Due South (The Compass series Book 5)

by Tamsen Parker

  I laugh because his expression is so forlorn and he doesn’t need to beat himself up. “It’s okay. When I said that, I meant I didn’t want to be—” The words catch in my throat because I don’t want to say them out loud. I didn’t want to be whipped with a belt. Who needs to say that? But I don’t think I do with him because he knows what I mean. He was my partner in voyeuristic crime, watching our boss getting dominated and fucked. My blanch should be enough. “But a love tap, that’s fine. You…took me by surprise.”

  Judging by the change of temperature in my face, I’m guessing my blanch has changed to a flush. Love? I said love? Love has nothing to do with this. We’re fuck buddies, a way to blow off steam and keep ourselves from going insane while we get this project done. And at the end of it…well, it’ll be the end. Because neither of us can risk losing our jobs. I don’t totally understand Evans’s story about why not—certainly he lives frugally enough he’s got some money put away that could hold him over if he got fired?—but it’s not as though I’ve confided in him my reasons either. I don’t want to prove to everyone back home that they were right, that I’m not smart enough to have a real job, that my only worth is my body, which according to them, I shouldn’t leverage anyway if I’m sincere in my love for Jesus.

  It’s better this way. Easier. We’ll enjoy this for what it is and then we’ll stop. And I won’t say love anymore. In any context.

  Relief washes over his features, and then his hands are on my hips, steering me toward the waiting shower. “Okay, cool.”

  We kiss and fumble at each other while we wait for the water to heat up enough to duck under the spray, and once we’re in, everything gets all slick and heated. Wet skin against wet skin, we stick and slide and I can’t handle it any more. I want him.

  I push him away, back against the tile wall, and drop to my knees. The tiles are rough under them, but I don’t mind the momentary discomfort because I’ll forget as soon as…

  Closing my hand around the base of his hardness, I lean forward and take the tip into my mouth, licking and trying to figure out exactly how I’m going to do this. Evans is big, which is wonderful when he’s pressing inside me, making me feel full and sated, but this is tricky.

  And Evans…well, he doesn’t seem to be aware of my difficulty. Not at all. He’s leaning against the tiles, his head tipped back and his expression is one of pure bliss. And the sounds he’s making—they make desire pool in my stomach, trickling lower. I love those bone-deep moans. Heh. Bone. My delirious thoughts bubble up in a giggle and his eyes pop open.

  “Luce?”

  “Sorry. I’m not laughing at you, I’m…” God, I’m practically drooling over him is what I’m doing. And because I can’t think of anything to say and I don’t want to confess my childish thoughts, I open my jaw wide and take him inside, filling my mouth with the taste and feel of him. He’s hard underneath, but silky without, and I explore the texture of him with my tongue. So smooth, except farther down where a vein ridges against my tongue. I stroke it upward until it meets the underside of the head. When I do, he groans again.

  “That is…ah! Lucy…” He threads his fingers through my hair and then his grip tightens. He doesn’t pull me toward him, which I’m glad for, because I’m still trying to figure out how to manage pleasing him when he fills me so completely, but I like them there anyway. Like the way he’s gripping me. Claiming me. “You’re so…unh…holy sweet…ngh.”

  The fact that he can’t get through a complete sentence delights me. I use it to tease him—backing off to let him gain his composure enough to start a sentence, to tell me how good it feels, how much he wants me, all those things men are liable to say while you’re sucking them—but with a flick of my tongue or a hollow of my cheeks, I can render him a babbling mess of incoherent sounds. Unintelligible Evans may be my favorite Evans, though I like it when he fucks me silly too.

  “Luce, could you…oh…you can’t…I’m gonna…” His grip tightens near my scalp, and I can tell he’s close. My hand that’s not stroking him has found his hip, and I can feel his muscles tense under my touch. He’s going to come. And though I’ve always been reluctant to do this because I’ve felt as though it was another way to be used and I already felt like dirty laundry with most of the other guys I’ve been with, I don’t feel that way with Evans. He makes me feel precious and pretty, and I know he doesn’t think I’m just another dumb actress. He doesn’t even know about that particular failure.

  He’s never made me feel ashamed for being a sexual creature. If anything, he’s seemed excited to have a partner in crime, someone as secretly filthy as he is. A partner to play with, an accomplice in carnal joy.

  So I want him to. I want him to spill his pleasure in my mouth. I want to swallow it down and have him inside me. Make him believe he’s worth it. That he’s allowed to want this and I’d honestly like to give it to him.

  He protests weakly and inarticulately, but I don’t let up. Instead, I work harder, taking him as deep as I dare without fear of gagging because then I know he’d stop. He’d be horrified. And this is supposed to make him feel good.

  A few seconds later, I’m pulling against the fists he’s made in my hair, increasing the tension on my own scalp, and it feels so good I drop my hold on his hip and slide my fingers down my stomach until I hit my clit and then I stroke. Just in time too, because with one last choked warning—“Lucy, I’m going to come”—there’s a spurt of hot, salty thickness toward the back of my throat. I swallow around him and work my tongue over him to get the last of it. He tastes—human. So human, like skin and flesh and real things, and his pleasure is earnest and intense. It floods me with an aroused glee and I find my own climax with a few more strokes of my fingers over my clit.

  I’m backing off when it hits me and I have to put my forehead to his hip and hold onto him while I shudder.

  “Oh, fuck, Evans. Fuck. A million times, fuck.”

  I don’t know what it is, because I try not to swear too much—god knows India does it enough for the whole office, never mind the two of us—but there’s something about the strength of my orgasms when I’m with Evans that knock the curse words loose from the vault where I keep them locked up tight.

  Gripping the sinewed cut of his hip and burying my face where thigh meets torso, the bristly hair wet under my cheek, I clutch at him until I can breathe well enough to stand.

  He offers me a hand, because of course he does, and then he kisses me.

  Kisses me. Sweet and lovely and it makes me ache.

  When he draws away, I can barely meet his eyes, because I can’t believe I acted that way. Dragged a man to the shower to give him a blowjob and got myself off in the process. Who does that? But it turns out I do, and when he looks at me with that marveling smile on his face, I can’t help but be pleased instead of ashamed of myself.

  “Lucy, that was—”

  The fountain of praise I was waiting for is interrupted by a crisp knock on the door.

  Holy. Shit.

  My heartbeat, which had been settling into post-orgasm normality, starts racing again. Holy fucking shit. Who the fuck is that? But I know who it is and so does Evans. Our eyes meet in utter panic. India. And if she catches us, canoodling in the shower… Shit, shit, shit.

  We stare at each other for too long and there’s another knock at the door.

  “Lucy?”

  I tamp down the squeak trying to escape from my throat, which is constricting with complete and utter horror.

  “Yeah?” I manage to croak.

  She starts talking, but I can’t hear her so I wrench the water off and grab a towel, handing Evans another one and gesturing wildly for him to hide behind the door. I would totally want him on my charades team because he reads my panicked flailing, wrapping the towel around his waist and scurrying over to plaster himself against a wall where he won’t be seen when I open the door. And quietly too. Damn you’re good, Evans.

  I clutch the towel around me so I’m at least
technically decent and jerk open the door to India’s impatient face.

  “So can you get that done today?”

  “What? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the water and the—” Horrified skittering. The sound of my own heart beating its way out of my ribcage. “Sorry. What did you need?”

  I’m saved by the chime of her cell and thank god for India’s self-centeredness as she answers the phone, her face softening slightly.

  “Hey, what’s up? You missed me already?”

  Cris then. They’re disgustingly adorable.

  “Oh, yeah. I’ll come down… No, you don’t have to, I know you want to get out to the beach. I’ll be right there.”

  She clicks off her phone, shaking her head, her perfect high ponytail swinging with the motion.

  “That was Cris. I forgot my lunch in the car. I’m going to go down and grab it, but when I get back, could we go over the information on syndicate structures and bond allocations? I need them so I can work on the underwriter selection part of the proposal today.”

  I scan my mind, trying to remember in the flood of things I’ve accomplished over the past few days. If I have—please, god—done that so I’ll get a smile or at least a nod of approval instead of a glare. “Oh, yeah. I went over those last night. I’ll—”

  I thumb toward the bathroom door where I’m sure Evans is hyperventilating. She takes my hint because I’m standing here, barely covered by one of her soft, luxe towels.

  “Yeah, of course.” She dismisses me with a wave of her hand and heads toward the exit to go collect her lunch. It’s cute that Cris picks her up and drops her off when he’s here. Weird, sure, but I guess they don’t get much time together. Makes sense they’d take whatever opportunity they’ve got to be together when they’re in the same time zone.

  As soon as the door to BCG clicks shut, I slam the door closed and am confronted by a white-as-a-sheet Evans.

  “It’s okay, she doesn’t know you were in here. But go!”

  I gather up his clothes from the floor and shove them into his arms, hustling him out the door. He’s still got India’s towel draped around his waist, though, and he can’t have it in his office. Because then she might think he was doing something creepy and inappropriate, which, to be fair is entirely true on the inappropriate, but it wasn’t creepy. So I grab the soft terry and pull it away from him.

  “You can’t take this with you.”

  He turns bright red but nods his understanding and covers himself with his clump of wrinkled clothes.

  “Go,” I urge. “She’s only going downstairs. She’s going to be back in a minute.”

  So Evans darts out of the bathroom and down the hallway. I can’t deny I get a little, entirely ill-timed pleasure out of watching the muscles of his back, hips, and butt work as he runs across the carpet. He’d die if he knew I was watching him. But better me watching him run naked down a hallway than India catch us both in her bathroom.

  Lucky. We got really fucking lucky, and the reality of how close we came to getting fired makes me queasy. We’ve got to end this. Soon. We’ll end it soon.

  *

  Evans

  No, seriously. This is my life. Hyperventilating in my office because my boss almost caught me getting blown by her secretary in her bathroom. After running down a hallway naked except for clothes I’d been wearing for over twenty-four hours clutched against my junk.

  Office affairs, man. They aren’t for the weak. Maybe we should call this early because I don’t know if I can handle the stress.

  I throw the wad of dirty clothes into the corner with the rest of them I’ve been forgetting to take home, which isn’t surprising given I barely remember my own name. Then I have to rummage in my drawers to see what the hell else I have. Which could be nothing. Luckily, in the bottom drawer, there’s…running clothes. Less than ideal because I bet Lucy’s got some cute dress hanging up all fresh from the drycleaner on the side of her cubicle and I’m going to be all in my sweats, trying to think of a not-insulting way of saying, “Thank you, beautiful woman, for the world’s best blowjob.” Is there a classy way to say that or not so much?

  But that had been awesome. So. Awesome. Some girls act as though giving head is a chore and some of the ones I’ve been with have been…intimidated. But not Lucy. No, she’d taken me inside her mouth as though she wanted to, like she enjoyed it. That was enough to make me lose my vocabulary. And when she’d swallowed, I’d devolved into some kind of speechless invertebrate. I can’t believe I get to have these things.

  Probably I’m going to wake up in a few minutes to the bleating of my alarm clock and the past several days will have been a dream. Or maybe it’ll be my phone ringing because my brother’s had another episode and my mom needs me to come help clean up the furniture he’s destroyed. But if that’s the truth, then this has been, by far, the best and most realistic dream I’ve ever had.

  But maybe it’s not made up.

  I’ve finished shoving my feet into some sneakers I keep under my desk when there’s a knock at the door. The way it sends my heart into overdrive is an echo of earlier, though I’m not doing anything suspicious. I don’t think.

  I double-check around my office to make sure there’s nothing incriminating and see some seafoam green lace in my laundry pile. Crap. Lucy must have grabbed her panties by mistake when she was scooping up my clothes. I turn over the pile to hide it under dress shirts and slacks and dark socks. There’s another knock at the door and I push my fingers through my wet hair. Well, that’s a tad suspicious, but there are a couple of showers down at this end. I could’ve used one of those.

  “Coming!”

  Heat bursts onto my cheeks as I remember struggling to warn Lucy I was going to lose it all in her mouth and how sexy it was when she hadn’t pulled away but instead let me spill into her throat and then she came herself. This is definitely not a dream. I don’t think my imagination could’ve come up with something that awesome.

  I open the door to be greeted by a pursed-lip India. “If you’re finished with your toilette, Evans, we need to go over the reporting requirements.”

  “Oh, yeah, right sure. Let me…” Get my shit together. Tie the drawstring on my pants so they don’t fall down around my knees. Because running halfway across the office buck-naked wasn’t bad enough. Get my head out of the gutter where it’s been stuck since Lucy and I started fooling around. “…turn on my computer.”

  She nods crisply and then spins around, her nose wrinkling. “I know you’ve been working like crazy this week, but some cleanup might be in order. Looks like a federally declared disaster area in here. Lucy’s making some coffee, so I’ll go grab a couple while you pick up a few things and then we can get down to business.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say, anxious for the opportunity to get some stuff straightened up and try to shake Lucy and all her hotness from my head so I can concentrate on my job.

  Chapter Thirteen

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  December 22nd

  Lucy

  The words on the screen in front of me are drifting around like sophisticated alphabet soup. My stomach growls in response to the idea of soup, because the last time I ate was… I don’t even know, but it’s headed on midnight. It’s headed on midnight and we have no food worth eating in the kitchen fridge. I’ve already checked. And in the cupboards too. Bare.

  My stomach grumbles again, and I shush it out loud because it’s too quiet in the hall. I need food, and I’m betting Evans could use some too. And yes, of course, that’s the only reason I’m headed down the hall to his office.

  Not because I’ve been thinking about his warm brown eyes and how they wrinkle at the edges when he smiles at me or the crazy way his hair sticks up on one side after he’s fallen asleep on his desk. Or even how hard he made me come on the beach and how thoughtful he is. Knowing the idea of an audience would rev me up, but an actual audience would freak me out.

  I’ve never had a man who was so interested in my pleas
ure and so willing to go out on a limb to make it a reality. Willing, able, and enthusiastic to make my fantasies come true in a way I could actually tolerate after the high of an orgasm had worn off. And Evans…

  Evans is the man.

  I’m sure my cheeks have gone pink by the time I reach his office and softly knock on the doorframe.

  His head yanks up, his curly hair unruly, probably from running his fingers through it. I’d like to do that too. It was soft when I gripped it between my fingers. He must’ve found some clothes somewhere too because he’s not wearing sweats anymore but a button-down shirt and I’m guessing slacks behind the desk.

  “Hey, Luce. What’s up? Need me to look at something?”

  I smile at him because it’s painfully sweet of him to offer. He’s up to his eyeballs in his own work, but he’d sink even deeper into this report to help me.

  “No. I need a break and some food before I get back to work. My stomach was grumbling so loudly it drowned out my music.”

  He smiles, a tired lift of a corner of his mouth. He’s about to speak when I hear something eerily familiar, the strange corporeal noises only a human body can make.

  “Apparently, my stomach concurs with your stomach. What’d you have in mind?”

  There are visions of food dancing around in my head like a Midwestern nutcracker suite: ears of corn with butter dripping off the golden kernels, a platter of bacon with the meat just crispy enough, fried chicken with the breading that perfect shade of brown speckled with pepper, Dutch letters with their sweet almond frosting and flaky crust… But what I really want, more than anything is, “Chicken wings. I want spicy, dripping-with-sauce wings. You know, the kind that gets all over your face, and you have to lick it off your fingers. The ones that’re so hot you practically drink the ranch dressing that comes with it. I’d even eat the celery to cool my mouth off.”