“I have to keep my options open.”
“Of course you do. So, this job?”
“It would be a good move.”
“But you’re hesitant.”
“It’s a—” He stopped, both the pacing he was doing and defense of the job he was about to make.
“Tom?”
He needed a coupon for it. Take Job in San Francisco. Earn a Big Sign-On Bonus. The problem was there’d be no Flick in Frisco, same as there’d be no Flick in Chicago. “It’s good. It’s not good enough to move for.”
“Even though Rendel screwed you over.”
He held his hand out to her and she took it. “Don’t remind me.” He drew her to standing. “Whatever is on that playlist will be enough.”
“Hmm, I’d like to—”
“Enough.” What wasn’t enough was the number of nights he had left with Flick. He took her to bed, but she didn’t stay there. For the first time since they’d started sleeping together every night, he woke to find her missing. He found her in the kitchen, staring into the refrigerator, backlit by its light, tumbled hair halfway down her back, T-shirt hitched up over one hip, the sleep shorts she wore pulled tight across her squeezable little ass as she leaned over.
“Didn’t I feed you enough?”
She jumped like he’d poked her and he was on the other side of the counter. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry for waking you.”
He slid onto a stool and yawned. He was half awake but he didn’t miss the endearment. “You haven’t gone wandering at night for a while. Worried about Drew?”
“Yes.” She closed the fridge door and it was harder to see her in the gloom, but he thought she shook her head. “I talked to his wife, Jeannie. He’s doing okay. His pain is being managed. No more trips to the hospital for now.”
“Uh-huh.” He yawned again. “Flick, you wouldn’t be spinning me a tall tale, would you?”
“Why would I bother?” She rounded the counter and shoved him till he stood. “Back to bed.”
“You’re not hungry?” If he was fully awake he’d have a better idea if she was being truthful.
“Only for a victory in whatever game we’re going to play.”
Hmm, he still needed to think up a specific game. “Pool.” She shoved him again so he let her lead him to the bedroom. “Do you play pool?”
“I might’ve played a game or two.”
That probably meant she was a hustler and had played for gas money.
At the end of the workday, in a half-empty dive bar, watching Flick sink the five ball in the corner pocket in their first game of eight ball, he didn’t give a damn that she was chasing him all around the table.
She’d come to the bar from the office and was wearing a dress he’d zipped her into that morning, and heels lethal enough to puncture a car tire, which should’ve made leaning over a pool table impossible. It was impossible from the standpoint of not being able to take his eyes off her. The hem of that dress rose to show off the backs of her thighs, just high enough to drive all other sensible thought from his head. He was all about the next solid she sank and hoping she made a mistake soon, and the cheesy fries they were going to eat later and one more beer and fuck, she was wonderful.
He’d turned down an interview for the San Francisco job, but Denise was still on the case. He needed an option to turn down how bright Flick burned in his eyes so he could see past her, to when his life would settle back to normal. Maybe then it would be easier to decide what he wanted to do with his career.
“Hot damn,” she said, her seven hitting the cushion but not rolling far enough to fall in the pocket. “You’re up.”
She had one ball left on the table. “You might’ve played before,” he mimicked. “I’m being hustled.” He knew it when she pocketed a ball on the break.
“I haven’t played for years.” She chalked her cue, struggling to contain the wickedest twist in her lips.
“But when you did?”
“I didn’t pay for a lot of meals, or books, bus fare, or my phone account.”
“You know there’s a coupon I was reluctant about.” He approached the table, studied the layout she’d left him. His seven stripes and the eight ball, her one remaining solid. And the cue ball. “It’s the one where I get to tie you up.”
“You feel bad about that?”
He stepped into her space, the toes of his shoes to the toes of hers, made her look up at him, locked eyes, then took the chalk out of her hand. She fought him, tightening her fingers around the cube for just a second, eyes flashing as he eased it from her grip. “Not anymore.”
He pocketed his first ball to the sound of her laughter. Played better pool than he bowled, despite the distraction she was. That red dress that hugged her hips. The way she lounged against the wall, one leg crossed over the other. The weight of her long string of pearls kept safe in his pants pocket. The knowledge she watched him as hungrily as he’d watched her as he moved around the table lining up his shots, chasing his stripes.
They played four games and won two each, sat at the bar for burgers and fries, and when a table opened up, played the decider.
She racked the balls and set up for the break. “This needs a side bet.”
I win, you stay in Chicago. Christ. Sixteen days and he’d clear his head. Be able to think straight again.
“I win and you tell me a secret,” she said, and broke, sending the nine into the side pocket.
That was better than the alternative, that he carved open his chest and put his still-beating heart in her hands. “I win, you let me cook for Wren and Josh Saturday.”
“No. That’s not the deal. The deal is I cook so you can spend time with them.”
“I win and the deal is I cook and you help me in the kitchen.” He didn’t want to see her stressed about cooking for guests.
“Death wish,” she muttered, and then sank every stripe on the table.
He sank every solid.
And then he sank the eight ball.
In drug parlance, an eight ball was an eighth of an ounce, three-point-five grams of coke. An eight ball of blow would punch a hole in his head and let sunshine and all the ancient wisdom of the world in. An ounce of coke would smack down every one of his inhibitions and anxieties and it’d be so fucking good, it would ruin his life.
He took Flick home and she held his hand on the street, and that felt like sunshine though it was the dead of night. He stripped her out of the dress that he’d zipped her into while his new playlist made her hips shake and her arms twine and she kissed him like it was the only thing worth winning and that felt like wisdom.
Flick was his eight ball and he’d never felt so high as when he was with her, and when she left he’d be ruined.
Chapter Twenty
He picked up the phone with a brisk “Tom O’Connell.” He didn’t recognize the number, which was the whole point of Flick locking herself into a conference room at Cassidy Strauss. The other reason was she couldn’t do this at her desk and she wanted to make it count.
“You know, the sound of your voice, Tom—”
“Flick?”
“The sound of your voice is enough to make my heart kick.”
“Flick.”
“Yes, Tom, keep saying my name because I adore it when you say my name. Your voice close to my ear makes me hot. It’s like an instant reaction. Your voice in my ear and you can have anything you want from me.”
“Are you about to tell me we need milk?”
She clamped her hand over her mouth so he wouldn’t hear her laugh. He’d catch on in a minute.
“When I feel your voice rumble in your chest—oh, that, that makes me horny. So impossibly horny, Tom.”
“I’m in the office.” Now he sounded more fittingly suspicious.
“I know. You go off to work looking so badass i
n those suits. I know you have them tailored because you’re so broad across the shoulders. I can get wet looking at you in a suit. Did you know that?”
“Flick—are you—is this—? Jesus.”
“You didn’t know. I can look at you ready to go to the office in the morning and I want to go work myself over with my vibrator because I am so turned on and you’re fully clothed and you don’t even know the effect you have on me.”
“You can’t do this now.”
“Oh, but I’m doing it. You can always hang up, but you won’t because you want me to talk dirty to you. You chose the coupon—this is for your birthday, baby. I’m going to tell you what it is about you that makes me ready to come without your hands being on me, without you being inside me, and while I tell you, I’m going to touch myself.”
“Flick. Stop.”
She laughed. He sounded a little panicked. “Hang up, Tom, or hang on for the ride.”
“You’re a little punk, you know that?”
“Insult me again, baby, it feels so good when you get mad at me.”
The sound muffled. Oh, shit, did he hang up? Oh God, maybe he really was angry and she’d screwed up. She looked at the conference room phone; the screen said the call was still connected to an outside line. Then she heard his voice, but not clearly, then a door closed. He’d made it safe for work.
“I’m kicking myself; I didn’t see this coming,” he said, and his voice in her ear did all the things she’d told him it did. Spread heat through her body in an instant, a chemical burn that seared and liquefied in the very best way.
“Are you mad at me, baby? Because you get all steamed and there’s all this pent-up energy in you, makes you so tense, and you just need somewhere to put all that when there’s no mountain around to climb.” He did, she didn’t have to make this up for the show, it was real.
“I want to be your mountain, baby. Work your frustration out on me. Take all that wired, straining, inner turmoil and make me pay. I want your hands on my skin. I ache for that. I want you to strip me slowly like you did last night. Tom, that was mind-blowing. You had me shaking. You know you did. No one touches me like you. No one makes me shake like you. No one makes me want it so much.” So, so real. “I lose a part of myself when you get me like that, and it’s intense. You get all take-charge and there is nothing I can do to stop wanting more. You make me greedy for your body.”
“Are you really touching yourself?”
Oh man, his voice had gone all lower-register husky. No, she wasn’t touching herself—she was at work, wearing a pencil skirt. In a conference room that someone had probably booked and would insist on taking over any minute.
“I am so wet, Tom.” And oh, God, she was because she knew, she knew in every overactive nerve ending that fired an electrical impulse to her pussy that she was doing it for him.
“Fuck, Flick.” He sighed and it had an agonized quality to it, and now she did want to touch herself.
“No one makes me wetter than you, no one kisses me like you do. You kiss me like you want to eat me up, tame me.”
“No, I like you wild.”
Who’d have guessed that? “You make me wild. Sometimes I wake at night and you’re sleeping and I fantasize about waking you with a blow job.”
He let out a frustrated breath. “This is—holy fuck, Flick.”
“In my fantasy, you’re always hard and ready for me. I lick you like an ice cream, swirl my tongue around you, trace that vein that looks almost blue, and when you’re dripping I’d suck you like chocolate, melt you in my mouth and give you all the heat and friction you need to blow.”
He groaned and she inhaled sharply, pressing the heel of her hand over her skirt, into her mound. “Are you touching yourself, Tom?”
“That would be ill-advised.”
Oh God, the strain in his voice. “But you want to, baby?”
“I want to push you into the nearest wall and fuck you into the plaster.”
Ah! “I’d love that. I love how big you are, I love that you don’t know how gentle you are with all that strength. You make me feel like I can do anything with you. You would fuck me into the plaster with your hand at the back of my head so I didn’t get hurt and you’d watch my eyes, my face, you’d know if it got too much before I even did. And after. After.” Oh, she could barely catch her breath, and if she dared to move her hand...
“After, you’d treat me so tenderly. I didn’t think you’d be the kind of man who knew how to be tender. You have no idea how I love that about you. That tenderness that comes with the strength and the storm in you.”
Wait. That wasn’t dirty talk, that was, that was—not what this was meant to be about.
“I wanted to cry when you told me about your experience in college. Made me hurt to think you’ve been holding yourself back all these years, blaming yourself. You were young and it’s complicated.” Stop, stop, stop. Not dirty, the wrong kind of real.
“You can touch me like I’m precious to you one minute then slap one of those big hands around me the next as if I’m nothing but a possession. I want to be possessed by you.” That’s better. “I want to feel you growing harder and harder inside me, feel you hit all those places that light me up. I want to feel you tremble because you want to come so bad but know you’re holding off to wait for me. I want to hear the roar that hides in your body. It’s mine, mine when you come.”
He’d gone utterly quiet but for the ragged sound of his breathing, and she couldn’t keep her feelings from leaking into the game; she stopped trying.
“I want you to scream my name, Tom. I want to hear you own me.” Oh, she wanted that badly. And if she got it, what then, if she got him to do that? She’d have found a new home.
“And then when you’re done, emptied inside me, and you’ve made me into a rag, a deliriously happy limp puddle, I want you to curl around me and just breathe with me because that, that is the sexiest fucking thing ever, you and me replete, coming down off the sex high in each other’s arms.”
She blew out a breath, another. She felt shaky inside, hadn’t counted on this being more than a little embarrassing, at best a good laugh, and he was silent. “Tom?” Was he still there? Was it too much? Did she need to apologize?
“I’m late to a meeting. It’s going to be over before I can get there because I can’t risk walking out into the office like this,” he growled. It was part angry bear woken from hibernation and part raw hunger, and it made her mouth fall open. “Be naked and wet when I get home, because I don’t want to waste any time getting inside you.” He hung up without waiting for a response. Just as well—she didn’t have one in her.
It took her a few seconds to realize a colleague who wanted in the room was rattling the door handle and calling out.
The dirty talk was supposed to get Tom hot, and it’d almost put her on her knees.
Chapter Twenty-One
“What’s on for the weekend, Tom?” That’s the question he got from Delray in the elevator on Friday night.
Tom didn’t understand Delray. He was unfailingly cheerful. He worked in the accounts department. He had the unenviable job of chasing consultants for missing time sheets, and clients for payments. You could be rude to Delray and he’d still smile, which either made him an idiot or a genius. Neither verdict meant Tom had to be truthful about the weekend.
“Not a lot.” If you didn’t count tonight’s exploration of the Kama Sutra, Saturday’s dinner party and Sunday’s lingerie shopping. “Quiet one. You?”
After last night, he probably should be planning a quiet one. Last night he’d made it home in record time to find Flick had beaten him there and was, as instructed, impatiently naked and ready to go.
They’d had furiously passionate sex on the floor of the hallway. It was determined and mindlessly hedonistic at the same time. Utterly glorious. It knocked the breath ou
t of him thinking about it. He’d been mostly dressed. They toppled a glass bowl off the hall table. Flick got rug burn on her elbow. He needed to dry-clean that suit. They’d lain there in a tangle after that explosive encounter and laughed hysterically, struck with the insanity of what they’d done.
“Someone could’ve lost an eye,” he’d said, when he’d been able to talk again. It only made her snort-laugh. “In my defense, your honor, she called me at work and talked dirty until my health was seriously endangered. It was an inciting incident and I beg for clemency.”
He wasn’t going to get any mercy from Flick. Once their knees were working again he bathed her elbow and slathered it with aloe vera, and they ate leftovers before falling into bed with the kind of exhaustion reserved for a day’s worth of expectation and seven minutes of going at it like maniacs.
“Weather is supposed to be great,” said Delray. He’d said something about playing golf, but Tom wasn’t listening.
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t expect to see a lot of weather, unless it was the moisture on Flick’s skin, the wetness between her legs or from her mouth, and the steam they could make together.
The elevator hit bottom. “Have a great one, Tom,” Delray said with a wave and a smile as he stepped out.
If only he knew Tom was going home with the express intention of having sex with his temporary roommate and trying out poses called the Dolphin and the Scorpion. That might put a different expression on Delray’s face.
The expression on Flick’s face when she arrived home and smelled dinner was almost as good as the expression on her face when he made her come. “What is that?”
“Chicken tagine.”
“I could live in it. I’m starving.” She sat at the counter and he heard the clunk of her shoes hitting the floor. She unhooked earrings and took her hair down.
He caught her arm and examined the burn. “Did you put more gel on this?” It was blistered and a little weepy.
“My sex wound? Yes, I put the gel on it. I had to tell people it was a yoga injury.”
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