“You’re good in there, Cat. Really damn good.”
And he gives compliments. I do like this man. “Thank you.”
He cups my face. “And really damn good with me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I think you might be good with me, too.”
“Think?”
“That’s all you’re getting right now.”
“Guarded. Understood. Challenge, once again, accepted.” He takes my hand, and we start walking across the room. Mr. Arrogant Asshole is holding my hand. And I have the realization that no one was holding my hand a few days ago. In fact, had they tried, I would have shoved that nonsense aside. Only, it’s not nonsense with Reese, and really, it’s incredible how life changes in a blink of an eye. One minute, you have an agent. The next, you don’t. One minute, you call a man you just met Mr. Arrogant Asshole, and the next, he’s something so much more.
Everything changes, and that thought is what has me trying to pull my hand away from Reese’s. But I can’t. He’s holding on too tight.
It’s nearly eight when I walk my team to the door, and finally I have Cat to myself, in my house, and soon, in my bed. I return to the den to find her still on the floor beside the coffee table, pecking away at her computer. “You have to be tired, Cat,” I say, crossing to join her.
She glances up at me. “Not yet. I get wired when I work.”
“And when you drink most of a pot of coffee?”
“The pizza made me do it. It was heavy.”
I lie down on my side on the rug next to her, fully intending to have her next to me in the near, anytime now, future. “What are you working so feverishly on?”
“I’m actually writing my column that is due tomorrow night.”
“You could work on it tomorrow. Do it over morning coffee.”
“I know, but—”
“You have a plan and you have to make it happen.”
She twists around to face me, her green eyes lighting. “Since you mention it, I do. My opening statement starts with: Who killed Jennifer and her unborn child? I never name names, but I present investigative angles. I can’t reach the jury. That’s up to you, but I can affect public perception. Get them thinking about options. Get them involved beyond convicting an innocent man. Now, here is why I think this helps you. Or I hope it does. I’m thinking that the real killer gets news of my column and is on edge. That means nervous on the stand. What do you think?”
“It’s brilliant. You’re brilliant. I’m lucky to have your help.” I lower my voice. “I want to feel you next to me, Cat. Come here.”
“I—Don’t look at me like that, or say my name like that either, until I finish my work.” She tries to turn back to her computer, but I don’t let her.
I snag her arm and pull her down next to me, aligning our bodies, my hand sliding under her sweater to rest on soft, warm skin. “I need to work,” she says. “I think this will be good for you.”
“You’re good for me,” I say. “Must be why I keep feeling like I need you.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Yes. I do. Maybe one day you’ll believe me.”
“You just met me.”
“You keep saying that, too. Soon it won’t be true.” I nuzzle her neck. “You always smell like fresh flowers in a city of smog and crime.” I brush hair from her face. “I haven’t smelled anything but that smog in a long time, Cat. And I didn’t realize until I met you how much I needed something else.”
Her hand settles on my shoulder. “You do know that I’m the one who called you an asshole, right?”
“Called? Or Call?”
She laughs, and it’s that sexy, sweet sound I feel like a rush of adrenaline. It makes me hot and hard, and my mouth slants over hers, tongue pressing past her lips, and the heady taste of her, all sweet honey, coffee, and temptation, fills my senses. I deepen the kiss, drinking her in like a drug I cannot get enough of. I can’t get enough of her.
She moans and slides her hand under my shirt. That sound, the touch of her hand on my skin, pushes me to the edge. A raw, low growl escapes my throat. I want her naked. I want to be inside her. For twelve fucking hours, I’ve wanted to be inside her, but not here and like this. She tangles her fingers into my hair and when her hand presses to my zipper, I catch it. “As much as I want your hand on my body, not here. Not yet.” I stand up and pull her with me. “Upstairs.” I scoop her up and start to carry her across the room.
“You don’t have to carry me.”
“And you don’t have to run,” I say starting up the stairs.
She doesn’t come back with one of her witty replies. She doesn’t say anything at all, which tells me I’ve hit about ten nails on the head. I walk us into my bedroom, but I don’t turn on the light. My bed is on the wall immediately to the right, but I continue on to the foot of the bed and set her down, not facing it, but rather the view: A room that is all glass, the night sky alight with stars, and beneath us the city that never sleeps, aglow in a rainbow of colors.
She turns to me. “I’m not running.”
“Prove it.”
She studies me for several beats and then takes a step backward, just enough to allow her to start undressing, and I let her. I watch her as she does. I drink in every moment. Every slash of skin. The first pucker of her pink nipples. The curve of her breasts. Her hips. The V of neatly trimmed hair between her legs. And when she’s done, she closes the space between us and stands in front of me. “Do I look like I’m running?”
I don’t immediately touch her. I know now what she’s doing. I see it now. “I effectively manipulate people for a living.” I pull my shirt off and toss it and then pull her to me, molding her close. “And I know when I’m being manipulated.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Yes, you do. Sex is your wall, isn’t it, Cat? I can fuck you, but I can’t have you.”
Her hand rests on my chest, her gaze on her hand before it lifts to me. “Yes. I set limits for myself.”
“And for those with you.”
“Yes.”
I tangle my fingers in her hair. “How’s that working for you with me?”
“It’s not. Because you’re an asshole that won’t let me finish my work.”
I laugh, but it fades into something darker, far more possessive than I’ve ever known myself to feel with a woman. “You’re in my bedroom, Cat,” I say. “That is about more than fucking, but right now, fucking is exactly what we’re going to do.”
I rotate her and press her against the tall post of my heavy wooden bed. “Don’t move,” I order, stepping back from her to undress. She doesn’t resist the command. She relaxes into the post, her hands at either side of it, her breasts thrust high, nipples higher. She’s comfortable naked. She feels in control, like she can grab a man by the balls and twist, and they will be just fine as long as they get off. Not me. That’s not how this plays out. She just doesn’t know it yet.
I toss my boots and remove the condom from my pocket before I strip down. I’m about to open the package when she says, “You don’t need that. I’m on the pill. And if we give each other something we can sue each other. We’re attorneys and I’m still licensed, just so you know.”
If she means to pull me out of my head and hers, and turn this into just a fuck, she fails.
In a blink, I’m there in front of her, my hands on the post above her in two seconds flat. “I thought he was two years ago,” I say, and I don’t even try to soften anything about my tone. I don’t like games. I like facts.
“He was,” she says. “There was someone else. A fuck buddy that wanted to be more.”
Fuck buddy usually works for me. It’s all that works for me but not this time. Not with Cat. I pull her to me, my hand under her hair, at her neck, my mouth a breath from a kiss I’m not ready to take. “I want more,” I say. “And I am not your fuck buddy, and if you don’t know that yet, you will.” I don’t give her time to rep
ly. My mouth slants over hers, my tongue pressing past her lips, stroking and stroking again in what is instantly a deep, passionate kiss. She moans and pushes against me, and I swear the sound of her moan is like a renewed challenge. Submission that isn’t submission.
But as if she’s replying to that very thought, her arms wrap around me again, and she is small and delicate yet somehow bold at the same time. The touch of her, the taste of her, steals my anger and feeds my hunger for this woman, hunger that I feel in her as well. One minute, I’m kissing her and she’s kissing me. The next, we are on the bed, her tight little nipples in my mouth, my cock buried deep inside her, and I am thrusting into her. I let myself be lost in her, in this, when I never lose myself. But I do in Cat; there is no time. No ending. There is just us, kissing, fucking, and she is just as fierce, just as hungry.
“Reese,” she whispers, and my name is exactly the right thing for her to say. It tells me she’s present. She’s with me, not some nameless fuck buddy, and I pull my mouth from hers, and say just that.
“I am not your fuck buddy.”
“Okay,” she says, “but you’re still an asshole.”
I take that asshole comment as a wall she still needs, and answer by making damn sure she feels me the way I feel her. I mold her close, my mouth closing down on hers, tongue stroking her tongue. This isn’t nameless sex. This is us. Me. Her.
She arches into me, and I wrap her leg with mine, holding her, allowing her no chance to hold back. I’m different with Cat. I feel it. I don’t understand it, but I don’t care. I’m in this, I want this. I want her and I cup her perfect little ass and angle her into me, thrusting as I do. She gasps, arching upward, her fingernails digging into my shoulders, her sex clenching around me, and it drives me wild. I press deeper inside her, and suddenly her body is clenched around me, pulling me into that same sweet spot she’s drowning in, and I am shuddering with release. Everything goes black, but I can smell that sweet floral scent and feel her body next to mine. Time stands still and I come back to the present with the wet, warm feeling of me buried inside her, with no condom between us.
I reach behind us and grab a tissue, which I offer her. “Thank you,” she says, and when I would pull her close again, she rolls away. “I need the bathroom.” Which happens to be on her side of the bed, and she hurries in that direction. Running.
My natural instinct is to pursue her, and I’m up in an instant, rounding the bed with just that intention, but I stop for my pants, and the control they offer. I reach for them and my gaze catches on the condom I’ve apparently dropped on the floor, so I snatch it up. I never go condom-less, but I did with Cat. In the blink of an eye. This woman has me by the balls, and that should be a problem, but it’s not, part of the problem is that she doesn’t know it. The condom thing was just her way of deflating the emotional context of what just happened and making it about sex again. I shove the condom into my pocket and note the closed bathroom door. That’s a clear message, and I give her space.
What she does next tells me everything.
Naked.
Leaning against the door of Reese’s fancy bathroom, gray and white checked tile beneath my feet, I am naked in every possible way. What is this man doing to me? What is this crazy, wild emotion in my belly and in my chest? I don’t remember feeling this with Mitch, the little cheating bitch. Not even before he was the little cheating bitch, though I suspect he was always that, I just didn’t know it. I don’t remember feeling this with anyone I’ve ever met. Really, truly, how does an asshole that cut in line become this, whatever this is?
And he thinks I’m running. I’m not running. I’m protecting myself. I’m making sure I don’t make the same mistake twice. That’s smart. That’s not scared, which is what the word “running” implies. Scared. He called me scared. My father calls me scared anytime I do something that doesn’t fit his agenda. Suddenly I’m angry, and I shove aside the whole feeling naked thing. I decide I need to draw lines with Reese. I need to tell him exactly what I think, despite the fact that at this moment, I have no clue what that is. I do, however, have complete confidence that it will come to me, and then out of my mouth it will flow. To him. Probably loudly.
I yank open the door, and my moment of confrontation is quite anticlimactic, considering the fact that I don’t actually have a visual of Reese. He’s definitely not on top of his massive four-poster bed, which isn’t all bad, since that would likely distract me. I walk out into the room and snatch up his shirt because I’m not going anywhere. I’m not running. But maybe he is, since he’s not here. I don’t like that thought, but I stay the course. I pull his shirt over my head and let it fall to my knees. That’s when my gaze lifts right and I realize that Reese is sitting with his back to me, in a giant oversized chair in front of the wall of windows.
I inhale, and all those words I was certain I’d have at the right moment, I don’t have. At all. What I have is honesty that just decides to smack me right in the face. I did run when I darted to the bathroom. In doing so, I lost the chance to read him in the aftermath of that steamy encounter. I regret that. I don’t like regrets. I have too many of those, which finally led me to where I am now. To him. I still don’t know what I am going to say to him, but I decide I’ll know when I look into his eyes. One of the things I love about being with this man is how easy conversation is with him. How straightforward he is with me. How comfortable I am with him. It’s my past that is uncomfortable for us both.
I round the giant, oversized chair and join him, sitting down next to him, but I don’t touch him. I am so hypertensive with this man, though, that I have this sensation of touching. I can feel him everywhere, from my head to my toes, inside and out. I can almost taste him. Seconds tick by, and we both stare ahead, the connection we have shared from the moment we met expanding, intensifying, and then, proving how in tune I am with this man, at the same moment, we turn to look at each other. And in that first connected moment, he steals my breath and ravishes my resistance. He’s not overbearing or brutally alpha, like many of the men in my life have been. He doesn’t have to be those things. There is an inner strength about him, and a natural charm that allows him to own everyone around him. The way he owns me right now.
“You didn’t run,” he says softly.
“Actually, I did,” I say, giving him a small smile. “Right into the bathroom.”
“Yes,” he says, caressing my cheek. “But you’re still here. That’s what matters.”
I catch his hand. “Do you know why I called you an asshole?”
“Tell me.”
“Because then I didn’t have to be surprised when you turned out to be an asshole.”
“Guilty until proven innocent?”
“Yes, actually. I know. I’m a hypocrite, but it’s been working for me.”
“It doesn’t work for us, Cat.”
“Then I guess it doesn’t work for me.”
His eyes warm and his arm wraps around my shoulders. “Come here,” he says. Inching me closer.
I let him. I want to be closer to this man, so I snuggle into the shelter of his big, warm body. And maybe that idea is what shakes me more than anything with Reese. That he feels like a safe place, when I’ve spent so much time making sure I’m my own safe place. For right now, he is, though, and I decide to enjoy it.
For at least a full minute, we sit there in silence, staring out at the city, the quiet between us comfortable, and somehow a test that says this, whatever this is between us, is right, not wrong. “The view is incredible,” I murmur, snuggling closer to him. “There’s something about the angle. It’s like we’re floating and no one can touch us.”
“This view is why I bought this place and why I haven’t left this building. Well, this view, and that bar downstairs. It’s the view that helps me come up with answers to ten thousand questions.”
“What questions are you asking now?”
“Who was he?” he asks, and I don’t have to ask for clarification. He’s no
t talking about his trial, as I’d expected. He’s talking about me, and my past, and the history that I’ve forced between us.
“No one,” I say, but I know he wants more than that, and at this point, he deserves it. I settle and add, “His name is Mitch Welk.”
He's silent several beats, in which I suspect I haven’t given him the answer he wanted. “Reese—”
“I know Mitch, Cat,” he surprises me by saying.
I twist around to face him. “What? How? Are you friends with him?”
“Relax, sweetheart.” He pulls my leg across his. “I went to school with him. I’ve run into him a few times since, but he was a dick in school and apparently still is.”
“He is what he is.”
“No trash talking?”
“Not my style,” I say.
“Good. It’s not mine either. For the record, him being a dick is a statement of fact that I could back up with evidence but I don’t have to. You know.” He moves on. “How did you meet him?”
“A party at my father’s offices. His firm partners with my father’s on occasion.”
“Did you love him?”
“If I did, I can honestly say that I don’t remember it now. And I don’t think you forget love.”
“What about the fuck buddy?”
“Did I love him? No. Who was he? Lance Parish. A professional sculptor, and where Mitch was a shark, Lance was a goldfish.”
“How long did your sculptor stay your fuck buddy?”
“He wasn’t my sculptor, and six months. It was sex. I told you that. He got the job done.”
“That is not the way a man wants his bedroom skills to be remembered.”
“You have nothing to worry about, and you know it.”
“I get the job done.”
“Yes.” I laugh, stroking his jaw. “You do get the job done, and for the record, I’m avoiding a joke with a certain nickname right now, despite the opening you’re giving me. Because I know you hate it.” I dive past the joke and turn the topic. “There has to have been some woman in your life.”
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