Chapter 6 #3
Her eyes met mine, something unreadable in their depths. “Would you? We haven’t exactly kept in touch.”
“That’s not — I just mean someone would have noticed… your sister, your friends.”
She laughed, but it wasn’t funny. Aven looked down at her food, pushing noodles around with her chopsticks. “You know what the worst part was? Failing at what I went there to do. I was supposed to write this groundbreaking novel,
about finding yourself through travel. You know? Eat, Pray, Love for the millennial set. Instead, I got food poisoning, maxed out my credit cards, and wrote exactly seventy-three pages of unrelatable garbage.”
I watched her profile. “Damn. Is that why you came back? The book didn’t work out?”
She sighed, leaning her head back against the wall.
“That, the stalker, and the mounting debt. The perfect trifecta of failure. Twelve countries, five credit cards, and all I have to show for it is a man who thinks folded paper birds are a love language and a sister who reminded me that she warned me ‘gallivanting around the globe’ would end badly.”
Now, I was seeing the reality — the struggle, the fear, the same human vulnerabilities I’d worked so hard to hide in myself.
“For what it’s worth, I think you’re braver than most. Even with how it turned out, you went for it. Most people never even try,” I said, choosing my words carefully.
She turned to look at me, surprise evident in her expression. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve said to me since I got back.”
“Don’t get used to it,” I replied, although I couldn’t suppress my half smile.
Aven returned the smile with one of her own. “Right, professional distance.”
She reached over and snatched another spring roll from my container.
Her touch sent a jolt of awareness through me.
Sitting here on the floor of my office at two in the morning, sharing food and truths we’d both been avoiding.
The distance I’d insisted on maintaining felt like the flimsiest of pretenses, especially when she looked at me with the same eyes that would make me forget my name back in high school.
“Eat your food before it gets cold,” I said gruffly, breaking eye contact to focus on my container.
Yet as we continued eating, I couldn’t help thinking that some distances, no matter how professionally necessary, were never meant to last.
We finished the last of the food in companionable silence, the empty containers between us on the office floor.
Aven stretched her arms overhead, the movement causing her blouse to ride up slightly, revealing a sliver of skin above her waistband.
I forced my eyes away, reaching for the paper bag that contained the fortune cookies, a final ritual of our impromptu feast. One cookie was left.
“Here you take the last one,” I said, tilting the bag toward her.
She shook her head. Stubborn ass. “We always split the last one. Don’t tell me you forgot the rules.”
The rules. Like we were still seventeen, sprawled across my grandparents’ living room floor with history textbooks and Chinese takeout, creating arbitrary rituals that somehow became law. It was a lifetime ago.
“I remember,” I admitted, breaking the cookie in half. The fortune fell between us, face down and unclaimed. Neither of us reached for it immediately, both knowing the rule. Whoever read it had to share.
We were sitting closer now, the containers from dinner pushed aside. Her knee almost touched mine, and I could smell her coconut-scented lotion again, stronger as her body heat activated it.
“You read it,” she said, voice softer than before.
I reached for the small slip of paper at the exact moment she changed her mind and went for it too. Our fingers collided, then froze in place. Her smaller hand partially covered mine, both touching the fortune no one now cared about.
Time suspended. I felt her pulse through her fingertips, or maybe it was my own heartbeat. Her eyes lifted to mine, and whatever she saw must have been what I was feeling, because her breath caught.
“Langston,” she whispered.
Fifteen years of distance evaporated in the space of a heartbeat. I don’t remember moving, but suddenly, she was in my lap, her thighs straddling mine as our mouths moved together with the force of a breaking dam.
Her tongue slid against mine, urgent and demanding, matching the desperation in my own movements. My hands wanted to touch her everywhere at once, touching her hair, sliding down her back, gripping her hips to pull her closer against me.
“Damn, Trouble, do you know how long I’ve wanted this?” I groaned against her mouth as she rocked against my hardness, already straining against my slacks.
Her hands framed my face, thumbs stroking my beard as she pulled back just enough to look into my eyes. “Show me. Show me how long,” she challenged. Her voice was husky with need.
I stood in one fluid movement, lifting her with me, her legs wrapping around my waist as I carried her the few steps to my desk. Papers scattered as I set her down, sweeping files and folders to the floor with one arm while my other hand remained anchored at the small of her back.
Her fingers attacked my tie, loosening it with surprising efficiency before moving to my shirt buttons.
I was equally busy, tugging at her blouse, hands sliding against the warm skin of her stomach.
When my hands cupped her breasts over her bra, she arched into the touch, head falling back to expose the column of her throat.
I took the invitation, trailing kisses from her jaw down to her collarbone, lingering at the spot where her pulse beat against my lips.
Her bra joined our clothes on the floor. The sight of her bare breasts in the soft lamplight stopped my breath. She was more beautiful than I imagined during those lonely nights when I couldn’t help but wonder.
“You’re staring,” she said. A hint of vulnerability crept into her voice.
“Damn right. You’re fucking gorgeous, Aven.” My hands covered her ribcage, thumbs brushing the underside of her breast.
A flush spread across her chest at my words. Her legs tightened around me, pulling me closer as her hands worked at my belt.
“Protection?” she asked, practical even in the midst of passion.
I nodded toward my wallet. “Inside pocket.”
“Prepared for office encounters, Mr. Black?”
“Prepared for you,” I corrected.
Something in her teasing gave way to something deeper, more vulnerable. She pressed her forehead against mine, breath warm against my lips. “It’s always been you, Lang, even when I thought I had it all.”
The confession undid the last of my restraint.
I covered her mouth again, pouring years of want, regret, and unacknowledged love into the kiss.
Her skirt gathered up around her waist as my hands slid beneath it, finding the lace edge of her panties.
When my fingers slipped beneath the fabric to find her already wet, ready for me, she moaned into my mouth, the sound vibrating through my entire body.
“Please. I’ve waited too long already,” she whispered against my lips.
We quickly removed the last of our clothes.
Her skirt and panties joined the growing pile of clothing on my office floor, while my pants and boxers followed suit.
She opened the condom packet with her teeth, a move so unexpectedly sexy my knees nearly buckled.
When her hands rolled it onto me, I had to grip the edge of the desk to maintain control.
And when there was nothing else holding us back, I positioned myself at her entrance.
Our eyes locked, a moment of perfect clarity among the frenzy.
This was my Aven, the girl who saved me, the woman who haunted me, now wrapped around me in my office at three in the morning like a wet dream come to life.
“Please,” she moaned, fingers digging into my shoulders.
I pushed into her in one slow, deliberate stroke, watching her face as her body accommodated me. Her eyes widened, lips parting on a silent gasp as I filled her completely. For a moment, we held still, adjusting to the overwhelming sensation of being connected.
Papers crinkled beneath her as she groaned with each thrust. The practical part of my brain registered that anyone walking past my glass-walled office would get quite a show, but I was too far gone to care.
“Oh my God, Langston, yes,” she chanted, my name as I drove deeper.
Her responsiveness fueled my own pleasure, pushing me to find angles that made her breath catch, speeds that made her nails dig crescents into my skin.
When her inner muscles began to flutter around me, I slipped a hand between our bodies, thumb finding the sensitive bundle of nerves that would send her over the edge.
“Come for me, Trouble. Let me feel you,” I murmured against her ear, using the old nickname deliberately.
Aven shattered with a cry that I captured with my mouth, swallowing the sound as her body convulsed around mine.
The sight of her coming undone, head thrown back, eyes closed in ecstasy, my name on her lips, sent me hurtling after her.
My movements faded as release crashed through me more intense than anything I’d ever experienced.
Afterward, we ended up on the floor again, my suit jacket serving as a makeshift pillow beneath our heads. Aven’s body curved against mine, her back to my chest, my arm draped over her waist. She admired the shield and key logo tattoo I designed for Black Security.
“I always wondered if you’d get ink. It suits you,” she murmured, voice lazy with satisfaction.
I pressed a kiss to her shoulder, inhaling the scent of her skin. It was the most intoxicating thing I’d ever smelled. “Got it as a reminder of what I built.”
She turned in my arms, facing me. “You built something amazing, Lang. I’m proud of you.”
They were four simple words, but they landed with the weight of absolution.
I’m proud of you. No one’s ever said that to me.
Not my mother, lost in her own battles. Not my grandparents, who expected nothing less.
Not even Tamika or my employees, who respected the business but didn’t know the boy I was or the odds I overcame.
Aven knew. Aven saw me at my worst and still believed in my best.
I traced the curve of her cheek, wondering how familiar her face was despite the changes time had brought.
“Why did we wait so long for this?” The question escaped before I evaluated it, raw with honesty that post-sex vulnerability brought.
“I don’t know. Fear. Timing. Not to mention, you’re stubborn as hell,” she answered with no hesitation.
I arched an eyebrow. “Me? You’re the one who got on that bus without looking back.”
“You’re the one who let me. You could have asked me to stay,” she countered.
The truth sat heavy between us. I could have asked. Should have asked. I wanted to ask, but I convinced myself she deserved better than a boy with a questionable reputation and an uncertain future.
“I’m asking now. Stay, Aven. Not just until we find Morales. Not just until you get back on your feet. Stay with me.”
Her eyes widened, searching my face for insincerity. “Took you long enough, Lang.”
As she leaned in to seal the request with a kiss, I marveled at how easily fifteen years of distance could collapse into nothing with the right person. No woman had ever made me feel this combination of desire, tenderness, and complete certainty. No woman had ever been Aven.
And as her body pressed against mine, reigniting the hunger we’d barely begun to satisfy, I moved my head between her legs. I silently promised myself I wouldn’t let her go again. Not for pride, or anything this world might throw at us.