by Megyn Ward
In the kitchen, I make coffee before poking around in the fridge for a few minutes. Finally finding a yogurt, I shut the fridge just as I hear the front door to our apartment open. A quick glance over my shoulder tells me that Patrick isn’t hungover and he isn’t sleeping. Despite tying one on last night and everything that happened after, he looked normal—like he did every morning.
He looks fantastic.
“Morning,” he says, stopping just inside the door to kick off his running shoes.
Knowing he left after what happened, I expected to catch him doing the walk of shame in last night’s rumpled clothes, I’m surprised to see him in workout clothes, like it was any other Saturday morning. “Good morning,” I say in a voice that’s surprisingly steady considering I suddenly can’t get the image of the two of us pressed against my bedroom wall out of my head.
Moving across the living room in my direction, he snags the hem of his fitted tank and drags it up over his head, tossing it into the basket of dirty clothes he has parked by the coffee table. It’s all a part of his Saturday routine. Workout. Laundry. ESPN until his eyes glaze over.
Predictable Patrick.
“You’re up early for a Saturday,” he says, giving me that same easy, gorgeous smile he’d given me yesterday morning and every morning since the day I moved in. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
Last night he’d been angry. Unwilling to talk about what happened. Unwilling to let me explain. Less than twelve hours later, it’s like it’d never happened.
I want to ask him when he came home—if he came home—last night but I don’t. I’m not his girlfriend. We fucked, once. One mind-blowing, earth-shattering time. Who he was with and where he went afterward is none of my business. Instead, I turn around, yanking open the silverware drawer for a spoon. “No—” I say, my face hot. Had I dreamt it? Had he been so drunk last night that he doesn’t remember what happened? Thinking about it, the ache between my thighs grew warm and heavy. “Tess texted me.”
“Oh.” He laughs while squeezing into our tiny kitchen, his smooth, muscular chest bare and slick with sweat, brushing past me on his way to the fridge. “I bet she’s chomping at the bit to know what happened last night.”
I drop my spoon and it clatters to the floor. “What?” I say, cutting him a sharp look. He’s got his head stuck in the refrigerator. All I can see is a set of tight abs and a pair of navy track pants slung low on well-defined hips. A baseball scholarship in college and working construction with his cousin Declan has paid off. The result is a body that would make any woman weak in the knees.
Myself included.
“Tess,” he says, straightening away from the fridge with a bottle of water. “She texted you to get the down and dirty about Trevor, right?” He leans against the counter behind me, cracking the lid on the water to take a drink.
“Yeah,” I say, turning my back on him to focus on my breakfast. The faster I eat, the faster I can go back to my room and hide. Yanking the foil lid off my yogurt, I fold it neatly and throw it in the trash before bending over to retrieve my spoon off the floor. “She wants to have…”
Patrick isn’t leaning against the counter anymore. He’s standing right behind me, so close I can feel his rapidly growing erection against the curve of my ass.
I stand up slowly, agonizingly aware that this is almost exactly what’d happened between us last night. What I’d done to start all this...
Only now he’s doing it to me.
His hand skims across my hips, fingertips brushing the hem of my shirt. “Are you gonna tell her?” I can feel his breath against the nape of my neck, slow and even.
Oh. My. God...
I take a deep breath, fighting to stay calm. “Tell her what?” I say, my hand clenched around the handle of the spoon so tight I can feel the imprint of it on my skin.
“Are you gonna tell her what happened?” His large, callused hand slips under my shirt, his fingers doing a relaxed slide up my ribcage while his hips do a slow grind against my backside.
“Nothing happened with Trevor. I told you—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Laughter brushes against my ear a moment before he presses his mouth against the underside of my jaw. “And you know it.”
Any hope that he’d been too drunk to remember what happened between us—and why—is gone, leaving me with the overwhelming and unexplainable urge to explain myself. To apologize.
“Patrick…” I don’t know what I’m going to say but it doesn’t matter. The second his hand closes over my bare breast, my mind shuts off completely.
Totally blank.
“Yes, Cari?” he says, the words brushing his mouth against my nape. He fondles me under my shirt, cupping my breast, rolling my swollen nipple between his fingers—tugging and pinching—exerting just enough pressure so that when his other hand slips into the waistband of my boxers, I widened my stance without even thinking, giving him room to do whatever he wants to me.
“Patrick,” I try again, squeezing my eyes shut, forcing myself to focus even though the last thing I want to do right now is think. “I think we need to—”
His long fingers skim the damp seam of my pussy, teasing me. “Why aren’t you wearing panties?” he whispers in my ear and I have to swallow hard against the moan that his hands are building up inside me.
“I don’t…” I swallow again, my head kicking back against his shoulder when the fingers plucking at my nipple squeezes even harder, the sensation shooting through my belly, straight to my clit. “We should talk.” I pushed the words out even though I’m afraid that once I do, he’ll stop touching me. I think I might die if Patrick stopped now.
“We are talking,” he says in that same calm, measured tone he’d used on me last night. “Where are your panties?” His fingers roll and tug at my nipple while his tongue traces the line of my neck. “Tell me, Cari…” he says when I don’t answer right way.
“You…” I manage to say despite the fact I can’t breathe. “you took them off last night.”
“Oh yeah…” Patrick’s fingers slide into me and my back arches, urging him to stroke me even deeper. “I remember now.” He skims his teeth against my jaw and that moan I’ve been fighting shutters out of me when he pulls his fingers out to work the drenched length of them against my swollen clit. “You’re wet,” he groans against my throat, his hand tightening on my breast. “Have you been thinking about me? The way I made you come on my tongue?”
“Yes…” My brain is completely scrambled. I push myself against him, working my hips against the maddeningly slow ride his juice-slicked fingers are giving me. I can feel the ridged length of him, pushing against my ass and suddenly, his fingers aren’t enough.
I want him inside me. Now.
I try to push his hands away so I can turn around and rip what’s left of his clothes off but he tightens his hold on me, keeping my back pressed firmly against his chest. “Is this it?” he says, his voice horse and tight, like he’s fighting for control. “You want to come on my cock again?” he grinds himself into the cleft of my ass, pushing against me through our clothes.
“Yes...” I don’t even know what I’m saying, what I’m agreeing to but it hardly matters. Not if it means he’ll stop playing with me and get serious.
His tongue skates along the long line of my throat, coasting toward my ear. “You want me to jerk these shorts down around your ankles?” He slides his fingers inside me again, slow and deep. “Bend you over the counter and pound my cock into this sweet pussy of yours?”
Something about his calm and reasonable tone, coupled with the filthy things he’s saying in my ear send another lightning bolt of arousal shooting through me, flooding my pussy. “Yes...” My breath stutters out of me as his fingers find my center again. They move in slow, feather-light circles that increase in pressure until my knees are loose and unreliable and my breath is hitching in and out of me in ragged pants.
“Patrick…” I can feel it build. My legs start to tremble
. The quivering sensation that begins in my belly—a vibration that spreads slowly but doesn’t overtake me. And then I know. He’s punishing me for what I did to him. All those months of teasing I subjected him to. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry for everything.”
“It’s a little late for that,” he says in my ear, confirming my suspicions. “It’s going to take more than a simple apology to make it up to me.” His mouth slides around to the back of my neck. “A lot more.”
And then, just like that, everything stops. As suddenly as it started, it’s over and he’s walking away from me. “I’m meeting Conner later,” he calls over his shoulder like the last three minutes never happened. He strolls down the hall, disappearing into the bathroom, leaving me stunned and shaking in the middle of the kitchen.
Twenty-three
Cari
He’s obviously pissed and if there’s anything I’ve learned in our three years of friendship it’s that a pissed off Gilroy is not a thing to be messed with. I should just walk away. From him. From this whole mess. Last night, I said I was moving out—another stupid, impulsive mistake—but standing here, strung out from the feel of him all over me—inside me—it seems like the only sane thing to do. I should just leave. What I did was horrible and cruel but he got his revenge. That made us even.
But I don’t want to be even and I can’t walk away. Not from this.
Not from him.
I stand in the middle of our tiny kitchen for a few moments, waiting for my legs to stop shaking and then I go after him, barging into our shared bathroom, the door rebounding off the sink so hard it slammed shut again.
“Wow,” he says, his voice bouncing off the shower stall walls. “You’ve developed a habit of walking in on me while I’m jerking off.”
His taunt should shame me but it doesn’t. It just makes me angry. And the anger makes me reckless. “You can’t just do that, Patrick,” I yell at the shower curtain.
“I can’t hear you,” he shouts over the sound of the shower. I’m not sure but I think he’s laughing at me.
Incensed, I rip the shower curtain open. “I said—” I’m still yelling but I’m unprepared for the sight of a fully naked and very wet Patrick and I almost swallow my tongue. Jesus, he’s beautiful. The kind of beautiful that makes you feel a little desperate. Like you can’t even hope to measure up. Like you’d be willing to do just about anything to prove that you do.
“You can’t...” I take a deep breath and try again. “You can’t do that to people.”
Despite what he said to me, he’s washing his hair, water and soap runs down his chest. Slushes off tightly packed abs. Splits around the base of his thick, hard cock to coast down long, muscular legs...
I’m trying not to look but seriously?
“Hello... my eyes are up here, Cari.” This time I’m sure he’s laughing at me. I can hear it in his voice.
Mortified, I force my eyes back to his face.
He finishes rinsing his hair and drops his hands. “Do what?” He’s using it again. That calm, reasonable tone that makes me crazy. He’s looking at me like I am crazy.
“You know what.” I say it through clenched teeth, my cheeks hot.
He’s not laughing anymore. “Oh... you mean tease you?” he says, the corner of his mouth lifting in a grin that’s totally void of humor. “Touch you.” His hand slides down his well-defined chest, taking my gaze with it, to wrap around his cock. “Make you wet...” He starts to work his hand in a slow, even rhythm, gripping the head before sliding his fist all the way to its base. “Make you want things... and then just walk away.”
That’s exactly what I’d been doing to him for months now. Hearing him say it jerks the indignation right out of me. “You’re right.” I manage to push the words out against a throat that suddenly feels like it’s full of sand. I lick my lips, trying to find my voice. “What I did what shitty and I’m sorr—”
“Stop. Apologizing.” He bites the demand in half, his reasonable tone taking on a dangerous edge.
“Then what?” I whisper, my throat horse, eyes glued to his hand, watching him. “What do you want from me?”
He doesn’t answer me, just throws me a question of his own. “Do you know how many times I’ve thought about you while doing this?” Something about his voice pulls my gaze back to his face and I find him watching me, his hooded, green stare nailed to my mouth. “You, in that goddamned robe...” His voice is thick, chest pumping, quick and hard. “That fucking dress...” His hand is still moving, flexing and sliding around his cock while his gaze dips to my breasts, their tight, swollen tips pushing against the thin cotton of my T-shirt.
That’s the last coherent thought I have. Before I can think about what I’m doing and why, I grip the hem of my shirt and drag it over my head, exposing myself to him.
I cup one of my breasts, rolling and pinching its nipple between my fingers, the sensation of my hand and his eyes on me, watching me touch myself, slams into my gut with the force of a freefall.
Catching my bottom lip between my teeth, I slide my other hand beneath the waistband of my boxers. “I’m guessing you’ve thought about me as much as I’ve thought about you...” that last word gets caught in my throat as I skim my fingers along the seam of my pussy, pushing inside just enough to get them wet—mimicking what he’d done to me in the kitchen. He’s watching me, his own hand gone still and fallen to his side.
I stop touching myself too. “To be honest, it feels better when you do it,” I say, holding his stare for a few seconds before I turn and walk out.
I barely get the door open before I hear him behind me, ripping the shower curtain off the wall, scrambling across the slick tile floor of the bathroom, careened after me.
Thank god.
He catches me in the hallway outside my bedroom and we go down hard, Patrick’s wet, muscular body covering me, his hips wedged between my legs. I can feel the stiff length of him against the back of my thigh, his breathing hot and ragged against the side of my face, his wet, muscular chest plastered against my back. “I thought I made it clear last night,” he says, dropping his shoulder and bending his elbow a bit to bring his mouth closer to my ear while he grinds his ridged cock against the thin cotton barrier between us. “You shouldn’t push me, Cari.”
I suddenly realize that even though we’ve been friends for years, I don’t know Patrick Gilroy at all. I know the boy scout. The nice guy. The Patrick who’s nursed me through a dozen break-ups. The friend who always lets me have the last slice of pizza when we order in. The roommate who tolerates my obsession with reality television. This is not that Patrick.
This is someone else entirely.
“The only thing I learned last night,” I say, pushing myself against the hard length of him, practically begging him to fuck me. “Is that I like what happens when I push you.”
I’ve lost my mind completely and he confirms it when he rears up, cursing—the sound of it low and harsh against the back of his throat—as he grabs onto the waistband of my boxers and jerks them down.
Before I can take my next breath, his fingers are thrusting into me so fast and deep it steals my breath, scatters stars across my field of vision.
He covers me again, breathing harsh and uneven against my neck. “I don’t think you understand,” he says, seemingly calm despite the ragged breath that skates down my spine, his erection bobbing between my legs with each deep, lazy stoke. “You’re not calling the shots anymore.” The tip of his blunt, callused fingers graze the sensitive spot deep in the center of me, again and again and I whimper in response, pushing back against his hand. I want more. Need more. “I am.” He keeps fucking me with his fingers. His hand. The maddeningly reasonable tone of his voice. “Got it?”
No, this isn’t the Patrick I know at all.
Cheek pressed against the floor, eyes squeezed shut, I nod. My legs start to shake again, the warm heaviness in my belly pressing lower with every stroke he gives me. I’m close to coming for the second tim
e in less than ten minutes and I’m not sure I can take it.
“Say the words, Cari,” he whispers in my ear, his fingers buried deep inside me, their callused tips crooked slightly while I move my hips, stroking myself along the blunt length of them. “Say, I understand, Patrick.”
Not caring anymore, so desperate to get off I’m on the verge of crying, I push my hips off the floor, making room for my hand between them and the floor. “I understand, Patrick.” I moan it out, pressing my fingers against my clit.
He chuckles softly in my ear and the sound of it would make me angry if I wasn’t dangling off a cliff. “Good girl.”
He pulls his fingers out, the wet suction sound of it heats my chest even as I let out a frustrated groan, the orgasm spinning away from me. I press and circle my fingers against my clit, harder and faster, trying to catch it.
“No, you don’t.” He flips me over, grabbing my wrist to pull my fingers from between my legs, holding it high above my head. “That’s against the rules.”
Rules? I lift my head off the floor, my gaze pulled downward to land on his rigid cock. It’s only inches from where I want it, the rock-hard heat of it scorching the inside of my thigh. I force myself to lay flat, meeting his gaze.
I let out a strangled scream, tears prickling the back of my eyelids. “I hate you,” I say it through clenched teeth and I mean it. I hate him.
He grins down at me. Hand still clamped around my wrist, he lifts my hand between us, its fingers still wet and glistening with my own juices. “If you say so,” he says, slipping my fingers into his mouth, sucking them clean.
I can feel the head of his cock, twitching against the junction of my thighs. I close my eyes, my concentration centered on the feeling of his tongue on my skin, even if it’s just my fingers. Lifting my hips off the floor, I run the slick seam of my pussy against the head of his cock. “Please…”
“If you still want to move out, then move out.” He drops my hand and reaches back, fingers digging into my upper thigh, stopping me cold. I can see it. How angry his is. The hard set of his jaw. The hurt I caused him, still fresh in his eyes when he looks at me. “Go ahead—I’m not going to stop you. I’ll even help you pack,” he tells me, leaning hard on the arm planted on the floor so he can lean closer. “But if you stay, I’m gonna fuck you.” The movement pushed the head of his cock against my entrance, stealing my breath. “Whenever I want. As much as I want. However I want. Understand?”