She could not contain it. God help her she did enough containing for a decade and she wasn't holding back any longer.

When Pepper Potts felt the warmth and softness of his lips crash into hers everything went up in smoke. She was never kissed this way, hell she never felt this way about a kiss. It was everything combined, gentle and hungry mixed with a savageness she couldn't explain. The next thing she knew she had dropped her laptop sending it crashing unto the floor in a bang. That didn't stop them they just kept kissing. Her hands found his soft hair and his hands found her waist.

And then she stopped. Pepper Potts froze.

Pepper broke the kiss and Tony stopped immediately, both stood breathing jaggedly. He searched her eyes, he smirked perhaps a nervous habit when he was uncertain, and she still just kept on staring at him.

"I need to go."

Pepper walked past him in such a hurry her presence could have easily been fabricated for the exception of leaving behind the trail of her flowery perfume to tease his senses and question his memory on fact vs. fiction.

Pepper nearly ran to her car yanking the door shut. She simply sat there confused and her heart racing. She placed her feverish forehead on the cool feel of the stirring wheel. God it felt soothing, her face felt like she was going to catch fire at any given moment. Then her mind drifted off to that kiss that nearly imploded her heart. What had she just done? She knew what she did, she kissed her boss, but at that moment she kissed him as if he was a man a man she could be with. The man she wanted the man that would tease about how she spend too much on shoes, or on how she was a neat freak and rambled on too much. A man that would love her when she was sick in bed with a red nose, a man that was not her boss. It could never happen, it would never happen.

Why?

That stupid little voice in her head would say, and that was when she started with her mental list of pros and cons. It was always the same thing. Pros: she loved him, she believes he might feel the same, he's handsome devilishly so, sexy, funny, goodhearted...with motives. No scratch that, she thought, he was a good man a very good man she knew that. Cons: Herself, she could never live up to that type of life, to be Tony Stark's girlfriend was liking being Katie Holmes to Tom Cruise, her life would spiral into chaos and Pepper Potts did not do chaos. Her little inner voice would suggest that it was fear that held her back. Maybe it was fear, fear that she may not be good enough, may lose him, may love him too much and in the process be disappointed. She couldn't bare it. Pepper had loved this man for almost a decade, all of him, his flaws , his habits everything about him she loved. Even the things she couldn't stand, like his loud music and his lady friends and his overly active sex life...or was and no longer is. Everything about him she loved to the very tiniest bit and if she was to lose it she would die, she knew she would never be the same again. Her stupid head always had to get in the way.

Why had his attention all of a sudden shift on her why on earth did he have to be so per—

Pepper snapped back to reality in a rush. She took a deep breath in and heard soft knocking on her side door window. She looked up and found Tony looking down at her concern etched on his face.

She instinctively brought the window down with a light pressure of her finger. She looked up at him almost self-consciously.

"Come back inside Pepper." It was more of a pleading sort of voice then an order.

Pepper looked in the distance and answered him solemnly.

"I can't. That shouldn't have happened."

Tony smiled warmly, she was too much sometimes. "I know," Pepper looked up at him instantly and he noted how she looked almost, could he say it hurt, he smiled affectionately and opened the car door to the driver's seat. "You shouldn't have walked out on me." Her hurt was replaced but a slight slouch of her tense shoulders and a small smile.

"Tony..."

He reached his open hand to her his eyes pleading for her to take it. She glanced at it, it looked calloused and strong and warm and safe. God she wanted to feel safe...but was he safe, could Tony Stark ever be considered as safe? Her heart said yes but her head said no. She always obeyed her head. She looked up at Tony once more, his soft brown eyes melting into her blue ones.

She told her head to piss off.

She delicately placed her hand in his he gave it a protective and affectionate squeeze. She stood up and he closed the car door behind her.

They walked back to the mansion in slow steady strides. "Maybe I came on to strong, huh."

Pepper smiled and squeezed his hand. "Maybe just a little."

He smiled and caressed her knuckles with his thumb. "I think I owe you a new laptop."

He let out a soft chuckle when her beautiful lips formed themselves into a little 'o', she had forgotten about that.

It was safe to say that for once her head was wrong, Pepper thought as she walked inside the mansion hand and hand with the singing yes of her heart.