Sinfully Yours

by Margot Radcliffe

  After Roger, said tablemate, told a joke that wasn’t actually funny, but that she laughed at anyway because it was polite, Will ran a finger down her spine, leaning close so only she could hear him. “You’re being a scaredy-cat again, Laura.”

  She put a hand on his arm to somehow prove she wasn’t, but it was such a mistake because she felt the strength and sinew beneath the fabric of his coat. Their eyes met and there was just no point in denying anything.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he urged, as the plates were cleared. He took her hand and met her eyes, prepared to lead them to the exit, saying pointedly, “Don’t chicken out again.”

  They made it to the front doors and once they were back onto Sixth Avenue, Laura met his eyes. “I didn’t think that was so bad.”

  He just rolled his eyes and started off down the sidewalk, his boots grinding into the snow. “If I had to listen to that man flirt with you any more, I was going to start throwing punches.”

  “Aren’t we waiting for your car?” she asked, the cold slithering up her legs underneath her skirt and through her sheer tights.

  “It’s easier to walk,” he declared, not waiting for her to follow him, just setting off in the direction of the WW. It wasn’t that far of a walk, just a couple of blocks on Sixth Avenue down to the cross street of Thirty-Eighth Street where his hotel was, but she was in heeled boots and so she stayed put. He was halfway down the street before he realized she wasn’t following him.

  “What’s the matter?” he called, his dark overcoat fanning out behind him as he swiveled to face her.

  “I’m not walking on the ice and snow in heels,” she returned, tapping on her phone for a car service.

  He returned to her, his brows knitted with agitation, and pointed to a black town car in a line of town cars waiting at the curb. “Let’s go.”

  “Were you going to inform your driver you weren’t using him?” she asked once they were in the car.

  “My assistant would have taken care of it.”

  It seemed the height of rudeness to her to not just tell the driver to go back to the hotel without him, but did remind her that while they’d both traveled leaps and bounds from where they’d started in life, he was leading a very different one from hers. As this brunch and last night’s party illustrated, his world was incredibly rarified and she didn’t know the rules.

  Once they were back in the hotel, she practically had to run to keep up with his hurried pace. His little touches during brunch had made him just as crazy as they’d made her.

  “Are you mad at me or something?” she asked, trying to normalize what was happening between them. Bring it back to safer ground, give both of them an out.

  His eyes snapped to hers, intensity pulsing in the brown depths. “Let’s cut the bullshit, Laura,” he said, his voice low and measured. “Last night we kissed and it was good. I know it was good, you know it was good. Off-the-charts good before you chastise my superlatives. You’ve been looking at me like you want me all fucking day, so I apologize if I haven’t made clear what’s wrong. I want you in my bed. So let’s just stop pretending that we can ignore our attraction to each other while you’re living in my house for Christ’s sake because we clearly can’t.”

  Laura took a deep breath because she felt his words like lightning bolts to her senses. Loved that he could be so blunt with his desire for her, his honesty and Will-ness catching her in the gut. Thank God she’d found him again, this person who’d known her at her worst and still wanted her.

  The black elevator doors opened up to his penthouse. She’d left the tree lights on, which made the evening feel surreal but also a little magical, even without thousands of dollars of glitter. Here they were, long-lost friends who found each other at Christmas. It didn’t happen to just anyone. Especially not to the two of them who were used to being the unlucky ones.

  Facing him in the living area, she met his eyes which had not moved from hers since his speech. “I’m not trying to deny our attraction, but I think we both know that having sex isn’t a great idea.”

  Twin eyebrows shot up. “We do? Because from where I’m standing I’m having a hell of a time figuring out why it’s a bad idea.”

  “We have history, Will. A lot of it,” she reminded meaningfully, before continuing, “and I’m not a casual relationship type of person and you seem to be.”

  She waited for his expression to change, but when it didn’t she tried again. “If we have sex it could never be just about the sex. There are already feelings involved and they could be hurt.” Her feelings which were already there, unchanged from when they were kids.

  Will’s gaze still held hers, penetrating and considering. “I like the odds.”

  “You don’t think you’re in danger of falling in love with me?” she grinned, attempting to lighten the mood and maybe sidestep this epic land mine.

  “I don’t care if I am,” he shot back, sending her own heart thumping wildly inside her chest. It felt like when they were young and about to do something incredibly dumb but fun anyway. He was daring her again to do the risky thing and she knew he was doing it to get what he wanted and wasn’t thinking at all about the consequences, but that little part of her that thought he actually was considering them was what got her. He’d already played out all the scenarios in his head, because Will planned for the future in his sleep; it was what you did when it was all you had. The fact that he knew exactly what could happen between them and was ballsy enough to do it anyway. That was what was enticing her to play the game too.

  “You’ve never had your heart broken,” she challenged. “It won’t be easy if this ends badly.”

  His ruler-straight jaw gave a single twitch, his eyes giving nothing away. “I never said my heart hadn’t been broken before.”

  Laura opened her mouth, wanting to ask more questions. Outside his wall of windows, the lights of New York City flickered on as dusk fell on Christmas Eve, illuminating the purple sky beyond them. Who could ever break Will Walker’s heart? He was always the toughest kid she knew.

  “Another kiss,” he proposed, testing her resolve. “If we don’t want to continue, we won’t.”

  It was a sucker’s bet because there was no way she wouldn’t want it to continue and he knew it.

  But fuck it, she always was a sucker for Will.

  So she pulled him into her, taking charge of her own destiny. He moved forward too, their eyes locked as he slowly tugged off her blue cashmere scarf and dropped it to the floor before lowering his lips to hers.

  Just like last night, the soft but firm press of his lips immediately set her body on fire. Hell with the future when the present was so damned good. His big hands threaded through her hair, taking all the time they hadn’t last night when they’d discovered each other by accident. She grew instantly too hot in her coat now that they were inside and when she began going for the zipper his other hand stayed her and he took over himself.

  “I’d be an awful host if I made you undress yourself,” he murmured, his voice lower than normal, intimate in a way she’d never been privy to.

  She held her breath as she watched him unbutton the etched silver buttons of her peacoat and throw the garment on the back of the couch. When she reached for him to return the favor, he beat her to it, shrugging out of his black overcoat and letting the expensive cashmere drop to the floor, revealing a black button-down shirt that looked luxurious and dangerous all at once. She liked that he wasn’t some suit-wearing entrepreneur with glossed wing tips and classy cufflinks; what she was seeing was a Will she could have imagined him being when they were kids. Honest, real and irreverent, a man who did exactly what he wanted and to hell with the rest.

  It became even more clear when he unbuttoned his shirt.

  He pulled her back into his arms and met her lips again. She hadn’t been prepared for the searing heat of his bare skin as her fingers
found his chest and she sucked in an embarrassingly loud breath, but he ignored it, a corner of his mouth lifting almost imperceptibly. His abs weren’t cut like models or athletes, but they were hard and outlined, the scruff of hair on his chest soft against the pads of her fingers.

  With a sigh, she fell into the kiss then, giving over to what she wanted. She loved it when he went deeper, exploring her mouth, their tongues tasting and touching and teasing. They took frantic breaths before meeting each other again, she tugged on his tongue, he pulled at her bottom lip causing her to whimper with need. When he gave her more like she wanted, her fingernails drove into the skin of his back and she gave up.

  Her heart might not be strong enough to take him on, but the rest of her body was up to the challenge.

  “You’re right,” she said, pulling back to meet him squarely in the eyes. “Just a kiss is not enough.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  WILL’S BODY HAD been hyperaware of Laura’s all day, her warmth, her smile with those silly dimples that he should find ridiculous, but instead adored. She’d hated them as a teenager because they’d made her look soft at a time when they’d truly needed to be tough to survive, but now here they were right in the lap of luxury and he wanted to lick and caress and worship those dimples for the soft place to land that they were.

  She was his soft place to land. Always the memory of her had sustained him over the years. He had the capacity to feel, to care; he knew that on some level, but he hadn’t been willing to make the effort. He was man enough to admit now that her leaving had left emotional scars on his heart so deep he hadn’t even had the guts to examine them. More than even his mom leaving because that at least he understood. But now, holding Laura, he knew. He’d loved her so much that her leaving without a word had nearly broken him; he could admit it, see it and maybe let it go.

  The anger he’d held on to was dissipating; it’d left him when he’d seen her baking cookies in his kitchen. The first rule of their childhood had been to take every opportunity as it came. He’d been the one to teach her that and she’d followed his instructions to the letter; he couldn’t fault her for it. Wouldn’t do that to a friend.

  But as she kissed him, her entire body locked against his as her hands slid through his hair to control the kiss and to elicit more of a response from him, he realized that he had been holding on to it, using it to keep his distance from the only person who’d ever meant anything to him in his life. That was a mistake.

  So he brought her closer against him, his veins burning like a brush fire under his skin, catching the rest of his body aflame without any rhyme, reason or direction until he was completely overwhelmed by her and what it meant that they were finally together in the way he’d always wanted.

  His hands traveled down her back, taking her rear end into his hands. She’d filled out from the starved, bony kid she’d been and he liked it, liked the curves, loved the breadth of her ass in his hands. Lifting her up into his arms, he headed to the bedroom. For once, the two of them were going to do things in comfort together, not in the space of hurried or stolen moments in between the rest of their shitty lives.

  Her squeak of surprise had him smiling against her lips as he nipped at them, pausing in his route to the bedroom to lean her up against a wall, her long legs tightening around his back, which got him painfully rigid. She seized the opportunity and dove in, their mouths crushing against each other, begging for more, more contact, more connection. He wanted it all, felt himself coming alive under her touch. Really letting himself be inside an experience instead of just standing outside it like usual. She’d always been his; it had been predestined, and now it was time to claim her.

  He slowly unzipped her dress and let it fall to her hips so that they were skin to skin, burning each other as they stood locked together against the wall. Her breasts, the tips hard and budding beneath the silk fabric of her black bra, absolutely unmanned him. He stared, trying to work out just how many times he’d wondered what she’d looked like with her shirt off, feeling dirty at the times when her breasts accidentally brushed against him. In his wildest dreams, he never could have imagined that this was the scenario in which he’d finally see Laura naked for the first time—in a luxury penthouse high above the world and her in a silk bra that cost more than a month’s rent of their foster parents’ crummy apartments.

  Pulling down the black strap, his breath stopped in his chest, the moment so surreal that he was caught between the past and the present, wanting to care and protect her but always wanting to completely wreck her like he felt. He pulled down the straps with reverence and slowly unhooked the gold metal front clasp, watching the fabric fall away to reveal the most perfect pair of breasts he’d ever seen.

  Feeling the moment in his knees, he met her eyes, not caring how he must look, crazed by lust and stunned by the wonder that they were finally together after all this time. The destiny of it, the rightness, made him feel strangely comfortable in a way he rarely felt with women. This wasn’t transactional; he didn’t have to worry about sending enough signals that it was sex-only for tonight or that they wouldn’t be hearing from him again, and he didn’t have to worry about paying them enough money to ensure that they wouldn’t try to show up at one of his hotels to embarrass him.

  His entire life from childhood to now had been solely about work, relentless and all-consuming work, but Laura was pleasure. Divine, lazy pleasure and he was going to steep himself in it for as long as humanly possible.

  “You’re incredible,” he told her before lowering his lips to her breast, he dropped reverential kisses along the delicate crest, drifted down to the lower curve, lifted it up slightly to press one to her abdomen, loving how warm her skin was there compared to her hands and arms, cold from being exposed to the freezing outdoors.

  Finally, he took a dark peach nipple into his mouth, sucking gently at first, then his tongue gliding over the puckered velvet of her skin before exerting more pressure, her nipple braced against the roof of his mouth as he sucked her. Her soft murmurs of pleasure echoed in the empty hallway and his blood heated to an ungodly degree. Lifting her from the wall, he let her nipple fall from his mouth with an audible pop, loving how her breasts jiggled against his chest as he walked them into his room. The eighteen-year-old kid in him was positively gleeful at seeing it.

  He set her down on the floor first so he could make quick work of her dress, his hands quivering as he pulled down her matching black silk underwear. He’d seen a lot of women’s underthings in his day, from lacy scraps of nothing, to hip-huggers, cotton, silk, polyester, cutesy designs, but nothing prepared him for Laura. Because no one had ever measured up to the girl he’d cherished back then. He should have known Laura was a purist at heart, that despite all her glittery and new fancy digs, at the heart of her was the no-nonsense rough-around-the-edges girl she’d always been. Her plain black underwear was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

  He contemplated what his next move might be because he needed to make this unforgettable for her. She wasn’t getting out of his bedroom without him knowing that he was the best she’d ever had. Because already, just by being her, this moment had already topped his charts.

  Angling her back onto the bed, they stretched out onto the thousand-thread-count white duvet cover. Kissing her again, he ran a hand through her hair, the cool strands slipping through his fingers lighting up every nerve ending in his body. He wanted to eat her alive, drive her crazy until she didn’t know her name, the year, what planet they were on, literally nothing.

  “Tell me what you want, Laura,” he asked, biting down on her earlobe, a little too hard because he barely had a handle on himself. He’d never felt this way about a woman and it should have been sending warning alarms through his head, but he didn’t care.

  Her breathing was heavy, the rise and fall of her chest pronounced as she battled her own lust. “You,” she choked out when he ran a hand over her
ass and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  He reached over and grabbed a feather from his nightstand because he wanted to surprise her, make her so insane that she’d never forget tonight. Regardless of what happened when the snow melted and normal life resumed, she wasn’t ever going to forget about him again. Not outside the bedroom and certainly not in it. He drew the soft feathers over the hard, wet nipple he’d just nursed with his mouth, watching as her entire body pebbled over with goose bumps. Provoking her was like a drug he wanted to overdose on.

  Flipping her over, ignoring her halfhearted mumble of protest, he planted his knees on either side of her legs, running first a finger down her spine, but then the hard tip of the quill. Her breathing audible, he ran the soft feathers over her entire back, down the sensitive backs of her arms, the exposed sides of her breasts, the smooth expanse of her legs, then back up to drift over the very heart of her. Smiling as she twitched under his ministrations, he did the same pass over her body again only this time swishing it lightly back and forth, the motion repetitive and hypnotic. The weight of Will against her back, the soft brush of the feathers against her skin was like heaven.

  He dropped a soft kiss on the small of her back that had her rolling her hips up. She heard him chuckle as he drew a thumb down the seam of her ass, teasing, testing as she whimpered.

  Then he pulled her hips up until she was secure on her knees and she opened her mouth to remind him to use a condom, but he had something else in mind entirely. Fingers opened her up, spreading her to the air and she thought she might actually collapse from need. She wanted him closer and got her wish when he ran a finger from her front to her back, spreading her moisture and teasing.