She turns to stone in my hands, her gorgeous lips falling open as I speak.
“I’ve spent so long lying to myself about it, needling you into hating me all over again every time we see each other. I don’t want to do it anymore either. Fuck, your skin is soft.” I trail my fingers over the line of her throat. “I have things to apologize for, and CJ, so do you. But why do I keep putting clothes on you when the only thing I want—the only thing I’ve wanted to do for seven years—is take them off you? Can we just sort all of this shit out later? Because right now, I need?—”
She rests her fingertips on my jacket, lifts up on her toes, and kisses me.
Finally, after seven years of anger and lust and lies and regret, I’m kissing CJ, and she’s kissing me back. All of the longing we shoved into the darkest corners of our hearts comes pouring out as I devour her mouth and she devours mine right back.
“The door,” she gasps out when we briefly come up for air. “Does it lock?”
I refuse to stop touching her to find out, so I band my arm around her waist and walk us backward, fumbling behind me until I find the knob and click it into place.
“It locks.”
“Oh, thank God.”
Then we’re in motion again as I spin us and pin her against the piece of wood that’s shutting out the rest of the world. Not that it matters. If somebody dropped us into the middle of a pack of savage geese right now, it wouldn’t stop me from sliding my mouth across hers, biting her bottom lip, and grinding my throbbing cock against her soft, sweet body.
“You taste like the hottest peppers in the world,” I breathe against her lips.
She gasps and tries to cover her mouth. “I’m so sorry! Sabotage quality control. Should I?—”
“You burn, I burn, baby.”
I show her I mean it by sucking on her tongue, groaning into her mouth and relishing the sting. She responds by rolling her hips against mine, creating mind-blowing friction because I’ve got her pressed so hard between my body and the door.
“Take this off.” She tugs at my jacket, pulling down on one lapel while shoving her hand under the opposite shoulder and generally fighting a losing battle with physics and my own human body.
“Absolutely.” I slide my hands down her arms. “Hang on.”
I’ve barely ripped it off before she’s at work on my buttons while I fight with my cufflinks. She succeeds before I do and immediately stills.
Right. Goddammit.
In a rush now, I wrestle my shirt the rest of the way off, take her hands, and guide them to the scar that stretches from my sternum to my navel before curving underneath my ribs. After almost eighteen months, the ropey line has faded to a pale pink, but the large backward L is still raised and sensitive to the touch.
“This,” I say with a deep breath, “is?—”
CJ stretches up to kiss me. “Let me guess. This is your organ-era scar, and last year in my office, you were in a bad place about it. You didn’t want me to see it or touch it, which is why you ran out of there like you’d just made your worst enemy come on your fingers and didn’t trust her to reciprocate without making it an issue.”
The knot I’ve been carrying in my chest for a year loosens as she talks, and I press my forehead to hers, so damn grateful to just breathe her in.
“God, I love your brain,” I say. “All of that. I was sliding toward a panic attack at the thought of you seeing me so weak and vulnerable. And Reese never?—”
“Nope.” She rests her fingers against my lips. “We will not be speaking her name aloud here. And you were never weak, but I’m assuming you know that now.” She kisses my shoulder, then my throat, then my breastbone. “Can I?”
“God yes,” I say hoarsely. “Anything you want.”
She kneels slowly in her beautiful, sparkly dress and presses her lips to the top of my scar. “Does it hurt?”
I shake my head. “Not as long as it’s you touching me.”
She snorts softly. “That’s a bullshit answer.”
The look she gives me is pure CJ exasperation that takes my cock from stirring to life to hard as fucking stone in one breath.
“It’s true.” I gather her hair into my hands and do my best to ignore my throbbing dick. “I lied last July and made it sound like you never mattered to me, but you do. Maybe more than anyone else in my life. And I wasn’t just lying to Reese, I was lying to myself. If I admitted that one night with you mattered more than six years with Reese, I’d have to face how badly I’d fucked up my entire life trying to forget you.”
“Shit,” she says thickly. Then pain bursts in my thigh.
