I place a hand gently against his cheek and I stare deeper into his eyes, but I still don’t know. I still don’t know this man, not really, and yet, I’m here, and he’s asking me to marry him, and I just don’t know…
I close my eyes as he kisses me, a kiss so gentle and soft my body almost collapses against him, and I fall into that kiss as he unzips my dress, letting it fall to the floor. I kick it away and he lifts me up onto his desk, and I raise my hips slightly as he slowly slides my panties down over my thighs. I’m naked now, bar for my heels and the ring he slid onto my finger earlier.
His eyes lock with mine as he steps between my legs, and I reach down and unzip him and I take him in my hand, smiling slightly as he hardens instantly in my grip.
“Marry me,” he murmurs, leaning in closer, his mouth touching mine as he pushes inside me, and I wrap my legs around him but I say nothing. I hold onto him and I take him deep; I throw my head back and moan quietly as he sucks on my nipples. But I say nothing.
He slides a hand into the small of my back and he pushes me forward, angling my body ever so slightly so he falls deeper into me and I can’t stop the long, low groan. He’s taking his time, thrusting long and slow and I’m taking him all the way, accepting everything he has, I want him. All of him. Demons and all, I want him.
And then he moves me slightly again, and when he does that it triggers a rush of white-hot tingles that flood my entire body, all at once, and I can’t stop the cries, I can’t. He’s brought me to the most glorious, most incredible climax and as I feel him come inside me I know now, what I need to do.
Mike is a demon I need to rid myself of because going back there just kills me. I can’t do it again. I can’t. Evan means I don’t have to.
Mike is my demon.
I don’t know what Evan’s are, but I’ll make him tell me. I’ll find out.
But right now he’s fucking me and I’m taking it all, because I love him.
I belong to him.
I’m his…
Evan
“Marry me, Lola.”
I hold her tight as she comes in my arms, her gentle moans giving way to longer, louder groans and cries as she bucks and jerks against me, gripping my cock with a vice-like hold, squeezing me to my own climax, Jesus! All that pointless, meaningless sex I’ve had over the years, what a fucking waste. When I could have been feeling this.
“Marry me, baby.”
I’m not giving up, I need this woman. I looked into her eyes and I know what I saw and I want to marry her, so bad it hurts. I want her in my world, and I’ll fight to keep her there. I’ll fight, for her. And I’ll win, every time.
She finally relaxes, her body now calm and still although her breathing remains heavy and slightly shallow.
“Lola?”
I take her face in my hands and I look into her eyes, and she smiles. And that’s all I really need to see. Her smile.
“Are we good here, baby?”
“I can’t,” she whispers, and those two tiny words slam into me like a hammer to the heart. They pierce my soul, kick hard at my gut, but I have to accept it. For now. “Evan, I love you, I do. I love you, I just…”
I close my eyes and rest my forehead against hers as I stroke her cheek, my fingers grazing her soft skin. He won’t leave us alone, I can’t get him to do that. He isn’t here, yet he still won’t leave us alone. She won’t let him. So I guess I have to try harder to make that happen.
“It’s okay.”
She pushes me back slightly, so she can look at me, and I am not letting this woman go, not now. I never thought I’d ever know what love felt like, but I think I do now, it happened, she happened, and she thinks I’m just going to walk away or stop fighting; never find out if we could actually have a future together? She knows me better than that.
“I’m sorry, Evan, I just…”
“You need more time, huh?”
She smiles slightly. “Maybe.”
I drop my gaze and I look at her, naked and beautiful on my desk. I’ve wanted to see her, like this, ever since the day she first walked in here.
“Maybe,” I repeat as she lets go of me, slides down from my desk and walks over to the window. And she doesn’t cover herself up, makes no attempt to step back into her dress, she keeps it all on show and I feel my cock react. I want her, again, and I’ll take her, soon. But right now I just want to look at her.
She presses her palms against the glass as she stares outside. “Dana said you had demons.”
I don’t say anything for a second. I just keep my eyes on her, watching her as she gazes down at the city below.
“Do you?” she continues, still keeping her back to me and I let my eyes drop to scan the curves of her body, committing every single one to memory. “Have demons?”
“I think we all do, Lola. Somewhere deep inside.”
I walk over to her, and I rest my hands on her hips as I lean in to kiss the back of her neck, and she sighs quietly as my mouth connects with her skin.
“You have yours.”
“You know what mine is.”
“Mike is your only demon?”
“The way I feel about him is my demon, Evan.”
My fingers dig deeper into her flesh; she said feel. Not felt. And I close my eyes as another painful spasm rocks my gut.
“I don’t know what yours are.”
“Dana didn’t tell you?”
I let my hands slide down onto her ass, and I cup it gently and she responds, pushing back against me. Mike may be her demon, but she still wants me.
“No,” she breathes as I pull her hips back against me; pull her gently back onto my aching cock and she moans quietly as I once more sink into her. “She didn’t.”
I didn’t think Dana would. Tell her, I mean. Because it was fucked up and messy and Dana and me, we should never have gone there. We had the same goals, the same ambition; the same endgame. But we were too similar. Too close to being the same person, too intertwined for it ever to have worked on a personal level.
“I didn’t love her the way I should love someone I married, Lola. She didn’t love me the way you should love someone you married. And there were reasons for that.”
I slide my fingers between hers and I press my mouth against her neck as I thrust a little harder, pulling her back against me.
“We say we loved each other, but we couldn’t have done. We couldn’t have loved each other,” I murmur, and her fingers tighten around mine as I thrust that little bit deeper inside her. “Not the way you’re supposed to love someone you pledged to spend the rest of your life with. Because love wasn’t something either of us was brought up to experience or feel or understand.”
I drop a hand and reach down to find her clit, and I rub it gently, which causes her to jerk slightly, her knees almost giving way but I keep hold of her.
“Neither of us knew what love really felt like, so when we tell people we loved each other, we’re probably lying. I don’t think we ever came close to feeling anything even vaguely resembling love. Not even for the briefest of seconds.”
Her fingers tighten around mine again as I thrust into her, pressing harder against her swollen clit.
“And our physical relationship, that was so fucked up. I needed the release, but that was all it ever was. A release. I felt nothing more, and neither did she. We were dead, Lola. She hated sex, and I needed it. I didn’t want or need commitment or emotion, that was something I realized soon after we were married. I just needed sex.”
She lies her head back against my shoulder and I pull gently at her clit, my thumb rotating slowly until she comes quietly, and I raise my hand to her neck, resting it lightly against her as she moans and shudders and I let my own climax take hold with one more push, one more sharp, solid thrust that slams into her and she cries out again, a little louder this time.
“So whatever me and Dana once felt for each other, we can pretend it was love. But I don’t think it was. She was as cold and as driven as
I was – as I maybe still am.”
She reaches up to slide her fingers into my hair and I close my eyes and breathe her in.
“We’re both the product of parents who thought the only thing that mattered in life was success and achievement. Parents who ran their own law firms. Parents who never loved each other; whose marriages were ones of convenience rather than choice and I guess that damaged both of us.”
She tilts her head slightly and I kiss her slowly, dropping my hand to her breasts, her moans quiet and guttural as I gently cup them; moans that vibrate right through me, and I realize I’m still inside her, I don’t want to leave just yet.
“We were messed up, Lola. Me and Dana. We had no idea how to do relationships. All we wanted was this; success, a top-tier law firm that was ours, that’s what got both of us off, because for all our lives that’s all we’d been told. That this mattered. Emotion makes you weak, but power is everything. So those demons she says I have, they’re hers, too. The same ones. We couldn’t love, not that real, deep love that most people experience. We couldn’t feel those things because they got in the way of this. When we got married – we still tell people it was because we loved each other, but that’s a lie. One we tried to convince ourselves was true. Because our marriage was one of convenience too, just like our parents’. The only difference being we saw through that shit before it totally destroyed us as people. You can be cold and driven without becoming completely closed off, and we knew staying married was the worst thing we could do. That could’ve jeopardize this, and we knew when to walk away.”
She turns around in my arms, takes my face in her hands and kisses me until my mouth starts to ache.
“I needed sex, Lola. I needed that release but Dana couldn’t be there for me, in that way. She didn’t want to be there for me, like that, but I – I needed sex. I didn’t need emotion or commitment because that gets in the way. But then came you, baby. Then came you, and the day you walked into this office, that was a wake-up call, I know that now. I have what I set out to achieve, I just never took the time to actually realize what that meant. I have it, all of it. The success, the law firm; the respected career. I have it all. And realizing that also made me realize how lonely I actually was.”
She steps back from me and picks up my suit jacket that’s hanging over the back of my chair behind my desk, and she slips it on over her naked body. And I swear, she’s never looked so beautiful. She’s all flushed from the sex, her hair just slightly mussed-up, and the shit I’m feeling now – that’s real. That’s fucking real.
“Then came you, Lola. And I don’t know if I’m doing it right because love scares the shit outta me, baby, it really does. I just know that what I feel for you, I never felt that for Dana. It wasn’t there, so this – this scares me.”
She walks back over to me, and I slide an arm under the jacket and around her waist, pulling her against me. “Say it again, Mr. King.”
I frown slightly, and she smiles before she leans right into me, her mouth resting against my ear as she speaks.
“Say it again.”
She looks at me, right into my eyes, and my fingers splay out at the base of her spine, pressing her against me.
“Marry me, Lola.”
Her mouth twists up into a smile and she leans in to kiss me, keeping her mouth on mine. “Okay.”
I wind my fingers in her hair and I kiss her again, a little harder, a little more forcefully, and she pushes me back into my chair and unzips me before she straddles me, lowering herself down onto my still-hard cock.
“We’re getting married,” I smirk, gripping her hips as she rides me slow and deep.
“Yeah,” she murmurs, leaning forward and gently nipping my lower lip with her teeth. “I guess we are.”
Thirty-Four
Lola
“I don’t want Mike to know, Kat.”
“You’re gonna lie to him?”
I look at her, and I shake my head. “No, Kat, I’m not going to lie to him because we don’t talk anymore. And I know you and Eric are engaged now, which means Mike’s a part of your life through default, but that doesn’t give you the right to tell him shit, okay? Not if it involves me. He doesn’t need to know about me marrying Evan, because it’s none of his business. Same as his life has nothing to do with me anymore.”
She leans back against the wall and sips her coffee. She’s popped over to Cavendish King for lunch, and because I very rarely see her these days, and I miss her. She’s living with Eric now so a lot of her time is spent with him, and I’m working all the hours God sends with Evan so our paths cross a lot less than they used to. Things change, I guess. But she’s still my best friend. And she still needs to know that as far as Mike is concerned, he’s my past. Evan is my future. And in a couple of weeks he’ll be my husband. But Mike doesn’t need to know that. I don’t want him to know that.
“Whatever you want, Lola. But I’m still not sure you’re…”
I throw her a look that shuts her down on the spot, and she takes another sip of coffee.
“It can’t be easy, though. Working with someone and then going home with them, too.”
“We’re managing.”
I’m not getting into the conversation I think she’s angling for. I’ve spent too many hours going over and over in my head the reasons why I’m marrying Evan, and there’s only one I keep coming back to. I love him. And, yeah, okay, it’s a love borne out of complications and messed up situations but it’s love. And I’m taking that.
“So, what’s gonna happen once you’re married?”
I look at her, and I frown. “What do you mean, what’s going to happen once we’re married?”
“Is he gonna be okay with you still working here?”
“Jesus, Kat, it’s not 1955. Things’ll carry on the same as they are now, the only difference being a ring on my finger and a change of surname.”
“Lola King, huh?”
I lean back against the table and fold my arms, narrowing my eyes as I stare at her. “What’s the matter with you?”
She shrugs. “Nothing. I just wish you and Mike could’ve…”
“I’m not doing this, Kat.” I go over to the coffee machine and pour myself another mug. “Am I making it awkward for you and Eric, huh? Is that it? When you guys get married is it going to be a problem, me being on the same guest list as Mike? Look, I’m not stupid, all right? I know we’re going to bump into each other every now and again, it’s inevitable. My best friend is marrying his brother so, yes, our paths are going to cross again at some point in the future. But when they do, Kat, I’ll be with Evan. And Mike – he’ll be with someone else, too. It just won’t be me.”
“It could’ve been. If the pair of you had just knocked your heads together and sorted your shit out.”
“I don’t believe you…”
She looks at her watch and goes over to the sink to wash out her mug. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Kat…”
She swings around to look at me, and she sighs and comes back over to give me a hug. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m being a bitch, I know. I should be happy for you. I mean, you’re marrying one of Manhattan’s most eligible bachelors; a man every woman I know lusts after, and you’re marrying him. People hate you, do you know that?”
I can’t help smiling, but that conversation’s unsettled me slightly, and I don’t like that feeling. Not so close to my wedding.
“I really am sorry, Lola. Just ignore me.”
“I try to.”
She smiles too and leans in to give me another quick hug. “I’ll call you later.”
I nod and wait until she’s out of sight before I lean back against the counter and let out a heavy, labored sigh.
“Oh, now that sounds like someone who’s got the weight of the world on her shoulders.”
My eyes spring open at the sound of Jess’s voice. “I’m fine.”
“Wedding arrangements getting to you?”
“Chance
’d be a fine thing. It’s all in the hands of Grayson and Lyle, my two exceptionally well-organized wedding planners.”
She sits down at one of the tables in the kitchen and looks at me. “Gay?”
“Very.”
“Good at what they do?”
“The best. You think Evan would’ve hired anything less?”
“Feeling a little out of control of this one?”
“You could say that.” I can’t stop another heavy sigh, and Jess frowns.
“A bit different to last time, huh?”
My head shoots up, and her expression changes.
“Oh, God, Lola, I’m so sorry.”
I shake my head and drop my gaze. “It’s all right. Really. You only said what I’ve been thinking.” I look up and my eyes meet hers. “Yes. It’s a bit different to the last time. And I hope it stays that way. I’d quite like Evan to turn up to this one.”
She smiles slightly, and I drop my gaze again.
“I’m not thinking about him, Jess. I can’t let myself go there. I mean, I’m over him, I am, it’s just… weddings bring it all back, y’know?”
“Understandable. Was that Kat I saw just now, by the way?”
“Yeah.”
“And how’s she feel about you and Evan?”
“She’s trying to get used to it. But she can’t let go of what could’ve been if me and Mike…” I drag a hand back through my hair. “She’s still wearing those rose-tinted glasses that see me and Mike and her and Eric on perfect double dates. And it’s exhausting.”
“Mike doesn’t know about you and Evan getting married, does he?”
“No. And I want it to stay that way.”
“You still feel anything for him, Lola?”
I’m slightly angry at that question, but at the same time I can’t blame someone for asking it. And Jess, she says it how it is, she doesn’t sugar-coat anything. That’s why I like her.
“I’ll always feel something for him, Jess. I can’t help that. But I love Evan. I’m marrying Evan. I want Evan.”
Lawfully His (A Dirty Business Novel Book 1) Page 28