Love. Local. Latebreaking.: Book 1 in the newsroom romance series

by H. Laurence Lareau

  “Jake, there’s no music.” Karli looked around the room in quick confusion. “There’s an awards ceremony going on over there.”

  “Well, then we will have to find a dance floor,” he said, again holding his hand out to her.

  She rose to take his hand, and he turned to the table and said simply, “Good night.” Karli made sure she had her purse, then nodded to the table generally, looked up at Jake and walked with him toward the main exit. As they passed through the room, several people leaned out from their tables to whisper congratulations. Karli thanked each, but had to walk quickly to keep up with Jake’s determined stride.

  As they passed through the entrance, Jake leaned to her ear and whispered the question that had been nagging at him since he figured out she was returning to Three NewsFirst: “Are you coming back to me, or just to your collaborator?”

  Karli could hear the restrained tension in his voice. She took a deep breath, bracing herself for the moment she had anticipated and dreaded for weeks. “I’m coming back to you, too, Jake.” She stopped, searching his eyes for a gentle response to the heart she had just laid bare to him.

  Karli caught a breath preparatory to speaking, then restrained herself from explaining all the other, professional reasons for returning that were racing through her mind: the Chicago news market placed inhuman demands on reporters, Jerry had given her everything she had asked for, her father’s reaction to her Chicago job had made her examine it and her motives for going there much more carefully than she had before going.

  She had indeed been trying to address her issues with her father’s ambitions for her by landing a job so incontestably huge that even he would see it in a positive light. But it hadn’t turned out to be what she wanted. She had realized almost immediately that none of the newsroom staff felt connected to the community—it was nearly impossible to even define the community. The city was so huge that understanding it required learning dozens of formal and informal neighborhoods, not to mention the several counties filled with their countless suburbs.

  And quite simply, she missed him with all of her heart. Chicago could never be home with Jake six hours to the west, among his beloved corn fields.

  “I know a place where we can have that dance,” he said.

  ***

  Karli took in a big breath of surprise when Jake opened the door and gestured her in. “This is amazing!” she cried. “How did you get the station to pay for an entire suite here?” She walked from room to room in the enormous space, which included a complete living room, separate dining room and completely stocked bar in addition to the huge bedroom.

  Jake followed her and immediately began moving furniture away from the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Ozark mountains. “The station didn’t exactly pay for this,” he said. “As a matter of fact, Norwich was so chintzy about this trip that he wanted Jerry and me to bunk together in one of the smallest rooms.” As he finished sliding the table away from the huge empty space he had created, he asked Karli what she would have to drink and poured them each a glass of wine from the bar.

  “I guess I forgot about your. . .um, resources,” Karli said, taking an eager sip of wine. They had walked together over to the windows to take in the astonishing—even at night—view from the 12th floor.

  “Sometimes,” Jake said, sliding open the glass door to the balcony and inviting Karli to join him, “it’s nice to remember that I have resources.” He inhaled deeply of the quickly cooling and lovely smelling evening air, and turned to Karli with a smile. “Especially when I don’t want to spend two nights listening to Jerry’s snoring.”

  Karli smiled in reply, then leaned her hip against the balcony’s railing and looked out over the Ozarks. This is such a beautiful view. And I’m taking such a giant leap, going back to Des Moines. It feels like it’s as big as if I jumped off this balcony. Yet I wouldn’t if it didn’t feel right to come back.

  She looked over as Jake leaned against the railing next to her, feeling satisfaction with the direction her career was headed. His profile was reassuringly strong and confident, and Karli felt a sense of security looking at him. The feeling was confusing, though, an uncomfortable mish-mash of the professional and the romantic. Karli paused to consider her feelings for Jake, then shook her head and looked back out at the horizon. “This is a glorious view, isn’t it?” she asked.

  Jake looked at her with surprising intensity. “You have no idea how glorious.” He drained his wine glass, held his hand out to Karli, and led her back into the suite. “I think it’s time for that dance,” he said, taking Karli’s glass and fiddling momentarily with a bluetooth speaker. After it began playing a Strauss waltz, he extended his hand to Karli and moved toward the large space he had cleared. “My college ballroom dance class skills aren’t much,” he said. “But I think I can manage a waltz. How about you?”

  Karli curtsied to him in elegant fashion, then batted her eyelashes at him and produced a heavy Southern accent. “Well, I do declare, Mr. Gibson. How could you expect that a woman raised in proper Charleston society would not know how to waltz?”

  Jake grinned and moved to her, and they circled their arms and stepped right into the beat. Karli felt the sure confidence of his movements through her left hand and arm, where they lay over his right shoulder and arm, and through her right hand’s connection to his left. The easy tugs, nudges, and lifts of his direction propelled them together over the improvised dance floor. The sweetness of his wine-scented breath mixed with the familiar spiciness of his cologne to form an intoxicating atmosphere around them. The suite was dimly lit by a few small bulbs, spaced far enough apart to give a sensation of flickering shadows as they turned through the dance.

  She knew the waltz and many of its trickier movements reflexively, thanks to many social dance lessons in her teen years.

  Yet Jake was unlike any partner she’d ever had: his strength made turns nearly effortless, and his signals made every movement safely predictable.

  Karli felt their breathing synchronize as the music took control, and she was transported. A gallant and handsomely dressed gentleman waltzing me in my finest evening gown, a luxurious setting surrounding me and the stars just outside to shine over us—this is the kind of night I’ve always dreamed of. And Jake is the very figure of the gallant gentleman. She looked into his dreamy, chocolate-brown eyes and saw a question—and an answer.

  Suddenly the long weeks they had spent apart came crashing down around Karli. The lonely late nights. The cold bed. The never-ending toil. All of those thoughts filled the music’s time, but they were distracting enough that Karli was taken by surprise when the music ended.

  Jake swept her up in a sudden hug, moved his mouth to her ear and whispered urgently, “You’re coming home. And you’re my home, just as I am yours.” Karli leaned back to respond and found her mouth covered in a kiss that began tenderly and lingered, then changed, suddenly and without warning, into an impassioned, hungry embrace.

  As the kiss deepened, Jake’s throat rumbled something that was very nearly a growl, and Karli smelled the exotic spice of his cologne as she caught a sudden breath of surprise. She savored the wet softness of his lips and moved her hands up his sternly starched shirtfront to find the beginning of a stubbly five-o’clock shadow on his throat and jaw. She had missed him.

  The sudden intense passion of the kiss after the romantic swirl of the dance and her reverie swept her up, where her entire world and every thought, her self-awareness, slipped away and all that remained was her-and-him and a keen awareness of how perfectly her body fit within his arms.

  Jake pulled back from the kiss and left Karli with a vaguely fuzzy feeling of unwelcome separation.

  “This is fast, I know,” he said seriously. “Let’s move into a new place together. I mean, not the old carriage house. I like it and everything, but it’s my space, you know, without accounting for other tastes. So you probably don’t much like it or you’d want something not so masculine or something
, and I don’t want to—”

  Karli’s half-lidded eyes found Jake’s. “Shut up,” she mumbled, as she reached behind his neck and pulled him back down to continue the interrupted kiss. She felt his momentary hesitation change to eager enthusiasm, heard his breath deepen, felt the strong pressure of his arms embracing her, and she melted a little more than she had already. She wanted him, and his desire for her was apparent. She moaned into their kiss, feeling the vibrations through her throat and onto his lips and tongue. His growling response sent tingles throughout her body.

  No sooner had she felt the quivering begin in her legs than she felt Jake reach down and sweep them up with one strong arm while supporting her back with the other. The kiss stopped only for a moment and resumed in all its intensity and passion as he carried her confidently to the suite’s bedroom, then stood her up next to the king-size bed.

  Once there, he undid her dress in the back, slipped it from her shoulders and let it fall to the ground, leaving Karli feeling oddly self-conscious in nothing but her heels and her lacy, bought-specially-for-the-gown black bra and thong. Jake had certainly seen her in the altogether many times, she knew, but never when he was fully dressed out in a tuxedo. The formal clothes after the formal dance and the formal event made the scant lacy underthings feel even more revealing than full nudity.

  She consciously called to mind the thought that the only place she had ever felt relaxed and sexy and completely herself was in Jake’s arms—and the related thought that she had nearly lost the chance to be herself by signing up for the energy- and personality-sink that her Chicago job had turned out to be.

  Jake again kissed her, this time tenderly, moving his hands gently along the curves of her hips, waist, and up to her shoulders. He paused as his hands reached her shoulders, and he stood back, holding her at arm’s length, his eyes moving hungrily over Karli’s face and body. “You rock the hell out of that lace, you know,” he whispered. “You look like you need me to attend to you on bended knee, right now.”

  “Not until you shave, Mr. Raspy,” Karli whispered back, though the compliment made her blush with pleasure. As she felt her cheeks heat up, she also felt that her nipples were already pressing hard against the thin lace of her bra, and she realized she was soaking wet. “Your face feels like you haven’t shaved in two whole days! Am I going to have to put up with this kind of slovenliness when I come back to Des Moines?”

  “I’ve been kissing you on the lips for about 15 minutes now,” he said, again in a throaty whisper, “and you haven’t seemed to mind. So I think I can manage to kiss you on the lips without causing too much distress,” he said, directing a hungry glance at the lace that barely covered her. His hands were still on her shoulders, and they firmly turned and tipped her onto the bed. She sat down as gracefully as she could manage with her gown still fallen around her feet.

  It took Jake no time at all to push her back onto the bed and move over her to begin another kiss, this time even more passionate and hungry. Karli felt overwhelmed at the sheer physical size of him, plus the spreading blackness of his tuxedo jacket that swept over her and framed the stark white of his shirt. The bed’s first creaks sent shivers through her. The kiss intensified, and she bit his lower lip hard enough to make him grunt and pull away.

  Her career—Chicago—as wonderful as it was, had not accounted for Jake. Everything she had ever wanted professionally and personally was all wrapped up in that jet-black tux. Even if it meant returning to Des Moines. She had been in danger of losing herself in her major-market job. Now she could realize her professional ambitions—plus the unknown of a real, enduring relationship with Jake.

  When Jake pulled away from their kiss—and her bite—he didn’t just pull a few inches away from her face. He kept moving back until he was kneeling at the side of the bed, between her legs. She felt his fingers gently move the lace to the side and heard his appreciative hum at seeing her smoothness. The sudden warmth of his tongue pressed just at her opening but did not enter. Instead, it slid gently and smoothly up and between her lips, probing slightly to find her most sensitive spot.

  He picked up her legs and raised them over his shoulders as he explored her pleasure. She felt an involuntary quiver shake through her legs, and she repressed the urge to repress the quiver. Instead, she took a deep breath and gave herself permission to go along with the sensations. And to go along with Jake’s ministrations.

  He progressed to gently sucking while rhythmically sliding his tongue around and up and down deeply between her inner lips. Karli found the pace of her breath and felt it flow through her, in perfect rhythm with the electric tingling that crackled from her clitoris. Just as she felt herself clenching with urgent need, she felt Jake’s fingers slip into her, gently probing her depths and pressing up against her upper wall—the back of the button he was so masterfully tonguing.

  She clenched the bedspread in each of her hands and then felt the swooping build-up begin to work its way through her. “Oh, yessss,” she hissed, feeling her hips begin to involuntarily rock in surrender to the irresistible wave of consummation that had snuck up on her and that would overwhelm her any second. She lost herself in her feelings, knowing that Jake had brought her to this place where every sensory nerve fired with intense pleasure.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, feeling her breath intensify as she continued to clench over and over around Jake’s fingers. The throbbing kept on for much longer than usual, until it finally ebbed away, leaving behind it a tingling series of diminishing aftershocks. Karli released the blanket from her tight grip and opened her eyes to a feeling of sudden dryness in her mouth that contrasted with the remarkably dripping wetness below.

  Jake kept at her, even though she had obviously finished. His tongue, which had delivered such intense pleasure, quickly became too much to bear. She pressed against the top of his head and twisted her hips to move away from the persistence of his mouth.

  “Mr. Raspy, huh?” he chuckled quietly. “I don’t think you suffered too much there, did you?”

  “Oh my God, Jake,” Karli whispered breathlessly. “That was amazing. I just kept coming and coming.”

  “I felt every throb,” he muttered through a devilish grin. “And I didn’t want it to end.”

  “I’m really thirsty,” she said, turning her head this way and that, looking for a drink.

  “Your wine is right over there,” Jake said, rising and indicating to the bar just outside the bedroom. “Or would you like something else?”

  “Water, please,” Karli said. “And the wine.”

  He returned and handed her two glasses. Karli sat up on the bed, took the water and drank deeply, set the glass on the floor next to the bed, then sipped the wine. Jake, having managed to carry three glasses altogether, took a drink from his own wine glass. He stood next to where Karli sat on the bed, reaching his hand out to lace fingers with her.

  Karli took his hand and looked up and down his tall figure, still fully dressed in his tuxedo, and noted the distinct bulge below the cummerbund.

  She took another, deeper sip of wine while her eyes fixed more or less involuntarily on the bulge. That, she thought to herself, is something worth coming back for.

  She savored the wine sliding down her throat, set the glass down next to the water, stood up, and put her hands on Jake’s shoulders. “Your turn, now, Mr. Raspy,” she whispered in her most seductive tones. She tried to twist him so she could throw him onto the bed, but he just grinned and stood still, controlling his weight and her leverage.

  Karli sighed in frustration and looked up at him. “Okay, so I won’t call you Mr. Raspy any more,” she muttered. “Just cooperate.”

  Jake chuckled deep in his throat and permitted himself to be twisted and dumped till he was laying on his back across the king-sized bed. “Um, I’m a little over-dressed, aren’t I?” he asked in somewhat startled tones.

  “Not at all. You’re hot in that tux,” Karli replied, tugging down his zipper and reaching i
n to liberate Jake’s visibly growing erection. She kept her hand around it as she slid her body up over Jake’s chest to kiss his lips, and she felt the racing thuds of his heart through the stiffly starched shirt. Just as their kiss began to deepen and promise to become an extended exploration, Karli broke it teasingly off and moved herself down his body again.

  She placed herself between his legs so she could pin them down and keep him from squirming. I may be coming back to you, she thought, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be in control. Then she moved her mouth slowly over his tip, circling it with her tongue and sucking gently.

  As she glided farther down his huge erection, she savored the odd contrast between the velvety softness of his skin and the stiffness that filled her mouth. Jake moaned and pushed his hips up against the pressure of Karli’s controlling arms. “Damn, that is amazing,” he mumbled through audibly clenched teeth.

  Hearing his pleasure, Karli gradually sucked harder and moved over him faster, bringing all of him inside her again and again. She then paused near the tip and sucked hard, sliding her tongue across and over the sensitive spot just below the heart-shaped cleft in the top. She felt Jake’s fingers run through her hair—not by way of controlling her movements, but rather to connect with her and communicate the intensity of his pleasure.

  Karli’s own arousal increased as she felt him pulsating against her tongue, and she went with her sensations, letting them overwhelm her. The heat of him, the moans of pleasure and the desperation to orgasm all both transported her and kept her completely in the moment. The thought of how desperately she wanted him inside her in other places and how gorgeously handsome he was both in his tux and out of it renewed the tingling of desire throughout her own body.

  The more turned on he got, the more Karli’s own body and movements responded, bobbing faster and needing to feel him explode inside her. She felt the moment approach as Jake suddenly tensed and held the breath that had been so heavy. He released it with a deep groan, “Oh, Karli. You’re mine.”