“No, you’re not. But you know whose type you are?”
“Is this a trick question?” I teased.
“You’re totally Mike’s type.”
“Mike, Blake’s hotel dude?”
“That’s the guy.”
“Nah, Blake is totally Mike’s type. I’m just striking out all over the place. Blake is God’s gift to men and I’m chopped liver.”
“Lucky me, then.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “lucky you.”
“Lucky me,” he repeated, huskily this time.
All traces of humor were removed from his tone and I welcomed the change. Especially since it involved him running his index finger slowly down my body, chasing that sensation with a trail of kisses. His goatee tickled my skin, erupting goose bumps on its surface. Outside my field of vision, I felt rather than saw him smile.
Since I was closer to the nightstand, I blindly flopped my arm above my head in search of the drawer and the condoms within.
“No,” he said against the flesh of my inner thigh, “not yet.”
My toes curled and my breath hitched at his intentions. “Alrighty then.”
His lips brushed gently against me, dangerously close to the promised land, but for every tease I’d given him, he seemed hell bent on paying it back tenfold. He danced around my most sensitive places with both mouth and fingers, creating such delicious agony within me. My back arched with each caress, a throaty response building inside me that emerged as a moan deeper than anything I’d ever uttered.
I would have been embarrassed had I not been so goddamn horny.
Just as I was considering taking matters into my own hands, he spread my legs apart, allowing himself room to get down to business. My arms still headed south, but instead of reaching for myself, I grabbed on to his shoulders and eased him into position.
Will didn’t need my help. He knew exactly what he was doing. I decided in that moment not to focus on where exactly he’d gotten his training, but rather to assume this was his maiden voyage and he was a freak of nature.
Being that we’d begun as friends with benefits, we’d never gotten into the down and dirty of comparing numbers, or conquests, or much of anything else. Hell, before this weekend, we’d not spoken during sex in fear that one of us would cry out the wrong name. Namely that he would call out the wrong name, but still. The logical part of me knew that given the timeline of events in his history, he’d likely only been with his ex-wife before me. This made Stephanie not only a bitch but also insanely dumb. Because how could you not stay with a man whose tongue was capable of that?
My legs tightened around him, attempting to persuade him to stay there until I found my release. Which was why I whimpered when his shoulder blades flexed beneath my ankles. He freed himself from my grasp, his eyes focused intently on mine as he made the return trip up my body. He had me on the brink and he knew it. And damn it if he wasn’t going to watch.
His lips quieted my protests. I tasted myself in his mouth, a heady blend of the two of us. His hands reached for my breasts while my fingers threaded through his hair, sliding down the back of his neck.
He was so hard, his length pressed up against me. I took him in my hand, his erection pulsing in my grip with every quickened beat of his heart. My thumb rubbed over the head, coming away slick with the preview of what was imminent. His breath came ragged and heavy against my ear. I wasn’t the only one tormented by this foreplay.
In the end, it was Will who procured the condom, shifting the both of us marginally to allow him to open the drawer and secure our protection. His eyes never left mine as he readied himself, fucking me with his gaze before he entered me in reality.
“I need you inside me,” I proclaimed involuntarily.
“I am inside you,” he stated, his brow furrowing.
Oh shit. Before he read into that as some sort of a size joke, I needed to clear my head and say what I really meant. Sometimes I really hated that my mouth worked without a filter.
“I want all of you. Skin to skin. No barriers.”
His countenance softened as he grasped my meaning. We’d discussed this before. Kids weren’t happening, which meant that until I obtained a prescription for something, condoms were. When we’d been on the outs, a doctor’s appointment hadn’t been on my list of priorities. After the past few days, it had rocketed back up to the top.
“I’ve never done that with anyone else before,” I admitted before I could stop the confession. “I want you to be the first.”
My cheeks flushed with color as I realized what I’d said. Obviously, he wasn’t able to reciprocate the event. And it wasn’t like I was a virgin before him, either. I’d just never been committed to anyone, in any semblance of a relationship, enough to think about anything other than the most temporary version of birth control.
He, in turn, had been married and had a child. Meanwhile, I felt like a child myself, romanticizing the notion of sex without a condom like it was some major gift with which I could present him.
Mortified, I turned my head so I wouldn’t have to see the amusement on his face at my stupidity. Perhaps the no talking during sex rule had multiple reasons for being implemented, and we should reinstate it.
Will’s index finger traced my jawline, the remainder of his fingers cupping my chin and persuading my face to turn toward his. He wasn’t laughing. He bent forward to kiss me tenderly, perhaps to shut me up.
“I’d like to be your first,” he whispered against my lips, so quietly I could nearly convince myself I’d imagined it. The acceleration of my heart was verification that I hadn’t. “Make it happen.”
I nodded, because there were no words. Just a surge of emotion, the rush of passion as it flowed between us. Declarations of love spoken as we crashed into one another, bodies thrusting against each other as we succumbed to desire.
All those months of denying what we were to each other, of pretending this could ever be casual, had taught me one thing: a valuable lesson in semantics. While the common thread in vogue these days was to proclaim how much you needed someone, that wasn’t what had happened here. We’d both proven quite handily that neither one of us needed the other.
We wanted each other.
And in our case, want trumped need every time.
His arms lifted me up from the bed, holding me in a sitting position as he climaxed, encouraging my own. Sated, we fell back against the mattress, our heavy breathing gradually slowing as we recovered from our exertion.
“I need to get ready,” I informed him once I was able to speak again.
He squeezed my hand before releasing it entirely, a gesture that meant he wasn’t going to fight me on it. “I know.”
Yet I still delayed the inevitable, reluctant to rise from my position by his side. I liked it here in our little bubble of lust. I wasn’t quite ready to let go myself.
Though his uttering the l-word in front of our circle of friends had pretty much cemented our commitment to each other, the fact that we hadn’t promised each other anything suddenly weighed heavily on my mind. I’d said the things I said on Friday - the not caring about anything but being in the moment stuff - primarily for his benefit. I didn’t want to scare him off. And I could deal with the consequences of that little fib as long as they didn’t involve him walking out of my life forever.
As though he could read my thoughts, he brushed his index finger against my cheek. “Don’t think. Just feel.”
I smiled back at him. “So now you use my own words against me?”
He shrugged. “It seemed fitting. You berated me for overthinking things and there you are, sprawled out on my bed, overthinking. Stop it.”
“I can overthink on my own time as much as I want to. I’ll just do it covertly from now on.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Gracie.”
“I know,” I said quickly. Deep down, I knew it in my core.
“Are you getting ready here or at your place?”
“Better d
o it at my place. I didn’t bring work clothes here. And taking a shower anywhere near you would be dangerous right now, I’m thinking.”
“You know me too well,” he grinned.
I rolled off the bed so he couldn’t see my reaction. Sometimes I felt as though I’d barely scratched his surface. There were many things - major things - that I didn’t know about him. He wasn’t eager to share details of his past with Stephanie, or of what had really unraveled their marriage. I’d found out more regarding that from Emma than I had from him. And yet, in the same breath, I felt like I’d known him forever. It was a strange balance to feel so at ease with someone whose past was shrouded in mystery. I knew without question that I could trust him. But did he reciprocate that?
I scooped up my discarded clothes from the floor and threw them back on. Since they were only being worn in transition from one house to the next, it mattered not that they were wrinkled to death. Will watched me as I slid the yoga pants up my legs, then wiggled into the long sleeved tee. From the expression on his face, you’d think I just got dressed in some designer outfit instead of second day loungewear.
“Quit,” I scolded, “you’re making me nervous.”
He snorted. “I seriously doubt that you’ve ever been nervous a day in your life.”
“That’s where you’d be wrong, mister.”
“Oh, really?”
“I was pretty damn nervous on Friday night,” I admitted.
“Not as nervous as I was, I bet. I went first, you know.”
“I could have gone first. If I wouldn’t have been afraid you’d run for the hills. And you said your thing and disappeared anyway. All because of a little crying.”
“You haven’t cried since you were eight,” he reminded me, “and there you were, leaking, and I didn’t know what to make of it.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“No, because I was too damn nervous.”
I smiled. “I’m really not that intimidating. You’ll see.”
I buzzed around his bedroom, gathering the few belongings that I had here. Once he’d pulled on a pair of sweats, he trailed behind me like a shadow. We said nothing, even though there was a whole lot of dialogue going on in my head.
As much as I wanted to play it cool, a very large part of me wanted to pin down exactly when and where we’d meet up again. My nonchalance with the whole situation was wavering. In the span of a couple days, I’d gone from playing it by ear to wanting to open up the planner on my phone and schedule our next rendezvous.
Besides, hadn’t Lauren insisted when she and Matthew first coupled that they too were playing it by ear? And I suppose they had, if one considered spending every night since together, virtually shacking up without really announcing it to anyone, as keeping things casual. So casual that he’d put a ring on it within a matter of months, and created a new life prior to them exchanging vows.
And Will and I had exhibited tendencies to do the same - minus the ring and the baby part - back when I’d lived in Indianapolis. The month before I’d moved up here, the one that he’d called possibly the best of his life, we’d pretty much lived together on the weekends, cocooned in the safety of being incognito.
We made it into the living room, him hot on my heels, before his hands found my shoulders and he spun me around. My overnight bag slipped from my fingers to the floor as he lowered his face to mine so we were forehead to forehead. My eyes fluttered shut as I breathed him in. I assumed he did the same, for he still didn’t say anything.
Several moments elapsed in silence before he broke contact with a chaste kiss brushed against my cheek as he lifted his head, then untangled his fingers from mine. Without looking away from me, he bent down just enough to grab my bag, then hand it back over to me.
“Have a good day at work,” he said as if we did this all the time.
“You too,” I responded automatically. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if he had a shift today.
Even if he didn’t, he smiled just the same. Then came the grand prize. “I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
The words hung in the air, possibly the most beautiful ones in the English language. If we had been on the phone, it would have been the equivalent of a battle to see who hung up first. I stayed put like a statue, and he made no move to walk me to the door. Instead, we just grinned at each other.
I didn’t want to say anything further; I liked parting on those terms and didn’t want to ruin the moment. So I made a tentative move to leave, and instead of coming with me, he turned and headed toward the kitchen. I watched as he retreated, staring at the space he’d vacated.
And then it dawned on me.
He couldn’t bear to watch me go.
Chapter Three
Lauren
Show time came quicker than I accounted for. Granted, I could get lost in the intricacies of mortgage lending without much help. But wanting to bury myself in my work was amplified tenfold by the fact that it kept the unrest rolling around in my stomach at bay. If I was swimming in a sea of tax returns, it was so much easier to ignore the trepidation that the phone call and the impending arrival of the woman who’d given life to my husband brought.
So I was knee deep in calculating debt-to-income ratios when I felt a presence hovering at my door. I knew who it was without needing to look up. Any of my staff would have just breezed right in, the unspoken understanding being that when the door was open that knocking first was unnecessary. Steeling myself for the confrontation that I imagined was imminent, I pretended not to notice my visitor.
Until she cleared her throat at least. Then my eyes snapped to attention, surveying the woman that stood in the threshold, poised to encroach on my territory. Perhaps I should have opted for a lunch meeting, to go somewhere that was neutral ground. If things went poorly, I’d need to have this place decontaminated.
“May I help you?” I asked.
The tone of my voice made Patricia cringe just the slightest bit. Good. I needed to set the stage, to keep up the appearance that I was in control here, not her.
“Lauren?” she inquired just as needlessly. A plaque on the wall outside my office clearly identified me, and she’d likely been given directions back to my department by the receptionist, if not escorted here personally. There had been no friendly introduction and handoff though, for which she had her reputation to blame. The rumor mill worked overtime at the bank, even when our employees didn’t.
“You must be Mrs. Snyder.” I pushed my chair back and stood as she entered the room. Before she made it too far inside, I did my own throat clearing. “Shut the door, please.”
“Of course,” she pronounced just as icily.
She latched the door gently behind her and continued her forward motion. As she drew nearer, I politely extended my hand and waited. She shook with a surprisingly firm grip, letting go as soon as decorum would allow.
We remained standing for a few heartbeats, sizing one another up. I knew there was nothing in my appearance to suggest that I was anything less than her equal. One power suit meeting another, though I wore mine to conduct actual business, while she probably dressed like that to go shopping. I felt like I was staring at a version of Blake, perhaps twenty-five years in the future, minus the piercings, the blue hair and with considerably more Botox.
I lowered myself into my leather chair, Patricia following my lead across the desk from me. She cradled her designer handbag in the seat beside her with the care of a mother protecting a newborn. Satisfied that nothing would happen to her precious commodity, she settled back and crossed her legs at the ankle, folding her freshly manicured hands over one knee.
A glance at the paperwork on my desk, a rustle through the file folders atop it to convey that I was a busy woman, and then I was off. “So what can I do for you today?”
The internal struggle in her countenance was clearly visible. With all of her class, her superior social upbringing, she knew that I was in the driver’s seat here. She needed something
from me - namely my help - and it was beneath her to ask. But she was attempting to swallow down that pride of hers, silently convincing herself that the end justified the means.
With a drawn out sigh, I steepled my fingers underneath my chin, resting my elbows on my desk. “Look. I don’t have time to play games. I think we both know why you’re here.”
Her expertly made up red lips trembled at the thought. The expression that lingered on her face was now one of relief. She was more than happy for me to do her dirty work. To outline the reason behind her visit. To set things up for her in a handy checklist and tick off the boxes while I was at it. She wasn’t the type to lift a finger unless she had to, let alone to get her hands filthy while doing it.
“They’re both happy, right?” she asked, desperation lingering long after the words were uttered. Ten plus years of self-doubt hung on that question, infusing itself into the syllables.
“No thanks to you.”
Her face fell.
“What did you expect? Did you think that leaving both of your children out in the cold was the appropriate way to scold them for their wrongs?”
“It wasn’t really my decision to make.”
I snorted. “Of course it wasn’t. You’re a kept woman. Your livelihood depends on your husband bankrolling your every whim. Seems there isn’t much room for disagreement there. But how funny that your then eighteen year old daughter had more conviction to stand up for Matthew than you did. Or than you do, even now. Tell me, Patricia, would Alan cut you off if he knew you were here talking to me?”
The blank look that was returned suggested I’d scored a win for this round.
“Then why?” I pressed. “Why would you risk all of that now? Is there trouble in paradise?”
She shook her head. “Heavens no. I’m sure that you understand, as a mother yourself, that there’s this intrinsic link to your children always there, no matter where they are.”
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