by Parker, Ali
Layton in all his bare, naked glory was a-fricking-mazing. I gaped a little at the size of him, wondering where the hell that thing had fit the first time we did it. He was hard as anything, long and slightly curved.
If you asked me, his dick was begging to be tasted, but he didn’t let me get that far. Flipping us again, he kissed me deeply and then started kissing a path down my neck to my chest. “I’ve been dreaming about doing this.”
“You’ve been dreaming about me?” I asked, struggling to keep my train of thought from running away with me when his lips closed over a hardened nipple.
“Mmm,” he hummed, causing ripples of goosebumps to raise on my flesh. When he released me, it was to look up into my eyes from my chest. “So many dreams. So many dirty, filthy dreams.”
I didn’t know if it was simply something he said in the heat of the moment, but I would be damned if it didn’t turn said heat up to mercurial levels. As he kissed a path down my stomach to where I was wet and achy for him, I could only whisper, “Show me.”
“Oh, I’m planning on it,” he breathed, gripping my thighs to spread them to make space for his shoulders. There was a beat where his eyes closed and he took a deep breath, almost as if he were savoring the moment, then he leaned forward and expertly licked and sucked me into two orgasms before finally relenting.
I was spent, but somehow still needy. There were tiny droplets of sweat dotting his forehead and his jaw was tense, betraying how intense his own need was.
Sitting up, I pushed back on his shoulders until his back hit the bed. Following his playbook again, I kissed my way down his iron hard length—only I didn’t quite take my time the way he had. I didn’t linger on any part of him until I got to my target. The poor guy had waited long enough for his release.
Closing my eyes, I slipped my tongue out of my mouth and swept it across the head as I wrapped my hand around his base. When I sucked his tip into my mouth, he groaned so loudly I felt it reverberating through me, ramping up my own need tenfold.
Before long his thighs started quivering beneath my hands, his breathing ragged and loud. Suddenly, he rasped out, “Stop, Marissa. I can’t—”
He jerked me up by my shoulders and turned us so I was on my back again. Positioning himself at my entrance, his eyes were dark and hungry. “I don’t know how—”
I cut with him off with a kiss that sparked each one of my nerve endings to life. “It doesn’t matter. I want you, Layton. Please. I won’t last either.”
Apparently assured, he thrust home and didn’t hesitate again. Stroking me in a frenzied rhythm, he climbed to his peak while chasing me up mine. In a loud chorus of moans, we both exploded into our climaxes.
Mine hit me with the strength of a tsunami, pulling me down into currents of pure bliss that rocked me again and again. Layton’s thrusts became jerky before he slammed his hips into me one final time, crying out my name.
Breathing heavily, Layton and I collapsed onto the bed. He disposed of a condom I hadn’t noticed him put on and got back on the bed. Unexpectedly, he drew me to him and draped an arm across my stomach. “Stay tonight?”
I tensed. Annie was staying over at Denise’s house, so it wasn’t like I desperately needed to get back home. But staying over? Wasn’t that usually reserved for relationships? It had been a long time since I’d had anything even vaguely resembling a one night stand, or a two time dalliance in this case, but the rules couldn’t have changed that much.
I was quite sure the expected protocol was for me to wait an acceptable amount of time until my heart rate slowed and then get going. My eyelids were already heavy though, and my car was still at the office.
Going out into the freezing cold, getting a cab home and spending the night in a dark, empty house didn’t appeal to me. Layton had asked me to stay, which I was assuming he wouldn’t have done if he didn’t want me to.
I snuck a look at him from the corner of my eye. He was lying on his side, his arm draped over me. His head was on a pillow, but his lips were so close to my shoulder I could feel his breath ghosting across my skin.
Eyes closed, he looked so peaceful. I didn’t want to bother him with taking me back to my car, and honestly, I didn’t want to go back to my place. Snuggling in closer to him, I said, “Okay, but I’m going to have to leave early in the morning.”
“Yeah,” he whispered in the darkness, bringing his mouth forward to plant a soft kiss on my shoulder. “We have to be up in a couple of hours, let’s get some sleep.”
I turned my head ever so slightly on my pillow, burrowing in until our foreheads were almost touching. “Sleep tight, Layton.”
Responding by drawing me even closer to his warm body, he kissed the tip of my nose before drifting off to sleep. When his breathing started changing, I knew he had fallen asleep.
I was close to following, sleep tugging at the edging of my brain. Cuddled up to Layton made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. For the first time with him, I felt an almost overwhelming sense of rightness. Like I was always meant to be falling asleep next to him.
I fought the sleep creeping up on me, not wanting this cozy moment with Layton to end. I was so comfortable, so sated and happy. I wanted to hang on to this feeling for as long as I could.
It was never part of my plan to feel this way in Layton’s arms, but I couldn’t help what I was feeling. He was a constant surprise to me. The more of his layers I got to peel back, the more I liked him. I couldn’t deny anymore that I was developing feelings for him. Which meant I had to tell him about Annie.
There was a tiny voice in my head telling me to do it now. Saying it was better to tell him sooner rather than later. It warned me that it was dangerous to let myself feel like this about any man who might or might not even know of the existence of the most important person in my life.
I shut that voice down hard and fast. I didn’t want fear or anxiety over Layton’s reaction to spoil the moment I was trying so hard to stay in.
But I knew I had to tell him about Annie soon, but not tonight. Not right now. The time would come when we would have to have the talk, but I wanted to put it off just for one more night.
Chapter 23
Layton
“Yeah? I bet you can get it in two tries.” Marissa giggled, crumbling two sheets of paper into her hand and shooting them one after the other in the general direction of the trash can in the corner of my office.
Both pieces of paper landed way short of their target. I laughed and gave her a pat on the back. “What did we bet again?”
She shot me a playful glare, elbowing me in the stomach. “Double or nothing.”
I motioned for her to go ahead, desperately wanting to wrap my arms around her. It had been a week since our date at the Freedom Trail and the night that followed. It had been, without a doubt, one of the best nights of my fucking life.
Marissa agreed to stay and after what turned out to be a series of naps instead of a decent night’s sleep, neither of us could get enough of the other. After our first relatively frenzied romp, we hit the shower, the bed again and eventually ended up on the kitchen floor.
Our relationship had changed since then. We spent more time together, both at the office and away from it. While at the office, we were careful not to touch too much. But we always ended up touching in one way or another.
Whether it was our legs pushed up against each other under the table during a meeting, our hands brushing when she handed me a file, or gentle elbowing and nudging like we were now, we found a way to connect.
Marissa leaned across my desk to grab two more sheets of paper from my printer, knocking over a holder full of different colored pens. They spilled onto my desk, rolling all over it. Some even hit the floor. One, a red one, rolled all the way to my shoe.
I bent over to pick it up, tossing it onto the desk with the others. Marissa’s eyes grew wide, then she dropped to her knees to collect the others on the floor. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. It was an accident.”
Surprisingly, the jumble of pens on the desk didn’t bother me in the slightest. I had no compulsion to pick them up and get them back into their place.
It seemed that I liked her enough not to be bothered by her messing around with my pens. Instead of jumping up or tapping my finger to modulate, I smirked at her. “If you wanted to be on your knees in my office, you should have just said so. If you scoot over a little I’ll undo my fly.”
A small smile grew onto her full lips, then she winked. “Sure thing, boss. Would you like me to send out a memo to let the staff know what’s about to happen so they can come watch their big, tough boss get his rocks off?”
Despite the circumstances and the obvious teasing tone of her voice, I felt myself growing hard. I couldn’t not. Hearing Marissa even joke about a blowjob or me getting my rocks off was enough to trigger memories of exactly that happening. And they were fucking hot memories.
“Perhaps they could take some notes,” I joked, though she really would have been able to teach a class on sucking cock if she wanted to. She was that good at it. “You know, we could drop the blinds.”
Giggling, she rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because that’s not obvious.”
I shrugged. “What are they going to do? Fire me?”
“Human resources certainly wouldn’t appreciate you carrying on with shenanigans when they’re working so hard to discourage such things,” she quipped. “Speaking of, did you hear Tony got caught with Erin at the party?”
I scoffed, my eyes growing wide when I saw the serious expression on her face. “You’re serious? Those two?”
Office gossip, juicy or otherwise, had never interested me much. I didn’t give a damn what anyone else was doing at the office, so long as they were also doing what they were paid to do. Like with so many other things, I found myself enjoying it only because I was doing it with Marissa.
Despite my best efforts and to my great surprise, I was really starting to like Marissa. The feelings I was developing for her were unlike any I’d felt before.
With her, one night was never enough. A few hours with her never exhausted me or made me look forward to getting home. No amount of time with her was ever enough. Whenever she left, I looked forward to when I would see her again.
I thought about her all the time, wondering whether she would enjoy a restaurant I was eating at. Or whether she would like the book I was reading. It was downright unsettling how much mental real estate the woman was occupying in my world, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Everything felt different with her. It was almost like I was waking up after years of being asleep, or surfacing after spending too much time under water.
“Care to make another wager?” Marissa asked now, drawing me out of my head and bringing me back into my office with her. Her sweet scent hung in the air around me—vanilla and flowery today. It intoxicated me, made me want to invite her home again so I could get that scent all over my sheets.
Looking into her happy blue eyes, I nodded. “I’m always ready to make a wager with you. What will it be this time?”
She held up the crumpled piece of paper in her hand. “If I can hit you in the head, you tell me what’s on your mind. You checked out on me for a second there. Don’t even bother denying it. You had this weirdly soft look in your eyes.”
“Weirdly soft?” I scoffed, trying my best to sound wounded. “Nothing about me is weird. And I don’t do soft, I’m hard all over babe.”
Her cheeks flushed, but she refused to back down. “Don’t I know it? That’s what makes it so interesting to know what you were thinking about.”
You, I wanted to say. Telling her the truth was on the tip of my tongue, but I just couldn’t get it to roll off. I had been on the receiving end of being told someone had feelings for you too early, and all it did was ruin things.
I wasn’t ready to take a chance that things between us would be ruined. We were only just getting to know each other. If I was interested in actually seeing where things went for a change, I couldn’t risk fucking it up now by sounding like a love struck idiot.
Not that I was in love with her. I just liked her, albeit a lot.
A ball of paper thwacked me in the head. Marissa threw her hands in the air like she’d scored the winning basket at the NBA Finals. “There. You have to tell me what you were thinking about now.”
Her voice was sweet, but triumphant. “I don’t remember agreeing to those terms.”
“Your silence implied agreement,” she teased. “It was tacit agreement. No backsies.”
“I’m pretty sure ‘backsies’ isn’t a technical term used in conjunction with implied or tacit agreements,” I said dryly, but in truth I was stalling.
It wasn’t something I did very often, but I didn’t have a clue what to tell her about what I was thinking that wasn’t either a lie or the truth.
I was saved by a red-headed woman wearing a grim expression bearing down on my office. Narrowing my eyes, I realized I didn’t recognize her.
I nearly fell off my chair when I noticed she was dragging a little girl behind her. The girl had bouncy blonde curls and wide blue eyes, red rimmed as they were. She looked just like—
“Marissa!” The redhead cried out when she saw her.
Marissa looked up, frowning before jumping into action. Her eyes shot to the little girl, zeroing in on her with laser like precision. She scampered to her feet, meeting them when they got to my door. “Denise? Annie? What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
Denise, the redhead, shook her head. Her eyes darted to mine. She nodded in greeting, but then spoke urgently to Marissa. “You have to come home. I’m sorry, I tried everything, but nothing is working.”
Marissa paled visibly, her hand shooting out to the forehead of the little girl. “Nothing? Did you try the—”
“Yeah. It was the first thing I tried,” Denise said.
Watching the two women talk was like trying to keep track of a foreign movie with no subtitles. You could kind of see what was going on, but you had no context and couldn’t really make sense of it. They never seemed to let the other finish a sentence, seemingly knowing what the other was going to say just by that one starting the sentence.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the little girl was Marissa’s. The way the girl threw herself into Marissa’s arms when they got into my office was proof enough, as was the borderline wild concern in Marissa’s eyes.
Firing off words at an alarming rate, Marissa suddenly looked at me. There was guilt in her eyes, trepidation too. All of it was completely overshadowed by worry so real it made my heart ache. “Can I go, Layton? Please.”
Layton, please. I wished I was hearing those words again under different circumstances, but I wasn’t. Frankly, I was astonished. Totally stunned by the appearance of the child who I was quite sure belonged to the woman I was—sleeping with? Seeing?
I nodded dumbly, forcing the words out of my very confused brain. “Sure. Yes. Of course. Go. That’s fine. Go home. It looks like you’re needed there.”
She flashed me a very relieved smile before saying goodbye. The look she gave me over her shoulder just before she hurried out of the office with her friend and daughter told me she knew we would have to talk about this.
Seeing the guilt and a dozen other negative emotions in her eyes before she left nearly killed me. I wanted more than anything to grab her, kiss her and to tell her everything would be okay. That her having a daughter didn’t change anything.
But didn’t it? And more importantly, why the hell hadn’t she just told me she was a mother?
Chapter 24
Marissa
“Why didn’t you call, Dee? How long has she been like this? What’s wrong?” The questions tumbled out of my mind one after the other. I was sitting in the back of Denise’s car, as close to Annie as our respective seat belts would allow.
I had her clammy hand in mine, my thumb rubbing comforting circles on the back of her hand. Denise
caught my eyes in the rearview mirror, worry shining through stress clouded by more worry. “It started a couple of hours ago. She threw up once, then it just kept happening.”
I reached for Annie’s forehead, trying to determine if her fever had gotten any worse since we left my office. She felt the same, but she looked much worse.
Her eyes were closed, her head resting against the window. She was breathing fine, but deeply. Denise looked at me again. “I’m not sure what it is. I gave her some flu medication, but I don’t know if she kept it down long enough for it to make a difference. I don’t think it’s the flu. She keeps complaining about her stomach.”
“It’s so sore.” Annie groaned in agreement, her thin arms wrapping around her waist. “I don’t feel well, Mommy.”
“I know baby.” I said soothingly, tears gathering in my eyes. Whenever Annie got sick, it was so much worse for me than getting sick myself. I would’ve taken every cold, flu and every other illness she might get in a heartbeat instead of having to watch her small body fight it. “Don’t worry. We’ll be at the doctor soon.”
Denise and I were rushing Annie to the urgent care office. To her credit, Denise was defying the laws of nature and traffic by weaving past cars and getting us there as fast as humanly possible.
“Okay, Mommy.” Annie replied, her voice cracked and fragile. Opening her eyes appeared to be a struggle. Guilt stabbed me in the stomach like a white hot iron rod.
I should have been home with her. I should have felt something was wrong and gone to her. “Why didn’t you call me? I would have come earlier.”
“I tried, Sissy,” Denise said softly. She kept her eyes on the road, but she knew I was still waiting for her to explain. “I tried calling again and again. You must have missed at least ten calls from me.”
Digging my phone out of my purse, I checked it and saw she was right. There were eleven missed calls and six texts. All of the texts asked me to call her back, stating Annie was extremely sick and we had to take her to the urgent care office.