IllicitImpulse

by Alexa Day

  Her eyes widened and her lips parted in shock before she whispered, “What?”

  “I told my boss today. I wrote a memo last night after you left.” The memory of it had him rushing through the rest of the explanation. “I told him basically that it was working like we intended. I said it increases freedom and appetite.” She nodded and he slowed down enough to take a breath. “I told him that with all the closeness removed, there was just the bare bones of the relationship. Or whatever was passing as a relationship. You know. All the truth and none of the cuddle.” He sighed. “I told him that might be our intent but that I wasn’t sure that was good.”

  He realized that some small part of him, something quiet and often ignored, hoped his explanation wouldn’t make sense, hoped he would wonder, aghast, what he had done. But he’d made the right decision, improbable though the entire adventure had been, and if anything, explaining it to Grace solidified it in his mind.

  “How can it not be good?” Passersby tried not to look as she raised her voice. “All you’re doing is taking away all that stuff that isn’t real, all the stupid lies the oxytocin makes us believe.”

  He shoved his hands into his coat pockets to keep from touching her, to make sure his reason stayed in the driver’s seat. “That’s just it. It is real. Grace, just because it hurts, just because everything falls apart later, that doesn’t mean it’s not real. Whatever you’re feeling afterward in that person’s arms, no matter why you’re feeling it—that is real. That’s the only reason anyone bothers.”

  The indignation seemed to desert her, and her shoulders drooped as if she hadn’t abandoned the project herself just a few minutes ago. “But you…this was everything to you.”

  “Yeah, it was.” That felt so long ago now, the night he’d first given her the pills, the night he’d watched her with Tal, even tonight’s conversation with his boss. He reached slowly for her, fearful in his heart that she’d back away and all of this would come to nothing. He stroked her chin tentatively with one finger before cupping her face in both hands, wanting to will her beyond the wonder in her eyes and into the truth. “It was everything. It’s not everything anymore.”

  Too dark to see if she was responding. If her pupils were dilating. If a rosy blush burned beneath that warm, vital skin.

  But he was done playing it safe.

  He bent toward her and closed his eyes an instant before his mouth met hers. Friday night’s noise faded to a whisper when he teased her lush lips apart, and when she exhaled against his cheek, everything went silent. She melted into him with a tiny sound of amazement. Her weight shifted toward him as she rose onto her toes, and he wrapped his arms around her slim waist. His tongue touched hers, hesitant at first, as if waiting to be invited. She stroked the hair near the nape of his neck and they pulled each other close, closer than he’d allowed himself to imagine they could be. She pulled away first, slowly, before pressing those incomparable lips to his cheek.

  They rocked from side to side like that a few times before he breathed in the wild, enticing scent of her hair and whispered, “I don’t want to be friends anymore.”

  She touched her forehead to his and laughed.

  Too far away. She lived too far away.

  They moved as if trying to catch up to something that would wink out of existence in another minute. Not quite running down the hill she’d come up so reluctantly, she found herself taking almost two steps to every one of his until they reached the stoplight. She stared at the firm set of his jaw as he watched the traffic, his hand viselike around hers. She wanted to stay there a bit longer, savoring this new, sweet sensation of being protected, even if the threat was just sparse traffic at a moderately busy intersection.

  A green light allowed them to continue the headlong rush she’d started with the pulse of her hand around his, an instant’s connection between her eyes and his. This was yes. Firmly yes. A long-overdue yes.

  Yes.

  Just ahead the traffic signal began to count down the seconds before they’d have to stop and wait again. She started to slow down, in deference to his lovable caution, but he lengthened his already long stride. To the cars going by, they were just another couple trying to beat the light, and no one else could know how different this was. The fact that she was running in these spectacular shoes. The fact that he was running at all. The madness of it almost made her lightheaded.

  A couple. They were a couple. Even now on the street, not quite home.

  Finally.

  Stopped again for yet another light, she rocked giddily back on her heels and laughed and his arm was around her and she crashed breathless into him and his mouth was on hers and… Jesus. Who knew he could kiss this way? He took his time, linking their fingers together one by one and answering every single what if, if only, when, where, how.

  Jesus.

  She let her hand swing in his on the way to that last intersection. While they waited for the light, she shifted her weight from one side to the other, all but dancing in place as she stole a glance at this stranger who used to be her best friend. He caught her looking—he’d always catch her, wouldn’t he?—and snaked his arm under her coat, smoothed his palm against her blouse, the long fingers seeking out her bra strap, tugging at it as if he meant to unfasten her here on the sidewalk. She wasn’t sure she’d stop him. She knew she would welcome the warm strength of his hands on her and he likely knew it as well.

  “Soon,” he whispered to her as if he could hear what lay beneath her conscious thoughts. “Soon.”

  This time, she closed her door behind them before she dropped her keys. Her purse fell away into the dark, followed by her coat, and she wondered if they would even make a sound when they landed.

  Delirium descended over her when his breath caressed the skin of her throat. She tugged his hair, gasped at the searing heat of his mouth and leaned back, her head against the door, wanting him to have everything. She closed her eyes and slowly the world dipped and swayed beneath her. She tightened her grip on his shoulders as he lifted her.

  How long since she’d invited a man here? Weightless and dizzy, she couldn’t remember anyone before him. With every step toward her bedroom, he seemed to claim a place of his own in her home. When he set her gently down on her unmade bed and sat next to her, she knew he’d always belonged right here.

  She propped herself against the headboard. For years, she’d wanted to pull his glasses off and see his face. Really see it as it would look just before he fell asleep at night. She’d never wanted to learn a man as much as this one. At the same time, he made it so easy just to be there, to relax and be still and savor each moment of this experience, not looking forward into tomorrow or back through the past. If it was this way forever, she’d always be content. No fear of anything, not even this gateway to the future. Just the resolve to remember this first step into the future, the hope that every detail would be just as rich in twenty years as it was tonight.

  She reached for him, flattened her palm on his chest to feel his heart beating. He lifted her hand away and brushed his lips against her wrist, where her own pulse must have fluttered like butterfly wings. Her fingers trembled when she took hold of his glasses. She felt the effort he made to stay still. Goose bumps slowly rose on her arms.

  This person who knew her so well made her feel so innocent, as if he were the first man to whom she would offer the fragility of her beating heart.

  Not innocent. An innocent wouldn’t watch with this kind of desire as he rose and undressed. Innocence feared this kind of hunger. She embraced this familiar fire and longed to feed it.

  Grace set his glasses on the nightstand and leaned back again to watch. She unfastened the buttons on her blouse, letting her fingers caress the lace of her bra in anticipation of his touch. He revealed a long, lean torso, moving with a smooth efficiency that brought a smile to her face. She’d expected his grace but not the understated power of his arms or the shadow of dark hair on his chest. She let her blouse slide from her s
houlders and kicked her shoes onto the floor before reluctantly turning her attention to her skirt.

  Soft clinking distracted her as she wiggled her way free from the last of her clothes and she caught him struggling with his belt buckle. He was always so confident—the calm, steady presence that never failed to put her at ease. He couldn’t be nervous, could he?

  She adjusted the sheets, dislodging the heap of laundry at the corner of the bed, and patted the space next to her. Still in his boxers, he settled in beside her, pulling the linens over them both. She sighed, delighted by the comforting warmth of him. Then his long legs tangled with hers, and the rush of need descended over them again.

  He overwhelmed all her senses, his soft, fragrant hair, his firm mouth taking charge of hers, the heat of his chest bringing her nipples to aching points. When she whimpered into his kiss, he unhooked her bra and they separated just long enough to get rid of it. She bared her throat to him, wanting the heat of his kiss on her sensitive skin and gasping when he obliged. His hands engulfed one breast and the curve of her ass and she moved into him, wanting this to go on forever and still wanting more.

  His tongue swept over the hollow of her collarbone, but he went still when she ground her hips against his hard-on. She reached between them and into his boxers for him, just stroking him at first, indulging years of curiosity as he held his breath.

  His cock was an easy, perfect fit for her hand, as if he’d been made for her alone. She let her palm slide over the satin-smooth skin, taut over the firm shaft that went on and on in her grasp. Her thumb caressed the curve of his cock head. She rubbed the first silken drops of his pre-come between her fingertips and his flesh. He whispered her name, and the harsh sound made her own aching center pulse in response.

  His body leaned toward hers and she rolled slowly onto her back, reluctantly releasing him. Beneath him, she tugged awkwardly at her panties, wriggling from side to side until she could kick them off and take hold of his boxers. When they were naked, she wanted to pull him down onto her, wanted him inside her, but he smiled gently at her in the shadows and propped himself above her on one arm.

  “Close your eyes,” he whispered and when she obeyed, he grazed her earlobe with his teeth. She sighed, the sound of surrender swelling into a moan as his weight settled alongside her. With his free hand, he caressed her skin, taking in the curve of each breast and the valley between them, moving as if he wanted to memorize every millimeter of her. She concentrated on his touch, determined to move at his pace.

  His broad palm swept slowly over her belly, leaving waves of wildfire in its wake until he reached the rise between her legs. She opened for him, yielding to the slight but persistent pressure of his long, strong fingers. He caressed her swollen lips, stroked slick folds, and in her ecstasy, she heard him whisper sounds of approval and encouragement. She answered in broken whimpers and startled gasps, alternately excited and eased by his lips and tongue and teeth at her ear.

  She longed for completion, to truly move as one with him. Her body ached to be united with his, but his stubborn attention to her distracted her in the best of ways. The intensity of the sensation undid her, unraveling her words into fragmented sounds of pleasure.

  She opened her eyes then, still riding his hand, half-expecting to see him in a sensual daze. He looked down at her and smiled, relaxed but in control, just as she’d imagined he had looked that long ago night at Tal’s.

  She reached for his cock again, grinning with satisfaction when he squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth against the surge of pleasure. She pumped and stroked him, alternating between a firm grip on him and gently sliding from his thick root to the petal-soft skin around the head of his cock. She wanted all night to study what would make him respond, further threaten all that self-control, but before then—

  He tapped the slick flesh between her legs lightly, all his fingers together like a perfect, tailor-made paddle. He spanked her there once, twice more, until she trembled, a breath away from climax. She gasped and he tapped her again, the wet sound of her flesh very loud, her dark, earthy scent teasing her tongue out between her teeth.

  “Please. Please, I want you.” She felt heat rise to her face. How had he made her shy? But he nodded in the bedroom’s half-light.

  “Okay. All right.”

  She reached awkwardly into the drawer of her nightstand, not wanting to move out of reach as he idly traced her clit. Blindly she pawed around inside, swallowing a moment of panic just before finding her chain of condoms. She pulled one off the chain, tried not to think of how long they’d been there, and offered it to him. He struggled with the wrapper for a moment before chuckling.

  “I think you’re going to have to get it. My hands are too—”

  She laughed and took the condom from him. The slick wrapper gave her a little trouble too, but she managed to get it open, turning it over to find the right side before returning it. She thought she could hear the rabbit-swift rush of her heartbeat in the awkward silence that followed, and the nonsense part of her mind coyly offered up the thought they’d just encountered their first inside joke.

  They were awkward for an instant then, their knees coming together as he settled atop her. She caught her breath at the length of him against her belly before he entered her in one long, slow drive. He filled her so perfectly, molding her inexorably to him, reaching deeper and farther within her than she could imagine. She treasured it, this feeling of him in her, and then he began to move. He seemed to want to savor it too, slowly plunging and withdrawing, his weight rocking gently onto her. Caressing her as no other man had, more carefully but more thoroughly, still he bent to her ear to whisper to her.

  Wonder. Praise. And her name. Always coming home to her name.

  She gave herself over to climax so easily, sorry that she’d arrived so soon, already dreaming of her future with him in bed before he pumped himself into her a little harder, faster. Mindless abandon preceded wordless surrender, and when he came, going still before those last few convulsive thrusts, he cried out for her again.

  She pulled him down to her and kissed his damp forehead as his own aftershocks rocked him. She whispered his name and ran her fingers through his hair, and as he caught his breath, she wondered what he thought. She wondered what he felt.

  Then her eyes met his, naked without his glasses but not at all vulnerable, and she realized how little she really needed to know and how much time she would have to make sense of it all.

  * * * * *

  You should always have bread, milk and eggs in your refrigerator.

  At first blush, the rule stood in conflict with one of her favorite rules—You can’t sneak out of your own place. She’d rationalized the inconsistency by saying that the fridge rule was mostly about her. An empty fridge meant having to go out for breakfast after a long night. Having to improvise hangover cures. Reluctance to leave a new friend’s apartment the morning after.

  Now, on this morning after, she was forced to reconsider the rules. Not just this one. All of them.

  She still wished she had something in the fridge. Last night she hadn’t given it the first thought, but now she wanted to offer him breakfast. Not to cement her place in his life or even because he would do it for her, but just because he was here and because whatever breakfast she managed to throw together might please him.

  Was it even still morning? She couldn’t read the clock on her nightstand without moving. She hated to wake him for something so trivial as knowing for certain what the time was. Instead she tried to divine the time using the brightness of the sunlight outside her window, but his glasses, now resting where she’d put them on the nightstand, distracted her. They seemed right there, as if that spot next to her bed had been waiting for him as long as she had.

  Breakfast would wait. Hell, even lunch would wait. Right now she was content to feel the regular fan of his breath against the back of her neck, steady and quiet and easy like the clock she couldn’t see but relied on all the sa
me. The last of the morning could slip away. The afternoon could follow behind it. She could stay right here until the sun set.

  The seasons would dance by her window on a hundred mornings like this. She smiled in spite of herself at the thought of dividing her time between her bed and his fireplace. From behind the stage curtain at the back of her mind peeped the question of whether he’d try to figure out where she might hide his Christmas presents.

  Grace, you don’t even know if you have tonight.

  As gently as she could, she turned over within his loose embrace. He needed a haircut, although she approved of the mischievous disarray of his dark hair on her pillow. Without his glasses, his features seemed both vulnerable and heroic at the same time. Yesterday must have been a long, tough day for him. First with the audit committee going over his work with a fine-toothed comb, and then…

  For her. He’d done that for her. He’d started it for her too, in a way. So maybe this was really for the both of them.

  For us.

  Why did it make her want to cry? Because she’d wanted to see Impulse on the market? Because she’d wanted it for him?

  Because as badly as he’d wanted it—he’d wanted her…this…more.

  Why did someone always have to give something up?

  He stirred and she held her breath, wondering as she so often had whether he had some way of hearing her thoughts.

  He didn’t even snore. The idea that she’d been this close to the only man in North America who didn’t snore, and that she hadn’t known it, made her want to giggle. She bit her lip to keep that bottled up.

  Even as she stifled her mirth, the doubts came up slowly. Was all this just the oxytocin talking? Fantasizing about Christmas, wavering between laughter and tears, staring at his hair. Was this just the hormone haze they’d fought so hard against?

  She did feel giddy. Score one for the hormones.