CHAPTER 12 #2
“She asked twice.” Rook kept his eyes on me and brought his voice down out of the loud register into something worse.
“He walked in at nine and took her out of active care in front of every man at that table, and he said the reason out loud instead of papering it. He is very good at paper. He picked the version that stays on the minutes forever.”
“That will do,” Julian said.
“It has never done.” Rook pulled his coat off the chair back and did not put it on. “You are going to let it stand and let her think it was nothing, and somebody in this building is going to say the true thing tonight, so it may as well be the man with nothing left to lose.”
Julian did not answer him. He took the coat off at last and folded it over his arm, and the folding took him longer than it needed to.
Cecily gathered her sheet, counted the room once with her eyes, and left us our keys.
By nine the kitchen smelled of cedar and burned oil and coffee. Alistair was rebuilding a board for a game nobody would play. Rook had his forearms on the table and his eyes half shut. Julian was drying a plate that had been dry for some time.
I put my cup down and heard myself before I had decided anything.
“Tonight felt like a life. I’d like to keep it.”
Alistair’s hand stopped over the white queen. Rook opened his eyes. Julian set the plate in the rack, precisely, and did not turn around.
“Then keep it,” Rook said.
The pipes started knocking behind the plaster at eleven, and I was four doors along the corridor with my hand on Julian’s door, and he opened it before the second knock.
He had the lamps off, and after he shut the door there was only the window and the ridge going black behind it.
“You know what I came for,” I said.
“I do. I would like to hear you tell me anyway.”
“Your mouth on me. Your cock in me. Your bed after, with me in it until morning.”
He put his hands on the hem of my sweater and stopped there. “May I take this off you?”
“Yes.”
He pulled it over my head and dropped it, and then he stood with his hands at his sides and looked at me long enough that I could feel it on my skin. He got the bra off with one hand at the small of my back and did not comment on having done it.
“You are warm all the way through, and I have thought about it where I had no business to.”
“Where?” My voice came out lower than I meant it to.
“At the table. In the corridor. In a room where I was supposed to be listening to a man read a finding.” He bent and put his mouth on one nipple, open and slow, without any hurry in him at all.
My hand went into his hair and stayed. He worked that nipple until it hurt in the good way, then crossed and gave the other the same patience, and by the end both nipples were tight enough that the air off the window hurt.
“Keep your hands down,” I said. “I want to watch you decide not to rush.”
He laughed against my breastbone, which is a thing he does about twice a year, and he did not move his hands at all.
“You are beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with the light in here.”
“The light in here is terrible.” I was out of breath and did not care who knew it.
“It is. You are the best thing in it.” He got my jeans open, and his knuckles were warm through the cotton. “You already know what I am asking you. Say it out loud anyway.”
“I want your mouth on me.”
“Where?”
“On my clit. Now, please.”
He went down on one knee and then the other, pulled the jeans off me, and put my leg over his shoulder.
The first touch of his tongue was flat on my clit and it stayed there while I got used to it.
Then he moved. He kept two fingers waiting at the entrance of my pussy until I pushed down onto them, and he let me do the pushing, and when they were in he curled them and held them and let his tongue carry the rest.
“You are so wet I can hear it.”
“Don’t stop talking. Don’t stop anything.”
He did not stop. My hand made a fist in his hair and I came on his mouth in three long pulls that took my legs out from under me, and he held my hips through it and brought me down to the floor with him.
His tongue stayed on my clit until the last of it went out of me.
Then he moved to the inside of my thigh and left my pussy alone.
I had my hands on his belt while I was still shaking.
“You are going to ask me for something,” he said. “Ask.”
“I want your cock in my hand first. Then in my mouth. Tell me no if that is not on offer tonight.”
“It is on offer. It has been on offer for some time.”
“Tell me how you want it done,” I said, with the belt open and my knuckles against his stomach.
“Slowly, and with your eyes open, and you knew both of those before you asked me.”
He was hard before I got him out of the shorts, and his cock filled my hand and then some, and I took my time with it because he had taken his.
When I put my mouth on his cock he said my name once and then stopped talking altogether.
I got a minute of that, of his hand hovering an inch above my head and never landing, before he lifted my chin.
“Stop. I am not finishing there tonight.”
“Why not?” I sat back on my heels and let him see that I would wait for a real answer.
“Because I am going to lie down, and you are going to get on me, and the pace is going to be yours. Do you want that?”
“Yes. I want that a great deal.”
There was foil in the nightstand. I put it in his hand before I climbed over him. He used it without a question, because that answer had already been given.
He went onto his back and spread his hands open on the sheet where I could see them, which was a courtesy and also a promise.
I got over him and took his cock in slowly, an inch and a stop and another inch, and his jaw set and he let me.
When he was all the way in my pussy I stopped moving and breathed, and he waited, and the pipes knocked twice in the wall behind the headboard.
“Perfect. Exactly that. Take as long as you want.”
I took longer than that. I stopped twice, once because I wanted to and once to see what stopping did to him, and both times he let me have it and asked for nothing back.
I set a pace slower than either of us wanted, because I could, because nothing in that room was being traded for anything.
There was no bargain in it, no term, no clause, and my hands were empty for once and did not want paper.
He said gorgeous once, into my collarbone, when I leaned down far enough to give him my nipples again, and he took one in his mouth and held it there while I moved on him.
Then he got his thumb between us and put it on my clit, small circles that matched what I was doing, and my rhythm came apart inside a minute.
“I can feel you starting. Come first.”
I came with my hands braced on his chest and his cock as deep in me as it would go, and it went through me in a wave that emptied my head out completely, and his thumb stayed on my clit until I pushed his wrist away.
He let me finish it. Then his hands came onto my hips and asked with pressure instead of words, and I nodded, and he took over from underneath in short hard strokes and came with his cock as far into my pussy as it would go, saying my first name into my throat.
Afterward he pulled the blanket over both of us without being asked and turned me onto my side, and put his hand on my shoulder and left it there.
His breath slowed behind me and mine followed it down, and I lay in the dark thinking about how much I was going to want this tomorrow, and how sore I was where his cock had been, and how little either of those frightened me.
Headlights swung up the drive and crossed the ceiling, and Julian’s hand stopped where it was, and four floors down Malachi Thorne’s car came in under the portico.