Page 46 of Undeniable You
I grinned. “I could be. If you wanted me to.”
She made a painful sound. “Jesus, Jo.” She closed her eyes and shook her head.
“What?”
“You’re making me think about too many things.”
I stepped closer to her and ran my hand up her side, causing her T-shirt to ride up just a little and give me a peak of skin.
“What kind of things?”
“Jo, we need to…” she trailed off, gazing into my eyes.
“We need to what?”
She blinked at me. “You made me lose my train of thought.”
“Sorry,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not even a little bit sorry.”
“No, I’m not.”
Holy shit, flirting with her like this was intoxicating. I wish we’d been doing this the entire time.
“Why don’t we sit on the couch so we can talk?” she asked.
“Sure.”
I waited for her to sit down and then I basically sat in her lap, my legs draped over her and my arm around her shoulders.I’d considered straddling her, but that was probably pushing things too far. I would straddle her sometime in the near future. Hopefully we’d both be naked.
“Jo, what are you doing?” she asked, her eyes wide as she looked up at me.
I kept my face innocent. “Sitting. Am I doing it wrong?”
Slowly she shook her head. “You are trouble. It’s all coming out now.”
I grinned at her and tried not to freak out when her arms wove around my waist.
“What did you want to talk about?” I asked.
Larison let out a breath. “Well. This. Us. How we’re going to move forward. You’re still going to work for me, but what about outside of working hours? How do you picture this going?”
I pictured it like dragging her to bed and keeping her there until she literally passed out. But that wasn’t what she was asking.
“I mean, I guess we could have our work hours and our personal hours. We clock in and clock out. Don’t do dating things during work hours.” I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth. I didn’t like them, but I knew they were right. We’d need to have some kind of demarcation.
Larison nodded. “Okay, that makes sense. So once you clock in, we just don’t have any touching or kissing or flirting or any of that. I also don’t want to confuse Juniper. I know this is a lot to ask, but can we keep things not in front of her? Is that okay?”
Her hand moved up and down my spine, and I wanted to purr like a cat and beg her not to stop.
“Yeah, that’s okay. I totally get that it’s kind of complicated with her.”
Right. Juniper. Larison had a daughter. It wasn’t that I was just remembering that now, but things had changed between us and I was about to become more than just her nanny. Larisonand I dating was a little more serious than dating someone who didn’t have a child.
If things got serious, I’d have to consider the fact that I could become a parent. Stepparent. What would happen if we broke up was also a huge consideration.
“Wait, before we talk more about logistics, I just need to know: are you serious about this? Because I can’t do something casual. If you’re in, you’ve got to be all in. I know that’s a lot to ask, but that’s just how my life is. There’s a reason that I don’t date or do any of this. I’ve just…” she trailed off, her hands pausing on my body. “I didn’t expect this, Jo.”