by S Doyle
He came out of the bathroom and looked to me like he was trying to come to some kind of internal conclusion. Then he moved to sit on the end of the bed while he very carefully unwrapped the bandage around my ankle.
“Definitely less swollen. You probably won’t need to ice it today.”
“Uh, yeah, not like that was going to be an option. I need to get into the office. And I just realized I left my car downtown.”
He scowled at me. “You’re not going into the office. The doctor said you have to stay off your foot.”
“Yes, with crutches.”
“No. You need to stay home today.”
I scowled back at him. “I don’t think you get to make that decision for me.”
His scowl looked only slightly less threatening. “I don’t. The doctor does. She said seven days. You can spend at least one more day lounging on the couch. Crutches can be a bitch and your temptation will be to just limp on it.”
He wasn’t wrong, but there was so much going on as we got closer to Christmas. “My team needs me.”
“I don’t doubt that, but they can handle things for one day.”
“Are you kidding? We’re only weeks out from Christmas. We’re decorating all the trees in the windows with personal ornaments.”
“Again, all stuff that can be handled by your team with you directing them remotely. One day,” he said, so reasonably. “Then you can deal with the hassle of crutches tomorrow.”
“Fine,” I muttered.
“You’re cute when you don’t get your way,” he said softly. “I wish I could stay here with you, but I do have to get into the office. There is something going down and I need to be there for it.”
“Trouble?”
“The end of trouble, I hope. But I don’t like leaving you. Is there someone else who can stay with you?”
“W.B., I’ll be fine. I would have been fine yesterday.”
He obviously didn’t agree. “I’ll go make us some coffee.”
He left and suddenly there was this weird emptiness in my bedroom. Like his presence had filled it with a masculine energy even Jake couldn’t match, and now that he was gone I missed it.
“Ugh!” I said, my head falling back into the pillow. This wasn’t good. I was getting too close to really liking him.
A minute later he appeared back in my bedroom, in his still-sexy bare feet, with two cups of coffee. Next to me Jake stilled, but he didn’t growl.
“I put food in your dish, cat. Go. Eat. Now,” W.B. commanded.
It appeared as if Jake was actually listening when he hopped off the bed and made a dash down the hallway, but the likelihood was that he’d just gotten a whiff of his food.
Sitting up, I pressed my back against the headboard and accepted the mug even as W.B. sat on the bed with me. For a few moments, we didn’t speak. He knew how I took my coffee, but I figured that wasn’t too weird. We’d chatted often enough in the break room while we’d made afternoon coffee together. He took his with two creamers and a ridiculous amount of sugar.
The silence seemed to thicken the longer time passed and I wondered what he was thinking. How soon he could get out of here? Or how much longer he could stay?
It turned out he wasn’t thinking about either of those things.
“Why didn’t you accept my offer to take you into the office last week? I told you to text me and you didn’t.”
I froze mid-sip. What was I supposed to tell him? He’d been on a date the night before. He was searching for a woman who was not me. Relying on him for anything was only going to make me fall a little deeper. I didn’t want to put myself in a situation where I might get hurt. Admitting that, however, meant admitting I was already falling a little bit.
I shrugged. “It was a nice offer, but you really didn’t need to…” I trailed off, hoping he would leave it at that.
He sighed. “When I was a kid I used to teach myself to always expect the worst outcome, so I would never be disappointed.”
That made me want to hug him. “Did it work?”
“I don’t know. I know I never got excited about anything. Good or bad.”
“This probably won’t come as a surprise to you, but I was the opposite. I always hoped for the best and so I was disappointed a lot.”
He looked at me then and I felt a whole different tension happening in my body. It was like he was trying to look into me, right down to my soul. Then his eyes dropped to my chest and the whole no-bra thing came back to me in full force. Especially since I was pretty sure my nipples were hard.
He reached for my mug and pulled it out of my hands, setting it down on the nightstand. He set his own next to it and moved in closer.
“I don’t want to leave you, Joy.”
I shook my head, trying not to be affected by his closeness and failing. “I’ll be fine.”
“No. Not because of your ankle. Because I don’t want to leave you.”
My eyes widened at that, and before I could say anything about it, he kissed me. A full-on mouth-to-mouth kiss. I felt his fingers at the nape of my neck, pulling me toward him. Without thinking about the implications, I opened my mouth and let his tongue inside. He was warm, wet, and delicious. Like a brownie just out of the oven. I wanted to sink my teeth into him and devour him in one bite.
I heard him groan, or maybe I groaned, but when I reached my arms out to wrap around his shoulders he pulled away.
Uncertain what to do, I clasped my fingers together and pushed them into my lap.
“That was a mistake,” he muttered without looking at me. “I’m sorry. I need to go.”
I nodded. “Yep. Thanks for everything. Except the kiss. That was definitely a mistake. So I’m not thanking you for that. At all. I probably should have slapped you. Or something.”
He looked at me thoughtfully but then his lips curved into a smile. “Yeah, I probably deserved to be slapped. You promise me you’ll stay off your foot?”
“As much as I can.”
His expression was grim. “Okay. I really do have to go.”
There wasn’t anything to say, so I didn’t say anything. I just reached for my coffee mug and pretended it was the most normal thing in the world to have been served coffee in bed, gotten kissed, then been rejected all in a matter of minutes.
“See ya, W.B. Or should I say Wilmington Baltimore? Like maybe your mom had a thing for East Coast cities.”
He huffed and got off the bed, taking his own mug with him. “Never going to happen, Joy.”
He left my room, and not very much longer after that I heard the front door closing. And I tried really hard not to be disappointed.
9
W.B.
This was yet another mistake. I was standing in the parking garage next to the Kane building as I considered my options. I could ask Sophie or Cheryl to drive her car back to Joy. Or I could just leave it parked for a few days. Given that it was her right ankle that was sprained, it wasn’t like she could drive anyway.
Instead, I stared at her car, a light blue Mini Cooper, because it was both gas efficient and adorable, then down at the keys in my hand that I’d taken from her satchel this morning, and knew I was hopeless to resist the pull I felt. No, I didn’t have to return her car, but I needed to see her.
I needed to know if her ankle felt better, if she’d been restless being stuck in the house, if Jake had bitten her for any reason. I needed to see her lips and her eyes and know that she wasn’t angry with me, or worse, sad because of me.
“Fuck it,” I muttered as I tucked into the car and started it. I ignored the fact that I felt like an idiot in the tiny car. Instead, I plugged in the address I’d already added to her contact information in my phone and pulled up the GPS. Traffic was heavy on a late Monday afternoon, but thirty minutes later I was pulling into her driveway.
I turned off the ignition and gave myself a pep talk.
“Walk inside. Hand her the keys. Make sure she has everything she needs and leave.”
&n
bsp; I wasn’t staying to hang out and watch sappy Netflix movies. I wasn’t ordering food for us. I sure as hell wasn’t sleeping next to her, holding her ankle in place while I listened to the sound of her even breathing.
And no matter what, I wasn’t going to kiss her again.
That was going to be the hard part. I was going to see her and she was going to smile and thank me for doing this for her and I was going to want to kiss her.
Or she was going to frown and accuse me of taking her car keys this morning and I was going to want to kiss her.
Or she was going to glare at me and tell me with icy words that she didn’t need my help. That I should leave and never come back, because what I’d done to her this morning was nothing short of a tease. A tease followed by a rejection.
It was just that kissing her had felt so damn good. Lying next to her in her bed had felt so damn peaceful. I’d woken up this morning, and despite being bitten on the toe, all of it had felt good and right. Like I could bring her coffee every morning and deal with her obnoxious cat and kiss her awake.
And sink inside her body.
God!
That fantasy had followed me almost all night. It had taken every ounce of discipline I had to not wrap my arm around her waist, cup her breast, lower her bottoms, and slowly sink my cock deep inside her pussy from behind. Of course while holding her ankle steady. Thoughts of trying to make her come, trying to make myself come, while not jostling her injury had tantalized me all night.
No doubt she would have kicked me out of bed if she knew a quarter of what I’d been thinking. Or would she have?
She’d kissed me back this morning. Of that I had no doubt. She’d been soft and wet and open. When I’d pulled away from her I’d felt her resistance. She hadn’t been ready to let me go, whereas I had felt an overwhelming need to run.
Joy was a trap. She was a free spirit and she actually seemed to like tofu. She made porn Christmas ornaments and she watched ridiculous reality TV. She loved a recalcitrant cat who bit her.
She was the opposite of everything I wanted in a wife. With her, everything would be ruled by feelings. She’d want to be loved, truly and deeply loved, and I didn’t know if I was even capable of it. I’d never been in love before. Hadn’t thought I really needed to be to make a marriage work.
Two sensible, serious people. Rooted in a community, with common goals and an eye toward the future. A similar approach to raising children, which was disciplined and grounded. My kid was going to know where his home was, where his bed was. Every single day was going to bring a sense of consistency that he could rely on. There would be no surprises. Ever.
Joy wouldn’t like that. Joy would want there to be surprises.
I shook my head. I didn’t know why I was even thinking about kids. All of that was very far down the road. Especially given the lack of success I’d had with first dates. Right now the only thing I needed to focus on was handing Joy her keys back and safely retreating out of her orbit of warmth.
Opening the car door, I clutched the keys in my palm, letting the car key dig into my hand as a reminder to stay focused on my mission.
Do not get lost in her eyes. Do not get lost in her eyes.
“Wasn’t sure if you were planning on stealing it or what.”
I glanced up, as I had been walking head down toward her front door.
She was leaning against the jamb of the open doorway, her crutches under her arms but not currently bearing her weight. She was in the same pajama bottoms but a different T-shirt that announced her love of famous glassblower Dale Chihuly. Her hair was down around her shoulders. Her big brown eyes weren’t accusatory. Merely amused.
“You were sitting in the car for so long, I wondered if you were thinking about driving off with it. I mean, it is really cute. Light blue is your color.”
I smirked. “I had to wedge myself into that thing and now I was pretty sure my feet were numb. Just waited for my circulation to come back before I tried to stand.”
She wasn’t mad.
She wasn’t ready to cut me off because of my behavior that morning and she wasn’t offended I’d had the audacity to take her car keys without asking.
But she wasn’t smiling either.
“I know this goes without saying, but you didn’t have to do that,” she said.
Hand her the keys. See if she needs anything. Leave.
“I wanted to see you,” I admitted, moving closer to her. “Make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine.”
Only she wasn’t smiling. I wanted to make her smile. I wanted her to smile at me. I did want back inside the orbit of warmth. I wanted to hold her and be held and all of those things that seemed totally wrong to want.
“Joy,” I said, standing in front of her. My voice sounded rough to my ears.
“W.B.,” she said softly, clearly confused by my presence. “I’m not sure what you want with me.”
I swallowed. I wanted her. I didn’t know how else to characterize it. I just wanted her. The words stuck in my throat, but against any self-control I had, I moved into her personal space. With her bad ankle, there was no escape for her.
She lifted her hand and laid it on my chest but she didn’t push me away. “You said this morning was a mistake.”
“I…” I shook my head. I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t want to want her. The insult would cut her deeply. As someone who had been insulting her since the moment I met her, I knew that to be true. Joy was tough, but she wasn’t invulnerable.
“I’m an asshole,” I whispered even as I reached up to cup her cheek.
“I agree,” she whispered back. “But it turns out I sort of like assholes.”
I bent down to kiss her, and this time when she lifted her arms to circle around my neck I didn’t pull away. I heard the clatter of crutches falling to the floor, but the sound wasn’t enough to break my concentration.
I had her mouth again and it was divine. Soft, wet, and so welcoming. Like she was taking me inside her where everything was soft and good.
Home.
I lifted her easily, taking her weight as her thighs gripped my waist. I made sure to support her right leg so that her ankle was suspended in the air. Moving inside her home, I turned us and pushed her against the back of the front door, both closing it and giving me a place to pin her.
I lifted my head for a second and I could see her eyes were dazed.
“Tell me you want this,” I told her. Then I dipped and lightly bit her jaw, her earlobe, her neck where it met her shoulder. I lifted a hand and cupped her generous breast. Fuck me, she wasn’t wearing a bra and I wanted to squeeze and knead that soft mound until she begged me to suck on her nipple.
“I shouldn’t,” she gasped.
Shouldn’t wasn’t don’t.
“Let’s not think about it, then. Let’s not think about two seconds after this moment. Let’s just…be us. Have what we want.”
Which might have been the most unlike-me thing I’d ever said in my life.
“You want to have me?” She sighed, even as she tilted her neck to allow me more access to her skin. That spot where her neck met her shoulder. I bit down and sucked it gently, careful not to mark her, despite it being exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to cover her in my mark, claim her in a way I’d never thought about before when I was with other women.
Fucking felt good. It was a nice physical release. That’s all I’d previously thought about sex. This didn’t feel like that. This felt dangerous. Like we were both doing something we shouldn’t, but we couldn’t seem to stop ourselves.
It felt out of control. It felt like something had been unleashed inside me. Everything was urgent. Our kisses, the stroke of my tongue inside her mouth. I thrust against her center with my hard dick, as if I could fuck her through my briefs and slacks and her pajama bottoms. I had this idea of Hulking out and my cock getting so big, hard, and furious that it shredded my clothes in its effort to be free.
The
reality was that I was going to have to carry her to her room, lay her down gently. Strip myself in front of her, starting with my tie, which was going to give her so much time to think. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want her to think. I didn’t want to lose this feeling by letting something like our reality intrude.
“I need to fuck you, Joy,” I growled.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Okay. That.”
It wasn’t sane or rational, just this desperate need to be inside of her. I moved my hands up her thighs, which were still wrapped around my waist, and stuffed them into her pajama bottoms only to find she was naked underneath them. I squeezed her soft ass cheeks and heard her gasp. With one hand I explored further, down to her core where I could feel the wet heat before I was actually touching it, sinking my fingers into it.
“Joy,” I muttered in a voice that didn’t feel like it was my own. “I’m going to set you down on your left leg, and we’re going to take these off you.”
Her head nodded once, twice against my shoulder.
Slowly, I lowered her until she was taking all her weight on her left leg, even as I slid the pajama bottoms over her ass and down her thighs and they dropped to a heap on the floor. My hands went to my belt, unbuckling it with hands I knew were shaking. I undid the buttons of my slacks and pulled out my impossibly hard dick. After that there was no thinking, no consideration for anything but the driving need to be inside her.
I’d only kissed her, palmed her. Only slid one finger inside her. This wasn’t how I fucked. I liked to take my time. I liked to make my partner come a few times. Women’s bodies were instruments I loved to play.
I wasn’t a taker. I wasn’t this insane person.
I lifted her again and pinned her to the door. I heard the thunk of her head against the wood. Geezus. What the hell was I doing?
“Joy?”
“Do it,” she said. “Please just do it. I need you in me so bad.”
I didn’t hesitate. I pushed my hips against her, my dick seeming to find its way home without any guidance from me. The head slipped inside of her and it felt hotter and wetter than anything I’d ever known in my life. I thrust hard and felt her body give away to mine.
