SULLY
This is Fish's fault.
We were fine at Murphy's. We were having a good night, a couple of beers, the boys still yelling about Cap getting engaged, and Bouch upset because he hasn’t found a woman yet but also complaining that he doesn’t want to settle down yet. Perfectly good night.
Then Fish looks at his phone and says, “Collette's at some club with the girls. No man better think they can touch my woman.” Forty minutes later here we are, five grown men walking into a club because Justin Crawford cannot be separated from his wife for one evening.
“You're pathetic,” Bouch tells him.
“Fuck you. You’re just jealous.”
“Facts,” Nelly teases Bouch, which earns him a finger.
Inside it's dark, loud, and packed, with the bass going through the floor, and Fish is up on his toes scanning the room like a lifeguard until he spots the booth.
And I see her before I've even decided to look for her.
She's on the dance floor, in a dress that shows off her curves, curves that I have run my tongue over, laughing with her head tipped back, and there's a guy with her.
Hands on her waist as if they belong there.
Everything in me goes very still. I watch him lean in and kiss her, I stand there like an idiot with a drink in my hand and my heart going through my ribs.
Good, I tell myself. This is good. This is exactly what she's supposed to be doing.
I told her to do this. Not in those words, but I told her.
Go be single, figure yourself out. I stood in my own bedroom and agreed with her that we should stop, and I meant it, and she is out here doing precisely the thing I said she should do, and I have absolutely no right to feel like someone's just taken a blade to my ribs.
She pulls back from him, smiling, and turns toward the booth.
Her eyes find mine, her face drops, and she subtly moves away from him.
Even in this light I can see it, that little flinch of oh shit, and I hate it, I hate that she looks caught because there's nothing to be caught at. She hasn't done anything wrong.
Then someone's hand lands on my chest, pulling my attention from her. “You're one of the Mavericks, right?” the silky voice asks.
There's a girl in front of me, blonde, tiny dress with cleavage spilling over the edge, and a big smile.
Then there's another one at my shoulder.
There are three more moving in on Bouch and Evan, and Nelly's already gone into full deer-in-headlights mode, and just like that, we're surrounded, and I can't see the dance floor anymore.
“Yeah,” I say.
“I knew it. I told my friend.” She leans in closer, her hand still on me. “Can we get a photo?”
We take the photo. I smile when she asks me fifty million inane questions about nothing. I do the whole thing on autopilot, same as I've done a thousand times. Normally it's fine, this is what the puck bunnies do, but tonight I'd rather be anywhere else on earth.
The blonde's still talking. She's got her hand on my forearm now and she's telling me she's here with her sister. I'm nodding along but I don't hear a single word, because I'm trying to see past her shoulder to a spot on the dance floor, but I can’t find her.
I shouldn’t be here. I put my beer down. “Sorry,” I tell her. “It was nice meeting you. I've got an early one.”
I find Bouch, tell him I'm out, ignore the noise he makes about it, and I leave.
I get home and shower. I put on the TV but don't watch it, then get a beer out of the fridge and don't drink it.
I stand in the kitchen in the dark with the city lights coming through the windows, running the same loop of watching her kiss some random in the club over and over and wishing it was me.
I have no idea what time it is when I hear the door to the apartment open. She comes in with her shoes in one hand, hair a mess, and stops dead when she sees me.
“You're still up.”
“Couldn't sleep,” I tell her.
“Right.” She sets her shoes down carefully and wobbles a little. She's drunk. “You left.”
“Yeah, not much of a club guy. We went because Fish didn’t want anyone hitting on his wife.”
She nods as she comes over to the island, and leans on it with both hands. I look past her to the empty hallway. “Cass not with you?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“She's with Marlowe. I think she’s staying there tonight.”
“Right.” I nod.
Silence falls between us. I walk over to the fridge and grab her a bottle of water and hand it to her.
“Thanks,” she says, opening it and taking a large sip. “You saw.”
I don't insult her by asking what. “Yeah.”
“He was just some guy,” she says.
“You don't have to explain.”
“I'm not explaining, just telling,” she says.
“Okay.”
“Why do you sound upset?” she asks, pushing off the island as she comes around to me. “You told me to go out and explore others.” She stops in front of me. Close enough that I can smell the champagne on her. “So why did you leave?” she says.
And there it is. I could lie, but … “Em,” I say.
“Why did you leave, Sully?” Her question is more urgent.
“You know why,” I tell her.
She looks up at me, her chin up, her eyes wet, and she's swaying very slightly on her feet, and she says, “Say it.”
“We agreed.”
“I know what we agreed.” Her hand comes up, landing flat on my chest, right where the blonde's did, and it is not the same, it is nothing like the same. It goes through me like a current. “Say it anyway.”
“You're drunk.”
“I'm not that drunk,” she argues.
“Ember …”
And then she kisses me. I’d love to say I stop her, but I don’t.
I get one hand under her jaw and one at her waist and lift her clean onto the island, and she’s laughing into my mouth, and then she isn’t.
The second her legs wrap around me, the laugh dies.
Her mouth turns hungry, open, desperate.
I kiss her like I’ve been starving for weeks, tongue deep, teeth nipping her bottom lip, one hand fisted in her hair so I can tilt her head exactly how I want her.
She moans into me, fingers digging into my shoulders, and I can feel how wet she already is through the thin fabric of whatever she’s wearing under that dress.
“Fuck, Em,” I growl against her mouth, shoving the dress up her thighs. “You taste like champagne and bad decisions.”
She laughs again, breathless, and then bites my lip hard enough to sting. I groan and shove her thighs wider, stepping between them. My cock is already rock-hard against the front of my jeans, and when she rolls her hips against me, I nearly lose it right there.
I yank the dress higher, exposing the scrap of lace she calls underwear. One hard tug and it’s gone, tossed somewhere behind me. She’s bare and dripping for me, and the sight of her on my kitchen island, flushed, lips swollen, thighs spread, almost drops me to my knees.
I don’t wait.
I drop my head between her legs and lick her open in one long, filthy stroke.
She cries out, hands flying to my hair, and I don’t ease up.
I eat her like I’ve been thinking about this every single night since I walked away from her bed.
Tongue deep, fingers sliding in, curling, fucking her while I suck her clit hard enough that her thighs shake around my head.
“Sully …. Oh God …”
“Come on my tongue,” I order against her, voice rough. “Right fucking now.”
She does. Hard. Legs clamping around my head, a broken moan tearing out of her as she soaks my mouth. I keep licking her through it, slower now, until she’s twitching and whimpering, pushing at my shoulders.
I stand, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and free my cock, but I don’t have time to grab a condom, I’m too far gone to stop now as I drag her to the edge of the island, line up, and push in with one long, deep thrust that makes both of us groan.
She’s so tight around me it borders on pain. Perfect.
I don’t go slow. I fuck her hard and deep, one hand braced on the counter beside her head, the other gripping her hip hard enough to leave marks.
Every thrust makes her tits bounce under the dress I never bothered taking off.
She’s moaning my name, nails scraping down my back, meeting me thrust for thrust.
“You feel so fucking good,” I rasp against her ear. “Missed this pussy. Missed how you take me.”
She comes again with a sharp cry, clenching around me so hard I have to grit my teeth not to follow. I pull out, flip her over so her chest is pressed to the cool marble, and slam back in from behind. Deeper. Harder. One hand in her hair, the other reaching around to rub her clit in tight circles.
“One more,” I demand. “Give me one more.”
She does, sobbing my name into the counter as she falls apart again. The way she squeezes me pulls my own orgasm out of me in a low, guttural groan. I bury myself deep and come so hard my vision whites out for a second.
We stay like that, panting, her cheek pressed to the marble, my forehead resting between her shoulder blades.
Eventually, I pull out and grab a dish towel to wipe myself from between her thighs and help her down. Her legs are shaky. Mine aren’t much better. She looks up at me, eyes glassy, lips swollen, as she pulls the dress down over her.
“You didn’t use a condom?” Her eyes widen at me.
I rub the back of my neck. “I’m sorry … I …”
She shakes her head. “It’s okay. I got tested, and I’m on the pill. It should be fine.”
“It was fucking stupid. I’ve never been so reckless,” I tell her.
“We were both reckless tonight.” She looks up at me.
We both know this was a mistake, and I know we’re going to do it again. It’s inevitable.