Chapter 28 A sexy warlock
A sexy warlock
Zoey
Iadjusted my robe, gave my hair one last fluff, and threw open the front door.
Gage was standing there holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a tool tote in the other. He looked me up and down, gaze lingering in all the right lingerie-clad places.
“I’m begging you. Please tell me there’s no leak,” he said finally.
I felt really, really good about popping on the black lace corset set I’d found on clearance at Sunita’s boutique. “I may have just forgotten to turn the faucet all the way off,” I purred, tracing my fingers up his chest. “I thought that maybe you’d want to…talk.”
Gage walked right into me, backing me up a few steps. He dropped the wine and the tote on the rug and kicked the door shut. “Disco. Admit this is a booty call.”
I twirled a curl around my finger. “We’re too old to use that phrase.”
“You’re stalling,” he said, spinning us around and backing me against the door.
“What makes you think I called you over here to have sex?” I asked, all innocence.
“The fact that you’re doing yoga in lingerie,” he said, tilting his head to the yoga mat I had rolled out in the living room.
“I’ve developed a debilitating fear of sports bras.”
He reached out, his callused hand skimming over my stomach, thumb under my breast. My nipples immediately and proudly announced their excitement through the barely existent fabric.
His hum of approval had my breasts going heavy and kick-started an empty throb deep in my core.
It wasn’t fair. I’d always felt in charge when it came to sex. But Gage Bishop made me feel like my best and only option was to submit to him and hang on tight.
“I think we’ll get started right here,” he said.
“Here?” I pouted prettily for him. “You don’t want to maybe check for leaks in the bedroom?”
“I’d hate to interrupt your workout.” He pulled me off the door and walked me backward, fingers barely skimming my hips, until I was standing on my exercise mat.
“Okay fine. I called you here for sex,” I announced.
His mouth quirked, and he rewarded me by cupping my achy breasts in those magical hands. His thumbs brushed over my nipples, and I went weak in the knees.
“Thank God,” he murmured as his mouth moved over mine.
The kiss took my breath away, and several brain cells went with it. It was hot, hard, and entirely possessive.
He pulled back ever so slightly as I clung to him. “If it weren’t incredibly inappropriate, I’d send my nephews a victory text right now.”
“What do your nephews have to do with this?”
“They both want to date you. They literally just asked if you were into younger guys. I told them to keep their grubby, hormonal hands to themselves, and then they tried to give me a lesson on how to be more attractive to you.”
My hand found his erection behind his zipper, and I gave it a squeeze. “I find you attractive enough without you having to work for it.”
“What made you change your mind?” he asked, slipping my robe from my shoulders.
“I didn’t. I wanted to jump right back into bed with you from the second I left. I just wanted to make sure.”
“Took you long enough,” he said.
“Wait.” I stopped him when he moved in for the kill.
“What? Is there actually a leak?”
“No. There’s just something you need to know. Well, you don’t need to know, given our agreement. But I feel like you should know.”
“Baby, you better tell me now while I still have some blood flow to the brain,” he suggested.
The man was fully hard, yet he was willing to hit pause and have a conversation with me. I appreciated that.
“Let’s sit,” I suggested, leading him to the couch.
“What’s going on?” he asked when we were settled.
“This is just sex.”
“Actually, this is just talking. I’ll let you know when it’s sex,” he countered.
I hit him with a pink, furry pillow. “I mean, just because I’ve decided to extend our one-night stand into a multiple-night stand, I don’t want you to be getting any ideas or feelings.”
He reached out and tugged on a curl. “You’re adorable when you’re trying to protect me.”
I batted his hand away. “I’m serious. You can’t start to catch feelings or whatever for me, because I can’t give you what you want. I don’t want you to get hypnotized by orgasms and start to have these romantic fantasies about wifing me up.”
“Zoey, I’m an adult man. You don’t need to manage my expectations for me. Tell me.”
“I can’t have kids.”
I blurted out the announcement and let it hang in the air between us like an ill-timed fart. Gage was still. Too still. I launched myself off the couch and paced the length of the rug.
“So it’s not a big deal. I found out in college.
It’s basically a structural problem. I’m fine with it.
Totally fine,” I insisted. “I mean, it’s better to know ahead of time before I meet someone, fall in love, and get my hopes up or their hopes up.
Right? Which is why I’m telling you. Not that we were going to fall in love or whatever, because we already agreed not to do something stupid like that.
But I just thought it was something that you should know. You know?”
I sucked in a breath and willed myself to shut the fuck up. The silence hung heavily between us.
“Okay. Please say something. Maybe compliment my boobs? Or at least tell me if I ruined the booty call.”
His fingers drummed out a beat on his thighs. “Just give me a minute. I’m processing.”
I gave him nearly ten whole seconds. “Have you processed yet?” I’d been here before, and I’d survived it. I could do it again, I reminded myself.
“How about you tell me the whole story?” he suggested.
“Really? I kinda felt like the bottom line was enough.”
He snagged my good hand and tugged me into his lap. I sat rigidly like a reluctant kid on a department store Santa’s knee. “Disco,” he said.
“Ugh. Fine. I was in college. I thought I was in love.” I toyed with one of the closures on my wrist brace.
“Sam,” Gage prompted.
I was surprised he’d remembered the name of the guy who had broken my heart.
“Yes. Sam. I don’t come from a very affectionate or attentive family, and when I met Sam, it was like he was everything I’d been missing out on.
We got serious fast, and things were good…
until I forgot to take a few birth control pills.
I didn’t even notice my period was late until the pain started.
Long story short, I had an ovarian torsion caused by a cyst rupturing. ”
“That sounds…painful,” he said.
“It was pretty horrible. I had to have surgery and a bunch of tests. That’s when I found out.
Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about having kids.
I was twenty years old. I was just trying to pass my business classes.
Sam, however, had his whole life mapped out in front of him.
And that life included kids and a wife who was responsible enough to notice when her period was late.
We broke up. And I made peace with the fact that I wasn’t going to have everyone else’s happily ever after. ”
“I’m sorry that you had that choice taken away from you,” Gage said, gently stroking my back.
“It’s really not a big deal. I mean, can you imagine me being responsible for other human beings?” I joked.
Sure, maybe at first, the young me had grieved the loss of something I hadn’t even thought about wanting yet.
And maybe that “deficiency” had added to the shame I’d already felt for never being good enough.
But I’d made peace with it. I’d built a life that brought me joy in other ways.
And now that I knew most of my mistakes had an explanation, a reason, that had nothing to do with laziness or stupidity, I’d been feeling pretty damn good about my life.
“Yes. I can. And you’d be great,” he said.
“Ha. Right.”
“I’m serious, Zoey. Kids don’t just need vegetables and pickups and drop-offs. They need champions. They need creativity and confidence. They need someone who’ll be in their corner no matter what. That’s you. So I’m sorry you didn’t get the choice, because you’d be fucking great at it.”
“Thanks,” I said quietly.
Gage gave me an affectionate squeeze. “Thank you for telling me…even though it was because you were afraid I was too stupid to listen to you when you said you didn’t want anything serious.”
“To be fair, I didn’t think you were stupid. I was concerned you were falling under the spell of my vagina.”
“It’s a pretty irresistible spell.”
I looped my arms around his neck, managing to remove only one layer of his skin with the Velcro on my brace. “So now that you know that I definitely can’t be the woman to give you the future you want, still wanna fix my leak?”
“I’m going to need you to state for the record that there is in fact no leak,” Gage said, standing up with me still in his arms. The show of strength had the predicted effect on my arousal.
“No leak. Promise,” I said breathlessly as he lowered us to the floor.
“Thank fucking God.” Gage arranged me over him so I was straddling his hips. He was already hard and I was already wet, a heady combination.
“We should go slow,” he said, lifting his head and sucking one nipple through the lace of my flimsy top.
“Nope.”
He growled in response. “Hold it for me.”
Now this was an order I didn’t mind following. I cupped my breast awkwardly with my braced hand, hoping it at least looked sexy, and offered it up eagerly like a sacrifice.
The rumble in his chest sounded like approval to me. He used his mouth on me, saturating the material with his tongue while he pressed me closer with one hand at my back. His other hand toyed with my as-yet-ungreeted nipple.
Moaning in delight, I gave a testing thrust of my hips, which brought my thong-clad clit in contact with Gage’s erection.
We both groaned. He shifted his attention to my other nipple, repeating the hard, wet pulls through the fabric. Every tug at the tender peak was echoed deep in my center.
“You’re gonna ride me, sweetheart, and then I’m gonna ride you.” His voice was a gravelly rasp.