by Amy Star
But even so, their efforts were still more than enough to be noticed.
Sometimes, it was a matter of Daphne prodding Harry into a game of chess in the den, and flapping a hand at Lorraine to hush her whenever her conversation strayed off of the professional path, with a distracted, “Hold on, you’re breaking my concentration,” tacked on at the end.
Sometimes, it was Cheyenne wondering, very magnanimously, how much information Harry wanted whenever she got an update about the baby. That was always the easiest; if Cheyenne’s pregnancy came up in conversation, then Harry was impossible to distract until the conversation petered out to its conclusion.
Sometimes, it was both of them, curiously wondering about Harry’s job and how work was going. And if nothing else, it wasn’t entirely disingenuous; his work was interesting, more often than not. If anyone asked him, he said he owned a delivery company, which did not sound especially fascinating, but he had a tendency to undersell it a bit. Considering it had gone global and he had stood on six of the seven continents, it was all more interesting than he was prone to letting on.
(Whether it was some strange sense of modesty or simply him already being accustomed to it and so not seeing any of it as a big deal, Cheyenne wasn’t sure, but she supposed the end result was the same either way.)
It was any number of things, so long as Lorraine never had time alone with Harry to try to sink her claws in. Maybe Cheyenne couldn’t have him, and Daphne certainly didn’t want him, but letting Lorraine have him was not an option.
And every single time, though she smiled that same smile like a gentle kindergarten teacher, though she said, “I’m glad to see you’re all getting along better than expected. It’s good to know this is all going smoothly,” her eyes were always cold, and there was always something calculated hidden behind them.
*
Cheyenne supposed she should have known that Lorraine would say something about all of it eventually. It was early in the morning—early enough that ordinarily Cheyenne wouldn’t even be awake, but the morning sickness still hit her from time to time—and Lorraine didn’t quite corner her in the kitchen, but her proximity to the doorway did make it rather hard for Cheyenne to simply slip past her.
In that same light and lilting voice, Lorraine wondered placidly, “Are you sure it’s such a good idea to demand so much of Mr. Carmichael’s time, Miss Renaud?” She sounded so concerned, as if what was best for Harry was really all that was on her mind. “He’s a very busy man, after all. And while he’s opened his home to you and Miss Forrester out of the goodness of his heart, it would be quite an abuse of that kindness to keep trying to distract him as the two of you have been.”
“We only take up his time when he’s off the clock,” Cheyenne replied, stirring her spoon in circles in her bowl of cereal. She hadn’t had any coffee yet. She was supposed to limit herself to one cup a day, and she was saving it for whenever she inevitably started to crash around 3:00 in the afternoon. “Expecting him to be working all day, every day seems a little unreasonable,” she argued mildly. “I mean, as his personal assistant, isn’t it at least partially your job to make sure he’s not driving himself too hard?”
Lorraine’s eyes narrowed just slightly. Hardly even enough to notice if someone wasn’t looking for it, but Cheyenne was paying attention. She offered a smile, small and polite, and Lorraine sighed out a slow breath. “A fair point,” she agreed pleasantly. “But it’s also part of my job description to worry about this sort of thing,” she added, linking her hands together in front of herself, “and to coax him back on track if it seems like he’s getting too distracted. His job can be stressful, true, but beyond a certain point, distraction becomes more of a detriment than a help.”
“You’re very good at your job,” Cheyenne assured her blandly, turning her attention back to her breakfast. She didn’t bother to point out for a second time that she was only distracting Harry when he was already done working. She could recognize a circular argument when one jumped up and did a dance for her, and she would just be wasting her time if she kept trying to argue her point. She had better things to waste her time on.
Lorraine watched her for a moment longer before she shook her head slightly and made her way out of the kitchen. A moment later, Daphne traipsed into the room and dropped herself down into the chair across from Cheyenne.
“Having a good morning?” she asked wryly, folding one arm on the table and leaning her chin on her other hand, elbow on the table. “Causing trouble?” She leaned forward slightly on her elbow and grinned, her expression turning sly and expectant at the same time.
“It was just a friendly chat,” Cheyenne protested, feigning an innocent tone. Daphne rolled her eyes, and Cheyenne went back to eating her cereal in silence.
She was finishing off the bowl when Harry leaned into the room, wondering in bemusement, “Lorraine seems like she’s in a bit of a bad mood. Either of you have any idea what’s up?”
Cheyenne shrugged loosely. “Beats me.”
As Harry turned and made his slightly befuddled way out of the room again, Cheyenne had to try very hard not to burst out laughing right there.
It all rather set the tone for the rest of Cheyenne’s stay at Harry’s house, but she was surprisingly okay with that.
CHAPTER THREE
There was a side effect to the ever-continuing campaign to keep Lorraine from spending any non-professional private time with Harry, and it was that Cheyenne was spending a rather considerable amount of time with him. Granted, it wasn’t an unforeseen side effect, but it was a side effect all the same.
Once he broke up with her, Cheyenne hadn’t actually planned on ever seeing him again. She certainly hadn’t planned on moving back in with him (slightly against her will, especially). She definitely hadn’t planned on spending a considerable portion of each day with him. And even if it began as an attempt to keep Lorraine away from him, it slowly started to become something…more. After all, they had been good together before everything fell apart. They were still the same people, on the whole. They were still capable of being good together.
She had missed him. She didn’t like admitting it, but she had never been in the habit of lying to herself if she could help it.
(Lying in general sometimes if she felt it was necessary, but that was a different thing entirely, even if she still didn’t try to make it a habit.)
Even so, she had to debate with herself on whether or not she actually wanted to bridge that gap between “houseguest” and “maybe friends.” It seemed like such an enormous gap to bridge, and truth be told, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to clear the distance.
But she supposed she would never really know if she didn’t actually try. And when she thought about it like that, it sounded very much as if she had already made up her mind about the situation.
*
When Cheyenne made herself comfortable in Harry’s office, she wasn’t actually expecting anything to come of it. Things had been friendly, sure, but on some level, she was most assuredly still upset with him. Also, she just tended not to look at her exes and assume anything intimate was going to happen. So, she could honestly say that her intentions had been honest when she wandered into his office with two cups of coffee, handed him one, and made herself comfortable in the armchair.
If whatever he was working on was particularly important, he evidently didn’t care, since he seemed perfectly content to shoot the breeze with Cheyenne instead. Their conversation meandered in a familiar way. They had always been good at just following the thread of the conversation wherever it led. Hours-long car rides had passed in what seemed like five minutes in the past, purely because they were good at keeping each other occupied.
And that was all she was really expecting when she sat down in his office. She hadn’t even expected him to fully pull his attention away from his work, though she certainly hadn’t complained when he did in fact turn his chair to face her, his desk sitting ignored behind him. She ha
d missed him, after all. She had missed the easy camaraderie and the way the conversation always flowed like water down a slope.
Cheyenne couldn’t drink any alcohol, of course, though she didn’t particularly care if Harry did. Even so, she appreciated it when he asked her, “Do you mind if I pour myself a drink?” as he gestured loosely to the liquor cabinet across the office.
Cheyenne bowed him towards it with a flourish, and snorted out a laugh as she dodged the pen he tossed at her head.
From there, it seemed pretty natural as he said, “Come on, you can come upstairs with me while I get out of my work clothes.” The only other option would be for their meandering conversation to come to an end, and considering it had been steadily meandering its way along for nearly two hours at that point, it seemed like a waste to let it end for such a silly reason.
And it wasn’t as if she had never seen him naked or in his underwear before. It wouldn’t be a big deal. She smiled crookedly and nodded, and it was his turn to bow with a flourish as he held the office door open for her. She punched his shoulder, but she did precede him out of the room nonetheless.
They talked as they made their way up the stairs, and it was only once they got to Harry’s room and he began stripping his work clothes off that they fell silent, as if it was only in that moment that it caught up to them that something else was, indeed, going on.
They didn’t acknowledge it at first, as Harry turned his back to Cheyenne as he dropped his shirt to the floor. But her eyes roved over the muscles of his back, and in that moment, she knew exactly how the evening was going to play out. She kept that thought to herself, though, until Harry had kicked his shoes off and let his pants and his belt fall to the floor. Only once he was standing in his underwear did Cheyenne say, “Hey,” to get his attention.
He peered over his shoulder at her, turning slowly as she gestured him closer with two fingers. Going by the look on his face as he closed the distance between them, it was readily apparent that he knew exactly what was going to happen just as well as she did, but his tone was still playful as he wondered, “Can I help you with something?”
“Maybe a little,” she mused, tracing the tip of one finger up from his abdomen and along his chest, until she could curl her hand around the back of his neck. He moved willingly, bending as she tugged and leaned up on her toes until their lips met.
It was clumsy at first. It had been a rather long time since they had last kissed each other. It had been a rather long time since they had last kissed anyone. But they quickly remembered what it had been like in the past, and soon enough they were kissing just as they always had, lips sliding against each other easily, until Harry’s tongue probed into Cheyenne’s mouth.
She shivered slightly, and with the hand she wasn’t using to hold onto him, she unbuttoned and unzipped the fly of her pants and began to clumsily inch them down with one hand. She only had to attempt that for a moment, though, before Harry realized what she was doing and took over for her, both of his hands sliding down her sides until he could hook his fingers in the waistband of her pants and tug them down easily, letting them drop to the floor. She stepped out of them and kicked them aside, and it was only then that they parted so Harry could pull her shirt over her head, dropping it to land in a pile with her pants.
Evidently, he planned on wasting absolutely no time, as he reached for the clasp of her bra a moment later, and Cheyenne let it fall to the floor as well without complaint, and then began shimmying her panties down her thighs until all of her clothing was piled at her feet and only Harry still had his underwear on.
They lasted only a few seconds after that before he shoved them down his legs and stepped out of them.
Cheyenne and Harry seemed to crash together again once they were both naked, skin against skin without any sort of barrier between them, and Harry’s lips trailed along her jaw and down her neck, until he was picking her up by the backs of her thighs so he could more easily kiss her chest.
She felt like she was supposed to say something, but she didn’t get a chance as he circled his tongue around one of her nipples until it hardened into a nub, and all she managed was a tiny gasp as he closed his lips around it, applying just the barest amount of pressure with his teeth and giving it a gentle tug, before he released it again to give the same attention to her neglected nipple, circling his tongue around it before taking it into his mouth.
Cheyenne cooed senseless encouragement as she ran a hand through Harry’s hair, and when he released her nipple again, it was so he could instead begin walking, hitching her up slightly higher in his hold as he moved.
They didn’t even make it to the bed in their impatience. It was just a few feet away, and even that seemed too far, so Harry instead wound up seated on the window seat with Cheyenne straddling his thighs. She curled a hand around his cock, stroking it with swift motions as it hardened beneath her touch, until it was dark and leaking at the tip. It twitched slightly as she released it, bobbing against his stomach, and Cheyenne couldn’t help herself after that.
She squirmed backwards, extricating herself from Harry’s hold and landing on her knees on the floor. She shoved his legs apart so she could shuffle forward, kneeling between his thighs. She glanced up, offering him a tiny, impish grin before she licked a stripe up the underside of his cock, and he sighed out an unsteady breath. It wasn’t quite the reaction she was looking for, though. So, she supposed she would just need to try harder.
There was a startled, very emphatic, “Fuck,” as Cheyenne closed her lips around the head of his cock, and then she sank downwards until she could feel the head of his cock prodding at the back of her mouth. She supposed she could have just stopped there, since she was a bit out of practice, but really, where would be the fun in that?
She swallowed around him and lowered her head further, relaxing the muscles of her throat as she took his cock deeper, until her nose was pressed against his pelvis. She could hear him sucking in air, and his legs trembled on either side of her as he struggled to keep himself still to avoid gagging her. A polite gesture, but that didn’t mean she planned on going easy on him.
She breathed steadily through her nose for a moment until it seemed as if he was getting a bit too calm, and then she swallowed around him and hummed, and she could hear his head thump back against the window with a quiet, “Shit.” On either side, his fingers curled around the edge of the cushion of the window seat until his knuckles went pale.
It was slow going when she began to lift her head again, dragging her tongue along the underside of his length until just the head was between her lips, and just as slowly, she sank back down, until her nose was once again pressed to his pelvis. She managed to repeat it only a few times before he threaded a hand into her hair and tugged carefully, and she lifted her head, releasing his cock from her mouth with a pop. She wiped a string of drool from her chin with the side of her hand, and she meant to say something charming and coy, but she never got the chance, as he simply picked her up off of the floor and pulled her back into his lap.
She was pretty sure she had a good idea of what he was getting at, considering the way his cock was leaking against his stomach and the muscles of his abdomen and thighs were twitching slightly. For a second, she was tempted to just sit and sink down the length of his cock, knowing he wouldn’t last long once she did.
He knew that too, though, and didn’t give her the chance, instead pressing one hand between her legs. She gasped as he dragged a finger along the length of the lips of her sex, already hot and damp, only applying the barest amount of pressure to her clit.
She groaned in exasperation, and with a scoff of laughter, he pressed his fingers to her clit and began to rub, slowly at first but gradually picking up his speed until she was trying to grind herself against his hand for just a bit of extra friction.
It didn’t take long before she was in much the same state as Harry, ready to come at a moment’s notice. She sat up on her knees, pulling away from his hand,
and before he had a chance to ask if everything was alright, she wrapped a hand around his cock to hold it steady and began to lower herself down onto it, moving carefully until she felt the head press at her entrance and breach her.
She sighed out a slow breath and let go of the base of his cock, to instead settle both of her hands on his shoulders. She waited until his hands curled around her hips, and then all at once, she lowered herself down until she was once again sitting on his lap. Once again, she heard Harry’s head thump against the window, and she threw her head back as her back arched. Her legs twitched with the effort of staying still and giving herself a chance to adjust to the sensation.
She didn’t give herself long, though, before her hold on his shoulders tightened. Knowing what she had in mind, Harry’s grip on her hips tightened as well, and as she began to lift herself off of his lap with her thighs, he lifted her higher, making it that much easier for her to keep sitting up until only the head of his cock was inside her. She paused there for a moment, before she began to lower herself again. And though she would have simply sat back down all at once, Harry’s steady grip on her hips kept her pace slower. She could feel each inch of his cock as it slid steadily back inside of her, and she tipped her head forward against his shoulder as she sighed out an unsteady moan.