by Noelle Adams
I turned to see John approaching me. He was leaving his office too, based on the fact that he was carrying his briefcase, and he joined me on my way to the elevator.
“You look really pretty today,” he said with a slow smile.
I glanced down at myself, blushing at the compliment. I’d had enough energy to wear a skirt today—a charcoal-gray one—and I’d paired it with a cashmere sweater set instead of my normal suit jacket. I also had on my pretty pinkish-buff heels and a pearl necklace I’d inherited from my grandmother.
I felt like I could belong in Mad Men, and I kind of liked the feeling. John’s was the fourth compliment I’d gotten today.
“Thank you,” I told him. “That’s nice of you to say.”
“You want to grab a drink?”
I glanced at my phone to check the time and hesitated. I had forty-five minutes before my regular meeting time with Sean. “It will have to be quick. I’ve got plans later.”
He didn’t look concerned by this piece of news. If I’d hoped he’d be jealous by the possibility of my having a date, I was to be sorely disappointed. “No problem. We can go to the bar downstairs.”
We’d had drinks a couple of times after work since that Friday I’d asked him out, and it was nice that he wanted to keep seeing me, even in such a casual way.
We went to the bar, and John bought us both drinks. He ordered me an Amaretto Sour without asking. I’d had one last time, but I was going to get something different today. He didn’t give me a chance though, and it wasn’t a big enough deal to make an issue of.
The bar was crowded for happy hour—filled with people like us who had just gotten off work downtown—so an intimate conversation was impossible. We chatted casually, and I smiled a lot, and I was pleased to discover I wasn’t having such an out-of-body experience this time.
We both had two drinks, and by the time we were leaving, I could say for sure that John appeared interested in me. I caught quite a few admiring looks on his part.
I could also say for sure that he wasn’t as smart as Sean.
Again, it wasn’t a fair assessment. No one was as smart as Sean. I’d never met anyone else who could talk like him and think like him and put pieces together the way he did.
I didn’t want or need John to be at Sean’s intellectual level.
It was just an observation that I couldn’t help but make.
I did feel a little strange, leaving John after getting another, slightly more lingering goodbye kiss and walking a block down to the hotel where I was going to have sex with Sean.
I’d never juggled two men before.
Women did it all the time. I had no commitments to either one of them. But it still felt odd to me.
If things got serious with John, I’d definitely end my Wednesdays with Sean. But we weren’t there yet, and I didn’t want to throw something good away if there wasn’t a sure thing to replace it.
So I went straight to the hotel and arrived about ten minutes later than usual.
I knocked at the hotel room door and had to wait for a minute before he answered the door. I discovered why when I saw Sean was wearing a bathrobe.
He must have used the extra time to take a shower.
“You’re late,” he said by way of greeting. He wasn’t frowning though. His mouth was turned up in a little smile, and his eyes were teasing.
I raised my eyebrows. “I think you’ve been late before, if I remember correctly.”
“Did work run late?”
I went over to the table with the wine, and I dropped my bag onto the floor. “Just got a slow start coming over here.”
I didn’t add any more information. I’d intended to tell Sean that I’d had a drink with John earlier, but when the time came to do so, it didn’t feel natural.
I wouldn’t lie to him. That wouldn’t be right. But I wouldn’t volunteer the information that I’d been with John just now and that was why I was late.
I studied his face as he came to sit down in the other chair at the table, tightening the tie to his robe. He looked a lot better this week, without that haunting ache I’d sensed in him two weeks ago.
In fact, he appeared to be in a very good mood, if his dancing eyes and the twitching of his mouth was any indication.
“How’s everything with you?” I asked, not sure how to broach the topic of his mood.
“Good. I’m good. No falling apart for me tonight.”
My smile faded slightly. “You didn’t fall apart last time.”
He gave a half shrug. “Maybe. But I promise I’m good today.”
“Good.” I searched his expression, but he didn’t seem to be beating himself up about his behavior last time, despite his self-deprecating comment.
He seemed... almost excited, like something good was going to happen.
I really wanted to know what it was, but I couldn’t figure out a way for me to ask.
He went on, his face sobering a little as he spoke, “I think the two-year mark was particularly hard because... because I’m starting to forget.” He paused and added, “Not that I’ll ever forget her. I’m just not thinking about her all the time anymore.”
I hadn’t expected this kind of admission, and it made my heart jump almost painfully. I murmured, “I can understand that. It’s been two years.”
He nodded, not meeting my eyes now. “It’s hard though. After holding on for so long. I go... days now without even thinking...”
He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to.
“You can’t feel guilty about that, Sean. It’s been two years. Eventually everyone has to heal.”
He nodded again, still not looking at me. He was silent a long time until he finally breathed, “I guess maybe I am.”
I didn’t know if he was talking to me or talking to himself. It seemed like a revelation to him either way.
“That’s good.” The words were too trite to answer what he’d said, but there weren’t any better words in such a situation.
He lifted his eyes and smiled at me, and the emotion relaxed between us.
I sipped my wine, feeling relieved at the change in mood and just a little disappointed at the same time.
“I see you’ve got a Man Men thing going on today,” Sean murmured after a minute, his eyes running up and down my body from my heels to my hair.
I actually gave a little gasp, so surprised was I at how he’d voiced something so close to my thoughts earlier in the day. “I wasn’t intentionally going for that,” I explained. “It just kind of turned out that way.”
His little smile broadened irresistibly. “I like it.”
“Thanks.”
His eyes were still restless, running over my face and body. His smile turned into a thoughtful frown.
“What is it?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious, despite my pleasure at his appreciation for my appearance.
“You look... different. I don’t know.”
I wondered if he could somehow sense that my romantic dreams were starting to come true—at least the very first steps toward them. Surely that wasn’t visible on my face. “I don’t think I’m different.”
“How would you know?”
“Well, I’m me. If anyone knows if something is different about me, surely it would be me.”
He was smiling again, as if he liked this slightly garbled response. “Maybe.”
“Stop grinning like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like a cat who got into the cream, as my grandmother used to say.”
His green eyes transformed from amused interest to something deliciously heated. “Do you have something else in mind for my mouth to be doing?”
Despite my attempt to stay cool and lofty, my cheeks flushed hot. “I don’t know. I could maybe think of a few things.”
He stood up and extended a hand toward me. I reached mine out to meet it, and he pulled me to my feet. “Maybe you can show me what they are,” he murmured.
I had no object
ions to that plan.
In fact, my whole body tightened with excitement.
We stood for a minute, holding hands, and I experienced the strangest clench in my chest. It wasn’t nerves. It wasn’t arousal. It was something else, and it was caused by the look in Sean’s eyes and the way his warm hand felt around mine.
For a moment I was hit with another one of those flickering visions where I could see myself somewhere else. I imagined myself in a room like this, standing like this, but it was John who had that look in his eyes, John whose hand was holding mine.
I’m a pretty good imaginer, but I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that visual. It didn’t feel real to me the way this did.
The realization was troubling.
“What is it?” Sean asked softly, drawing his eyebrows together.
I smiled and gave my head a little shake, dismissing the vision and the reflections that had come with it. “Nothing.”
He was still frowning, as if it bothered him that he couldn’t tell what I was thinking.
As if he had any right to see into my soul.
He didn’t.
We had a contract, and soul-searching wasn’t one of the clauses.
“Ash?” he prompted.
My name was Ashley. No one called me Ash. No one but Sean.
“Nothing,” I repeated, telling myself to get it together, or my enjoyable night of sex, food, and stimulating conversation would be ruined.
When Sean kept studying my face, I knew I had to move us past the weird moment. So I stepped closer to him, took his head in both my hands, and pulled him down into a kiss.
That got things moving in the right direction. Sean took control of the kiss almost immediately, sliding one hand down to the small of my back and pressing my body closer to his. When he deepened the kiss with his tongue, I lowered my hands to tug at my cardigan until I could slide it down my arms and drop it on the floor.
I wore a matching sleeveless sweater underneath it, and Sean took care of that one quickly by grabbing the bottom and breaking the kiss so he could pull it off over my head.
Today I was wearing a lavender bra, and Sean stared down at it for a few seconds with hot appreciation on his face before he pulled me back into a tight embrace.
We kissed for a few minutes, during which we managed to get rid of my shoes and skirt. Sean was still wearing the bathrobe, and I was starting to get rid of that when he grabbed me unexpectedly, swung me up into his arms, and carried me over to the bed.
I gasped at the sudden movement, clutching at his neck with both hands. I’m not particularly heavy, but I’m also not a wisp. I’ve got solid bones and muscles and some extra padding, and I’m not in the habit of men carrying me, even for a few steps.
In fact, I’d never imagined that anyone would.
So I was breathless and disoriented in Sean’s arms like this. I wanted to tease him or make a joke or anything to sustain a light, familiar mood between us, but I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
Sean was smiling as he lowered me onto the bed.
I wanted to ask him why he’d done that.
I wanted to make some sort of ironic quip.
I wanted to do anything other than gaze up at him with wide, bewildered eyes the way I was sure I was doing.
Sean’s smile turned into something almost tender as he lowered himself onto the bed and moved over me.
My breath—and any word I’d been trying to say—caught in my throat.
He kissed me, saving me the trouble of finding my voice, and then he raised his head to let his lips trail across my flushed face and then down to my neck. I wore my bra and panty set and my pearl necklace. Nothing else.
He clearly liked what he saw.
Once again, I opened my mouth to attempt something clever, but he kissed me before I could.
Not that I was in a fit state to think of anything clever to say anyway.
We kissed for a long time, the weight of Sean’s body pressing into mine in a way I couldn’t help but love. He was so warm, so solid, so... not a flimsy fantasy that dispersed at the first gust of wind.
I wasn’t sure where that thought had come from, but it distracted me briefly from my enjoyment of the kiss.
Sean evidently could since my distraction. He lifted his head and frowned, his face only inches from mine. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Really.”
He didn’t believe me. “Are you feeling uncomfortable... about last time?” The smile in his eyes had faded into something thoughtful and sober.
“No, of course not.”
“Are you sure? I know I was... intense. I hope it didn’t mess things up between us.”
I could suddenly see what he thought had happened. He was afraid I’d gotten scared that he’d made things too serious between us. He thought I was being skittish because of that.
And I wasn’t.
Not really.
I was feeling skittish, but I didn’t know why.
“I won’t be that way again,” he murmured. “I promise. It was just a... fluke. One bad night. I think that was the worst of it. That’s not the way I really am.”
Had I been feeling the way he thought I was feeling, what he’d said would have been exactly right. It would have eased my concerns about things between us jumping into intimacy, when that wasn’t the way we were supposed to be together.
But that wasn’t the way I was feeling.
Not really.
So his words just made my stomach twist even more.
“Ash?” he murmured, his voice thicker than before.
“Yeah.”
“Tell me what’s bothering you.”
I would have told him had I been able to put it into easy words. But I wasn’t even sure what my problem was. It was like I had this tangled mess of emotions, and they’d gotten knotted inside me so tightly that I couldn’t begin to straighten them out. “It’s nothing important.”
“If it’s holding you back, then it is important.”
“I’m not holding back.”
He arched his eyebrows, and that felt like a challenge. So I did the only thing left for me to do in the face of such a challenge.
I pulled his head back down into another kiss.
And that worked. I was immensely relieved when Sean stopped talking and focused on kissing me again.
The kissing lasted longer than I expected it to. He was never lax in the kissing department, but he usually got excited and moved to other parts of my body pretty quickly. Tonight, though, he didn’t seem to be in a hurry, even though I could feel him growing erect against my belly.
I relaxed and enjoyed the skill of his mouth and tongue—and his hands which were doing very nice things to the parts of my body he could reach—until I felt that knot inside me start to tighten again.
Then I raised my hips to rub myself purposefully against his erection, causing him to break the kiss and groan.
After that, he moved things along. He lowered his mouth to my neck and then my breasts, teasing my nipples through the lace of my bra. Then he trailed kisses even lower—to my belly and then to the top edge of my panties.
When he flicked his tongue between my legs—just thin fabric between him and my hot arousal—I bucked up my hips involuntarily.
He made a soft growling sound. It was a new sound from him, and it made my whole body clench hard.
He chuckled, evidently pleased with this response, and gave me a soft nip through my panties.
I gasped and arched up, grabbing for his head with both hands.
His hands moved to the sides of my underwear, and I knew he was about to slide them off. Then he would move his head back between my legs. Then he would do something to me that he’d never done before.
I knew what was coming. And I wanted it desperately.
But it also made that knot of emotion inside me tighten and twist until I could barely breathe.
It wasn’t rational, but it didn’t matter. It was real, a
nd I had to act on it or else do something I didn’t want to do.
I tugged at his hair, and he lifted his head to meet my eyes.
I shook my head.
He drew his eyebrows together again. “Really? I was going to—”
“I know.”
“You did it for me last week.”
“I know. And you can do me some other time.” I tried to keep my voice light, as if it were no big deal. “I’m not in the mood for it tonight.”
“Okay,” he said softly. “But you do want to...”
“Have sex with you? Of course I do.” The naked seriousness of the conversation was making me nervous, so I pitched my voice lighter to add, “Am I crazy? You think I’d miss out on sex with Sean Doyle?”
To my relief, he didn’t continue the conversation or interrogate me about my reasons. He gave me a little smile in response. He did seem more sober underneath the smile than he had before—as if some of that excitement I’d sensed in him earlier had dimmed—but he got back to business quickly. He kissed his way up my body until he’d reached my mouth again.
I felt better after that. Things felt more familiar.
He spent a while on foreplay, teasing and fondling me until I was breathless and rocking restlessly beneath him. Then he took off his bathrobe and reached for a condom on the nightstand. He’d kept my bra and panties on, and he just moved my underwear aside so he could enter me.
It felt full and familiar and deeply pleasurable, and I wrapped my legs around him in response to all those feelings. He was kissing me again as he started to move, rocking into me rhythmically, making all of me feel so good.
It felt so good.
So good.
So good.
My mind couldn’t really process anything else, except how much I wanted Sean like this, kissing me, moving inside me, his bare skin pressed against mine, the heat from his body reaching me, filling me.
“Oh Ash,” he rasped, breaking the kiss and tilting his head down toward my neck. His speed had started to accelerate.
I whimpered and squeezed my legs around him, meeting his motion with little thrusts of my hips.
“Ash. Baby.” He was breathing fast and hard against my throat.
I hadn’t been close to orgasm the moment before, but suddenly I was. It coiled inside me so quickly it was startling. I gave a ragged sob and dug my fingernails into his back.
