by S. L. Naeole
“He’s not even awake yet,” I pointed out as I went through the motions of frying up two over easy eggs and two slices of the sausage. I popped in two slices of bread into the toaster and then plated everything before doing a quick cleanup of the kitchen. “I’ll make him breakfast when he does.”
Grabbing a mug of coffee, I sat down beside Lara and started eating. She gaped at me. “So you guys really didn’t have sex? Are you disappointed? Because, if I were you and I had all that man meat in my bed and I didn’t get to dine at that buffet, I would definitely be disappointed. We’ve got canines and vaginas for a reason, Ria. We’re meant to eat meat. None of this sexual veganism bullshit.”
Laughing, I shook my head even as my cheeks flushed hot at her words. “Everything is happening exactly how it should. He’s not rushing me and I’m not freaking out.” Then I remembered what happened the day before in the elevator—both times—and relayed to them everything, smiling at their shock and subsequent pride.
“You Rockstar!” Kara cheered as she hugged me, her eyes bright with happiness. “And he’s a fucking godsend, okay? I’m going to say that right now. A downright miracle. If he asks you to marry him, you had better tell him yes because that man has been the push you needed to start living life instead of just existing.”
Nodding enthusiastically, Lara agreed. “That was fucking amazing, Ria. And, like, total rom-com-esque. You had the entire elevator singing! Man, I wish I could have seen it.”
“Me, too,” a voice chimed in. The three of us pivoted our heads to see Mal standing shirtless at the edge of the hallway, a pair of baggy slacks hanging loosely at his hips. Lara’s mouth fell as she gazed at him appreciatively, while Kara—happily engaged Kara—licked her lips. Involuntarily my own hips dipped forward at the sight of him, my eyes dropping to his groin before quickly flicking upward to see that he’d caught me looking, a sexy smirk tugging at his lips. My cheeks somehow grew even hotter.
“Two nights in a row. We’re gonna have to start charging you rent if this keeps up, snuggle boy,” Lara quipped as Mal walked around her to sit on the empty stool beside me.
“Lara!” I hissed, mortified, heat flowing to fill my cheeks with stark pink. “Mal, I’m sorry. She—”
His mouth pushed down on mine, cutting me off and making me forget what the hell I was gonna say. His lips were firm, but his tongue was soft and searching as it danced with mine teasingly. I melted into him, incapable of stopping my body’s involuntary reaction to everything Mal. When he finally released me from his kiss, he smiled. “God, that blush does things to me. You can always come to my place, love. It’s much quieter and there’s no need for pants.”
Stunned, I fought against the tumble of words that wanted to leak out all at once as my mind immediately filled with the vision of a pantsless Mal.
Sleeping tiger…
“I-I…”
“Oh shit. Looks like it won’t just be snuggling for long,” Lara cackled, while Kara slapped her sister’s forehead so hard, I winced at the sound.
Mal grinned at me and then took the fork from my hand before helping himself to my breakfast. “What did you want to do today?”
Have sex!
“I don’t know. I normally do my laundry on Sundays but I did it yesterday so…”
“So, want to try that picnic in my office again?”
“Maybe another time,” I answered before admitting that I wasn’t sure I was ready to see Hannah again.
Understanding flashed in his eyes before he frowned. He put the fork down and reached into his pocket. Pulling out his phone and looking at the screen, he made his apologies and went into my room. The second he was gone, Kara and Lara decided to reenact the Spanish Inquisition.
“Who the fuck is Hannah?” the asked in unison, Mal’s assistant’s name having triggered their dormant powers of twintuition.
“She’s his assistant,” I replied before adding quickly that there was nothing to worry about, hoping that my tone sounded convincing enough.
Lara leaned her body toward the hallway to make sure that we weren’t being spied on and then swung in close, her voice low. “So is she, like, the you and Delmonico kind of assistant, or is she the red sports car, second wife, new underwear-buying kind of assistant? Because the first one I can live with. The second one will make me fuck her up. I’m not kidding. I know how to use power tools. I’ll turn her ass into an Adirondack chair if she messes with my girl.”
It was difficult not to smile at her vigorous defense of me. “Thank you, but it’s okay. It was a misunderstanding. I…I’m not used to this and jumped to conclusions.”
Kara shook her head. “You never jump to conclusions. You’re too fucking logical for that.”
“Yeah, but she never dates, either, or has guys sleeping over either,” Lara interjected, giving me a wink.
“Guy,” I corrected. “One guy. And it really was just a misunderstanding.”
Kara sniffed while Lara patted my back. I finished my eggs and moved to wash my plate and fork. When I was done, I gave the girls a shy wave and headed back to my room where Mal was pacing agitatedly, his phone pressed to his ear, his mouth a thin, hard line.
“A three-million-dollar deficit is not a small issue, Hank. If it’s bleeding that kind of cash every week then it’s an issue that needs to be addressed and rectified yesterday. I really don’t care if it used to be a cash cow. Maybe it’s time we start going vegetarian in some departments.”
I sat on my bed and watched him, taking in the focused concentration and the way his body moved like an animal on the prowl. His legs moved lithely, his shoulders pulled back while his eyes darted back and forth as if trying to capture everything all at once. His mouth was mesmerizing as it moved with each word, and I found it impossible to not lick my lips when certain innocuous words caused his mouth to pucker and pout. Who would have ever thought that a man saying “precipice” would be so fucking sexy.
“I want a detailed itemization by the end of the day, Hank. I want those numbers and I want them fast. Eliza’s got everything in spreadsheets so just punch in the formulas and get that to me as soon as possible. I’ll be in my office in an hour.”
He hung up and then turned to me. Before I could say anything his lips were on mine, his tongue darting into my mouth and dancing, hot and wet. I moaned, my hands lifting to clasp onto his neck, desperate to hold on as my legs started to shake. He pushed me back, leaning without covering me, his arm holding me just above the bed while his free hand moved to squeeze one breast beneath his shirt.
“I could just eat you up, sweetheart,” he groaned as he nipped at my lips, licked them, and suckled at my neck. “Watching your mouth while I was on the phone, seeing how fucking hot you were getting was driving me crazy. You’re wet, aren’t you? You’re wet from just watching me talk.”
It took every ounce of courage I possessed to nod and breathe the monosyllabic confirmation, but the sound he made when I did, the deep-throated growl against my sensitive skin told me it was more than worth it. He licked his way to the neckline of his shirt and then pressed kisses against the ultra-soft fabric until he reached the crest of my pebbled nipple. He took it between his teeth, nibbling and suckling on the hard bud, drenching the shirt with his saliva.
“So pretty,” he whispered when he lifted his head to admire his handiwork. I glanced down and saw that he’d turned the shirt translucent, my darkening areole and nipple showing through as if there was nothing there at all. “So pretty, and just for me.”
Every lick, every nip was sending shockwaves of sensation straight to the heat at the apex of my thighs, causing my hips to undulate rhythmically in the air. Searching…
Slowly, so slowly I almost didn’t notice it, his hand had moved down past my breasts, lower, past my navel and fitting in the crease where my torso and thigh kissed. His thumb stroked that crease through my pants, slipping deeper and deeper into that hidden vee that ached for him. My thighs were quivering with need, my breath
stunted with anticipation.
“I want to touch you, love. I want to touch your wet heat. I want to run my fingers along your folds and feel how slick I’ve made you, feel how hot you are inside.” His words fanned over my wet breast like a hot breeze, and I moaned at what the sensation and the words themselves did to me. His own breath caught in a hitch when I moved my leg so that his finger eased further into the crease. “I want to feel how wet your panties are. I want to see that slick spot of moisture penetrate your pants, your jeans, every goddamn thing you own.”
Feeling simultaneously shy and braver than I ever have before, I pulled myself up to whisper into his ear a secret. One that he hadn’t detected. When I pulled away, the shock on his face had pulled his eyes so wide, his mouth forming a perfect O, that I burst into giggles.
“You weren’t wearing panties in the elevator? I had you all to myself in my office, with no panties on, and I spent it in a goddamn meeting with division accountants?” He seemed incredulous, almost angry.
He rubbed his thumb back and forth, lower and lower until the tip of his thumb was brushing against the soft outer curve of my core. “Fuck, Victoria. If I had known, I would’ve put you on my desk, lifted that dress of yours, spread your legs and dined on you instead of Ralph’s cold fucking pasta.”
“Holy fuck,” I breathed, my thighs shaking as each stroke of his thumb shot heat straight through to that ball of pulsing nerves between my legs.
“Come with me to the office. Put on that dress again—with no panties—and come with me. Then…come with me.”
Oh, I wanted to. I so wanted to. But… “I’m not ready,” I told him, hiding my face against his arm. “I’m sorry, Mal. I want to. I do. But I’m not ready.”
I expected him to be angry. I expected him to take out his disappointment on me. I expected so many things and none of them happened. Instead…
“Sweetheart, don’t ever apologize to me for something like this. I have so many plans for you, for us, but we’re going to take things as slowly as you want to because I don’t want to scare you. You’re worth the wait, love. Okay?”
God. Could he be any more perfect?
“Okay,” I answered with a soft smile.
He kissed me then, his mouth so soft and sweet that it felt like a first kiss, the hesitant “getting to know you” kiss that we’d never really had. Our kisses had been different. Our kisses had been fire. Our kisses had been…
Sexual.
This kiss…this kiss was love.
There was tenderness and gentleness in this kiss.
Just then his head turned as his phone began buzzing softly on the bed. “Shit. I’ve gotta take that.”
With infinite care, he extricated himself from me and answered his phone. Almost immediately he began speaking in serious, hushed tones, his pacing returning as he walked back and forth with the phone pressed to his ear. While he talked, I decided to change my clothes. I hated the idea of taking off his shirt, but he didn’t have much here to wear, and if he was going to be spending more time here then I needed to remember that this was my home, which meant my clothes were already here.
“No, Juliet. Hank and I already spoke today. Yes. Yes, email them to Hannah. I know I said that I’d be there in an hour but something important came up.” He looked at me when he said those words, giving me a smile of pleasure when he saw my blush. “I’ll be there soon. Just order an early lunch with drinks at Ralph’s. Tell him it’s on my tab. Yes. Thank you, Juliet.”
He watched me as I pulled a tank-top out from my drawer, his eyes darkening as I lifted his shirt from my body, pulling it over my head. My slight curves somehow managed to bounce for him, and he smiled appreciatively at the sight even as his teeth came out to tug at his bottom lip.
Fuck, that was so sexy.
“Sweetheart, if you keep doing things like that, I’m never leaving this room,” he rumbled.
I slipped on the tank before I turned around and pulled out a pair of panties from my drawer. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, I pushed my lounge pants down, smiling mischievously at his reaction before I bent forward, holding onto the dresser with one hand as I slipped my legs through the simple cotton panties.
Just like that, all of my sensual bravery evaporated and I quickly tugged the plain garment on before reaching for my pants again. Mal’s hand reached out to still me as his stray fingers traced up the curve of elastic that wound around my thigh. His mouth came to my ear, his tongue and teeth finding my lobe and tugging gently, licking softly.
“Don’t be ashamed of anything, sweetheart. These—” he stroked the curve of my behind “—make your ass look like a sweet, juicy heart. My sweet, juicy heart.”
And then he was kneeling, his mouth pressed against that curve. I groaned, gripping onto the dresser as my knees lost their ability to hold me up any longer. “Mal.”
His lips moved up, pressing against the dip just above my behind, then kissing every other vertebra of my spine until he was at my neck where he kissed and sucked as he pressed into me. I felt him, hard and long, fitting perfectly between my soft cheeks. God, when had anything felt so perfect before?
In the mirror I could see him, staring at me, watching us as he licked my neck and then—oh!—he bit my shoulder. “Oh, Mal,” I groaned, pushing back into him as my hips began to circle. “Is this…is this normal?”
He chuckled as his mouth clamped onto the same area he’d bitten and he began to suck. The pressure, combined with the licks and heat of his mouth was intoxicating. One of Mal’s hands moved to my neck, holding me still while his other hand—
His other hand was pressed against my core.
“Oh my God,” I gasped as he walked us back so that I could see his hand. See what it was doing as he moved it in slow, deliberate circles. Riveted, I couldn’t look away, the sight combined with the different sensations flooding me with limitless need. With each twist of his hand, his tongue swept faster, but his eyes, they never left mine. Electricity sparked between his skin and mine, each shock tearing a gasp from me.
He increased the pressure of his hand, deepened the vacuum of his mouth, and somehow darkened the intensity of his stare. All three combined made my entire body begin to tremble. My legs spread wider, my nipples tightened into hard pebbles as blood flowed too fast to that single point that connected my pulse to his.
“Do you feel it, sweetheart? Do you feel it coming?” he said as he broke suction and licked thickly, hotly up to my ear.
My breaths were shaky, the tightening within me edging closer and closer to something I knew only as fulfillment. It had to be, because the promise in Mal’s eyes, the promise that my body was singing about in heat and vibrations told me.
“What, Mal? What’s coming?”
He smiled wickedly as his hand around my neck tightened, his fingers splaying just beneath my jaw and pulling my head at just the right angle so that he could reach my mouth with his. “You are, sweetheart.”
His lips crushed down onto mine, his tongue plunging into my mouth to tangle and brand mine with his taste as the fingers of his circling hand spread and his middle finger slipping into the sopping wet crease it made in my panties. At that simple touch, that slight, guarded invasion, my mind and body broke apart from each other, each one spiraling in their own different direction of completion.
No. Fuck completion.
I was coming.
I was fucking coming and moaning into his mouth as his fingers didn’t stop rubbing. My hands left the dresser and flew behind me, gripping his thighs as another rush of sensation pushed through me.
Mal moaned in surprise and tore his mouth away from mine, licking my lips before smiling at me in wonder. “Again? You came again, my beautiful girl?”
My body was a quivering, over-sensitized mass of nerves and bones and skin as slowly he pried his fingers away from my panties. I turned to watch in the mirror as he brought those fingers to his mouth. I held my breath, mesmerized while he sucked one finger, then
another, and then another, until he’d cleaned them of whatever moisture had seeped through the cotton fabric of my underwear onto his magical fingers.
“So fucking delicious,” he purred before returning that glorious mouth to mine.
A thought came to me then, a thought and an overwhelming sense of selfishness and guilt as my hand moved behind me to touch that hard length of him that he’d wedged so perfectly against my ass. “You haven’t come yet,” I breathed between kisses, my fingers tentatively stroking him, loving how thick and long he felt against my skin.
Chuckling, he pulled my hand away, doing nothing to hide his groan of disappointment at the loss of my touch. He turned me around to face him and draped my arms around his waist while he put both hands at the base of my neck, resting them there while his thumb drew lazy lines up and down my throat. “Sweetheart, the next time I come, I want it to be inside you. Until then, every single sweet cry I hear, every slick drop of moisture I feel, and every burn I receive will be from you coming on my lap, in my hand, and in my mouth.”
My body jerked involuntarily at that last word, my mind immediately filling with images of me doing just that—coming in his mouth. “But you’re a guy. You need release, too.”
His mouth descended and pressed soft, loving kisses on my cheeks. “God, I love that blush. Baby, you’re so innocent sometimes it kills me.”
“You just had your hands on my panties,” I pointed out with a sheepish smile. “I’m not that innocent.”
He licked the tip of my nose before nudging it with his. “You are very innocent. And I like that. And because of that, you don’t know that for some guys, guys like me, we get our greatest pleasure knowing that our ladies are satisfied and pleasured well. I’ve come with you. I’ve enjoyed every single second of it, too. But the next time it happens, it’ll be while you’re coming because I’m inside you.”
Heat traveled through me in a rush of need. The idea of him inside me. Inside me. Wow. Seeing that part of him lying prone and harmless on his thigh, I hadn’t once thought about what it would feel like inside me. But even with my understanding of how the human body works, I still couldn’t imagine flaccid Mal somehow fitting in me, let alone raging hard Mal.
