2. “CAN YOU STAND UP,WILL YOU JUST FALL DOWN?” #7
Faster. Harder. He rocked into her mouth, holding her by the hair, offering no quarter and greedily showing her exactly how he wanted her to suck him off. He held complete control over her and himself until he lost his rhythm and tensed.
That garbled masculine sound of pained ecstasy was the only proof he’d almost lost control, but he’d stepped back and recovered before it was truly gone.
She tumbled to her elbows and looked up at him, big eyes under a mess of dark, tousled hair. She wiped her swollen mouth on the back of her hand. “Why’d you stop?”
Once more, in full command of himself, he reached for her. But as he pulled her to her feet, he caught her off guard and reverently caressed the side of her breast. “Such a wicked mouth.” He touched her intimately, as if he caressed her there a hundred times before. “Come on.”
Not giving her a chance to object, he led her into the bedroom.
Forty minutes later, the cameras caught him exiting her bedroom, shirt loose, hair tousled, wool coat and cashmere scarf draped over his arm.
He glanced back at the bedroom and paused.
His gaze searched the hall, landing on a notepad sitting on the accent table. He jotted down a note, then ripped it off and disappeared into the bathroom, only to exit a moment later with something small tucked in his fist.
She still had the note in her nightstand drawer. And it still confused her as much as it had that following morning when she found it under two aspirin.
Don’t hate me.
They might fight constantly, but she could never hate him. He’d been her frenemy since the third grade. They shared a sort of rival kinship. Sometimes, those ties went deeper than ordinary friendship, embedding someone so deeply under the skin the bond went far beyond an ordinary acquaintance.
It wasn’t his fault anyway.
She’d been the instigator.
Drunk or not, she basically forced him to put his hands on her. For a while, that really messed with her head. But then came his father’s funeral, and she realized, whatever this was, it hadn’t been one-sided.
She closed her laptop with a confused sigh. To this day, she struggled to decode whatever this thing was between them. Eighteen months, and it only got more complicated and harder to decipher.
It wasn’t just a note. There had been a million other little gestures since then.
He came back upstairs with a glass of water, two aspirin, and a trash can in case she got sick again.
Men didn’t do that when they hated someone.
And women didn’t seduce their bullies unless they knew they held some level of power over them.
Don’t hate me…
It would have been so much simpler if she could hate him.
She snatched her phone and powered it off before she did something stupid, like text him. That was, after all, his coat in her foyer, stinking like another woman’s perfume.
Downing her watered-down whiskey, she went to check on Cordelia. Animals were easier to love than people, which was why she had a dog instead of a husband.
She was messy enough, and relationships were messier. Feelings got sloppy. That was why writing fictional love stories had always been easier than living a real one. At least on page, she had control, and the characters ended up happily ever after. Reality wasn’t so kind.
Enough daydreaming. Her focus was better spent on her work.
Jocelyn was deep in the midst of chapter thirteen when a heavy knock sounded at the back door, scaring the hell out of her and sending Cordelia into a rabid fury. The dog raced out of her little bed, set to murder whoever just disrupted her slumber.
Jocelyn already knew who it was. Only one person snuck in through the back door after dark.
Jocelyn tightened the belt of her kimono, rubbed her face, debated whether she should even answer, then saved her document. “Shit.”
Before she even acknowledged her poor decision, she carried Cordelia into the spare room and shut the door.
Soren’s silhouette filled the stained glass as he waited for the lock to turn.
She stepped closer, but didn’t touch the door. “What do you want, Hawthorne?”
“You know what I want.” His voice was a low temptation that slithered right to her core and unraveled any sense of order there.
If she opened that door, he’d be inside of her in two minutes flat. How much longer could they keep doing this? Who would he smell like tonight?
“I’m writing.”
“Joce. Let me in.”
Her hand lifted to the lock, only to pause in the air. She knew better. “Go home, Daddy Issues. I’m busy.”
“Open the door, Jocelyn. Don’t make me say it again.”
Why did his commanding tone make her so weak in the knees when she knew the smart thing was to kick him to the curb? She despised heroines who couldn’t stand their ground.
“I’m on a deadline, Soren.”
A long silence passed, and she almost thought he’d back off. But she knew better. “Then don’t drag this out longer than it has to be. You know how it’s going to end. One hour. That’s all I want.”
That’s all I want…
It was official. As far as main characters went, she was absolute crap. The lock clicked, and the door opened.