Thick As Thieves: A Romantic Comedy

by Julie Olivia

  I point to the corner. Moonlight shines in through the window, illuminating my white sheets in the glow of the night. It would almost look heavenly, if heaven were filled with dark-haired men whose eyebrows were in such a concentrated line with naughty determination. However, I doubt heaven has men like Owen—men who carry me to my large bed, lay me down, and nip at my neck.

  He tugs off his flannel, ripping it over his head, exposing his body to me for the first time. It’s everything I imagined it might be and more: his arms are bulkier than the stretched shirts ever gave them credit for, his collar defined with the bone leading like a tour guide to his sculpted shoulders and chest, and his abs ribbed for my pleasure.

  I run my hands over him, admiring, but only until my own needs take over. I gear toward his pants, unbuttoning them as quick as I can, tugging them down until they fall to his ankles, exposing his black boxer briefs. He steps out of his pants, walking forward to the edge of the bed, rubbing the hard curve in his underwear against me, tucking a thumb under mine and pulling them down.

  “Oh, hang on,” he says. He walks away, and his absence instantly steals the heat with it, but then he’s back with the kitchen scissors in hand, cutting through the remaining bits of my tights. I hadn’t realized they were hanging on for dear life, flopped to my sides, held on only by the waistband. We both laugh as he cuts them off and throws them to the corner. Leia’s startled meow suggests they landed a bit too close to her on the couch.

  Poor girl.

  Impatient, I tug at Owen’s underwear, pulling until what I’ve been promised is finally freed. And, in that heavenly moonlit glow that I’m now realizing might just be the blaze of the fires in hell, is my very large prize.

  Were this actually heaven, there’s no way I’d be an angel. I bet women in heaven ask for gentle back rubs. I don’t think they ask things like, “Did you bring a condom? Because I need to get pounded right now.” I bet men in heaven ask how you take your coffee. With sugar? With cream? I bet men in heaven don’t ask things like, “How fast do you like it?” and “How hard?”

  But I do. And Owen does.

  Owen grabs the condom from the pants on the floor, ripping the wrapper with his teeth like an animal and spitting the covering down to the floor. He rolls it on, edging himself between my legs. I splay out on the bed, wrapping my legs around him, my knees coaxing him closer until he’s right there, his head teasing my opening.

  “God, you’re so gorgeous,” he mutters, a hand roaming over my hips, his palm spreading over my stomach. I melt into the touch, running a finger over the coils of veins running down his forearm and to his wrist. For once, it’s there for me to admire, placed in a domineering fashion, holding me, preparing me. And I am very prepared when he finally thrusts into me, bit by bit, inch by inch, until he fills me up completely.

  We don’t wait to settle in together like I might with some men; we don’t have to. We fit together like puzzle pieces, locked into place instantly, like we are meant to fit as well as we do. Owen slides out then thrusts back in, the edges of him sliding with ease against my wetness, so smooth and easy. He leans over me, hand gripping my hips, pulling me closer until my ass hits his thighs. He takes one of my legs, tugging it to his shoulder, getting deeper and deeper into me, occasionally moaning my name as I call out his.

  My second orgasm comes easier than the first, if that is even possible. Owen follows shortly, thrusting harder until I can feel him throb beneath me. Eventually, after a few more well-placed thrusts, Owen falls on the bed beside me, pushing my bangs aside to kiss my forehead and then my cheeks before muttering, “Do you still think I’m such a good guy?”

  I laugh and we kiss each other. His lips are still demanding even after all of tonight.

  “I want worse,” I say.

  He growls in response, biting my bottom lip. “I can give you worse, Fran.”

  Though, what else he can give, I’m unsure. Owen just gave me everything: his sweet, caring side, but also the rough, demanding man. I can’t think of anything more I would need.

  “Are you tired?” I ask, offering him an out.

  He doesn’t take it. Instead, he curls an arm around my backside, taking a handful of my ass in his large hand and squeezing it in his grip. The biting sensation spreads through me, pulsing directly to the pleasure between my thighs.

  “For you? Never.”

  17 Owen

  I wake up the next morning almost forgetting it’s Friday; I would were it not for the beautiful blonde telling me so. I might have gotten upset by the news were that same blonde in anything except for her current getup of black underwear and only black underwear.

  “I have work,” Fran says, tiptoeing over to the bed and sitting beside me. Her hand trails up my leg, which is halfway stuck out of the sheets, stopping just before where the fabric conceals my naked groin. “You’re free to stay, though.”

  Fran is so sexy with everything she does, even teasing me right when I come out of the best sleep I’ve had in possibly years. I feel bad waking up so late in an apartment that isn’t mine to a woman working hard at her desk, but the way her two fingers shimmy their way underneath the covers, petting the underside of my length, I’d say she’s not too bothered.

  Still, I pull my wrist up and check the time.

  Seven thirty. I slept more than four hours. Imagine that.

  “Walk for me again,” I say. “I like watching you.”

  Fran purses her lips in mock disapproval, but a smile peeks out at the edges. I’m surprised when she actually does get up and walk across the room to her kitchenette. She doesn’t like to be told what to do, but I guess me eating her out on top of her counter makes her a bit more malleable. Though, it’s deceptively accommodating. I can still see her feisty nature with every jerk of her hips swaying from side to side. She’s not showing off her body for me; she’s showing it off because she likes the way I look at her. Good. Win-win, in my opinion.

  Fran pulls down two mugs from her open cabinets, her perky breasts giving me a fun show the whole time.

  “Coffee?” she asks.

  “And here I thought you’d only have tea.”

  Fran sucks in her bottom lip. I inhale sharply at the gesture and sit up in bed, trying to conceal my already hardened parts.

  “I keep coffee for my man guests,” she says.

  “Oh, are there other men drinking your brew?”

  She rolls her eyes. “No, but there will be if you keep saying silly phrases like that.”

  “Fair.” I stretch toward the ceiling, touching my fingertips to the popcorn at the top.

  “Your phone has been blowing up all morning, by the way,” Fran says, nodding her head to the couch where my clothes are draped over the back. My other items—wallet, keys, and phone—are placed neatly in front. The only thing that isn’t mine is the large ginger cat curled right on top of my shoes.

  I swing my legs out of bed, padding across the hardwood floors, Fran’s eyes growing at the sight of my own hard wood. She blushes but doesn’t look away.

  I step into my underwear then into my pants, attempting to pet the cat rested on my shoes once my buttons are secure, just in case she’s not the friendly kind—always respect a cat’s claws. But, when I reach down to pat her head, she leans into it. She is Fran’s cat, so I shouldn’t be surprised she’s sweet deep down.

  “I wasn’t teasing last night,” Fran says, leaning against the counter. “Leia doesn’t trust people easily. She likes you, though.”

  “Oh yeah?” I say. I give Leia one final pat and walk over to Fran, wrapping my hands over her hips. “And what about you?” I trail the backs of my knuckles to the underside of her breast and lightly thumb over the nipple. A breath escapes her slightly parted lips. “What do you think?”

  “I think I should be working,” she says, though the tone is airy. “But instead I have a man seducing me.” She’s not wrong: I bet I could convince her to have one more go. Everything in me wants it, but the buzz of my p
hone on the couch catches my attention. It seems the real world doesn’t exactly wait on me to relieve how hard I am.

  “Alright, I can be an adult,” I say, walking over and picking up my phone. “I can get through the workday before screwing you senseless again.”

  She smirks at me, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Don’t hide those, please,” I say with a snap of my fingers. Her arms drop and the smile widens as her breasts are on full display.

  When I unlock my phone, it’s a barrage of messages. It’s hard to tell just how many calls have been missed, but by dragging the seemingly endless notifications from bottom to top, I can tell it’s more than usual. Some are from Emma and Taylor, but most are from Ryan. Calls, texts, emails, and—worst of all—alerts sent from the app we created to collaborate on our secret project. Alerts of all kinds, most of which I don’t have the mental capacity to decipher this early in the morning, except that I can tell it’s definitely something I need to address, and quick.

  I pocket the phone, pulling on my flannel and buttoning it up. I put my wallet and keys in my pockets, and when I look up, Fran is staring back at me with a lopsided smile, as if admiring a dear pal from afar.

  “Are we friends, you’d say?” she asks me.

  I laugh. “Maybe. Depends on what you want. We’re friends if you need someone to walk you home at night.” I walk toward the kitchenette again. “We’re partners if you need an extra set of eyes on a tech issue. But…” I make it to her, stepping so close she’s pinned between me and the counter. It’s so reminiscent of last night that my erection already stirs in my pants. Being the minx that she is, she arches her hips forward to tease it. “If you want me to do the things I did last night, I’d say we’re dating.”

  “And do you like labels?” she asks. If I weren’t looking at her so intently, I might have missed the nearly imperceptible twitch of her brow, the slight curve of a line between her two eyebrows that’s there then gone just as easily. Her tone almost sounds genuine, a slight stray from our teasing back and forth so far, so I shake my head slowly.

  “Nah, I’m mostly just trying to get your underwear off again,” I tease. I look down at her, taking in her full, perky breasts, the smoothness of her flat stomach, the slight curves of her petite figure. “But I also need to leave, so really I’m just torturing myself with you here.”

  “So, how would you classify dinner?” she asks.

  I tilt my head. “At a restaurant?”

  “No, with friends.”

  I narrow my eyes at her. “You want me to get dinner with your friends?”

  “Just my elderly neighbor and my cousin,” she clarifies. “Here in my kitchen.” She glances around us, eyeing the countertop with a seductive smirk. “Nothing new to you.”

  I laugh. We just slept together, and she already wants me to meet her friends. I consider what I should be feeling: a gut-clenching anxiety or maybe the topsy-turvy tilt of my stomach telling me to avoid this with a ten-foot pole. But, with Fran, it doesn’t feel that way. Those thoughts only pervade my mind as memories of the past, something to be had with another woman at another time in my life. But, my only real thoughts are how soon we can plan this and if I could even manage to make it on time with how busy work is. Even then, I know I’d try my best to make it as long as she would be there.

  “You don’t think that’s a bit quick?” I ask, trying to offer an out for her. I would eat a ten-course meal with her next-door neighbor, but is she just trying to be nice? I mentally laugh. Since when is Fran nice for the sake of being nice?

  “Not if we pick the label correctly,” she answers in a matter-of-fact tone. “I want to go with ‘friends’ instead of ‘lovers’ for that activity.”

  “And after?”

  Her hand goes to my crotch, and I inhale sharply. The action is bold, so confident, so Fran.

  “We can negotiate,” she says.

  “Sure,” I agree. “I can do dinner.” My chest feels warm, and I wonder if maybe I’m the Grinch with my heart growing three sizes.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket again and I groan, leaning down to press my forehead against hers.

  Oh right, the project. With this morning being what it is, I’m already behind.

  “Do you ever stop working?” Fran asks with a slight giggle, shaking her head back and forth against mine.

  “No,” I groan. “Unfortunately.”

  “Some other time then?” she asks.

  I lean back more suddenly than even I anticipated, holding her hips in my hands and taking her in. She doesn’t look pissed; she only has this general demeanor of calm. It’s so understanding it’s almost eerie.

  “I didn’t say no to dinner,” I say.

  “Yes, but I could feel it.”

  I look down at my hardness pressed between us, a bump in my denim and into her bare stomach.

  “I think you were feeling something else,” I say with a lopsided grin.

  Fran rolls her eyes, cocking her head to the side. “Go be a businessman, Owen. We can get dinner some other time. I have the number of your coworker, and I know for a fact that Emma won’t let you sleep with me then leave.”

  The sentence probably holds more weight than she meant it to. Emma will already be begging me for details on what happened after last night’s meeting. I’m not one to brag about these things, so Emma wouldn’t get the chance to chastise me if it didn’t work out, but that’s the weird thing, the wonderful thing—I can see this working out so well because I’m fucking crazy about this woman.

  Fran understands work, the value of it, the difficulty. She’s smart too, and, being in the industry, the long hours and sleepless nights are not foreign to her like they have been to previous girlfriends. Hell, I barely know her, and I almost find myself venting about my entire project with Ryan, spilling all the ridiculous things we’re doing that’ve been lingering on my mind. The legal precariousness, the struggle between what I perceive to be the right thing to do and whether I’m blinded by my blackmail and curiosity for the project or if I’m digging myself in a deeper hole. I want to unload everything onto her, have her brilliant mind assist me through it like she’s done countless times up to this point with my ethical hacking clients, but I know I can’t.

  I lean forward, nosing my way through the hair hanging by her neck, letting it tickle over me in waves as I kiss every inch of her exposed skin.

  “You’re so different from everyone else, Fran,” I murmur.

  “Keep talking,” she says, tilting her head away to give me more space to explore. Her scent, the flowery rosebud, an intoxicating poison…it washes over me and spurs my mouth to turn my kisses into light nibbles.

  “You have no idea what you do to me.”

  “You have no idea what you do to me,” she says. I pull away to look down at her. She doesn’t give me the chance to say anything in response before she’s on her knees, tugging down my pants and cupping all of me in her soft hands.

  I am, inevitably, late to the office.

  18 Francesca

  It seems my little virtual antagonist returned with a vengeance.

  When Owen left my apartment, after showering with me in the lukewarm heat with semi-reasonable water pressure and some Sinatra singing, I changed into business casual clothing to get my mind more focused on work—and less on a wonderful man’s body—then started delving into the mess left for me.

  I thought I had the whole hacking ordeal handled yesterday, but it looks like Stuart the Rat attempted two more times since then. I received an email from my boss saying even he received security alerts overnight. Why they were sent to his inbox as well, I’m unsure; most CEOs aren’t privy to the nuances of their security, but given the nature of this company, I shouldn’t be surprised. It seems like the small size makes everyone a bit more involved in the day-to-day happenings.

  I spent most of my morning looking through logs, fixing error after error like the virtual equivalent of loose sheets of confidential pap
ers scattered in a room. Stuart was looking for something, but it doesn’t seem they found anything of use. I analyze where the crack in the system occurred to allow them access. When I finally find it, it’s cleverly located—some back door I have yet to test for security fallacies in my one month of being here.

  I spend the next few hours looking into it and, after work, I head to the corner store to pick up some groceries for tonight. I woke up to a text chain between Lara and Natalie wherein they both insisted on a girl’s dinner. They had exchanged web chat usernames and spent all night gabbing. Funny that in the same night I made leaps and bounds with a man I was determined to hate, Natalie became close friends with a woman overseas who is three times her age.

  As it is, apparently, we’re having pancakes at midnight so Natalie can join us for breakfast over in London. I text Owen these details, saying it’s probably best he doesn’t join us. I even take the courteous route of changing his name in my cell phone from ‘Prick McGee’ to ‘Owen McMan-Candy.’ I figure if the man has been inside me, he can also live in my phone with a proper name.

  Owen McMan-Candy: Isn’t midnight a bit late for dinner?

  Fran: You’re telling me you wouldn’t be awake at midnight?

  Owen McMan-Candy: That’s when I get most of my work done.

  Fran: Of course it is.

  My gut clenches at the thought of his work schedule. It’s not that I view it as an issue, except prioritizing literally everything and everyone over me has always been a problem in my relationships. Granted, Owen seems genuinely interested in me. He’s texting me more than he did prior to last night, so that’s a plus; it wasn’t a one-night stand. He gave me more orgasms in one night than in the length of one month with any of my exes. And yes, I invited him over quicker than I should have, but it’s Owen. It feels different. It feels like I’ve known him longer than just a few weeks. When we hooked up, I wasn’t self-conscious of a stranger viewing me; it felt like being with a man who was destined to see my jiggly bits naked. And if you can feel comfort in that, what else can you conquer?