Picture Perfect Love (Heartstring Dating Agency Book 3)

by Lauren Wood

  My feet shuffled back to the brick wall as Abby threw herself on me, pressing her lips to mine. Her tongue still tasted like the syrup from whatever cocktail she was drinking last as it rolled across mine, unleashing all the pent up arousal I had been keeping bottled up for hours. With both of her hands clung tightly to the collar of my jacket, she pulled my face in closer to hers and deepened the kiss. We made out right there in the alley with drunken fervor until we were both breathless and turned on past the point of return.

  “My place?” I asked the first second our mouths managed to break apart.

  She sucked in a deep breath and took a few steps back. “I don’t know. It’s getting awfully late and…”

  “It’s cold. Come back for one more drink. Then my limo can take you home if you want.”

  “I think we both know that’s not how it’s going to go down,” she smiled.

  “Do we both know that? I don’t think I got that memo. Come on, I know the tabloids paint me a certain way. But I really am a man of my word. One drink, then I’m sending you home. Whether you like it or not.”

  She started to shiver even under all that fur and finally caved. “Alright, yes. Let’s go. I’m dying to know what your place looks like anyway.”

  My place was an overpriced penthouse suite in the heart of downtown. An even more overpriced decorator had morphed it into something that kind of looked like home—the home of a rich bachelor anyway. With all the modern art and minimalist furniture, I always thought it was a little cold. But watching Abby walk around and study it seemed to bring a warm new life into the place.

  “This is exactly like I imagined it,” she laughed as she walked around my living room with a glass of wine.

  We had somehow managed to keep our hands off each other on the ride home, giving us both enough time and space to calm our racing libidos.

  “I don’t know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.”

  “Neither,” she shrugged. “It just… is what it is. Do you like your place?”

  “It’s missing something,” I admitted as I looked around.

  I noticed her swallowing down the last of her drink and was prepared to make good on my word.

  “I better send you home now.”

  She looked at her empty glass then back to me. “One more.”

  “We made a deal.”

  “And you still haven’t paid me for our first deal yet.” She shoved the glass into my hand and wandered off to explore the rest of the apartment.

  I couldn’t stop smiling as I poured her more wine and went in search of her to deliver it. I really was prepared to send her home without expecting anything more, but her wanting to stick around made me feel good inside. It made me want to make her feel good too… in not so innocent ways.

  4

  Abby

  The mood in the room had shifted by the time Joshua found me in his bedroom. I didn’t want it to be my call. I didn’t want to be the one throwing myself at him, begging him to be bad with me. Wasn’t half the point of this to open myself up to him talking me into getting into trouble? But oddly, most of the evening had been the other way around.

  I flashed him a look that made no mistake about what I was wanting. I acted out of character by skipping work and spending the evening with him. I wanted to make the most of it.

  In the darkness of the room, I took both glasses from his hands and put them on the end table. I was hungry for more of what I had tasted in the alleyway and had been yearning for ever since.

  His tongue slid against mine, tasting of wine. His fingers traced the edges of my neck and jaw, sending shivers down my spine. I wanted so much more.

  “Hey, feel like checking out the rooftop with me?” he suggested suddenly. “There are heaters.”

  I quickly weighed the options in my head. There was a perfectly warm room and bed right there. Going to the roof would make it take longer before I could start exploring the body of this infamous Joshua Meadows, the details of which I knew Valerie would demand to hear. But it was a night for doing extraordinary things.

  “Okay,” I smiled.

  I made the right choice. The rooftop had a canopy covered in tapestries with heaters all around it. We quickly found ourselves bundled up inside with his head laying in my lap. I didn’t know if it was the heat emanating from our bodies or the heaters themselves, but I couldn’t even feel how chilly it was out.

  After drinking a little more wine, as if we needed it, his head tilted towards me… tempting me with those kissable lips. I drank them in and ran my hands along the curves of his chiseled chest. Within moments, he switched the roles, sweeping me into his arms and rolling over to pin me underneath him. I could feel the bulge in his pants as he settled between my legs, and it held an impressive promise of what was to come.

  As his hands traveled down the curves of my body, he started stripping away my clothes. He chuckled as he worked down the buttons of my shirt, both of us remembering the ridiculous way I fashioned my outfit in the back of his limo. With all that ripped fabric out of the way, he kissed along my flaming skin… making it clear that his mouth was skilled for much more than just kissing me on the lips.

  In between kisses, he drank in the sight of my body with a gleam in his eyes that made me feel impossibly sexy and wanted in a way I, truthfully, had never felt with a man before. It was surprising, but something that I decided shouldn’t be given too much thought.

  “God damn, you’re sexy,” he growled across my skin.

  All I could manage in reply was a whimper as he lips kept trailing down to the waist of my pants. A few blurry seconds later, those were removed and tossed to the side. With nothing but my panties standing in his way, he teased along the edges of them, slipping in and out of brushing against the most sensitive spots.

  I was writhing against the pillows of our hideout by the time he finally slid his fingers inside of me. He kissed my thighs and moved his fingers with a rhythmic pumping that pushed me to a point of wetness I didn’t know was possible. His thumb stroked my clit until my back arched—my whole body surrendered to him, begging for more.

  I started to shake and call out his name, but he spread one hand across my mouth for the sake of any neighbors that could hear. But even while muffling me, he kept his hand thrusting at the perfect tempo, pushing me closer to the edge.

  I was on the verge of cumming when he stopped, causing me to jerk up with impatient disappointment. “Heeeyyyy, no fair,” I whined breathlessly.

  “I know what I’m doing,” he assured me. “And I know what I want… which is to be inside you when you let go.”

  Let go. Was that what we were calling it? Maybe it was perfect. More and more the night was reminding me just how badly I needed release… how much I needed to misbehave, at least every once in a while. All work, no play makes Abby… just as dull as the guy she’s seeing.

  But Joshua was anything but dull, which was only confirmed by the excitement that rushed through me when he started taking off his own clothes and revealed the impressive package that had been throbbing up against me during our heated kisses.

  His body was breathtaking, sculpted to perfection. I was dying to keep feeling more of him, to have him inside of me.

  He kissed and bit and licked my lips, breasts, neck, and any other part of me he could reach. Whatever thin lacy barriers remained were quickly stripped with his teeth. My body surged with hunger as he pinned both of my hands above my head and positioned himself over me.

  I spread my legs, taking his tip into my opening. I sucked in a sharp breath as he finally gave me what I needed and thrusted inside of me. The feeling of him moving inside of me rippled through my whole body. As big as he was, it didn’t take me long to grow more wet and open, taking him in completely. I wrapped my legs around his back, urging him to go deeper and harder. My nails dragged across the warm skin of his back as he kissed me again, not breaking the rhythm.

  He kept me pinned down where he wanted me, devouring every inc
h of me while I took in every inch of him. He rocked back and forth, hitting me with wave after wave of pleasure.

  For a moment, I seemed to slip out of myself. Some part of me was still with it enough to ask… Where the hell am I? What am I doing up here on this roof… having sex with the guy who invented the very dating app that set me up with the guy I’m currently seeing!? This is NOT the kind of thing Abby does!

  But some other part of me was quick to tell that Abby to shut her mouth. Wherever I was and whatever I was doing felt so damn good. Enough to make any repercussions more than worth it, and that wasn’t the kind of thing I had been able to say often in my life.

  “God, yes!” I cried out. Another measure to silence all the lame voices in my head.

  “You feel so fucking good,” he groaned into my neck, swirling his tongue between his words.

  The strain in his voice and the shiver of his body told me he was getting close, and pushed me right along with him. I relished in the noises that seeped from his mouth as his cock pulsed and twitched inside of me until it exploded. He spilled out just as my whole body seized up with the overwhelming crash of pleasure. Everything went dark and blurry as the orgasm ripped through me, until I couldn’t even hear his voice anymore.

  It washed over us, leaving us in a daze. As the pleasure faded, we laughed. Because suddenly, it was abundantly clear to us that we were completely naked on the rooftop of his building.

  “I hope no one heard us,” I snickered.

  “I hope they did. Let them know what they were missing out on.”

  “If anyone knew it was you, they’d probably take a picture and then you’d have a whole new level of scandal in the tabloids. Not to mention, my career would be ruined.”

  “I would never let that happen,” he assured me, kissing my forehead.

  It was too big of a promise for him to make. If he couldn’t even keep his own rowdy drunk adventures out of the media, he certainly wouldn’t be able to help me any. The press would eat me alive. Even though I was drunk and deep enough in post-sex bliss to not want to care, I suddenly felt the need to be tucked away in the safety and privacy of his apartment.

  I leaned forward and started getting my clothes together, thinking that even better than his apartment would be my own. I hated to leave, but I had done what I set out to do. I got wild for a night, and had a blast. But now the party was over and it was time to go back to my real life.

  “I know we deviated from the plan a bit,” I said as I slipped back into my pants. “But does your offer of sending me home in your limo still stand?”

  He paused for a moment, rubbing his hand along the back of his neck… certainly not in any rush to put his clothes back on. “It certainly can, if that’s what you want.”

  “It’s for the best, don’t you think?”

  “No,” he growled with a smile, pinning me back down to the pillows as he kissed along my neck and ears. “I don’t think that’s for the best at all. What I think is for the best is for you to come back into my apartment and we try that again… in my bed.”

  I laughed and looked at the pillows behind me. “This is close enough to a bed. I can’t imagine it being so different.”

  “You don’t give me enough credit,” he grinned. “I’m imagining a million different things I want to do to you. We’re only getting started.”

  My typical bedtime was over an hour ago, and I had a vague memory of a hefty list of things to do the next day. But the longer he kissed me, the more I felt like abandoning all of that entirely. I had come this far. Why not go a little further?

  We bundled up and went back into his apartment. He pleasantly surprised me with just how different he could make things in his bed. He pulled out all the stops until I had cum so many times my legs didn’t work anymore.

  We didn’t stop until the sun was coming up and we were both spent. I definitely wasn’t going to go home then. I didn’t even think I could keep my eyes open long enough to walk out to a car, much less make it home.

  For that night, or… uh, night turned morning, I’d just have to settle for the feeling of Joshua’s warm body wrapped up with mine, the curls of his hair stroking my skin. Not such a bad way to fall asleep.

  5

  Joshua

  Nothing felt particularly out of the ordinary when I woke up the next day. Hangover, check. An angle of the sun which indicated it was past noon, check. A discarded phone full of angry messages from my siblings, check. A beautiful naked woman by my side…

  Check, but that part was different. Because the naked woman was Abby. Someone who had somehow seeped into my skin through the night.

  She stirred awake around the same time I did, but not with so much ease. She jerked up and immediately panicked.

  “My phone. What time is it?” she groaned. “Fuck, my head. I need water. Where am I?”

  Her eyes moved over to my body sprawled out next to her.

  “Hi there,” I waved with a smile. “Good morning. Your phone is in your purse by the front door. I’m guessing it’s somewhere around one o’clock. There’s aspirin and water on the nightstand. And if you haven’t figured it out by now… you’re at my apartment.”

  She looked around the room. “You mean mansion. This place looks so much bigger in daylight.”

  I leaned forward and kissed her shoulder. “Maybe you were just too distracted to really notice last night.”

  “Last night I was too distracted to notice a lot of things,” she laughed. “Like the difference between good choices and bad choices.”

  “Maybe I need to remind you of just why you thought those choices seemed so good last night,” I suggested, kissing up her back.

  But she moved away, flinging off the sheets to search for her clothes. She held up her tailored outfit in the air. “This looks a lot different in the daylight too. I thought I was being so clever, but now I see I was just walking around in a shredded caterer’s uniform.”

  “And a fur coat,” I added.

  “Oh god,” she buried her face in her hands. “I should return that.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll drop it off with a note. They’ll take it way easier on me than they would you.”

  “Well, that’s one less thing to worry about, I guess.” She slid back into her ripped pants and shirt and stepped into her shoes.

  “Hey, don’t rush off. Let’s get some breakfast… and maybe a little hair of the dog.”

  “No way. I’m at my limit of what you can talk me into. I have way too many things to do with what’s left of the day.”

  “Like yoga?” I asked, remembering the details of her life she had shared the night before.

  “Yes, and dinner plans and… ugh. I need to get going.”

  I reluctantly climbed out of bed and followed her into the living room. She blushed when I came around the corner, still completely naked. But I let it all hang out with the hope that just maybe she would change her mind and come back to bed. The look in her eyes made it seem like it wasn’t so far outside the realm of possibility.

  “So, when can I see you again?” I asked finally, leaning against the wall as she rushed to gather all of her things.

  But with that, she stopped cold. Her mouth dropped open as she stared back at me. “What? See me again? I thought… I thought it was a one night thing.”

  “Everything’s a one night thing… until it’s fun enough to warrant a second night, and a third, and then who knows what else.”

  “I don’t even know where to begin with picking that one apart,” she said, shaking her head, brushing a hand across her face.

  “So don’t.”

  “We can’t see each other again,” she said firmly. “I’m already seeing someone else, remember?”

  “Well, whoever he is wasn’t enough to stop you last night,” I observed. “That says something about how you feel about him.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about him yet,” she snapped. “I haven’t had time to decide yet. That’s how the rest
of us do things. We go on one date, then two, then three and so on if it goes well.”

  “How is that different from what I suggested a minute ago?”

  “Less sex, I think. I don’t know. Look, the point is… I thought last night was just a one night stand. I mean, I’m a waitress and you’re freakin’ Joshua Meadows. Why would I ever expect anything more to come out of it?”

  “Why wouldn’t you? And you’re not just a waitress. You’re going to be a lawyer, and I know I intend on hiring you when you are. Maybe you can help me with all of my defamation lawsuits.”

  “It’s not defamation if what they’re saying about you is true,” she quipped, getting more panicked by the second. “I don’t believe in leaving one person for another. It starts everything off on the wrong foot. And I’m not the kind of person who’s comfortable seeing more than one guy at a time. That’s just not me. None of this is really me. You caught me in a rare, unheard of, form last night. If you knew the real me… you wouldn’t be interested in seeing me again. Trust me.”

  “I beg to differ,” I said, crossing my arms. “But there’s only one way to find out.”

  She calmed down for a second and came closer, pressing her lips to mine for a long, sweet kiss.

  “I’m sorry,” she told me, brushing my stubbled cheek. “Maybe one day… if our paths cross again… who knows? But right now… I have to go.”

  She turned and walked out before I could argue any further. I couldn’t make her stay or agree to see me again if she didn’t want to. But that didn’t make it any less perplexing for me. It was usually the other way around. Women were always begging me for more while I gently turned them down. It didn’t feel so good in reverse.

  I finally let it sink in and went into the kitchen to stare at my empty fridge for a while. I caught myself thinking Abby was probably the type who never had an empty fridge. I had caught onto more of her true self than she realized the night before. Maybe even more than I had realized at first.