Kissing my Co-worker Read online

  KISSING MY CO-WORKER

  by

  J. Sterling

  KISSING MY CO-WORKER

  Copyright © 2022 by J. Sterling

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by:

  Jovana Shirley

  Unforeseen Editing

  www.unforeseenediting.com

  Cover Design by:

  Michelle Preast

  www.michelle-preast.com

  www.facebook.com/IndieBookCovers

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This serial e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Please do not participate or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-945042-36-2

  Please visit the author’s website

  www.j-sterling.com

  to find out where additional versions may be purchased.

  Thank you for downloading this book.

  Sign up for my newsletter to get emails about new releases, upcoming releases, and special price promotions:

  NEWSLETTER

  Come join my private reader group on Facebook for giveaways:

  PRIVATE READER GROUP

  NEVER MISS A NEW RELEASE AGAIN!

  Text: Jack

  To: 77948

  Other Books by J. Sterling

  Bitter Rivals- an enemies to lovers romance

  Dear Heart, I Hate You

  10 Years Later- A Second Chance Romance

  In Dreams – a new adult college romance

  Chance Encounters- a coming of age story

  The Game Series

  The Perfect Game - Book One

  The Game Changer - Book Two

  The Sweetest Game - Book Three

  The Other Game (Dean Carter) – Book Four

  The Playboy Serial

  Avoiding the Playboy- Episode #1

  Resisting the Playboy- Episode #2

  Wanting the Playboy- Episode #3

  The Celebrity Series

  Seeing Stars- Madison & Walker

  Breaking Stars- Paige & Tatum

  Losing Stars- Quinn & Ryson

  The Fisher Brothers Series

  No Bad Days – a New Adult, Second Chance Romance

  Guy Hater – an Emotional Love Story

  Adios Pantalones – a Single Mom Romance

  Happy Ending

  The Boys of Baseball

  (the next generation of fullton state baseball players):

  The Ninth Inning – Cole Anders

  Behind the Plate- Chance Carter

  Safe at First – Mac Davies

  Fun for the Holidays

  (a collection of stand-alone novels with holiday based themes)

  Kissing my Co-worker

  Dumped for Valentine’s

  Table of Contents

  Other Books by J. Sterling

  SORRY, AM I DROOLING?

  IS IT WRONG TO HIT A COWORKER?

  SOMETHING IS UP

  STOP BEING A PUSSY

  THAT WAS WEIRD

  PARTY OF THE YEAR

  WAIT, WHAT?

  LEAVING LILY

  COLTON FUCKING ADAMS

  TYPICAL AND CHEESY

  GET MY GIRL

  ONE HELL OF A KISS

  FINALLY

  BETTER THAN DREAMS

  EPILOGUE

  Other Books by J. Sterling

  About the Author

  SORRY, AM I DROOLING?

  LILY

  I wasn’t the type of woman who’d ever wanted to sleep with a coworker. Every job I’d had before this one, I’d been able to contain my emotions and my desires, easily separating business from pleasure and without any real challenge. There wasn’t a single guy that I’d thought about outside of the office. Ever. At least, that had always been the case before I started working with Declan I’m so ridiculously sexy that I make your panties melt with just one look in your direction Maguire.

  Now, it was all I could think about. During work. After work. And on weekends.

  Screwing him on his oversize mahogany desk as folders and papers crashed to the floor around us like confetti during the Macy’s Day Parade.

  Him taking me from behind in the conference room as I gripped the edge of the table for leverage, pushing back into him, the sounds reverberating throughout the otherwise empty space.

  Fucking him in the corporate kitchen, where we’d first met, my legs wrapped around his hips as he pounded into me with reckless abandon.

  Declan had turned me into a walking hormone factory, and I had never, ever in my twenty-eight years on this earth fantasized about a man the way I dreamed about all the things that I could do to him.

  It was a problem.

  Mostly because I knew it was written all over my face whenever he looked at me. I had no idea how to hide it—this overwhelming desire to drop to my knees and please the ever-loving fuck out of him. Literally. I had to stop myself from doing it each time he walked by.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  And even though there weren’t hard and fast rules about dating coworkers at Rockline Studios, it definitely seemed frowned upon. Especially when it dealt with a subordinate and a superior within the same department. I’d heard rumblings about some things that had happened before I started working here, but at this point, I had no idea what was reality and what was overblown fiction. We were required to attend multiple human resource classes upon getting hired and take yearly refresher courses online. I’d signed a document that stated I would let them know if someone in a position above me ever made me feel uncomfortable or made unwanted sexual advances.

  At this point, I wished Declan would do something as reckless as hit on me or shove his tongue down my throat in the elevator. Not so I could report him for it, but so that I could take him up on the offer and finally know what it was like to kiss him. At least then, I’d know that he felt the same way instead of wondering if he truly ever saw me as anything other than the person who sometimes answered his phones.

  “Lily? Are you listening?”

  I looked up to see Ellen, the object of my lust’s actual assistant, hovering above my desk. “I’m sorry, what?”

  She managed a small smile but looked annoyed at my obvious lack of respect. Ellen had been in our department the longest and was therefore the unofficial Matriarch of executive assistants. I knew she planned on working here until she couldn’t work any longer. She’d informed me of that fact on more than one occasion, hinting that everyone else was temporary while she was as permanent as the statue at the front gates.

  “I was saying that I have an appointment during lunch, so I’ll be longer than an hour. Is that okay in terms of coverage?” she asked, and I nodded.

  “Of course. It’s fine,” I said without a second thought because it was.

  Part of our job requirem
ents was to cover the other executive assistants’ phones whenever they took a break or lunch. We coordinated with one another, scheduling around conflicts without any of the drama that usually accompanied a throng of women working together. It might have seemed old school, but the majority of the assistants in this particular department of Rockline Studios were women—with one exception.

  That wasn’t to say that the actual executives were all men because they weren’t. There were two women running things here, but I wasn’t assigned to either of them. And to tell you the truth, if Ellen decided one day to leave and never come back, I’d ask to switch from my boss to hers. And not just because I was in freaking love with the guy.

  My boss was a complete dickhole with no qualms about acting like one. Marlo DeLong couldn’t pick up his own phone and dial numbers if his life depended on it, yet he still insisted on treating me like he was somehow above me. Excuse me for not going to Harvard and into debt for the rest of my life for an education I could get somewhere else.

  And unlike my typical douche bag of a boss, Declan Maguire never asked Ellen to fetch him coffee. He actually got his own.

  When he’d introduced himself to me on my first day in our department kitchen, he’d poured me a cup, adding in one cream and one sugar—the way I liked it—before handing it over to me with a smile. Before I could ask him how he knew how I took it, he explained that he’d seen me make it that way earlier in the morning. It was a kindness he didn’t have to show me, but he still had, and I thought I’d started falling for him right then and there.

  I’d been falling ever since.

  Declan never acted like he was above me—or anyone really—which was more than I could say for a lot of the other guys here. It was an ego thing. Men were typically ruled by it, but Declan never came off the same way. Maybe it was his thick Boston accent or the way he looked—all rogue, like he half didn’t give a shit and half did. His dirty-blond hair always seemed to be mussed, the strands heading in different directions, but it suited him. On other men, it might look silly, out of place, or unprofessional, but on Declan, it just … worked. And don’t get me started on those green eyes. They were things of beauty that starred in many of my dreams at night.

  “Morning.” The accent hit my ears, and I shook my head to glance up into the green eyes that haunted me.

  He was devilishly handsome, and I could feel my pulse starting to race with his presence.

  “Good morning,” I said with a smile I wished I could stop. It was embarrassing how badly I wanted this man. And I swore he knew it. How could he not?

  He walked away, and I admired his ass as he went before Ellen cleared her throat. I looked at her, and she shook her head at me with disapproval before following him into his office for their morning meeting. Even she knew how I felt about him. How mortifying!

  “Lily!”

  The sound of my voice being screamed into the hallway caused me to groan to myself, but I might have actually done it out loud.

  “Today, Lily! Come on!”

  I pushed up from my desk and headed toward my boss’s office to begin another day of hell, being the assistant and verbal punching bag to the biggest asshole in our entire department.

  IS IT WRONG TO HIT A COWORKER?

  DECLAN

  I swore to God that if I heard Marlo shout Lily’s name one more fucking time, I was going to head in there and punch him square in the jaw. At least that would get him to shut the hell up for a few seconds. The guy was a grade-A asshole. A complete tool who not only thought he was above his assistant, but the rest of us executive staff as well. He was your classic rich kid—you know the type. The one who had everything handed to him, including this job. Something about his dad being fraternity brothers with one of the bigwigs in the company.

  I hated the guy.

  And he had my girl.

  “Declan.” My assistant cleared her throat, and I refocused on her. “She’s a strong woman.”

  Shaking my head, I pretended like I had no idea what she was talking about. “Excuse me?”

  Ellen shifted uncomfortably in the chair across from my desk. I could tell that she was scared she’d crossed over some kind of invisible line.

  “I just meant that Lily can handle Marlo. She’s been doing it every day for over two years now.”

  I nodded. “I know. I just hate the way he screams out her name like he’s too good to walk over to her desk or call her on the phone like a decent person.”

  “He is a special kind of asshole, if you don’t mind me saying,” Ellen said, and I started laughing.

  I’d never heard her curse before. She always acted too refined and above all the nonsense we brought into the department on some days. Plus, she was old enough to be my mom, so I was a little afraid of her at times, to be honest. But the swearing, it was downright refreshing. I wondered what had taken her so long to let loose with me.

  “He is, isn’t he?” I asked with a smile, and she focused her attention back on the notebook in her hand.

  We went over my schedule for the day, and she let me know that she would be taking an extra-long lunch and that Lily would be covering my phones during that time. I tried to calm my heart down, but it got excited, just hearing that bit of news.

  “Declan,” Ellen started to say in the mom-like warning tone.

  I braced myself for what was going to come. It was like I forgot that I was the boss here.

  I cocked my head to the side and waited for Ellen to finish her thought, but she only stared at me, the wrinkles around her eyes more pronounced than usual, and I wondered for a second if she was okay, health-wise.

  “Yes?” I pressed, and she blew out a quick breath.

  “Just … be careful, is all.” She knew. “You do remember what happened to Gustavo, don’t you?”

  Damn.

  Ellen knew just the right punches to throw. It was like a brick to the guts.

  Gustavo had fallen in love with his assistant. Normally, that might have just been a little sensitive in terms of the work environment if things went sour, but the bigger issue was that Gustavo’s wife wasn’t down with this love affair. She threatened to kill them both one night when they were working late. She actually came into the office, waving a handgun as she cried. It hadn’t been pretty.

  “Of course I remember Gustavo. But I’m not married, so there’s no one to piss off.”

  “Andy,” she countered, and I threw my head back and laughed to myself.

  “Dammit, Ellen. I get it.”

  “Just don’t want you going anywhere,” she said before standing up from her chair as thoughts of Gustavo and Andy raced through my brain.

  Andy had also dated an assistant at one time—not his. Things in the office were fine as long as they were happy and getting along, but the second their relationship started to fall apart, the entire department was affected. We were forced to take sides—the assistants on one and what felt like the rest of us on the other even if we weren’t. Our days felt more like a war zone than an office with the battle lines sharply drawn.

  It stopped production like you wouldn’t believe. The assistants controlled our days. They had the power to make us miserable, by doing things like “accidentally” messing up meetings, transposing numbers for a dial-in, and “dropping” calls. It was hell. And all because one grown-ass adult couple had called it quits.

  The assistant was eventually coerced into transferring departments, and we were all told to stop shitting where we ate. While the company couldn’t legally impose a no-dating policy, it had become highly recommended that we keep our dicks in our pants—or so they’d implied in not so many words.

  And while I’d never even been tempted to cross that line in all my years here, Lily St. Claire had started testing my resolve on day one.

  She was so fucking beautiful when I saw her in the kitchen that I almost spit out my lukewarm coffee at the sight of her. I knew that didn’t sound very attractive,
but she’d caught me off guard with her long, dark hair and almond-shaped eyes looking up at me sweetly as I walked in. I watched as she added one cream and one sugar into her coffee before she smiled. At me.

  Good Lord, I almost fell to my knees and started worshipping the ground she walked on based on those lips alone. It took every ounce of strength I had in my body not to take her in my arms and kiss the hell out of her. I walked away instead. Rushed out of the kitchen that morning to pull myself together and gather all the wits I’d apparently lost.

  And I had no fucking idea why she’d made me so crazed. To put it simply, I was drawn to her, whether it was her energy, her vibe, or whatever you wanted to call it. Something about that woman had dragged me in. And I’d felt that draw every single day since. I’d thought the feeling might fade with time, but it never did. It was absolute torture to want someone this badly and be told to stay away from her.

  Lily was smart too. Way too intelligent to be assisting that jackass, Marlo, even though brains were a requirement in order to work here. She should have been working her way up the ladder in another division altogether, not stuck here in a department that didn’t allow for any growth. And that was the truth. Lily had nowhere to go. She could be an executive assistant or not work here. Which was fine for some people, like Ellen, who couldn’t be happier in her job—thank God—but I could tell that Lily had been growing antsy lately. It was written all over her face. She wanted more than we could give her, and I didn’t blame her. I would have craved more too by now.

  “Wait!” I shouted at Ellen before she left my office completely.

  Ellen walked back to the chair across from my desk once more and sat down. “Did we forget something?”

  “Don’t yell at me,” I started to say, and she dropped her pen to the notebook with a thump. “But—”

  “Declan,” she scolded, and I put a hand up to stop her.

  “I overheard Lily talking to you the other day about the advertising department.”