Chapter 22
22
Our clothes fall off faster than leaves on a tree at the end of autumn. One moment the branches are full; the next, they’re bare.
Peter presses my naked body against the wall, his hands gripping my spread thighs just to the point of pain. Words stutter from his chest like the barest sound hurts him, too. “Are you still on the pill?”
“No.” I exhale in an equally painful fashion. “The side effects were awful, and I haven’t been sexually active since you. I saw no logical reason to continue torturing myself that way.”
“What side effects?” He tips his head the way my cat does when I talk aimlessly to him.
“Nausea, headaches, bloating,” I list the most common side effects first. “Toward the end of our final year together, I began to lose interest in sex.” I grip his jaw in my hands to be certain I have his full attention. “I didn’t lose interest in you. My libido suffered because of the manufactured hormones. I wasn’t even sure why until I did further research.”
His expression crumples into that now-familiar frown. “Why didn’t you tell me? ”
I shrug. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
He chuckles. The sound vibrates through his body into mine where we’re pressed together, chest to chest. “What am I going to do with you, Dr. Fowler?”
“Less talk and more action would be nice,” I suggest.
He laughs harder then lowers me to my feet.
I do not laugh at this development.
He strides to his duffel bag near the front door, completely confident in his nakedness.
“What are you doing?” I cross my arms over my chest. I am not quite as confident.
I can’t remember a time when we were physically intimate with all the lights on in a place that wasn’t the bed. Or at the very least, the couch.
Still crouching in front of his open bag, he holds up a box and waves it around a little.
I squint. Condoms.
“Prepared, were you?” I mumble. “Premeditation indicates continued pretense.”
“Not at all,” he says as he unabashedly tears open the box, then a foil packet, then rolls the latex onto his length. The process is admittedly fascinating. Not to mention his actions draw my greedy gaze to a rather well-endowed part of his body that makes me salivate for more. Preferably sooner rather than later. “Your well-being is important to me. Pretense would be not caring about the consequences of my selfish actions.”
“What selfish actions?” I mutter, injecting a lethal dose of sarcasm into my tone. “You’re heroically selfless. At all times.”
He returns to me, hoisting me up again so quickly that I gasp at the sudden change of position. My head falls to the wall on a moan as he notches his length between my thighs. So, so, so close. Yet still not where I need him.
His eyelids are half-lowered over blown pupils that swallow the edges of his rainbow-colored irises as he drags his hardness up and down in a torturously slow motion against my throbbing center. My muscles clench around nothing—empty, wanting, pleading.
He kisses me deliberately and deeply before whispering against my lips. “What’s so wrong with wanting to make sure you enjoy it, too?”
“Just once.” I’m not above begging. “Just let me feel you without any thought one time. I want to experience all of you. Show me everything. Give me everything.”
“Elise…” he groans against my lips. It’s a guttural sound with too many emotions to decipher.
All the air I’ve ever breathed leaves my lungs in a searing rush of heat as he shoves himself inside me without warning.
He grunts against my ear as my body struggles to accommodate his length and girth, stretching and burning and yearning with primal need.
His breath stutters in a staccato of sharp exhalations that match the rhythm of him driving into me without ever pulling out all the way. My thighs tremble as his large hands pull me wider apart while his heavy body showcases all its strength by pressing me against the wall until I can scarcely draw a full breath.
Time becomes a nebulous counterbalance to the pinpoints of sensations of both pleasure and pain as he thrusts mercilessly into my body over and over again without any words exchanged between us. Only the rough animalistic sounds of skin slapping against skin, slick noises of sex, the rising heat of our combined body temperatures, and the curling pleasure of an increasing chemical cocktail of ecstasy.
On a feral note that emanates from deep within his chest, Peter sinks his teeth into my flesh at the juncture of my neck.
The sharp sting of his release catapults me into waves of endless bliss. I clutch onto his undulating, muscular shoulders, digging my nails into his skin to pull him closer, to share in his bliss, to feel even a fraction of the reward of a similar invasion of my body into his.
As he pants harshly from obvious exertion and the inevitable return to baseline after such a physical high, he licks at my neck to soothe the pain away.
I moan as ebbing waves of pleasure continue to roll through my shuddering body.
He purposefully circles his hips against my spread thighs, drawing out the last tendrils of my powerful orgasm.
I tunnel my fingers through the damp, silky-soft hair at the back of his head, scraping my nails along his scalp as I go. Already, the descent down the mountain makes me feel bereft of the complete physical closeness that we haven’t technically abandoned yet.
“I’m forming a new hypothesis,” he murmurs in between pressing open mouth kisses along my neck. He stops every so often to suckle on my sweaty skin as if it’s his favorite sustenance in the entire universe.
“What’s that?” I moan as he devours a particularly sensitive spot below my ear, eliciting yet another shiver of orgasmic tension from my body.
“I think you need me to take the reins here. You don’t want to be in the lead every waking moment of your life,” he says, his lips brushing against my jaw. “You don’t want to be coddled and tended to like a fragile, perfect thing.”
He raises his head to meet my gaze. His eyes are hazy and exhausted, but clear satisfaction shines bright in them nonetheless.
“What made you think that?” My knee-jerk reaction is to refute his assumption, but a smaller part of my mostly logical brain agrees with him .
He chuckles. “Nothing I ever did to you before elicited an orgasm that strong.”
“How could you possibly know the strength of my orgasm?”
“It felt like you were strangling my cock. I could actually feel you pulsing around me. I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t know before. I’m still learning your language.”
“I’m still learning, too,” I admit as I revel in the sound of my palm scraping against the stubble of his jaw. “I didn’t know enough before to ask this of you.”
He leans in to kiss me, to taste me, to delve deep inside me in a way that marks me from the inside out. No one will ever know. This connection is only between us. Only for us.
After air becomes a necessity instead of a want, he breaks our connection. “We have the rest of our lives to learn together.”
I sink my fingers deeper into his shoulders like I can possibly control someone else’s will with such paltry actions. “You’re not the first to tempt me with offers they can’t possibly fulfill. I’m tired of being hurt. I can be stupid, too, Peter. I can be na?ve and abrasive and stuck in my own head and selfish at times and an animal like anyone else, and when I don’t live up to other people’s fantasies of me—”
He silences my emotional vomit with another deep, searing kiss.
“You don’t have to hide yourself from me,” he insists against my lips. “Just as you want all of me, I want all of you. No lies, no pretenses.”
“I’m a lot to handle.” I whimper as he pulls out of me oh-so-slowly.
“Yeah.” He sucks my bottom lip into his mouth, swiping his tongue back and forth against my sensitive skin before releasing me to whisper, “But, I like it.”
I shiver against the warmth of his body. No one’s ever claimed to like all my worst parts before. I’m not sure I believe him.
He grins as he carries me down the hallway toward the bedroom. “You don’t think I can handle it. You believe I’m not up to the challenge.”
I frown as he settles me on the bed. “Is that all I am to you? A challenge? First, for money, now for…for what? To prove now that you’re a better engineer than me because you’re my boss?”
He shakes his head as he gazes downward. A low laugh rumbles the muscles of his chest.
I’m tempted to laugh, too. With his hands on his hips, his flaccid penis covered in sticky-looking latex, and his naked—not manscaped—body on full display, I have a difficult time taking either of us seriously.
He bends over me to press a firm yet chaste kiss to my mouth. His eyes sparkle as he pulls back to inform me, “This. This is the challenge.”
“What is?”
“Getting you to trust me completely,” he murmurs. “You’re halfway there, but we still have a long way to go.”
“How do you know I’m halfway there?” I call after him as he strides out of my bedroom, presumably to dispose of the condom in the bathroom.
“You told me about your super-secret spy mission,” he calls back. “That’s definitely a measure of trust.”
He’s not wrong. I settle myself under the blankets as I contemplate the potential consequences of my actions. Peter could prove a valuable resource. He knows the team better than I do, as well as all the security measures in place at Chester. On the other hand, if Chet finds out what I’ve done, I’ll surely be out of a job. I may have to leave Paramus anyway. The idea of a long-distance relationship is less than palatable. Not to mention, adjusting to life in yet another city isn’t particularly high on my list of enjoyable activities. I don’t find acclimating to new situations enjoyable at all.
Long after Peter returns to bed and wraps me in his arms, I’m still mentally tabulating all the pros and cons of this situation of my own making. I absentmindedly run my fingers through his chest hair. The tactile stimulation is both soothing and helps me focus my thoughts.
Normally, I would detest the sensation of him gliding his fingertips up and down along my spine. In this case, it feels…nice. Reciprocal. We’re both naked. We’re both seeking similar means of comfort from each other’s bodies. Still under the biochemical spell of bonding hormones, it would be easy to dismiss these lazy caresses as a byproduct of our humanity. This quiet time together feels intrinsic, primal, and yet…also a choice. That we’re making together.
Not just because I’ve heard plenty of stories of men rushing out the door after the main act. The so-called hit it and quit it phenomenon.
His voice is raspy after so much silence. “You like me au natural, huh? That’s unexpected.”
I lift my head, propping my chin on his shoulder to gaze at him with disbelief. “That’s what you’ve been thinking about all this time?”
He shrugs on his back, a hint of color pinking his cheeks. “I’m as self-conscious as the next guy.”
This…this is a foreign concept to me. I’ve long known Peter is shy and—at times—can be as awkward as I constantly feel. He always seemed to own his quirks, to wear them like a badge of honor rather than something to be ashamed of. I spent many years envying his quiet confidence in himself, wishing I could emulate that somehow.
“Can I ask you something?”
The corner of his mouth lifts into a half smile. “Please do. ”
“Ever since I arrived at Chester, you don’t seem like yourself. You went from lurking on the fringes of social activity to acting like, like…”
“Like?” he prompts with a raised eyebrow.
“Like an alpha male,” I blurt, acutely aware that most men would be insulted by the insinuation that they weren’t already the most revered form of man. “Your team both admires and fears you. You constantly frown, throw around your intellectual weight like a gorilla pounding its chest in a show of dominance. How did you learn to behave in ways that go against your nature?”
“You,” he says simply with a faint smile on his puffy lips.
“Me?” That’s nonsensical. I can’t fight against my nature. I’ve given up trying. Despite Peter’s insistence that I don’t suffer from a low EQ, I know the truth. Even now, lying in his arms, I’m struggling to relax completely. To trust him in the most vulnerable way. If anything, I’m more aware than ever of the immense power he holds to destroy me in so many ways—emotionally, physically…professionally.
“Yes, you,” he insists, gathering me closer to him. His words rumble through our pressed bodies as he explains, “Remember what I told you about when I first learned of the bet? How when I asked to be involved, they laughed at me?”
I nod against the crook of his shoulder.
He swipes a gentle finger against my cheek as he gazes at me with tenderness so acute that it spreads over my body like a warm, weighted blanket. “I realized I couldn’t afford to show them any weakness. I couldn’t give them a chance to doubt me. If I wanted to be the winner, then I had to act the part.”
I scrunch my brow as past questions bubble to the surface of my mind. “You won the initial bet. How did you only collect your winnings just before graduation?”
The lightness in his eyes dims then brightens with a spark of indignation. “We were institutionalized to compete. Not as elite athletes, but absolutely as elite minds. Once I reached the goal of sleeping with you, they insisted on leveling up. No one was willing to pay out the grand prize so easily.”
“What was the next level?”
It’s not that I haven’t already realized this obvious conclusion but hearing him confirm my suspicions doesn’t feel like a victory. It’s simply more proof that I was nothing more than a chess piece on multiple people’s game boards.
His mouth twists in a blatant show of displeasure. “The scoreboard was reset for a time. Just because I ended up with you first didn’t mean anyone else was out of the running. It became a competition for who could sleep with you the most times.”
I blink as I contemplate that flawed premise. “I never slept with anyone else. Only you.”
He nods, his expression sober. “Yeah. I made sure you wouldn’t be interested in seeking pleasure from anyone else.”
I hide my heated face against his chest. “That’s why you researched female pleasure so deeply. If you provided everything I could ever possibly want, then I wouldn’t go searching for it anywhere else.”
That’s why we remained strictly friends with benefits for so long. I gasp as another realization dawns on me. “You used your knowledge of my aversion to change as another weapon in your war against the other men.”
“I did,” he admits easily as he scoops his hand through the hair at the back of my head until he tilts my gaze toward his again. His eyes are clear, without a hint of remorse. “The bet leveled up, so I did, too. The next wager was who could lock you into a relationship. I already felt so fucking righteous because I took the time to learn deeply personal things about you that they weren’t willing to. By that point, I was so far gone for you that I had zero hope of saving myself. My only goal was to save you. From them.”
He frowns. “I never considered that I needed to save you from me. I thought you loved me, too.”
His professions of love—his assumptions of mine—don’t make the clichéd butterflies erupt in my chest. Instead, I feel hollowed out and sad. Our first relationship was doomed from the beginning. This one doesn’t feel like much progress even with the truth laid bare before me. If anything, it seems like we’re regressing to what should have been obvious at the beginning. This can never be anything more between us than sex because of our jobs.
Would it be so wrong to at least enjoy that while I can?
“I was in lust with a lie. Would you have ever changed yourself so much to attract me if it wasn’t for the promise of winning an entirely different game?”
He hums as he continues to comb his fingers through my hair while studying my face. “I thought I was saving you, but it turns out…you saved me.” He cracks a half smile. “I wanted to absorb your genius, but you gave me so much more.”
I scrunch my nose as I stare up at him. “What did I give you?”
“A full life to live,” he whispers as he tips his head down until our lips brush together. “You gave me new hopes and dreams and fantasies that I’d never opened my mind to before. You made me so much smarter, Elise Fowler.”
I press our mouths firmly together as a deep well of emotions bubbles inside my chest. “You made me stupid, Peter Carrington. So utterly stupid for you.”
He pulls back to frown at me, his eyes glistening as he cups my cheek in his capable hand. “I never wanted to make you feel stupid. I didn’t mean to trick you. If I had the powers of time travel and teleportation, I’d go back and do it so differently. ”
I don’t kick him by pointing out that without the competition, he may never have been interested in me at all. Instead, I say, “You would keep the manscaping, wouldn’t you?”
He grins. “It was kind of nice to actually spend time caring about my meat suit for a change. It was time consuming, but it made me feel good about myself. Confident in ways I never was before. I still don’t know how to find the right balance. I can’t change the fact that I’m hyper obsessed with only a few things at a time.”
Instead of also pointing out that he obviously still cares about his meat suit—hilarious term—if his highly developed muscles are any indication, I press a kiss to his warm skin before reaching over him to the nightstand. After sliding his glasses into place, I smile at him. “There. Balance. Now you’re a geeky muscle man. I actually prefer you this way.”
He laughs before adjusting the frames more comfortably on the bridge of his nose. “You wouldn’t like me wearing these while my face is between your thighs. The frames would poke your sensitive skin.”
“How do you know I have sensitive skin?”
He’s right, of course. I just want to know how he knows.
“Research,” he murmurs before pulling me closer for a soft, slow, languid kiss.
I chuckle into his mouth as I tunnel my arms around his neck and throw my leg over his waist. From anyone else, the admission that he researched my preferences for years before making his move might be a red flag. From Peter? The brilliant scientist who caught my eye—likely before that stupid bet even started? His dedication flatters me. No one before him ever tried to get to know me so well. Certainly not for so long.
I pull away with a frown. “I didn’t research you. I simply observed then assumed. Like a quack scientist. How much do I still not know? ”
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Research your heart out. I’ll give you unfettered access. No red tape, no political maneuvering, no ulterior motives necessary.”
“I have ulterior motives, Dr. Carrington.”
His smile turns feral as his pupils dilate. “Me, too, Dr. Fowler.”
Without warning, he flips our positions, pinning me on my back with the full weight of his body on top of me. His erection pulses against my thigh.
“You were careful with me before,” I accuse as I glide my palm along the scruff of his jaw. “Because you knew I was inexperienced.”
He nods before bending his head to lick a line of heat up my neck. “I was.”
“I would like to research what you’re fully capable of.” I moan as he settles himself between my thighs. “Don’t hold back. You’re not in competition with anyone anymore. You don’t need to concern yourself only with my pleasure.”
He chuckles darkly against the hollow of my throat. “Are you sure about that?”
“Completely,” I insist.