By a thread

Ally,This is stupid. I don’t like getting to know you.DomDom,Back at you. Let’s go back to ignoring each other.Ally

What the hell are you wearing?”She looked down at the dress and back at me. “Why are you so obsessed with my clothes?”“It’s Wednesday. On Wednesdays, you wear your navy pencil skirt.”

while I craved her next confession, I also couldn’t handle the intimacy. I was ripped down the middle. Torn between wanting to know everything there was to know about this woman and wanting to forget she existed.

I hated it when she walked away from me. It always felt like she took the light and heat with her.I added that to my Hate List.

I was waiting for a man who didn’t want to want me.

I wanted what I couldn’t have.I wanted her to the point of desperation. And it made me hate myself just a little more.

Was it weird that the sexiest moment of my life hadn’t actually involved having sex?

I hoped to God security was up to the challenge tonight. Because if anyone laid a hand on her, one single finger on her, I was going to lose my shit.

I’d buy her a thousand thongs if she were mine. I’d drown her in lingerie and dresses and diamonds and fucking yoga pants. Anything she wanted, I would give her.

“I hate how much I want you,” he whispered brokenly, nuzzling at the curves, nipping at the pasties. “I despise the fact that I can’t think of anything else but you.”

I’d just made Dominic Russo, my boss, come in his pants at a strip club.I didn’t know whether to go jump off a bridge or pat myself on the back. Maybe I’d do both.

“You can’t carry me around like a bride,” she insisted.“Yeah, well, a few hours ago, I would have said you couldn’t jack me off in a strip club. I guess we’re both wrong.”

And now I was fucking hard again.I needed to see a doctor. This wasn’t normal.

If mystery bothered him so much, this son of a bitch—wait, no. His mother was a lovely human being. This alphahole was going to suffer. I’d make sure of it.

I tried not to look at the sexy ink on his forearms. Dressed-up and classy on the outside, but dig down a few layers, and Dominic Russo was a primal, rough-around-the-edges sex god.

On Valentine’s Day, I got every assistant on the floor a flower arrangement just so I could give her something. I signed her card “From Linus” so she’d keep the fucking flowers.

Every night, I watched her leave without a word and wished she were going home with me.

I didn’t know what was worse, seeing her all day every day and not speaking to her or watching her leave and not knowing what she was doing.

I was so pathetically happy that she was speaking to me in multisyllabic words I would have let her slap me across the face with the folder.

“Ally, you’re the kind of fairy tale we all need,” Nina insisted. “Poor country bumpkin—”“Hey, I’m from Jersey, jerk.”