Picture Perfect Love (Heartstring Dating Agency Book 3)

by Lauren Wood

  “I see you’re humble too,” she teased, her eyes burning into mine with a kind of look that suddenly felt less funny.

  “And that same instinct tells me you’re something special,” I rasped, eyeing her plump, pink kissable lips.

  Her eyelids fluttered, inviting me in to press my mouth to hers. Her lips tightened against mine, and then the sake must have set in. She sucked in my bottom lip and bit into it with just the right amount of stinging pleasure.

  It could have gone on like that for a while—our tongues dancing in and out of each other's mouths. But I wasn’t about to let her think all these gifts and all the chasing was just about sex.

  I stopped and pulled back, holding out my hand to hers instead. “Let’s dance.”

  “Dance?” she gaped. “What… now? There’s no music.”

  Once again, the waiter was cued to strike up a song in the speakers I had planted around us for the evening. An old jazzy love song came on with perfect timing as I pulled Abby onto her feet and twirled her around under the moon and stars.

  We danced with her head on my shoulder and our hands locked together until I could feel her shivering against me. I wrapped my arms around her and ran my palm up and down her back.

  “Let’s get you inside before your dancing feet freeze off.”

  It was soothing to see Abby walk around my penthouse, passively studying everything she saw as she put down her bag and coat.

  “I’m glad to have you back here again,” I confessed. “This whole place is plagued with my memories of you from that first night.”

  She darkened her eyes over me. “Like you haven’t coaxed other waitresses and bar floozies back here since then.”

  “I haven’t actually. Haven’t had the taste for anyone else.”

  “I’m not that gullible, Joshua.”

  “And I’m not the sleazy playboy you think I am,” I told her, crossing the room to pull her against me again. “Remember… for everything I don’t know about you, there’s just as much you don’t know about me.”

  “Then I guess we should sit down and talk. Get to know each other better,” she suggested, as if it was a dare she didn’t think I’d take.

  I waved my arm over the couch. “Whatever you want. Let’s sit then.”

  Her eyes sparked and I knew that wasn’t what she wanted at all. She was just testing me, and I called her bluff. I could see exactly what was on her mind, what she wanted to do. It was everything I wanted to do, but would have pushed aside if she really wanted to talk all night.

  “Lucky you,” she murmured, darting her eyes across my lips. “I’m all talked out for the day. Maybe you can show me to the bedroom instead? There might be something of more interest to me in there.”

  “Abby Matthews. Are you trying to use me for sex? Do I mean nothing more to you?” I teased her. “I’m a human being, you know. With thoughts and feelings and everything.”

  “Oh?” her brow raised. “Let’s hear those big important thoughts then. Far be it from me to objectify you.”

  I grinned and smoothed my tongue along my bottom lip where she had sunk her teeth in earlier. “I am thinking about big important things… like what I’m going to do to you when I get you into that bedroom.”

  She laughed as I lunged forward with a playful growl, smacking her on the butt as I chased her into the bedroom. I couldn’t wait to lay her down and remind her of just how amazing that first night had been. My whole body was reeling for it.

  10

  Abby

  As much as Joshua was hell bent on proving himself to be a gentlemanly romantic that evening, he gave his secret hopes away with the arrangement in the bedroom. I ran in with him playfully chasing behind and froze in the doorway at the sight of rose petals and candles. The same dreamy music that had been playing on the rooftop was streaming through a speaker in the corner.

  “You really went all out tonight,” I admired as I walked over to the bed and plucked one of the petals up between my fingers.

  “You’ve been avoiding me, so I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I’d do if I got the chance to see you again.”

  I could only hope those thoughts held more than just romantic gestures. I loved it all just as much as the next girl, but Joshua brought something out in me. A primal desire to ravage and be ravaged.

  Our bodies crashed together again as we stripped away each other’s clothes, groaning in anticipation in between our smiles and laughs. It didn’t take long before we were naked and making out on the bed, kneading into each other’s skin as a sign of our need—an intense one that lingered beneath the surface of all our playful flirtations.

  He started kissing his way down my body, and I gladly spread my legs open wide for him, eager for him to start showing his determination to win me over in other ways. He buried his face over my tingling folds, sliding his fingers inside of me until I was dripping wet.

  “God, you taste good,” he moaned in between long, generous laps with his tongue.

  “Remind me what you taste like,” I demanded, wriggling out from under him to roll on top.

  I spread my palms out across his chiseled chest, tracing the lines of his muscles. I worked slowly down to his throbbing cock, standing at full attention. I trailed my tongue around the base of it, then to the tip. A drop of pre-cum trickled onto my tongue, but it was quickly lost as I took him completely into my mouth.

  He shuddered as I glided him to the back of my throat and settled into a steady rhythm of pulling his shaft in and out. He cradled my face in his hands as I bobbed up and down, feeling the shockwaves of pleasure ripple through him.

  “This party is going to be cut short if you keep doing that,” he warned, his voice straining.

  I would have stopped, but he betrayed himself and nudged me back down, relishing in the sensation a little longer. But this time, he pulled at my legs, urging me to turn around and straddle his face while I sucked him in and out.

  His mouth collided with my clit again, motivating me to suck him even harder. The closer he pushed me, the closer I pushed him.

  “I could do this all night,” he moaned with a flick of his tongue.

  “I thought you just said you couldn’t do this all night,” I chuckled, returning the favor with my own tongue, swirling his sensitive skin from top to bottom.

  “Oh it can be done, with the proper intermissions here and there.”

  I swung my leg over, sitting next to him as he ran his hands up and down my naked body, pinching my hardened nipples. “I can’t do this all night because I have to be up early. Remember? We’re behaving. I help you, and you stop tempting me to be bad.”

  “The way you’re acting… I don’t think you need any temptation to be bad.”

  I flashed a coy grin and decided to play the part up even more. I crawled towards him slowly on my hands and knees, keeping my eyes locked to his. The moment I was close enough, he swept me up in his arms and rolled over on top of me. He teased his hardness along my dripping wet slit for just a second before sliding in. We both cried out with relief and the need for more.

  I tightened around him, my muscles clenching and shuddering. He kissed me harder and thrusted faster, his hands grabbing at every inch of me. It was like being hit with an exquisite train that I didn’t want to stop. He didn’t leave any part of my body unattended for long.

  “Oh god yes, Joshua,” I whimpered, clenching my breasts.

  He slid his hands into place to relieve mine, not letting me have the chance to do a single thing he could do for me. I dug my nails into his skin, wrapped tightly around his hard muscles. All while pumping into me over and over again, pushing me closer and closer to the edge.

  I threw my head back into the pillows, my eyes scrunching shut as the orgasm ripped through me. I moaned and cried out with victorious, shaken bellows—surprising even myself with just how much my voice gave away the intensity of the pleasure tearing through me.

  “I love feeling you cum on my cock,” he s
aid breathlessly in the darkness, not letting up on his pace.

  Just as my pleasure started to make the slow tumble back down, he grunted as his thrusts took on a new raggedness. He was losing control of his precise movements with the swell of his own orgasm. I watched his face change as it built up, exploded, and rained down to the aftershocks. He crashed down to the bed next to me where we could both be still for a moment and catch our breath, letting our bodies recover.

  I didn’t put up a fight against falling asleep in his bed again with our naked, satisfied bodies tangled together. But I did make a point to set an early alarm and didn’t let him talk me out of leaving the next morning. I was determined to prove I could handle the rest of my life along with this new addition without throwing off the balance. And from what I understood, Joshua needed the good influence to do more with his own life.

  I still didn’t know what this thing between us was, but I was feeling more comfortable in basking in the giddiness that came along with it. I floated through my day on cloud nine, all the way up to a dinner party I was set to attend that evening. I didn’t invite Joshua to come along, though I was sure he would have been thrilled to go. He acted like he would be thrilled to do anything I asked of him.

  The space with my friends would help me regroup, I thought, especially if I was going to keep dancing around with him and this fling between us without losing my head. But I was in for a surprise because it turned out all anyone wanted to talk about was Joshua.

  I evaded the flood of questions through the initial cocktails and appetizers, but by the time we sat down for the main course, it was clear they weren’t going to let me fly under the radar all night.

  “We’re not seeing each other,” I tried to explain. “He asked to see me again. I said I was too busy. The end.”

  “Bull shit,” my friend Rachel blurted, sparking laughs around the table. “For one, you have that look on your face that says you just had sex last night.”

  My cheeks turned bright red and my eyes widened towards the dinner guests I was not quite as comfortable with. “You don’t know that,” I insisted.

  “Actually, I do,” she shot back. “I’ve known you long enough to know that face, and believe me, honey. You’re wearing it. Like a cat that ate the canary. And second off, we all know he has some reason to believe he has a shot with you because he’s been bugging us left and right.”

  “What?” I asked, nearly choking on my wine.

  Everyone nodded in agreement as they each recalled their own communication with Joshua. My yoga studio and the membership, my hair appointment, my waitressing shifts, and even my favorite flowers. I had been too flustered to really think too much about how he knew so much about me and where I’d be and what I was doing. All of it came from my friends and acquaintances which he stalked down on social media, one by one, squeezing info about me out of them.

  “Unbelievable,” I murmured, toying with my fork and the food on my plate.

  “He’s determined. That’s for sure,” Rachel laughed.

  “And romantic,” another swooned.

  “Is that really the sort of thing women go for?” One guy remarked, somewhat bitterly. “It sounds like stalking to me.”

  “There’s a fine line between stalking and romance,” his girlfriend suggested.

  “It’s not that fine of a line,” I defended. “But he’s been this way from the moment we met. I wonder if this is how he won over his last girlfriend. Only for her to turn around and see his face plastered in the tabloids, being a drunken buffoon with random sluts he picked up at the club.”

  “Or random waitresses he managed to sweep off their feet,” someone offered from the other end of the table.

  I ate my dinner and sipped my wine quietly while a full-on debate erupted over what Joshua’s true motives were. Was he really a hopeless romantic who found the right one to fight for? Or was this all just a game he would toss aside the moment he won? I was apparently in a group of optimists because everyone was leaning towards the first theory.

  Their faces were filled with intrigue, excitement, and this spark like they were witnessing some great love story unfold. But surely they wouldn’t have been so keen on it if Joshua Meadows wasn’t mildly famous, or infamous, I should say, and also rich.

  His pursuit of knowing everything about me was either the craziest thing I had ever heard, or the most romantic. By the next day, I was feeling even more on the fence about which it might be. But even there I wasn’t given a fair chance at respite. I was barely an hour into my shift when Joshua appeared. At least now I had some clue about how he was figuring when and where I worked.

  He marched towards me with that charming smile, which I hated in that moment. He couldn’t keep interrupting me at work and stalking me all over town, pestering all of my friends. I was leaning towards thinking he was insane by the time he was standing in front of me.

  11

  Joshua

  While I was delighted to see Abby’s beautiful face in front of me again, with her adorable little nose and tempting plump lips, she did not look quite as happy to see me. With one hand on her hip she cocked her head to the side with a sort of “what the hell are you doing here, not this guy again” look.

  “Aren’t you happy to see me?” I asked cautiously.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “That sounds like a no… but I had to see you. Couldn’t stop thinking about you,” I explained.

  “I’m working,” she huffed, crossing her arms. “You have to go, Joshua. You can’t keep showing up like this while I’m at work. And you can’t keep harassing my friends to find out when and where I’m working either.”

  “It’s hardly harassment,” I defended. “Doesn’t anyone believe in romance anymore?”

  “There’s a fine line between stalking and romance… or that seems to be the opinion of my friends anyway.”

  “And, in their opinion, which side of this fine line do I fall on?”

  “Their opinion isn’t the one that matters here. It’s mine. And I’d say you’re definitely leaning towards stalker at the moment.”

  I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into a quiet corner, away from the other servers pushing past us.

  “I don’t mean to be a pain in your ass, Abby. Really. But… well, you may just have to get used to it. I came here because I needed to tell you… I’m falling for you. I can’t stop thinking about you, and if I have my way… I’m not going anywhere any time soon.”

  Her mouth flinched with a smile she was trying to contain. “It’s not up to you. It’s up to me, and I’m telling you… you have to go. My boss is still pissed at me for playing hooky with you that one night, not to mention the other time you barged in on my shift at the club.”

  “Let’s have dinner again tonight,” I proposed. “Say yes and I’ll get out of your hair.”

  “Blackmailing me into dating you is starting to get old too,” she laughed, brushing a strand of hair from her face.

  “If you didn’t play so hard to get, I wouldn’t have to revert to such extreme measures,” I winked. “But I have to admit… the way you keep trying to act so indifferent towards me is incredibly sexy. If I thought begging you on my knees would help, I probably would.”

  “Into that sort of thing, are you?” she grinned.

  I leaned in close to her ear and groaned, “You know exactly the kinds of things I’m into, and you do them all so well.”

  “Abby!” her boss fumed from the kitchen. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Not again. Do you actually want your job? Or should I start looking for someone off the street to finish out your shift?”

  “I’ll be right there!” She shouted back. “See,” she turned back to me with a hiss. “You’re going to get me fired.”

  “Quit,” I blurted out.

  “I’m not rich like you, remember?”

  “Hey, there was a time not so long ago when I wasn’t rich either,” I reminded her. “I’m serious, Abby. You should
n’t have to work so hard. And not just for my own selfish reasons of wanting more time with you. Since you mentioned it… I do happen to be rich now, and I can afford to support you. Quit your job. Come live with me. Just focus on going to law school full-time and become that bad ass lawyer you were destined to be.”

  “You’re insane!” she shrieked. “We barely know each other, Joshua. We’ve been on the equivalent of two dates, and whether or not I should have agreed to either of those is questionable. I’m not going to quit my job and move in with you! Do you actually hear yourself right now?”

  “If you had told me a few months ago that I’d be standing here saying this kind of thing to any woman, I would have thought you were crazy. But that was before I met you, and now the only thing that seems crazy to me is not being with you.”

  “You don’t know me,” she stressed again.

  “I know how I feel and that’s all that matters.”

  “Feelings change. And if you ask me… you’re just not used to not getting what you want at the drop of a hat. That’s the only reason you’re so crazy about me. I’m a challenge, and you’re not accustomed to challenges.”

  “I’m not accustomed to actually caring enough about the challenge to try and win it. That much is true. But that just proves how much of an impact you’ve had on me.”

  She narrowed her eyes, once again trying not to smile or let on just how much she was really enjoying all of this. “Balance or moderation of any kind really aren’t your strong suit, you know that?”

  “You only live once, sweetheart. And that one life is too short to beat around the bush or worry about moderation.”

  “A short life gets better eventually if you work hard for the things you want from the get-go,” she argued.

  “So are you moving in with me or what?”

  She blew out a sharp breath and started to walk away. “You’re insufferable.”