Chapter 18
Eighteen
Now
Wyatt
I know I’ve made a mistake the second I step into the hallway.
What am I doing? Why the fuck am I leaving her like that? The last thing I want is to go another year with all this shit unresolved between us and risk starting the cycle all over again.
I spin on my heel, fling the door open, and walk back into the office to find CJ hastily swiping at her eyes.
Fuck, she’s crying.
“I can’t keep doing this, Wy,” she says with a sob that rips right through me. “I can’t keep fighting with you and pretending that I’m okay afterward.”
I grab her by the nape of her neck, sliding my fingers into her soft hair and brushing my thumb over the tear that escapes and rolls down her cheek.
“And I can’t keep pretending that I didn’t fall in love with you that night, too.”
She turns to stone in my hands, her gorgeous lips falling open as I speak.
“I’ve spent so long lying to myself about it, needling you into hating me all over again every time we see each other.
I don’t want to do it anymore either. Fuck, your skin is soft.
” I trail my fingers over the line of her throat.
“I have things to apologize for, and CJ, so do you. But why do I keep putting clothes on you when the only thing I want—the only thing I’ve wanted to do for seven years—is take them off you?
Can we just sort all of this shit out later? Because right now, I need—”
She rests her fingertips on my jacket, lifts up on her toes, and kisses me.
Finally, after seven years of anger and lust and lies and regret, I’m kissing CJ, and she’s kissing me back. All of the longing we shoved into the darkest corners of our hearts comes pouring out as I devour her mouth and she devours mine right back.
“The door,” she gasps out when we briefly come up for air. “Does it lock?”
I refuse to stop touching her to find out, so I band my arm around her waist and walk us backward, fumbling behind me until I find the knob and click it into place.
“It locks.”
“Oh, thank God.”
Then we’re in motion again as I spin us and pin her against the piece of wood that’s shutting out the rest of the world.
Not that it matters. If somebody dropped us into the middle of a pack of savage geese right now, it wouldn’t stop me from sliding my mouth across hers, biting her bottom lip, and grinding my throbbing cock against her soft, sweet body.
“You taste like the hottest peppers in the world,” I breathe against her lips.
She gasps and tries to cover her mouth. “I’m so sorry! Sabotage quality control. Should I—”
“You burn, I burn, baby.”
I show her I mean it by sucking on her tongue, groaning into her mouth and relishing the sting. She responds by rolling her hips against mine, creating mind-blowing friction because I’ve got her pressed so hard between my body and the door.
“Take this off.” She tugs at my jacket, pulling down on one lapel while shoving her hand under the opposite shoulder and generally fighting a losing battle with physics and my own human body.
“Absolutely.” I slide my hands down her arms. “Hang on.”
I’ve barely ripped it off before she’s at work on my buttons while I fight with my cufflinks. She succeeds before I do and immediately stills.
Right. Goddammit.
In a rush now, I wrestle my shirt the rest of the way off, take her hands, and guide them to the scar that stretches from my sternum to my navel before curving underneath my ribs.
After almost eighteen months, the ropey line has faded to a pale pink, but the large backward L is still raised and sensitive to the touch.
“This,” I say with a deep breath, “is—”
CJ stretches up to kiss me. “Let me guess. This is your organ-era scar, and last year in my office, you were in a bad place about it. You didn’t want me to see it or touch it, which is why you ran out of there like you’d just made your worst enemy come on your fingers and didn’t trust her to reciprocate without making it an issue. ”
The knot I’ve been carrying in my chest for a year loosens as she talks, and I press my forehead to hers, so damn grateful to just breathe her in.
“God, I love your brain,” I say. “All of that. I was sliding toward a panic attack at the thought of you seeing me so weak and vulnerable. And Reese never—”
“Nope.” She rests her fingers against my lips. “We will not be speaking her name aloud here. And you were never weak, but I’m assuming you know that now.” She kisses my shoulder, then my throat, then my breastbone. “Can I?”
“God yes,” I say hoarsely. “Anything you want.”
She kneels slowly in her beautiful, sparkly dress and presses her lips to the top of my scar. “Does it hurt?”
I shake my head. “Not as long as it’s you touching me.”
She snorts softly. “That’s a bullshit answer.”
The look she gives me is pure CJ exasperation that takes my cock from stirring to life to hard as fucking stone in one breath.
“It’s true.” I gather her hair into my hands and do my best to ignore my throbbing dick.
“I lied last July and made it sound like you never mattered to me, but you do. Maybe more than anyone else in my life. And I wasn’t just lying to Reese, I was lying to myself.
If I admitted that one night with you mattered more than six years with Reese, I’d have to face how badly I’d fucked up my entire life trying to forget you. ”
“Shit,” she says thickly. Then pain bursts in my thigh.
“What the hell?” I look down in shock to see that she’s bitten me through my pants.
“That’s for saying her name,” she says. “And for making me want to cry again.”
“Honey, no.” I haul her to her feet. “I don’t ever want to do that.”
“Then stop saying amazing things!”
“Okay.” I kiss her forehead. “Never again.” I kiss the tip of her nose. “Promise.” I kiss her mouth, but when I start to pull back, she chases my lips and deepens it, sliding her tongue against the seam of my lips until I open and accept her.
“Still lying,” she says when we reluctantly pull apart. “Your body’s so hot I want to weep. That’s on you.”
I start to laugh, but she’s dead serious. Her eyes glisten as she looks at my chest, and I have to press the heel of my hand against my cock to relieve the pressure of not being inside her right fucking now. She sees what I’m doing and licks her lips.
“No,” I tell her sternly. “The first time we have sex isn’t going to be in Sheila’s office.” But I surge forward and kiss her anyway. I even reach behind her and fiddle with the hook and zipper of her dress until I’ve got it partway undone.
“Definitely not,” she agrees, wriggling her arms free so the red sequins bunch at her waist and I can thumb her tight nipples through the lace of her bra. “I mean, we only paid ninety”—she gasps—“ninety dollars for the night.”
I’ve replaced my hands with my mouth, sucking her through the material, and she threads her fingers through my hair to pull me where she wants me.
“Bite them, Wy. Please,” she begs, so I do, nibbling and biting one nipple, then the other. I do it through the lace and then I tug the cups down and lose my fucking mind at seeing her naked tits topped by those pretty pink gumdrops for the first time.
“This is how I want to die.” I palm the sides of her breasts and push them together, lifting them to my mouth. “Cover me, smother me. Fuck, sweetheart.” I bury my face in all that soft, pillowy skin, then use my teeth and tongue to torture her until we’re both panting and desperate.
“Our first time’s not going to be in an office at the Oakwood,” she reminds me as she takes my hand and glides it all the way up the slit of her long skirt.
“Definitely not.” I catch the material and drag it up so the whole dress is bunched around her middle. She’s standing in front of me with her breasts out and her soaked panties on display.
“Definitely, definitely not.” Her devious little fingers find my waistband, then the hook and zipper keeping my cock in check inside my pants.
When she wraps her hand around me for the first time, I have to dig my nails into my palms to keep from spilling all over her, making this discussion about our first time moot.
“Slow. Fuck, baby, I need you to”—oh goddd—“go slow.”
My hand wraps around hers, slowing her pace but adding to the pressure, and we both groan at the sight of our fingers tangled together and gripping my dark, engorged length.
“Of course your dick is perfect, you monster.” She squeezes me as she strokes, and my hips buck involuntarily. “And I’m definitely not thinking about you stuffing that inside me right now, in this office.”
“Def…” I choke out as pleasure rockets through my veins. “Definitely not.”
She steers me around so I’m the one with my back against the door.
“And I’m definitely not walking over to my bag to get a condom.” She releases her hold on my cock and takes a step back, her eyes on my face. As if I’m going to fucking stop her when she walks to her tote bag and grabs a packet.
“Definitely wouldn’t want you to do that.
” I let my head fall back against the door and shut my eyes, praying for the strength to not embarrass myself with the woman I’ve wanted since the moment I saw her.
I don’t open them until she’s standing in front of me, rolling the latex down my length.
Her expression’s all nervous excitement as she sneaks glances at me, and the instant I’m covered, I set out to erase the nervous from her face so only the excitement remains.
“You’re everything I’ve ever wanted,” I murmur as I maneuver her away from the door. I plan to pound into her so hard that motherfucker’s not likely to stay on its hinges.
We need a wall. A load-bearing one.
“Fuck, look at you,” I breathe. “This body. These tits. Your sweet face, CJ. That mouth.”
I press my thumb against her lower lip, working it inside until her tongue’s stroking me. At the same time, I pull her panties aside and slide my fingers between those thick fucking thighs so I can skate my other thumb over the slippery wetness of her pussy.
“How do you want to come?” I ask, slowing down to play with her clit. “On my hand? On my cock? Both?”
She scratches my sides as she grips me and pulls me closer.
“I told you already, I need you to fill me up.” She practically whines it; she’s so desperate, her hips rolling and her mouth wet and open. I didn’t think it was possible to get any harder, but here we are.
“Fuck, Wyatt, please, please, do it alr—”
I slide into her with one thrust, and we both freeze, caught in this shared moment of finally and perfect and home. When my body’s able to move again, I pull out slowly and push back in, my brain whiting out at the welcoming heat and drag of her cunt.
“Been waiting for you for so long,” I grunt into her ear before catching her mouth in a kiss as I drive into her.
I don’t know if she slides her knee up first or if I’m the one to grab and lift it, but the next thing I know, I’ve got her spread wide so I can slide and grind into her, my pelvis rubbing her clit and my free hand pinching her nipples until she starts to convulse around me.
“Come on, come with me,” she pants in my ear. “Fall with me.”
Then she’s crying my name as she comes, and I don’t fucking care if the whole ballroom can hear us because I’m coming too, rattling the frame on the wall as I empty myself into her.
“Worth it,” I pant, caging her body in my arms while we both catch our breath. “Worth the wait. Best I ever had.”
She bursts into tears, and I pull back in horror.
“Sweetheart, no. I promised you, no more tears.”
“I’m happy!” she sniffles. “These are happy tears!”
“Even though our first time was in Sheila’s office?
” I pull her to me and stroke a hand down her back, holding her while she cries and laughs and my cock softens inside her.
The CJ in my arms is the CJ I met seven years ago and dreamed about even when I shouldn’t have.
I never want to let her go, and this time, maybe I don’t have to.
I’d be elated to stand there all night with CJ feathering kisses against my neck, but the walkie-talkie in my jacket pocket picks that moment to spring to life.
“Wyatt, what’s your twenty?” Hollis’s disembodied voice asks, and CJ groans. Unfortunately, it’s not the sexy kind I just coaxed from her.
“We have to get dressed now, don’t we?”
I nod. “We still have some revenge to serve.”
“How involved are you in whatever’s left?” she asks as she tugs her dress into place.
“Not much. The wheels of justice are pretty much in motion. How about you?”
“Same.” She glances up at me, and the sweet nervousness on her face has me cupping her jaw. “Does that mean we can go out there and sit at a table together like…”
“Like a couple?”
She ducks her head almost shyly and nods, so I nudge her chin back up and kiss the fuck out of her just because I can.
“The only problem with that,” I say, “is that I now know exactly what’s underneath that gorgeous dress, and I’m an impatient man.”
“You?” She laughs. “The man who waited seven years?”
I pinch her nipple, and she squeaks. “We have all that time to make up for.” Then I force myself to pull away and look at her. “But yes, honey, that’s all I want. Us, together as a couple. In here, out there, in my bed, in my life.”
Forever.
I don’t say it out loud, but it’s there in my eyes when I look at her. It’s in hers too, and now I’m the one fighting happy tears.