Chapter Ten #2
She doesn’t seem like a pink kind of girl. She’d been warm and bubbly with Bev, Vinnie, and the others at Our Open Table last week, but there’s something hiding underneath the surface. Pain. “Is pink your favorite color?”
The question leaves her skeptical. “Why do you care?”
I lift a shoulder. “I don’t. I’m simply curious. Is there anything wrong with asking questions? You barged in on me, after all.”
She grumbles under her breath, and I swear I hear her cussing out Emaly’s name. I do my best to hide my amusement by schooling my features and stretching my legs out.
“Mine is black,” I tell her. “If you accept black as a color. I know it’s technically not, but I find myself liking it anyway. It makes sense, I suppose. I prefer my coffee black, my whiskey straight, and my chocolate dark.”
Winter stares at me. “So you’re a bitter person. Shocker.”
My smile returns. “You could say that. You don’t strike me as bitter, though. Even if you pretend like you are.”
Her lips part. “I do not!”
“You’re certainly not sweet. Not to me.”
“You haven’t earned that right,” she counters.
Touché. “What do I need to do then?”
Her lips open to reply, then close when she comes up with nothing. Her tongue drags along the seam of her lips to wet them, and I can tell she’s thinking.
I stand and slowly approach her. Her frame is tiny compared to mine, but she’s slightly taller than Emaly, so the height difference doesn’t feel as dooming. “Do you want me to beg for your forgiveness? Would you like me to get on my knees right here, right now?”
My low spoken words are slow and steady, and a small breath releases from her when my shoes nudge the tips of hers. Her eyes peer up at me through thick lashes and are glazed with something I’m all too familiar with.
Lust.
“Do you want me to get on my knees, Winter?” I repeat the question, watching her crane her neck to look up at me with flushed cheeks.
Her throat bobs with a swallow that tells me I’m not the only one who’s interested.
Good to fucking know.
“You don’t—I—” Her sputtered words get stuck, and that red in her cheeks returns. Forget black. I think I like that color more.
I lift my fingers to her chin, pinching it between them to hold her gaze. “I would have chosen you to be here over Ashton or that condescending asshat who runs this place. It wasn’t me who suggested you stay out.”
Her eyes don’t move away from mine. “I thought…” Her throat bobs again.
She thought I’d done it intentionally.
To hurt her.
To get back at her, somehow.
Slowly, so slowly, I sink to my knees. “Is this what you need, Winter?” I’m at eye level to the waistband of her jeans, but I look up at her so I don’t get any ideas.
Like unbuttoning her jeans and pulling down her zipper.
She’s staring down at me now, her bottom lip between her front teeth.
“I wanted you here. I even told my agent I wouldn’t do it if you weren’t involved. ”
She sucks in a breath. “What? W-why?”
“Because, contrary to popular belief, I’m not a total asshole. And there’s nothing I hate more than when people take credit for something they didn’t do,” I explain, ignoring the bite of pain in my knees from being on the hard floor.
My sincerity must be written on my face, because she offers me a singular nod to acknowledge me.
How many times had Emaly called me upset that someone in school or at her internship had taken credit for an idea or project? Too many. I saw how much it upset her to be discarded after putting in the work for no reward. I won’t see it happen again. Not to her. Not to Winter.
“It hurt my feelings,” she admits, more to herself than to me.
“I didn’t mean to do that.”
She stares at me, her throat bobbing.
“I very rarely get on my knees for just anyone, Winter,” I say, eyes roaming over her until I meet her eyes. “The next time I get on my knees for you, it’ll be to taste you.”
She sucks in a breath. “Who says I’d let you?”
My lips kick up. “Who says you wouldn’t?”
“I—” She doesn’t get a chance to tell me one way or another, not that she needs to. I recognize the look in her eye. The interest. The curiosity. She wants to know what my mouth would feel like on her, she just won’t admit it.
Before she can lie and tell me I’m wrong, I hear Ashton’s voice from down the hall.
I bolt up and walk us toward the furthest wall away from the door.
When her back hits the drywall, she lets out a sharp breath that gets cut off when my body completely presses against hers to hide her from view.
“If you want to make sure my dumbass manager doesn’t rat you out for showing up today, follow my lead. ”
Her body is stiff against me. “I don’t know what you—”
I gather her hair in my fist to hide the pink strands, so Ashton doesn’t see them when he opens the door. “Do you want to get caught?”
“No!”
“Then go with it and don’t kick me in the balls,” I say with my lips pressed against her ear. Her body shudders from the briefest touch.
Before she can object, my mouth is on hers.
And the sound she makes.
The fucking sound.
It has the potential to be my undoing.
What I’d classify as a surprised moan goes straight to my cock.
The kiss is unexpected. Hard. Awkward at first. But, to my surprise, Winter’s body melts into mine as I place my free hand on her waist and massage the flesh there.
Her hands grip my sides before smoothing over my obliques and moving around my back as she opens her mouth for me.
The door opens, and Ashton curses as soon as he sees us. “For fuck’s sake, Tom. I leave you alone for thirty minutes to find you a shirt, and you’re already trying to screw one of the volunteers?”
I peel my lips away despite the sound of her protest just enough to growl, “Out,” to Ashton before dipping my head back down and closing the space between us.
Winter tastes like sugar and watermelon and feels like goddamn heaven against me. I barely hear the door slam closed because all I can focus on is the next moan that escapes her as I roll my hips forward for the friction that my hard cock wants.
She closes her lips around my tongue and sucks as her arms wind around my neck.
I’m steel in my fucking jeans thinking of what those lips would feel like around my dick.
Would she be a good girl and take the lead, or would I need to help set the pace?
I would happily tell her what to do. Where to touch me.
Where I wanted her tongue and fingers as they worked me.
It’s a fantasy of mine I’ve been thinking far too much about in my short time since meeting her.
Her fingers clench my sides, not to push me away but to pull me closer. We get lost in the moment, neither one of us paying attention to the fact that we’re alone again.
Another sound rises from her throat as she grinds against me. I would strip her naked right here and sink my cock into her warm pussy against the wall if I could. But anybody could walk in, and the things I want to do to her would take far more time than we have.
But I’m not done yet.
“Please,” I growl against her mouth, desperately needing something. I’m not entirely sure what I’m asking for. But more than this.
My fingers rise to circle around the nape of her neck and squeeze lightly. “The things I would do to you, Winter…”
Her arms tighten around me as I lift my thigh to brush between her legs. She whimpers into my mouth, so I do it again, applying more pressure where she wants it. Her fingertips dig into the muscles of my shoulders, and I like the bite of pain that comes with her nails sinking into my flesh.
My hands move down her body and rest on her hips to start guiding her to use my leg to get off with.
If the door had a lock on it, I’d strip her jeans off and bury my face in her cunt until she came at least twice.
But I don’t have the luxury of a lock or time before Ashton, or God knows who, comes back and disrupts us.
“That’s it,” I coax, watching her face morph with pleasure as she rocks against me. She already looks close. So responsive. So mine at this moment. “Come on my thigh, Winter. I can see how badly you want to.”
It’s easy to see that she’s on the brink. I want to dive under her shirt and bite her nipple and slide my hand into her panties and play with her clit. But something tells me if I go out there smelling like I’d just gotten freshly laid, it would cause some problems.
So I do neither of those things.
I do, however, press my thumb against her over her jeans. And the jerking motion that thrusts her hips forward as she tips her head back and opens her mouth into an O tells me that’s all she needed before going over the edge.
“Christ, you’re so sensitive,” I praise as she rides out the orgasm. Watching her come is an ethereal experience. The stiff, guarded expression usually on her face is now long gone and replaced by bliss and sedation.
It’s too goddamn much.
I set her down and barely have time to undo my jeans before I’m coming in my hand. I stabilize myself on the wall as my head tilts back and hot cum spurts onto my stomach as I picture her falling apart on repeat.
“Christ,” I mumble, catching my breath as I examine the mess I made of myself. If she could do this to me with our clothes on, I can’t imagine the destruction of my sanity when I’m inside her.
From beside me, I hear the quietest, “Oh my God.”
When I glance over my shoulder at Winter, she’s staring at me with glassy eyes and parted lips. Her focus is on the cock still hard in my hand, not that she can see much from her angle. If she did, her eyes would be a hell of a lot wider at the silver piercing.
“Oh my God,” she says again, this time more panicked. As though ice water had been dumped on her, she slams into the wall and covers her face.
“Winter—”
“You’re married,” she rasps, shame filling her tone as she shakes her head against the palms covering her eyes. “You are a married man, and I—And we—”