Sheltering His Desire by Allyson Lindt

could get into your apartment.” She held up
a second bag, and he realized it had clothes in it. His clothes.
She shrugged, playful smile dancing on her face. “Wishful
thinking.”
    The desire he’d squelched earlier rushed
back. He stood, tangled his fingers in her hair, and crushed his
mouth to hers. She whimpered against his lips and dug her fingers
into his shoulders. His pulse roared in his veins, mingling with
the desire to press her against the wall and strip her down. He
subdued most of the response. “Thank you.”
    Pink dotted her cheeks. “How’s it going?”
    “Good. Getting it under control.” He traced
his thumb over the back of her neck, and twisted a strand of hair
around one finger. “Still got a few more hours, though.”
    She nodded behind her, but didn’t break his
grip. “I’ll be in the living room, watching TV.”
    “Do we have the new landing page?” Jared
asked.
    Alyssia shook her head, and stepped out of
Tate’s reach. “Good luck.”
    Tate wanted to chase her. He forced himself
to unmute his phone instead. “Yeah. ETA to deploy, five minutes.”
He dove back into the grind, picking at his food, even after it
went cold. The light outside faded, and computer clock told him it
was after ten when they finally declared the day a success.
    “This saved my project, and my ass today,”
Tate said, as he and Jared wrapped everything up.
    “You’re welcome. You owe me.”
    “Bullshit. This is you paying me back for
that all-nighter in Vegas.” The weekend Jared and Mikki met had led
to a major crisis for the company as well. All of them had pulled
an all-nighter to bring things back under control.
    “Fine.” Jared laughed. “You okay to make it
home? Sleep in your own bed?”
    Tate forced himself to ignore the emphasized
word. “It’s only ten. I’m not an old man. But now that you mention
it… the couch here looks pretty comfy.” A twinge in his neck
reminded him he’d spent last night there, and that might not
actually be true. Then again, he’d only slept a few hours, and he’d
been hunched over a computer all day.
    “I’m glad we got this sorted,” Jared said.
“And at least as glad you’re not serious.”
    Tate ignored the lack of conviction in his
best friend’s voice. “Totally. Night, man.” He disconnected, and
leaned back in the chair. Exhaustion, combined with Jared’s
half-joke, summoned a doubt Tate had managed to suppress since last
night. What was he doing? Carrying on like this wasn’t helping
either of them. He should have gone home this morning. Or last
night. Whatever he was doing with Alyssia wasn’t going anywhere.
How had he justified it to himself?
    So why did knowing that ache in his joints,
and rattle uncomfortably in his head?
    “How’d it go?” Lys’s soft question startled
him. “Sorry to interrupt. I heard you hang up.”
    He whirled to find her standing in the door.
The way she leaned against the frame accentuated her lithe figure,
and he let his gaze trip over her curves. “It’s fixed. We’ll put
more permanent measures in place on Tuesday.”
    She hooked her thumbs in the belt loops of
her shorts, pulling just low enough to tease. “So what now?”
    She wasn’t talking about work. He didn’t need
to clarify with her. That didn’t make his answer come any easier,
though. He needed to tell her he was leaving. Thank her for
everything. Walk out the front door, and dial all the flirting back
to zero. The words repeated in his thoughts on fast-forward until
they were a scrambled mess of squeals. He was exhausted, still
wearing the same clothes he’d been in yesterday, and hadn’t had
more than four hours of sleep any given night in the last
several.
    But watching Lys’s chest rise and fall with
each breath. The way she chewed her bottom lip. The tick of her
thumbs against her bare stomach. It sent a new rush of energy
through him, and the reminder they had unfinished business from
this morning. He crossed the room, and