by Leona Lee
I didn’t want to hide anything more from her than I absolutely had to. Chewing on my bottom lip, I sank into a rickety chair at my dining room table. I couldn’t hold back anymore. “I finally did it.”
“You finally did it?” Nicole’s eyes grew wider than saucers, and her coffee mug hit the dining room table with a loud thump, causing some of the liquid to trickle down the side of her bright pink mug. “Wait, by it, you do mean sex, right?”
“Yeah, I’m mean sex.” My cheeks grew hot and my palms clammy.
Calm down, I ordered myself. Nicole told me every sordid detail of her sex life. I should be comfortable saying the damn word around her.
She let out a loud squeal and dropped into the chair across from me, leaning forward excitedly, coffee all but forgotten. “What? When? With who? How was it? Why didn’t you text me?!”
Her questions came out so fast that they all sounded like one word. I couldn’t help but laugh a little at her enthusiasm. This was exactly why I had to tell her.
“It’s not like I was going to pull out my phone in the middle of it and say, ‘oh, wait. Let me just let my best friend know that you’re about to hump me’.”
Nicole rolled her eyes, laughing with me. “Don’t say ‘hump’ again. Ever.”
I crossed myself in a joking promise, making her laugh harder. “Never again, but really. When did you want me to text you?”
“After,” Nicole said, sighing exasperatedly. “So, spill it. When? Who? Did you come? It’s okay if you didn’t.” She paused, then let out another excited squeal at my expression. “Oh my god. You totally did!”
I nodded, feeling like my cheeks were about to burst into flames when I whispered the next part of my confession. “Twice.”
“Squee!” Nicole roared, a wide smile on her face. “Details, I need details.”
“It was last night,” I said, and the smile fell from Nicole’s face almost instantly, a deep crease marring the patch of skin between her dark eyebrows.
“Wait, weren’t you with my dad last night?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Shit. I’d forgotten I’d texted her before I met Brad in the lobby to tell her I was going out with her dad and the people from work to celebrate my first week. I was supposed to meet up with her and her newly-minted ex, but I thought that since it was a work thing, I couldn’t blow it off.
Little did I know. My heart was thundering in my chest, my mind suddenly blank.
“I, uh.” I coughed, trying my very best to get it together. “Yes, I was. But it was after.”
“After?” she asked, arching a brow suspiciously.
“Yes. After the work thing.” Surprisingly, I managed to keep my voice even.
Nicole relaxed a little, but her spine was still ramrod straight. “Who was the guy?”
Who, indeed. “Just a guy that I met out at a bar.”
“You went out by yourself after the work thing?” Nicole sounded hurt and still suspicious. “Why didn’t you come meet up with us? You never go out by yourself.”
Fuck. I was really bad at this whole trying to cover up a lie to my friend thing. “It was a long week. There was a bar near the restaurant we had dinner at. I popped in for a drink and to blow off some steam. It just kind of happened from there.”
Nicole sank back into her seat, reaching for her coffee and taking a long sip of the cooling liquid. I crossed my fingers and my toes that she would believe me, that she’d stop asking questions that were going to make me lose her if she ever got to the bottom of them.
No, it won’t be her questions that’ll do it, It’s what you did that’s going to make you lose her if she ever finds out. The unwelcome thought broke free into my mind, but I pushed it back. That wasn’t happening. I wasn’t losing Nicole.
Finally, another smile spread on her face, and the tension in her shoulders relaxed, her emerald eyes soft and excited again. “So, tell me more. I want to know everything.”
I did as she asked, saving only the most private of details, and of course, the man’s real name. Nicole listened closely, sighing when I was done with the story. “Sounds like you picked the right one for your first time. Are you going to see him again?”
Brad’s voice earlier, telling me to call him back later, played in my mind. “I think so.”
“Good, you deserve a little fun,” she told me, but the corners of her mouth turned down.
Now that my secret was out there, sort of, anyway, I took a good, hard look at my best friend for the first time since she’d arrived. Her eyes were lightly rimmed with red, like she’d cried a bit and hadn’t slept well.
Nicole’s usually squared shoulders were a little droopy, and her borderline black hair, also the exact same color as her dad’s, lacked its usual careful styling. Instead, it was piled in a messy bun on top of her head.
She was wearing yoga pants and an oversized shirt. All was not well in Nicole-land.
“So, now that I’ve told you all about my night, what’s going on with you? What happened between you and David?”
Nicole sighed, then got up to cross my open-area house from the small dining room table to sink into a sofa. She lay flat on her back, folded her arms across her stomach and launched into what an ass the guy was. As she was talking, I found my thoughts drifting to Brad every so often.
No matter how many times I told myself to stop, I just couldn’t get the man out of my mind.
Chapter Seven
BRAD
“Good morning, Mr, Woods,” Jordan said as I approached her desk that next Monday morning. She was at the office before I was, which was unusual, but it also allowed us a small window of time before the majority of the worker bees got in.
I, for one, knew how I would like to spend that time. Jordan was wearing some kind of black skirt that flared from her waist to her mid-thighs, exposing the soft, creamy skin that I wanted to bury my head between. Her shirt was tight, accentuating each one of her hourglass curves.
“Good morning, Jordan. Could you step into my office for a minute, please.” I didn’t even stop as I asked the question, marching past her desk like I would any other employee.
This was definitely going to be one hell of a fucking thrill. The thought alone of what I was about to do to her, of what the two of us were doing, sneaking around together, was enough to rouse my dick. Though, it always seemed ready to go from zero to hero when Jordan was around nowadays.
As soon as we hit my office, I kicked the door closed behind her, and I was on her the very next second. Pushing her up against the door, her sexy body was caged between my arms and pressed up against my chest. My lips crashed onto hers, and my tongue shot into her mouth at the first gasp that escaped.
Jordan held her own, however, kissing me back just as passionately and throwing her arms around my neck. Her hips started gyrating against mine, fast. Hungry. I pressed my erection against her, giving her just a taste of what I knew she wanted, savoring the resulting moans.
I got off on women’s pleasure, and Jordan’s was intoxicating. The thought that a beautiful girl like her was driven so wild by the likes of me, it was no wonder my dick was acting like we were back in our early twenties.
When we finally came up for air, Jordan’s lips were slightly swollen, and her eyes glazed with lust, but she smiled against my lips. “What was that for?”
“Just saying good morning.” Another moan fell from those fuckable lips when I pressed myself hard against her again, keeping her caged against the door.
Jordan sighed happily and kissed a line over my jaw to my ear, licking its shell when she got there. “Good morning to you too, then.”
Planting kisses all the way up her neck and down to her collarbone, I made mental notes of every place that made her shudder or gasp. I planned on doing a lot of that before our time together inevitably came to an end.
“Want to make it a better morning?” I asked.
“Depends, what do you have in mind?” Jordan asked, her voice breathy.
/> “Well.” I tapped my chin, pretending to think as my other hand danced under the hem of her skirt and up those glorious thighs. “For starters, I want to taste you. I’ve been going fucking crazy thinking about you all damn weekend, and I’m not waiting any longer.”
Jordan released a soft groan when my hand stroked higher, cupping her pussy over silky panties that did absolutely nothing to hide the wetness that was already seeping through. She writhed against my hand, pouting when I moved it with her. “It was the same for me. Please, Brad.”
Music to my fucking ears. I rewarded her by pushing down right onto her clit, quickly clamping the hand that had been on my chin over her mouth to muffle her load moan. “Think you can be quiet for me, baby? Just this once, though.”
Her teeth sank into her lip, and she nodded, but her eyes shone with uncertainty. I hooked my thumbs into the elastic of her panties and took a small step back before I started rolling them down.
“Where are you going?” she gasped.
“Nowhere. I’m right here. We’re just going to need something to put in your mouth.” Her eyes grew wide, but darkened until the blue of her irises had all but disappeared when she realized what I was planning to do with her panties. I chuckled. “You really are a wicked girl, aren’t you?”
“No,” she protested, but then her eyes grew contemplative and lost some of the heat that had been there.
“What is it?”
Jordan shook her head. “It’s no—”
“Don’t you dare say nothing. What’s wrong?” I would coax whatever it was out of her, no matter what it took. I wanted her too badly to let anyone, or anything else, into the room with us. I needed her attention on me and my tongue and nothing else.
She took a deep breath, looking nervous about what she wanted to say. “It’s just, you know that Nicole was with me all weekend, right?”
There was the only name that could, and did, extinguish the mercurial levels my blood was heating to. “Right.”
“It was really hard being with her, Brad.” Tears sprung to Jordan’s eyes, and I wanted to kick myself for ever giving into the temptation that was causing them. Women should never cry on a man’s account.
It was a rule that I lived by. It was one of the big reasons why I was always upfront about the fact that nothing would ever come of a fuck, not with me.
Pressing myself back up against her, my hands went to her ass, and I lifted her against my stomach, walking her over to my desk. “I know it’s hard for you. It’s hard for me, too.”
“What do you mean?” She looked up at me, vulnerability in her eyes.
Yeah, I fucked up on this one. But I wasn’t quite ready to let her go yet, either. I’d been with her once, for fuck’s sake. No man worth his salt would let a girl like Jordan Hill walk away after one damn time.
“She called me yesterday. I felt like shit after we talked.” The least I could do was be honest with her.
A look that I didn’t like flashed across her features, settling as a deep frown. “Do you think we should stop this?”
My eyes dropped to where I was clutching at her perfect thighs, her skirt pushed up to her waist, and my erection tenting my slacks. “Well, yeah. But maybe not right now.”
Jordan cupped my face between her hands, smiling before tugging my mouth toward hers and kissing me. Hard. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe not, like, right now.”
I was about to drop to my knees, pull her ass to the edge of my desk, and finally get a taste of that sweet pussy when a soft knock at my door had us breaking apart. “Just a minute.”
Jordan looked at me, terror flashing across her delicate features. Then, she jumped from the desk and got her clothes smoothed out. Meanwhile, I thought about the economic crisis in Greece, filing tax returns, and anything else that I could to take care of the bulge in my slacks.
When Jordan was ready, she nodded at me, and I strode across my office, ready to lay into whoever dared to interrupt what I couldn’t fucking wait to do.
I opened the door to find Zach waiting on the other side with a knowing smirk fixed on his face.
Cock. Blocking. Mother. Fucker.
“What?” I barked.
Zach held up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender, but not before looking over my shoulder to wink at Jordan. “Nothing. I can see that you’re busy. I’ll come back later. Have fun.”
Jordan was frozen in place when I slammed the door in Zach’s face and turned back to her, ready to pick up where we’d left off. The look of horror fixed on her pretty features, however, immediately made it clear that that wasn’t happening. “What wrong?”
Jordan sucked in a deep breath. “How does he know?”
Frowning, I realized that telling Zach might’ve been a mistake. “I told him.”
Her features contorted into a mix of shock, outrage, and disbelief. “How could you tell him?”
She didn’t give me the opportunity to answer. She stormed out of my office and went to her desk, then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of morning. She only spoke to me when she absolutely had to and glared daggers in my direction whenever she thought she could without anyone noticing.
It would’ve been either cute or infuriating, if it wasn’t for the case of blue balls I was stuck with, which made for some curt meetings and less than friendly phone calls.
I could only hope that she would forgive me soon. My mind needed to be appeased that she wasn’t pissed enough to do something stupid, and my cock needed to be buried deep, deep inside of her. Stat.
Chapter Eight
JORDAN
“Surprise!” Nicole’s voice rang out from behind me. My heart and stomach both sank like stones right to my feet. Schooling my features to fix a smile that I hoped was happy and relaxed onto my face, I whirled around.
Nicole was standing a few feet away from my desk, sunglasses pushed up into her hair, wearing a flowing tank top, skinny jeans, and low-slung boots on her feet. She seemed excited about something, which usually meant trouble.
“Nikki,” I exclaimed. “What’re you doing here?”
She closed the distance between us and pulled me in for a quick hug, planting a big kiss on my cheek. “I’ve come to take you and dad out to lunch.”
Fuck. That was exactly the kind of thing I was afraid of. A ball of ice started growing in the spot previously inhabited by my stomach.
“Why?”
Nicole shrugged, stepping back to look toward Brad’s office. “Is he busy?”
“Very,” I answered. I didn’t know, actually. I thought that he was, but I hadn’t been back to his office since the bomb he dropped earlier that he’d gone and blabbed to Zach about us.
I still couldn’t believe that he’d done that. If word got out… Although, it was worse now that Nicole was there. The last thing that I wanted to do was spend time with both of them, especially right now.
It was going to be hard to pretend that I wasn’t pissed off at Brad, even just for an hour over lunch. Nicole would definitely pick up on it. On the other hand, if I declined her invitation, it would probably look more suspicious.
Post break-up Nicole always surrounded herself by friends and her dad. I’d never once not been there for her. If I started now, she would know something was up. I couldn’t even fib and tell her that I couldn’t get out of work, seeing as how my boss was included in the lunch invite.
She glanced at his door. “I’ll just go ask if he can take a short break for lunch. I’m sure it’ll be okay. There’s this new place over in Fremont that you’re both going to love.”
Without waiting for an answer, she bounded to his door and knocked once before letting herself in. She disappeared through it, closing it behind her.
Arguing with Nicole was a lost cause. I knew this from personal experience, so I grabbed my purse, smeared on some fresh lip gloss, and waited for her to emerge. Whether Brad was going to lunch or not, I knew that I wasn’t getting out of it.
A few minutes later, the door o
pened again, and Brad followed Nicole out, glancing at me before he turned his attention back to Nicole. “I’m serious, Nic. It’s going to have to be a quick one, okay?”
“Sure, sure. I’ll have you back before you turn into a pumpkin.” Nicole laughed.
Brad shook his head, his lips twitching up into a slow smile as he slung an arm over her shoulders. “What am I gonna do with you, huh?”
Shrugging, Nicole gave his hand a quick squeeze before she looked up at him, eyes bright with laughter. “Take us out to lunch. Then maybe a shopping trip?”
He sighed, still smiling. “As long as you promise to leave a couple of things in the shops this time. Honestly, you have to stop breaking up with these guys, Nikki. Or at least get the next one to sponsor your retail therapy afterward.”
Brad had always been a sucker for making Nicole feel better, but he knew it, and he indulged her anyway. It was probably the only reason he’d agreed to lunch.
“Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I left plenty last time. You ready, Jay?”
“Ready,” I lied, hating myself for it.
I trialed after them, barely aware of their continuing banter as I tried my best not to stare at Brad’s ass. I might’ve been angry with him, but the man had one fine backside. No amount of irritation could change that.
Once we hit the rainy sidewalk outside, we dashed to the town car that Brad had waiting for us at the curb, and he waited for both me and Nicole to pile in before gracefully lowering himself into the car. It was ridiculous, and now infuriating, the way he moved. Like the world itself would mold around wherever he needed it to be.
Unfortunately for my pissed off ass, it was also super damn sexy. I was beginning to realize that being angry with him while also being around him was going to be harder than I’d initially thought. In a screwed up way, that made some of the tension over being found out at lunch ease from my stomach.
If Nicole didn’t pick up that I was angry with him, there was nothing for her to question. If she did notice anything, I could always blame work, but he was a great boss, and she knew it.
