23. Genie in a Bottle
Genie in a Bottle
Charlotte
A rden guides me to stand and turns me in his arms.
I should be coming down from the sexual high, not still riding it. But I’m as desperate as I was before he gave me an orgasm.
Chest heaving beneath the crisp cotton of his shirt, he watches me like a hungry lion. But I’m not afraid to be devoured by Arden.
When I look down, my breath stutters. Tentatively, I reach out one finger and follow the path of a vein that branches up the side of his beautiful erection.
He tips his head back. “Fuck.”
I wrap my hand around him.
The game is over. No more sir and Ms. Miller. Playfulness gone, he yanks my blouse and bra off. When they’re on the floor, he fists my hair and tips my head back as he holds my gaze with burning twilight eyes.
“This is the first time. Not the only time,” he says.
I swallow.
“Promise me, Charlotte,” he grates. “Say it.”
“It’s not the last time.”
His mouth eats at mine, and his kiss tastes like he owns me. If he’d started this way, aggressive instead of playful, part of me might have gone to a very bad place.
But with my body still humming from pleasure, I’m not afraid of Arden, no matter how intense he’s gotten. I own him too. I yank blindly on his shirt, so hard that a button pings across his desk.
“Savage,” he mutters against my mouth. “I like it.”
When I push him back toward his chair, the corners of his mouth lift, and he drops down. Then he reaches to cup my butt, jerking me onto his lap to straddle him.
Arden palms my breast and dips his head to suck on one nipple after the other, his mouth sending electric sensation straight to my core.
He guides me to rise, and I position his erection at my entrance.
“You can take me, honey. Do it.”
I drop my weight slowly, an inch at a time, aching in the best way possible at the stretch.
He lifts possessive hands to frame my face. “God, Charlotte. I—” He shakes his head, his brow furrowed in what almost looks like pain.
Then his mouth is on mine, and we’re moving together in a rhythm that doesn’t require words. Sweat beads. My heart pounds. Muscles strain. Arden’s chair squeaks lightly as we give it a workout it was never designed to take. My knees dig into the buttery soft cushioned leather. The hair on his thighs and chest gently abrade my own smooth skin. Pleasure and fullness vibrate through me, until every part of me is consumed by it. By Arden.
He smells like sex and the shirts I sleep in and like forever , if I could only believe in something so impossible.
Arden buries his face in my shoulder and wraps his arms around my waist until not a molecule of air exists between our torsos. Then he jackhammers up into me, finesse and patience gone.
I cry out, tension winding tighter inside me as release becomes inevitable.
“You’ll be coming stuffed full of my cock,” he says, voice rough. “It’s me. Not a fucking toy. Not a fantasy.”
I don’t need the reminder. He’s ruined me for anything else.
“I know those sweet little sounds you’re making. I can feel you squeezing me. Give it to me, Charlotte. Come. Now ,” he grinds out.
The moment my release drags me under, Arden loses his rhythm. He jerks inside me. Once. Twice. We both submerge into breathless pleasure. On and on. For long moments, it feels as though it will never end. Infinity exists inside a minute.
The orgasm fades, and real life intrudes. Sweat dries on my skin. Muscles unused to activity ache. My inner thighs grow cool and sticky. Arden softens inside me, and, still, we hold on, neither of us ready to let go.
I don’t believe in fate. If she exists, she’s a thoughtless and cruel mistress. But this—we—are as close as I’ll get to believing that some things were always meant to be. We’ll fall apart tomorrow, but I have Arden tonight.
He shifts beneath me. When I hold him tighter, he brushes his palm over my head and down my back. “I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere.”
“We can’t stay like this forever,” I say glumly.
“Why?” His voice is as gentle as his hand.
I keep my head on his shoulder as I speak. “Because you’ll eventually lose circulation in your legs, one of us is going to have to pee so she doesn’t get a UTI, and our kids would miss us.” I pause, then tack on as a sheepish afterthought, “And we’d miss them, of course.”
“Goes without saying,” he agrees.
“Good. Because putting them at the end of the list sounds bad. I didn’t organize it by priority. If I had, they’d have come after bladder infections, but before pins and needles in your legs.”
He laughs.
I sigh. “Can you believe my family doesn’t get my humor? And Rochelle only gets my jokes half the time.”
“There’s something wrong with them.”
“Obviously,” we say in unison, the word colored by the same inflection.
We stay as we are a little longer. Then he brushes a lock of hair behind my ear. “I have a bedroom upstairs. It’s the strangest thing, but there’s a bathroom attached to it.”
“Is there?”
“There’s also a bed. Plenty of room for both of us.”
I climb off, and he passes me a handful of tissues. Heat curls up my neck, and I make a spinning motion with my finger. “Turn around while I clean up.”
His eyebrows lift. “You realize my mouth was on—”
“Yes. I know. Turn around.” My face has to be the color of a tomato.
He grins, then gives me his back. I put myself back together as quickly as I can but leave my hair down.
“All done,” I say.
Arden zipped his pants while his back was turned. I bend to pick up his shirt for him, and a piece of gold-embossed cardstock under his desk catches my eye. “We probably knocked it on the floor earlier.”
I pass it to him, and he shakes his head. “I dropped it when I realized you’d arrived.”
The way he keeps looking from the paper to me and back again makes me curious. “What is it?”
He rotates it so I can see the writing more clearly. “It’s the invitation to my parents’ annual All Hallow’s Eve Masquerade.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “What do you think, Cinderella? Can I convince you to go to the ball?”