Chapter 12
twelve
. . .
Armin
The door handle turns and I brace myself for a hail of insults from Evie or Vance. Or both. I don’t rush to greet them. I don’t take my eyes off the city skyline. I can only stand there and wonder where Mia is by now, and it’s the not-knowing that pounds a dull ache into my chest.
Maybe she’s already gone, to follow Harvey to Sunbreak Harbor.
I flick my eyes from the reflection of the door behind me to the city below, back to my own sorry-looking reflection in the glass, subdued by the same anhedonic stupor I’m always in after she’s left me.
And she walks in.
I have no control, not anymore. I’m on her before I can stop myself, shutting the door behind her, my lips on hers.
She breaks the kiss to hold my face in both her hands. I can’t read her expression.
Maybe she didn’t know I was in here. The thought kills me inside, and I have to fight hard to stifle it.
“You came back.” I don’t say for me. I can’t dare to hope that she would.
“I wanted to say thanks.” She runs her thumbs down my chin, strokes them through the thick of my beard.
I take a step back, breathless, and check myself, though my body craves nothing more than her touch. I can’t assume anything with Mia. A week-long affair at my cabin didn’t mean she was mine. It was a mistake I made, and I never recovered.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “I’m, um, I’m happy to see you.” Painfully happy to see her. She must have felt it.
“Oh, yeah.” She’s matter of fact in her tone, though she looks me up and down with an intensity that heats me up. “That is how I want to say thanks.”
For the first time I find Halo City beautiful, but only because it’s reflected in her eyes.
“Just doing my job,” I say.
“Sure,” she smirks. “Just to be clear, we’re both off the clock right now.” Vance must have been right. Harvey’s gone. She’s happy, free.
I want to tell her that I love her, that I need her. That I would have gladly died for her, last night. But I know she’ll hate to hear it.
And I don’t want to ruin the moment.
I lift her up onto the conference table and slide her skirt up, run my hands up those luscious thighs.
She wraps her legs around me and draws me to her, her hips working me.
An involuntary moan escapes me, and I plunge my hands into her hair to bring her face to mine, to kiss her again and again the way I’d imagined.
But she ducks me and unzips my fly instead, her hands reaching for my erection, pressed thick against my pants.
It’s not romance she’s after.
And, all things considered, she’s smart to err on the side of brevity, because, after all, we are fucking in another man’s office—a man who saved both our lives.
She guides me to her and edges my cock inside, hot and wet. I want to slow down, to take off every bit of the clothing that separates us, feel her skin on mine, to kiss her bit by bit. But she shoves me inside with both her heels on my ass, and cries out.
She pulls me to her, creating the rhythm, bringing me in and then pushing me out.
“That feels so good,” she murmurs.
I can’t resist her. But I want to shout, what? Me? You? Sex? My cock? Your cunt?
She’s not high simply because we’re together. Like I am.
What I’m feeling isn’t what she’s feeling. This is casual sex for her, nothing more. She couldn’t be any clearer about her intentions. But my mind is done in by the thought of her walking away from me one more time. I want this—her—forever.
I thrust inside, my mind raw and my cock clenched inside her. I pull her closer to me, drunk off the smell of her, the shape of her body, both hands cupping her juicy ass.
All I want is more time.
I wonder where she’ll go now. I pray it’s with me, but I know better than to hope.
If these are our last moments together, I’d better give her something to remember me by. I slide her away, flip her over, and climb onto the table. I edge my way inside. Too slow for her, and she pushes back on me. Moans loud. I clamp my hand over her mouth and lean in close.
“Ssshhh,” I whisper into her ear. “No screaming, ma’am.
We’re a family-friendly security company.
” I feel her smile against my fingers. I pull up on her from behind and her smile turns into a gasp, her breath hot on my palm.
I let go to brace myself on the conference table and pump into her, enjoying the jiggle of that delicious ass.
She props herself up on her elbows, arches her back and bears down on me, and it’s too much.
I have to pull out, and breathe through it, or I’ll explode.
My mind tortures me with a thousand visions of the future I crave: Mia pregnant with our child, holding her hand through the labor, she and I on a playground, pushing a toddler in a swing, laughing and dancing barefoot on a soft carpet in a beige living room in the suburbs, Mia on a yacht with the sun in her curls.
It doesn’t matter what I get, as long as she’s there.
I want to climb onto the conference table next to her, and hold her in my arms for hours, stroking those curls, her soft skin.
Instead I back off the table, and drag her towards me.
She lets out a little cry of surprise. “You’re in rare form,” she says, breathless.
“Only for you,” I say. I stand her up and turn her around, so we’re face to face. I sure as hell don’t want to miss an opportunity to put my mouth on those breasts. I drag her shirt up.
No bra.
She’s also in rare form. I close my lips around her nipple and tongue it. I find her mouth with my thumb, push it inside. She sucks it sopping, and I enter her to circle her clit. She always came harder on the left. I play her on both sides to drag it out until her legs quiver.
She clutches at my hair, breathing hot into my scalp, panting and huffing and thrusting against me. I know she wants to wrap this up. Mia prizes efficiency in sex. She wants to come, and then she wants me to blow my load, so we can move on with our lives.
Not so fast, love. I won’t let this end.
I pull my thumb out, and lift my mouth from her breast, and I make a big sloppy show of licking her off me. She watches me, still breathing hard, curious now, on the verge of irate.
“Are we going to finish this?” She blurts.
Yeah, she’s annoyed.
“Then what?” I drawl. I won’t match her urgency.
She shrugs one shoulder. “We go have a drink?”
It sounds normal, the way she says it. Like we’re a couple, and we’re going to be together in this moment and the next.
I wonder if my heart can take it when we’re not.
She’s so goddamned beautiful, with her wild curls mussed, lacy shirt up around her neck, breasts glistening where I’ve tongued them, her cunt splayed, one leg dangling off the conference table and the other slung over the arm of an executive chair, and I can’t help myself.
I grab her, and I kiss her on the forehead.
Her brow creases, like I’ve caused her pain. “What was that for?”
“Because I love you.” Then I kiss her hard, the way she likes it, my tongue on the roof of her mouth, so she can’t say anything back.
I pick up her leg and push inside her, slow and careful this time, one hand at the small of her back to tilt her forward, dragging my shaft along her clit. She moans into my mouth.
I break the kiss. “Climb on,” I say.
Her eyes widen, angry by definition. She hates it when I give her orders.
Usually she does the opposite as punishment.
But for the first time, she listens to me, and wraps both legs around my waist. I groan, I’m in so deep.
I slide her up and down on my cock, grinding her on me, her hips rolling, my thrusts matching her rhythm, and I want her to ride me forever.
“Oh, Armin,” she says, breathy, her head on my shoulder, and I’m gone.
I pull her off me with an urgency she understands.
She kneels to take me into her mouth, and I empty into her before her lips reach past the entirety of my head.
She sucks me clean. My whole body shudders, helpless with her mouth on me.
I stroke my hands through her hair while I have the chance. She’s perfect.
I notice she’s got two fingers inside herself, knelt before me on the gray office carpet.
“Don’t steal my job,” I say. She smiles. I raise her up off the floor to standing and move to set her palms against the window.
She hesitates. “I don’t want to leave fingerprints.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “This isn’t a crime.” I kiss her neck and fondle her breasts from behind, pushing up against that perfect ass, half-hard again already.
She’s a drug.
“Vance’ll treat it like one,” she says with a smile in her voice I need to ignore. Hearing another man’s name on her lips after she’s sucked my cock dry flares a hot rage across my mind.
It occurs to me that she might not have known I was in here.
After all, it’s not my office.
I want to fuck her all over again, until she forgets Vance or any other man exists.
“If you say so.” I take a seat on the floor, put my back up against the glass, and I pull Mia onto my face until I’m smothered with her, my tongue flicking her clit with all the fury I can channel. She grips my head with her thighs, and she lifts up with her legs to lighten my load.
No.
I want all of her, I want to drown in Mia.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her in place so she can’t squirm away.
Her whole body shakes, her pelvis bucking on its own.
She rocks against me, her legs trembling in short bursts, her ragged panting becoming small cries and her slick running down my chin until she stifles a scream, her mouth pressed hard against the top of my head.
I lift her off me and lay her down so I can slide myself inside her, hard for her once more.
She rips my shirt open, frenzied, her hips rolling, the orgasm working through her body. Her nails rake down my chest.
“Harder,” I rasp.
I want scars from this moment that I carry with me for the rest of my life.