by Kim Karr
Just as I got out to open the car door, the front door swung open wide and Hannah stepped out on the porch. Her sleek dirty blonde hair fell over her shoulders like a waterfall and her tight little tank top caused my cock to twitch.
Down boy.
No more of that.
Hannah stopped at the top step and I stared at her for a moment. At her eyes that were so blue. At her full lips that were so soft. At her smile that was so full of white teeth. And then there was that body. It had changed a little, but only gotten better, more defined. Sexier, if that was possible.
She was still so fucking beautiful, and the thing was that beauty was inside and out. It always had been.
Ripping my gaze from her, I turned to open the door. As soon as I did, Jonah jumped out in excitement. “Mommy, I played football.”
Hannah clapped her hands together in excitement. “That’s great. Maybe you can teach me.”
“I still have a lot to learn,” he said, repeating what Scarlett had told him.
Scarlett was still watching her movie, so I closed the door and leaned against it, waiting for Jonah to reach his mother.
Jonah stopped just before hitting the bottom step and then came charging back at me. Wrapping his arms around my legs and looking up, he said, “Thank you, sir.”
I grinned down at him. He did have a kind disposition just like his mother had said, then again he was Hannah’s son. “You’re more than welcome, champ.” I bristled my hand over his soft, blonde hair. “And how about you call me Jace?” I wanted to say call me anything but sir or Mr. Big Shot, but I refrained.
“Okay, Jace,” he smiled. “And next Friday you’ll teach me how to pass?”
“Yeah, champ, I’ll teach you how to pass.”
He let go of his hold on me. “You think I’ll ever get to be a qwartback like Scarlett?”
I should have corrected him, but it was too God damn cute. “Absolutely,” I said.
At that he went flying back toward his mother, who was staring at us with a smile on her own face that did something to me.
As Jonah hugged her and started to tell her all about his night, she waved to me and mouthed, thank you.
I gave her a slight wave back and strode around the front of my car, getting in, and driving away without daring to look back.
“He’s nice, Daddy,” Scarlett said.
“He is.”
“And so is Hannah. And she’s really pretty.”
I found her gaze in the rearview. “You know his mother?”
“Yes, Daddy, she brings him to school every morning and always says hello to me.”
I scratched my head. “I didn’t see her when I brought you.”
She shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t walk him that day, but she usually does. A lot of parents do.”
The next question I asked wasn’t exactly because I was thinking with the right head. “Do you want me to walk you in sometimes? I can’t do it every day, you know some days I have meetings, but I can try to take you a couple days a week.”
Those little palms clapped together so quick, I thought she was going to do a cheer. “Oh, that would be wonderful.”
Wonderful.
Yep.
That’s the word I would use.
It’s not like I wouldn’t have done anything to make her happy, but this wasn’t only for her.
Even though I refused to admit otherwise.
20
Less Than Ten Years Earlier
Hannah Michaels
The rest of January was a complete blur.
Things between Ethan and I had definitely slowed down with his clerkship taking up so much of his time. Things between Jace and I, on the other hand, had definitely heated up because of all the time we were spending together.
Neither was the best news.
As had become standard Saturday night practice, I’d spent the night at their house. What was not standard practice was waking up in Jace’s bed.
When I opened my eyes, I became instantly aware of the situation. No one was on my right. I rolled over to my left to find Jace with his face buried in his pillow.
Tip-toeing out of bed, I peeked out the window. The snow had covered everything, but it was easy to see that Ethan was gone. And he’d left me alone and naked in Jace’s bed.
Why would he do that?
I had no plans for the early part of the day. I didn’t have to work until late afternoon, so I slid into the warmth of Jace’s bed and figured I would go back to sleep.
Careful not to wake him, I faced the door and brought the covers to my chin to try to warm up. The cold February temperatures were brutal and the heater in their old house wasn’t the best.
Over my shoulder, I glanced at Jace. I couldn’t help myself. While I was cold, heat practically rolled off him. Before I could stop myself, I was inching closer to him, and then in a contorted sort of way, I started stroking my hand down the soft skin of his arm.
Jace stirred, lifting a squinted-eyed face my way and looking deliciously rumpled. “Morning.”
I craned my neck a little more and smiled at him. “Morning.”
He rolled onto his back. One arm went behind his head and the other ran down his chest lightly.
Up and down.
Up and down.
The movement was hypnotic, and after staring for way too long, I fell back into my pillow with a sigh and stared at the door.
“Ethan in the bathroom?” he asked, his voice rough with sleepiness.
I shook my head. “He’s not here. His car is gone.”
“Really?”
I looked over my shoulder at him again. “Really.”
His fingers had drifted lower, the covers too, and my gaze followed them right to the tent in the middle of the bed sheet.
When I looked up at his face, it was blazing with heat. This was dangerous territory. The two of us alone in a bed, both of us naked, and him, well, very erect. Not knowing what to do, I turned back around and started to get out of bed. It would be much safer that way.
In a flash, Jace was roughly pulling me to him. “Come here you little vixen.”
My heart started to beat way too fast. “Vixen?” I somehow managed to question as he mouthed my neck and cupped my breasts from behind.
“You’re being a tease,” he said, tweaking my nipples to stiff peaks.
Looking over my shoulder at him, I arched my back. “How am I being a tease?” I asked indignantly.
He let out a low, evil chuckle as one of his hands slid down to my sex. “You can’t possibly think that you can slip back in bed in the morning, especially naked, and then leave me here to fend for myself.”
“I was thinking we could cuddle,” I suggested.
He pressed his erection against me.
I pressed back. “Or not.”
“Fuck,” Jace groaned.
I smiled. “Yes, I see you have a slight,” I coughed a bit to hide the word slight, “problem.”
Right then his fingers swiped up my sex and found me wet for him. “It appears you do too.”
“Oh, God,” I moaned.
Nipping at my earlobe, he let his hot breath cascade over my face and it made me shiver. “God can’t satisfy that ache, but I can.”
“I know you can,” I said, relaxing my body.
The hand on my breast caressed my nipple, while the one between my legs circled and stroked me in the most delicious way.
There was no way to stop what was about to happen, and I wasn’t going to fight it. I turned and climbed up on top to straddle him.
Asking him wasn’t needed, this I knew the minute his hands drifted to my ass to hold me close.
His gray eyes were mesmerizing, and bending, I pressed my hands on his sculpted chest. “We probably shouldn’t,” I said.
That grin that melted a million panties would have melted mine if I were wearing any. “I’m going to consider this an extension of last night.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“Leaving us naked and alone in a bed could only mean he wanted this.”
“I agree.”
Neither of us moved while we were rationalizing what we were about to do. Normally, if I fell asleep, Ethan woke me and brought me to his room. Since he hadn’t last night, Jace was right in his thinking. Or so I told myself.
Our breathing shifted as we stared at one another.
Faster.
Harder.
In.
Out.
“We won’t fuck,” Jace said.
I nodded, and that was that.
He rose up to trace my collarbone with small, light flicks of his tongue, and at almost the same time, I rocked against the heat and hardness of his cock.
Both of us made the first move, so no one person could be to blame. That seemed best.
“Do we tell him?” I asked.
Jace sat up at that, and those gray eyes flickered. With his back resting against the headboard, he grabbed my ass harder and pulled me snug against him. “That we got each other off?”
I licked my lips. “Yes.”
His mouth pursed in a way that made him look sly. “You tell me. Do you have some kind of pact that you can’t get off without him?”
The air might have been that of mid-February, but all I felt was heat. There was a handful of fabric keeping us apart, and I tugged the sheet away, and then looked down before answering.
Bare skin to bare skin, his cock was trapped between my sex and his stomach. All we had to do was shift a little and he would be inside me. The restraint was almost too much. The fact that we weren’t going to do that justified what we were going to do, in my mind anyway. I lifted my gaze and wrapped my hands around his neck. “No, we don’t.”
Jace didn’t waste a beat before putting his arms around me again.
This time I wrapped my legs around his waist, and when I did my nipples brushed his chest.
Sliding my hands up his neck to his face, I tipped his head back. I held him still while I looked down into his eyes. With my thumbs, I traced around his lips and lost myself in his eyes. I was nodding my head, but not on purpose.
The silence told the story, and when he turned his own head and kissed my fingers, I knew what that meant. Without any more recourse, his hands went to the back of my head and forced my mouth to his.
And I was lost.
Lost when he kissed me so hard that our teeth clashed. Lost when he twisted to push me down on top of the tangled sheets that already smelled of sex. And lost when he covered my body with his.
In that new position, his hot, thick erection stroked against the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, and he rubbed against me.
We were kissing each other again, harder this time, hard enough that I knew our mouths would bruise.
And then I took everything one step further. Getting off hadn’t been defined as getting ourselves off, and I couldn’t help myself when I wrapped my hand around his cock.
As soon as I did, Jace nipped at my bottom lip.
When I cried out, I opened the gates to all kinds of touching and rubbing with our hands and mouths.
Time wasn’t anything we were aware of as we tangled our bodies and writhed together, doing everything we could that didn’t include actually fucking.
It was rough and wild, and without restraint. We moved and kissed and licked and sucked.
Somehow, a long time later, after twisting and turning and tangling, we ended up back the way we started. His front to my back. This time though we were both sweaty and breathless.
Jace was speaking low, muttering things in my ear that should have made me blush, but didn’t.
And then, with his taste on my tongue and his breath in my lungs, he reached around and took my hand. Used it to circle my clit in a way we hadn’t before. Harder. Faster. At the same time he pressed his cock against the base of my spine and began thrusting. Hard and fast.
Pleasure started to fill my veins and soon it was flowing like a stream to a river. If Jace were a pool of water, I knew I would drown in him. We came within seconds of each other, calling out each other’s names.
Exhausted and spent, neither of us moved for a long while. Soon though, Jace uncurled his limbs from around my body and the mattress shifted. I saw him in the doorway and heard him padding down the hall.
The bathroom door closed before I heard the hiss of the shower.
Guilt.
That was what it felt and sounded like.
Saying we were doing nothing wrong was one thing, but living with it after was another.
Uncertain how I felt, other than guilty, I got up and gathered my things, and then went to Ethan’s room to dress. I wanted to get out of there before he returned and before Jace got out of the shower.
Jace and I would have to talk about it, but I knew with his brooding disposition he wouldn’t be in any shape to discuss it today.
And to be honest…neither would I.
Tomorrow would be pushing it.
21
Present Day
Jace Bennett
People have said I have a brooding disposition.
Not that I listen to what people say about me very often. But that less than endearing quality was never clearer to me than right at that moment.
The weekly early Monday morning meeting had to be delayed because Perry was waiting for the new hire to arrive and he wanted her to join us.
Not that big of a deal in the larger scheme of things, except that I had skipped taking Scarlett to school for it.
Now I was sitting at my desk staring broodingly at the pile of work on it. The deep unhappiness I felt was unlike me when I was at work, anyway. Flirt was my salvation, aside from Scarlett. And I put all I had into it. It kept me going and kept me sane.
Except I’d spent the weekend thinking about what had happened with Hannah. How weak I had been. For fuck’s sake, she’d been back in my life for all of five seconds and I hadn’t been able to keep my hands off her, or anything else for that matter. Like in the house I had once shared with my wife. Or say, like in the kitchen she cooked in. And for fuck’s sake, on the table we’d eaten at.
Yeah, I’d spent the weekend drowning in guilt and unable to stop thinking about Hannah at the same time. So yes, I was in a dark, rotten mood I couldn’t shake and the stack of work on my desk wasn’t what I wanted to dig into.
Fuck, I had to get Hannah out of my head. I thought about punching the wall. I thought about turning my desk over. I thought about going home. But hell, let’s face it, I wasn’t going to do any of that. I did put some Led Zeppelin on low though.
Picking up the first stack of file folders, I started to look the top one over. It was the analytics from the Date Me app. The hits were down, and the unique visitors were down. I frowned. Down. I hadn’t seen that measure in a long time.
Were we losing our edge in the marketplace?
As I dug deeper into the analysis trying to uncover the driving cause of the decline, I found nothing glaring that stood out.
Frustrated, I rubbed my eyes and then opened the next folder. This was the analytics from the Fake Me app, and they too pointed to a decline in hits and unique visitors.
What was going on?
The knock had me pushing back in my chair and rotating my stiff neck as all of the data continued to swirl around in my head. “Come in,” I called as I turned the music down.
The door swung open and Perry stood in it. He was a tall guy the same age as me. But unlike me he hated wearing suits and ties. Although he did somewhat dress up, his style was what I might call retro. He wore skinny ties, tight jeans, and Converse sneakers. It worked for me.
“Hey,” I said. “How was your weekend?”
“Not bad,” he replied. “Yours?”
“I survived. What’s up?”
He leaned against the doorway. “Our new Technology Manager is in the conference room, and I thought you might want to meet her before the meeting starts.”
Catching the time,
I stood and arched my back, stretching it to help alleviate the stress. “Yeah, let’s do it. Then after the meeting let’s sift through the results of last month’s analytics reports together.”
Perry scratched his chin. “By the look on your face, I take it they aren’t great.”
“No, they aren’t.”
I strode into the hallway and he stepped beside me. “Shit, I should have been on top of that. I’m sorry.”
Glancing at the app on my phone, I said, “You’ve been buried. Don’t kick yourself. But now that your time should be somewhat freed up, I’d like you on this.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“I’m pretty sure it has to do with the other current trends.”
“What other trends specifically?” Perry asked.
I twisted my lips as I hit the icons that launched me into the cyber world of Flirt. “That’s just it, aside from that I’m Here app I’ve been pursuing, I don’t really know.”
“I guess I have a shit-ton of work ahead of me, then.”
“We all do,” I told him.
Stopping at the entrance to the conference room, Perry took the lead, and still tapping my phone, I stepped in behind him.
“Hannah Crestfall,” he said, “Meet Jace Bennett.”
The phone nearly fell from my grip as I jerked my head up to see the woman whose back was to me rise to her feet. Hannah Crestfall? My Hannah? No, not my Hannah. Scratch that.
The room blurred for a moment as I turned around, but then I quickly refocused. However, my gaze was on her golden hair, her clothes that molded her body perfectly, and her eyes that appeared to be filling with concern.
Dressed in a work-appropriate blouse and tight black skirt, and wearing high heels was office appropriate. The fact that she looked incredible wasn’t the issue. However, the fact that she was standing next to my conference table, was. It had me rocketing into a tailspin.
Fuck me.
Fuck me.
Fuck me.
Hannah was Perry’s new hire. My new employee! How the hell had this happened?
The expression on her face was one of pure shock. From where I stood I could see goose bumps prickling along her slender arms as she folded them around herself.