Chapter Twenty-Two
Braden
“We can’t.”
Even as the words came from my throat, they were gravelly and raw and not very convincing. I was already letting my hands grip her tighter, letting myself pull her closer just to feel the tiniest bit of friction of her body against my aching cock.
“Sure, we can,” she argued.
“We signed a contract.”
“Which you’re breaking by being here right now.”
“That’s different,” I panted as Emily ran her nails up into my hair, her lips teasing along my neck. “I’m just checking in on you. They wouldn’t fire us for this.”
“Mmm, well, what if you dicking me down is just what the doctor ordered for my recovery?”
“Christ, Em,” I cursed, eyes rolling shut as she nipped at my jaw with a smile.
I was careful not to touch her injured arm, and truthfully I was afraid to move my grip from where I was holding fast to her hips.
I knew if I let go, I’d let go entirely — I’d have her pinned against the wall, her leg hiked up, my cock pressed against her and my mouth eagerly devouring hers.
I was holding on by a thread as it was.
“There are a lot of fun things on the list,” Emily continued, walking her fingertips down my chest. “Road head. Role play. Sex in the kitchen. Strip tease. Sex in public.”
“That one is definitely out,” I panted.
“So you’re considering the others?”
I wet my lips, the hormones raging a war in my body against my poor common sense and logic. “Emily, there is nothing I want more than to bury myself inside you, to hear all those little jokes you make disappear the second I bottom out and feel you clench around me.”
She bit her lip, pressing into me like that was exactly what she wanted, too.
“But we can’t,” I said, voice pained and dry. “There’s too much at risk. For both of us.”
“So we keep it a secret.”
“We could lose our jobs.”
“Not if they don’t find out.”
I let out a fiery breath. My resolve was leaving me by the second, especially when she walked those fingertips down to my joggers again. This time, she slid them over the fabric instead of toying with the band, her palm covering my hard-on and squeezing with the perfect amount of pressure.
I moaned, my head falling back.
Hold it together, Lock.
“Besides, I’m not even technically a dancer right now. I’m injured,” she reminded me.
“Another reason we shouldn’t fuck around. You could get hurt even worse.”
“I have a feeling you’d be careful with me,” she whispered, and my cock jumped at the thought, begging for the chance to try. “Then again, maybe you’d rough me up. I’d like it either way.”
“Em.”
“That’s not helping, you know,” she said breathlessly, her eyes falling to my lips.
She was so fucking gorgeous it hurt to look at her — her sleepy, heated eyes, the hair I’d just had my hands in, that she’d trusted me with.
She was all cozy in her sweatsuit, and I knew without testing my theory that she didn’t have a bra on. I doubted she had panties on, either.
She was right there, close enough to touch, to take, if only my brain would shut up and let me.
“Every time you say my name like that, I think about that day in the gym. I think about your hands on me, your mouth, the way your face looked when you came.”
“Fuck,” I hissed, and my body moved without permission. My grip tightened on her hips as I rubbed my cock against her hand. My whole body shivered with the friction, with the notion of what I could have if I just said yes.
“We can be quiet,” she whispered, pressing up onto her toes so her words were a warm breath against my lips. “We can have what we want and not risk our positions. If anything, it gives us motivation to keep it under wraps, don’t you think?”
I didn’t want to answer, not when I was now running out of reasons to say no, and not with her looking at me like that.
Like I held the key to making her feel good again, like I could be the bright light in the darkness she was just thrown into.
I could feel the last of my restraint slipping, could hear my best friend’s words in my head.
Worth the risk.
I heard it like a chant, like a song, like an anthem. It was soft at first, but with each passing second it grew louder and more insistent.
Worth the risk.
Worth the risk.
“Tell me you want me, too,” she pleaded, her lips brushing mine. I advanced, ready to kiss her, but she backed away with a smile. She stayed close enough to tease, but too far for me to claim her. “Tell me I’m not alone.”
I swallowed, shaking my head. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that day in the gym. Before that. Maybe since the first day I saw you.” My hands began to shake where I held her, the last of the dam crumbling. “I want you, too, Emily. I want you so fucking bad.”
“Then take me,” she begged, rubbing her hand in one long, slow caress over my cock. “Say yes. Trust me. We can have what we want, and no one will get hurt.”
I almost laughed, because I knew, even then, that the last part of that sentence was wrong.
Someone would get hurt. It was inevitable. One way or another, someone would go down in the flames that were already torching high between us.
But I didn’t want to think about the consequences.
I didn’t want to think straight.
For once in my life, I just wanted to act without wondering who would be impacted, without considering how it might all turn out wrong in the end.
Right now, I wanted her. I wanted this, us.
And I was done fighting.
What’s the best that could happen?
“Fuck it,” I said roughly, and then I scooped her up, careful of her injury as I pinned her against the wall just like I’d been fantasizing about.
It was sweeter than I imagined — the smile on her lips when her back hit, the gleam in her eyes when she wrapped her legs around my thighs, the sweet sound of her moan when I crashed my lips over hers.
I sucked in a breath on that kiss, savoring the feel of her mouth, the little roll of her hips, desperate and seeking.
“Yes?” She breathed the question, her head falling back as I moved my kiss down along her jaw, her neck, all the while conscious of where I held her and where her arm was slung.
“Yes,” I growled.
And then I asked the first selfish question of my life, and every cell in my body buzzed to life like they’d been waiting for this moment.
“What’s first on the list?”