16. Harry
— ? —
Harry
“Harry?”
Avery’s voice comes through the phone speaker, sweet and hopeful, as if she’s been waiting for this call and knew it would come eventually.
I look at Jules. She’s sitting up in bed with the sheet pulled to her chest, watching my face. The phone with the photos is still in her hand.
“Avery,” I say. “We need to talk about what you just sent my wife.”
There’s a pause, and when she speaks again the sweetness is gone.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Photos. Texts. ‘He’ll always choose me.’ Does that ring a bell?”
“Harry, I would never…”
“Don’t.” My voice is flat. “Don’t lie to me. Not now, and not about this.”
Jules is still watching me. Her face is unreadable, but I can see the tension in her shoulders and the way she’s holding herself very still. She’s waiting to see what I do. She’s been waiting for two years to see what I do.
“Those photos are old,” Avery says, and her voice turns defensive. “They’re from before you were even married. There’s nothing wrong with them.”
“The texts aren’t old.”
“I was upset. You’ve been ignoring me for weeks, Harry. You shipped me off to that awful office across town and you blocked my number, and I didn’t know what else to do. I just wanted to talk to you.”
“By harassing my wife at six in the morning?”
“I wasn’t harassing her. I was just trying to make her understand.”
“Understand what?”
Avery is quiet for a moment. When she speaks again, her voice is smaller and plaintive. “That I was here first. That I’ve known you longer. That I’ve been there for you through everything, and she doesn’t understand you the way I do. She doesn’t know what we’ve been through together.”
“Avery.” I keep my voice steady and controlled. “Listen to me very carefully. You are never to contact my wife again. Not a text. Not a call. Not a card. Not flowers. Nothing. Do you understand me?”
“Harry, please.”
“Do you understand?”
“You can’t just cut me out of your life. After everything we’ve been through, after all these years, I’ve always been there for you. I’ve always…”
I hang up while she’s still talking.
I block this number on my phone too. Then I take Jules’ phone from her hand and block it there too.
“I need to tell you about the call on our anniversary night,” I say.
Jules looks at me but doesn’t speak.
“The one at 1 a.m. The one you saw me take in the hallway.” I sit down on the edge of the bed. “She said the man from the garage was outside her building. I told her to call her building’s security and I hung up. It was two minutes, and that was all of it.”
Jules is quiet.
“I was still wrong to get out of our bed for it,” I continue. “On our anniversary night, after everything that happened with the dinner, I should have let it go to voicemail. I should have dealt with it in the morning. But I want you to know what the call actually was.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because Avery told you to ask about it, which means she was planning to use it against you, with a version that would make it sound worse than it was. I’d rather you hear the truth from me.”
Jules looks at the blocked number on her phone, and then she looks at me.
“You were right in the car,” I say. “Moving her across town was never going to be enough.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“I’m fixing it.” I pull out my phone. “Right now.”
I call my number two. It’s barely 6 a.m., but he answers on the second ring.
“Avery’s fired,” I say. “As of right now. I don’t want her in any building with my name on it.”
“Sir, it’s six in the morning. There’s a process for…”
“I don’t give a shit about the process. She’s done. Tell her today.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hang up.
Jules is still looking at me. Her expression hasn’t changed, but there’s a tension in the room that wasn’t there before.
She’s the one who moves first.
She leans forward and kisses me.
It’s angry and desperate and full of two years of frustration and fear and wanting. Her hands fist in my shirt and pull me toward her, and I go, letting her set the pace and take what she needs.
When she pulls back, her eyes are dark.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” she says.
“It means everything to me. But I’ll take whatever you give me.”
She looks at me for a long moment, and then she kisses me again.
I let her lead. I let her pull me down onto the bed beside her, and I let her hands roam over my chest and my shoulders and my back. She’s fierce and demanding, and nothing like the careful, guarded woman she’s been for the past four weeks.
“You’re being too careful,” she says when I hesitate over the hem of her shirt.
“You have a broken leg and healing ribs. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I’ll tell you if it hurts. Right now I need you to touch me.”
Before anything else, I prop her booted leg on a pillow, because I can’t help it, and she rolls her eyes and lets me. Then I slide my hand under her shirt, up the soft skin of her stomach. She’s warm and alive and here, and I’ve spent so many nights dreaming about this that it doesn’t feel real.
“Higher,” she says.
I trace the curve of her breast and brush my thumb across her nipple through the thin cotton of her shirt. She makes a sound in the back of her throat and arches into my touch.
“Off,” she says. “Take it off.”
She sits up with my help, enough to pull the shirt over her head, and tosses it aside herself, impatient.
“Now yours.”
I pull my shirt off and she puts her hands on my chest with her palms flat against my skin. Her fingers trace the lines of muscle, the scar on my ribs from a childhood accident, the trail of hair below my navel.
“I want your mouth on me,” she says.
My head dips to her breast, and I take her nipple between my lips. She gasps, and her hands come up to grip my hair and hold me in place.
“Harder.”
I suck harder and use my teeth just enough to make her moan. My hand finds her other breast, and I roll the nipple between my fingers to match the rhythm of my mouth.
“God,” she breathes. “God, Harry, yes.”
I take my time with her breasts. I’ve always loved them, the weight and shape of them and the way she responds when I touch them. I alternate between them, using my mouth on one while my hand works the other, until she’s squirming beneath me.
“Lower,” she says. “I need your mouth lower.”
Then I’m kissing my way down her stomach, slow and deliberate. I go gently over each rib, because I know they’re still tender even though she won’t admit it. I follow the curve of her waist, the dip of her navel, and the soft skin above the waistband of her underwear.
“Take them off.”
I hook my fingers in the waistband and slide them down her legs, careful of her boot. She’s wet already, I can see it, and the sight of her makes my cock throb.
“Please,” she says. “Harry, please.”
Settling between her thighs, I look up at her. Her hair is spread across the pillow, her chest is heaving, and her eyes are dark with want.
“Tell me what you need,” I say.
“Your mouth. On me. Now.”
I lower my head and give her the first slow lick.
She cries out, and her hips jerk off the bed. I put my hand on her stomach to hold her in place and do it again, long and slow, from her entrance to her clit.
“More,” she gasps. “More pressure.”
I flatten my tongue against her clit and press harder, and she moans. I work her with my mouth, learning her all over again, paying attention to every sound she makes and every twitch of her hips.
I pull back just far enough to talk. “I jerked off in a cold shower last night thinking about how you taste. I’d have sat in that hallway chair for a year if it got me this.”
“Shut up and keep going.”
“There,” she breathes when I find the right spot. “Right there. Don’t stop.”
I don’t stop. I stay on that spot, circling it with my tongue and changing the pressure when she tells me to, and I slide two fingers inside her, where she’s hot and tight. She’s getting close. I can tell by the way her thighs are tensing and her breathing has gone ragged.
“Harry, I’m going to…”
She comes with a cry, with her whole body shaking and her hands fisted in my hair and her pussy pulsing against my tongue. I stay with her through it, easing off as she comes down, pressing soft kisses to her inner thighs.
“Inside me,” she says when she can speak again. “I need you inside me.”
I move up her body and she reaches for my belt. Her hands are shaking as she undoes it, and as she pushes my pants and boxers down just enough to free my cock.
“How do you want to do this?” I ask. “Your ribs.”
“On my side. You behind me.”
I help her turn onto her good side and settle her boot on the pillow again. I fit myself behind her, with my chest against her back and my cock pressed against her ass.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Yes.”
I reach between us and guide myself to her entrance. I push in slowly, giving her time to adjust, and she feels so good around me that I have to close my eyes.
“Okay?” I ask when I’m all the way inside her.
“Yes. Don’t you dare stop now.”
I start to rock into her with slow, shallow strokes. One arm is wrapped around her waist, holding her close, and my other hand finds her breast and teases her nipple.
“That’s good,” she breathes. “You feel so good.”
“I’ve missed this,” I murmur against her ear. “I’ve missed you.”
“Less talking. More of that.”
I keep talking anyway, low and rough against her skin. “You’re so tight around my cock. So fucking wet. I can feel you clenching every time I push in. I don’t deserve this, and I’m going to take it anyway, because you asked.”
She pushes her ass back against me, hard.
I pick up the pace and thrust deeper. She pushes back against me, meeting each stroke. The angle is different from what we’re used to, but it works, and it lets me go deep without putting any pressure on her ribs.
“Touch me,” she says. “I need your hand.”
I slide my hand down her stomach and find her clit. I rub in tight circles, matching the rhythm of my thrusts, and she moans.
“Just like that,” she gasps. “God, just like that.”
I can feel myself getting close, with the pressure building at the base of my spine. I hold off and keep my attention on her, on the sounds she’s making and the way her body is moving against mine.
“I’m close,” she says. “Harry, I’m so close.”
“Let go. I’ve got you.”
She comes again, clenching around me and crying out. The feeling of her pulsing around my cock pushes me over the edge, and I follow her with my face buried in her hair and my whole body shaking with the force of it.
We lie there for a long moment, tangled together, catching our breath.
I pull out of her carefully and stay where I am behind her, with my arm still around her waist. Without thinking, I slide my hand up to her ribs and press gently against the bones that were bruised four weeks ago.
She tenses slightly under my touch.
“Does anything hurt?” I ask.
“No.”
I don’t believe her. I can see the way she’s holding herself and the careful control in her breathing.
“Jules.”
“I said no.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying. I’m being stoic. There’s a difference.”
I look down at her boot, still propped on the pillow where I put it. The velcro straps are undisturbed, and the angle is exactly where it should be.
“Your ribs,” I say.
“Are fine.”
“You flinched when I touched them.”
“I didn’t flinch. I twitched, involuntarily, because your hands are cold.”
“My hands are not cold.”
“They’re freezing. You have terrible circulation.”
I press my palm flat against her stomach, and she makes a small annoyed sound.
“Stop fussing,” she says.
I don’t stop. I check the boot again and her ribs again, looking for any sign that I hurt her.
She lets me. For a full minute she lies there and lets me run my hands over her, checking for damage and making sure she’s okay.
Then she shifts away from my touch.
“That was sex, Harry.”
I wait for the rest of it.
“It wasn’t forgiveness.”
I sit up on the edge of the bed. She doesn’t turn to look at me.
“Leave the door open on your way out.”