Past Midnight

by Jasmine Haynes

  For the first time in over a year, she melded her mouth to his and kissed him back, deep, hard, breath-stealing, heart-pumping. And when he filled her, it was beyond giving her his essence, it was his heart and soul.

  THE NIGHT WAS SURREAL. DOMINIC HAD TOSSED THE KEYS TO THE valet, and when the car arrived, he’d bundled her inside as if she were a porcelain doll.

  Some other woman had hurled those insults at her husband. Some other person had sat speechless while Dominic told a stranger that she loved to masturbate for him. Someone else had let those words turn her inside out with heat and desire, had let Dominic take her on the cold tile countertop, fucked him, kissed him, climaxed, and begged for more. Some other woman had loved every moment.

  She wanted to say it was the champagne. She turned her head on the seat to tell him she was sleepy and drunk and she couldn’t remember exactly what she’d done tonight, but his profile was crystal clear.

  She reached for Dominic, laying cold fingers on his warm arm. He covered her hand with his palm. “That was hot, baby.”

  She absolutely could not deny it. Or that she needed more of it, the mindless sex that kept the rest of her life at bay.

  WEARING ONLY BRA AND A THONG PANTY THAT OUTLINED HER firm, heart-shaped ass, Erin leaned over the bathroom counter applying her makeup. Already showered and dressed—they’d agreed he’d leave for the exhibition hall early, and she would meet him later—Dominic leaned against the doorjamb watching. After that hot episode in Miterberg’s rented mansion, he’d had the nerve to reach for her in the night. She hadn’t turned him away. She’d let him kiss her again. It wasn’t the sweet melding of lips in the early dawn of attraction and desire, but nor was it the perfunctory swap of tongues in a relationship’s fading twilight. He couldn’t assign a name to it, only acknowledge that she allowed it, just as she had last night in the opulent mansion bathroom. That had to mean something, a step forward.

  She moved from her brows to her lashes, whisking them with a mascara wand. She always worked from the top down, brows, eyes, cheeks, then lips. Why not up, lips first? He’d been present for the process countless times, but he’d never stopped long enough to take it all in. Until Jay morphed from baby to toddler, she’d done her makeup in her panties, like now. When he started running around and hadn’t learned to knock, she’d taken to wearing a robe. At home, she still used the robe, yet here, despite the hotel garment hanging on the door, she wore only her underthings. For the life of him, Dominic couldn’t remember what she’d worn yesterday morning as they were getting ready, or if the change in her had come about during the night.

  “Why are you watching me?” she asked without smudging the stroke of her eyeliner.

  Because last night was kinky and hot, and her reaction to that scene with Winter made him hope they’d passed a threshold. What threshold would they cross if he pushed her into action rather than fantasy and talk? Because really, that’s all last night had been. Fantasy. She’d fucked him, yet that was still part of the fantasy. No one had seen a thing.

  “Would you have done it if I’d asked you to?”

  Her hand jerked, leaving a tiny smear on her eyelid. She hissed and grabbed a cotton swab to wipe it away. “Done what?”

  A rumble of tension snaked through his abdomen as he recognized the signs of shutdown. When you don’t want to answer, pretend you don’t understand the question.

  If he didn’t force the issue here, he’d never get the chance at home. “If I’d told you to masturbate for him, would you have done it?”

  She screwed the brush back into the tube of liner, then smoothed a finger over the eye shadow on her lids. She had her routine, always did it that way. Yet he detected the pulse at her throat, its beat faster than it should have been as she weighed the consequences of a lie. Or the truth.

  Finally, she pulled out her blusher compact and swept the brush over her skin, adding color to her cheeks. “Yes.”

  A rush of adrenaline hit his bloodstream. In one moment, he was hard, cock aching with need. Yet his skin felt clammy as if he’d stepped off the curb before looking only to suddenly see the bus bearing down on him—too late.

  She turned, leaning back against the counter, totally unselfconscious in her near nakedness. “Did you really want me to do it? Or would you have punished me for it later?”

  The hotel bathroom seemed suddenly smaller. He’d needed her answer, craved it. Now it hovered on the precipice of being a huge mistake. She’d asked him last night if he was jealous that Winter was checking her out. He’d gotten away with a fencesitting answer.

  What the fuck was the truth anyway? He thought he wanted it, believed he could handle it. In his fantasies, it made him hot as hell. He pulled away from the door, bracketed her with his body, arms on either side of her, leaning close, nose-to-nose. The scent of her shower made him dizzy. The proximity of her lips twisted his insides.

  “I would be mindless. Then I’d have to have you while he watched. Yes, I fucking wanted it. More than you can know.”

  Her breasts touched his chest as she breathed. His shape filled her pupils.

  He was beyond jealousy. Everything was about her reaction, forcing her to see him, look at him, touch him. He wanted that moment in the forest when the hikers turned the corner, and she’d whispered, “Don’t you fucking stop.” The tension in her body, the need, and everything else fell away but that primal act. It defied logic, yet she had been his more than at any other moment in their lives.

  “Tell me how much you wanted it.” He needed her confession, too. It was nothing so noble as making an intimate connection or fixing what had gone wrong or healing or finding a way to live with each other after what they’d lost. It was visceral.

  Her pebbled nipples branded him with each breath she took. Then she pulled his hand down to the outline of her panties. The thong’s crotch was soaked with her desire. “This much,” she whispered.

  He could have had her then, fucked her on the counter like he’d done last night. He merely stroked her cleft, absorbed her shudder, then pulled away to reach into his back pocket.

  He laid a business card beside her cosmetics bag.

  She trembled. “What’s that?”

  “His phone number. He gave me his card while you were prettying up in the bathroom before we left.” While she was erasing the remnants of her ravishment.

  “I’m not going to call it,” she said.

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “To tell him to come here tonight.”

  HOT AND COLD WASHED THROUGH ERIN LIKE A FEVER. SHE WANTED to masturbate for Dominic now. She couldn’t wait. Needed the relief. Yet she wondered if she’d been lying to both of them when she said she’d have done it for Winter. “I didn’t bring my vibrator.”

  He laughed low in his throat. “You have time to shop.”

  Her skin buzzed with aliveness, but her blood rushed with nerves. “What if someone finds out?”

  “He’s not going to tell anyone.”

  He lifted her chin, and she realized she’d been staring at that card. Winter, winter. The winter of discontent. God, the last year had been so much worse than mere discontent. But Shakespeare had really been talking about the turn, from winter to glorious summer, from bad to good. Even if for a fleeting moment.

  “I want it,” Dominic said.

  And . . . and . . . Jesus. “I can’t do it.”

  His eyes didn’t change; they still burned. “You said you could.”

  “That was last night. The heat of the moment.” She swallowed. “You shouldn’t have asked me. You should have just brought him here.” Okay, that was abdicating responsibility, but it was the truth. As wet as she was at the thought of it, she didn’t have the courage to execute.

  “Fine. You need to make it up to me,” he stated flatly, but that glow remained in his eyes. He wasn’t angry. He’d wanted Winter in their room tonight, but he was adapting to her whim.

  “What do you want me to do?”

/>   “I haven’t decided yet.” He held her chin in his hand. “Maybe I should have you get down on your knees and suck me off like that woman did for her man last night.”

  She trembled, her nipples hard, her pussy wet. “What about my orgasm?”

  He smiled cruelly. “You don’t get one. That’s your punishment for not doing what I told you to.”

  She wanted to snicker because cruelty was so not Dominic’s nature, yet it was another phase of the game he wanted to play. When they were young and hot, sometimes she’d send him off to work with a blow job, the taste of come lingering with her. It had been exciting, the drop to her knees, then pushing him on his way, knowing he’d think about it all day. The power in that.

  “You can swallow me and taste it for hours while we’re in the booth, knowing what you did to me,” he murmured, eyes gleaming, as if he were guessing the direction of her thoughts and the memories suddenly vivid in her mind.

  Oh, yes, there was power in sucking a climax from a man, making the very act almost as good as having an orgasm herself.

  “Then again, maybe I’ll go to my knees and lick your hot little snatch,” he went on seducing her. “You’ll have the reminder all day long while I’m talking to customers.” He swiped his tongue along her cheek. “Remembering how good my mouth felt on you as I’m introducing you to the people you’ve talked to on the phone, your customers. What would they think if they knew what a dirty woman you are?” He trailed a finger down between her breasts, over her abdomen, to the elastic of her thong.

  Her belly fluttered with need. “Too much talk,” she said, a slight catch in her voice. God, yes, she wanted it.

  His mouth followed the path of his hand as he slowly went to his knees, then he breathed in the scent of her arousal, exhaled with a puff of warm air. “You smell good.”

  She gripped the bathroom counter, her legs suddenly weak.

  Pulling aside the thong’s crotch, he drew in another deep breath. “You’re pretty, too, all plump, pink, and moist.”

  His voice drove her crazy, the sight of him down on his knees for her, like a slave forced to do her bidding. Then his tongue dipped between her folds, and she closed her eyes. “Oh yeah,” she murmured.

  He swirled against her clit. She throbbed low in her belly. Then he spread her legs wider, put both hands between her thighs and cupped her butt, bringing her flush against his mouth.

  “God, that’s good. So good. Put your fingers in me.”

  He didn’t let up on her clit for even a beat, simply drove two fingers up inside her. She clenched the countertop so tightly, her knuckles turned white. “Right there, yes, please, don’t stop.” Her body began to undulate with the rhythm of his mouth and fingers, and she tried to think of what he’d been saying before, what he’d wanted. “Every time I look at you today”—she gasped as he rode that perfect spot inside—“I’ll remember you on your knees licking my pussy.” Her legs trembled. “When you introduce me as your wife—oh Jesus—” She squeezed her eyes tight against the pleasure. “I’ll think about my come all over your tongue, how you’ll smell like me, taste like me.”

  He took her with fervor, as if her words were as important as the sex, making him hotter, driving him higher. The climax started as ripples flowing out from his touch, his tongue.

  “I’ll know how you’re thinking about licking me, sucking me, fucking me, every time you look my way.” She moaned, and any other words were lost in sensation. Her body bucked against his mouth. Then she wailed, orgasm roaring over her like a train.

  Coming down from the peak, she was still on her feet, though her knees were weak. Dominic gazed up at her, his lips wet with her juice, then he licked his fingers.

  “Taste,” he said, rising, cupping her nape, taking her mouth with the musk of her own come on his tongue. “Good,” he whispered. “I’ll taste you all day.”

  “But—” His cock was hard against her belly. “That.”

  He rotated his hips against her as his dark eyes glowed like hot coals. “I’m going to be crazy by the time we get out of there. Then I’m going to fuck the hell out of you the minute we walk back in this door. You can think about that all day long,” he drawled, “every time I touch you, every time I look at you.”

  Then he held her chin and put his lips to hers, a sweet kiss still piquant with the taste of her come. “And one day, you will masturbate for another man while I watch.” He reminded her about Winter. “I’ll keep asking until you do.”

  She could barely move as the outer door clicked shut.

  Yes, he would keep asking. She’d started something with agreeing to this weekend, and Dominic wasn’t going to back down.

  Gazing at herself in the mirror, her skin glowed and her lips were full and sensual. She looked so sexy and wanton, she didn’t recognize herself.

  8

  CHRIST, IT WAS GOOD. TRUE TO HIS WORD, AFTER HE’D MADE HER come in the bathroom, he’d touched her, stroked her, whispered sex talk in her ear all day, in front of customers, when they were alone. He’d driven himself mad with desire, had pounced on her the moment they were back in the room, just as he’d promised. It had been so fucking unbelievably good. He hadn’t even needed to take her to another party on Saturday night to seduce her. They’d had sex all weekend. Erin had kissed him, blown him, fucked him, bantered with him. Now, on the plane, she slept beside him.

  Dominic dared to let himself hope. He wasn’t an idiot; he knew they had to talk. They needed a counselor to help them through all the things they hadn’t managed to say or feel since the day Jay fell ill. But he felt a surge of optimism that she would at least talk to him.

  He lifted her hand, laced his fingers with hers. She didn’t wake. He kissed her fingertips, stroked a soft tendril of hair back behind her ear. He breathed her in, the sweet scent of lotion and shampoo.

  After months of despair, he had hope.

  ERIN WOKE WITH HER HEART POUNDING. SHE WAS IN HER OWN BED again, night, dark, Dominic’s quiet breathing beside her as the dream began to fade. No, the nightmare. Jay. She remembered every moment of the nightmare. She felt the reality of it every day, yet it was so much worse reliving it in the Technicolor of her dreams. She covered her ears, trying to block out the sound of her own voice shouting those awful words at her son.

  When she was able to sleep, her dreams of Jay were usually sweet. She would wake longing to return to them. But then, in the dark, the bad thoughts would begin churning, and she couldn’t sleep again. She wanted to reach for Dominic now, with her hands, her arms, her whole being. But Dominic was out of reach. It didn’t matter what had happened between them this weekend; if he knew the things she’d said to Jay, he’d never forgive her. She would always see what she’d done mirrored in his eyes. She was the one who wasn’t able to forgive, not herself, not Dominic.

  Yet the trade show had changed something. She couldn’t seek the solace of sex now. After everything they’d done over the weekend, their own bed was . . . different. She now knew she could step outside of herself, move beyond the perimeter of her guilt. She could forget for a time, live for a time, and it didn’t take all that much pretending. They’d woken in Orlando this morning, showered, dressed, packed, driven to the airport, and returned the rental car. She’d let Dominic hold her hand on the plane, though he’d thought she was asleep. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d simply held hands like that.

  She craved his warmth now, yet too much of a good thing for too long a time was almost like betraying Jay’s memory. That was the problem. The guilt tortured her, yet without the guilt, it was like forgetting Jay. God, she hadn’t thought of him all weekend. And that was sacrilege. The constant pain she felt was the only thing that kept him alive. Tonight’s nightmare was her punishment for forgetting that.

  She knew she was addicted, knew she’d do it again, have hot sex, play Dominic’s dirty games. She craved them. But not tonight. And not in this bed. It was the only thing she could promise her son.

  Sli
ding from beneath the covers, she made as little movement as possible, keeping the blankets mashed down to avoid a rush of cool air that might wake Dominic.

  She couldn’t remember where she’d left her slippers and rather than turning the light on to find them, she padded barefoot down the hall. The house was split-level; four bedrooms, one was a guest room that never got used and another served as her office. Dominic had remodeled the workshop attached to the garage as his pseudolab and home office.

  Her feet were cold by the time she’d booted up. Pulling her legs up onto the chair, she folded her fingers around her toes to warm them as she waited for the Internet. Her computer was old, a castoff from work, and websites with more sophisticated graphics took longer to load. She’d never been able to throw out stuff that still functioned. Though she couldn’t afford to lose the time at work, it didn’t matter at home. Dominic was different; he loved state-of-the-art.

  The desk faced the door. She’d read that was some sort of feng shui thing, so that you could always see when someone was coming into your space. It gave you control. She did the same thing in her office at DKG. She’d also set the computer to erase her history whenever she exited the Internet. Dominic would never check up on her, but she couldn’t take the chance he might see something by accident. So she always made sure she shut down her browser before she left her desk or if Dominic’s shadow darkened her door.

  Finally, after the tap of a few more computer keys to open the photo gallery, her son’s beautiful face blossomed on the monitor. She touched the screen as if she were touching his face.

  Dominic would be pissed if he knew what she did tucked away in her office late at night, if he knew the things she’d kept hidden from him.

  And she wouldn’t blame him for that.

  HE AWOKE WITH A START. HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW LONG HE’D BEEN alone, but when he ran his hand over her side of the bed, the sheet was cold.