautiful his eyes were.
My breath caught and I forced it out of my chest. I wasn’t going to pass out just because he was looking at me. “The, uh, flowers all have to be facing in the same direction.”
“They are.”
“No, you turned this one the wrong way.”
He looked to where I was pointing and asked, “How did you see that all the way across the room?”
Because I’m becoming obsessed with you and everything you’re doing and thinking and I was just waiting for an excuse so that I could come over and be close to you?
Obviously, I didn’t say that.
I tried to take a step back, not willing to be sucked in by his sexy gaze. He reached for my hand and stood up, so close to me. So very close. A pang of crackling tension raced along my nerves, making it difficult to breathe.
I stared at his neck, thinking that would somehow make my pulse stop throbbing, but it didn’t work. All I could think of was what it would be like to press a kiss against his throat.
What kind of sound he might make if I did.
Why did I want something so badly that I knew I couldn’t have? It was like that time I tried to give up sugar and every bakery I passed gave me the shakes and I’d had to resist the impulse to press my face against the glass.
That probably wasn’t a very apt comparison, considering that the sugar fast had lasted only three days. I could make it three more days again, right?
Only the desire in his eyes made me think I wasn’t going to last three more seconds.
“Why are you afraid of this?” he asked.
What this? The fake this where he was trying to make me reveal that I was a spy? There was no this. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
My stomach hollowed out when he somehow managed to get even closer to me without touching. I gulped hard, willing myself to resist.
“You know. This sexual tension.”
I tried to remind myself about how he’d blown me off last night, hoping that would make it easier to keep my raging hormones in check. But he stood in front of me all hot and lickable and what was I supposed to do? It was like a switch had been flipped inside me and there was no way to turn it back off.
No matter how much I denied it, I was so attracted to him. And even if things had been different for him before, unless he was the world’s best actor, he was attracted to me, too.
But none of that mattered. It couldn’t happen. “I think maybe you’re unclear about the meaning of sexual tension.”
He ghosted his lips over mine, and I felt it in my knees. He wasn’t even touching me but my lips still burned and tingled as if he had. “Oh, I’m very clear about what it means,” he murmured just above my mouth, making me blaze and shiver at the same time. “And it’s been happening between us from day one.”
“That’s . . .” I was having a really hard time forming words as I no longer had control over the air coming into or out of my body. I wanted to melt against him. His teasing was driving me wild. It had to be stopped. “Nothing is going to happen between us.”
“When I kiss you,” he said, his lips still impossibly close to mine, making it so that I nearly missed the way he’d put an emphasis on when, like it was a foregone conclusion that it would definitely happen, “it’ll be because we both want it. Nobody will be impaired. You won’t feel sick. And there won’t be any more secrets.”
That was the cold bucket of ice water I needed to reengage my brain. Camden and his secrets. He really was a good actor. This had all been a lie to get me to confess the “truth.”
There was a knock at the door and I didn’t even care who was on the other side. Because whoever they were, they had just saved me from doing something really, really stupid.
I stepped back, trying to regulate my breathing.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Camden said in a voice that sounded both sexy and demanding.
Oh no, we would not. I ran for the door, yanking it open. Irene was there, and I was confused. Surely Troy wouldn’t have called Dan’s mom to come help us, would he?