Finding Mr. Write (Business of Love Book 5)

by Ali Parker

I fell into step behind him as he shrugged out of his sports jacket and down to his black T-shirt. I’d never really gotten a good look at his arms or shoulders before, but they were on display now. His shirt clung to every inch of his body and showed off muscles I hadn’t quite expected to find. He was fit as hell.

  My body began to ache. It started in my stomach and moved lower, lower, and lower still, until it settled between my thighs and bloomed into a heat I’d never felt before.

  We headed up the stairs to the second floor, where we hooked a right and stepped through the doorway into his bedroom. It was a simple space with a king-sized bed, white sheets, white curtains, and navy-blue walls with crisp crown molding and baseboards. Two wall-mounted lights framed the bed, above which hung a foggy picture of a rolling landscape of hills, mountains, and trees. There was a light gray blanket draped across the end of the bed and a bench on the floor, under which were four pairs of Wes’s shoes neatly lined up.

  He had his shit together.

  His sex appeal tripled in a matter of seconds.

  Wes opened one of the top drawers of his black dresser and rummaged around until he found a white cotton T-shirt. He held it up to me. “Will this work?”

  I hooked my fingers in the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head.

  Wes stared at my breasts.

  “I don’t think I need a change of clothes just yet,” I whispered.

  He swallowed and forced himself to look me in the eyes. “A hot shower then?”

  I shook my head, unbuttoned my jeans, and shimmied the wet denim down my legs to my ankles, where I stepped out of them. By a happy coincidence, my black bra matched my lace panties. My hair was soaking wet against my back, and my skin was covered in goosebumps, but I didn’t feel cold.

  I felt like I was on fire.

  Wes’s forehead creased. “I thought we were taking this slow.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.” I reached behind my back, unclasped my bra, and let it fall from my shoulders. It dangled from the tips of my fingers before I let it fall to the floor. “Now what are you going to do about the naked girl in your room?”

  “I’ve been writing too many scenes,” he breathed. I wasn’t sure what that meant. He moved toward me. “The real thing is so much better.”

  I smiled, stripped out of my panties, and met him at the end of the bed completely naked. “You have no idea, Shakespeare.”

  Wes tore his shirt over his head.

  His muscles flexed as he worked to undo his belt and jeans. He stumbled as he stepped out of them, caught himself on the bench, and turned to me with a look of primal need in his eyes.

  Yes, I thought. This feels right.

  He stood in nothing but a pair of tight black boxers that left little to the imagination. He was hard as a rock and huge. It was almost intimidating. My pussy tightened as I thought about him sliding his cock inside me.

  Wes swept me up in his arms and threw me down on the bed. I sank into the fluffy duvet and giggled as he climbed on top of me and showered me in sweet kisses. His lips grazed my throat, chest, and breasts, where he stayed for an indulgent amount of time. He took my nipples in his mouth and ran his tongue over them until I was breathless. He pinched them between his teeth, teasing me, until I plunged my fingers into his hair and pushed him lower.

  Wes inched down the length of my stomach. He pushed my legs forcefully apart.

  My heart raced and the flame burning inside me screamed for more. Every nerve ending strained, waiting for that delicious flick of his tongue to come.

  Wes paused, face framed between my thighs, and locked eyes with me. I bit down on my bottom lip and held his gaze. He dropped his head.

  His tongue slid up the length of my pussy.

  I moaned immediately. There was no holding on to it. It felt like I’d been keeping so much at bay since the first night I met him, and now the dam had broken, and everything was flooding through at once. The rush of endorphins and pleasure made me dizzy. The white ceiling overhead swam like I’d had far too many cocktails, but the only thing I was drunk on was the man between my legs.

  He spoiled me with his tongue. I’d never been licked and suckled at like that. My body trembled and sang sweet melodies as he slid his hands under my ass and then over my hips so he could hold me down on the bed. I plunged my fingers into my hair and bit down on the inside of my forearm as he swirled his tongue over my clit before sucking it into his mouth.

  My belly rose and fell rapidly as my breathing became erratic.

  I’d never had an orgasm during sex before. Was this what it was like? It felt like I was climbing to the highest point of a rollercoaster and I couldn’t get off—didn’t want to get off. Wes was in control and he brought me to the brink, where he held me, his tongue slowing, lips sealing and puckering, until I could see stars bursting behind my eyelids.

  He released my hips. His tongue worked me over and he ran his fingers up my swollen slit and pushed in. As soon as he filled me up, I broke open. I cried out with pleasure and gave up what little control I had left. Wes moaned against my flesh. The sound of him between my thighs unleashed a fresh desperation I didn’t think I could feel after such a release.

  Was I ever wrong.

  I scrambled back and onto my knees. Wes watched hungrily and slid off the end of the bed to step out of his boxers. His cock sprang free, ready and bending toward his belly button, and I fell onto my stomach, rolled onto my back, and hung my head over the edge of the bed, inviting him to fuck my mouth.

  Wes let out a low growl and stepped in close. He pressed his cock down so it rested against my tongue, and then he leaned forward, sliding into my mouth until he pressed against the back of my throat. I closed my eyes and took as much as I could. He started to pull out but I reached up and grabbed him by the back of his thighs, showing him I could take more.

  He gave it to me.

  I moaned around his thick cock and spread my thighs for him. Wes leaned over me, his cock still buried in my throat, and rubbed two fingers along my clit. I rolled my hips, enjoying the pleasure as I held him in my mouth. He started rocking his own hips, fucking me nice and slow. I moaned in response, unable to control or contain my arousal. I had never in my life been so turned on. I could hear and feel how wet my pussy was when Wes slid two fingers inside me and fucked me like he meant it.

  I came all over his duvet.

  Wes pulled back and rolled me over. “Don’t move,” he commanded.

  I stayed right where I was and he went to the nightstand, where he opened the drawer, pulled out a condom, and returned to me as he tore the wrapper open and rolled it down his length.

  He turned me around so that I was on my back with my ass right at the edge of the bed, pushed my legs back, and ran his cock over my swollen, dripping-wet pussy.

  “Hold your knees,” he growled.

  He was a completely different man in the bedroom. He knew what he wanted and how he wanted it and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I would give him everything.

  Everything.

  He pressed inside me.

  He was huge. I felt a tight sensation of pressure as he pushed in deep, but I took him. He started off slow and gentle, and I bit my bottom lip until the discomfort abated and was replaced with such intense pleasure I found it hard to breathe.

  Wes pushed his thumb down on my clit.

  I whimpered.

  “Your pussy is so fucking tight,” he grated through clenched teeth.

  His hair hung wet in his eyes and all of his muscles stood at attention as he fucked me and fought to stay in control.

  I wished he would let go completely. I wished he would indulge in his primal side. I could take it.

  “Harder,” I pleaded.

  Wes gripped the back of my thighs as I held my legs back. He leaned over me and buried himself deeper. I cried out, but he didn’t relent, and he fucked me hard and fast until I came on his c
ock. My screams pushed him over the edge and he came hard with his head bowed and his jaw tight. I pulled him down to me and he settled between my thighs for sweet kisses as his cock pulsed inside me like the after tremors of an earthquake.

  Chapter 22

  Wes

  Briar dozed off around four in the morning. We were both spent but I didn’t dare close my eyes. Every moment with her, especially this moment, was precious, and I didn’t want to miss a single second of it.

  She slept like an angel. Her hair, a wild tangle of red upon my white pillows, was splayed out like she was a mythical underwater creature. Her long lashes left shadows on her cheeks and our vigorous sex had smudged her mascara. She was naked, and so was I, and she’d stolen all but one square foot of the duvet, which rested over my lap. Her even breathing was the only sound in the room and I’d lost track of how long I’d been contentedly sitting by her side while she slept.

  The rain had stopped a couple of hours ago. A gentle wind blew outside and the branches of a tree in my neighbor’s yard tapped gently on the window pane. The curtains were open just a sliver, letting some of the light of the moon stream through into the room.

  It was enough light for me to see my way as I got out of bed, put on some sweat pants, and padded over to the chair by the window. Like every nook and cranny in my house, there was a notebook there. I hadn’t written in this one yet. It was a simple black leather-bound notebook with smaller pages made for writing on the go rather than sitting down at a desk. A gold pen was tucked in the spine. I pulled it out, clicked it open, and held the ballpoint over the first blank page.

  It was always tricky finding the right place to start. The first word held more weight than one might think. It set the tone, like the paint color on a wall or the first note of a song.

  I licked my lips.

  What word made me think of Briar?

  I glanced up from the page as she rolled over in bed and claimed that last square foot of duvet as her own. A smile tugged at my lips and I got a great view of her bare ass as she drew one leg up. It pulled the blanket up with it, where it got caught up around her knee. She nuzzled her cheek deeper into her pillow and fell still.

  My attention shifted back to the page.

  Petals.

  She is made of petals and lace and glass that does not break. She looks fragile, but she is mighty, and she carries within her the soul of who the rest of us wish we could be.

  Grace and kindness are her left and right hands. Patience and gratitude, her eyes. Passion and lust, her lips.

  She holds you like you’ve wanted to be held. Where in the hands of others you feel like water, in hers you feel solid and whole. You are not too heavy for her even though she’s weightless like sunlight. How she can hold you so you can never truly understand, but you don’t ask questions. You don’t need answers from her.

  She lets you breathe deeply. She kisses away the hurt that’s scorched your heart. She tells you to let go of it without saying a word and you do because you trust her, and because you know when you forgive she will still be there, keeping you together.

  My pen stilled.

  Did this even make a lick of sense? Or was this just the rambling of a man who had lost all sense of who he was?

  I frowned and tapped the end of my pen to my chin.

  This wasn’t the kind of thing I usually wrote. There wasn’t really a story here. It lacked a beginning, middle, and end. It had something going for it, to be sure, but what that might be, I couldn’t decipher. Not yet anyway. It had a cadence and a rhythm, and it read more like prose than fiction.

  My frown turned to a scowl.

  Bleh. Poetry.

  Not my thing.

  The pen twirled around my fingers like a living thing as I lowered my hand back to the page. Briar hadn’t moved a muscle as I’d scrawled frantically. She still lay with her back to me, her bare ass on display, the curve of her spine daring me to write about elegance and the curves of back roads and winding rivers.

  She has a spine like the creek that runs through your backyard and eyes like the reflection of the sun that dances upon the surface of the water. Her body moves like a dancer but she tells you she’s never danced anywhere like she meant it unless you count her bedroom, where she’d dance wildly in bare feet on the pink carpet beside her bed.

  She makes it hard for you to breathe and you wonder what it felt like to hold air in your lungs before you met her.

  She has a mouth full of clever words and a dangerous tongue. It’s too quick for you, that’s for sure. And she can do things with that tongue—oh God can she do things with that tongue—that will make it hard for you not to fall in love with her.

  I chewed the inside of my cheek.

  This was uncharted territory for me. I wasn’t writing about a fictional character I’d plucked from the depths of my mind. I was talking about the woman I’d just slept with. The woman who lay in my bed at this very moment sleeping like a baby. A real, in the flesh, living, breathing, beautiful woman.

  I’d never been the guy who was lucky enough to feel this way. That was why I’d written about characters falling in love. It was as close as I could get without getting hurt.

  The longer you stare at her the softer her petals look. She’s a flower you cannot pluck but do you ever want to? You could put her in fresh water, not too warm but not too cool. You could keep her safe. You could keep her close.

  But that’s not how this works.

  My chest ached.

  What were these thoughts and feelings spilling out of me? Since when had I ever felt like a woman was mine? It sounded a little creepy on the page, certainly off-putting, but the desire was there. I didn’t want her to leave my bed.

  Or my life.

  Briar moaned softly and rolled over in bed. Her eyes fluttered open and she drew the blankets up under her chin as her gaze focused on me. Confused, she lifted her cheek from the pillow.

  “What are you doing over there?” Her voice was thick with fatigue.

  “Writing.”

  “Writing?” Briar looked over her shoulder at the clock on my nightstand. “It’s four thirty in the morning.”

  “I’ve had worse timing. Believe me. Go back to sleep.”

  “I can’t. Not when you’re sitting there so ominously. Have you been watching me, Shakespeare?”

  I loved when she called me that. Why was that? What sort of pet name was Shakespeare? And why did she insist on calling me by the name of a poet when she knew I didn’t like poets?

  She was a riddle I would never make sense of.

  “Perhaps,” I admitted. “I couldn’t sleep, so I came over here and started writing.”

  “About what?”

  “You.”

  She propped herself up on one elbow. “Can I read it?”

  My stomach did a back flip. “What?”

  She giggled and sat up. The blankets fell away, exposing her nakedness, and I didn’t hide the fact that I wanted to see her. She rose smoothly and padded over to me. Then she popped out a hip, rested one hand on it, and held the other out expectantly, curling her fingers inward, gesturing for me to hand the notebook over.

  My writer’s anxiety squirmed.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said.

  “Just a little bit?”

  The first page wasn’t too vulnerable. At least it didn’t have the part about being in love with her on it. She could read that, couldn’t she? I wouldn’t be playing too many cards? I wouldn’t scare her off?

  I swallowed and held the book out but didn’t let it go when she tried to pull it from my hands.

  “Oh come on, Wes. Don’t be a baby!”

  “You can read the first page,” I said steadily. “But only the first page. When the rest is ready, I can show you, but I’m private about these kinds of things.”

  She nodded her understanding. “First page. Cross my heart and hope to die, I won’t go past that. Unless you give me permission.”

 
I released the book.

  She brought it with her back to the bed and sat on the edge with the book resting on her knee. Her hair fell from where she’d tucked it behind her ear and hid her face from my view while she read. I didn’t say a word. I just sat there and stewed in the all-consuming nerves of having someone read my work.

  One might think that nervousness would go away with experience.

  It did not.

  When she was done, she lifted her head and closed the book. She didn’t say anything for a minute and I feared the worst. She hated it.

  Briar licked her lips and turned to me. “You wrote this just sitting there?”

  I nodded. “I had inspiration.”

  She swallowed and I realized there were tears in her eyes. “Nobody has ever said such nice things about me before.”

  “I find that very hard to believe.”

  “I mean it,” she whispered as she got to her feet and came back to me. She crawled into my lap and put the book down on the armrest.

  I wiped a tear from her cheek. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She cupped my face in one hand. “Don’t be. I loved it.”

  Her lips found mine and I breathed in the smell of her vanilla shampoo and savored the warmth of her flesh against mine.

  Chapter 23

  Briar

  One full week of work at the new job hadn’t made it any easier, or me any less clumsy for that matter. In a grand total of five shifts, I’d managed to cost Mare roughly sixty dollars in spilled coffee beans, incorrectly made drinks, and spilled milk. She claimed it was fine and all part of the expense of hiring a new staff member but her gracious forgiveness didn’t make me feel any less guilty about it.

  I vowed to be a better employee. I knew I needed time to get the hang of things, as Wes had said, and time was something that was out of my control. But what was in my control was making sure I was someone the staff as well as customers wanted to be around. I did my absolute best to upsell anything and everything, from scones to books to breakfast sandwiches, and it turned out I wasn’t too shabby at it. Consistency seemed to be key, and people didn’t buy more if you didn’t ask them if they wanted it.