Chapter 6
6
Emily
T hat pulse of intent and determination behind his words stirred heavy emotion through me, as did the brooding stare he levelled on me, seeming to be waiting for…something.
Fortunately, the second “when” that rushed to the tip of my tongue managed to stay put.
We were flying at breakneck speed and I needed to put the brakes on.
Luckily, Fletcher didn’t seem to mind when I changed to safer subjects like our case load for the rest of the way to his condo.
His place was stunning.
I’d been there only once, when he hosted a pre-Christmas dinner for his senior partners. He called me to pick up and deliver a case of wine stuck at a warehouse in Queens because of heavy snow.
I suspected it was an excuse but hadn’t been able to fully convince myself back then. But he’d invited me to stay, and throughout the dinner, I felt his gaze following me around the room.
He’d looked positively livid when at the end of the night Darius Redmond, one of the partners, had offered to give me a ride when he found out I lived in the Village.
Fletcher had called every five minutes until I assured him I was home. And that yes, I was alone.
I barely dropped my purse on the nearest surface now before he swept me up into arms, his lips finding mine, his tongue stroking mine in hungry licks as he headed down a hallway to where I suspected his bedroom was.
I needed a longer time to recover, especially after he insisted I sit on his face after we showered. Then in the many hours thereafter.
And for the second time that day, after I fell into a boneless heap, this time in Fletcher Knight’s California king size bed, he'd scooped up his phone and placed the call to Tony Strada.
Turned out the intemperate chef could be coerced.
Especially since his nephew needed urgent help with his second DUI. Fletcher had promised to put his best person on it, turning to wink at me as he said that, then winking again when I’d rolled my eyes.
Then he’d gone one better and promised to pay for Strada’s nephew’s fine.
Which was how we came to be enjoying leftovers from the veritable feast on Saturday afternoon, accompanied by wine from Fletcher’s extended selection.
Fletcher never made it into work yesterday, and by simply stating I was working with him from home, neither did I.
“On Thursday, when you said that thing about not dating... I mean, I know you said vows are vows but she didn’t keep hers to you. So…”
He shrugged. “Tit-for-tat fucking wasn’t my thing. So no, I haven’t had sex with another woman in three years.”
Oh God. That accounted for the unhinged edge to our coupling on his desk. But that also worried me a little. Because once he appeased the years-long hunger and deprivation, would he grow bored with me?
“I see you thinking again, baby. What’s up?”
It was deeply disconcerting how easily he could read me. But in a way I was also glad. Because left to my devices, I would’ve suppressed then obsessed about this until I tore out my metaphorical hair.
With his implacable demand, I could blurt it all out.
So I did.
Fletcher
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected her to say, but what she did say triggered a bark of laughter.
When she frowned, then pouted her adorable lips at me, I kissed her irresistible mouth before I answered. “You think you’re just an itch I intend to scratch then discard?” I asked, incredulous.
“It’s not funny,” she grumbled when I chuckled some more.
I had to kiss her again.
At this point it felt like not kissing her was a cardinal sin. And I was a good, ruinously perverted, mostly unhinged Catholic boy when it came to Emily Hartley.
“No, it’s not. But I don’t want to scare you, so will you accept my oral statement when I say I won’t grow bored? Or do you need irrefutable evidence?”
A slow blush crept in her cheeks, and she looked slightly abashed when she flicked me a glance from beneath her lovely lashes. “I wouldn’t mind a little more concrete evidence, please.”
Grinning, I pulled her closer until she was splayed on top of me. Fuck, she was so soft. So gorgeously supple. Touching her was an addiction I intended to feed often and unreservedly.
I wrapped my fingers around the long strands of her hair, watched the silky fall caress my skin for a moment before I met her beautiful blue eyes.
“I know your favorite meal—pancakes with three pieces of bacon, a shaving of butter and blueberry syrup—which shampoo you use—Pantene with argan oil, where you buy your perfume. The only thing I didn’t know until today was just how incredible you would taste. How insanely good your little pussy would feel around my cock, whether that toy you ordered online had done its job so you would be able to take all of me the first time.”
Her mouth dropped open and a deep flush flooded her face. Had I not tightened my hold on her, she would’ve fidgeted. Probably jumped out of my arms. “Oh God! You know about that?”
I chucked inwardly.
This girl. I was a little worried for her when she found out the extent of my obsession. How I hadn’t left a single stone unturned when it came to making sure I knew her inside out.
It did help to know she’d pulled a few tricks of her own too.
“Yes. Just like I know the dry cleaners didn’t lose my shirt.”
Her fiery blush deepened and she covered her face with her hands. “Oh no, I’m so ashamed.”
Laughing, I captured them, drew them away so I could look into her eyes. “Are you really?”
She paused for a moment. Bit her lip. Then shook her head. “No. I wanted a piece of you with me and sure, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing to take the shirt, but I don’t regret it.”
“Good, then I hope you’ll bear that in mind with what I’m about to show you too,” I said.
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“You wanted more evidence, baby, and I can provide it. But I’m also okay with holding back if you want a breather?”
She blinked, then shook her head. As I suspected she would.
My heart lurched, wondering if this might not be the best idea. Too fast too soon and I risked spooking and losing her.
But wasn’t it better she knew this early that I had very few boundaries when it came to her, so we could get to working on possible disagreements if necessary?
“Come with me.” I linked my fingers with her and tugged her out of the bedroom, past my study to the door at the farthest end of the hallway. I entered the code and when it whispered open, I pushed it wide.
Positioning her in front of me, I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, sent a prayer just in case God was in a listening mood, and flipped on the light.
Her shocked gasp followed her tensing. Then her gaze whipped around the room, struggling to catalog what she was seeing. “Oh…my God. You…I…”
“Yes,” I responded simply. There was no point hiding how far gone I was for her.
To be fair though, this was a lot.
I couldn’t even pretend to know how she was feeling because to me, this had been as inevitable as breathing the second she walked into my life.
And the evidence was right there.
Dozens of pictures of Emily, splayed on the walls on three sides of the room, carefully spotlit so none were in shadow or hidden from my rabid attention. So that from the specially commissioned armchair positioned in the middle of the room, I could gaze at her celluloid representations, revel in my obsession.
She took a step forward and I moved with her as she went closer to get a better look at the smaller items pinned to some of the pictures. Her breathing stuttered. “Oh! You have receipts from…”
“Every takeout you’ve ordered, every movie stub, every birth control prescription you’ve filled since you came to Chicago.”
I watched her face carefully as I recited every deep, perhaps unhinged, thing I’d done. I registered her shock, of course, because seriously, who would do this if they didn’t have something pathologically incorrect with them?
But beneath that shock, I spotted something else. Something that made my heart jump and my blood rush a little faster.
That glitter in her blue eyes.
She… liked it. This singular fixation I possessed.
Emily Hartley came from a good family, with no history of aberrant behavior anywhere on her family tree. She was the middle child of three and got on well with her siblings. Her parents seemed, on paper at least, like decent folks.
And yet, my sexy little paralegal who’d taken me down her throat like a slutty vixen, was positively vibrating with undisguised delight as her eyes tracked my walls, taking in the extent of my depraved interest.
Glancing down, I saw her nipples had peaked into hard nubs and her breathing was growing choppier by the second.
She was hopelessly, beautifully turned on.
And I was utterly thrilled as hell because I knew I would be able to pinpoint to our grandkids the second I fell in love with Emily Hartley.
It would be a heavily embellished, PG version, of course.
Sucking in an ecstatic breath but deciding not to show how utterly pleased I was… yet, I slid a hand over her belly to her pussy.
Her sopping wet pussy. Reveled in her hot little gasp.
“Look at you, dripping wet for my obsession wall. You wanted to know, now you know. I would call us even, but I have a feeling I’m going to win this obsession game,” I whispered in her ear. Then bit her soft lobe, my dick jerking against her ass when she shuddered.
“When…?” she asked shakily, still taking it all in, but now nudging her juicy ass against my crotch.
She would need fucking soon and I couldn’t wait to fulfil her need.
I slid two fingers alongside her clit, not quite giving her nub the attention it desired. “When was my obsession mode activated? I craved you the moment I saw you. But I knew I wasn’t going to rest until you were mine when you wiped the floor with paralegals with years more experience than you during the Lovell deposition.” I bit her ear again and felt her body sag.
“Fletch.”
“Fuck, have I told you how much I love it when you sigh my name like that?”
“I thought you loved it when I called you Mr. Knight?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I love everything about you.”
Her breath caught and mine strangled in my lungs when my words echoed in the room.
She struggled to spin around in my tight hold and her eyes were wide saucers when she looked up at me. “I…you…”
“Just told you I love you?” I dropped my forehead to hers. Fuck it, I’d held on to my willpower for six months by the skin of my teeth. Maybe letting go wasn’t such a bad thing. “Yes, I did. I do.” I pulled back so I could look into her eyes. To confess my unshakable truth. “I would die and kill for you. I fucking love and adore you, Emily Hartley. With every fiber of my being.”
She didn’t say it back.
And I was okay with that.
She…we’d been through a lot. And I’d unloaded way more on her today than I’d intended.
While I knew of the little things she’d done, like steal my shirt and pretend the dry cleaners had lost and then replaced it, and bought me a gift to mark my divorce, it could all have been the equivalent of a schoolgirl crush on her part.
If she needed a minute to work through her feelings after forty-eight hours of being dicked down by a raving lunatic who hadn’t had sex in almost three years, I owed her that respite.
Especially when she threw her arms around my neck and rose on tiptoe to kiss me. With tongue. Enthusiastically.
Wrapping my arms around her, I lifted her and marched us to the armchair I’d spent many lonely nights in, stroking my cock to her image.
Perching on the edge, I placed her between my spread legs without breaking the kiss. Her fingers spiked into my hair, and God, the noises she made when she was turned on was like my own personal orchestral symphony.
So of course, I protested when she broke the kiss. “Hey, I wasn’t quite done with—oh…fuck.”
The sight of Emily dropping to her knees was a new and intensely heady one. And I was stoked to see she was already growing bolder, taking my cock in her hands while looking me straight in the eyes.
Stroking me while her breath shortened, as if her pleasure in the act was just as acute as mine.
“Is this okay, Mr. Knight? Shall I go a little harder?” It was a half-teasing, half-curious query that I had to blink a couple of times to answer.
“Whatever you give me, I’ll take, baby.”
She pouted. “But I want to learn. Teach me, Mr. Knight. I’m your eager paralegal, super stoked to learn.”
Yeah, okay. Now she was in full vixen mode. I squeezed my eyes shut as sensation battered me. “Fuck.”
As she lowered her head and her tongue flicked out to lash my engorged crown, a whisper of a thought impinged.
Monday was racing toward us.
And as she’d reminded me, she was my paralegal. At least for the time being. She would make a phenomenal lawyer when the time came and I intended to fully support and yeah, maybe push her firmly in that pursuit.
Being ballsy about being discovered was one thing. But I’d known I would need to manage the fallout delica?—
“Fuck!” The hot suction of Emily’s mouth scrambled my brain. I gripped the arms of the chair to keep from shoving deeper.
I took her a little too roughly in my office on Thursday. And again in the bathroom yesterday. I couldn’t have her throat sore from overuse, regardless of how much I was dying to.
But holy shit, her mouth was heaven on earth and nirvana wrapped into one. “God, that feels so fucking good,” I croaked.
My eager little paralegal lapped up the praise, sucked me harder and longer until my eyes started to cross. Until my soul threatened to leave my body and throw itself into her arms in deep gratitude.
Regret stabbed me when I tapped her shoulder and pulled myself free.