After Hours (8 page)

I freed my mouth and gulped a breath. Kelly went still above me, waiting.

All I managed was a croaky, “Well.”

“Well.”

I found the wherewithal to inch myself back, pushing up on my elbows. “Where are my
roses?”

I hadn’t realized I needed it so badly, but when he smiled, my heart unraveled.

He crawled a bit closer, and spoke against my lips. “Brought you something better,
if you want it.”

“You really are shameless.”

“You want this, same as me.”

“Want what?”

Kelly left me to stand beside the bed. Laces were tugged loose, shoes and socks kicked
aside before I could realize what was happening. A freed button, a lowered zipper,
and he pushed his jeans to the floor. As I sat up I stole only a glance, just enough
to know his boxer briefs were black and his cock wanted out. He looked big and hard
and obscene, and getting caught staring would’ve felt incriminating. I studied his
bare chest instead, his chiseled belly. I memorized the shapes of his shoulders and
hips, drank in the finest, most masculine body that’d ever been offered to me. I took
a crisp mental snapshot of the very big mistake I was about to make, and swallowed.

He stepped out of his pants, and in seconds his weight was bucking the bed once more,
his bossy hands urging me to lie back.

He’ll take a mile,
some goody-goody in my head warned. Give this man an inch and in a blink he’d be
halfway across the county and already forgetting me, just some newbie nurse he vaguely
remembered nailing during her first week on the job.

But he felt too good. Sinful, the way his warm palms stroked my shoulders, the way
he wedged his knees between my thighs and loomed over me. His body was tense in the
glow of my reading lamp, at once heavy and lean like some rare predator, every inch
of skin and tendon and muscle seeming to thrum with life and impulses. Reflexes.

He braced one hand at my side, and trailed the knuckles of the other down my arm,
up my ribs and along the edge of my breast. I held my breath, flesh tightening under
his caress. He traced the curve with his thumb then closed me in his heat, squeezing
softly. His gaze jumped to my face and snatched the air from my lungs.

Tell me I’m beautiful.

Kelly’s hand slipped from my breast and he leaned in close. “Turn over.”

The words sounded ominous in his deep, dark voice, but I did as he said. A strong
hand settled me against him on our sides, his chest melting my back muscles like butter.
I felt his cock just below my butt, hard and hot through his underwear and my pajamas.
He stroked my thigh, kneaded it, then coaxed it up.

His mouth brushed the back of my neck; soft, slow kisses fogging my brain so thoroughly
I didn’t protest as his hand crept closer, closer. His palm slid over my mound, cupping
me, the other hand tucked beneath my ribs. Something in his touch told me to trust
him, so I let him hold me, feeling warm and fragile and protected, a captured bird.

He told me things without uttering a syllable. The kisses behind my ear said,
You’ll give me anything I want tonight.
The palm heating my sex added,
And anything you don’t offer, I’ll take.
Promises, not warnings. I’d always been a girl whose spine stiffened the second she
felt a man trying to sweet-talk or pressure her, but not with Kelly. Had to be the
voice, or maybe the hard length of him pressed to my ass. One dose of Kelly and I
went docile, welcoming the surrender.

He plucked at my hem, and without thought, I helped him take my shirt off. There was
cool air on my bare skin, then the hot whisper of Kelly’s lips across my shoulder.
I shut my eyes as he freed the bow of my pajamas, slackened the waistband with a tug.

You hadn’t even kissed him twenty minutes ago, and now you’re going to let him touch
you? Down there?

Fucking right.

He slid his hand inside, the tips of his fingers tracing me through my underwear.
I reeled. His hips shifted, cock pressing harder at the juncture between my thighs.

What if he wants actual sex?

That question grounded me. Surely he
did
want actual sex, and I wasn’t on anything and I didn’t have condoms. Even if he’d
come prepared, I’d have to tell him no. That was too far, and as good as these horrible
mistakes felt, I’d have to find out what happened when Kelly Robak didn’t get what
he wanted, how he wanted it.

What if he gets mad?

Better to find out now than in a few minutes, before I gave him too much implicit
permission.

“I can’t go all the way tonight,” I murmured. Oh Jesus, I sounded like a scared-shitless
high schooler in the back of some horny upperclassman’s car.

Kelly said nothing, just kept whispering things with his hips and fingers.
You’ll go where I tell you to go,
they informed me. I imagined the worst, of his pressing the issue and my not telling
him to stop. Us, as we were now, but my underwear gone, my body ready, Kelly pushing
his shorts down and sliding inside me. The breaths heating my neck would deepen to
grunts, the fidgeting of his hips speeding to thrusts.

I wanted all those things as badly as I feared them. I wanted to know what he sounded
like as the need mounted, what he’d say as he chased his pleasure. A man so in control,
coming undone. I didn’t know which of us I distrusted more, on this bed.

He made me curious—me, the girl who’d always planted her feet firmly in place when
the other kids wanted to race after trouble. I was in my sister’s shoes now. Shoes
that felt like roller skates, bad ideas like magnets and me dipped in steel. I’d glide
right into whatever Kelly wanted, I could feel it. And I hated myself for it.

But you can’t fuck him unprotected.

He’d be the one fucking, silly girl.

Still.
If that happened . . . it’d feel awful, come the dawn. I’d feel foolish and reckless,
and any pleasure that giving in might offer, it’d sour to days or weeks of disappointment,
cast a shadow over my working relationship with this man, maybe even wreck the professional
trust I’d already invested in him.

“Where’d you go?” Kelly whispered.

I’d turned still and stiff, I realized, brittle with regrets I hadn’t even earned
yet. “I’m right here.”

He kissed my ear, and when he spoke it was like he’d stepped inside my mind. “Not
all of you.”

“You scare me, a little.”

Another soft kiss. “What about me?”

Your intentions. And the way you garble my intuition.
“I don’t know. You’re just more . . .”

“More what?” Another kiss, another hot exhalation.

I spoke from some thoughtless, honest place. “I don’t trust myself around you. This
way.”

“There’s something between us,” he murmured. “We’re just doing what it’s asking.”

“It feels like I’m just doing what
you
ask.”

“And you don’t like that?” As he said it, his fingers traced my lips through my panties,
cock pressing close. Heat flashed, dizzying me.

I swallowed a moan, scrabbling for words. “I like it now. I’m afraid I’ll wish I hadn’t
done so much in the morning. It feels good, but it won’t last.”

“That’s what pleasure is.”

Indeed. That was what made much of it decadent. Every one-too-many cocktails a person
downed, every cookie that wrecked a diet, every bad-idea boyfriend taken by my mother
or sister . . . all just pleasures given in to, consequences be damned. But I hated
consequences. I’d spent my entire life searching for calm in the fallout of other
people’s shitty impulses.

Push him away,
my brain said.

Fuck him,
my body begged.
All these years you’ve wasted cleaning up after other people’s parties. Quit reaching
for the dustpan.

Kelly slid my pajama bottoms over my hips. Thoughtlessly, I shifted to let him pull
them to my thighs, my knees, then I kicked them away myself, all those fresh chances
to tell him to stop heaped on the growing pile.

His hand was on my belly and slipping lower, lower. His cock was against my ass, insistent.
I felt his knee nudging my legs, and I did as it said, raising the top one. He moved
behind me, adjusting his erection, pressing it deeper between my thighs. My breath
was shallow, cheeks fevered, lips swollen. Drunk again. Drunk on Kelly.

“Jesus,” I muttered.

“Got a better name you can say, if you want.”

Before I could reply, his hand slipped inside my underwear, robbing me of words. His
fingers tickled my curls, warmed my skin. They glanced my clitoris and I bucked. It
was too much and nowhere near enough. His breath steamed hot on my neck, and with
a low, sharp moan, he stroked my clit. I gasped.

“Good,” he murmured. He withdrew his hand but only to wet his fingertips at his mouth.
Then they were between my legs again, hot and slick, teasing me with explicit caresses.
I groaned, imagining his tongue. His cock. He was imagining the same, I knew. I could
feel his hips moving, rubbing his thick length against my inner thighs with steady
thrusts.

I’d never wanted a man so intensely. So simply. His flesh inside mine, two greedy
bodies taking what they wanted from each other. I imagined him above me, working.
That harsh face, cruel with arousal, that voice hijacked by the sounds of his nearing
release. My own climax was building against his quickening touch. I fondled my breast,
toying with my nipple to double the sensations.

I was close, so close, and Kelly could tell. His hips bumped my backside again and
again, clothed cock fucking my thighs. He grunted behind my ear with each impact,
and it was his voice that did me in. The orgasm swallowed me whole, drowning me in
perfect, violent heat; too much, way too much. I grabbed Kelly’s wrist, forcing his
hand higher, the pleasure so intense it hurt.

I heard myself panting, gulping air.

I heard Kelly murmur, “Good girl,” and he kissed my jaw. I let his wrist go and the
ball of his hand brushed my throbbing clit with a jolt. His fingers dipped lower,
parting me like water. I blushed, shocked by how wet I was.

That’s been permission enough for too many pushy men,
I reminded myself. But his fingers delved deeper and a lust-heavy sigh in my hair
erased the worries.

“That’s where I want to be,” he whispered. He stroked my clit with his slick fingers,
then slipped back inside with a moan. “You want me there, too, don’t you?”

I wouldn’t lie, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t take this chance to reassert
some boundaries. “I want you,” I admitted. “But not tonight. Not that far.”

“I heard you the first time.” Not a jot of irritation in his tone—just a fact. His
hand left my pussy to fumble behind my butt. Suddenly I could feel him, his unmistakably
bare cock between my thighs, pressed to the damp crotch of my panties. Then he was
touching me again, warm fingers penetrating with slippery suggestion, erection stroking
me through the cotton. He spoke right against my neck, lips tickling my skin. “Feel
that?”

“Yeah.”

“Feel how bad I want you?”

He pressed roughly against me, a thrust that would’ve made us lovers if not for my
last stitch of clothing. I answered with a little moan.

“You’re so wet,” he whispered. He rubbed my clit, letting his length tease my lips
with the friction of wet cotton. I felt the flex of his hips as he thrust, muscle
as hard as his dick. “I can’t wait to feel you.” His body sped at the suggestion,
alongside my pulse. I hadn’t had many lovers, and none had ever been able to do this—to
make me this crazed. Certainly not to make me come without instruction or assistance.
But his fingers read me like Braille, and in no time at all I felt a second climax
building against his touch.

Fuck, I wanted him. I wanted him above me, those strong hips spreading my thighs.
I wanted to see him—his face and chest and cock as he took me. But not tonight.
Not tonight.

“I’m gonna make you come,” he said. “Tell me.”

“You are.” Oh, he was. His bossy words alone had me close.

“I’m what?”

“You’re going to make me come.”

A smug
hmmm
at my ear, wet fingertips at my clit, hungry cock begging for entrance. He pulled
my panties aside. I froze. But it was his fingers that taunted my folds, not his cock.

“So tempting,” he muttered.

Indeed. Just one bad decision and I’d be able to feel his hard flesh inside me.

“Someday you’ll give yourself to me,” he said matter-of-factly. “Let me have whatever
I want, do whatever I say.”

It would’ve been a pretty pompous announcement if I hadn’t suspected it was completely
true.

“I’ll have you pleading for my cock.” He pumped me with his fingers, hips mirroring
the rhythm. “Can’t wait to hear you beg.” He let the crotch of my panties go, slipping
his fingers back down the front to rub my clit again, erection taunting my swollen
lips. I imagined him rolling me onto my stomach, taking me from above and behind at
once.

I’d never wanted someone this way before, never wanted to be dominated. I’d always
seen strong or pushy men as dangerous creatures to be kept at a distance. But with
Kelly I wanted to see the beast set free to take what it wanted, exactly how it wanted
it.

Behind me, he changed. His thrusts were for him now, designed for his pleasure and
not mine. He was that thing I coveted most during sex, a man losing control. One second’s
massive lapse and he could have me—slide his thick cock between my slick lips and
prove himself a liar, and me a fool.
Do it,
I thought.

He moaned, a long, desperate, needy sound. His fingers abandoned my sex, a gruff hand
angling my hips so his dick rubbed my clit with every thrust.

“Fuck.”

“That’s right,” he muttered. “That’s right. Lemme feel you come.”

The position triggered a stitch in my side and his fingertips dug hard into my hip,
promising yet more bruises. But I felt my body obeying, the next orgasm drawing me
tighter, hotter, closer and closer against his punishing cock. His chest pushed hard
into my back, tilting me so I had to brace myself on my elbow. He was half on top
of me now, but fuck, he was hot.