Every Part of You: Takes Me (#5) Read Online Free PDF

out just how far I’d go to keep her that way.”
    “You’re playing with fire.”
    “Better to risk getting burned,” Jimmy said, “then to never let yourself get close enough to be warmed by the flame.”
    There was silence, a long one, in which the sudden ping of Simone’s phone from her purse startled them both. She laughed. Jimmy did, too.
    “So deep,” she told him, mocking, but gently. “Such a philosopher.”
    Jimmy buffed his nails elaborately on the front of his shirt and gave her a smarmy grin. “What can I say. Ladies love it when a guy gets deep.”
    “Perv.” Simone rolled her eyes. Her phone pinged again. She looked at her bag with a sigh.
    “Aren’t you going to answer it?”
    “No. It’s a voice mail from my mom or maybe from Aidan. Or from my friend Teresa. I owe her a call.” Tree had called Simone every day, trying to get her to have lunch. Dinner. To sleep over, have a girls’ night. Simone had declined, but there was only so long Tree could be put off.
    “You hanging out here any longer?”
    “I should. But no. I don’t want to. I’m tired and it’s late and, sorry,” she gave him a wink and a grin bordering on wicked, “I don’t have the motivation you do.”
    Jimmy laughed and gathered his files. “You want me to walk you to the bus stop?”
    “No. I’m good.” Simone made sure her computer was off and stood to sling her bag over her shoulder. “And Jimmy … really, congratulations on the job. And the other stuff.”
    He nodded, then after a second or so, blushed again. “I can’t tell anyone else about it, you know? Not just because she’s my boss. But because of the other stuff. My friends don’t get it. They’d think I was pussy whipped.”
    He walked with her to the door and Simone shut it behind them. “Your friends have kinks of their own. What you like isn’t so strange, Jimmy. Believe me.”
    “My dad would shit a brick. He’d disown me if he thought I was letting a woman boss me around. I mean, he already thinks I’m an asshole for taking the job with an actual woman boss. If he knew about the other stuff…”
    “Your dad’s a Neanderthal,” Simone said as they walked the dim and quiet hallway to the elevator. She turned to him and put a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place until he looked her in the eyes. “Giving yourself up to another person isn’t wrong or sick, and it doesn’t make you an asshole to like it. It doesn’t make Tasha a bitch to want a man on his knees for her, either. People like what they like, and when you find that person who can give you what you like, you shouldn’t let anyone get in the way of that.”
    Jimmy nodded. “Is that what happened with you and that guy? Anderson?”
    Simone frowned, wishing she could find a smile, a breezy reply. Instead, she had to swallow against another one of those fucking rushes of emotion that kept threatening to send her to her knees. When would that stop? When would it feel better?
    “No. It wasn’t someone else. It was all him.”
    “I never liked that guy,” Jimmy said.
    Simone shrugged. “What can I say? I got close to the flame. I got burned.”
    “I’m sorry,” Jimmy said as the elevator doors opened. “That sucks.”
    “Hard and mightily,” Simone agreed. On impulse, she pushed onto her toes to kiss his cheek. Into his ear, just to make him blush again, she whispered, “You’re a good boy, Jimmy.”
    Then she got on the elevator and let it take her down.
    *   *   *
    Elliott was just getting in his car when he saw Simone. Walking with purpose, keys bristling in her fist, she scanned the parking garage back and forth with such determination that anyone who even had a passing thought of jumping her would be a fool. It made him smile, the way she walked, like she was ready to kick the world’s ass for crossing her. When he stepped out from behind his car and said her name, he was lucky she didn’t drop-kick him.
    “I have a bus to catch,” she said