Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
My heart feels like it’s going to burst out of my chest any second. It’s beating so hard I can feel it everywhere.
My palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms heavy, and somewhere in the back of my brain, Eminem is yelling about spaghetti.
I draw in a shaky breath and knock on the door. Nothing happens at first. Then the lock turns, the door swings open, and there he is. Andrew. In a T-shirt and sweatpants.
Sweatpants.
The gray kind.
For one very long, very stupid second, all I can do is stare at him.
Because my brain has spent years surviving crisp white shirts, black slacks, expensive coats, rolled-up sleeves, and the general corporate brutality of Andrew Bennett in work mode, only to be absolutely taken out by soft cotton and a drawstring.
“Carly?” he says, his confusion sharpening almost immediately into concern. “What are you doing here? Do you have a fever? Why didn’t you call me? I could have come to—”
“It’s not a fever,” I say, interrupting him before his panic can fully load. “I’m okay. Great, even.”
His gaze moves over my face anyway, assessing me like he’s checking for symptoms.
I straighten a little. “You’re going to have to look for a new assistant.”
For one second, he just stares at me.
Then the furrow between his brows smooths out, and a smile starts spreading across his face. Slow at first, like he doesn’t quite trust it, and then wider. “Is that so?”
I nod, my own grin taking over completely. “It is.”
He leans against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. “Communications Coordinator Carly Michaels,” he says, like he’s testing the words. “It suits you.”
“It does,” I agree. “And it also means you’re not really my boss anymore.”
His nose scrunches slightly. “I’m still the CEO of the company you work for.”
“Yes, but.” I raise one finger in the air.
“I don’t report directly to you. It’s a gray area, and the thing about gray areas is that they are just that.
Gray. Like, yes, technically, you’re still my boss in the broad corporate food-chain sense, but you have no direct insight into my daily work now, and I won’t be managing your calendar, and Marissa will be the one approving my vacation days, so really, when you think about it, this is more of a philosophical question than an HR question, and—”
“Carly,” he says, stepping back. “Come inside.”
I do.
He closes the door behind me, and I follow him into the living room, where the night he was having before I showed up is still sitting there in plain view.
A takeout box on the coffee table. The throw pillows on the couch pushed out of place. A movie paused on the TV, some man on horseback frozen mid-battle with a sword in his hand.
The sight squeezes my chest.
He was having a movie night.
I turn to him. “Sorry to interrupt your night.”
“You didn’t,” he says, taking a step toward me. “Why are you here, Carly?”
“Because I wanted to tell you that I got the job.”
His eyes stay on mine. “You’ve done that.”
“Yes.”
“Is that the only reason?”
I swallow. “No.”
The air between us feels suddenly thin, like there isn’t enough of it in the room. Andrew is close enough now that I can see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, the soft worn edge of his T-shirt collar, the pulse moving once at the base of his throat.
“Carly,” he says, and there is a warning in it. One last door left open, in case I want to run.
I don’t.
“I’m not your assistant anymore.”
“You technically still are.”
“But soon I won’t be. That’s a fact,” I say, moving closer.
We’re just an arm’s length apart now. If I wanted to, I could reach out and touch him.
“I know it’s complicated. I know there are still things we probably need to talk about.
” I take a breath. “But I am here because I got the job and because you’re the person I wanted to tell.
” Before I lose my nerve, I add, “And because I’m tired of fighting this, and I think you are too. ”
For a moment, he doesn’t move.
Then he reaches for my face, his fingers brushing my jaw so gently it almost makes my knees give out. “Yeah, I am,” he says, his voice low. “Now what?”
I hold his gaze while gathering every ounce of courage I have. All of it. Every sad little scrap.
“Now I want you to kiss the ever-loving shit out of me, Andrew Bennett.”
There is a beat of silence.
Then he does.
And oh man, does he take the request seriously.
Both hands cradle my face as his mouth comes down on mine. It’s raw and hungry and a little messy in the best possible way. He kisses me like a starving man, like he has been holding himself back for far too long.
Maybe he has.
God knows I have.
The relief of it hits almost as hard as the kiss itself. There’s no pretending now. No invisible line that we’re both trying not to cross. There is only Andrew’s mouth on mine, his hands in my hair and my fingers twisted in the soft cotton of his T-shirt.
I push closer, and he makes a low sound against my mouth.
He releases my face only to grip the backs of my thighs, lifting me like I weigh nothing. My legs lock around his waist, and he turns toward the kitchen counter, but I break the kiss just long enough to say, “bedroom.”
The trip down the hall is a blur of mouths and hands and me trying very hard not to make an embarrassing noise every time his fingers dig into my thighs.
The bedroom door opens with a push of his hip, hitting the wall with a soft thud, and then we’re inside, surrounded by dim light and cool air and the faint, clean smell of him.
A few seconds later, my back hits his very expensive mattress.
His mouth finds mine again immediately. Then my jaw. My neck. The spot just below my ear that makes my whole body go loose and stupid. One of his knees presses into the mattress between mine, and the bed dips under his weight as he leans over me.
I push at his shoulders before I lose the ability to form words.
“Undress,” I say, as sternly as I can while lying breathless on his bed.
A low sound leaves him, almost a laugh. “Bossy.”
Then he pulls his T-shirt over his head, and I forget whatever clever thing I was going to say next.
Because Andrew is shirtless, in gray sweatpants, in his bedroom, with his discarded T-shirt on the floor and his eyes on me like I am the only thing in the world worth paying attention to.
Holy fucking shit.
If someone had told me a year ago that this would happen, I would have laughed directly in their face. There was no universe in which Andrew Bennett took me to his bedroom and looked at me like that.
Except apparently there is.
His eyes stay on me as I sit up and start unbuttoning my shirt. My fingers are clumsy, and one of the buttons catches because apparently my blouse has chosen this exact moment to protect my modesty. I make a frustrated sound, and his mouth twitches.
“Don’t laugh,” I warn.
“I wouldn’t dare.”
He absolutely would.
I get the button free and push the shirt off my shoulders. It lands somewhere near his T-shirt, and my bra follows closely behind.
Andrew lowers himself over me, and the first press of his bare chest against mine pulls a shaky sound from my throat.
His eyes flick to my face, checking, and I pull him down to kiss me before he can ask a question I am too impatient to answer.
His mouth moves over mine, deeper this time. My back sinks into the mattress. My nipples drag against his chest with every movement, the friction sending bright little sparks through me. His hand slides down my side, over my hip, and stops at the waistband of my pants.
I lift my hips.
He pulls them down slowly, my underwear with them, and the cool air hits my skin.
Andrew breaks the kiss and pulls back. His eyes move over my body with a kind of focused hunger that makes me want to cover myself and spread wider at the same time.
He sucks in a breath and shakes his head slightly. “You have no idea.”
My skin prickles. “No idea what?”
His fingers trail down the curve of my waist, light enough to make me shiver. “How many times I’ve imagined this.”
“You’ve been imagining me?”
His eyes lift to mine.
“Constantly.”
Then his mouth is on mine again.
His hand slides between my thighs, and he touches me the way he knows I like, finding the place that makes my breath catch and the rhythm that makes my hips chase his hand. His mouth leaves mine and moves lower, kissing a path down my throat before closing over one nipple.
He works me like that until I’m shaking under him, right there on the edge, so close I can barely breathe.
Then I catch his wrist.
“What is it?” The question scrapes out of him, but his hand stays exactly where I stopped it.
“I want to feel you when I come,” I say.
I can see heat ignite in his eyes. He kisses me, hard and brief, then pulls back to shove his sweatpants down. I help because I am generous and also extremely motivated, and then he is naked too.
I put a hand on his chest and push him back just enough to look at him properly.
All of him.
The lamp beside the bed throws warm light over his shoulders, his chest, the hard lines of his stomach.
“It’s unfair,” I say. “No one should be allowed to look like this.”
His mouth twitches.
Then he lowers himself over me again, and the humor disappears under the weight of him, the heat of him, the impossible reality of his body between my thighs.
“Condom?” he asks hoarsely.
“I’m on birth control,” I say.
His eyes darken.
One hand slips between us as he lines himself up, and I feel the head of him glide through my wetness. My breath catches. His mouth brushes my temple, then my cheek, then the corner of my mouth.
“Tell me if you need me to stop.”
“I will.”
Only then does he push into me, slowly. So slowly that the stretch feels endless, my body opening around him inch by inch. I gasp and grab at his shoulders.
“Okay?” he asks.
“Yes.” My voice comes out high and desperate. “Please don’t stop.”
A broken sound leaves him, and then he moves the last few inches until he is fully inside me.
For a second, neither of us moves.
The room is quiet except for our breathing. His forehead lowers to mine, and I stare up at him, overwhelmed by the fullness, the heat, him, us. His hand is braced beside my head, the other still curled around my hip.
Then he starts to move.
Slow at first. Deep. Careful in a way that feels almost like reverence, which is a truly insane word to be thinking while Andrew Bennett is naked on top of me, but there we are.
Fuck.
It’s better than I imagined.
And I imagined a lot.
For a while, there is only that. The weight of him over me. The heat of his breath against my cheek. The steady rhythm of him moving inside me, our bodies finding each other again and again.
I hold on to his shoulders and let myself feel every impossible second of it, because part of me still can’t quite believe this is happening.
That this is Andrew. That this is me. That we are here, in his bed, with our clothes on the floor and his paused movie still waiting uselessly in the other room.
His hand slides up my side, over my ribs, then back down to my hip, holding steady as he moves.
I shift beneath him, angling my hips until his body presses against me exactly right, and his breath catches.
“There?”
“Yeah,” I manage.
His grip tightens on my hip, and he keeps that angle, moving into me again with the same perfect pressure.
My head tips back into the pillow.
Andrew watches my face as he moves, like he’s learning me all over again in a different language. Every sound I make changes something in him. His rhythm. His grip. The angle of his hips.
I wrap one leg higher around his waist, and he sinks deeper.
The sound that leaves me is not dignified.
“That’s it, baby,” he whispers.
He lowers his mouth to my neck as his rhythm starts to fray. Not completely, but enough that I feel it. Enough that the bed shifts beneath us, that the sheets twist under my back, that one of his hands tightens on my hip like he is holding himself together by force.
I touch him. My hands move over his shoulders, down his back, feeling the hard shift of muscle beneath warm skin. When my nails drag lightly over him, his rhythm falters even more.
There.
I do it again.
A rough sound breaks from his throat, and pride, reckless and bright, blooms in my chest.
His mouth finds mine, harder now. Less careful. I meet him there, kissing him back with weeks of wanting, waiting.
His hand slips between us, his fingers finding my clit, and the first touch sends a bright shock through me. I gasp into his mouth.
“Is that good?” he murmurs.
I laugh once, breathless. “Stupid question.”
His mouth curves against mine.
The pressure starts building low in my belly.
A heat gathering and gathering until I can’t focus on anything except the press of him inside me and the perfect rhythm of his hand.
My fingers dig into his back. The headboard gives a soft knock against the wall, and a distant part of me hopes his neighbors are either asleep or extremely sex-positive.
“I’m gonna come,” I whisper.
Andrew’s breath turns ragged.
“Good,” he says, and the word sounds wrecked. “Come for me.”
That does it.
I break.
It rolls through me hard and deep, my body clenching around him as pleasure drags me under. I hear myself cry out, feel his mouth at my jaw, his hand on my hip, his body still moving through it, drawing it out until I’m shaking beneath him.
A few seconds later, his rhythm stutters.
He drops his face into the crook of my neck, and he comes with a broken groan, his body going tense over mine.
For a while, neither of us moves.
We just lie there, breathing.
His weight is heavy and warm on top of me, and I don’t want him to move. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Eventually, he shifts enough to keep from crushing me, but he doesn’t go far. One arm stays wrapped around my waist, his forehead pressed against the side of my neck.
“Holy fucking shit,” I whisper.
His breath tickles my skin.
“Yeah,” he says. “Holy fucking shit.”