Chapter Fourteen
Zoey
I ’m going to have to fire him.
It’s not the bad job he does. It’s him. I like him too much.
Suzanne gives me a look. “What’s that face?”
“It’s my face. I have it all the time.” I take a sip of my Jack and Coke. Not my usual, but I need the sugar and the boozy courage.
It’s Friday night and it’s been a few hours since Magnus left and his sweet words reverberate in my head. Yep, I’m going to have to let the gorgeous hunk of a man go.
She sits in O’Reilly’s like the place is ready to bite her, or give her some kind of infection, or the poor gene, as she once actually called not having money.
Honestly, if I didn’t love her, I’m not sure we’d be friends.
And I’m going to have to tell her. Especially since she’s asked about Magnus about ten times in the last hour.
It’s starting to get a little rowdy in here, so I take a deep breath and say, “I think I’m going to fire him.”
She blinks like I suggested burning down a roomful of the New Yorker, her favorite magazine. “But he’s gorgeous.”
“I know.”
“You have lost your mind, woman.”
I can feel my cheeks heat and her eyes narrow. I slurp my drink down and go to get another when her hand wraps, vice-like, around my wrist. And some band throbs out a song about love and booze and broken hearts over the top of the crowd.
“Oh. My. God.”
I point to the ceiling. “What? I can’t hear you. Mr. O’Reilly’s playing his music too loud.”
“You…” Now her eyes go wide. “Did you sleep with him?”
Anything I want to do with Magnus Simpson and that hard rock body and onyx eyes has nothing to do with sleep. “We kissed.”
“Zoey! Are you firing him to have your wicked way? Because if you are, just keep him. Office affairs are all the rage.”
“They are not.” I breathe out, snatch back my wrist, and take a sip of the dregs of Jack and Coke and icy water. It’s not very nice. “And no. I just…”
She pats a hand over my head, like I’m a pathetic stray. “Listen to me. He’s not that idiot from school who crushed your heart.”
“Bronn did not crush my heart.”
“Your confidence, then. You can have a man and work with him and a business. Modern women sometimes have lovers all over the place.”
Suzanna makes it sound like they grow on trees.
“I…” I slump down. “I’m worried I’m going to jump him. He’s so…”
“Hot. Like melt your panties off as if they’re ice cream on a hot New York pavement on a hundred and twenty summer day.”
“I was going to say lovely, but he’s got a sick gran and…also…I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes.”
“And you said he needs the money!”
She’s got me. And I am scared. What if he’s like Bronn? What if he hurts me? Which is stupid because though I don’t know him, he’s been nothing but sweet and nice, with little bits of spice that keep him really interesting. “I know.”
“Did you kiss him or did he kiss you?”
“Which time?”
She gasps, looking utterly delighted, and claps her hands. “It was him.”
“Look at me, and look at him.”
“I’mma looking, girl, and I think he has good taste. You’re no glamor queen, but you have substance. We could go do your hair, if you like, spruce up your wardrobe—”
“I thought you said he had good taste.”
Suzanna’s able to turn a maybe insult on a dime. “I did. I was just saying if you’re worried, we can do that. But he likes you. It’s a store. It doesn’t matter.”
Ugh…do men talk like this? But… “I’ll sleep on it. Another round?”
She nods and hands me a twenty. It’s Brooklyn, old school. People prefer cash. I weave my way to the bar and as I go, I know it’s just fear. And if I don’t do anything about it, if I sit him down and say we can’t do anything, then it will all be okay. Right?
Right?
It’s late for me when I roll the half block home. I’ve put Suzanna in a car service, and I’m ready to curl up in bed. My mind is soft and I almost have a buzz from the handful of drinks.
Someone is leaning against my door and my stomach somersaults as my heart tattoos against my ribs.
Magnus steals my breath. He’s so beautiful.
And maybe that’s the problem. He’s beautiful and nice with a sick gran and he’s someone I could develop real feelings for. If he wasn’t quite so much of a cypher.
I stop.
Where the hell did that come from?
A cypher?
But it fits.
I don’t really know him or much about him, only he’s a fantasy man. He’s polite and sweet and lovely and I don’t know what dwells under all that surface stuff.
He’s the perfect man. He really is.
And he likes me and—
“You know, Zoey, I couldn’t get you out of my head all evening.”
He’s dressed in black from his boots to his jeans to his sweater and he’s utterly devastating. And maybe it’s because I’m just the right—or is that the wrong—side of tipsy, but he seems different somehow.
The shadows and light from the buildings and the street lamp throw his cheekbones into sharp relief, and there’s an air of sardonicity about him that makes my heart beat even faster, my blood heat.
“I had a thing—”
“You didn’t see your gran?”
“She went to bed early and I had to attend something, and you were in my fucking head.” He stays leaning against the door and taps his temple with one long-fingered hand. “And I kept thinking I shouldn’t like you. Zoey Smith is way too sweet. She eats a lot of sugar and I’m…I shouldn’t be here.”
“But you are.”
Now he straightens and comes to me. “I am. Because you’re in my head, Zoey. You’re sweet and taste like stolen moments and hot sex.”
I can’t move. Never in my life has anyone said anything like this to me. I’m rooted down to the spot on the cracked pavement, and not even the swish of cars or the honks of horns or people shouting and laughing can penetrate the spell he’s weaved.
This is no cypher.
This is Magnus.
And I want him.
Desperately.
It’s like he reads my mind. He slides his hands through my hair and kisses me. Not like before. This is a hard kiss. This is sex. It’s naked, hot, erotic, and I’m not thinking. I hit the door, his body crowding me and the word yes is the only one in my head.
I kiss him back like this is life itself and he’s devouring me.
He tastes my throat in ravishing bites that make me ache down into my core. That sweet aching need that presses against me and I need him in me. I release the hold I have on him and fumble in my bag, but he takes my keys from my shaking fingers and jams them into the lock, kissing me all the while.
His tongue is hot and the dance is wild and I’m slowly self combusting. We barely get in the door and he kisses me all the way up the stairs, all of them, his hands on me. Under my shirt, touching my breasts, teasing my nipples and I can barely hold myself together to not maul him on the stairs.
Once we’re inside my apartment, we’re in the small hall and Magnus drops to his knees, tugging my jeans and panties down and then his mouth is there and I’m trapped, his mouth at my clit, his tongue laving against it, his hand coming around and sliding down past my ass, to trail along the slickness there.
“You’re so fucking wet, Zoey.” He looks up at me and his eyes glitter. I’m shaking. I don’t know what’s happening except I need this. I need him. This Magnus, the one who isn’t sweet and nice, but raw and forceful with an erotic current that buzzes in my blood.
He pulls off my shoes and clothes and I’m naked and he’s not and he uses one hand to push me back against the door and then he lifts my leg and throws it over his shoulder and he buries his face in my pussy, and I come. Just like that, I shake apart in an orgasm that leaves me weak and open and shocked.
But Magnus isn’t done. He keeps going, stoking the fires, using his tongue and teeth and fingers to bring me right up to the edge and then, still holding me, he takes that leg in one hand, the other holding me against the door, and he rises up, my leg about his waist.
We stare at each other and he says, “Why do I think you don’t get to come nearly enough? We need to fix that.”
“Magnus, you and me, I…it’s wrong.”
“I know.”
“We shouldn’t.”
“I agree.”
“You better fuck me now.”
“Try and stop me.”
I reach for his jeans and I undo them, and push them and his boxer briefs down enough to free him.
He’s gorgeous. Utterly. Big and thick and there for the taking. “I want…” I take a breath. “I want to taste you.”
“Later.”
And he kisses me, deep, rough kisses that rub me in all the right directions and he lifts me up and positions himself at my entrance. And he stops kissing me then. Magnus stares at me. We’re eye to eye and then he pushes in and I cry out because he feels so damn good.
It’s like everything I’ve ever needed, whether I knew it or not.
He starts to move. I meet him, thrust for thrust, my short nails digging into the skin of his upper arms, that hard, hot muscle. We slam together, my hips raising, thighs widening, like I need to fit more of him in me than is possible, and he moans, burying his face in my throat and starts to move harder and harder. Inside, the sweet hot pressure builds and I fly apart. I crash down over and over and over again and then he shudders, coming, too, and we stay like that for a long time.
Finally he lifts his head and I wait for him to say that was a mistake, or to apologize or something that makes me wish we hadn’t done that. Not that I think anything could.
But he just looks at me and says, “That, Zoey, was a great starter. Ready for more?”
“Oh, God, yes.”
Tomorrow. I can deal with the fallout tomorrow, but now? I want this slice of heaven. I want it desperately.
He kisses me soft and gentle and says, “Bedroom?”
“This way…”