by Vivian Wood
My stomach twists under my open blouse, my chest rising and falling fast. I grip Heath with all the strength my hands can give, and with a slow nod, I lick the edge of his bottom lip, shucking his suit jacket from his muscular shoulders.
With a slow deliberate finesse, I undress Heath Sparrow, stripping his shirt from his chiseled body. I open the zipper of his slacks like a present on Christmas Day. Tearing at the seam, I lean back into his arms, raising my own above my head, pressing them against the elevator wall as he pins me. I meet his curious gaze with a small sigh.
“Show me.”
His stroke is gentle at first, slow as he slips inside my skirt. With a parting of my panties, he slides his firm hardness along my soaking slit, pressing at its opening, and I gasp as he stops just before plunging, his voice a gritty growl in my ear.
“Are you sure?”
I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.
I’m tempted to tell him just that when I wrap my hands against his well-formed ass, my body eager to receive his. I pant.
“I… I want Mr. Tequila b-back. He knew better than to—to talk.”
I feel his grin. Licking my earlobe, Heath lifts me up higher, impaling me. Now sitting on his immaculate cock, he lowers me slowly, halving my consciousness into two. With a breathy gasp, I give in, my body fitting around his like a firm glove, and when his thick length throbs, he groans, a guttural sound I feel all over my quaking body. I bite into his shoulder.
“Fuck, Violet,” he hisses, his voice sharp. “How do you feel so fucking amazing?”
The words are like kryptonite, weakening me at the knees. And when he starts to move, bouncing me harder and harder, his hands on my ass, and his lips at my neck. He mutters words—filthy dirty little words against my open collar and I struggle not to scream his name, my body squeezing from the pleasure building inside out.
“So fucking sexy, Violet. My God, I couldn’t want you more.”
“Soak me, baby. Fucking feel me.”
“So wet. So everything. So mine.”
I’m a mess, my mouth turned to mush. I sink my fingernails into his skin, my orgasm building. With a deeper bite into his shoulder, I moan, only four words making it to my lips. I cry out inside the small space.
“Heath, come inside me.”
His stroke quickens, his length thickens. And then I come. On the crest of an incredible climax, my thighs shaking, my breasts pressed against his immovable chest, the sex god in my arms fills me with his release, sinking farther into me.
It is the most sensual moment of my life. The most special.
Tears flood to my eyes, begging to fall hopelessly down my body. I love him. I know I do.
Every bone in my body is telling me so. And this time? I’m absolutely right.
There’s no mistaking what this man means to me. What we mean to each other.
And in his hold, imprinted from the inside-out with his body, I let Heath—just Heath—have me all night long, christening every surface we see with our climax, filling the elevator and every other surface from here to his apartment with our ecstasy.
Chapter Twenty-Six
HEATH
Sunday night
Two days before Christmas
“Holy hell, woman. Haven’t you had enough yet?”
Violet grins up at me, flashing a smile beneath a wave of ginger-hued hair. The glint in her eye is mischievous, her face full of wickedness and when she presses a kiss between the sheets, between my hips, it is enough to make me grab her and start all over again.
Not that we haven’t done so all Friday night. Or all Saturday afternoon and evening.
Sunday morning’s weather forecast is almost as bad as the prior two days and on the tail end of our snowed-in weekend in my penthouse, I am nearly spent.
Cell phone towers have been knocked down. Service is terrible. Sequestered in our love nest, we’ve fed on everything in my fridge and fucked. Fed some more and fucked again.
My body is exhausted from making love to Violet all over my apartment, my cock begging me to let him breathe. But the kiss Violet sweeps over my growing erection lets me know that she’s ready for round forty-five.
And within seconds, I realize…dammit, maybe I am, too.
I growl on a frustrated groan.
“Jesus Christ, Vi. You’re worse than me.”
She winks. “Or better. Depending on how you look at it.”
She lowers her body down my own, digging her nails into my skin. With a lick of her lips and a brush to the tip, my cock comes alive, thickening. I prepare to slide away from the wily woman under my covers when she covers the entire length with her mouth, sliding me so slowly inside that I’m almost tempted to come.
Almost.
“Christ!” I hiss out.
A mere two days before Christmas, Violet was making it hard for me to remember my manners. With Christmas Day now only hours away, I smile down at the greatest gift God has ever given me, my hands threading in her ruby hair as she swallows me with her lips before pulling back.
“Once more and then I have to go back to work.”
I frown. “Work? There is no work.”
The naked woman in my bed shakes her head. “I want to make headway on the Fletcher case.”
The frown on my face becomes a scowl, and I remember why I went back to SparrowHead in the first place. Looking for her. Needing to have her in my sights.
Needing…to keep her away from whatever cocksucker is quietly threatening her.
I reach for Violet again and she dodges me.
“Your boss,” I growl, “says there is no work.”
“You’re not my boss. You’re just Heath.” She teases, lapping me with her tongue. She’s so hard to resist. With my cock between her hands, wetness glistening against the tip, I’m nearly powerless to tell her no. Especially when she lays her hand flat against my abs, pressing me backwards into the bed, her head dipping to devour me once more. She murmurs against my skin. “Just enjoy, Heath.”
So I do.
Violet pumps with her mouth and hands, working me into a frenzy. Sliding the underside of me against her smooth tongue, she circles the tip of me, making me moan. Her mouth is hot and wet, ready to take what I can give her, and she presses down around my hardness, sucking me into oblivion. When I swirl my hips, swinging farther onto her tongue, she inhales even harder, a finishing move that shoots me to the brink.
“Fuck, gorgeous. I’m gonna come…”
She sinks her fingertips into me tighter. With my release in her throat, she swallows skillfully. Her mouth spreads into a smile, a self-satisfied look on her pretty face. I grab her wrist, pulling her towards me, tempted to kiss her groan. I breathe into her face.
“You did that on goddamned purpose.”
“Yup.” She beams up at me.
I let her go. “Let me show you what real torture is like.”
She laughs. “You’ve been showing me all weekend.”
I slide down the bed. “I wasn’t talking to you.” I point between her legs. “I was talking to her. See, I told her sometime last night that I was going to make her happy. And I don’t think I’ve finished that job yet? Do you?”
VIOLET
Monday morning
Christmas Eve
I no longer think of Heath Sparrow as a liar.
A year ago, I would have never uttered the words. But when he said he was going to ‘make good on his every mutter promise to tongue my honeyed pussy all night long,’ well…he meant it.
We spent the weekend among the piling snow in bed, but come Monday morning, while he slept peacefully in his penthouse suite, it was clear that one of us was still telling tall tales.
And that someone…is me.
I couldn’t sleep. At four am, with half of the snow melted, I caught a taxi cab to the SparrowHead building, eager to get back to the case I was building.
Chris Jackson was going down. If I have anything to say about it.
I’d made a promise to Arlene Fletcher. A promise to myself.
In the early morning hours, just before dawn, I sit at my desk, feet kicked up, Wham!’s Last Christmas sounding from my headset—as awful as I think the song is, thinking about Heath.
Until my office door swings open at 8am. And Emily steps in.
Her brunette curls bounce as she strolls over to my desk, files in hand. Her arms are clutched tightly to her chest as she smiles down at me—as if it isn’t Christmas Eve, her hazel eyes lively as she sashays right in.
Her good mood matches mine, and with a determined strut, she stops right before my desk.
“Good morning, Miss Keats.”
“Good morning, Em,” I manage to eek out. “You look chipper.”
“I am,” she grins. “Woke up on the right side of the bed this morning despite a bad date on Saturday night. Got a call from a gentleman, and I’ve been talking to him for the entirety of today’s morning. I find him very interesting.”
“Interesting?” I nod over the edge of my coffee mug towards the files, reaching a hand out for the documents in her hand. I managed to actually swallow some of the piping hot drink as our hands pulled the exchange.
But when I pull back, I almost choke on the caramel mocha again. More and more was getting revealed about Emily, enough to catch me off guard. I glance at her beautiful new blouse.
“Em” I scoff with amused surprise. “You look fantastic.”
“Oh, this old thing?” Her eyes skim down at her outfit. “It’s nothing special. Just a little something I picked up on a whim last weekend.” She dusts some lint off her new navy blue suit, and I have to admit: my eyes follow.
Her outfit is phenomenal.
The pencil skirt is a perfect fit for her darkened blue blazer. The lapels of her jacket look crisp around the color of a lily-white blouse, and her jewelry is of modest and impeccable taste.
She looks effortlessly clean. Minimal but chic. It’s a feat few businesswomen are capable of pulling off, and she’s done it with style. A grace that’s respectable and feminine and she looks like…she looks like…
I set down my coffee mug.
She looks like me. I swallow harshly.
“Emily, this…outfit…” I comment stiltedly.
She throws her hands out. “Okay, so I might have taken a few cues from you in terms of fashion, but…”
“A few?” I start to laugh. “Emily, if I weren’t a redhead, you would be my clone.”
She winces, shifting on her feet. “It’s that bad, isn’t it? I figured if I was going to act like a lawyer, I needed to look like one.”
“No,” I giggled. “It’s not bad. You look amazing, actually, as…well, me. And I must admit that this was exactly the kind of laugh I needed this morning.”
“You laugh,” she leans in. “But I’m serious.” Her tone takes a dip, lowering. “You have no idea how much you’ve inspired me.”
I point at my own chest. “Me?”
“Yeah, you.” Emily plants her hands on her hips. “I’ve seen the change in you over the last few weeks. And I love it. I used to think that we women couldn’t have it all. That life was always going to stomp a mudhole in our Manolos. But I see you…venturing out. Smiling more. Letting go…like you did on the Rockefeller ice.”
Emotion scratches my throat as Emily goes on.
“I think you’re brave. And chic. And adventurous. And bad-ass,” she laughs. “And if this,” she waves at me, “is what a strong career woman is, then I know this is what I want to be.”
My eyes grow watery, my mouth going instantly dry. I bow my head.
I wish I could tell Emily that I can take all the credit for this “career woman” she sees in front of her. But I’d be lying.
I was half that woman. And was incomplete. But the love of a strong man—a man like Heath—finished the half-painted picture of who Violet Keats was.
I’ve felt like a masterpiece the second I truly let his love into my life. I glance back up at Emily, clearing my emotion-clogged throat.
“Fine,” I exhale finally, “Miss CUNY law school. You can certainly help.”
She smiles. “I’m going to help you nail this Chris Jackson asshole…” I raise a finger, and she stops me. “And, please, don’t pretend you’re not going to go after him. You may have fooled everybody else at the firm. But don’t insult my intelligence.”
Her smirk spreads wider, and I have no recourse but to shake my head, starting the tedious process of rearranging the files on my desk. Feeling light for the first time since I woke up, I let the warmth of the laughter with Emily run over me.
“Just one rule: No excessive laughing. I won’t be much of an ‘inspiring lawyer’ with pee in my pants, now, will I?”
I could tell the chuckles run their course when Emily suddenly coughs from above me. I look at her still standing there.
“You might want to reconsider the ‘laughing’ part you were talking about…” She trails off, and I bit my lip at the frown on her face.
What? my body questions. What was it?
I don’t get to ask anything before Emily, solid wall of secrets that she is, starts rambling.
“So, a man called late on Friday when you weren’t here,” she begins. “And he was polite and funny. He asked for you and when I said you weren’t here, he told me that I was the next best thing and so I told him that I wasn’t. That I was just a secretary and he mentioned that if more secretaries sounded like me, then he should definitely get one and when we laughed, he started saying that…”
“Emily,” I interrupt. “I’m growing gray hair over here. Please.”
“Okay, okay.” She expelled a quick breath. “So, before he got off the phone, I asked if I could take his name and number down and when he gave it to me, I realized why he sounded so familiar. His voice. The inflection.”
She licks her lips.
“He said…he was Fitzgerald Sparrow.”
I swear I feel my heart drop through my ass.
“He said,” Emily maintains, “that if you didn’t speak with him soon, then the firm was in serious trouble. That someone was going to reveal everything he knew about us. Everything he knows about you, too. So, he asked that you call him…” She fiddles with her fingers. “As soon as possible.”
I blink. I think I stared at Emily so long that she started to get uncomfortable. My eyes shift to the TV located on the far wall, and again, I get those familiar pangs. The ones I have every time a Chris Jackson report comes on television. My brain tunes in.
Focus shifting, I stare at the image of Chris Jackson in a suit crossing the screen, his entourage in tow. With Fitzgerald’s call in the back of my mind, a memory starts to form, and the memory turns solid the second I set that same damned clip they’ve been running of crooked Jackson among the crowd.
Emily turns to stone beside me. She waves a hand in front of me to break my trance, and when she does, I lose it, jumping ten feet into the air from my chair, grabbing everything that I set out just minutes prior.
I snatch my purse from the edge of the desk.
“Violet, are you okay?” She leans in closer. “Do you need…” Her brow furrows. “Do you need some help or something?”
“Yes,” I replied, still scrambling and scraping to grab my shit. “I need some things. I need lots and lots of things.” I finally looked up at her. “Including you.”
I marched for the door.
“Me?” She gapes, watching me scuttle like a chicken with its head cut off. “Vi, we just got into the office. Your coffee’s not even cold, and we have a million things on the schedule today.” She clasps both hands upon her chest. “What on earth could I do?”
I step past her, heading out of my office.
“You can help me get the hell out of here, Emily. And grab your purse.” I glance back at her, still speed walking with the fury of Hell within my heels. “Because we won’t be coming back.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
HEATH
Monday
Christmas Eve
I learned the lessons of love and hate a long time ago. Twenty years ago, to be exact.
I was eight.
Love was a fairytale, a story more unbelievable than the Boogeyman in those days. There was very little of it in my household, and what little that did exist, only survived in the small bonds between me and my equally unloved siblings, a ragtag group of dreamers, drug addicts and money-chasers.
I didn’t know much about my father’s other children outside of his marriage to my mother. But I’d heard enough rumors over the years to know they existed.
And among them, I was the worst. At least, in the eyes of the only man who mattered.
More than a decade and a half after learning the first lesson of love and hate, I had wound up learning the second as he looked at me on the eve of my law school graduation, his golden eyes hardened beneath a set of bushy dark eyebrows, the hair above his heavy lids thicker than the strands on his balding head. He crosses his arms.
“You’re the student body president of your Harvard Law Class, for Chrissakes. And you’re telling me…” he shifts on his feet in my tiny wooden kitchen, “that you’re not walking across that goddamned stage?”
I rotate towards him, feeling the icy breath from the open fridge door. I reach inside. Standing in my silk-covered cap and gown that I’ve only recently decided won’t ever see the graduation stage, I grab for the glass brown bottle stashed on the refrigerator shelf, swigging from its open neck.
Funny. I don’t taste a thing. The heavy robe on my frame brushes the black laces of my spit-shined shoes, and I blink once, pushing beer and bile back down my throat, washing both away with a feeling of guilt to follow. I swallow that too, leveling my glare.
“Technically, I didn’t tell you anything. The dean did the lovely honors of doing that.”
“The dean is a good friend.” My father stares.