After Hours

by Jodi Lynn Copeland

  A huge believer in love and marriage? Then why was he wasting time on her? He’d made it clear last night that she didn’t know anything about him and never would. Joyce’s belly tightened as she remembered the aloof way he’d spoken those words.

  She should leave immediately, not listen to another word about Colin or his ex. But Liz seemed so nice, not to mention anxious for cooking advice. Staying just a while longer couldn’t hurt. Hopefully.

  Sitting on a barstool at the kitchen counter, Colin stabbed a bite of soufflé and brought it to his lips. If he died for being nice enough to Liz to taste it, there would be real hell to pay. He swallowed hard and shoved the forkful into his mouth. Flavor exploded over his taste buds. And not the flavor of dirt, either. Really good flavor.

  “Holy shit. I don’t believe it.” Stabbing another forkful, he looked at Liz, who leaned against the other side of the counter, beaming. “This is incredible. If you weren’t my sister, I’d marry you and make you cook this for me every day.”

  Her smile widened. Her eyes twinkled. “Then I’ve got good news for you. I didn’t cook it.”

  Pleasure over the soufflé’s superior taste forgotten, he set the fork down on his plate. He knew that look. It was Liz’s way-too-happy face. She only got it when she was up to no good. “Who made it?”

  “Caitlyn.”

  “Caitlyn,” Colin repeated, his stomach roiling.

  He didn’t want to think about her. He’d already endured thoughts of her—as well as thoughts on Liz’s comment that he really liked her—all day when he should have been concentrating on work.

  Fuck, yes. He did really like her.

  When she looked at him not through the eyes of the red-hot siren, but as the cautious woman who’d obviously endured as messy of a divorce as he had, he wanted to reveal all. He wanted to show her that he understood her fears because he’d been in similar shoes. Marlene had never raised her hand at him, but she’d made him feel like less of a man on a daily basis.

  No matter his wants, he couldn’t share that information with Caitlyn. It would mean making things between them about more than sex, and he wasn’t prepared to do that for any woman.

  “She had the day off and just happened to have this killer soufflé recipe of her mom’s in her head. And, well, it turns out she’s quite the cook.”

  “You spent the day together.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement that further irritated his stomach. How much of his past had Liz shared with Caitlyn? Knowing his big-mouthed sister, it was every sordid detail.

  “Not the whole day. She had to meet up with someone tonight. She left around four. By the way, she said to tell you that you’re a god in bed and you can call her any time.” She nodded at the notepad next to the phone at the far end of the counter. “Her number’s on the first page.”

  Who was she meeting with tonight—another man? And why the hell would she bother if he was truly a god in bed? Shit, he shouldn’t care what she did with her time. Last night had been it for them. End of the road. Still, Colin couldn’t help but ask, “She said that?”

  “Not in quite those words, but it was pretty clear.”

  It was also pretty clear he should end this discussion. Only, he couldn’t. Liz looked more energized by the second. She no longer leaned against the counter, but stood back and shifted foot to foot, as if she had something big to tell him. “How?”

  “The way she blushed whenever I would bring up your name,” she rushed out. “It’s really cute. Kind of in a gag-me-sick way, but still cute.” She stopped her shuffling and lowered her voice. “There’s just one small problem.”

  Colin sat forward on the bar stool and steeled himself for the worst. “What?”

  “She isn’t taking this just-sex thing so well. I’d say she’s already half in love with you. I definitely wouldn’t use that phone number she left behind, because if you see her again she’s going to fall harder and eventually you’re going to break her heart.”

  He grabbed on to the counter ledge for stability as the impact of the words hit him. Liz had to be mistaken. He’d witnessed a softer, almost insecure side of Caitlyn by accident. He couldn’t imagine she would show that side to his sister. “Are we talking about the same woman here? My Caitlyn?”

  Liz tossed back her head and let out a boisterous laugh. “Normally I’d say possessiveness doesn’t become you, but in this case, I think you might have something. ‘Your Caitlyn.’ That’s just so cute.”

  So cute it curdled his gut.

  What if she was right? He’d owe Caitlyn a chance to explain that they couldn’t work out. Any other woman he wouldn’t care to say good-bye to, but she wasn’t any other woman. She wasn’t just his comeback fuck. She was a woman he could relate to, and for that reason, if no other, she deserved a proper good-bye.

  If Liz was right.

  “One question and then I don’t want to hear another word about her. Who did she really leave her number for? No bullshit now.”

  Liz glanced at the notepad, then back at him. “Oh, fine, you old bore. She left it for me. I asked if I could call her if I needed cooking tips.”

  “What about the rest? Was the rest of what you said legit?”

  She stuck up her hand, extended her fingers and folded in her thumb and index finger. A fresh smile twitched at her lips.

  “Sorry, Col, but count ’em: That’s a total of three questions. You said I couldn’t talk about her after the first one.”

  “Answer me!” Damnit, he hated raising his voice when it was unwarranted, but Liz’s teasing was more than he could handle.

  Her lips fell flat. Soberly, she said, “Yes. Everything else I said was for real. She’s sweet. She’s gaga for you. And for such a little thing, she’s really loud in bed. I swear, I had to break out my vibrator, I was so keyed up after listening to you two go at it half the night.”

  Colin shook his head, his temper fading with the highly unwanted information. For better or worse, it was impossible to keep a bad mood going around Liz. “No. No discussion on your vibrator. I’m your brother, for Christ’s sake.”

  “That’s okay. I already told Caitlyn all about it.”

  And what about Caitlyn? Did she have vibrator stories of her own to recount?

  An image of her pale, curvy body splayed out on a bed, her legs spread wide and her sweet pink pussy dripping with juices around the long, thick shaft of a vibrator filled his mind and hardened his dick.

  He groaned and shifted on the bar stool. She might have plans tonight, but come tomorrow he’d meet up with Caitlyn a last time and say his good-bye. He had to do it and soon, before she wasn’t the only one thinking they had something more between them than sex.

  5

  J oyce answered the knock on her apartment door with a trembling hand. Colin had called just before midnight to ask if it was too late to stop by. She’d gone to bed shortly after arriving home from the weekly book club meeting. Regardless, she’d wanted to blurt out that it would never be too late for him to come over. The tension in his voice stopped her from speaking those foolish words. Something was wrong.

  She opened the door. A plain white T-shirt lovingly hugged the sculpted muscles of his arms and torso. Frayed jean shorts displayed a drool-worthy pair of long legs made all the sexier by a dusting of sandy-brown hair. Heat zoomed into her belly and warmed her inner thighs. Good gracious, he was turning her into a nympho.

  Fisting her hands so she wouldn’t give in to the urge to touch, she met his eyes. They weren’t friendly sea green or weighted with lust. They were cool jade and distant, as was the rigid set of his mouth. The sizzle between her thighs tapered. Something was definitely the matter.

  “Come in.” She stepped back, anxious to demand to know what was going through his mind. It wasn’t her place to ask such questions and she had to remember that. She was nothing to him. Nothing but a temporary lover.

  Sorrow threatened. She pushed it back to cross the entryway and sit on a faded tan sectional couch. He
would talk when he was ready.

  Colin sat in a recliner several feet away. He looked around the small sitting area, which opened up into an even smaller kitchen and dining room, then back at her. “This place doesn’t seem like you.”

  What did he expect? An apartment swathed in red and black with strategically placed whips and chains and Harley signs trimming the walls? Somehow Joyce didn’t believe she’d played the part of sex goddess that convincingly. Even if she had, it didn’t explain the comment. A man who didn’t want her beyond the physical shouldn’t bother to put any thought into her tastes. Unless Liz was accurate about him being a love-and-marriage kind of guy.

  “It was my brother’s place,” she explained before hope she shouldn’t want to feel could take flight. “Andy moved in with his girlfriend a couple months ago. Since he still had a lease on this place, I sold the house I owned with my ex and moved in. I haven’t had much of a chance to redecorate.”

  Questions filled his eyes. He didn’t ask them, but stood and paced to the open window. He looked out into the dark muggy night for several silent seconds, then moved on to a photo collage hanging on the wall several feet away. His fingers stroked over a picture of a dark-haired man with a laughing redhead sitting on his lap on an old wooden swing.

  Moisture settled in Joyce’s panties as she recalled exactly how incredible those long, graceful fingers felt stroking over her body, into her heated sex. She pulled her attention from his hand to focus on the day the shot had been taken. She smiled. “My brother with his girlfriend, Tawny. I never thought I’d see the day Andy would settle for just one woman, but they’ve been together for almost a year and seem really happy.”

  Colin dropped his hand from the collage and sent her a doubtful look. “Yeah, well, hopefully it’ll work out for them.”

  She stood and thrust out her chin, called forth the strength to act casual. What he’d come here for was now clear. He’d come to prove his sister didn’t know him any better than Joyce did. He’d come to tell her he wasn’t a relationship kind of guy and to say good-bye. Despite the way her marriage ended, the last few days had proved she was a relationship kind of gal. For his benefit, she lied, “I hope so. Me, I have no desire for another relationship. They take too much out of you. Straight sex is easier. All the pleasure without any of the complications.”

  His skeptical look intensified. She expected him to call her bluff, tell her just how complicated things could become. Instead, a smile touched at his lips. “Hate to break it to you,” His eyes darkened, turned intense and he took a step toward her, “but you miss out on some of the best parts when it’s just about sex.”

  “Like w—what?” She closed her mouth around the stutter. The last thing she wanted was to relapse to the Joyce of old. He wasn’t making that task easy. She felt suddenly breathless, trapped in the heat of his gaze.

  He continued toward her, his pace unhurried, his voice intimate. “Curling up together on cold winter nights. Laughing at each other’s stupid jokes. Looking forward to babies and old age.” Colin laughed, a low, rough sound that stoked the fire kindling to life in her sex. Stopping two feet away, he shook his head. “But, then, I don’t do relationships anymore, either. I’m not even sure where that stuff came from.”

  “You said you had something to tell me?”

  His smile faded. “Yeah. I…Like I was saying, I don’t do relationships. Too much time. Too much effort. Work’s the thing for me.”

  “You came to tell me you don’t want to have sex again?” Joyce might not be completely rid of her naïveté, but instinct and the lust in his eyes said he did want her again. Just as she ached to have him.

  “No,” he said soberly, then quickly added, “but, hell, yes, I do.” His gaze moved to her breasts. Her nipples steepled beneath her tank top, pouting for his mouth. He grunted. “Fuck, I can’t stand here and see the way I affect you and not want you.” His arms opened to her. “What do you say, cupcake? One more time?”

  “Heck, yes!”

  Laughter followed her response. Moving into his arms, she rose on tiptoe and cut it off with a gentle brush of her mouth over his. The passion that erupted the moment his tongue pushed between her lips and stroked over her gums was anything but gentle.

  Colin’s tongue found hers in a demanding caress, and a storm of wild need flashed to life in her belly. His hands slid over her back, pulling her against his hot, hard body. She buried her own hands in his hair, wanting him closer still, his stiff cock thrusting inside her, pushing her over the edge and into one last ultimate orgasm. Clinging to his solid strength, she feasted on him, consumed his masculine taste, committed every single texture to memory.

  His hips rocked against hers and he moaned into her mouth. She repeated the sound with a hungry, husky one of her own. She rolled her pelvis, and the hot, thick length of his shaft pushed against her mound. Restless ache clawed at her from every direction.

  Holy Hades, she had to have him. Had to have him now.

  Panting, Joyce lifted from his lips. “I need you.” But, no, she couldn’t allow him to think that. “I want you,” she corrected.

  She stepped back a half foot and grabbed the hem of his T-shirt, tugged it from his shorts. Pushing up the shirt, she placed her hands on his bare abdomen. Shudders rippled through her with the longing to feel his entire mouthwatering body naked and pressed up against hers, skin on sweaty skin, limbs tangled and hips pumping. “I’m going to strip you.”

  “Not if I do you first.” Challenge glimmered in Colin’s eyes. Wicked challenge she thrilled in.

  His hands moved to the bottom of her tank top, fisted and yanked. The untamed sound of ripping cotton filled her senses and sent her pulse into a frenzied dash. Juices of anticipation spilled into her panties. Hastily, she reached for his zipper and gave the metal tab a tug. His hands came over her breasts, cupping, squeezing. He bent his head and his mouth latched on to a nipple, sucked hard. Her attempts at freeing his cock were momentarily forgone as ecstasy tore from her lips with a ragged sigh.

  He freed her throbbing nipple to tease, “I thought you wanted me naked.”

  She did want him naked. Wanted his hard length buried in her dripping sheath. His shorts she might be able to manage. The shirt he was too tall to get off without assistance. Ripping it off the way he had hers sounded more than a little appealing. Since she wasn’t that strong, Joyce settled on a more direct route.

  Taking a step back, she flung herself at him. Her body rammed into his and she wrapped her legs around his ankles. Colin went down with an “oomph.” For once her tactics proved successful. He didn’t land on the floor and crack his head open on the end table. He landed on the sectional, with her splayed over top.

  He puffed out a breath. “Nice move, Rambo.”

  She grinned and ducked her head to nip at his erection through the open vee of his shorts. His shaft jerked beneath her lips, fueling her desire all that much more to get him inside her. She slid down his legs, her pussy flaming with the hard press of his thigh against her clit. She grabbed hold of the legs of his shorts and pulled. He lifted his hips. The shorts and underwear slid down easily and his cock leapt free.

  Tongue out and at the ready, she grabbed hold off the thick base of his shaft and licked over the weeping head. His taste assailed her, masculine and heady.

  “I love the way you taste.” Joyce retracted her tongue and stood, pushing her own shorts and panties quickly down her legs. “I love the way you feel even more.”

  Colin’s mouth opened. Before any words could make it out, she came onto his lap and consumed his cock with her body. His pubic hair was starting to come back in, and while it probably itched to him, to her the short stubble was the most incredible friction ever. Erotic sensation shot from her slippery sex to her curled toes. She tossed back her head and lifted herself up and down the length of his erection. A tidal wave of pleasure coursed through her with each move—pleasure that nearly had her climaxing with the first of his hard thrusts. />
  He shifted beneath her, his pelvis positioning to scrape against her aroused clit. He rotated his hips and the breath snagged in her throat. Her eyes watered. “So good…you’re always so good.”

  “It’s all you, cupcake.”

  His tone was tight, as if he hung on to control. He had more willpower than her. Joyce couldn’t contain the pressure building inside her a second longer. Orgasm rippled through her, sheer and intense. Spasms gripped her pussy. His cock shuddered within her. Before those shudders could turn to an explosion, he pulled out. Fisting his cock, he pumped his seed onto her belly.

  The bliss of release died the instant the reality of what he’d done filled her hazy mind. “Why?” She shouldn’t ask it, but darnit, she had to know. Was this his way of saying good-bye? Denying her the last chance to feel him climaxing inside her?

  He tucked his finger under her chin and smiled. “Not because I didn’t want to feel your pussy dripping honey on my cock. I didn’t have a chance to put on a condom before you jumped me.”

  “Oh. Right.” How inane of her. She should have known he was thinking about her well-being. That was Colin. Compassionate to the end. She smiled impishly. “Sorry. I was a little excited. Next time…” The words died with a sharp intake. Heartache pressed at her ribs as she realized this truly had been the end. There would be no next time.

  Her smile vanished. She eased from his body and stood. Retrieving her ruined tank top from the floor, she used it to wipe the cum from her stomach. When she looked back at Colin, it was to find him dressing.

  The tab of his zipper slid up with a foreboding hiss. The look of finality in his eyes wasn’t any better. “I should go.”

  He should. It was for the best. Neither of them wanted a relationship. At least, he didn’t. She shouldn’t. Joyce grabbed the throw blanket from the back of the sectional and wrapped it around her body. The urge to hide her unhappiness by looking at the floor was almost too great to deny. She did so with the reminder that she wasn’t that weak woman any longer. She could face the future looking ahead, even if that future was destined to be a lonely one.