Due South (The Compass series Book 5)

by Tamsen Parker

  She looks me up and down, her gaze pausing for longer than strictly necessary where there’s still a noticeable bulge in my pants. “So you’re saying we can keep sleeping together until this PRA thing is done.”

  “Yeah.”

  Her mouth twists up to the side, as though she’s honestly considering it, and it makes my heart grow three sizes. Come on, Luce. Say yes.

  “And no one has to know.”

  With that, my heart deflates some. Would it be so terrible for someone to know we were sleeping together? I mean, professionally, yes, because we would get our asses handed to us on a Fired platter, but is she embarrassed by me otherwise? Am I not who she would choose to date? The point is moot, though, so I shouldn’t let the possibility get me down. “Our little secret.”

  She chews her bottom lip, and I wish it were my teeth sinking into the plump pinkness. “That doesn’t sound like a terrible idea. I mean, the hours we’re going to have to put in should be illegal, and sex is good stress relief. We’d be doing BCG a favor.”

  “Exactly.” I’m warming to this. “It’s the most efficient way. Not having to leave the office, even to get some, is enhancing our productivity.”

  She giggles, and some of the fear she might say no leaves with an answering laugh. “I probably wouldn’t try to sell India on its merits that way.”

  “Can we not talk about work for a while? I can think of things I’d rather be doing with my mouth.”

  Her mouth forms the prettiest O, and I can think of things I’d rather her mouth be doing, too. But first…

  “Push your chair back.”

  She does as she’s told, keeping her eyes locked on mine as the wheels roll over the mat behind her desk. I walk around and study her cube for a second before deciding, yeah, there’s enough room for a grown man to crouch under the desk. Which is exactly what I do.

  “Evans, what are you—”

  I shush her and position myself so I can pull her back, spreading her thighs as I do. The lighting in here isn’t ideal, but I can still see the lace of her panties pulled tight between her legs. Which is totally sexy, but they’re also in my way. Reaching under her skirt, I urge her hips high enough to drag the scrap of fabric down her thighs. I could take them totally off, but the idea of them slung around one ankle because we couldn’t even wait that long to go at it is hot. So that’s what I do before pulling her even closer, her wheelie chair aiding and abetting our illicit activities.

  After a few seconds of licking and tasting her, I realize the chair keeps rolling away, which, dammit, I don’t want it to, but I also want to use my hands, push fingers inside her so I can feel the pulse of her orgasm when she comes. It takes some fumbling, but I find the lock on the chair and pull her exactly where I want her before flicking it so she won’t roll away.

  I’ve always had a fantasy about a woman going down on me behind a desk, but I’ve got to say the reverse is as hot as I ever thought that’d be. Even though I know it’s extraordinarily unlikely, there’s the tiniest chance someone could come back to the office, and they wouldn’t know I was hiding under here with my head buried between Lucy’s legs. And maybe I wouldn’t even know, given how her thighs are pressed tight around my head, covering my ears.

  It’s stupid to need anything other than the taste, the smell, the feel of her, but I can’t help fantasizing someone’s going to come back because they forgot something in the office and they stop to say goodbye to Lucy on their way out. She’d try to be pleasant, but she’d be breathless, her words suspiciously gaspy and her face damningly flushed. But no one would ever guess what was actually going on because we’re the last two people on earth who would do something so scandalous. I mean, we wouldn’t even slip a pad of Post-Its in our pocket on the way out.

  Swirling my tongue around her clit and then taking it into my mouth to suck, something thuds and drags above me. If that’s Lucy dropping her head to the desk and scraping her nails over it because she can’t even take what I’m doing to her… That is nothing short of inspiring.

  She’s started canting her hips up, offering herself to me more fully, so I use my fingers to spread her apart and then enter her. Tight, hot, and wet, the feel of her surrounding me makes my cock ache. I’m so hard kneeling here and only get harder when she bangs the top of the desk with what has to be her fist. Or maybe her stapler. Whatever it is, it’s substantial and emphatic, and then she’s drawing her thighs apart slightly, enough so I can hear her say, “Evans, please…”

  I stop working her with my mouth and rest my head against her thigh, not ceasing the slick pumping of my fingers, and she’s meeting me thrust for thrust. “Please what?”

  “Make me come. Make me come like this. I want to come in your mouth.”

  Yes. The idea of her flooding my mouth is… I need to be careful, lest I totally fucking lose it and come in my pants. I might not be any kind of Casanova, but dammit, I will not disgrace myself by blowing my perfectly good load into these pants. Besides, my drycleaner is this adorable seventy-eight-year-old Korean woman who gives me jars of kimchi because she says I’m too skinny, and I can’t imagine exchanging her thoughtfulness with ejaculate-soaked trousers. But the thought of elderly Mrs. Kim is at least a good deterrent to humiliating myself.

  Long enough anyway to focus on how best to get Lucy off. I suck her clit again because she seemed to like that—a lot—and then curve my fingers inside her until I find the—

  “Ah!”

  Yep, that’s the spot. And after a few more thrusts, I get what I was after. A pulse of moisture surging into my mouth, and it’s as good as I thought it would be. She tastes so goddamn good. Cherries and vanilla and the musk of intimate flesh…

  “Evans, god, fuck. You’re so fucking good.”

  And then there’s a barely human noise, one that sends my dick jerking because it’s so freaking sexy. Her interior muscles are squeezing around my fingers, and the rhythmic pulse is incredible. Makes me want to get inside her and feel that around something other than fingers.

  She pushes against me a few more times, rocking out the rest of her orgasm, and then runs a hand through my hair. “So good.”

  Her thighs are spread lazily, and she’s collapsed against her chair, getting her breath back. I unlock the wheel and push the chair away enough to see her face. Her hair is in disarray, the pencils having come loose at some point. She looks delightfully spent, and pride surges through me along with desire, twin pleasure and frustration coursing through my veins. I made Lucy look this way, feel this way. Me.

  Stroking my hair more, her eyes are closed, and she doesn’t bother to close her legs. Tenderness overwhelms me that she trusts me so much, to let me see her anything but put-together and prim.

  It’s not the most comfortable, here on the floor, but I’m happy to have my knees ache for a while to let Lucy have some peace. She’s been working so hard and it’s only going to get worse over the next few days. I almost hope she falls asleep like this. I’d grab the blanket from India’s office and cover her, wake her up in a couple of hours so she wouldn’t freak about missing too much time.

  While I’m listening for her breath to even out into the sounds of sleep, she stirs and gently scratches her fingernails against my scalp, which feels amazing.

  “Evans?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I ask you for something and you won’t think I’m a total glutton?”

  “Whatever you want, Luce.”

  “Would you fuck me over the desk?”

  I almost choke on nothing, because, holy smokes, that makes her gluttonous how? I suppose some guys might call her insatiable, but if I did, it would be in tones of admiration, not shaming. I smile against the inside of her knee and then kiss and nip.

  “If I have to.”

  She tugs at my hair and giggles, hearing the teasing in my voice. “You do. It’s required.”

  “Do you need another minute or…”

  “No. I want it now.”

  The
re’s another yank at my scalp, and while I could imagine how that could feel good to other people, it doesn’t particularly to me. I like that Lucy’s asking for what she wants, though, and it doesn’t hurt. Pushing off the floor, I survey her desk, moving piles of papers to one side and her shiny pink stapler to a shelf. That should give us enough room.

  I offer her a hand and she places her soft one in mine, giving me an easy, dazed smile at the same time. Pulling her up and drawing her into me not gently, she gasps. The sound makes my dick throb. I playfully push her over the desk and love the way she spreads her fingers across the surface. When she’s steady, I use my knee to spread her legs, her skirt already hiked over her hips.

  Waiting to get inside her isn’t what I want to do, but I think of Mrs. Kim again and back off to shuck my pants so I won’t have Lucy’s wetness marking the fly. Shoes have to come off too, but I don’t bother taking my shirt off because I don’t have that much patience. And then I realize—

  “Shit. Condom.”

  Lucy squeaks and pounds a fist on her desk. “Dammit, Evans!”

  “I didn’t think I’d get to do this again. I didn’t want to be presumptuous,” I hiss.

  “Well, go get one. You still have them in your desk, right?”

  Yes. Yes, I do. Did she think I would’ve used them all up in the less-than-twenty-four-hours since the last time we’ve done this? That is the precise opposite of what’s happened. So yes, they’re there, safely tucked into a desk drawer but going to get them is going to be interesting. Put my clothes back on or no? Running through the office with no pants on has a high potential for embarrassment, but the potential for ridiculous levels of hedonism inside Lucy if I do it outweighs that.

  “I do. You stay there, spread out on your desk and waiting for me, and I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”

  She nods and I take a step back, testing her, before I make a break for my office, running down the hall in socks, my shirt and my tie. Like a sunglasses-less Tom Cruise from Risky Business. I must look ridiculous, but if you can find me a straight guy who wouldn’t do the same thing with Lucy waiting for them, I’d hand over my car and have to roller skate to work.

  The socks keep me from skidding on the carpet as I round the corner, and then I’m slamming desk drawers open and shut until I find the condoms and rip one off, scrambling back down the hallway, delighted when Lucy’s waiting for me. I’m the luckiest guy in the universe. For at least the past couple of days at any rate, and if Lucy doesn’t freak out and call it off like a sane person would do, for the next few days too.

  She hasn’t changed her mind in the minute it’s taken me to get back, and in a crazy selfish way, I don’t want her to change her mind before I get inside her. I mean, she can change her mind whenever she wants and I’d listen, but I hold out hope she won’t, not quite yet. I want to hold onto this pleasure for as long as I can.

  I roll on the condom and push a finger inside her, but she’s still soaked from her earlier climax and I slip right in. “Are you ready for me, Luce? Do you need anything first?”

  She pushes onto her elbows and fumbles with the front of her blouse and then she’s dragging my hand that’s not working inside her toward her breast, wrapping my fingers around the flesh and squeezing. Holy—

  “Will you do that while you fuck me, Evans?”

  Words flee my head because, hell yeah, but I realize she can’t see me nod, so I gather up the letters and sounds and finally manage to say, “Yeah. I can do that.”

  “Then do it.”

  So I do, pulling my fingers out and replacing them with my dick. Slowly, gently, two steps forward, one step back because I don’t want to hurt her. I snake my other hand around to work at her other breast while I press inside. Yeah, this is amazing. She feels amazing. She is amazing.

  Once I’ve worked my way inside, I squeeze her tits and she returns the pressure around my dick and it’s so good I almost die. “You feel so good, Luce. I love being inside you.”

  Probably shouldn’t use the word love at any time with Lucy, don’t want to give her the wrong impression. Not because I don’t think I could love her because—not worth thinking of. I can’t have her, so why torture myself? Take what you can get, Chuck, and be grateful for it.

  I hate that I hear the words in my brother’s voice. Hate that he always called me Chuck. To be fair, it hadn’t been just him. Everyone had called me that because Chanoch was “too weird.” When I was a kid, I’d been proud of my name, loved it, but after too many jokes at my expense, too many wrinkled noses when I introduced myself, and too many people butchering it because they couldn’t be bothered to take a second to learn how to say my goddamn name correctly—well, I’d become angry. And tired. So freaking tired.

  If someone would say it for real, really see me and speak to me, I could enjoy it again, instead of getting my dander up. Maybe someone like Lucy. But that’s too much to ask for, and I shouldn’t let those cloying, intimate fantasies ruin a thing I can actually have, that’s right here in front of me in flesh and blood.

  So I let my body take over, wallowing in the feel, the smell, and the sounds of her, abandoning any wishful thinking to pleasures of the flesh. Because no matter what else, she feels freaking incredible.

  “Harder, Evans. More, please.”

  And who am I to deny a request like that? No one. So I give her what she’s asked for and what I want, thrusting into her hard and digging my fingers into her breasts, finding her nipples to pinch, and then she’s panting underneath me and making those small, sexy noises that have meant in the past she’s about to come.

  “I’m gonna—I’m gonna—”

  She doesn’t even finish her sentence before she’s pulsing around me again and squeezing me tight which makes me spill. I can’t even help it, all my pent-up desire spurting inside her, transforming frustration and tension into satisfaction.

  “Lucy.” I barely recognize my own voice, an animal groan so forceful it surprises me.

  “Yes, yes,” she chants over and over again, and that’s the rhythm I push into her too, finishing out my climax until I’m wasted, wrung out, slumping over her prone form on the desk and breathing in the scent of her at the nape of her neck. Cherries, vanilla, sex, Lucy. I kiss her there and she purrs.

  “That was good.” I can barely hear the words as she murmurs them into the desk, but it makes me happy anyway.

  “Yeah, really good.”

  Good enough to take a risk, for me anyway, even though I’m naturally risk averse. But this—Lucy, sated and warm, lying underneath me—worth it. I want to hold onto this for as long as possible. Even if that’s only a couple more days. I’ll take it.

  Chapter Eight

  ‡

  December 20th

  Lucy

  After we finished thoroughly debauching each other, Evans and I went back to work. Because goodness knows we’ve got enough of it to keep us busy. Toiling over spreadsheets and the minutiae of this report are killer. I hate Ellington and Travers for sticking us with this, but at least I’m not the one who has to go home for the holidays and tell my family I got fired for messing up so badly other people won’t be going home to see their families for the holidays at all.

  It’s coming up on seven, which reminds me I should call my mom. I said I would, but I don’t want to. She’ll lay a guilt trip on me again about not being able to come home, and I won’t even be able to act that sorry. I mean, I am, because I’ll miss everyone, but it’s always qualified.

  I’ll miss my cousins, but I won’t miss them insulting the work I do. I’ll be sad not to be baking mountains of cookies with my mom, but I won’t be sorry she’s not asking me why I’m not married yet. Because clearly that’s my only worth. I wish I could be there to help my dad pick out a tree for the living room, but I won’t regret not having to go to church where too many people will ask me if I’m still living among non-believers and saying how they wouldn’t be able to do it. I don’t even want to know what the
y’d say if I told them I fornicated with a guy whose first name I didn’t even know.

  I have to admit I tried to look up Evans’s name because I’d never heard it before. It took me more than a few tries to spell it close enough to google it, but when I had, I’d smiled. Chanoch. I found a website where I could listen to people pronounce it, but they didn’t say it all the same way and I couldn’t remember exactly what it had sounded like in his voice. It’s Hebrew, and it means dedicated. Which fits. Evans shows up here, every day, and works hard. Even when India yells, even when things go wrong. No matter what, unless he’s traveling, he’s here. Faithful, reliable, constant Evans. Even when he’s away, I know I can count on him to answer emails or calls. Always.

  Does he feel the same way about being thought of as dependable as I feel about being thought of as nice Lucy? Because I think other things about him too. Feel other things also, like the pleasant not-quite-ache of having had him between my legs only a few hours ago.

  Which I need to stop thinking about, because surely one marathon bang with two earth-shattering orgasms is enough for one day. Besides, what my body is craving right now is Chinese food. I dig out my favorite place’s menu and jot down the same thing I always get: black mushrooms with oyster sauce and an order of egg rolls. And because it’s only polite—and not at all because I’d like to see his face, hear his voice—I walk the menu down the hall to Evans’s office to see if he’d like something too. Unless he’s got a stash of something in his office, I don’t think he’s eaten since his traditional ten o’clock yogurt. He must be starving.

  I use the doorframe to swing into his office, and there he is, hunched over his desk with a look of fierce concentration on his face. But when he lifts his head, his expression gentles into a smile, and it warms me. It’s cold in here—that must be it—because I don’t want to think about the other reasons my nipples might be pulling into hard points, confined by the satin of my bra.