Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“C—Cal,” I manage, the word breaking, my heels digging into the backs of his shoulders.
I feel him smile against me, the bastard, and he keeps going, gentle then deeper, sucking softly, and then sliding a finger inside of me, pumping once, and then twice, then replacing it with his tongue.
Like he’s mapping oceans and naming them, just to set course to map them again.
His left hand holds me against his mouth and against the desk even though I am bucking against him and both my hands find their way into his hair, gently massaging his head. He slides two fingers inside of me now, licking and sucking in rhythm.
I gasp, pulling at his hair with one hand and gripping the desk with the other, and his hums against my clit in response to me send me over the edge, literally and metaphorically.
His fingers slip out of me as I slide a few inches off the desk, but I don’t fall, and I don’t even consider falling as an option.
Both his hands grip me around my ass and back to hold me against his lips, my legs fully over his shoulders now where he sits.
I brace my hands on the desk beside me and throw my head back as he devours me.
When my orgasm hits, it’s a small detonation.
I vaguely hear his name and it sounds like it might be my voice, but this feeling is bright, melting, and my senses blur together.
My spine arches, my fingers scramble for purchase over moon phases and gold and wood.
He doesn’t stop until I’m done shaking, until breath returns to my body like tide returning to shore.
He kisses the inside of each thigh, then each knee as he sets one foot and then the other solidly on the ground.
But he doesn’t let go of my hips as he stands.
My pulse won’t calm down as he trails kisses against my hips, and the kisses follow his hands up to my waist. He holds me there as he rises to tower above me, mouth swollen, eyes dark with the kind of pride that undoes me all over again.
“You okay?” he asks, forehead against mine.
I huff a laugh that’s half-sob. “Unfairly okay.”
“Good.” He drags his knuckles down my cheek. “You on this desk might ruin me.”
“I will allow you to negotiate your ruin, like any good lawyer.”
“Take everything.” His hands slide under me, lifting, setting me further onto the smooth wood.
“You’re a real shitty negotiator, Calogero Renzetti.” My lips tilt in a smile and I laugh as his hands run back up my body, caressing a nipple with each hand as he does. “Not lawyerly in the least.”
He kisses me lazily and deep, and the taste of myself on his tongue makes my knees go soft again.
Somewhere beneath me, paper shifts. He makes a low sound when I tug his shirt over his head; I make a lower one when he does the same to my cardigan and tank top, tossing them aside.
Skin to skin, nothing between us but the thin band of control that feels more optional by the second.
I reach down to touch the waistband of his jeans and find the button, releasing it and sliding the zipper down, as he continues to steal my breath with his lips on mine. I hear the jeans hit the floor and feel the soft band of the top of his briefs under my fingers.
Of course he pauses. “Tell me, Max.”
“I want to be on top,” I say, surprised at how steady I sound. “I want to see you.”
His curse is soft and reverent. “Anything you want, you can be the boss.”
A curve of a smile rests upon my lips as he turns me, sitting back against the desk, palms flat behind him, the muscles in his stomach cutting neat lines down the center of my new favorite view.
The chandelier paints him in warm gold. I swing a leg over his lap, slowly, a deliberate claiming of what is mine, and settle my hands on his shoulders.
I press him back as his hard length meets my center between us. The movement crinkles something under him. I glance down.
There—half tucked beneath his shoulder, half fanned across the desk—are glossy pamphlets. A pamphlet for Roger Williams University School of Law in Providence.
My breath catches. Another pamphlet peeks out from under his palm; the corner bent like someone was saving it for later.
Admission Options for Transfer Students.
My name is handwritten on a sticky note in the top corner.
Words slowly come into focus.
Spring Start.
A spot saved.
One semester.
Six months.
I freeze, heartbeat ricocheting, the want and the need I felt moments ago and awareness colliding like cars in a tunnel. I look back at him. He’s watching my face, not the rest of me. Waiting. Not pushing. Realizing what I’m seeing at the same moment as I am.
“Cal,” I whisper, and the room tips, just a little, as the shape of the gift shifts in my hands.
I don’t move. But I feel the weight of this moment get heavier. The office wasn’t just him listening to me. It was also for this.
“I didn’t mean to bring it up this way,” he starts as he pushes himself up on one elbow to get closer to me. “I just know you only have one more year to finish if you’re going to finish, and I don’t want you to not have the option…”
He’s referring to the seven-year maximum for the law degree.
The clock I’ve tried not to hear ticking in the back of my head for years.
There’s a seven-year clock from the day you start law school; miss it and you basically have to start over.
He’s right, and it isn’t the first time I’ve thought about the impending date.
I glance over at the pamphlet and chew on my bottom lip.
He sits up fully, hands on my hips, the hard bulge between us sliding and making me inwardly groan despite the situation.
He says nothing. He doesn’t try to convince me, doesn’t tell me what his opinion is or what I should do.
He hugs me.
My naked body is pressed against this man’s hard, muscular chest and he wants to hug me. My arms are already around his shoulders and he lifts me slightly, allowing me room to lace my legs around his waist. He reaches up to cradle my head in one of his hands and sighs.
“I’d stay like this forever if you’d let me,” he mumbles it into my neck.
All my muscles relax and I lean into his arms. I’ve never felt so safe.
Not just physically, but every part of me.
I know for a fact I could tell Cal to drop this topic, and he would never bring it up again.
I could tell him I want to be a fly fisherman, and he would be out first thing in the morning buying me waders and a fishing pole.
I run my hands along his wide shoulders and pull back. His eyes look into mine and he smiles.
“You’re fucking beautiful. Every day, you are, but right now… fuck me,” he says it awestruck, running his fingers down my cheek and his smile gets wider. “Right now, you’re like a goddess.”
His eyes don’t even drift down to where my boobs are inches from his chin. Nope. Cal just looks into my eyes, and I can feel him growing harder beneath me.
His smile is contagious and I can’t help a matching one from spreading across my face. “Thank you for this office, Cal.”
“Anytime you need to pull yourself out, it’s yours.”
A loud, obnoxious laugh escapes my lips. “Oh no, not the pulling out again.” I cringe at him.
“If you think I’m ever pulling out, figuratively, you’re delusional—have you seen yourself? I’m not going anywhere.”
And now he looks down, his hands sliding down to my waist, over the curve of my ass that is sitting on his hips with a squeeze.
They run back up, his fingers grazing the sides of my breasts on either side as he does and a quiet, deep groan from his chest rolls between us as I rock forward slightly against his length.
He’d be perfectly content if we never spoke about law school ever again, I think as my mind drifts back to the pamphlets beneath us. But I don’t think I would.
“Do you think you’d mind?”
“Hmm?” He hums in question, his eyes drifting closed as his hands settle back on my hips, pressing me into him.
“Having to share your office for six months?”
His eyes pop open and his head jerks to look up at me.
“Do you think Richard will let me take a six-month hiatus?” I smile, joy bubbles up, sparks like it remembers me.
Another door Cal has propped open for me. And I’m walking through it.
The joy of making such a big decision like this is foreign, but it feels right.
It’s happiness that I lost. No—happiness that was taken from me.
I made the choice to leave law school, I know I did.
I own that. But I also wasn’t showered with praise, affection, and encouragement.
Not in the ways Cal has shown are possible in the past few weeks.
“Trying to consider if I want to talk about another man while you’re completely bare and on top of me, but yeah, I don’t think he will mind.
” He grips my neck with one hand, his thumb tilting my jaw up from my place in his lap.
“You’re going to be an attorney this time next year; you don’t need to go back there unless you want to. ”