“You okay?” Chris asks, lifting an inquisitive brow. The lines bracketing his mouth are deeper, sexier than usual.
“Yep.”
“Good.” He holds my gaze as he lowers his hands to the button on my jeans, then the zipper, pushing the denim down to my knees before crouching to work it off my legs completely. He remains kneeling, his face level with my satin panties. “Tell me to take these off,” he murmurs, trailing the edge of his thumb along the crease of my thigh, making me shiver.
“Chris.”
“Mm hmm?” He leans in and presses a kiss to the front of the fabric, close to where I want it, but not close enough.
“Take them off,” I whisper.
He keeps his eyes on my face as he tugs the panties down, fingers circling my ankles one at a time as he lifts my feet. Then I’m naked. Totally, vitally naked. You don’t have sex with a bunch of strangers and not get used to it. But this is different. This is daylight. This is no alcohol. This is someone I know.
His face takes on a heavy-lidded intensity I haven’t seen before, and he brackets my hips with his hands, stroking into the curls, searching until he finds softer, damper flesh, and nudging it apart. He kisses my legs, each side, higher and higher, his thumbs seeking and opening, stroking and teasing, and by the time his mouth finds me I’m wet and trembling.
“Oh, God,” I hear myself mumble. “Please.”
He doesn’t make me wait this time, urging my thighs apart so he can have better access. He can have everything right now. Absolutely everything.
Chris does this the way he does everything else, with his own brand of slow and steady and rough and sure. I’m melting so fast I have to lean back to brace myself against the dresser, arching my hips to his face. He doesn’t ease up when I’m moaning and shaking, my stomach flexing, one hand clutching his hair, making sure this doesn’t end until it has to. Until I can’t take it anymore. Until I’m covering my mouth to stifle sounds I’ve never heard before. The orgasm rolls through me, smug and unhurried, proving all the points he’s been trying to make. And then, finally, reluctantly, his fingers slow, his tongue just brushing my too-sensitive skin, and all too soon and far too late, he stops.
He sits back on his heels and wipes his mouth on his forearm, and I can’t quite catch my breath. My hair hangs in my face, but I don’t have the energy to move it. I’m wrung out. I’ve forgotten whatever reservations I had.
“Wow,” I manage.
He raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
My heart is bounding around like a loose puppy. “Yeah.”
“Hang on a sec.”
I really have no choice, so I watch him disappear into the attached bathroom. I hear water running, splashing, then he returns, drying his face with a hand towel he tosses in the hamper. He reaches for his fly, then hesitates. “Still good?”
I try and fail not to smile. “Still good.”
IT’S AFTER SEVEN WHEN Chris offers to drive me home, of course, and I decline, of course. I can tell he’s irked, but he doesn’t press. The rain has stopped, and though it’s dark outside, it’s downtown Holden, which means it’s lit up and bustling, because God forbid someone sleep when they could be making money. I keep my head down and my hood up as I walk, just in case. I spent the entire afternoon being exposed and wide open, it’s time to get back to normal.
But normal isn’t as welcome as I thought, and when I push open the door to my cold, dark apartment, I immediately miss the warmth of Chris’s place. I miss his bed and his couch and his grilled cheese. I miss the old normal, when I had friends and a brother and a father who wasn’t a criminal. That we knew about.
I change into sweats and a T-shirt and toss a load of laundry in the washer as I boil water for tea. I check pockets as I add clothes, frowning when I find something in the back pocket of a pair of jeans. A business card. I rack my brain, trying to figure out why I’d have any business cards at all, never mind one for a small Holden City brokerage called Emerald Isle Investors. And then I remember: I stole this card. From Chris. It was his bookmark. He’d never mentioned it missing,