Chapter 12 - Fighting the Attraction.

An Hour Later…

Charleigh Smith…

Being around Jason was growing more and more difficult. The moment I admitted my attraction to him aloud - it is as if my mind was simply waiting for that and is now almost entirely consumed by him. There is no reprieve from it, no stopping the fact that he consumes my mind day and night.

Dreams that started off innocent enough but have quickly progressed to wet dreams – so erotic that I am back to living like a damn teenager with no control over my impulses.

Excitement bubbles in my tummy whenever my eyes find him for the first second in the morning – as if eight hours being separated is simply far too long.

Pleasure licks through my veins whenever I hear that soft timber of his voice – it feels more and more like I am fifteen years old all over again and having an inappropriate crush.

A bone deep contentment when he brushes his hand against my arm, or when he hugs me, or even when he brushes up against me in the kitchen. I am at his mercy, and he doesn't even realise it. I know that he doesn't. And he doesn't grant me that mercy - it's wave upon wave of torture that has never felt so fucking amazing before.

I'm no stranger to men and all the things that come with attraction, but nothing has ever felt this amazing before. I feel like I have this constant ache between my legs, like a burning need that only he can quench. I can't even imagine what it would feel like if I tried to even look at another man right now. But that is where the problem is - as attracted as I am to him, I have to remember that he is my best friend's dad.

That means it isn't a good idea. I know that. I am not stupid. We would be risking far too much to even think about trying to see where this could take us, right?

On the one hand - I just know that the chemistry that flows between us is just too strong for it not to be amazing if we gave in. I can imagine the sex would be the most rewarding and explosive of my life. But then what?

We date.

Get married.

Have kids of our own.

Sure, that could all happen but what if the opposite happened?

We argue.

We fight.

We break-up.

Where would that leave Dakota and me? Our friendship would be in tatters because there is no way that I would ever expect her to pick me over her dad and it would be far too awkward for us to continue our friendship. I would not only lose a man that I already can't bear to think of not being in my life and I would lose the best friend that I have ever had.

No. I have to remember that things with Jensen are better kept as a fantasy and nothing more. But boy, what a fucking fantasy. Even in my dreams - he leaves me more satisfied than any man I have ever been with. The first night I had a sex dream about him, I was so embarrassed to face him in the morning that I was pretty sure astronauts would have been able to see me from the space station as my face lit up with all of the ferocity of a thousand suns. Thankfully, Dakota was the only one who noticed, and she teased me later when we were alone in her room. Before admitting she was having her own erotic night-time dates.

What a pair we were. Both lusting after the men we were currently living with.

"So, today I was hoping we could start you off on the admin side of things-" Jason announced on the drive into his garage.

The roads had been swept clear of snow but to see it all built up on the side of the roads was not something that I ever imagined I would ever see. Today was the first day we were all venturing out of the cocoon of the house where the world outside had ceased to exist during the storm.

"I'm here to do as you say boss-man!" I replied and only as the last word left my mouth did, I realise just how suggestive my response had just sounded.

Get a fucking grip, Char! I know better than this. I am usually so careful with the way I talk to others, especially men I like but there is something about Jason that seems to sneak past all of my defences. And with my mind still 100% focused on that damn dream from last night - I fear I am not at all at my best.

I caught the way he moved in his seat before seeming to catch his composure and replied, "you have no idea how much of a help this will be. I am not expecting a lot of physical work today, or for a little while with the roads still causing some issues, so best to get on top of the paperwork while we have a lull in the grunt work!"

"Makes sense. And as I said, you're the boss. You tell me what to do and I do it," I agreed with him, but it wasn't difficult to catch the sudden tensing of his shoulders and the white knuckles that gripped the steering wheel as he was clearly fighting with himself not to look at me.

Is it possible that he is as affected by me as I am by him?

I mean, sure the idea has crossed my mind a couple of times, but I always dismissed it because it felt safer to not know. Safer for my resolve to keep my distance. But how can I remain distanced if I know that he is feeling the same way as I am?

Dakota has given me her blessing to pursue this if it is something that I really want too. But I promised myself that I wouldn't. I have to think of my life outside of this attraction and Dakota has been my best friend for the past three years - it is a friendship that both of us rely on. That girl may be inexperienced with men, but she knows how to support me when some asshole breaks my heart, has the best advice when I need it and always has my back when I need it. I can't jeopardise that for something that might not last. I won't risk it.

I just have to keep remembering that. I have to hold on to the fact that Jason is taboo. And as exciting as that is - it can't go anywhere. It has no future. It will cause nothing but pain and problems that can be avoided by remaining firmly in the friend zone. Right?

I can do this, can't I?

I can hold onto my resolve and just be friends with this man.

"Great," he finally replied but there was a tightness to his tone, like he was holding back something, "I have a skeleton crew coming in for the next couple of days so you will meet everyone eventually over the rest of the week,"

"Sounds like a plan!" I nodded, turning my head from him, and looking out the window.

I have to create boundaries. I have to draw a line in the sand and ensure that we both remain on our side. No crossing over. No reaching over.

Friendship. That is all I am prepared to offer. It has to be. I just hoped that my heart would get with the programme and be back in harmony with my head as it normally is. I may be attracted to Jason on a level that feels very new to me but that does not mean that it has to be pursued.

Jason Adler…

Sometimes my own stupidity astounds even me.

Why the fuck did I think that offering Charleigh a job was a good idea?

Why did I think that spending more time with her was the answer?

I mean, it's not as if I didn't know what asking her to work in my garage would entail. Travelling to work with her, spending all day with her, travelling home with her at the end of the workday and then spending the majority of the evening in her presence - the dreams I had already been having were going to increase ten-fold. I could see it now. Why the fuck hadn't I seen it when offering the job?

Because you were thinking with your dick! A small voice whispers in the back of my head. It was true. As much as I don't want it to be true, it is true. I let my mind be led by my cock.

From the moment I laid eyes on her I was devising plans to get to spend more time with her. This morning when she walked into the kitchen wearing a pair of faded and distressed jeans and a thick purple jumped that she promised she didn't mind getting messy if I needed her to work on anything, she was a fucking vision that impacted my head and heart as much as she impacted my cock.

Fresh from another night of dreams of her - it had taken all of my self-control not to pull her against me and kiss her the way I have wanted to do from the moment I laid eyes on her.

I know that I can't.

I know that I shouldn't.

I know that she has to be off limits. Yet my body can't stop yearning for her. I haven't felt this way about a woman in the longest time. I wish that I could say that I know how to cope with all of this, but I really don't. It is completely new territory for me.

Having Dakota here is everything I have wished for the past 15 years, and I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. But that is the point I have to remember - Charleigh is my daughter's friend, best friend - and it isn't hard to miss the fact that the two girls seem almost as close as Jeremy and I have always been. Dakota has expressed to me just how influential and supportive Charleigh has been to her over the three years of them being friends and how she wasn't entirely sure that she would be here with me now if it hadn't been for her friend.

I can't ruin that for my daughter.

I won't ruin it for her.

As much as I believe that Charleigh and I could be incredible together; she is my daughter's best friend first and foremost and honestly there is no guarantee that whatever is sparking between me and her would last. There is certainly no guarantee that it would end well either.

If we got together and it just didn't work for some reason - Dakota would be stuck in the middle and honestly my daughter has already had one parent let her down so epically that I can see how she has almost hardened herself, the way she feared that I would somehow end up like her mother was more than obvious in the way she would apologize for just turning up. I couldn't be a disappointment to her. I had to be the better parent. I had to get her to see that she should stay here with me.

So, despite the fact that Charleigh made me hotter than any woman before her, I have to find a way to make my dreams enough for me. I had to find a way to stop myself from devising ways to make them a reality.

Of course, that was all made even harder when I could see that the woman of my dreams felt the same way about me as I did about her.

It was all a whole new level of torture that I wasn't prepared for, and it was warping my sense of reality. Twisting the way, I was looking and acting around the woman. I had to stop myself because the very last thing that I wanted to do was give her mixed signals - she deserved better than that.

"We're almost there," I told her for the sake of having something to say to cut through this tension that was hanging in the air from the double entendre of her previous statements. Jesus my cock hasn't ever been this hard.

I can feel it thumping against the seam of my own jeans desperately. The way it is throbbing with need that I'll be surprised if there isn't a little wet patch from the pre-cum leaking out of the tip - I can feel it almost pumping out of me like a release. This was another thing that took me by surprise. The effect she had on me was new, it was exciting, it was intense in ways that made my resolve weaken a little more every damn time my damn cock sprung to life.

"I'm looking forward to it," she admitted, her hands stuffed under her thighs, and I wondered if she had done that to stop herself from reaching out for me, "as weird as it sounds - I have spent so much of my life in a garage that they always feel oddly calming for me!"

"It's not weird, I absolutely understand what you mean by that," I agreed with her, "so have you decided whether you are going to stay or not?"

"I would love to stay but I will need to get a visa and they usually only last for six months, anything longer than that I risk being kicked out of the country,"

I hated that. And not for the first time the idea of marrying this girl pops into my thoughts.

Of course, she was right about the work visa and how long she would be permitted to stay, the only way to get her a full green card would be to marry her and the more I thought about it the more appealing the idea became to me.

Would Dakota be ok with that?

I fear asking my daughter about my thoughts, because there's a part of me that is terrified that she will shut me down without question. Forbid me from going anywhere near her best friend and honestly, I wouldn't blame her. In the parent lottery my daughter had missed out on a decent mother - so much so that I was determined to be a better father than Anna was a mother.

However, to begin with, six months would be long enough, right?

Long enough for what? I don't actually know. I am almost entirely certain that all I can give this woman is friendship. I mean I am a thirty-five-year-old man who is having a completely inappropriate fantasy about a woman who is ten years younger than me. I mean that in itself isn't exactly something that is out of the ordinary. No, it isn't so much the age difference as it is the fact that she is my daughter's best friend.

I had to find a way to control myself.

I have to find a way to look at this amazing woman whom I have so much in common with and see her as nothing more than a friend, an employee, my daughter's best friend.

Yeah, good luck with that! A small voice sneers in the back of my mind.