Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he thumbed in a text.
—
Ava glanced at her phone, figuring it was something from work. She’d taken the morning off for the fitting with Maggie and when she’d called in to touch base with the senior partner she’d been assisting with a case, he’d told her to take the rest of the day off, promising to have his assistant keep her apprised of any developments.
Thumbing the message alert she saw it was Sam and the room around her blurred into background noise. Because he was in her bedroom. With a fistful of condoms she knew for a fact he’d brought for her.
Swallowing hard, she tilted the screen away from Maggie, who was taking her usual hundred years hemming and hawing over her tiles. Then as casually as she could manage it, Ava read.
Sam:…Spank bank deposit: You in those plaid jammies. Me sliding my fingers deep inside you. Less than five minutes, Ava. How quiet can you be?
—
Well, based on the whimper that slipped past her lips before she’d had even a shot at containing it, probably not very.
“Everything okay, Ava?” Tyler asked, shaking the bag of tiles at his fiancée.
Ava smiled, rolling her eyes. “Work stuff. They’re, umm, looking for something they thought could wait but now needs to get taken care of. Give me a couple of minutes,” she said, pushing unsteadily to her feet.
Tyler let out a gruff laugh. “Pretty sure you’ve got whatever time you need. We’ll be here. Waiting on Maggie and her perfect word.”
Maggie growled affectionately, but her head never came up. Ava just hoped like hell it took her as long as it usually did to make her move. Then Tyler. Then Tony. And if they had to wait just a bit for her…while she snuck off to her bedroom for five minutes in heaven with Sam?
It was tacky. Really tacky.
Shady. Completely shady.
And she was ashamed. But not enough to keep her feet from moving one after the other until she was standing on the threshold of her bedroom, that near electric connection sizzling to life the second Sam caught her around the waist with one hand and pulled her inside. Kicked the door shut with his foot and pushed her into the wall using the whole of his body.
Another betraying moan skipped past her lips, but then Sam’s mouth was there taking it with his kiss. Running his hands over her breasts, cupping her face, sliding into her hair and beneath her robe. Lower.
Her fingers balled in his shirt. She opened wider to him, parting her legs for the press of Sam’s knee between them.
Another rock of that solid thigh and Sam broke from the kiss. His mouth moved to her ear. “How quiet can you be?”
Even within the depths of her flannel robe, and with Sam’s incredible heat burning through her, shivers rolled across her skin.
“I don’t know,” she admitted honestly. It wasn’t that she’d never tried to be quiet. It was that she’d never needed to try.
She wasn’t any virgin. And it wasn’t like no one had ever made her come. But outside her experience with Sam, it had taken some doing getting her there, and even reaching climax, she’d been quiet because there hadn’t been anything to shout about.
But then Sam didn’t seem too concerned with the details.
Or the consequences, because already he was taking her mouth again. Working past her waistband with his hand, teasing beneath her panties and gently parting her with his fingers and, oh God, pushing inside.
Deep.
Deeper.
She didn’t dare to breathe. Because she could feel the cry of pleasure pushing at her throat.
Another finger joined the first and she started to shake.
Sam’s mouth left hers and—
Three soft knocks sounded at the door next to her head.
Chapter 16
“Hey, Ava?” Maggie called from the other side of the door. “You left your phone out here if you’re looking for it.”
Sam stepped back. Then, running his fingers through her sex as he withdrew, he mouthed the word Answer.
Her breath was ragged, her heart pounding as though she’d just run the Chicago Marathon. There was no way she was going to sound even close to normal. But sounding weird was better than trying to pretend she wasn’t in there at all when everyone knew she was.
So she pulled it together and did what she had to do. “Seriously? God, I’m an—”
Eyes still locked with hers and a wicked smile curving his lips, Sam lifted the fingers he’d had inside her mere seconds before to his mouth and sucked.
“—idiot,” she gasped, her insides reacting to the visual she was never in a million years going to get out of her head.
Sam was a very, very bad man.
And God help her, she loved it.
The door opened and Maggie handed off the phone, laughing. “Figured you might need this.”
Ava nodded dumbly, wishing she’d had the sense to turn out a few work files on her bed or at least crack her laptop. But she’d been too busy getting stupid against the wall with Sam. Who was so going to pay.
Somehow.
Some way.
Once her brain rebooted she’d figure it out. For now, all mental capacity was directed toward forming partial sentences for Maggie.
“Yeah, I was sure I’d just set it down when I came in here, and then I couldn’t find it,” she rambled more than a little desperately. “L.O.L. You know me.”
Sam grimaced at her text speak. But he could bite it, because she was nervous and worked up and barely keeping a secret she truly wanted to protect from becoming public knowledge.
Maggie’s brows furrowed. “Hey, you seem jumpy. Did missing work mess things up for you today?”
“No, not at all,” she assured her, hating the idea that Maggie would worry about her nonexistent problem. “This only came up in the last few minutes. Everything was fine earlier, but now I just need to take care of this one little thing and then I’ll be fine and we’ll have the rest of the night to hang out.”
“Which case is this?” Sam asked, pushing for details that didn’t exist, that impish grin cranking up.
And suddenly the path to making Sam pay was clear. She smiled at him. “Sorry, can’t talk about it. You remember that delivery I got the other day?”
Sam blinked. And yeah, she had his attention now. “Yes.”
She shrugged. “Same deal. Confidential, you know? Private.”
His brows were creeping higher, his eyes skirting toward the closet where that special delivery had been stored and remained, as yet untested.
“Really?” he choked out, longing filling his eyes.
She almost felt guilty. Except that Sam had started this whole thing with his sexting proposition. And he sure hadn’t looked guilty when Maggie came knocking and Ava had been left hanging, barely able to string two words together.
So she nodded, crossing her arms. “Mm-hmm. But it shouldn’t take me long to finish. Most of the work was already done, you know?”
Satisfaction rolled through her as the muscle in Sam’s jaw started to jump.
“Ava,” he said, his voice low, threatening.
Sexy.
“Don’t worry,” she said, her smile saccharine sweet as she pushed him toward the door. “I’ll be quick.”
That groan rumbling out of Sam’s chest shouldn’t have been as much fun as it was, but the guy had it coming. And more than that, after all the years of searching for any sign that Sam could see her as more than just a friend…knowing how powerfully she could affect him? Amazing.
With the door closed, she leaned back against it, giving herself one more minute to savor the still fresh feel of Sam’s hands on her body, his kiss, his need.
Then with a deep breath she straightened and went for her dresser. Not the closet where her brand-new arsenal resided.
As much as the idea of some relief appealed, breaking out the sex toys Han Solo while she had a living room full of friends sitting around was one line she’d never cross.
&n
bsp; What she was going to do? Take a minute to regroup and change her panties.
Because the second she’d gotten Sam’s text, the pair she had on were shot.
—
Seated in the dim of his quiet apartment, Sam stared down at his jock, contemplating warnings about erections lasting more than four hours, wondering whether it was necessary to contact a physician if said erection was the result of one naughty upstairs neighbor as opposed to a pill.
The night had been brutal.
Too many hours of too much chitchat. Too many jokes he’d been too on edge to laugh at.
Because of Ava.
In her freaking sexy little plaid pj’s and flannel robe, suggesting she was going to finish herself off with some undisclosed sex toy while he made small talk in the front room. There was no way she’d actually done it. In fact, she’d probably cracked open her laptop and followed up on a few work emails, if he knew her at all. But that didn’t matter.
The seed had been planted, and all he could think about was the inventory he’d mentally cataloged and what it would be like to watch her use any one of them on herself.
Shit.
Definitely a long night.
And definitely a new experience feeling that way, because his friends were like home. They were the ones he rushed back to after he’d finished with a date. The chitchat and lame jokes and simple hanging out was how he unwound. With his friends, he could be completely himself.
But tonight he didn’t want any part of it.
Tonight, all he’d wanted was Ava to himself.
But even after putting in all the hours with everyone together, he hadn’t gotten it. Not even ten minutes of Maggie running over to grab her toothbrush and pillow so he could steal another kiss. No. Maggie had packed a bag. Tyler gave her a peck at the door and took off, and then there’d been nothing to do but go himself.
That had been an hour ago.
Picking up the remote, he clicked on the TV and started flipping channels. Surfing the late-night offerings.
He’d just landed on an infomercial for a new mop that was crazy absorbent and made him think about the time Ava dropped a full pitcher of orange juice on her floor, when his phone went off.
Pausing the mop thing, he answered with what he considered an apt greeting. “Demon.”
Her laughter sounded through the phone, soft and sultry. “This from my five-minutes-how-quiet-can-you-be man? Pot, meet kettle.”
He sat lower in the couch, closed his eyes, and let his head rest back. “So you’re saying I started it.”
“Totally.”
That was his Ava.
“So what’s going on?” he asked, wishing she’d just called to shoot the shit, but with Maggie sleeping over, there had to be something else.
“Maggie and I were getting silly. A couple of the cabinets in the kitchen are all messed up. And you’re going to need your tool belt.”
Sam was already off the couch, headed down the hall to the closet where he kept a few household regulars he didn’t store with the rest of his tools for the business. “So what are we talking here—a blown hinge, or did the shelf come off its slider?”
There was a beat of silence, then Ava sighed. “It’s pretty bad. You’re going to have to see for yourself.”
She didn’t even know how to describe it? Crap.
Those cabinets had taken him forever.
He grabbed his toolbox. Normally he’d have a look at the problem first, but with the difficulty he was having around Ava, better to get in and out as quickly as possible.
“Be right up.”
“Thanks. And Sam? Don’t forget the belt.”
He was about to tell her he wouldn’t need it, but he changed his mind. Ava loved the full-on fix-it thing, and when he’d wear the tool belt for repairs up at her family’s cabin, she’d have to go through every pocket and tool before he could actually get back to work.
And as it happened, he was in an accommodating state of mind.
Ava greeted him at the door wearing significantly less than she’d had on when he left earlier. Gone was the robe and oversized sleep shirt, the plaid pajama pants and sweat socks. Now she was wearing a pink tank top, thin and fitted, and a pair of those ass-hugging, high-riding boy shorts he never should have gotten a look at on Ava, because holy hell.
His throat went dry, clicked as he tried to force a word through it, and failed.
Ava smiled, leaning up against the door. “You wore the belt.”
“You changed,” he croaked, wishing like hell his tool belt were the kind with the extra pocket over the fly. The way the pockets hung at either side with the buckle sitting just below the top button of his jeans, it was like a freaking spotlight for the hard-on he’d barely gotten under control before seeing Ava in what he was guessing were her summer pj’s.
Maybe she’d spilled something on the others when she and Maggie were getting silly enough to destroy a cabinet. Maybe that mop would have been just the thing.
He’d order it when he got back downstairs.
Ava plucked a bit of her tank top between two fingers—Christ, it was thin. “I got hot.”
He nodded. He’d buy the mop after about thirty minutes of quality alone time with his right hand. Maybe forty.
“Sure. Okay.” He nodded. “Let’s see what we’re looking at in the kitchen. Where’s Maggie?”
“Hmm. She left.”
Sam stopped where he was, his head cranking around to Ava, who kept walking, turning once she passed him to walk backward down the hall.
“Don’t know what happened. One minute I was asking her about Tyler and the next she was gathering up her stuff, full of apologies. And then she was out the door.”
And now Sam was following her toward the kitchen, or wherever the hell else she wanted to lead him. Because they were alone.
“What were you asking her?”
Ava cocked a shoulder. “Girl stuff. Silly stuff. Not really the sorts of things you share with another guy.”
So she’d basically played Maggie. Worked her up by exploiting her weak spot—Tyler—and then let Maggie decide for herself that a sleepover wasn’t in the cards.
Diabolically hot.
In the kitchen, Sam set his toolbox down. He hooked his arms over the open door frame, scanning the cabinets and coming up with a whole lot of nothing wrong. But Ava wasn’t done with him. Bending over so he had a prime view of the heart-shaped perfection that was her ass, she opened the cabinet and pointed to a few cups that looked like she’d turned them over on their sides.
“It’s a mess.”
He laughed, loving that she wouldn’t lie to him even for a cause as noble as getting him back into her sexy clutches. “It is. But Ava, why the tool belt?”
Looking up at him from beneath the thick fringe of her lashes, she bit her lip and closed the distance between them. “Because from the very first time I saw you wearing it, I’ve wanted to do this.”
And she went to her knees.
Chapter 17
This was bold like Ava had never done bold before.
She’d shamelessly lured Sam up to her apartment, flaunted her wares for everything they were worth, and then dropped to her knees like she was worshiping at the altar of dreams come true.
He was wearing the tool belt. A frequent flier as her fantasies went.
Sam made it look so hot. Every time she’d seen him wearing one, all she could think was how perfectly it suited him. Because he was a guy who got it done, whether it was fixing what was broken or building beauty and function where there hadn’t been any before. He was strong. Capable.
And now here she was, sliding her palms against the soft denim covering his thighs, working his zipper under the durable leather and solid buckle slung across his hips. Coaxing his engorged shaft free from the vee she’d made of his fly beneath.
Sam groaned, the sound falling somewhere between agony and pleasure, and driving Ava’s state of arousal off the charts.
&nb
sp; “This is your fantasy?” he croaked, as if he couldn’t believe it.
Peering up from where she knelt in front of him, she saw the hands that had been loosely hooked at the top of the door frame were now gripping it tight. She might have been the one on her knees, but in that moment, Sam was at her mercy as much as she was at his.
“You wanted to know what I’ve thought about? Where my imagination veered off course?” She wet her lips and all that rigid length pulsed against her fingertips. “This is it. I see this belt, the way the leather pouches hang at either side of your fly, almost framing the one thing I’m not supposed to want. It’s hot. Gives a girl ideas.”
“Ideas?”
“Like wondering what it would be like getting my mouth around you while you’re wearing it.”
He swore and Ava smiled, liking the rough sound of it.
Wrapping her hand around him as far as her fingers would reach, she stroked up and down, bringing the bulbous head into alignment with her lips.
She took him into her mouth. Tasted the salty-sweet flavor of velvet-wrapped steel on her tongue. Felt the stretch of her lips as she opened wider and wider, wanting as much of him as she could manage.
He was too big for any serious stunt work, not that Ava knew all that much about it. Just what she’d read in Cosmo and, giggling with Maggie, from other such reliable sources. Head was one of those things that had never really done it for her. At least not in the contexts it had presented itself before. She’d tried it out a few times, mostly to see how it worked more than anything else. But after a few goes she’d realized it was an intimacy deeper than she’d been interested in with the men she’d been with.
But Sam was different.
With Sam, depth of intimacy was the foundation of their relationship. With Sam, she’d salivated at the idea of feeling him filling her mouth, reaching the back of her throat, giving her the taste of his release on her tongue.
Liquid heat churned in her belly at the thought, making her ache for more.
She rubbed her tongue against the underside of his shaft and felt his groan rumble through her like an earthquake.
She strained to take more of him—
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