“That’s reassuring.” I placed a hand on his chest, needing a bit of space between us. He dropped his hand, but he didn’t let me out of his lap. “This is . . . this is crazy.”

“Crazy can be good,” he replied, one side of his lips kicking up.

“Or crazy can be the kind of crazy that ends really badly,” I reasoned, trying to grasp onto sanity. “We just can’t do this.”

“And why not?” His other hand fell to my bare knee. The contact caused me to jerk in his arms.

I thought there were plenty of reasons why. “We . . . we work together, Brock. If we do this and it blows up in our faces, we have to keep working together. I can’t let my dad down,” I said. “I . . . I can’t let myself down.”

“Why do you think it will blow up in our faces?” His question sounded genuine. “Do you think that I would be here if I thought it would hurt you in the end?”

I stared at him, wanting so badly to believe his words, but I never thought he’d hurt me as badly as I’d allowed him to before. “Why?” I asked. “Why now, after all this time?”

“It . . . it just changed. I don’t know exactly when it happened,” he said, voice rough as sandpaper. “If it was the night I saw you at the restaurant, or your first day at work, when you cocked major attitude at me. That wasn’t the Jilly I knew, and it threw me through the damn loop, because it was fucking hot. I don’t know if it was when you hugged me after that dinner, because that was the Jilly I knew, but you didn’t feel like her in my arms.”

I couldn’t think, could barely breathe, as his words washed over me and his eyes closed. The hand on my thigh slid all the way up, over my stomach and then my breast, and a ragged sound left me as his palm grazed the aching tip, but kept moving until his fingers circled the base of my neck, his thumb resting against my wildly beating pulse.

“Or maybe it happened before I even saw you again,” he said, appearing to be talking to himself, but that statement didn’t make any sense. His eyes opened and shone like polished obsidian. “Maybe it was seeing you finally relax and laugh the night we went out with your friends. It could’ve been falling asleep with you lying against me. Hell, what we did that night had a lot to do it with it.”

My gaze searched his tense, strained features.