Intersect: The Parallel Duet, Book 2

by O'Roark, Elizabeth

  As much as I would love to do just that, I have something else in mind. “Maybe I feel like being the one in charge today,” I reply, dropping to my knees. I slide his khakis down and then slowly pull him free of his boxer briefs.

  His head falls back against the wall. “Fuck.”

  I saw plenty of him this weekend but it was mostly prone, in the dark. Seeing him like this, in a well-lit room, is another thing entirely. His size is…intimidating, which should probably make me nervous but instead only makes me want all the things we can’t do even more.

  The hallway outside echoes with footsteps, chatter, the wheels of a gurney. Inside here, though, it is is whisper-quiet, his small sharp breaths the only sound as I begin to tease him with my hands and my tongue.

  For so much of the time I’ve known him, Nick has been the expert, the one leading the charge—calm, responsible, stoic. But here he’s at my mercy, and I can feel his desperation in the hitch of his breath, in the way his fingers—already tangled in my hair—struggle not to press to my scalp, to demand more. “Jesus, Quinn,” he finally begs, “you’re killing me. Stop playing with it.”

  I obey, finally giving him what he wants. The heat of my mouth, my hand firm around his shaft, his hips bucking to chase me whenever my head backs away. His fingers lose their restraint, begin to press. He looks down at me and then his eyes squeeze tight. “You have no idea how badly I want to fuck you right now,” he grunts. “None.” I try to take more of him, until he hits the back of my throat. He gasps and I do it again.

  “Oh fuck,” he says on another gasp. “I’m gonna come.” With the smallest pained cry he lets go, my head held tight in his hands until he sags backward against the wall, his chest heaving.

  I rise from the floor, unsteady with want. I’ve never been the girl who licks her lips after giving a blow job like some porn star but he’s made me into that girl and I’m not ashamed of it. He watches me through eyes that are heavy-lidded, drugged. “Holy shit,” he says, pushing both hands through his hair. “Get on the desk.”

  Watching him come just now left me so worked up I can barely stand it, but I force myself to be responsible. “We need to meet the realtor.”

  “Get on the fucking desk,” he growls. He backs me into it and lifts me himself before I can even think of arguing, shoving my sundress around my thighs and dropping to his knees. His mouth is between my legs, against the cotton of my panties, inhaling me, his tongue pressing against the fabric but not moving beyond it.

  The tables have turned and it’s me who’s desperate now. I throw his words back at him. “Stop playing with it.”

  I feel his low laugh against my skin, but he slides the panties down, kissing along the inside of my thighs, nipping the skin a little, before he pulls a knee over each shoulder to hold me open. His tongue flickers over my clit—fast, hard, relentless—and just as I feel myself getting close he changes tact—long sweeps of his tongue like I’m a melting ice cream cone in the heat of summer. He increases the pace, groaning over my skin, and then slides a single finger inside me.

  I come before I even have time to warn him it’s going to happen, with a small cry I barely manage to muffle. My eyes are still closed, my arching back hasn’t even fallen back to the desk, I’m still coming and I already want more. I want the feel of him inside me like I’ve never wanted anything in my life, enough to beg, to bargain with God, to do whatever is necessary.

  He apparently does too. When my lids finally flicker open, he’s rising with that drugged look on his face once again, pushing me farther back on the desk, so hard it’s almost impossible to believe he just came five minutes ago. He stands between my legs, the tip of his cock resting in precisely the right place. I feel the first hint of pressure, the fullness that will come, and I know I should stop him, but God I don’t want to. I’ve never seen him look quite as desperate, as needy, as he does right now. He wants to shove inside me as badly as I want him to. His nostrils flare, the tendons in his neck strain, and then he leans down and rests his forehead against my chest, trying to regain control. “God, this is hard,” he whispers.

  “I know.” It just doesn’t seem to ever be satisfied—the need. No matter how many times he makes me come, in the end I find myself exactly where I am right now—trying to justify doing the one thing we cannot do.

  He finally backs away, leaning against the wall while I brush my hands over my sundress and pull my hair back again.

  “Am I presentable?” I ask.

  He grins at me as he pulls up his pants. “Are you asking if you look like you just came?”

  I laugh. He certainly looks like it—his eyes are glazed over, his cheeks flushed. “I’m pretty sure there aren’t a lot of moments I haven’t looked like that of late, but yes.”

  He pulls me against him, pressing his mouth to my forehead. “You just look hotter than hell. You’re lucky we have to meet that agent or I wouldn’t be letting you out of here today.”

  I straighten his tie and then, with his hand at the small of my back, he opens the door and we step into the hall—where we come face-to-face with a woman in scrubs who goes pale at the sight of us. With a sinking stomach I realize the woman is Meg. She isn’t done up like she was at the market a week ago, but it’s almost easier to appreciate her perfect skin and bone structure without the makeup and curls. It’s petty, but I wish his ex was less attractive. Especially since she’ll be the one who’s still here when I’m gone. And based on the look in her eyes, I think she’ll be more than willing to take him back.

  Nick exhales. His shoulders relax but it’s a forced gesture, the same thing he used to do before swim meets. His hand falls away from my back but it’s too late. She saw how we emerged from the office and her nose crinkles in disdain at his attempt to cover it up now.

  “Hi Meg,” he says. “This is Quinn.”

  Her eyes move toward me, not nearly as full of loathing as I’d expect. She’s angry, but there’s something else there too. It takes me a moment to realize what it is: pity. Did Nick tell her about my brain tumor? Does she know I’m dying? I’m not sure why it bothers me so much, but it does.

  She says nothing. Just stands still as a statue and then steps around us. Nick pulls my hand and leads me to the elevator, while I grapple with a stew of sick thoughts I wish I was not having. I stare at the floor, wanting to pull my shit together so when I voice a thought, it’s the right one.

  “Hey,” he says, pulling me to him. “I’m sorry about that. Are you okay?”

  I press my head to his chest and close my eyes, needing comfort and distance at the same time. My imagination is off to the races now. She’s moving into his apartment after all. She thinks their lives might just pick up where they left off when I die, and I wonder if, at some level, he’s thinking they will too. If I were a better person I’d want that for him, wouldn’t I? I’m not a better person. The idea of him with anyone but me makes me feel like I’m going to be sick. I step away from him, leaning against the wall. “You told her, didn’t you?”

  “Told her what?”

  “You told her I’m dying.”

  He swallows. “She knows about the tumor.”

  She doesn’t just know about the tumor. That look she gave me wasn’t the kind you give a person who might recover. “And is she just…waiting for you?” I ask. My words snap like lightning but there’s grief behind them. “Letting you go spend time with the dying girl, knowing the two of you will pick up where you left off in a few months?”

  I’m not sure what I expect from him in response, maybe blithe reassurance, a little pat on the head. Instead, he stops the elevator entirely and closes the distance between us until I’m pressed to the wall and so close to him I can barely breathe. “Are you serious right now?” he asks. “Please tell me that was not a serious question.”

  I exhale. “I wouldn’t fault you for it,” I reply, my voice small. I think it’s true, although the pain is so fresh right now it’s hard to imagine. “I mean, you deserve t
o have a life after I’m gone. But…”

  “It may have escaped your attention,” he says, voice low with fury. “But I am crazy about you. I’m so crazy about you I seem to care very little about everything that mattered a month ago. Not my reputation. Not my job. Not my future. All that exists for me is the time we have left, and after that, honestly, I can’t imagine wanting to go on.”

  The pain swells and releases, and I weep, my face pressed to his shirt. It can’t all be about seeing Meg or the possibility that he’ll move on. I’ve been building to this for a while. Every day I spend with him just makes it hurt even more that it can’t last. “I’m sorry.”

  He holds me tight to his chest. “Not as sorry as I am.”

  9

  NICK

  Our talk in the elevator lends our house-hunting trip a new gravity. This is probably the last place she will ever live. It focuses me. I want to choose the perfect home for us. The one where we might have stayed forever.

  We follow our agent over the cobblestone streets. She’s talking on the phone, so I tug Quinn closer and press my mouth to her hair. She’s recovered from the incident in the elevator but I’m not sure I have. It’s actually going to end—for some reason, it didn’t seem real until now. She’s already preparing herself for the day when I’m here without her. The emptiness I feel at the idea of it terrifies me.

  “Like anything yet?” I ask.

  We’ve seen two townhouses and a few apartments. They were fine, but none of them were enough. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m just asking too much.

  “They’re all great,” she says. “I just can’t get past the idea of spending that much on a place.”

  “It’s really not that much,” I counter. “Everything we’ve looked at isn’t a ton more than I’m paying for a one-bedroom right now.”

  “I guess you take the girl off the bankrupt farm, but you can’t take the bankrupt farm off the girl,” she says with a small laugh.

  I raise a brow. She’s implied before that she grew up without money, but she’s got this inheritance and her mother’s new home couldn’t have been cheap. It doesn’t add up. “Your definition of bankrupt and mine must be different. Your mom looked like she was living pretty well to me.”

  She shrugs. “My dad had this massive life insurance policy. About two million. And 200 grand of that was earmarked for me. That’s what I’ll be using to pay for school.”

  I shove my hands in my pockets, thinking. People who are broke don’t take out insurance policies that size. He’d have had to pay premiums on it he could have barely afforded. “Doesn’t it seem a little strange that your dad would have taken a policy that large?” I ask.

  She nods. “Yeah, especially because my father was the cheapest man alive. He once went an entire day in Philly in the summer without anything to drink because he couldn’t find a water fountain and refused to pay for a bottle.” She smiles a little at the memory. “But thank God he did. We found out about it at the last possible moment, right before the bank was going to foreclose.”

  “It wasn’t in his will?”

  She shakes her head. “Nope. If I hadn’t dreamed about that policy I think we still wouldn’t know.”

  The agent is on the phone again so I stop, tugging her hand to face me. “You dreamed about it and then it happened?”

  She laughs. “I see where you’re going with this, but no. I just had a dream in which I remembered talking to him about needing a policy and when I woke up I knew where to look.”

  “Rose said you may be time traveling in your sleep without even realizing it.”

  She shakes her head quickly. Too quickly. For some reason her default position is to deny that there might be anything supernatural going on, no matter how bizarre the circumstances. “My friend Caroline dreamed her missing passport was under her toaster once and found it there. Does she time travel too? Sometimes we just forget stuff, tuck it away some place we can’t reach it when we’re awake.”

  I’ll table this for now but we’re coming back to it later. I have a feeling her mom did a number on her where this stuff is concerned, and I need to rectify that immediately.

  We arrive at the next house, a single-family Cape Cod on Q street. “The owners have spent the whole year redoing the interior,” the agent tells us as she opens the door.

  Given how many “redone interiors” we’ve seen that have fallen short today, it doesn’t mean all that much, but I’m more willing to keep an open mind once we get inside. It’s in better shape than a lot of the places we’ve seen, and the owners have put in wide-plank hardwood floors and a new kitchen. Quinn’s unwilling to tell me she likes anything simply because she’s worried about the money, but I see the way her eyes soften when we enter, and once we pass through the kitchen I know for certain. The back of the house is a wall of windows, looking out on a private garden. It reminds me of my flat in London. Quinn stands at the French doors with this look of wonder on her face, taking it all in. And that’s the look I’ve been waiting for from her.

  “This is it, eh?” I ask, smiling.

  She forces her mouth into a straight line. “How do you know that?” she asks. “I haven’t said a word.”

  I twine my fingers through hers. “How do I know anything?”

  “Yes,” she replies with a small laugh. “This is it.”

  * * *

  Our celebration dinner takes place at an Italian bistro two blocks away from our new home. Seeing her across from me—incandescent, pink-cheeked with the excitement of what we are doing—makes any consequence I suffer at work worthwhile.

  Beneath the table her legs cross, brushing mine by accident. I try to ignore the images that flash through my head. This afternoon in my office took the edge off but that edge is back, and it’s multiplied. What we’re doing was supposed to quench the fire but instead it just seems to spread and spread. I’ve been picturing her bent over this table at least once a minute since we sat down. I was picturing her bent over my desk until we got here.

  “What’s the matter?” she asks, tilting her head, brow furrowed. “Are you worried about moving in together? Please be honest.”

  “I was thinking about how badly I wanted to fuck you on my desk this afternoon,” I reply, watching the pink in her cheeks deepen. She’s a little shocked but there’s a gleam in her eye that tells me she likes it too. “How I wanted to bend you over and push that dress around your hips and pound you loud enough for the whole fucking floor to hear. Honest enough for you?”

  She tucks her head, smiling. “That was pretty honest.”

  “Sorry,” I reply. “To use your diet analogy, anything I do with you is like eating a single potato chip. All it does is remind me how much I love potato chips.”

  “And then you want to fuck them over your desk.”

  I laugh. “Exactly. I want to fuck the potato chips into oblivion.”

  “Is it weird that this conversation is turning me on?” she asks. “I’m picturing your dick in a bag of Ruffles and I’m a little wet.”

  And all she has to do is use the phrase I’m a little wet and I’ve got an erection that will make leaving the restaurant impossible. I shift in my seat. Adjust myself. It doesn’t help. “We need to talk about something else,” I plead. “Something that will not make me think about what you just said.”

  “You mean that I’m wet?” she teases. “So wet you could slide right—”

  “Stop,” I say with a low groan. “Please.”

  She laughs. “Fine. Then we can talk about logistics. That’s a boner killer if there ever was one. What happens when the hospital finds out we share an address? I could just have my mail sent to Caroline’s, I guess.”

  It’s occurred to me too, but I refuse. I get one chance at this life with her and I’m going to do it right. “No. We aren’t half-assing this. Look, I’ve told the few people I’ve discussed this with that we dated in college. If push comes to shove, it’s what I’ll tell the administration too. We’ll just hope
for the best.”

  It’s on the tip of her tongue to argue. I can see the struggle in her face. She wants to remind me it might not last that long. It feels like she’s always trying to remind me of that, as if I could possibly forget it. “God, I wish we could find Rose and just ask her a few more questions,” she says instead.

  “You know,” I venture. “There is one way we could talk to her.”

  Her brows raise nearly to her hairline. “There is?”

  “You could time travel back to her.”

  A laugh escapes, and then she sees my face. “Oh my God, you weren’t joking.”

  I don’t know why she persists in acting like this is some crazy impossibility. Haven’t we had enough proof she’s capable of doing something? “Rose said you could do it. She said you’ve been doing it.”

  She shrugs. “They’re just memories though. I mean, you’ve remembered things too.”

  “Not like you do,” I argue. “Not with that level of detail. And what about the insurance thing? Don’t you find it pretty freaking hard to imagine you completely forgot a conversation like that with your father? And then the new policy turns up the very next day?”

  She waves her hand. “Coincidence.”

  “That’s one hell of a coincidence. All these things you just know too. Think about the story you told me about your neighbor: you dreamed you’d tried to save your friend and the dog followed you. What if it wasn’t a dream? What if you really did travel backward to save her?”

  She pauses. For a moment I see a hint of fear and then she shakes her head and laughs. “Come on, Nick. If I’d tried to go back to save her, I’d probably have died too. Yes, there’ve been times when I’ve known stuff I shouldn’t, like about architecture, about you and London. But that’s because we lived them before, somehow. The thing with the neighbor was…I don’t know what it was, but there’s no way I actually went there. If I don’t know how to time travel now, I sure as hell didn’t know how to then. It’s like I told you before. If we actually existed in some parallel time, maybe I read about the murder there.”