Chapter 9
Emma
This shouldn’t be happening.It was the middle of the workday. I shouldn’t want to grab Noah Pearson, push him back against that desk, yank his sexy jeans down, pull up my skirt, and straddle him.
I had never had sex in my office. That was not the kind of company I ran. I liked sex, but I was a professional. Any man who had ever suggested fucking me in my office would have left with a scathing setdown and a knee in the balls.
Yet here I was, and I was hot all over. Noah hadn’t even suggested anything, and I was calculating the fact that I wasn’t wearing pantyhose, and I could get my skirt up past my hips without wrinkling it too much while I dropped my panties. Here I was, wondering how quick we could be, how quiet, whether anyone outside my office door would be able to hear. How I could brace my knees on the desk while I rode him. How good he would feel.
The image was so strong it spun out right in front of me, like it was happening. I was the Boss Bitch, and when Noah traced his thumb along my jawline, I went positively stupid with lust. It was all because of what he’d done to me on his deck that night. I would do anything he told me to in this minute. Including, it seemed, confessing my problem.
“You won’t like it,” I managed. “I’m warning you, I’m a disappointment.”
“I doubt that.” His voice was pure sex, as smooth as his fingers on my skin. He ran his hand up the side of my neck, then traced my jawline again as I tried not to shiver. His thumb ran beneath my lip again. “Tell me why you ran from me, Emma.”
“I don’t…” I had never put this in words, even to my therapist, so I had to search for the right words to use. “I don’t actually…come when I’m with someone. I only come alone.”
His fingers stopped, his touch pausing on my skin in surprise. He was still close to me, his hazel eyes on mine. His brow furrowed as he took this in. His voice was close to a whisper. “You don’t come during sex?”
God, he smelled good. I remembered this smell from L.A., that night under the stars in the warm air. “No.”
“Not even with a man’s tongue? His fingers?”
The words were so blunt, my humiliation was shrinking and I was getting even more turned on. That made it easier for me to say, “No. Not with any kind of sex. Never.”
His fingers moved subtly against my skin, signaling his shock. “Never?”
“Never.” I wanted that hand to move lower, preferably into my blouse. My nipples were hard and aching. “It’s never happened even once. When I’m with someone, I…I fake it. Or sometimes I don’t even bother. Then, after I’ve left, I go home and take care of myself. That’s how it happens. Every time.”
There wasn’t a flicker of amusement in his expression, not even a hint of derision. Instead his gorgeous eyes went dark and he let out a moan that sounded like he was in pain—a deep, very sexual kind of pain. He brushed my hair back over my shoulder and lowered his mouth to my neck, his breath warm on my skin. “Except for that night,” he said in my ear. “Except with me.”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” I managed. Even though it should definitely go to his head. It had certainly gone to mine. I’d been so stunned right after I came that night, I’d nearly started babbling nonsense. Or maybe crying. I would have humiliated myself somehow if I hadn’t left when I did. The shock of it still got to me, even now. My own body had acted completely differently with Noah than it had with any other man.
“It won’t go to my head.” His voice was still low and pained, his breath against my skin. My blood was pounding in my ears, and I still ached for his hands to go somewhere, anywhere on my body other than where they were right now. “But you know you’ve just given me a challenge, right?”
No. Oh, no. The fear that flared up in me was quick and sudden. “We’re not going to try and do it again,” I said. What was I scared of? It wasn’t him, and it wasn’t sex. It was disappointment. I’d felt it so many fucking times, and the idea of being disappointed with Noah—with seeing that look on his face—was too much to even think about. “You got lucky once,” I said. “That’s it.”
“Emma.” Even in pain, his voice was so damned hot. And then he pulled the move that made me weak—he dropped an arm to my waist and pulled me gently until my body was flush with his.
Heat rushed through me. I could feel his chest, his stomach, his hips through the clothes we wore. I could smell him, the smell of clean clothes and spicy male skin beneath them. And right there, in my office, I was like a junkie who had been given a high.
Here’s the thing about men: I like them. I like their laughs and their dirty jokes and their complete lack of ability with their emotions. And I really, really like their bodies. I like male shoulders and chin stubble and the slim line of a man’s hips. I like a man who’s fit as much as the next woman does, but to tell the truth, I’m not even that picky. I can handle a little softness around the middle. Just give me a cute ass and a nice pair of hands and a hard dick, and I’m a girl who’s in her happy place.
Noah slowly tightened his grip on me, pressing me closer, and I practically swooned. My God, that body. He was lean muscle under that sweater, hard thighs in his jeans. Even with his clothes on, I could tell that Noah had a body that was made for nothing but pleasure, a body that could give a woman hours of enthusiastic fun. It was a body that turned me on, full stop. Which must have been the reason I’d come on the deck that night.
“Give me a chance,” he said as his mouth gently traveled the side of my neck. “I know I can do it again.”
“This is insane,” I breathed, because I had the urge to pull my skirt up and climb him like a tree.
His free hand slid down my body, then—oh, joy—smoothed the fabric of my skirt down over the curve of my ass, slow and confident. “What’s insane,” he said, “is how much I want to fuck you right now. I’d do it right here in this office if you’d let me.”
He was practically mirroring my own thoughts, but I had too many defenses, which I’d been using for too many years. “You’re just trying to get laid.”
“You think I can’t get laid?” His mouth on my neck was driving me crazy. “I flew across the country to fuck you if I possibly could.” His fingers brushed the hem of my skirt, pulled it up an inch and traced the skin of my thigh. “Do you ever get yourself off in this office?”
Jesus, he was going to kill me. “No.” I paused. “In the bathroom, sometimes.” When I was particularly lonely, particularly stressed, or—okay, fine—particularly horny.
“Sweetheart, you need it so bad,” Noah said, still holding me, his fingers still rubbing my thigh. “So fucking bad.”
I closed my eyes and felt myself give in. We were consenting adults, and he was right here. He’d done the impossible once, after all. Maybe he was the only one who could do it again. And there was only one way to find out.
“My place,” I said, inhaling the scent of him. “Seven o’clock. I’ll text you my address.”
This was either going to be the best or the worst idea I’d ever had.
I was soon going to find out which one it was.