I lifted my head for the specific purpose of rolling my eyes at her before I went back to kissing every inch of her exposed skin. “I could make you scream my name even if we were about to skydive and land in the middle of a war zone with gunfire all around us. It’s not that I don’t think I could. I just didn’t want anything to worry you.”
Snaking her hand in between us, she found my dick straining against my fly and squeezed it. “Let me show you what I prefer.”
“Nope. Not yet. I told you there were a lot of things I wanted to do to you. I’m not nearly done yet.”
My mouth crashed back to hers. Unbuttoning her shirt, I pushed it open and moaned into her mouth when my fingers closed around her puckered nipples. My hips ground into hers again, and I saw fucking stars while rubbing us both until our breathing was ragged and I needed her more than ever.
My fingers were still inside her, and I started stroking her again. More urgently and faster than before. Her inner muscles tugged at my fingers almost immediately, and her body started writhing again.
I groaned into her mouth when I felt it, slowing the kiss to look at her face while taking her closer and closer to the precipice again. “Laurie. Fuck. You’re killing me here.”
Too far gone to reply, she simply let out a sound of protest when I withdrew my fingers and slid down. I didn’t know what the fallout was going to be from this once it ended, but if I never got to do it again, I wanted to experience it all with her.
Yanking her skirt up, I pushed her panties aside and sealed my mouth over her slick core. She dissolved under my tongue, her hips bucking and her hands digging into my scalp as she trembled her way through another orgasm.
She rode it out before she started blindly reaching for the buttons on my shirt. Realizing what she wanted, I shrugged it off my shoulders while her hands burrowed between our bodies for my belt.
When her fingers fumbled, I lifted my hips and took over before shoving my slacks and my boxers over my ass. Laurie licked her lips when she glanced down and wrapped her fist around my shaft.
Her hand was warm and small, and it felt way too good. The base of my spine started to tingle. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I grabbed her wrist and jerked it to a stop. “If you don’t stop, I’m not going to last much longer.”
“Do you want to?”
Lowering my head to claim her lips in another kiss that made me throb in her hand, I shook my head before pulling back slightly. “I want to last so much longer, but I’m not coming anywhere but inside you today.”
“The inside of my mouth counts as inside me,” she said huskily.
I brought my hands between her legs again, sliding my fingers straight into her. She was still so wet that I was met by absolutely no resistance. “I meant inside here.”
“My mouth not good enough for you?”
“Not today.” There was a hint of promise of a next time in the air, but now wasn’t the time to talk about it. I rolled us over so I was on my back and she had a leg planted on each side of my hips before reaching past her to get a condom out of my wallet.
She plucked it from between my fingers and shrugged when I looked at her with questions in my eyes.
“What? It’s my responsibility too.” Something in the way she looked at me told me it was important for her to take back some control after unraveling, so I lay back and let her see how much I needed her.
“Yes, it is. Fuck me, Laurie. Take what you want. Just do it fast.”
She kept her gaze fixed on mine as she sank down on me after putting on the condom, feeding me into her inch by inch. It was fucking torture. I was pretty sure I was going to bruise her hips from how hard I was gripping them, but I needed something to anchor myself to or I was losing it.
“Do you have any idea how sexy you look right now?” she asked in a voice that was barely above a whisper, her fingers in my hair as she started moving.
My gaze raked deliberately lower, lingering on her breasts with her shirt half open and the rounded cup of her lacy bra. It was sheer, and I saw the hardened, dusky nubs I wanted in my mouth. “If it’s half as fucking sexy as you, then yes. I’m going to fuck you now. I can’t go slow anymore.”
“Yes,” she breathed, lifting herself up on her knees before plunging back down. “Please.”
Both of us really started moving after that. A wildness overtook me when I finally let go. I’d been holding back so much that I couldn’t do it anymore. I had been trying to make it about her, and I still wanted to, but I couldn’t.
My mouth and hands were all over her, giving her what I could while also satiating the desperate need in my own body. We worked together until we were frenzied, clawing, and kissing before I felt her tightening around me.
“Ahh, fuck,” I groaned. There was no way I was lasting through this.
She had to be seconds away, but she still locked her glassy eyes on mine and planted a kiss on the corner of my lips before speaking against them. “Come with me, Jacob. Don’t hold back. I want you with me.”
“I’m all about giving you what you want.” I barely got the words out before I finally surrendered, and it was the best fucking feeling I’d ever felt.
Chapter 25
Laurie
Holy. Shit. I’d just had wild and impromptu sex with my lawyer. In his freaking office. In the middle of a workday. What the hell was I thinking?
Oh, yes, I hadn’t been thinking. Not with my brain anyway. I’d been thinking with my vagina, and that could only lead to trouble.
I was still sitting on top of him, my chest heaving after the three best, most powerful orgasms I’d ever had. I’d gotten so carried away by the dirty promises in his dark gaze, his kisses, and his maddening fingers that I hadn’t even stopped to think about it before I spread my legs to let him in.
The same confidence that I’d found annoying about him at first had suddenly become sexy because it silently let me know that he would rock my world. And he very much had.
I’d learned from my own experiences, as well as a bunch of research for my books, that there were a lot of people who thought they were capable of world rocking when in reality, they couldn’t even cause a faint tremor.
Jacob and his confidence hadn’t left me high and dry, but that might have been preferable to the frazzled way it had left me feeling. He was still inside me, looking as relaxed as if he’d just taken an hour-long bath.
I knew because I’d felt the exact same way until it dawned on me what I’d done. Confused, frazzled, and both elated and ashamed at the same time, I stood up and adjusted my clothes. “I’m so sorry about that. This can’t happen again.”
He frowned, sitting up before pushing himself off the floor and holding out his hands. “Hey, no. There’s nothing to be sorry about. If you want it to happen again, of course, it can happen again.”
“No, it can’t.” I buttoned up my shirt and felt my cheeks flaming as I looked into his concerned eyes. “We shouldn’t have…”
I didn’t really know how to finish that sentence. There were so many reasons flying through my head about why we shouldn’t have, yet I couldn’t hold on to one for long enough to actually voice it. I just knew it’d been wrong.
“I’ll be in touch soon,” I said, heading for the door. As I twisted the doorknob, I turned to look at him over my shoulder. “You’re not going to fire me as a client, are you?”
“No.” His frown deepened. He’d pulled his pants back up and fixed his own clothes, but his hair was messy and his expression soft. It was such a contrast to how put together he always looked that it made me smile a little.
“Thanks for everything.” I cleared my throat, my entire face bursting into flame when I realized what I’d just thanked him for.
Best to get out of here before I stick my foot so far into my mouth that I choke on it.
I lifted my hand in an awkward wave instead, then hurried out of his office.
Shit. Shit. Shit. What have I done?
Banging m
y head against the steering wheel once I climbed into my car, I tried to figure out how that had escalated so fast. I’d arrived about a little over an hour ago for a meeting with my lawyer, and now I was leaving having slept with him and without any new information about the case.
The business meeting hadn’t happened, but my body had met his in more ways than one. I groaned into the silence of the car.
What is he going to think about me?
I was sure he’d felt the same pull to me as I had to him, and that knowledge made little pricks of joy float through me. Unfortunately, the good was wrapped up in a whole lot of bad. It felt like my head and heart were being split in two with all the conflicting emotions running through me.
If I had any hope of stemming the tide and making sense of how I really felt about this, I needed to go someplace I could be still. There was only one place I could think of where my mind usually quieted. My emotions eventually untangled themselves if I stayed there for long enough.
Turning over the engine, I pulled out of my parking spot and headed in the direction of my sister’s grave. The cemetery was a beautiful, peaceful place, and I always kept an old blanket to sit on in the trunk of my car.
The traditional Victorian cemetery had lots of curving pathways. Aged trees cast creeping shadows over the paths and provided thick, cool shade, and grassy areas situated all over meant it was a nice place to come for picnics, regardless of what it was.
There were never too many people, and those who did come to picnic mostly did it to feel closer to their relatives there. A few others had spread out blankets near graves. Some read while others spoke quietly under their breath.
No one took any notice of me as I meandered down the path to where we had laid Katherine to rest. A slight breeze started as I shook out the blanket before laying it down. I smiled at the sound of the faint rustling of the leaves.
“Hey, sis, I miss you too,” I said, keeping my voice down. I settled on my blanket with my legs crossed and one hand dangling over my knee. Then I rubbed the petals of the fresh flowers that had been left on her grave. “Did Mom and Dad bring you these, or was it one of your friends?”
I didn’t expect an answer, but I still liked talking to her as if she were still there with me. It made me feel connected to her in a way I’d never be able to describe, and yet I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt it.
The other people there whose lips had been moving when I passed were evidence enough of that, and it’d always made me feel slightly less crazy to see others doing the same thing. Otherwise, I might’ve wondered if I needed therapy, but instead, this had become my therapy.
Rays of sun came through the branches when the leaves shifted, making light dance on the grassy surface of the grave. I kept running my fingers gently over the flowers, trying to come up with where to start.
One of the reasons why it was easier to make sense of things when I came to see Katherine was because it didn’t really matter how jumbled my words and feelings came out. Even in life, she’d been able to keep up with even my most convoluted explanations.
“There’s this guy,” I said softly, staring at the bright green grass and the colorful flowers like it was important to maintain eye contact with them. “His name is Jacob. He used to make me so angry. He’s one of those, you know?”
I sighed. “You know the type I’m talking about. Cocky, selfish, smirking. I’ve always hated those people and he was no different, but now he’s not only making me feel anger anymore. He’s making me feel other things too. Things I haven’t felt for someone in a long time.”
I’d always been more honest with Katherine than I was with even myself. It never helped to try to lie to her because she could always tell. She also never let me get away with fooling myself or with my attempts to downplay things.
Even though she wasn’t here anymore, I kept up our tradition of speaking what was in my heart and of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We’d giggled so many times about how our sisterly chats required the same oath that people took in court, but it didn’t make me giggle now.
It made me think about Jacob, really think about him, and about how he made me feel. “I didn’t want to like him. I still don’t want to, but the more time I spend with him, the more drawn I feel to him.”
“It’s like this unavoidable, inexplicable, undeniable attraction, but it’s also more than just an attraction. I don’t only want to screw him, even though I definitely want that too and I just did, but it’s more than that. I want his mind, his heart, and his innermost thoughts.”
I ran my fingers through my hair and dragged in a deep breath. “I haven’t known him long enough to ask for any of those things, or even to really want them, but I do. I feel like I want to live in his arms, lose myself in his lips, and be the shoulder he cries on.”
When I released the breath, it came out slightly shuddering. “It’s scary because I don’t know if I have any right to feel like this. Obviously, Katie will always be my first priority, but I don’t feel like it would detract from her if something more was to happen between us. If anything, I’ve seen what a wonderful father he is and that’s part of why I have these overwhelming feelings about him.”
I shook my head. “I never thought I would even think this, but there’s something incredibly sexy and alluring about a man who’s such a fantastic, attentive father. It’s almost like it speaks to a deeper part of me when I see him in that mode. A more mature part who values that aspect of his personality as caregiver and protector.”
A quick glance at my surroundings told me I was still alone, which was great. I really didn’t want anyone overhearing me right then. “Why am I here and not with him, you ask? It’s because I needed to be close to you. You trusted me with raising Katie, and I worry that all my time and energy should be spent on her. It’s only been two years since her mother passed and she still has so much healing to do. The last thing I want is to let a guy distract me from what really matters.”
When I said it, I could almost hear Katherine laughing and pictured her shaking her head. “I know you never believed in timing.”
Katherine always said that if you wanted something, you had to go for it. Otherwise, someone else would get it and you’d always wonder what you were missing. “Is this about timing, though? Is the possibility of a relationship with Jacob one of those things I’ll regret letting pass me by?”
I propped my elbows on my knees and rested my chin between my palms. “How is it even possible to find someone equally as compelling as you find them annoying, and how am I supposed to get the answers to any of these questions?”
I stayed with Katherine for a few more hours. Eventually, I stopped talking about Jacob and told her about Katie, my parents, her friends, and how I’d had coffee at our favorite place the other day.
I relaxed while I spoke and finally left when I didn’t feel frazzled anymore, but I was still confused. My radio came on as I got into my car, and I heard the host of the show talking about a ballgame.
I didn’t know which game, but just as I drove out of the parking lot, he said something that stuck with me for the rest of the day. “We’re all disappointed that he didn’t make that shot, but at least he took it. Not a lot of players would’ve even tried it under those circumstances.”
Laughing as I shook my head, I wondered again about those phone lines to heaven. Obviously, it wasn’t Katherine’s voice, and it was just some radio presenter talking about a game, but maybe that was my answer.
Maybe I did deserve to give this a real shot, even if it might not work out. After the way I’d run out on him, I couldn’t imagine Jacob would be interested, but maybe he would hear me out.
If I missed this shot, I might live to regret it. The first time Katherine told me that, I’d been too young to really understand it. I understood it now. Life was too precious to live with so many regrets over all the shots you didn’t take, and I really didn’t want to miss this one.
Chapter 26
Jacob
Twelve hours after the most confusing moment of my entire life had happened in this very office, I was still there. Allie was staying with my parents while I drowned in Laurie’s case.
I’d sent over a request for documents to the production company’s lawyers, and they’d more than complied. It was an old tactic and an overused one to dump so many files and documents on your opponent that they wouldn’t find what you’d hidden inside, but there was a reason it had been used so often and for so long. It fucking worked.
One needed serious time, manpower, and dedication to dig through it all and remain alert enough that you could find something you hadn’t even known you were looking for. The facts and the law were on my side in this lawsuit, which definitely helped, but I was determined to win it, and I didn’t want any surprises.
Laurie’s reaction earlier had surprised me. I genuinely hadn’t expected it, but I’d realized at some point in the afternoon that I should’ve.
She had so damn much on her plate and I’d just promised her a professional relationship. Then I’d gone and fucked it up by kissing her. I’d already decided that I would give her some space, and if I didn’t hear from her within the next few days, I’d go see her to straighten things out.
One time with her would never be enough for me, but I also didn’t only want the sex. I just needed to be patient and to properly formulate what I wanted to say. I knew now that she felt the chemistry too, but I also understood why she was hesitant.
Instead of bugging her when she’d literally run away from me, I was trying to fulfill my promise that she would be able to move on from the lawsuit soon. She needed to know she could count on me, and I wanted to show her that she really could.
If anything else happened between us, I wouldn’t balk at the first sign of tears or trouble. I would stick by her side and support her. No matter what.
I didn’t hear the knock at my door at first. Only when it got louder did I register that the faint banging was actually knocking.
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