Bad Swipe

by Elise Faber

  Gasping, Stef threw her head back on the pillows, her hips bucked against his hand, bucking again when he dragged his thumb over her clit.

  “That’s it,” he murmured, bending and sucking her nipple.

  Deeply and without warning.

  Partly because he couldn’t stop himself. Partly because she liked it a little rough.

  Drawing deeply, he let her cries wash over him, didn’t gentle, didn’t yield, not even when her back arched up off the mattress, legs going even wider. He needed more. He needed her—to be in her and on top of her, pressed to her soft body, her curves soft to his hard. He needed to be fucking her fast and furious and—

  Her hips arched up, and he felt all that silken heat against the tip of his cock.

  His control withered away.

  Her hips tilted a second time, brushing against him, calling for him to thrust, to plant himself deep.

  He pulled away.

  Stef cursed, reached for him.

  But he was already stretching for the nightstand, for the box of condoms, grabbing one and tearing it open with his teeth, rolling it down his cock. Then he was stroking deep.

  This wasn’t slow or controlled.

  It was fast and frenzied, a frantic race to the end, a baton pass, him trying to get her there before he exploded. Stef doing the same for him. Her hands didn’t stop moving on him, gripping tight to his shoulders, his ass, gripping him tight inside, too. Over and over he plunged into the tight, wet heat of her pussy, riding that razor’s edge, so damned close to exploding—

  And then her breathing hitched.

  Her neck arched.

  She clenched around him as she came.

  One more thrust and Ben was done, his orgasm barreling up and down his spine, sending heat and pleasure to his fingers, down to his toes.

  He collapsed, barely able to prop himself on his elbows, chest heaving, sweat dripping down his spine. “Fuck, you’re beautiful,” he murmured, summoning enough energy to roll to the side, to keep her close as he stroked a hand up and down her side.

  Her lips curved, but thankfully, she didn’t argue with him over the compliment, just kept her eyes closed and snuggled into him.

  Fuck, he loved when she did that.

  He held her closer, enjoyed the feel of her slowing breathing on his throat before he managed to roll away from her, to pull up his boxer briefs, to move to the bathroom and take care of the condom then make his way to the kitchen.

  To the coffee pot.

  He filled two mugs, added cream and sugar to Stef’s—his, he took black—and then made his way to the bedroom.

  But not before he saw Fred and Sweetheart standing outside in the back yard, staring at him through the glass, sad puppy eyes on full display. “I’ll be right there,” he said before walking down the hall, knowing that Stef must have let them out before she’d come and attacked him.

  In the best way possible.

  He handed Stef the mug, turned back for the kitchen, and started taking care of the dogs’ food. He’d seen Fred’s intricate food prep the day before and had done his best to replicate it when Stef came out of the bedroom, her sexy robe pulled around her again, though now that he knew she didn’t wear anything beneath it, she was even more of a temptation.

  Ben wanted her.

  He’d just had her.

  But he wanted to be buried balls deep in her again.

  “You’re making Fred’s breakfast?” she murmured, coming close and glancing over his shoulder, her breasts pressing into his arm.

  “Trying to,” he said. “Did I do it right?”

  Her gaze flicked over the bowl and then she smiled. “Yup,” she said, breaking up a piece of chicken he hadn’t apparently shredded small enough, sprinkling it over the kibble. “Thank you.” She rose on tiptoe, pressed a kiss to his cheek. “You didn’t have to do that, or bring me the coffee.”

  God, had that asshole who she’d dated not taken care of her at all?

  But all he said was, “I wanted to.”

  Her mouth curved, and she squeezed his arm before going to the slider and letting in Fred, bending as though to scoop up Sweetheart.

  But Sweetheart dodged away.

  “Hang on,” Stef said. “We should be careful with—”

  He’d already set the food dish down and didn’t process what she’d said until her voice went a little panicked. Then he realized there were two dogs heading for Fred’s bowl, and Sweetheart wasn’t good at sharing.

  Shit.

  He tried to scoop the bowl up, but he didn’t beat the dogs to it, and then there were two heads in the stainless-steel container.

  Gut clenching, he turned to snatch up Sweetheart—

  “Wait,” Stef said, coming over.

  Ben froze, blinking at the sight. Sweetheart took a handful of bites and then laid down next to the bowl, letting Fred finish the rest.

  Letting Fred.

  What the hell had the witch done to his dog?

  Sweetheart was practically civilized now.

  Stef put a few more kibbles in, since Sweetheart had apparently found her breakfast in Fred’s, and then Fred ate until the bowl was empty before flopping down next to Sweetheart, alternating between licking the container and his pup-friend’s ear.

  “You’re amazing,” Ben told her as she came to his side.

  “No,” she whispered. “That’s Fred. All Fred.”

  He thought she was wrong. That it was her—all her.

  And he looked forward to proving it.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Stef

  “Oh. My. God.” A beat. “You got laid.”

  Despite herself, she felt her cheeks heat, knowing that Heidi was clearly able to see that Stef had, in fact, gotten laid.

  Multiple times.

  With multiple glorious orgasms.

  So glorious that she was a little sore as she meandered her way into the lab. Meandered because Heidi was there, and Stef knew her friend would notice the difference. Hell, when she’d looked in the mirror that morning, she’d hardly recognized her own face.

  Happy.

  She’d looked utterly happy.

  And had decided it was a good look on her.

  That had been after her momentary panic with the food dish and the two pups, of course. She hadn’t thought Fred would get possessive, but he was so much bigger than Sweetheart, could easily hurt her, so she’d worried.

  But then, like two peas in a pod, it hadn’t been an issue in the least.

  Then Ben had made her a bagel, with loads of cream cheese, had downed a second cup of coffee, and disappeared into the bathroom to shower and change, coming out in a suit that had taken her breath away.

  “I thought you tech guys didn’t wear suits.”

  He’d merely grinned, kissed the top of her head. “I’m glad you like it.” Then he’d told her he had a meeting with the board that day, so he had dressed up for the occasion. Though from the glimpse she’d gotten of his closet Friday night, she knew that he was no stranger to a suit.

  The entire back wall of his wardrobe had been filled with suits.

  Now, Heidi squealed and clapped her hands together. “Yes! You got the best kind of laid.”

  Stef bit her lip. She had.

  “Who is he? What does he look like? Where did you meet him? What did you do? How many times did you—”

  Stef held up her hand. Not only to thwart the pure onslaught of questions but also in order to cut off Heidi. They were at work, for God’s sake, and she wasn’t going to spill her guts when an intern could come in at any point. “We’re not talking about this right now.”

  Heidi started to protest.

  The lab door opened.

  Stef lifted her brows, silently telling her friend, “See?”

  Heidi just lifted her hands in surrender as their newest intern walked in then issued some instructions to Stef and Aarav, before strolling over to her computer.

  Aarav, quiet, shy—and did she mention q
uiet?—merely said, “Good morning.”

  Then they all got to work.

  Stef on going over some data from the weekend, mostly seeing if their equipment was functioning properly, but also prepping some things for an experiment that Heidi wanted to conduct later in the week.

  Her job probably wasn’t exciting from the outside—spending her time going over spreadsheets and spectrometer readings—but she enjoyed the challenge of working with atoms, with trying to discover their secrets, trying to study something that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, with a normal microscope . . . hell, with any microscope.

  It was all theory and testing and studying the blank spaces left behind. Atoms were too small to be able to see, so they studied the reactions between molecules more than the small, basic units of life themselves.

  The ultimate puzzle.

  And she was thrilled that she got to work on it, even her small part of it.

  Her cell buzzed, and she glanced down at the screen quickly, knowing that she needed to turn it off and unable to believe she’d left it on. It could mess with the equipment, for one, and was a general distraction, for another.

  But it wasn’t Ben texting, as she’d hoped.

  It was from . . . Heidi.

  On a scale of one to a million, how good was it?

  Stef glared.

  Deliberately held up her cell, the screen facing her boss as she turned it off. But then because she was so fucking happy, she found herself mouthing, “A million and one.”

  Heidi grinned.

  Stef slid her cell back into her pocket.

  Then she let her life happy bleed into her work happy . . . and found herself happy happy for the first time in a long time.

  She was driving to doggy day care when Ben called her.

  “Hello?” she answered via her car’s Bluetooth.

  “You done with work?”

  “Just finished.” She glanced over her shoulder, checked for traffic as she changed lanes.

  “Come to my place.”

  Four husky words and her legs pressed together, her brain struggled to focus on the traffic clogging the freeway. “I have to go get Fred.”

  “Get Fred. Then come to my place.”

  Signaling again, she forced her way into the next lane, one step closer to the exit. “You have a white rug.”

  Silence.

  Then, “Yes, I do.”

  “Right,” she said, half-distracted as she crammed her car into a tiny opening and managed to navigate onto the off-ramp. Fucking California traffic was the worst.

  “I’m not understanding your obsession with my white rug.”

  She thought it was rather obvious. “It can get dirty.”

  Another pause, shorter this time. “Isn’t that what rugs do?”

  Okay, he had her there. But still, it was a white rug and Fred was Fred. He’d get into something, and the white rug wouldn’t be white and—

  “Stef?”

  She turned right at the signal. “Yeah?”

  “It’s just a rug.”

  He also had her there. Except, “It’s probably an expensive rug, and you haven’t seen what kind of damage a golden retriever can do to expensive and white household objects. He’ll ruin it, and it’s probably not washable, and I certainly can’t afford to buy you a new one and—”

  “Baby?”

  The endearment had her heart fluttering up into her throat. “Yeah?” she managed to push out for a second time.

  “Come to my place. Bring Fred.”

  Her protests welled again, but he just hung up.

  Well, that was one way to end a conversation, and she found that she wasn’t even mad that he’d just disconnected. It was bossy and a little annoying but also a whole lot sexy, and . . . he wanted her to bring Fred.

  That had her smiling and staring out the windshield.

  A knock on the window had her jumping, clamping her hand to her chest. She hadn’t realized that she’d made it into the drive-through pickup for day care, and Fred was there, a handler holding his leash.

  She scrambled to unlock the doors, made small talk as Fred was buckled into his seat belt.

  Just before she was going to pull away from the curb, her phone buzzed.

  With a text from Ben.

  Then again with another.

  The first was a pin for her to navigate to the proper entrance of the parking garage. The second was a QR code for her to show the security office.

  A final buzz told her to park in spot PH-3.

  Stef stared blankly at her screen for a few minutes before Fred whined. That snapped her out of it, and she drove forward, pulling out of the lot and heading back for the freeway. She’d still need to stop at her place to feed Fred. He might be happy to see Sweetheart, but he wouldn’t be thrilled for his dinner to be late—meaning arriving later than five minutes after she walked through the door at home.

  Her phone rang again.

  “Yes?” she said, seeing that it was Ben.

  “I have food for Fred.”

  The signal turned red, and she slid to a stop, struggling to find the words. The directions. The gate pass. The parking spot. Food for Fred. It was too much. She didn’t know what to say.

  And Ben seemed to understand that.

  “Hope you had a good day, baby,” he said, right as the light turned green.

  She waited as the cars in front of her moved then slowly accelerated, heading north on 101 to make her way into the city. But even though she drove carefully, checked traffic, and made her way through the on-ramp and merging, her heart was pounding. Why was he doing all of this?

  I’m just going to show you that I’m not going anywhere.

  Remembering his words didn’t slow her pulse. They only made her grip the steering wheel a little tighter.

  “Stef?”

  She swallowed hard, cleared her throat. “Yeah?”

  “Did you have a good day?”

  She was a smart woman. Some might even say smarter than average, but it took her much longer than average to process those words. But as though he’d sensed that, Ben waited patiently for her to answer. “I did.” She cleared her throat again when it came out raspy. “Did you?”

  “I did, baby. Thanks for asking.”

  “I—”

  He waited.

  She had too many thoughts and emotions roiling within her to give voice to them all, to give voice to even one of them. Her mind was a whirling dervish—Fred, directions, pass, dinner last night, Sweetheart, coffee, kisses, and—

  “I’ll see you soon,” she eventually murmured.

  “Okay, Stef. Drive safe.”

  They hung up, and she crawled her way through the traffic.

  Toward Ben.

  And for the first time in her life, she had to wonder if she’d finally found herself moving in the right direction.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ben

  The security office had called up the moment Stef drove through the gate, giving him time to take the elevator down to the garage.

  She parked next to his SUV and his sedan, her tiny little hybrid’s back seat full to the brim of Fred’s fuzzy, golden body.

  He waited until she opened the driver’s side door then stepped close.

  “Ben,” she whispered.

  “Hi,” he said, brushing back her hair. “Want me to get Fred?”

  A nod. “O-okay.”

  He wrangled the pooch while she reached in for her purse, and by the time both doors were shut, Stef seemed a little more relaxed. Enough, at least, to lean close and kiss him on the cheek. “Hi.”

  “You good?”

  Her eyes were soft. “Yeah.”

  “Good,” he said, slipping his arm around her and leading her toward the elevators.

  “How did your meeting go?”

  His heart squeezed that she’d remembered, that she’d asked. “Typical bullshit. No big problems, but endless droning on.”

  “Meetings,” she said
on a sigh.

  “You have your fair share?”

  “Unfortunately.” A smile. “Though, Heidi has more of them than me, much to her chagrin.”

  Heidi her boss. Heidi her friend.

  “When am I going to meet your friends?”

  Her steps hitched, and she glanced up at him. “You want to meet my friends?”

  Again. He wanted to murder that fucker, Jeremy. To have deposited the insecurity so deeply into her, who’d had her doubting that he wanted to do something as simple as meeting her friends, who’d had her shocked that Ben remembered how she took her coffee or would make breakfast for her and her dog.

  At first, he’d looked at Stef and had seen red lips and curves.

  Then he chatted online with her and thought she was funny and smart, someone he wanted to know better.

  So getting to meet her in person, seeing how sweet and lovely she was, then knowing that someone had dimmed that, made her doubt herself, absolutely killed him. Especially when he got those glimpses of her humor, of the fire that was often banked inside her, and he knew that if she hadn’t been smothered, they would be there all the time.

  That she wouldn’t still be carrying all those shadows in her eyes.

  The elevator doors opened, and he ushered her onto the cart, punching in the code that would take the car up to his floor, asking, “Are they important to you?”

  “My friends?”

  He nodded.

  Her teeth pressed into her bottom lip, a flash of white digging into red. “Yes, of course they are.”

  “Then I want to meet them.”

  Her throat worked, and she released her bottom lip. “I . . .”

  He shifted Fred’s leash to the other hand so he could cup her cheek. “I want to meet them, but only if you’re okay with it.”

  A pause, her eyes searching his until the elevator opened up into his entryway. He held the door as they stepped off, and then her gaze came back to his, studying until Sweetheart heard them and came running.

  Fred wiggled like he was full of jelly, and Ben bent, undoing Fred’s leash, biting back a smile when Stef winced as he traipsed across the white rug.

  Sweetheart jumped up to kiss Fred’s face, the pair of them circling each other before taking off, nails clicking on the floor.