I take her hand, pull her up, and take her to the back of the couch. “Bend over. Let me see that beautiful ass of yours.”
She pulls up her dress to her waist, and I yank down her knickers, a rumble working its way up my chest at the sight of her boot-camped booty. “Such a perfect ass.” I smack her cheek, and she yelps, then wiggles, asking for more.
I give it to her, swatting the other cheek before I reach for my wallet and roll on a condom. I rub my cock against her heat, and I slide inside, shuddering from the sheer intensity.
“I want to spend all night making you feel good,” I groan, bending my chest over her back, gripping her hair. “But we have to go soon. So I’m going to fuck you hard and fast. But know this—I’ve never wanted anyone this much, this intensely.”
“I want you too. So much.”
“And even when I’m fucking you like the clock is ticking, you’ve got to know I don’t want it to end.”
She turns her face, her blue eyes fierce as she meets my gaze. “I don’t want it to end either.”
Maybe we’re both saying other things, meaning other things. But now’s not the time to figure that out. Now is the time for hot, dirty fucking.
That’s what I do, pumping into her, filling her. Thrusting hard, deep. Gripping her.
She moans and groans, pants and cries out, and our noises mingle. Sliding a hand between her legs, I touch her where she wants me most.
She trembles beautifully beneath me, her back arching, her hands clasping the furniture as if she’s holding on for life. “You like it when I do all the work,” I murmur.
“Love it, fucking love it.”
“So do I. Love it this way with you. Love it every way with you.”
Words cease, and grunts and growls take over. Slaps of flesh. Bodies pressing together.
Until she cries out, incoherent as she flies into blissful oblivion.
It doesn’t take me long to follow her over the cliff as I come hard inside her, loving everything, absolutely everything, about the way she makes me feel.
I wrap my arms around her, unable to resist kissing her. I brush my lips to her cheeks, against her hair and the shell of her ear. “You’re spectacular.”
“And you’re going to look less than spectacular in that suit if we don’t get out of here soon.”
We clean up quickly, straightening dress and suit, hair and lipstick. Then we leave, and in the elevator of my building, I take her hand.
That’s all.
And it feels all too right.
So right that it occurs to me—for the first time in ages, I’m not thinking about my lack of interest in relationships. I’m not considering how to avoid entanglements. I’m definitely not dwelling on how to keep someone at a distance. I’m thinking about how I want her all the way in.
And I don’t know how to get her there.
41
I’m rarely at a loss for words. I traffic in them, I juggle them, and I spin them into different combinations, whether with my mouth or my pen. But tonight, I’m not certain I remember how to make the shape of them on my tongue.
Words evade me as we catch a Lyft to the swank cocktail party in a ballroom at the Luxe Hotel. Maybe that’s because there are too many words jostling around my mind, squeezing hard against my heart.
Perhaps that’s the issue.
Words are taking over in a mad alphabet soup. Words I never intended to attach to myself. To my emotions. And as for those pesky things—didn’t my emotions get the memo that I banished them long ago?
I’ve been following a stoic plan for ages, marching forward, and part of that plan was avoiding this kind of wild rampage in my heart.
Too late.
I feel it. I feel it everywhere.
The last time I felt anything remotely close to this, I was blindsided by my ex.
But then, as Chip said, heartbreak doesn’t have to break you. It can be the best thing that ever happens to you.
Looking at Truly on the way to the party, all I can think is he’s so damn right, because the words that tango on my lips feel like they’re comprised of four letters, and those are the most dangerous words of all.
Falling for Truly means falling for the one person who’d wildly complicate my life.
And yet . . . I don’t want to turn away from whatever is brewing between us.
When we reach the hotel and head into the elevator, I locate words again. I face her, take both her hands in mine, link our fingers, and meet her gaze. “I know we said we’d figure this out. I know we said we’d get this out of our system, but I really can’t foresee a world where you’re out of my system.”
For a second, I hold my breath, hoping I haven’t scared away the woman who values her space, the woman who’s already beholden—to Gin Joint.
But the look in her eyes nearly knocks me to my knees. It says everything. That I’m not alone. That she’s feeling all of this too.
Maybe this is what happens when two workaholics meet their match.
