Good In Bed

by Bromberg, K

“Thanks for your concern.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “You want me to assure you of something?” I sniped. “You want to feel better? Like, that the egg isn’t fertilized and I’m not killing a precious Crowne embryo?”

  “No. I want you to tell me if this is going to keep you from succeeding next month.”

  Why should he care? It wasn’t his business. Not even a little.

  Not unless he actually cared about me, which was a possibility I hadn’t considered until that moment, and as much as I tried to dismiss it, I didn’t want to. If I chose to accept his care, I had to accept the fact that it comforted me.

  “Really?” I could barely hide my suspicion. “That’s what you need to talk about?”

  “Do I want you to do this? No, Olivia, I don’t. I could sit here and promise to send you all the money in the world and never get in the way, but that’s not going to move you, and to be frank, I’d never trust you again.”

  He was the most infuriating, inconsistent, contradictory man I’d ever met.

  “You’d never trust me?”

  “I’d never trust you are who you are. You don’t give up that easily. So, I’m not going to try to convince you. You want to go it alone, fine. Go it alone. What’s really bothering me is that you distrust me enough to not get what you want out of your own life.”

  A dust bunny was caught between the chair leg and the linoleum floor. It wasn’t until he was done that I realized I was staring at it with my hand over my mouth.

  “Olivia?”

  I was snapped from my reverie. “Yes.”

  “Yes, what? Is this going to keep you from having a baby later?”

  “I talked to my doctor. It’s fine. It’ll mess up this cycle. Maybe the next one. Not more.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” I repeated.

  “You left your underwear.”

  He wasn’t trying to be sexy, but the information was so small compared to the magnitude of what was going on that I wanted to choke him.

  “Is there something else we need to talk about?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “Business as usual, then?”

  “Business as usual.”

  We hung up. I could hate him again. Go full fire-of-a-thousand-suns, et cetera, et cetera.

  No problem.

  The box had a window. The pills were blister-packed inside like babies in glass blankets.

  All I had to do was take them.

  Now.

  Before it was too late.

  Jun was at her computer. I put the box on the counter and reached across for the cup of water, tossing it back as if it was the last tequila shot before the bar closed.

  I’d made a decision, but I didn’t know why.

  * * *

  “I thought you had a doctor’s appointment?” Amara asked as the elevator doors closed. We’d gotten on together, holding our coffee cups and staring at the lighted numbers.

  “Change of plans.”

  “Saw the pictures of the Eclipse thing though. Who’s the hot number?”

  The thought that somehow she’d found out about Byron stopped every mental process. I had to force myself not to freeze in my tracks.

  She couldn’t know. We hadn’t been photographed. And she knew what Byron looked like. She wouldn’t have to ask who he was.

  “Alan Barton?” I asked. The doors opened, and we stepped into the hall.

  “That’s the one.”

  My relief was deeply felt, but I watched it flood me as if I was standing outside myself with my arms crossed, shaking my head in disapproval. Why did you do something you don’t want anyone to know about?

  Guilt flooded where relief had been. Not that I’d hurt anyone, but that I’d put myself in a position where I could be hurt. The night with him needed to be secret or, as a matter of ethics, it needed to be disclosed to my team and the judge who got the case.

  “Conference room in five,” Martin said as he approached. “With Kimberly.”

  “Do you know what it’s about?”

  “Bel-Air, I think,” he replied.

  “I’ll grab your notes,” Amara said, dashing away.

  Martin and I walked down the hall.

  “We tried to call you last night,” he said as we entered the conference room. “Where were you?”

  “Sorry. I shut off the phone.”

  “Do you have a fever?” he asked as we sat. “Your face is red.”

  “Hello, hello!” Kimberly blew in like a plastic bag in a windstorm, wearing a suit jacket, matching trousers, and a blue tie. Though Kimberly was a feminine name, my boss preferred gender neutral pronouns. It had taken me a week to get used to it, but now I couldn’t think of them any other way.

  “You’re back just in time, Monroe.” They threw themselves into the chair at the head of the table. “Guess who I ran into at the gym this morning? Don’t bother. Betty Bellini, the Bellini side of Bellini and Jonson. Architects to the rich and environmentally careless. We were chatting in spin class, if you can call trying to talk while barely breathing a ‘chat,’ and she mentioned she was tired from spending all night at plan check. So, me, being curious but not wanting to alarm the woman during her cardio workout, I called my buddy Jason the building inspector, and guess who pulled new permits late yesterday and, color me shocked, got rush approval on a damn Sunday night? Don’t answer. Let me just bask in how impressed you are for a moment.”

  They could bask all they wanted. I knew the answer. Mitch and I were in the middle of litigating two dozen cases, but the timing of the revision was too much of a coincidence.

  “What were the changes?” I asked.

  “Placement of the electrical box and a one-foot shift on the west side of the footprint. And since the judge put a stay on the permit, not the property, he thinks he bought a one-way ticket to Doing-Whatever-the-Fuck-He-Wants-ville.”

  “We’ll file another injunction before he breaks ground,” I said.

  “Ground’s broken,” Kimberly said. “They started moving dirt this morning at 7:31, apparently.”

  I bolted upright as if my chair had caught fire. “I’m going over there.”

  Kimberly leaned back with fingers laced together over their abdomen. “Nope. I filed for an inspection confirming compliance, and Crowne filed for an independent auditor to monitor the site on his dime, which the judge won’t approve. Yes, it happened that fast.” Kimberly stood. “He’s not going to move a shoebox of dirt off that property without a proper accounting.”

  Kimberly was in a state of self-awe, and I should have been as well, but now there would be no hearing. We’d have to go to a full-blown trial.

  He’d made all these moves while holing me up in a hotel room. He must have had the revised plans already and probably had an independent auditor set up beforehand. All he had to do was show up at the Eclipse event and promise me a night of pleasure.

  I’d been played. I should have known better.

  Knowing what he was, I’d begged for it like a dog in heat.

  Begged.

  I was a loser. A lightweight.

  Chump. Patsy. Dupe. Stooge.

  Never again.

  Now this was war.

  Chapter 9

  OLIVIA

  I’d managed to get through the day without eating my own liver in rage. We did all the things we were supposed to do to get Byron to halt construction. None of them needed my anger, and none would work quickly enough. The permit signoff wasn’t a big deal. He didn’t know I’d undone those before, but he was about to find out.

  I could scrape out a win, as always, but I couldn’t shake my emotional uneasiness.

  The night was a lie. The gloaming at the horizon, the cooling fall air, the mating call of the crickets as I pulled up my street. All of it was a lie of peace and contentment.

  Byron Crowne playing me like a fiddle had been eating me hollow all day, and on what should have been a lovely drive home with the car top down, it got
worse. Without the constant noise of tasks to do and people to talk to, that bitter, sticky rage and shame got bigger.

  My house didn’t have a gate in front. The front yard had a path right up to the front door, and the driveway was open to the usually quiet street. The apartment buildings on either side weren’t noisy most nights, and the busiest boulevard was two blocks away.

  I pulled in, put the convertible top up, and walked up to my front porch with my keyring on my finger, figuring I’d stew until I was too exhausted to sleep. I was so focused on my bitterness I didn’t see Byron on the porch swing until I turned the key.

  Then I gasped, dropped my bag and held my hands out to defend myself.

  “Whoa,” he said with a chuckle, as if I couldn’t hurt him.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to see if you were all right.” His tie was loosened, and his top shirt button undone, leading me to imagine the body underneath. The hardness under my fingers, the undulating muscles under the skin.

  “I’m fine.” I pushed the door open.

  “Were you sick today?”

  “Why?” I stopped myself. He didn’t know I hadn’t taken the pills. I didn’t want to tell him. He didn’t need another win over Team Olivia. “Why do you care?”

  “I don’t know.” He was serious. He didn’t know why he cared. What a dick.

  “I’m not sick,” I said. “So, you can go before I call the cops.”

  I waited at the door while he stood, buttoned his jacket, looked across the street as if he needed a moment to think, then looked back at me.

  “You look like you had a bad day.”

  “Yeah,” I said, dropping my bag inside the house while I still had a foot on the porch. “Today, I found out you distracted me while your people got a late-night signoff on new plans that are half a percent different. Nice play, Mr. Crowne.”

  He nodded. All the confirmation I needed was in that motion.

  “I enjoyed it very much,” he said, stepping forward, closer to both the stairs and me. He could have turned either way, but his body language committed to neither. “You did too.”

  “And now you’re on my porch.” I put both feet inside the house and crossed my arms. “What’s going on behind my back now?”

  “Nothing. I swear. This is strictly a personal visit.”

  “Pure concern for my health and well-being,” I scoffed.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Why should I?”

  He faced fully in my direction. “I meant it when I said I couldn’t stop thinking about you. All day, I had to stop myself from calling to see how you were.”

  “That doesn’t make me like you.”

  “Believe me.” He came closer, leaving his toes on the porch side of the door. He looked down at me with a heat that burned through my clothes and snaked its way between my legs like a long, sparking fuse. “This obsession I have doesn’t mean I like you either.”

  “We agree, then.”

  “Oh, this? On this we are in total agreement. You’re an annoying, yipping little dog in a pen of Rottweilers.”

  His words were insulting, but his expression confirmed his metaphor. He looked at me like a starving animal, and under it, I shook with anticipation and loathing.

  “You going to fuck me or not?” I spat.

  “Can you?”

  “Can I?”

  He thought I’d taken the pills and had no idea what the effect was. Right.

  “You could,” I said. “Nothing stopping us. But last night’s over. We agreed.”

  “You trusted me to keep a promise?” he growled.

  I lost a piece of my mind, putting one hand on his chest and gripping a handful of jacket. “No. I didn’t.”

  In a heartbeat, we were kissing in my dark living room, door slamming behind us. He pushed me back, jamming his hand up my shirt as I slammed into a side table, knocking down a vase. I shoved him into the wall, rattling the picture over him, and yanked his belt out of the loops.

  “You got something planned while you fuck me this time?” I pulled the belt free of the buckle and landed a punishing kiss.

  “No.” He bit my lower lip and pulled my skirt up over my ass. “But you do.”

  He spun us around and back, tripping us both onto the couch, where he held me down with his hand on my chest. I grappled for his clothes with a violence I didn’t know I had in me. His jacket button broke away and clicked to the floor.

  “Maybe I do,” I said as if it mattered. As if I cared about anything but getting his cock inside me.

  He pushed my knees apart and grabbed the fabric of my pantyhose, shredding them. Without preamble or a shred of human decency, he shoved two fingers inside me, and I nearly came from the roughness of his touch, crying out with my eyes closed and my back arched. He took them out before the orgasm fully blossomed so he could take out his erection.

  Fisting it with his right hand, he leaned down and laid his left hand under my jaw, putting enough pressure on it to keep me from moving. “I’m going to wrap this up, and I’m going to fuck the yipping dog right out of you.”

  “No.”

  He froze, lessening the pressure on my throat.

  “You don’t have what it takes,” I added.

  Kneeling straight, he got a condom out of his jacket pocket before ripping off the jacket. He wrapped his cock, then pulled my legs up so I was bent at the waist with my underwear and shredded stockings stretched tight between my legs.

  “Take it, then.” In one hard thrust, he was inside me. In two, he was buried to the base.

  I twisted in pleasure, and he took me sideways, one leg over his hip and one under, ramming deep and hard as if he wanted to kill me with his cock.

  “That’s all you have?” I gasped.

  He growled, ripping my stockings apart, then my underwear, allowing him to spread my legs apart and push so deep his body rubbed my clit.

  “This better?” His question was a challenge. “Or like this?”

  He slammed in deeper than I thought possible, shifting against my throbbing core as if he was in a contest to get me off.

  “Should I let you come?”

  “I come when I want.” I reached between my legs, but he took my wrists and held them over my head.

  “What now, huh?” He gyrated deeply, gripping my wrists so hard the pain of my helplessness was exquisite. “What are you going to do now?”

  “Come when I… oh God. Faster.”

  He didn’t go faster. He didn’t slow down either. “Tell me how much you like it.”

  “Faster, asshole.”

  “How bad do you want me to make you come?”

  “Fuck you.” I wanted to slap him, but his hold on my hands was too strong. “Fuck you. I want to come. I need to. Make me come, you fuck. Give it to me harder. Make me come.”

  He leaned down and pushed my bra aside with his chin, then he put his mouth on the pliable flesh at the top of my breast. “You’re not ready.”

  “I am!”

  He sucked the skin of my breast, fucking harder as he sucked me into his teeth into a painful, delicious, agonizing bite that left no room for any other thoughts or sensations.

  As I came, he groaned through his teeth, sucking flesh as he exploded into me. My orgasm went on and on, taking hold of my thrashing body, which was held down by the wrist and tit.

  When he let go, the darkness in the room swam, and my anchor to the earth was my gulped breath and his softening cock inside me.

  “Olivia, one.” He kissed the spot he’d wounded with tenderness I hadn’t known he was capable of. “Pills, zero.”

  “I hate this,” I said.

  “You seemed to like it.”

  “Not that.”

  “What, then?”

  “I didn’t take the pills.”

  “You…” He straightened his arms, his face high enough to be illuminated by the streetlight through the window. “You what?”

  �
�I’m sorry.”

  “So, what does that mean exactly?”

  “I’m not trying to trap you. It’s not that. I won’t—”

  “But you could get pregnant?”

  “From last night. Yes.”

  He stood up in the blue light of the night, dick hanging out, shirt half-undone and wrinkled at the tail.

  “And you want it?” He said it as if he couldn’t believe it. As if the whole conversation in the pharmacy hadn’t happened.

  “Well, yes. I mean, I’m pissed that it’s yours. Obviously.”

  “So, you didn’t get the IUI this morning?”

  “No. I was busy dealing with your backstabbing bullshit.” I sat up straight on the couch, naked in front of him, sore and messy, and regarded him standing there with his dick hanging out.

  His smirk and his regal bearing didn’t seem cultivated to intimidate, but as much a part of him as his green eyes.

  “But I wouldn’t have gone anyway,” I continued. “This way, if I am, then I know whose it is and how it happened. I don’t need the stress of waiting for the DNA.”

  He hadn’t moved since he stood, half-silhouetted in the darkness, the details of his face in blue shadow. He wasn’t sincere or trustworthy. Some manipulation was probably behind trying to convince me not to take the morning-after pills.

  “Did you change your mind?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “So, why are you standing there like you’re shocked?”

  “How long before you know?”

  “I usually take an early test, then the doctor confirms.”

  “I need a date.”

  Quelling enough annoyance to throw a shoe at him, I sucked in a breath so hard it was audible halfway across the room.

  “Please,” he added.

  “Two weeks. Next Sunday, earliest.”

  “I want to be there.”

  “Where? In the toilet when I piss on a stick?”

  He sat next to me in the dark, hands folded in his lap. The bite on my breast was throbbing, and my clothes were situated uncomfortably, but I didn’t move.

  “I know you hate me,” he said. “I know I stand for everything you despise in a person.”

  “What was the hint?”