Updated Release Date: 12.28.2016!! [excerpt]

(Because I know y’all are low-key freaks, lol)

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“Why do you want to? Are you trying to run your fingers through my hair? You can’t. And I don’t mean I don’t want you to…you literally can’t. The way my hair is set up—”

There was no use in talking. He was already unraveling the elastic, which had actually been a headband she’d looped around in order to fit her massive head of curls. The strap on the Starbucks cap had been holding on for its dear life. It was her fourth hat, and it kept its hold like it knew what had happened to the other three, and was determined not to fall to the same fate.

The elastic snapped in the middle of his removing it and her hair expanded like a lungs filling with air. The sensation was freeing, and it released a tension headache that had been bugging her all evening, but she could only imagine how crazy she looked.

“Hmm.”

“I’m going to need more than that from you, Dr. Edwards.” She closed her eyes as his fingers meandered into her hair and scalp. “You’ve released Medusa. I’m afraid that if I look at you now, you’ll turn into stone.”

She looked up. His fingers stopped moving and he went completely still, without even as much as a blink. She swatted him in the chest.

“You’re so corny.”

“And you love me for it.”

I will.

The intruding thought surprised her, but she didn’t give it too much thought. She couldn’t, not with the way his hands were giving life to her scalp.

“What if I’d said I didn’t like your hair?” he asked. “Or that it made you less attractive this way, in its natural state?”

His fingers moved to the base of her skull, massaging in small, tight circles. She almost had to remind the space between her legs now throbbing with heat that he wasn’t touching her there.

“I’d be hurt,” she answered. “Why? You don’t?”

“I do.” He gently pressed against the curve of her neck. “But I’m supposed to, Bailey.”

“I’m not following you.” She almost moaned it.

“Feel good?” he asked.

Apparently, she had moaned it. “It feels amazing.”

“My accomplishments,” he went on. “Do you feel like they somehow translate to us and our relationship? Like because I went to Johns Hopkins and you, I don’t know, work at Starbucks, we’re unsuited for each other?”

Yes.

“Why?”

Dammit, she’d said that out loud too. She was losing herself to his magic fingers which were now caressing the space behind her ears.

“What if you want to invite me to fancy dinners with your colleagues?”

When he didn’t respond, she opened her eyes.

“Your point?” he asked.

“I can’t talk about the latest developments in medicine.”

“You won’t be there to talk to them.”

His fingers were moving south again, and he tipped her forward so that her forehead was pressed against him while he trailed his massage down her spinal column. If he’d asked her to have his children right then, she was one-hundred and eight percent sure she would have agreed.

“So I’d be there to…what? Look pretty?”

“That’s as easy for you as breathing, Bailey.”

She snorted a laugh.

“You’d be there to support me, share in the experience, and be on my arm because you’re in my life,” he explained. “Look at me, Bailey.” His fingers regretfully stopped moving, but he moved his hand around to navigate her chin until they were eye to eye. “Fuck them.”

There was a devious flicker in his eyes that made her hands inch closer to his zipper. “Fuck who?”

“Whoever told you that you aren’t good enough, just as you are. They lied to you, Bailey.”

He felt wonderful pressed against her, his deep voice soothing, and she wanted to remain right where she was.

“Why do you keep saying that?” she asked.

“Because I know someone did.”

“I’ve never been told I’m not good enough.”

He shrugged. “Maybe not out loud. Maybe not with those words. But maybe in another way.”

Like hurling a book across the room at me at full speed when I was three years old? Maybe pretending that I don’t exist whenever it suits her? Treating me like her biggest regret?

Bailey searched the seconds of silence to make sure she hadn’t spoken her thoughts.

“I won’t bring it up again,” she promised, not quite sure she could keep it.

“You will.” He leaned forward and brushed his lips over hers. She shivered and wrapped her fingers behind his neck, the hairs at his nape silky against the pads of her fingertips. “You will until you stop believing it. Until I’ve convinced you that it’s not true, show you that it’s bullshit and that you’re perfect like this.”

He thrust his fingers into her hair, gently gripped her scalp, and walked until her back pressed into something solid. A wall, she guessed. Her senses were blocked, and her thoughts were muted. She might as well have been leaning against the steel grates of a cage. Only instinct existed—the thud in her chest, her grip on his body, the movement of her mouth as his came down on hers, hard and possessive. A passion she never knew existed erupted inside of her as he nibbled on her mouth, flicking his tongue against the corners before thrusting between her lips. He kissed her like he’d created her, like he knew exactly what spot on her bottom lip would make her whimper, and the precise pressure she’d need of his tongue against hers to cause her leg to lift and lock around his waist.

The combination of his hard body and soft massage against her scalp sent her to heights she’d never before experienced. She could make love to him right there in his office, couldn’t she? He’d said that he was willing to take his time, but no man would wait forever.

He groaned, shifted, and long, hard and thick met the space between her legs. She started to slink down to her knees to greet it, but he picked her up and steadied her back against the wall.

“Kellen, I want you,” she managed between swollen and tender lips.

He groaned and pumped his hips, pressing into her while his mouth moved to her neck. “Not in my office. Not the first time.”

“I want you. Please.”

His phone went off on his desk, but they ignored it. Bailey’s hands moved to his belt. “If not in me,” she said, “then in my mou—”