by Zara Cox
‘Bloody hell,’ he growled, then dipped his hands into the lace and scooped out my boobs.
The erotic sensation of my double Ds spilling out made us both groan.
‘Christ, you’re so fucking lush,’ he muttered, slashes of colour staining his chiselled cheekbones. ‘There isn’t an inch of you I don’t want to taste.’
With needy hands I dragged him back, crying out when he latched onto my peak again. The suction was even more intense, tongue and teeth coming into deeper play.
‘God, yes,’ I gasped as he mercilessly tormented me.
Maybe the crazy depth of sensation careening through me was because I hadn’t had good sex for so long.
By our first wedding anniversary, Dan had been hard-pressed to perform the bare minimum. By our second, we’d been down to the cursory once-a-month three-minute humping in the shower to convince ourselves we had something remotely resembling a marriage. The transition from there to divorce had been a measly miserable nine months.
Or maybe I was feeling like this because this was Bryce. An older, edgier version of the boy who’d blazed a memorable trail in the public school I’d despised until his arrival had made my existence bearable, the rugby-loving hunk I’d hung out with in Cambridge, and the man who’d been my best friend for years before he’d removed himself from my life.
Whatever the reason for my heightened emotions, a particularly clever twist of his fingers dragged me back to the present, to the heated blaze of his eyes fixed on me as he tormented me.
I gasped again as he lowered his head, flicked his tongue brazenly over my wet flesh and then blew on it.
‘Bryce...’
He kept hold of one globe as he trailed kisses down my midriff and belly to the edge of my panties. Crouched over me like some dark overlord, he scoured his nails lightly over the skin above the panty line, leaving a trail of goosebumps in his wake. He repeated the action a few times, his other hand still tormenting my nipple, and each time I felt myself getting shamefully wetter.
By the time his fingers dipped beneath the scrap of silk, I’d forgotten to breathe.
One bold finger glided between my folds and he groaned. ‘You’re so fucking wet. You’re close, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I panted, my hips lifting off the sofa to meet his next glide.
He circled slow and sure, then dragged wetness to my clit. At the first touch, I let out another cry. He removed his hands from my body, repositioned himself with one knee on the floor while dragging my panties down my legs. Tossing the knickers aside, he spread me wide, his gaze zeroed in on my pink, glistening flesh. A rough breath shuddered from him.
‘Ah, rosebud. You’re still as beautiful as I remember.’ The quiet, almost reverent murmur made my heart lurch and, with his gaze fixed on my face, he slowly slid his middle finger inside me. ‘And just as bloody tight.’ He buried his digit to the hilt, then flicked it upward.
‘Oh, God.’ My thighs shook as pleasure rained through me.
Slowly, he finger-fucked me, his breaths harsher the louder I moaned. ‘Is that the spot?’ His voice was thick and hoarse.
‘Yes!’
He gave a low, masculine laugh, then proceeded to pile up the torturous pleasure. One finger became two, but, although the pressure was deeply satisfying, it wasn’t enough.
‘More,’ I demanded. ‘Put your mouth on me.’
He shifted again, dropping his head between my legs. My fingers immediately buried themselves in his hair, a part of me terrified he would stop.
He didn’t. And at the first glide of Bryce’s tongue over my clit, I screamed. By the third glide I was pleasure blind. But not deaf to the decadent sounds of his fingers inside me or his pained groans as I grew wetter, screamed my way to the edge and flung myself over it as he sucked my clit into his mouth.
Reality returned in a cascade of harsh breathing. When I opened my eyes, Bryce was standing at the window, his back to me, his shoulders rising and falling in a rapid movement that attested to his scramble for control.
Tension screamed in the distance between us as I hastily fixed my clothes.
When I was reasonably decent, I exhaled. Now what? I’d dared him and he’d gone for it. But from his rigid stance, nothing much had changed, except maybe for the worse.
I went for the direct approach. ‘Bryce?’
He turned without answering, his gaze heated but hooded.
‘Is our friendship worth salvaging or am I wasting my time trying?’
His shoulders stiffened harder. ‘You just exploded back into my life, rosebud. I’ll need a minute to consider that.’
My shoulders slumped. ‘I guess that’s that, then. I sent you a save-the-date for the launch. It’s going ahead whether I get a lease in your building or not. So I guess I’ll either see you there or I won’t?’
He shoved his fingers through hair I’d gloriously dishevelled, his eyes still a touch wild as they roved over me. ‘You’ve got what you wanted. You can sleep soundly tonight knowing you’ve proved whatever point you wanted to prove. Let that be enough for now.’
‘And if it’s not? What if I want my friend back?’
He stared at me in that unique way that always made my skin feel tight and raw and exposed. That way that said he saw and knew much more than he should. But while in the past I would’ve dropped my gaze, mumbled something along the lines of never mind or whatever, this time I met his gaze full on.
Dared him to say the words I knew in my heart would flay and wound. He didn’t disappoint me.
‘The guy you knew is gone. You’re doing us both a disservice by clinging to the past. It’s time to move on.’
I didn’t speak as he slowly strolled back to where I stood, praying my eyes wouldn’t mist with the tears prickling wildly.
‘My executive assistant will let you know if I can make it. If I can’t, have a great opening. I’m sure you’ll blow their socks off.’
‘Bryce—’
‘I have a meeting to get to. I’m sure you can find your own way out.’
And then, just as he’d done on my wedding day, he calmly walked out of the living room, the deafening silence left by his departure confirming what I already knew.
We’d crossed a line that night three years ago when I was forced to face the fact that the dream I was secretly chasing would never come true. That Bryce would never belong to me the way I fully and desperately wanted him to. That walking away instead of clinging to false hope had been the right thing to do then, and probably was now.
That really, when it came down to it, he didn’t want or need me. I was the girl who’d made him laugh when he was bored, who’d challenged his intellect and dug him out of his funk when the family drama he’d always been so tight-lipped about drove him into deep, scary silences.
Basically, I’d been useful as a crutch until he hadn’t needed me any more. Then when I’d needed him the most, he’d simply...walked away.
I’d seen the signs long before Bryce had left for good. The anguish of that distance, of being thrust farther and farther into the fringes of his life was what had made me give in that night, then made me deliver a promise I hadn’t been able to keep in the long run, my need to belong sending me down the wrong path.
And as much as I wanted to blame him, the one thing Bryce had never misled me on was that he would never become something more to me than a friend. No, that layer of torment was all down to me and my foolish yearning.
With a thick swallow, I crossed his stunning living room to retrieve my clutch. I paused for a beat, toying with the idea to confront him wherever he’d disappeared to, then dismissed it.
The best way to tackle an intransigent Bryce was to let him cool off. But if nothing else, this particular dare had proved one thing.
Bryce was still hot for me. I could either test the boundaries of this strange
new world we found ourselves in, or heed his warning and back off.
In the lift, I leaned back and let a small smile slip free while the after-effects of the incredible orgasm trailed through my bloodstream as I contemplated my next move.
Twenty minutes later, I was back in the apartment I’d rented for the duration of my stay in Singapore. Padding on bare feet to the kitchen, I poured myself a glass of wine and sipped, my mind whirling with possibilities.
He was right. We weren’t the same people we were three years ago.
But he was very much a man. And I was a woman with needs who was done relying on the cosmos to dictate my destiny.
Friendship or sex?
Friendship and sex. I’d settled for one over the other once upon a time.
This time...
My heart lurched wildly as it accepted my truth.
This time I wanted both.
CHAPTER THREE
Bryce
‘MR MORTIMER, I have Miss Knight on the line for you again?’
I smothered a groan and raked a hand across my face. A small, non-disgruntled part of me was thankful she hadn’t kept that bastard’s name. I wasn’t sure how I would’ve handled hearing her addressed as Mrs Wallis.
Nevertheless, her persistence had grown beyond just a pain in my arse. If I weren’t frustrated and in danger of dying from blue balls, I’d admire her tenacity. She’d called every hour during business hours for the last couple of days. I was running out of excuses and my EA was using that put-upon voice that said come Christmas she would be expecting a hefty bonus.
I didn’t want to lose Tandy. As an executive assistant she was second to none. And normally, she was good at dispatching unwanted calls. So why not now? What the hell was stopping me from instructing her to bar all calls from Savannah?
Because she was under strict instructions to pay special attention to all clients with a stake in The Sylph. And since my commercial team, without any involvement from me whatsoever, had all but fallen over themselves to fast-track her lease, she now fell firmly under that purview. And, as my commercial director had also informed me, having Savannah Knight open her flagship store in my building would garner the kind of publicity I’d be a fool to reject. So whether I liked it or not, she was now a top Mortimer Group client with access to me whenever she chose.
Access she was fully capitalising on.
‘Sir?’
With a grimace, I hit the intercom button. ‘Put her through.’
Soft breathing flowed from the phone a second later. ‘Bryce, how wonderful of you to take my call,’ she murmured in that sultry voice that came second in the instant-hard-on-achieving status only next to those sexy little whimpers she made when she was fully turned on.
Fucking hell.
I gritted my teeth and thumped my head against the leather headrest. I’d jacked off to the sound of that breathy voice fifteen minutes after I’d heard her leave my apartment after our doomed lunch ten days ago.
Since then, I’d masturbated a hell of a lot more times than I could recall in recent memory. Each time I reassured myself I had finally got her out of my system, I’d hear that voice in my head, demanding, ‘Put your mouth on me.’ And I’d be rock hard all over again.
‘Seriously? You’re giving me the silent treatment? When you said you’d changed, I thought you meant in the direction of evolution, not a regression to adolescence.’
‘What do you want, rosebud?’
It was disconcerting how the nickname I’d coined for her rosebud lips fell so easily from mine. How calling her name while I jacked off in the shower felt so bloody right and hellishly wrong at the same time.
‘Besides your overdue response to my invitation? We’ll leave that for now. I have a more urgent problem.’
My back stiffened as a fierce urge to demand what it was so I could fix it scrambled up my spine. Had she missed me? Was she calling to demand a repeat of what happened on my sofa? The sofa I hadn’t been able to sit on without recalling her stretched out on it in all her dark golden glory, her beautiful back arched and her juicy lips parted in delicious pants?
‘Shoot,’ I answered with more vim than I’d intended.
‘I put in a request for a Venetian chandelier for the main showroom a week ago and I haven’t heard back from your people yet as to whether it’s arrived or when it’ll be installed. It’s the centrepiece of the store. Everything else revolves around it,’ she stated crisply.
I struggled to change lanes from lurid to business, unwillingly admitting that Business Savvie turned me on just as much as Sexy Savvie. ‘I employ an excellent team. It’s on their radar. I’m sure they’ll get around to it—’
‘I’m afraid that’s just not good enough. I’m paying extra for an expedited service and I was assured things would be handled smoothly and in a timely manner. I don’t feel efficiently or smoothly handled, Bryce,’ she murmured, evoking another bout of racy images that made me bite back a groan. ‘In fact I’m feeling the opposite. And not in a good way.’
I wanted to handle her in a great many ways, all guaranteed to leave her with that rosy afterglow and breathlessness I couldn’t get out of my damned head.
‘I’m not familiar with the ins and outs of your lease. I’ll get Jerry to personally give you a call with an update. Will that suffice?’
‘I called your site director this afternoon. His son is having his tonsils taken out today. The poor man was distraught. I didn’t think it was fair to bother him.’
Damn it, I’d forgotten about Jerry’s email telling me exactly that this morning. The man had done a stellar job managing a team of over three thousand workers getting my building ready and within a whisker of the projected schedule. It wasn’t his fault his son had fallen ill. And none of the contractors would be around at this time on a Friday evening to confirm her request.
Even if they were, I couldn’t very well pass her off to anyone but Jerry. The Mortimer Group was renowned for its top-notch reputation. I’d met every single one of my long-and short-term investors, taken a personal interest in their wants and desires.
Like my building, my singular attention to detail was what had made me a success. There were several rungs in the hierarchy before a client would normally request my personal input but, once they did, it went against my principles to pass them back down the chain or fob them off simply because the client at the end of the phone happened to make my cock react as if I were fifteen instead of thirty-one.
Yeah, time to stop hiding and man up, Bryce.
‘I can be there in half an hour. Can you make it there by then?’
‘I’m already here, Bryce. I’ll be waiting.’
She rang off before I could reply. I dropped the phone back into its cradle, my bloodstream already humming as the pressure behind my fly grew.
Jesus.
Where the hell was my common sense? You’d think I’d learned my lesson after the one person I’d trusted had let me down so spectacularly. I might not have given her the unsavoury details about my family life and especially my parents—simply because I never discussed that...ever—but she’d known enough about dysfunctional Mortimers. Enough that I’d thought I could trust her with what our safe space meant. But the moment some idiot had clicked his fingers, she’d trotted off without so much as a Goodbye, Bryce.
When that same idiot had shown all the signs of being a complete and utter bastard much like my father, I’d tried to warn her. She’d lied to my face, demonstrating that the woman I’d thought I knew and trusted was just a figment of my imagination.
What the hell had Dan given her that I couldn’t?
You know exactly what! She never made it a secret.
I smothered the voice in my head and rose from the desk. What the hell did it matter now? She’d broken a trust that had probably been only one-sided to begin with, all so she could
chase some stupid dream of happily-ever-after. A dream I’d tried to tell her was a figment of her imagination.
And, like me, she’d been left with a pile of ashes. Only problem was, our friendship had been sacrificed in those flames too. Worse thing was, even after all that, a part of me had yearned to reach out, to ease the pain she must’ve been feeling during her acrimonious divorce.
Or perhaps I was projecting...
Whatever. I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth, made my way to the door and dismissed Tandy for the evening.
Downstairs, I slid behind the wheel of my Ferrari and lost myself for a moment in the smooth throb of the engine.
All too soon I was pulling up to The Sylph.
Normally this was the moment I took a minute or three to look up at the building I’d poured my heart and soul into. The steel and blue-green smoked glass masterpiece that had taken two long years, singular focus and some deep, untapped desire to leave something beautiful, something memorable behind.
Without looking I knew the structure in the pleasing shape of a slender woman’s torso, half turned, perhaps to view her lover over her shoulder, would be gleaming beautifully against the dying rays of the setting sun. That soon lights from within and those reflected from surrounding buildings across the bay would bathe it in a stunning silhouette that drew awed gasps.
But tonight my pride and joy paled in comparison to my interest in the silver town car idling in the designated parking space beneath the wide double portico of my building.
Parked a dozen feet behind it, I watched Savvie step out, her long, shapely legs extending in that way that only models and trained dancers could execute without appearing pretentious or awkward. Her heels were a shiny rose-gold colour that drew attention to her delicate ankles. I’d gripped those same ankles ten days ago, as I’d spread her thighs and bared her wet, beautiful pussy to my hungry gaze.
Was she wearing another of those mind-blowing scraps of silk underwear? Did she have a garter belt on under that short, flared black skirt whispering against her thighs in the light breeze? My gaze climbed up her body to the black off-the-shoulder top baring her throat and the top of her cleavage, my hands gripping the wheel as the image of those full, heavy breasts emblazoned itself on my mind.