* * *
I’m standing at CJ’s desk.
In CJ's office.
In CJ's home.
It’s exactly the way I've pictured it—professional but offbeat. Pictures of people I don’t recognize, along with plenty that I do, line the walls. Her ergonomic chair is an all-business black, and a fuzzy pink blanket is draped over one arm. I barely resist the urge to pick it up and see if it smells like her.
It doesn’t matter, though. Her light floral scent assaults me when I wander closer to her desk. I close my eyes and inhale, and of fucking course that’s how she finds me.
“I know you're not in this room right now.”
My eyes snap open to find her standing in the doorway with her arms crossed tight under her breasts. I'm sure I look guilty as fuck, which I am. Our friends are just outside this room at an impromptu holiday party following our annual Golfmas outing, and I just let myself into her space knowing damn well she wouldn’t want me here.
"There’s not a thing in this house that could possibly be of interest to me," I say in my most bored voice because old habits die hard, and I’m still pissed about July and am hoping her scorn will have its usual bucket-of-acid-to-the-face effect on me.
“Listen, asshole,” she hisses. “I’ve been extremely polite to you tonight out of respect for Liv, and?—”
I snort. "You call glaring at me, spilling eggnog on my shirt, and stabbing me with a fondue skewer ‘extremely polite’?”
"You're lucky it was your hand and not your…” Her lips press together, but she doesn’t actually voice the word. Instead, her eyes drop to my dick, and the motherfucker in question starts to wake up. Fuck.
As casually as possible, I step behind her desk chair to put more objects between us, but it has the opposite effect when she mutters a curse and steps all the way inside the room, easing the door shut behind her.
"Nuh-uh, Wyatt. Nobody gets to steal any more of my ideas."
I grip the back of her chair so hard that my knuckles turn white. I know I should apologize for believing Reese over CJ for as long as I did, but I want her on her knees apologizing to me for being a fucking child in that alley, too.
Fuck. On her knees. Now I’m turned on, mad, and guilty. It’s not a good combo.
“I don’t need or want your ideas,” I growl.
She stalks to the desk and hits a button so all that shows on her monitor is the log-on screen. “Maybe not, but your girlfriend sure did.”
"She's not my girlfriend.” I try to take shallow breaths now that the floral scent is coming from the woman herself. “Or my fiancée. We’d already broken up this summer.”
Instead of putting more distance between us, I step out from behind the chair until we’re standing chest to chest, thigh to thigh in this small, dark room. Her back is to her desk, and the glow of the monitor outlines her brown waves and the curves of her body in a cool, white light.
"But she said?—"
"I know what she said,” I snap, so fucking tired of everything about us being so twisted up and twisting me up. “But believe me. She’d moved out. It was over, and she was acting jealous for no reason. I don't lie about my relationships.”
“You don’t? Not ever?” Her voice is throaty as she shifts from side to side, dragging her breasts across my torso maybe accidentally but maybe on purpose. I have to plead with my body to calm the fuck down as my frustration from our last encounter comes roaring back, along with the reminder that I did fucking lie. I told Reese that CJ and I were nothing and never had been. But how often have I thought about this woman over the years? All that bitterness and disappointment kept her vivid and hot in my chest, and I feel sick that Reese must’ve known all along that our relationship was the shield I used to deflect those feelings. And even then, loving another woman, truly wanting to marry her, was never quite enough to purge me of the loathing and the heady, miserable joy of fighting with CJ. And even though I’m free to pursue her now, I don’t know how to turn any of it off.
So I go on the offensive, shifting forward to press her against the desk until my cock digs into her hip. Based on her sharp inhale, she likes it.
"Oh my god, I should have known,” she says as she rubs against me like a cat.
"What?" I growl.
“That you like being told you're a bully and a liar and a disappointment.“ Her voice almost breaks on that last word before her jaw hardens. “Because that’s what you are, and you’re about to come in your pants because I’m not afraid to say so. You’ve got a degradation kink. ”
No, I’ve got a CJ kink, I almost tell her, but I keep my teeth clamped together and thrust against her, rattling every loose item on her desk and watching in fascination as pink floods her cheeks.
Her plush lips fall open, and I say, “That degradation kink’s all you, I’m afraid."
"Me?" Her tits are still brushing against my chest with every inhale, and she's doing a lot of inhaling as I rut against her.
