by C. L. Parker
“Shaw—”
“Shh,” I said, cutting her off. “Come here.”
My plans had changed once again. I was going to have her against the window. I was going to have her bare and on display to the world as I fucked her from behind. But then I realized … I didn’t want anyone else to see her.
Cassidy stopped in front of me, and I cupped a thigh with one hand, urging her closer still, until she was forced to use my shoulders as leverage to climb the chair and slip her legs inside the openings under the arms on either side. And then, finally, she was straddling my lap.
Slowly, I eased her onto me, feeling the tight sheath of her insides as her walls stretched to accommodate my girth. Good God, I wanted to explode when she rocked her hips back and forth, sinking farther and farther with each stroke until she had taken all of me.
Cassidy’s lips were parted, her breaths shaky as she clung to my shoulders and found a rhythm that was favorable. There was no hurried frenzy, and there was no bouncing up and down porno shit going on, but it had absolutely nothing to do with emotions, either. This was fucking. Slow, purposeful, feel-every-fucking-centimeter-of-it fucking. Whatever I thought of Cassidy’s attention to detail before didn’t matter now. They said the devil was in the details, and I believed it, because this was sin manifested into something tangible, something mere mortals were never meant to experience.
She reached between our bodies, and I watched as she pulled back the hood of skin to reveal her clit and then rolled her hips forward again to put the friction where it was most beneficial. Have mercy, but a woman who knew what she wanted and how to get it was the one thing that would make me lose my goddamn mind.
Fisting her hair in both hands, I pulled her down to me and ravaged her mouth. How the hell she tasted so sweet when she was so fucking mean, I’d never know. And I didn’t much care to figure it out, because she was rocking back and forth, rolling her hips and arching her back to brush her breasts against my clothed chest. Instantly, I regretted not getting rid of all of my clothes, too, just so I could get down with the skin-to-skin.
Cassidy’s movements slowed, her strokes going deeper and becoming heavier as she ground against my pelvis with more purpose. The kiss was broken and her head fell forward, her eyes closed and lips parted. The rhythmic pulsing began, her walls contracting around my cock and pulling me under with her.
The semi-silence was broken with the “Fuck!” that I could no longer hold back.
Not wanting to lose the momentum of her orgasm, I filled my hands with the cheeks of her ass. Cassidy grasped the arms of the chair and used them to hold on as I picked her up and pushed her back down. Over and over and over again until my balls were tight and my cock was ramrod straight and prepared to …
Jesus fucking Christ! I yanked her off me just in time to come all over both of us, though I’d intended something much neater. Semen shot out in spurt after spurt, my hand working to make up for the strokes I’d missed by pulling out. In truth, it had been a close call. I almost hadn’t made it in time.
I never came inside a woman, and I nearly always used a condom. No idea why I hadn’t with Cassidy, but I wasn’t concerned about diseases. Someone as compulsive as she was would be sure to keep herself clear of STDs. And she was too damn moral not to tell a man if she wasn’t.
It was the threat of impregnation that I was most worried about. A man with a background like mine had no business knocking up a woman. I sure as hell didn’t have the time for a kid, and I had no desire to play daddy.
“Sorry about the mess,” I joked.
Cassidy was already scrambling off my lap and grabbing her messenger bag. Rummaging through it, she finally pulled out some tissues and handed me a couple.
“Thanks,” I said, taking them.
“It’s not the first time I’ve cleaned up one of your messes, and I’m sure it won’t be the last,” she said, wiping at her own abdomen.
There was that smart mouth again. How was it that I’d silenced her before? Oh, yeah, with my cock shoved down her throat.
“Then the next time, I suggest you let me get off in your mouth,” I quipped back.
Cassidy picked up her panties and stepped into them. “Coming in my mouth will never be an option, Matthews. So don’t get any bright ideas.” Her bra was next.
I stood to tuck my dick and my shirt back into my pants. “You’re acknowledging the likelihood that there will be a next time?”
“No,” she said, slipping the bra straps over her shoulders and looking around for the next piece of clothing.
I was done—the advantage of not stripping down completely. So I picked up her blouse and walked it over to her. She made a move to snatch it out of my hand, but I yanked it back before she could while also pulling her against me with an arm around her waist. None too gently, I kissed her, only releasing her when she shoved against my chest and took the shirt anyway.
Hot and cold. And that was fine by me. It gave me a chuckle.
Fucking Cassidy was fun, but there was no cuddling afterward, and I had no desire to stick around while she lashed out at me because of her lack of self-control. So I was out, but not before issuing a warning.
“For the record, telling me no only makes me want to prove you wrong.”
CHAPTER 8
Cassidy
God, I’d done it again!
Only this time, I hadn’t let Shaw fuck me. I’d fucked him. Or ridden him. Damn good, too.
I was a slut.
Not just any normal slut, either. I had turned into a pathological slut. Streetwalkers demanded more respect. At least they got paid for dishing up the goodies as easily as I had.
Shaw would be at Monkey Business, of course. But he wasn’t the one I dreaded seeing. If Quinn’s f’dar had been ringing before, it was going to be screaming now.
The second I crossed over the threshold, it began.
“Cass! Oh my God!” Every eye in the place turned to stare at me when my roommate shouted my name across the pub with dramatic flair.
Crap. It was just as I’d thought. I turned to make a run for it, but then I came face-to-face with Shaw striding through the door, so I screeched to a halt and swung around, only to stop halfway when I spotted Denver Rockford sitting at the bar. What the what?
I did a quick scan of the scheduler in my head to see if we had an appointment I’d forgotten about, which was highly unlikely. Though Shaw had been fucking my brains out lately, so maybe something had been jarred loose up there. But then I realized that I would never invite a potential client to my personal hangout spot, so I was thoroughly confused.
“He’s here for me.” Shaw’s warm breath at my neck gave me a start. I almost turned on him to ask what the hell he thought he was doing—we were in a public place, for Pete’s sake—but then I realized he was just edging past me. I was pretty sure he didn’t really need to cup my ass as he did so.
Wait. Exactly when had it become okay with me for Shaw to get frisky as long as it wasn’t in a public place?
“Will you get over here, please?” Sasha put her arm around my shoulders and guided me toward my judge and executioner, laughing all the way. Which was either really disturbing or meant she’d gotten over her heartbreak and was in better spirits. She’d probably even moved on to her next disaster.
When we got to our table, I pulled out my regular chair and scooted it as far away as I could without raising suspicion. If by some miracle I managed to escape Quinn’s f’dar and the girls couldn’t see it written all over my face, I certainly didn’t want to take the chance of them smelling the sex on me. I’d stopped at the bathroom at the office and had taken a quick whore’s bath in the sink, but I’d swear I could still smell Shaw’s cologne.
Demi rolled her eyes. “Quinn has good news—”
“Outstanding news, jealous,” my roommate corrected her.
“—but he wouldn’t tell us until you got here,” Demi finished, never once looking up from her nail filing.
; “Oh, yeah?” I asked, relieved. Quinn was practically jumping out of his skin with excitement. Whatever it was, it was big. It was also probably enough to squelch the f’dar. “So what’s up?”
“Daddy bought a penthouse for us!”
“What? But, Quinn, I like the apartment we have now. I don’t need or want a penthouse.”
“Not us us,” he said, pointing between him and me. “Me and Daddy us. I’m moving out. Onward and upward.”
I was stunned. It wasn’t that I’d thought Quinn and I would live together forever, but I certainly hadn’t thought Daddy would ever come out of the closet, either.
“Oh. So he left his wife?”
“Of course not.”
“But you said he got a penthouse for the two of you.”
“Right. Daddy thinks it’s too risky to keep staying in hotel suites, even under fake names. So he bought the penthouse so that I could live in a nice place.”
“You already live in a nice place.” Sasha looked every bit as concerned as the rest of us, though we knew to tread lightly.
“Nicer.”
“And living in this nicer place also means you’re available to him whenever he has the time for you.” Demi was toeing the line that had been drawn in the sand. If she tripped over it, Quinn would do some tripping of his own.
He tilted his head, eyes narrowed with a challenging stare. “Say what you really want to say, fuzzmouth?”
Demi stopped filing her nails and sat forward. “Okay, fine, I will. This dude is using you, Quinn. And you’re letting him. Why? Because it’s better than being alone?”
Quinn crossed his arms and legs and sat back, comfy as you please. “At least I’m not pussyfooting around with what I really want instead of reaching out and taking it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He nodded toward the bar, and Demi’s attention followed. I could see the pain in her eyes the second she spotted a voluptuous blonde who looked remarkably similar to her leaning over the bar and giving Chaz’s bald head a flirtatious polish. What was worse was that Chaz was flirting back, leaning into her hand like a purring kitten. The chick didn’t look very classy at all. In fact, the ample tits practically spilling out onto the glossy wood made her look easy. Not that being well endowed was a crime, but jeez, she was really putting it to work.
“You’re going to mess around and someone is going to snatch that man up. And then you’ll be all alone.”
“So? I’d rather be alone than made to feel second-best.” Demi peeled her eyes away from Chaz and found Quinn’s. “He’s never going to leave her, you know. You deserve better.”
“Better than a posh penthouse, an unlimited spending account, and Jennifer Aniston’s personal decorator?”
Demi thought about that for a moment. “Touché,” she said, sitting back and resuming her manicure.
“You bet your sweet candied ass, touché.” Quinn looked down at his watch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—and even if you won’t, I don’t care,” he said, standing to leave. “The very expensive timepiece my lover used to decorate my wrist says it’s time for me to scurry off to meet him. Don’t want to keep Daddy waiting.”
“Oh, no. We wouldn’t want that,” Sasha mumbled.
“Shush, woman.” Quinn leaned down and whispered conspiratorially into her ear: “Watch this.”
He walked over to the bar where the Demi look-alike was still flirting it up with our bartender friend. Quinn was never overly effeminate, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t turn it on when he wanted to. It was very apparent that he wanted to right then. Before he even reached the bar, he called out Chaz’s name with a giggle and an exaggerated sway of his hips. Only he didn’t stop at the bar. Quinn put a knee on the stool to hoist himself higher, used his hips to nudge the girl out of the way, leaned over the bar, took Chaz’s face in his hands, and then kissed him on the mouth. Not a tongue-in-the-mouth kiss but not a quick peck, either.
There was a collective gasp at our table, followed by a wicked giggle when the blonde reared back in shock.
Most straight guys wouldn’t be okay with another man laying one on them like that. But Chaz wasn’t most guys. He loved Quinn every bit as much as we did and knew this had nothing at all to do with his homosexual friend wanting to get frisky with him. Plus, he was comfortable enough with his own heterosexuality not to think that a kiss from another man would suddenly turn him gay. So there were no fists swung or disgusted shove-aways. He took it. He took it because he knew why it was happening. And it wasn’t the first time. A first for the Quinn kiss, but not the first time one of us had cock-blocked him.
Quinn pulled back and swept his thumb over Chaz’s lips as if he were removing lipstick, which wasn’t there, since he didn’t wear any. “Gotta go, babe. I’ll see you at home when you get off, and then I’ll get you off again.” Quinn turned to look at the blonde and gave her a wink. “Nice try, honey, but you’re wasting your time.”
The blonde grabbed her purse with an insulted huff and made a beeline for the door.
Chaz’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “Ah, man, why’d you have to do that?”
“You know why” was the only explanation Quinn gave. He looked back at Demi, so that Chaz couldn’t see his face, and mouthed, “You’re welcome,” followed by an air kiss.
Demi and Chaz had been doing this really weird mating dance for as long as I’d known them. Only neither of them had gone in for the lift or the dip. They were the real-life Baby and Johnny, sans the bump and grind. Chaz was from the wrong side of the tracks, and Demi didn’t care. He did, though. In his mind, he wasn’t good enough for her and probably never would be. Add to that the insult to his machismo because she made a lot more money than him, and the resulting stalemate looked less like a bump and grind and more like two uncoordinated and slightly inebriated barflies trying their best to learn the steps to a country line dance.
A burst of raucous laughter caught my attention—and that of everyone else in the room—and I turned to see Denver and Shaw yukking it up, complete with fists pounding on the bar top.
I could’ve gone over and inserted myself into the fun, but I decided to let Shaw have this one. The soreness between my thighs was a stark reminder that I’d been letting him have a lot of things lately that I shouldn’t, but qué será será, c’est la vie, and all that jazz.
With an exhausted sigh that was every bit as much mental as it was physical, I stood and gathered my things. “I’m out, too. Do me a favor and keep an eye on those two?”
“Why? Who is he?” Sasha was getting her ogle on while mentally calculating how to get Denver into her bed.
That wasn’t the shocking part for me. I drew my head back and looked at her, genuinely bewildered by how clueless she’d just sounded. “Are you serious right now? That man’s face is plastered all over every magazine cover and billboard imaginable. He’s the most exciting thing to hit football in, like, forever, and he happens to be the target of my latest obsession, and you don’t know who he is?”
I could practically hear the click of the lightbulb. “Ohhhh … that’s Denver?”
It took everything in me not to smack her on the forehead. “Yes, that’s Denver.”
“Can you introduce me?” She had that look in her eyes, and I could see the whole disastrous relationship playing out from beginning to end.
“That’s so not going to happen.”
Demi smirked. “Besides, he only has eyes for our dear Cass.” She gave a wave with her fingers while looking toward the bar. Denver was looking back. At me.
“He’s so big and sexy and beefy.” Sasha actually licked her lips as if she were a cartoon character envisioning a nice juicy steak.
“Beefy?”
“Oh, yeah.”
I tilted my head to regard him, and the appeal began to take shape. It wasn’t like I was incapable of recognizing a fine specimen when I saw one. Denver was definitely a manly man, tall and thick, with skin and hair made golden by time spe
nt in the California sun. The crinkles at the corners of his Sinatra blues came to life with the lift of his cheeks, a smile that was infectious even if you didn’t feel like you had anything to smile about. Under different circumstances, I probably would’ve been attracted to him, but he was my client. Or at least I wanted him to be. And there were rules, ethics.
As if I were a star in a sitcom, a little thought bubble formed in my mind with Wade Price’s face and prodding reminder. Bring home that win. By any means necessary. I think bubble Wade was trying to tell me that a slightly inappropriate friendship with Denver would fall under the “by any means necessary” category. It seemed I already had his attention; would it be so bad if I played it to my advantage? I mean, there was a partnership on the line. And Shaw was having drinks left and right with the man like they were best buds, so it wasn’t like he was exactly playing fair. I wasn’t sure my moral compass would allow me to follow through on it, but there was one thing I did know for sure: it was never going to happen if Sasha got there first.
“Sasha, seriously. It’s creepy. And he’s got, like, two feet on you.” Hopefully, that would be enough of a deterrent.
“Whatever. I’d climb him.”
Or not.
“A man like that can have any woman he wants and usually does. Pass.” At least Demi was sane. Or maybe her immunity was due to the expedition we all knew she wanted to make to the peak of Mount St. Chaz. And mount him she would, if given the chance.
“Right. So, I’m going to go home and get some sleep. No mounting of my client while I’m away,” I told Sasha before kissing her on the cheek.
As I made my way toward the door, I simply couldn’t resist giving Shaw a little perspective. Honestly, it was his own fault. He shouldn’t have been looking so smug when he glanced over Denver’s shoulder at me. So I made a little pit stop and gave Denver a playful hip check. “Are we still on for tomorrow?”
