In Her Defense

by Julianna Keyes

  “Best part of my day,” I admit as he helps me to my feet. He doesn’t let go of my hand and we walk around aimlessly, my shoes dangling from his fingertips.

  “Hey,” he says suddenly.

  “Hey what?”

  He glances over, a faintly nervous smile creasing the corners of his mouth. “You want to be my date?”

  I cock my head. “Eli, I am your date. Maybe you shouldn’t have had that third glass of wine.”

  “I didn’t,” he says. “You stole it and thought I didn’t notice.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He stops and I do too, watching him gaze down at our loosely joined fingers. “You want to go to the company party with me?” he asks. “Together? As my date?”

  It takes me a moment to process the words. I’ve been to four of the Morgan, Sterling & Haines summer galas, and no one has ever asked me to go as their date. I can’t even remember the last time someone asked me out the old-fashioned way, especially not someone who has nothing to gain by going through the motions. Eli’s already won the grand prize, so to speak. These baby steps are entirely unnecessary. And incredibly flattering.

  “You’re killing me,” he says, scratching his shoulder and avoiding my gaze.

  “Of course I’ll go with you,” I say abruptly, shaking my head to rid myself of girlish images of Eli showing up with flowers, opening car doors, asking me to dance. I don’t care about that stuff.

  Really.

  “I’d love to,” I add, for emphasis.

  His relieved smile makes something in my chest tighten. “All right, then,” he says.

  “You’re not worried?” I ask when we resume walking. “About what people might say?”

  “That you’re using me for my money and my big cock?”

  I cough out a mortified laugh. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  He runs a hand over his mouth, hiding his smile. “What will people say?”

  “You know. They might add you to the...list.”

  “Ah,” he says. “That.” He’s known all along what I was referring to, he’s just being a pest. “Nah, I’m not worried. We’ll go to the party, then you’re off to LA, and I’ll be left behind, all by myself, fending off the hordes of women who want to mend my broken heart.”

  I roll my eyes. “I see you’ve thought this through.”

  He squeezes my hand. “You’re not the only genius in this pair.” We amble around awhile longer, then he asks if I’m ready to head back.

  I’m surprised to see it’s nearly eleven. “I didn’t realize it was so late.”

  “You’re in good company.”

  “So you keep telling me.”

  Eli’s chivalrous act lasts all the way to the front door of his building. He doesn’t even wait to climb the stairs to the third floor before he pins me to the wall and kisses me, heels thudding against the wallpaper beside my head. I’m more than ready for it. Hell, I’ve been ready since he bought the flip-flops. I push off his jacket and loosen his tie, then tackle his belt. His erection digs into my belly and my body heats at its unspoken promise.

  He spins me around to unfasten the clasp at my neck, trailing his lips down my exposed back until he reaches the zipper just above my tailbone. He shoves the dress down my arms and turns me so he can study my naked chest with eyes so hot I swear I can feel them raking over me.

  “Eli, come here,” I murmur, stepping out of my flip-flops and into him, left in only a pair of barely there black silk panties.

  “Upstairs,” he says, sticking a finger under the very edge of the silk and stroking my stomach. “Right now.”

  I’m ready to sprint to his apartment, but he slings me over his shoulder and starts walking. “Eli!” I gasp, struggling to breathe in the awkward position. “You’ll fall.”

  “Nah.”

  I watch our discarded clothing dwindle as he climbs to the third floor. He has one big arm wrapped behind my knees, hand squeezing my upper thigh, and uses his still slightly injured hand to unlock the door. He carries me all the way down the hall to his bedroom, deposits me carefully on the bed, then tells me to lie there as he strips to his boxers.

  “Now,” he says, crawling over me. “Where were we?”

  “The front hall might have been fun,” I mumble against his lips.

  “This will be fun.” He cups my breasts in both hands and buries his face between them, letting his breath warm me. My nipples tighten and he strokes them with his thumbs, knowing it drives me nuts. I lift my head to watch him fasten his lips over one desperate peak, seeing his tan body silhouetted between my pale thighs. Eli’s a breast man, I’ve discovered, and he spends too much time there, leaving me to lift my hips in search of friction where I really want it. He chuckles roughly when he feels the damp silk against his belly, sliding a hand down to cover my pussy.

  “This what you want?” he whispers.

  “You know it is. Come up here. I want you.”

  “You’ve got me.”

  “Your cock.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not right now.”

  He does the exact opposite and slides down instead of up, curling a hand in my panties and tugging them off, then pinning my legs to either side of the bed, his face inches from my slick, shiny folds.

  “Eli,” I protest. “Not—”

  “Not this,” he says, finishing the sentence for me. “Remind me why not?” He trails his tongue ever-so-lazily down my inner thigh on one side, then the other, gaze locked on my very exposed center.

  “Because.” I tangle one hand in his short hair and tug. “I can’t...”

  “Come.”

  My cheeks heat. It sounds so stupid hearing him say it, or maybe it’s just his refusal to drop the subject that makes it sound ridiculous. Like having someone shine a flashlight under the bed to prove there really isn’t a monster lurking there, no matter how many noises you hear when it’s dark.

  “I think you should let me try,” he says seriously.

  God. I wish I’d made him turn off the lights, but he likes them on and he’s so generous in other ways I never insisted. Plus I don’t normally feel this shy. I’m not normally having a fucking conversation in this position. “Eli, stop. Come up here.”

  “I’m not going to do it if you don’t want me to.”

  “Good. Then get up—”

  “But I do want to talk about it.”

  “This is hardly the time.”

  “Why not?” He squints up at me, finally recognizing my discomfort. “I’m sorry,” he says, strangely formal. “Are you feeling a bit...vulnerable?”

  I scowl at the ceiling. “Knock it off.”

  But instead he reaches past me to pluck a tissue from the nightstand, laying it over my spread sex in a very belated and likely insincere attempt at modesty. “Better?”

  “Not really!”

  “I like doing it, Caitlin.” To his credit he’s making eye contact, even as his big hands slide under my thighs and start to stroke, thumbs skimming the crevice between legs and torso, never delving into the place beneath the tissue that needs the most attention.

  “I’m sure—”

  “And I think we’ve addressed a lot of your...focus-based performance anxiety issues.”

  “Excuse me? Performance anxiety? You’re on very thin ice here. I perform—”

  “Beautifully,” he interrupts. “Perfectly. Wonderfully. Let me do the same. I love it when you go down on me, I do. But I don’t feel right not reciprocating.”

  “I’m not keeping score.”

  “You’re not? I am. It’s twenty-three to nineteen, in your favor.”

  I squirm with laughter, coming to an abrupt halt when I feel his hot breath gust
through the tissue, flooding me with desire. “Stop.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  I groan. “No.”

  “Make you sick?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “I just...can’t.”

  “Come, right?”

  “Yes! Can you please accept that and get up here?”

  He cheats a little, sliding his thumb between my cheeks and over my pussy, spreading the copious moisture around before pushing inside. My muscles clasp around him eagerly, the traitors. “Let me try,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to my hip. “Just this once. If you don’t like it, I’ll stop, break up with you and never try again. Promise.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  “I’m mostly serious.” Another kiss, a twist of his deviant thumb. “Move the tissue. Tell me it’s okay.”

  “I can’t believe we’re negotiating this.”

  “Trust me, neither am I. And I’m really good, by the way.”

  “You are?”

  “Oh, yes. I have lots of experience. Literally...thousands of experiences.”

  I guffaw, covering my mouth with the corner of a pillow.

  “Fine,” he amends. “A little less than that. Let me show you what I’ve learned. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. No hard feelings. I promise.”

  I give up and yank away the tissue. I know when I’m beaten, and I know when I’m fighting a battle I no longer believe in. Eli’s too smart to waste this time gloating, and immediately spreads me wide with his thumbs, licking me right up the middle, tongue swirling around my throbbing clit. Turns out a conversation about cunnilingus is almost as hot as he promised getting it would be.

  My heartbeat ratchets up another ten thousand notches and I stare at the ceiling, somehow spotting whorls in the plain white paint, willing myself to stay in the moment, not drift off thinking about work or...well, paint.

  “How’re you doing?” Eli asks, his tongue pausing long enough to help form a sentence.

  “Fine.”

  “Just fine?”

  I bite my lip. “This is what happens.”

  “What happens?”

  “I get distracted. If I’m not...participating.”

  He pushes two fingers inside and teases the sensitive patch on my inner wall until I hiss in a breath and arch my hips. “So participate.”

  “Fine,” I gasp. “Turn around. Let me suck—”

  “Nuh-uh,” he chides, nipping something that should not be nipped and making me yelp. “Participate in this.”

  “H-how?”

  “Give me a play-by-play.”

  “For the love of God. You and your recaps.”

  “What am I doing right now?”

  “If you don’t know, you way oversold, Eli.”

  He laughs, the vibrations running through me. “What are my thumbs doing?”

  I pull in a breath. “They’re...opening me.”

  “Mmm-hmm. What’s my tongue doing?” He lowers his mouth and drives his tongue right inside, my body welcoming him eagerly.

  “It’s... You’re...”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “It’s inside me.”

  “Does it feel good?”

  Oh God. Now that I think about it, it does. “Yes.”

  “Good. How about here?” He wraps his lips around my clit and sucks hard, tongue lashing the swollen flesh.

  I cry out a little bit, hips jerking at the sensation, and manage a terse, “Yes.”

  “Thought so. And when my fingers do this?” He strokes that place inside again, but this time he’s not teasing, he’s torturing, and my legs can’t decide if they want to flop open or clamp shut around his head to stop the overload of sensation.

  “Eli!”

  “Yes?”

  His fingers. His tongue. His lips. Hell, his chin and his nose and his breath and every part of him feels like it’s everywhere. My body is overheating. I feel sweat gathered in the small of my back and behind my knees, my temples damp. But right between my legs is the true issue, a swamp of desire, manipulated expertly by a man who may not have been overstating his oral prowess after all.

  “Think you can come?” he asks, uttering the words right against my clit.

  “Yes!”

  “Aw. Good. Let me feel it.”

  “I’m close.”

  “Let me hear it.”

  “Eli...”

  “Let me taste it.”

  And then I lose it.

  * * *

  “Well,” Eli says sometime later. He’d flipped me onto my stomach during the final spasms of my first ever oral sex orgasm and driven into me from behind, coming in just a few rough strokes. Apparently he wasn’t lying when he said he enjoys giving just as much as getting. “You want to say anything?” he asks when I’m quiet.

  I’m still on my belly, arms crossed over my head, limp and spent. I manage to give him the A-OK sign and he laughs. “Can we put it on the menu?” he tries after a moment.

  I open my eyes to meet his earnest stare, nothing smug in his face, just the very genuine desire to be able to do...that...again. I’m not an idiot. “Uh-huh.”

  His lips curl. He’s so unbelievably sexy. How did I ever think he looked like a frat boy? He looks like a man. A decent one. A filthy one. “Excellent,” he says. “Because nothing at Mache 42 tastes as good as that.”

  I turn a million shades of red and bury my face in the pillow. Maybe because I’ve always turned down oral sex, there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity for this conversation. Or maybe it’s mortifying no matter how many times it comes up.

  “Are you embarrassed?”

  “Yes!”

  “Caitlin Dufresne, embarrassed?”

  I’m human, I’ve had my share of moments I wish I could erase, things I’d do differently. But it’s rare that I’m truly embarrassed, cheeks stained with the proof. When I’m working, I’m focused. And that’s it. I do my job, and I don’t do much else. I don’t get pedicures and go shopping. I don’t go to baseball games or screw in the stairwell. At least, I didn’t think I did. I’ve spent so long concentrating on being a good lawyer that I forgot about everything else. Now I’m spending another night in the apartment of a man I didn’t know three weeks ago, and I’m not thinking about anything else, because I don’t have work tomorrow, and I don’t have anything else in my life.

  “Hey.” Eli taps my hip. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was just kidding.”

  “I’m not upset.”

  “You sure?”

  I turn my head to look at him. “I’m sure.” Whatever he sees in my face, he seems to believe.

  “So would it be safe to say...”

  “Eli. You’re pushing it.” But I’m smiling.

  “...you’ve had a change of heart?”

  “What is this, a post-game interview?” He merely offers me that panty-melting grin. “Fine,” I say, my grumpiness all an act anyway.

  “Fine what?”

  I stare at him for a moment, willing myself not to read too much into the words. “I’ve had a change of heart.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Do you think my mom will ever come to one of my games?”

  “Probably.”

  “Do you think my dad will like it here?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Do you think Winona’s going to have one tan leg and one white leg after wearing a cast all summer?”

  “Yep.” I hope so.

  “Do you think—”

  “Dorrie. What’s with the questions?” I dart a look her way as we pull into the parking lot at the softball field. It’s time for her Wednes
day night game, and it’s predictably hot and sunny. The mood in the car, however, has been anything but predictable, as Dorrie morphed from uncharacteristically silent to manically inquisitive in the span of ten minutes.

  She blinks at me. “Nothing. Just wondering.”

  I park in the usual spot behind Eli’s truck, but he’s already at the diamond. I shut off the car and turn to look at my niece. “Is that true?”

  “Yes...?” It’s more question than answer.

  “What’s bothering you? You really want your mom to come? You know she wants to be here, right? She’s just busy.”

  “She’s always busy.”

  “She has a busy job.”

  “You have a busy job. You’re here.”

  Technically I had to be forced to take this break, but I’m not about to explain semantics. “I’m on holiday right now, so I have time to be here, and I love watching you play. I know your mom wishes she could be here, too, and as soon as she can, she’ll come. She’ll sit in the front row. Right between Marla’s dad and Flipper, the dog that drools all the time.”

  Dorrie giggles. “His name is Phillip.”

  I smile at her. “And I know your dad can’t wait to see you. He told me.” Dorrie’s father, Stephen, is coming tomorrow night to stay with Dorrie while Susan and I are in LA. He and Susan are on semi-speaking terms, and he’d called to ask to stay in my apartment while he was here.

  “He did?”

  “Uh-huh. He misses you a lot.”

  “Do you think he’d sit by Marla’s dad?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Do you think we’re going to win tonight?”

  “Honestly?”

  Dorrie’s lips quirk as she stares at me. “No. Lie to me.”

  “Hell yeah, you’re going to win. This will be great!”

  She doubles over laughing. “I hope you have to sit by Phillip.”

  * * *

  I don’t have to sit by Phillip, as it turns out. But Stella and Winona have already staked their claim on The Closers bench, so I take a seat on the top row of the bleachers and text Susan. You really need to be here.