Chapter 12 #3
The dual sensations of the sudden loss of pleasure and the uneasy squirm of being caught in . . . Well, not quite a lie.
“No, I, uh.” This was something better discussed when one of them wasn’t bent over a cabinet with their skirt fully up around their waist. She stood up and tugged her hem marginally lower as she turned to face him.
“Healing isn’t automatic. It doesn’t happen on its own.”
Maxim waited for her to continue.
“And I . . .” She brought a hand to the twin pink semicircles. “I liked the look of this.”
“Why?” That one rasped word was barely audible. There was a tightness to it, as if Maxim had to force himself to say it.
Because it felt like you were still with me.
It seemed like such a juvenile reason, as if she were a teenager wearing a hickey like a badge. It wasn’t something she could say to a well-dressed man in a tie, even if his knuckles still shone with her arousal.
So instead, Pippa forced a light chuckle. “Maybe it reminds me of the things I like.” She reached forward and grasped Maxim’s tie, using it to pull him back toward her.
If he had been a book at that moment, he would have snapped shut. Muscles in his neck worked around his harsh swallow.
What on earth had she said? She’d thought that bit about “something I like” was flirty and might possibly imply what she was too embarrassed to say out loud, but here was Maxim with his jaw pulsing like he was chewing on his tongue.
“You know what else I like?”
“Hmm.”
He’d gone back to stoic. How disappointing. Pippa backed up until she bumped against the filing cabinet, then wiggled and shifted to a seated position on top of it.
“I like you.”
He quirked an eyebrow in such a minute movement that she wondered if she’d imagined it.
“I like this.”
Maxim stepped between her legs and puffed a sigh through barely-parted lips, his attention darting between her mouth, her breasts, her bared neck, and her exposed and saturated underwear.
“I like you doing this.” She took his hand and brought it to the heat between her thighs.
The air left his lungs in a strangled groan, and then he was kissing her again, one hand on her nape and the other rubbing and delving and curling into her so perfectly that her legs trembled.
A moan burbled up from Pippa’s chest, and Maxim clamped his hand over her mouth, a little rougher than he’d done before.
She reached down between them and pressed her palm to the front of his pants, then moaned again at what she found there. She pressed harder, and Maxim gasped, tipping his head forward to rest against hers. His hips jerked into her touch and his breath tickled her cheeks.
How wonderful would it be to see him as undone as he had been able to do to her; to feel him quiver, to see him unravel.
Pippa said that, albeit much less eloquently, but only got a few words before Maxim blurted, “Oh, shit, sorry, what?” and removed his hand from her mouth.
“I want to suck you off,” she repeated.
He hummed as she traced the curve of his stiff cock beneath his pants. “You really want that? Here?”
The enthusiasm of her nod loosed several strands of hair from her hair clip.
He leaned in, nipped her earlobe, and murmured, “Well then you’d better fucking come, Pippa.”
An order she was all too ready to follow.
Her fingers moved frantically right above where Maxim’s were buried within her.
Between the feel of him inside her and the demanding way he had said her name, it didn’t take long before she was whimpering into the palm he’d clamped back over her mouth.
Tension built hard and fast through her body, and every fierce thrust of his thick fingers pushed her higher and higher until she came with a bright flash of pleasure.
Pippa’s limbs felt heavy and liquid, but she fought through it and even ignored the wobble of one knee as she slid off the filing cabinet.
She’d expected Maxim to be just as desperate for this as she, and it was a little surprising when she was the only one to fumble with his belt, the only one to tug his button free and wrestle his zipper into submission.
He stood silently, his hands resting gently on her upper arms and his jaw working.
Pippa paused. She bit her lip. Why wasn’t he seeming as into this as he’d been earlier?
“The tapping thing can go both ways,” she said softly. “If you’re having second thoughts.”
Maxim ran his thumb along her jaw and brushed it over her lower lip. “I’m not. Not at all.” He was touching her far more tenderly than she would expect, considering how this closet encounter had begun. There was something reverent in the way he looked at her as she sank to her knees.
She glanced up at him before she fully lost herself in pulling at the waist of his unbelievably soft boxer briefs. In all the situations she’d imagined where they were arranged like this, none had ever included hesitancy. As she opened her mouth to get additional confirmation from him, he spoke.
“Are you sure?”
Something deep in Pippa’s chest melted, and then melted further as he tucked some of her hair behind her ear. Here she was, inches from his dick, and he still thought to ask.
She rubbed the hard length of him through his underwear and sent up a coy smile. “I want to taste you.”
A strangled groan escaped Maxim. It turned into a tight gasp as she dipped beneath the fabric and took his cock in hand.
Oh, he was nice. Thick and heavy and warm.
But as nice as his cock was, with its flushed head and impressive size, his reactions were even nicer.
He shuddered as she licked up the length of him.
His trembling hand cupped the back of her head and he arched forward as if he could barely manage to stay upright when she tried to take him as deep as possible.
Such lovely, flattering reactions.
Pippa moved faster, stroked harder. She relished every single sound that came from above her.
His hips bucked slightly as she flicked her tongue along a spot she would make sure to remember for later.
It was tempting to draw this out, spend time learning his gasps and what little spots on his body set him shaking, but they’d already been in here for some time. Wouldn’t want anyone to get suspicious.
Just as she’d done in the office, she sent magic sweeping up his torso, two warm extensions of her hands that traveled from his hips to his chest. They grazed his nipples and his pectorals, and right as they scraped his neck, he choked and shuddered and fell apart.
Pippa reveled in the glazed, startled look in his heavy-lidded eyes as she swallowed him down.
Maxim had braced one hand on the closed door, and as she stood and wiped her mouth, he ran his other hand down his face.
“You’re merciless,” he said.
She tucked his cock into his underwear, “No idea what you mean.”
“It’s not even noon.”
“And?”
Maxim huffed a soft laugh. “And that means I have to force myself not to keep thinking about your mouth for the next five hours.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage.”
“Yeah.” Focusing on a point over her shoulder, he chewed on his cheek as if trying to figure out how to say something difficult.
Pippa swallowed, suddenly nervous. She tugged her skirt back into place and snatched her scarf from the floor. Big revelations after any sort of intimacy never tended to be ones that left her feeling bright and happy and free to revel in the recent orgasms.
“What are we doing?” he whispered.
Pippa’s stomach sank. Please let this not be regret. She stepped close to him and put a hand on his lapel, feeling his heartbeat lurch under her palm.
“We’re having fun.” Her smile was far lighter than she felt. “Yeah?”
At least he smiled back. At least he placed a hand over the one she’d laid on his chest.
“Yeah,” Maxim said, although there was something forced in his smile, too. “Yeah, we are.” He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you head back first. I need to get this”—he made a broad gesture to his body—“cleaned up.”
Pippa unlocked the door, but before she could turn the knob, Maxim grasped her wrist and pulled her into a kiss.
It would be easy to assume that this was an ordinary “Well that was fun, bye for now” sort of kiss. She was about to leave the Closet of Debauchery, and Maxim was due in meetings for the rest of the day that were not the sort of meetings a lowly legal assistant would attend.
However, most parting kisses weren’t this lingering, or gentle, and they certainly didn’t involve the sudden intensity right at the end.
He kissed her as if he was going to war tomorrow, as if he was trying to tell her a thousand things without speaking a single one.
It was incredibly tempting to imagine what those things could be. Too tempting.
She left him behind in the closet and closed the door.
The stair treads clanged as Pippa stomped up them, and it felt casually rewarding to make so much noise at the same time more unfortunate noise was happening in her head. Hell, what were they doing? She scraped her hair into some semblance of decency and frowned.
As she turned the stairwell corner, she’d tipped her head down to more carefully secure her hair in its clip, and only realized someone was in the hall with her when she saw the pair of shining black high heels set apart like their owner was about to start a fencing duel.
Shit.
“Oh hey!” Pippa said. “Heading to Get Buzzed?” The chipper note in her voice could likely be heard four floors down.
Jules crossed her arms over her chest. She was wearing a smart dark blazer over a button-down shirt, and Pippa chose to look at her rainbow cuff links instead of the excitement blazing in her eyes.
“You saucy bitch.”
“Jules—”
“You illicit, saucy bitch.” Her grin was on the edge of terrifying. If it got any wider, it would split her ears.
“Listen—”
“This is the best thing you’ve ever done. Seriously. Screw whatever you did to make Maxim all flustered and bloody in that alley— Oh my God did you bang him there too?”