by Doyle, S.
“I was engaged to CJ for five seconds because I thought I might have a chance at having a real relationship. But I should have known that was never going to be an option as long as you were still in my life. That’s why I needed to quit you. Need to.”
“But you came back,” Carol prompted.
Jules shut her mouth.
“Ethan said that he’s here in therapy to help fix what he broke. Yesterday, you said you wanted out, Julia. Is that what you want today?”
She shook her head subtly. “I don’t know what I want. That’s as honest as I can be.”
“That’s fair. However, I think we need to talk about the wedding,” Carol announced.
“We both agreed never to talk about it,” Julia said. “I don’t see the point now.”
“Because I’m having a hard time believing that intimacy between you two wouldn’t have been anything other than important,” Carol answered her.
I looked at Jules, thinking of last night. Of how easy it had been to persuade her back into bed. Like she should have been there all along.
And maybe she should have been. I’d just been too much of a jackass to realize it. That had changed after Daniel’s wedding.
“The whole point of coming back today was to tell all of our story, Jules. That night changed things whether either one of us realized it or not.”
* * *
Three years ago
Julia
“Jordyn, did you talk to Scott?” I asked my senior assistant as she walked into my office, the elevator doors closing behind her. It was a rare, sunny day in downtown Seattle and the floor that was my office was beaming with light. Glancing outside I could see the Space Needle in all its glory and thought I should take the time to get some fresh air.
Maybe a walk around the building, even though I knew, as soon as I had the thought, it would never happen. I was here by seven in the morning and it was a rare day that had me leaving before nine at night. My schedule wasn’t conducive to midafternoon walks.
“He says you need to be patient,” Jordyn told me, setting a coffee cup on my desk. I hadn’t asked for it, but she was great about doing things like that.
“I’m going to patiently put my foot up his ass,” I muttered. “Does he have any sense of when we’re going to know about the Cameron merger? If we don’t get the specs on those land grants, I can’t commit to the planes Ethan wants us to create.”
“He didn’t say. Only that you needed to be—”
“Patient, yeah, I got it.” I could be patient. Ethan…not so much.
Speaking of the devil, the elevator doors dinged and slid open. Ethan walked out with a casual wave for Jordyn—I’d forbidden him to have sex with any of my assistants, much to Jordyn’s disappointment.
Although, in the past five years we’d been working together, I had to give him credit for not using his company as a private dating pool. Instead, he’d focused on supermodels.
Lots and lots of supermodels.
He sat on the edge of my desk, facing me. “Where are we on the Cameron merger?”
“You need to be patient,” I told him.
“Not sure if you’ve met me, but I don’t really do patience.”
I shot Jordyn a glare. “Go back and sit on Scott until he talks,” I told her.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I was only two years older than Jordyn and I’m pretty sure she called me ma’am just get under my skin. She was efficient, hardworking, and predicted my needs, which made me tolerate the ma’am comment and her fangirl crush on Ethan. But just barely.
Jordyn left but Ethan didn’t. “You have your own floor, you know,” I said, reminding him of his penthouse office above mine.
“I like your office better. It has you in it.”
I rolled my eyes, which made him laugh.
“Listen, more seriously, Daniel’s wedding.”
Daniel and Kaylee were getting married this weekend. Daniel had long since given up his dreams of stock-car racing and the girlfriend who had gone along with them. When he met Kaylee in his third year of law school, everyone had known that was it for him.
True love, he’d told me and Ethan. And I believed it was.
I had new shoes and a new dress, and I was planning on getting my groove on.
“What about it?”
“You’re not bringing anyone, are you?”
He was talking about David. Whom I’d had exactly three dates with before he realized I was already married to my job. To put it bluntly, my dating life sucked. But anytime I was dating anyone, Ethan usually disapproved.
It wasn’t exactly rocket science to know why. He wanted me focused totally on the business.
“No. Why? Because if you think I’m going to spend the wedding chatting with your supermodel of choice, I’m not. They don’t eat or drink anything, which makes me nervous.”
“I’m not bringing anyone. That was my point. We should go together.”
I shrugged. I didn’t see an issue with it. “That’s fine.”
“You’ll let me know about the merger?”
“As soon as I know, you’ll know.”
“This is going to be fun, Jules. I have a feeling.”
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about the wedding or the merger, but I went with the wedding.
“As long as I get to drink and dance, I agree.”
* * *
The wedding
Ethan
“My man!” Daniel announced as he approached me. We did the bro-hug thing and I slapped him a few more times on his shoulder. The ballroom of the hotel was packed with people in their finest. And since most of the guests had a room for the evening, the booze was flowing.
I had a normal room, as I’d made sure Daniel and Kaylee had the penthouse suite. I considered myself fabulously generous for that.
“You did it,” I said.
“I did. And I’m a happy motherfucker.”
He handed me a shot of something. I didn’t drink normally, no more than a glass of wine or two after my college days, but I decided this was a special occasion. I took the shot in one slug and winced.
“I can’t believe I’m giving you two weeks off.”
“Hawaii, baby. Kaylee and I have a private cabin on Kauai, and I plan to be naked the entire time.”
“I don’t need the details,” I said. I looked toward the dance floor and saw Jules in the arms of another man. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and she was wearing a strapless dress that made me realize she had exceptional shoulders to go along with her exceptional rack.
Not that I was ever allowed to think about her rack. That was out of bounds for us.
Instead, I mostly dated models who were all ridiculously thin. Jules had been right about that. I hadn’t felt an actual soft breast in…I couldn’t remember when.
“Hey, don’t mess that up,” Daniel said.
“Mess what up?”
Daniel lifted his chin in their direction. “I told Craig to give it a shot. Julia’s amazing, but all she does is work. I can’t remember the last time I saw her leave the office before me and I’m there until eight almost every night. She needs a life.”
I frowned at that. “What are you talking about? I gave her a life.” A highly profitable one at that. There was nothing Jules or her family would ever want for. Every goal she’d had in life accomplished before she was even thirty. That was the life I gave her.
“No, you gave her a job. She deserves more than that.”
“You don’t think I know that?” I snapped. “I’m not preventing Jules from dating anyone. That’s why I made her hire an assistant. Remember, Jordyn was my idea.”
Daniel held up his hands. “Hey, I’m not suggesting you are. Just don’t go over and there and break up that dance because you don’t like watching her in the arms of some other guy. That’s all I’m saying.”
I turned to look at them again. I didn’t like her in the arms of another man. I started toward the dance floor, an
d as I did, I heard Daniel behind me.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
On my way through the throng of people I found a waiter who was walking around with another tray of shots. I took two and downed them, one after the other. It wasn’t that I needed liquid courage to dance with Jules. I just had this feeling inside. Maybe it was the wedding. Watching Daniel pledge his entire fucking life to a person. Having the balls to do it.
Hadn’t I done that? Hadn’t I found Jules when she was only eighteen?
No, we weren’t married, but no one could say that we weren’t committed. We were a team.
Where was our celebration? When would people toast to us?
On the dance floor, the man holding her whispered something in her ear and I could see her physically pull back. She didn’t like him getting that close.
There was my girl. Didn’t he understand Jules was a thorn bush? You couldn’t just dive in without expecting to get pricked. You had to ease in, gently, bit by bit, while she decided if you were worthy.
This guy was not.
“Can I cut in?” I asked, tapping the guy on the shoulder.
“Is that still a thing?” he asked me with a smirk on his face.
“When my friend is looking at me like she’s desperate to escape your company, yes, it’s still a thing.”
“The fuck? Whatever,” the guy said, releasing his hold on Jules.
I took her in my arms and didn’t think about how good it felt. The shots were starting to go to my head, and I was okay with that. It was a party after all.
A break from our reality. Could I do that? Could we? One night when we weren’t Ethan and Julia, two friends who had known each other since college, who were working together to change the world.
But maybe, instead, tonight we could be something else. Someone else.
“You are so mean,” she accused me even as she settled into my arms.
“Was I wrong?”
“No. He was getting a bit too bold too quickly. But I’m a little tipsy, so I was actually considering it. You probably saved me from a very bad idea.”
“Really?”
“I’m horny,” she said, even as she wrapped her arms around my neck. “And drunk. Did I mention that I’m drunk? I gave myself permission to let go tonight.”
“I like drunk Jules. I see her very infrequently.”
Not since college, actually. There had been a night that first year. My only year. St. Patrick’s Day, but I didn’t like to think about it, because it hadn’t ended well. Tonight, there wasn’t anything that could go wrong. We could drink and dance and get drunk, knowing we would protect each other.
She pressed herself against me and I pulled her close.
Yes, I thought. It’s a different kind of night. With none of our history in the way. Just a moment removed from time. We could have this.
* * *
After the wedding
Ethan
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she muttered against my mouth.
“No,” I said, cupping her face in my palm so I could take our kiss even deeper. “We can have this. Just this night.”
I pressed her against the door of my hotel room, my thigh between hers, pushing against her in a way that had her moaning when I slipped my tongue into her mouth.
This was Jules, but it wasn’t. We were playing a game. Two people who happened to meet at a wedding. It had started as silly teasing. I called her Leslie and she called me Patrick and we laughed about it because it was ridiculous. And I talked her into coming to my room for one last drink. And she’d said yes, because like me, she didn’t want the night to end.
So we were pretending, but we weren’t. Because this was Jules and I was Ethan and there wasn’t anything I didn’t know about her. Except how she tasted. Now I knew that.
She was delicious. I knew she would be. I knew she would feel perfect against me. How?
“Ethan, I’m serious. Game over. We’re drunk. We’re not thinking straight. This is a bad idea. This isn’t us, remember?”
I didn’t have the heart or the will to tell her I wasn’t that drunk. And the fact that she was still thinking about whether or not this was a good idea meant she wasn’t that drunk, either. Instead of explaining it, I ground my erection against her core.
“Take off your dress,” I whispered into her ear.
“Ethan…”
I cupped her face in my palm. “Jules, it’s okay. Tonight is for us. Only for us. Do you want me?”
“Ethan,” she whispered, her eyes closing. I kissed her, which was all the proof I needed of her desire. She moaned for me. She gasped for me. Of course she wanted me. I’d always known that, but there were rules when it came to Jules. Always there were rules.
Tonight, I was breaking them.
I stepped back and took off my suit coat, tugged and loosened my tie.
“The lights,” she said.
“Stay on.” Neither one of us were going to hide from anything.
I turned her around and pressed her hands against the door. I wanted everything at once, but at the same time, I wanted to take this slow. We had the whole night. One night to break all the rules.
I pulled the zipper down and the sound of it, of unraveling Jules, was the most erotic thing I’d ever heard. I ran my hand down her naked back and she arched. I reached around to cup one of her full breasts and loved that her nipple was already hard.
Releasing her breast, I used my hands to pull the dress off. Tugging it over her hips until it pooled at her feet. No thong for my practical girl, but instead a plain pair of white cotton panties that nearly made me come just looking at them.
I ran my hand around her waist and dove into those panties to find her bare and soaking wet.
“Mine,” I growled, unable to hold back.
I thrust a finger deep inside and she gasped. I added another finger and her head fell forward to bang against the door.
“I’m going to make you come this way. Just with my fingers so I can concentrate on what it sounds like when Jules Whitford comes for me.”
Ruthlessly, I played her with her, finding that spot high and deep inside that made her arch her back.
“Ethan!”
“Already?” But I could feel it. The way her body clutched around my fingers as if I’d pulled on all her muscles at once, like they were strings and I was the puppet master.
“No worries,” I whispered into her ear. “There are more where that came from.”
She sagged forward and I stepped back to remove the rest of my clothes.
“Turn around, Jules.”
She shook her head. Still in denial that this was happening, even after I’d made her come.
I planted myself against her back, my hands on either side of the door next to hers. My hard cock was pushed against her ass, but that wasn’t close enough. With one hand, I lowered her panties so now my dick was nestled between her ass cheeks.
“Ever had it in the ass, Jules?”
She shook her head but moaned a little as I pressed forward. I bent to kiss between her shoulder blades. “Then we’ll do that, too. We’re going to do all of it tonight. No rules. Nothing held back. For one fucking night. Now tell me, do you want it here against the door, or do you want to lie down on the bed like you’re my lover?”
Another shake of her head. I pressed a hand against her back to bend her over even farther, used my other hand on her hips to shift her out toward me. Then, because I couldn’t wait another second, I took my heavy cock in hand and slid inside her pussy.
“Ah, Ethan!”
I was connected to her. I was inside Jules and she was pulsing around my cock and I thought I’d never felt anything quite like it. She banged her hands against the door and pushed against me until she was taking all my dick.
“Fuck,” I muttered even as I slid out of her so I could thrust back in. Because fucking Jules made me feel like a king. A god.
“Harder,” she groaned.
&nb
sp; Of course she would be demanding. Because while I was her boss at work, she was mine in so many other ways. I reached around her so I could play with her breasts. I wanted to feel them swaying as I hammered her from behind. I pulled on her nipple and she squeaked and slammed against me even harder.
“No, I’m doing the fucking!” I barked at her. This was my night. Where I got to break the rules and fuck Jules and listen to her come.
“Ethan!”
I slid my fingers against her clit, as I continued to fuck her, feeling my balls get tight.
“Get there, Jules,” I growled, trying to hold back. But it was too good, too intense, too thrilling to know who was under me.
I felt her tighten around me, heard her cry, and I let myself come hard and deep. Like I was falling off a cliff. Years of pent-up frustration and release, all in a single moment.
As gently as I could, I slipped out of her then braced my hands on either side of her head while we both tried to breathe through our recovery.
“Okay,” I panted. “Now get on the bed so I can treat you like you’re my lover.”
She glanced at me over her shoulder. I could see the question in her eyes but there was no answer.
“Tonight, Jules. Tonight is our vacation from us.”
This time, she nodded. And got into bed so I could ravish her all night long.
* * *
The morning after the wedding
Julia
“I can’t,” I moaned. Not again. Not after what we’d done to each other’s bodies all night long. What time was it? It had to be morning, but I didn’t want to open my eyes.
I could feel him lifting my leg over his hip. We were on our sides in the bed and he was behind me. I could feel his erection between my ass cheeks, and I was so sore back there, I couldn’t even think about another round.
