Affair of Pleasure

by Lindsay Evans

  After dinner, he called a cab, waited with her and watched her ride away in the yellow car, waving at him and smiling shyly.

  Once she disappeared from sight, he got into the second cab and gave the driver an address. He was done being a perfect gentleman for the night. All evening, a pretty image had dangled in front of his eyes, making him realize what he really wanted.

  It had been easy to pretend with Chantal that it was her making the blood heat in his veins, the charm surface so effortlessly while they shared their meal. But once she was gone and the date was over, he was free to be himself again. And he was free to want what he wanted. Whom he wanted.

  He knocked on the door to the small house in Wynwood, put his hands in his pockets and waited, imagining that she was waking up in something pretty and sheer, sliding on the robe to open the door and welcome him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Nichelle stood in her doorway in thin pajama pants and a T-shirt, a mirror of what Wolfe usually wore to bed. Nothing like the negligée he’d pictured. He had to laugh at himself.

  “I want to talk,” he said.

  She made a show of looking at the skin on her wrist where she normally wore a watch. It was well past ten o’clock. “I doubt that very much.” But she opened the door and let him in anyway.

  Wolfe walked in, hands curled loosely in his pockets, part of him still trying to process what he was doing at Nichelle’s house so late at night.

  “Why have you been avoiding me?”

  He followed her into the darkened living room. A sliver of light from an open doorway, her bedroom, caught his eye. Nothing else was visible in the golden light, but the fact that it was her bedroom made him painfully hard just thinking of it. Of her.

  “I wasn’t avoiding you,” she said. “You know more than anyone how busy things have been since we took on Quraishi as a client.”

  She snapped on a light and stood in the middle of her pretty but efficiently designed sitting room with arms crossed.

  “Tell me, really, Wolfe. Why are you here?”

  She watched him with a narrowed gaze as he approached, coming even closer than he’d intended, crowding into her personal space, breathing deep to find the scent of sleep or of her bedroom nestled into the curves of her body.

  “Didn’t you have a date tonight?” Nichelle asked.

  So she did know what he was doing. Not that he’d hidden his evening activities from her or from anyone. Hiding was not his style.

  “Yes, I did have a date,” he said. “She went home.”

  “And you came here.” If possible, she looked even more irritated. “Why don’t you go home?”

  “Because I want to talk with you. Is there anything wrong with that?”

  He stepped even closer to her. She wrinkled her nose.

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Buzzed. Feeling good.”

  An unamused smile lifted the corner of her mouth. “Don’t you see the billboards? Buzzed driving is still drunk driving.” She quoted the slogan with a sneer. “You could’ve gotten yourself arrested coming over here.”

  “I took a cab.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. The implication of his actions occurred to him the moment her face hardened. “Get the hell out of here, Wolfe. Now.”

  “Stop, Nichelle.” He raised his hands in surrender. “It’s not like that.”

  “No? Then tell me that you didn’t send the girl home and bring your ass over here to get some because she didn’t want to put out.”

  “Of course she wanted to put out,” he murmured with a smile. “They always do. But I want...”

  “Want what?”

  “I want my wife.”

  She drew in a sharp breath and stepped back. “No. No. You don’t get to do this here. The pretense is over. Dammit—”

  He kissed the next words from her mouth. Then he drifted his hands down the taut line of her back. “Nicki...” He breathed his need against her closed lips, hands on her waist, on her hips. He felt her resistance, her own hands dangling at her sides. But within the span of a heartbeat those same hands were fisting into his shirt.

  “I hate you for this.” And she kissed him back.

  It was nothing like Morocco. Before, everything seemed like a prelude. A waiting period. Knowing that nothing would come of their touches, but wanting them anyway, savoring them. But with the release of her breath into his, the warm wet of her tongue licking his mouth, his teeth, the waiting was over.

  Tonight was about taking the desire they’d shyly unfurled to each other to another level. Hunger and lust and frustration lashed between them. Wolfe was instantly sober, effortlessly throwing off that flimsy curtain of drunkenness that had given him the excuse to come to the house where the woman he wanted lived, to knock on her door and ask her things he hadn’t had the courage to before.

  “I want you.” He breathed the words against her mouth.

  She moaned and shoved into him, bit his lips. He flinched into her from the pain. Her hands yanked at his shirt and scattered buttons across the living room floor. He vaguely heard them bounce across the tiles, focused more on their desperate breathing, panting lust and hands on flesh, flesh against cloth, the wet sounds of their kissing.

  He pressed his aching hardness into the sweet seat of her. “I want to—”

  “Then do it.”

  Without waiting for him to do what he wanted, she shoved the shirt from his shoulders, grasping desperately at him with cool hands. She yanked his belt and fly open, slid her hand into his underwear and gripped him.

  “God!”

  They made it as far as the couch, Wolfe on his back, Nichelle on top, her pants discarded on the floor next to everything he’d had on.

  Nichelle gasped as he mouthed his way down her throat. “I swear to God if you say tomorrow that you don’t remember any of this...”

  She fumbled a condom from his wallet—because his brain was too fried to remember even the simplest things—sheathed him in latex, and climbed onto him. Her wet heat sucked him in, and everything he was collapsed with the feel of her body around him. Firm clutch, tight heat, her thighs pressed to his hips. He swallowed past a rough gasp as she moved on top of him, controlling the pace.

  “Wolfe.” She was still. She squeezed him inside, paused to pull off her shirt.

  He groaned at the sight of her small breasts and reached up to touch them. She shivered when he thumbed the firm buds of her nipples, her muscled belly rippling with reaction. Yes, he wanted this. He needed this.

  She moved on top of him, a slowly rolling tide. But he wanted more. He wanted the instant explosion of it. And normally he’d be more than happy to have her control the situation, but he’d been waiting years for this moment to come. Years. And if he watched her any longer, her beautiful breasts bouncing with every movement of her on him, her wet mouth, the panting breaths that left her even more beautiful, he would lose it. He would explode, and it would all be over before it even got started.

  Wolfe sat up on the couch, taking her with him. She gasped at the shifting angle, then held on to him during the stumbling, kissing and tangled fingers that comprised their journey from the living room to the bedroom. Her bed had only one side turned down, a book on the bedside table, a single lamp burning. He bore her down into the sheets without losing the hot clutch of her around him.

  “I’ve dreamed of this for so damn long.” He sank into her, even more deeply. She whimpered, her nails dragging down his back, digging into him, urging him on. “You feel so good.”

  Wolfe quickly lost track of what he was saying but knew that whatever it was, she liked it, her nails scoring his shoulders and flanks as they moved together on the bed. He was close already, so perilously close, but he wanted her to come first. He wanted to watch her lose control. He climbed to his knees, lifted her hips, drove into her.

  She wailed. Her whole body shivered. The line of her arched neck was wet with sweat. Tears of need leaked from her closed
eyes and spilled down the sides of her face and onto his tongue. She was so beautiful. He loved her harder, filling her with his heat, every inch of his pleasure. His body quivered from the feel of her, hot and humid around him, pulling him deeper, squeezing him. Pulling him closer and closer to explosion.

  She cried out his name. A plea. The scent of sweat and their sex rose up around him. Wolfe pressed his thumb on the hot little button while his hips snapped into hers. She fell apart around him, screaming, shuddering into him.

  The hot clasp of her destroyed the rest of his self-control. One moment, he was watching the frantic breath and heaving breasts. Her teeth anchored in her swollen lips, the agony of lust on her face. And the next he was growling out his own orgasm, jerking viciously as his body emptied into her.

  His eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped heavily over her, frozen in that instant of indescribable bliss. Spent. Under him, she panted softly, blinking sweat from her eyes. She was so damned beautiful, he almost didn’t deserve her.

  Wolfe pressed a kiss under her ear, down the damp line of her throat. She murmured something he lost in the still pounding rush of blood through his body. But he gathered her tenderly through all that, settled her into the bed. And kissed her again. She sighed into his mouth and her arms draped down his neck, still trembling.

  His body was spent for the night. But he wanted to please her more, to give her even a fraction of the spine-melting pleasure she’d gifted to him.

  How could he have gotten this lucky to have her? He kissed down her body, pausing at each rise of flesh to lick and suck, stroke and hum his enjoyment. She moaned softly. Then gasped when he settled between her thighs. She was tender there, slightly swollen from where he had loved her. He kissed the delicate flesh. She sighed, fingers sliding over his head, alighting on his neck, his shoulders.

  She smelled like perfection, like sex and fulfillment. A combination to him that usually signaled the end of the evening. But now his mouth watered for a taste of what he’d only touched before. He licked her. She gasped, trembled, her thighs pressing wide open.

  He smiled against her flesh at the greediness of her action. Much of her personality translated to how she was in bed, nakedly wanting, desiring and going after what she wanted. Her nails dug into his shoulders, into the back of his neck to push him deeper into her damp center. She wanted him and wasn’t afraid to let him know.

  He burrowed into the tight, seafoam-scented wet of her, and she gave him the slick of her arousal, her stuttering moans, the wild flex of her thighs around his head. The mattress heaved with the rough toss of her body. She writhed under him as he loved her with his mouth, teased her wetness, the firm pearl of her clitoris, skimmed with his curled fingers the space inside of her that made her shout out his name.

  “Wolfe!” Her sharp demand cut his teasing off at the knees.

  He stopped playing and latched his lips to the firm bud, slid his fingers deep, lashed her with his tongue, hummed into her hot flesh.

  “God. Yes! Please. Yes. More...”

  She moaned as if in pain, her hips circling in the bed, curling up into his face, the circles growing tighter and more frantic the more he thrust his fingers, fluttered his tongue. She cried out again, his name a screaming wail. But he still didn’t stop.

  Her nails dug into his shoulders again, deeper. Another tremor quaked through her, thighs vibrating. Then another and another. Wailing cries and pleas. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes as she cried out still, her hips bucking and wild beneath the steely grip of his hands.

  “More,” she moaned.

  And he gave it to her. Fingers, his tongue, until his body was firm again, and he pulled her up in the bed, bent her over the pillows and took her until she screamed in satisfaction again and again. He exploded with her, an electric current. They collapsed together into the sheets, gasping, damp flesh sliding together.

  He gathered her into his arms and rolled to one side of the massive bed. A sound of contentment purred from her, then she became a limp weight on top of him. Asleep. His own eyes drooped, his lust satisfied, his woman put to sleep, but he glanced down at himself sleepily, pulled off the condom and slid from beneath her to go to the bathroom. She made a soft noise but didn’t move.

  When he got back to the bed, she was right where he left her. He curled protectively around her soft and scented weight and draped a hand over her hip. He fell asleep to the thought that he could very well get used to this, falling asleep next to his very own wife.

  * * *

  Nichelle opened her eyes to the pale light of dawn. She stretched in her bed, sighing into the feeling of satisfaction and contentment. The hard warmth at her back felt completely natural, something she’d wanted for so long that it didn’t register as strange until a deep voice groaned in sleepy protest and firm hands settled on her hips to pull her closer.

  She blinked and slowly turned to face the man in her bed. It hadn’t been a dream. He was as beautiful as she’d always known he would be, stretched out on her pale linens, his lashes resting on his high cheekbones, mouth slack in sleep. He breathed deeply and easily as he slept, in contrast to the way her own breath sped up, her pulse knocking frantically in her neck.

  Oh my God...

  She slid from the bed, her knees trembling as she stared down at the beautiful man spread out on her sheets.

  What the...?

  She stumbled to the bathroom and snapped on the light. In the mirror, she saw she was a wreck, mouth still swollen, her neck and chest dotted with love bites, her eyes drowsy with satisfaction. Probably looked just like any other woman Wolfe had been with.

  She didn’t want to be one of them. Screwed today, tossed out tomorrow. And she didn’t want to ruin what she and Wolfe had at the firm. But now, they could no longer go back to what they had been. It was impossible. The thought made her slump against the sink, her arms trembling from holding up her weight.

  She needed to leave.

  Nichelle shook herself into motion, quickly got dressed in what was sitting on top of the laundry hamper—sweat pants and a tank top—and left the bathroom then the house. In the car, she grabbed her phone and redialed the last number she’d called the night before.

  Barely half an hour later, she walked into Novlette’s café, one of her favorite coffee and brunch places. She grabbed a salted caramel latte and almond croissant at the front counter before heading out to the terrace to search for Nala. Nichelle found her at one of the little French café-style tables, her hands clasped around a coffee cup, head down.

  Nichelle shoved the croissant toward her friend, then sat in the empty seat across from her in silence while the sun struggled for the horizon.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” she croaked. “I just had to talk to you.” Nichelle swallowed around the thick lump in her throat.

  “I can’t believe you dragged me out at ass crack of morning and expect actual coherent conversation.” Nala held her cup of coffee under her nose, sniffed the rising steam but did not drink. She barely glanced at the pastry Nichelle brought her.

  Her hair was scraped back from her face with a steel headband, a black cat suit hugged her body and a red cropped top drooped from one shoulder.

  “You’ve dragged me out of my house for worse,” Nichelle muttered.

  They’d remained friends through much drama, including the time in high school when the girl Nala was dating also tried to get under Nichelle’s boyfriend at the time. One school fight and countless ride-or-die sidekick missions later, neither woman was going anywhere.

  Nala chuckled, beginning to wake up over her coffee. “Oh my God, remember that time when—”

  “Nichelle, how nice to see you.”

  A man unexpectedly appeared over Nala’s shoulder.

  “Good morning, Isaac.” She greeted him with her most civil smile. What the hell was he doing on the East Coast?

  Nala turned around, gave him the once over, then dismissed him in favor of sniffing more of
her coffee. Nichelle sipped hers. Maybe she wasn’t awake enough for this, either.

  Isaac looked disgustingly well-rested, ready for the day in boat shoes, pressed khakis and a white dress shirt rolled up to the elbows. He carried a cardboard to-go tray with three large coffees.

  “I see you’re not wearing your pretty sparkler these days.” He nodded toward her ring finger. When she realized she was rubbing the bare spot on her finger with her thumb, she stopped the motion. It had taken her days to get used to its absence. And now with just a few words, Isaac made her aware again of how naked her finger felt without that reminder of Wolfe wrapped around it.

  “I see that your eyes are working.” She tipped her head over her shoulder to see a car idling near them in the parking lot. Then she turned back to pointedly look at him. “It was interesting running into you, Isaac. Please don’t make a habit of it.” Then she turned back to Nala. “I could go for a walk,” she said to her friend. “How about you?”

  “Screw that. I just sat down. We can go for a walk when there’s more sun and I’m in a better mood.”

  When Isaac didn’t leave, Nala showed him a finger that also didn’t have a ring on it. “My sparkler is at the jeweler’s,” she said with a smirk.

  He said something under his breath about immature women and strode away toward the car waiting for him.

  “Was he an ass, or is it me?”

  “I think it’s a tie,” Nichelle muttered.

  Nala laughed and choked on her coffee. “Bitch.”

  The sun gradually rolled higher in the sky above them, spreading its warm light over the terrace where they sat. With the rising sun came Nala’s coherence and better mood. She poked at the croissant in front of her.

  “So, from this random outfit, am I to assume you just rolled out of a bed not your own?”

  “It was my bed, but I left Wolfe in it.”

  Nala’s mouth dropped open. “So you finally got some of that?”

  “You make it sound like I’ve been waiting forever to screw my business partner.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  She flushed, aware there was some truth to the question, the desire she’d harbored for longer than she’d even been aware of. “Shut up.” She sipped her lukewarm coffee and wrinkled her nose at the taste. “I wasn’t planning for it to happen. He came to my house after a date.”