Versed in Desire

Chapter Three



“Jesus, Corryn,” he said as he reached forward to run his thumb along my wet, swollen mouth.

In lieu of a reply, I smiled at him and wondered if this was the end of the evening. I’d come. He’d come. He’d had me up against a wall, sort of. My clock showed 2:26 a.m. I’d been up for twenty hours and by all rights I should have been tired, but instead an alert awareness, effervescent and sexual and full of life, hummed in my body.

“You look like you did the first time I saw you at Tony’s,” he said.

I glanced at the mirror. Half-dressed, on my knees, my hair tumbled around my shoulders, sweat sheening my torso, I looked much the way I felt. “I looked like I’d just finished giving a guy a blow job?”

I meant the remark to be sexy and fun but he took me seriously. “No. You looked alive. Like you could power the city with the force of your personality. Lately you’ve looked…distracted. Quiet.”

Obviously Luke had been paying attention to me, close enough to see my need, my dilemma. How to describe the growing sensation of airy emptiness, the sudden awareness of nothingness under me? I couldn’t think of an answer so I rose to my feet, swaying a little as my blood pressure dropped. Luke put a steadying hand on my hip and looked up at me, his eyes still dark and unreadable.

Time for another choice, but it wasn’t mine to make. I didn’t realize how much I hoped he’d stay until he slid his hands into the open waistband of my pants and relief seared through me.

“Again?” I asked, mock exasperation in my voice.

He worked the clinging leather down my legs along with my thong, then flashed me a smile. “Slower.”

I used his shoulder to steady myself as I stepped free of my clothes. He took my hand in his and slid back on the bed, stretching out on his side. I lay flat on my stomach and rested my cheek on folded arms so I could look at him. He was so beautiful, his hair as much a wreck as mine, his mouth kissed over the line into sulky temptation and his eyes… His eyes. The initial demand was gone, replaced by something I couldn’t identify.

He reached out, stroking my cheeks with the backs of his fingers, then slid my hair over my shoulder so he could see my face. “Why am I here, Corryn?”

A valid question given how long I’d made him wait, but I hadn’t thought he’d care. “We were long overdue for this,” I said, which was true, just not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

“We were overdue for this the night we met,” Luke said mildly, his fingers now tracing the bumps of my spine.

“I was two weeks into a new job. Hooking up with my boss’s best friend seemed…imprudent.”

“I don’t write your performance appraisals,” he pointed out, amused. “I can’t give you a raise for that blow job or fire you if you won’t do it again. In fact, you’ve got one hell of a hostile work environment lawsuit against me, if you’re so inclined.”

“I’m not so inclined,” I said with a smile. “And you can tell Tony all the dirty details at the racquetball game on Tuesday and he can find someone else to read his email and work up his presentations and make his travel arrangements.”



“Stalemate,” he said, then his hand paused. “If you thought I’ll tell Tony, what made you change your mind?”


How do you tell a man of formulas and calculations, of stock prices and valuations and P and L statements, that sleeping with him seems tied to your creativity?

How do you talk about the muse without sounding flighty and artistic? Crazy?

“I needed to make a choice. It was either this,” I said with a vague between-you-and-me flip of my hand, “or sit down in some very public space and tell you I was going to start wearing shapeless burlap sacks to the office and you had to stop buying me cupcakes.”

A smile quirked the corners of his mouth, then he resumed his caressing strokes. “I’m glad things went the way they did. Just so we’re clear, what happens between you and me,” he mimicked my vague flip with his hand, “stays between you and me.”

“I know you now,” I said, rolling onto my back. His hand trailed over my hip as I moved, transferring from the base of my spine to the softness of my belly just above my mound. The sensation of his fingertips light against my skin sent renewed heat skittering through me. “You aren’t like that.”

“You know me.”

I felt my eyes widen. “I think I do,” I said, a little more cautious.

“What do you know about me?”

Where should I start? “I know you bring me cupcakes but you never eat dessert yourself. I know you couldn’t care less about baseball but you spent a small fortune on World Series tickets so you could take your Little Brother who’s crazy for the Yankees.” I didn’t mention the photo of him and Marshall at Game Seven that was his current desktop background because suddenly this was revealing exactly how much I’d learned about him. “I know you drink nothing but water, with the occasional whiskey.”

“I have juice every morning with my cereal,” he said in his I’m-too-serious-to-be-taking-myself-seriously fashion.

“How healthy of you. Water, whiskey and juice,” I amended. Then I reached up to cup his raspy jaw. “I know you look like the devil incarnate and Tony looks like a cherub, but when you were kids Tony was the troublemaker and you were the voice of reason. I know you can go home with the prettiest girl at a party, but you never bring her to the next party and you never brag about your conquests.”

Whether I was the prettiest girl at Tony’s party was debatable. Luke arriving alone at the Christmas bash was indisputable. My smile faltered.

He stared at me for a couple of heartbeats, his face suddenly unreadable. Then he reached for my hand, kissed my knuckles and brought it down to his hard shaft. “What do you know about that?”

I stroked slowly, gently, watching his face all the while. “I know you want me.”

He kept his hand on top of mine until I had a rhythm he liked, timed to our breathing. Then he trailed his index finger over the thin strip of hair on my mound and dipped it into the slick heat between my legs. “And you want me,” he said.

I should have felt grateful he’d returned the discussion to its rightful place—sex—and the sheer physical need I felt for him almost, almost sufficed. I opened my legs just enough to admit his hand and tilted my hips. “Yes,” I admitted, my voice lower. Husky. He added a second finger. “Oh, yes. Right there.”



His eyes darkened, then he bent his head and kissed me, soft, closed-mouth, chaste kisses at the corners of my mouth, my cheek, my jaw, until I parted my legs and gasped.

“Are we back to slow?”

A chuckle rumbled deep in his chest as he rolled between my legs. He braced himself on his elbows and looked down at me for another long moment. “Always,” he murmured against my mouth.

His tongue flickered lightly against mine before he slanted his head and kissed me. I looped my arms around his neck and sank into the feel of us pressed together along the length of our bodies, his calf against mine, erect cock notched between my thighs, the hair on his chest rasping against my sensitive nipples. I could smell him, sweat and musk, taste the saltiness on his shoulders, hear the deepening rasp of his breathing as our kisses went from exploratory to passionate.

He nipped his way along my jaw to my ear. “I can taste myself when I kiss you,” he murmured.

Some guys hate that. They want you to swallow, then immediately brush your teeth. The way Luke was kissing me, the way his cock surged against my p-ssy every time our tongues met, told me he didn’t have a problem with it. In fact, it seemed to test his control because he left a trail of nipping kisses on the tendons in my throat then set his teeth against my collarbone. I whimpered at the bite, then sighed when he licked the spot to soothe it. He moved a few inches closer to my shoulder and repeated the process. After several sharp stings and wet licks I was arching into his body and his breathing was definitely strained.

Tense breathing and my own gasps didn’t keep him from slow. In bed with a woman, so often a man acts as though he’s on a guided tour in a strange city with twenty minutes to see the sights and a list of highlights. Mouth, nipples, *, penetration, orgasm, back on the bus. Luke explored me as if each individual patch of skin held the possibility of some delightful surprise or unique memory. I lay back and became a tourist in my own body, with his mouth and fingers as my guide.

He abandoned my collarbone for my shoulder, guiding my arm over my head to trace a path along the edge of my armpit to the swell of my breast. He dallied on that gentle curve, his open-mouthed kisses wet and soft, a sharp contrast to the sandpaper on his chin and the sting of his teeth. It took forever for him to put his mouth to my nipple, but when he did, I let out a shuddering little sound far too erotic for foreplay. It sounded like a sex moan, a penetration moan, a perfect-pressure-against-my-*-don’t-stop-until-I-come moan.

His patience transformed me. I was used to tension, to urgency, to Yeah, you like that baby? to pounding and grasping. F*cking, really. I was used to f*cking. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this making love, but sex implied a casualness, a disconnect that was impossible to conjure and maintain when Luke took delectable minutes to cover the soft skin between my breasts.

What was this?

It was Luke, in my bed. It was Luke.



By the time he made his way from my nipples to my ribcage, I was beyond words, adrift on sensation that ebbed and flowed through the contours of my body, rising to meet his clever fingers and mouth. Luke drew pleasure from places I hadn’t known contained it: my waist, the previously untapped spot between hip and mound where the scrape of his weekend stubble sent eddies of desire to my *. I lay in a state of suspended animation, limp under his ministrations but at the same time pure energy, gathering for what promised to be a fierce electric storm. Thunder and lightning and lashing rain.

His exploring mouth reached the tuft of hair left just above my slit. I spread my legs and somehow found the strength to slide my fingers through his hair as he opened me with his thumbs. I arched and whimpered as he applied his tongue to the soft folds, then my *, the soft flicks and laps calling down the storm.

My gasps took on a breathy, pleading quality when he stopped and kissed my hip, my breastbone, my throat. I opened my eyes to see him looming over me, surveying me with a newfound confidence, as if now he knew me, too. All languid surety, he dropped a kiss on my mouth then said, “Turn over.”

In my strung-out state the words sounded foreign, but held the right cadence and structure for me to know what he meant. I shifted to my stomach and parted my legs, moaning when my sensitive nipples brushed against the cotton sheets. Behind me I felt the bed dip, heard his jeans rustle, a thud as they dropped back to the floor, then a pause before a condom wrapper tore.


Yes. Oh yes.

He planted one hand beside my shoulder while the other arm slid under my hips, lifting and supporting me while the blunt tip of his cock pushed at my swollen folds. I was so wet he slid into me with the first seeking nudge. I let out a startled gasp at the sudden overwhelming sensation of fullness, of the undeniably erotic feel of his hips and abdomen hard against my ass.

At the surprised noise I made, he paused. My consciousness expanded enough to feel his hair-roughened thighs against mine, the heat of his arm at my waist and his breath huffing against my hair with a gratifying sense of need.

“Okay?”

I would have answered if I’d had the cognitive ability to form words. Instead I arched my back and tipped my hips towards his, embedding him that extra bit inside me. The movement created the delicious hint of friction against my G-spot and I widened my stance.

A low, rough noise echoed in Luke’s chest. Could have been a grumble, a laugh, a groan, but I didn’t care to name it because he’d let go of my waist to skim his hand over my belly to the top of my sex. When his fingertip found my * I let out my own unnamable noise and rocked hard against him.

I supported my weight on my forearms and knees. Luke was braced behind me, his hand by my shoulder, his stomach hot and taut against my back, his legs bracketing mine. The sparks he’d struck throughout my body exploded into a conflagration when he began to move. Rough, deep, thorough strokes held just the right unrelenting beat, his fingers caressing my * so perfectly I was quivering and helpless under the onslaught. I kept my face turned to the mattress in an effort to stifle the escalating whimpers coming from my throat with each thrust.

I reached the edge and with a low cry flew over. Luke didn’t stop moving, just thrust through the spasms racking my body, easing up only as I sagged down into the mattress. Damp spots of pleasure spread across my shoulder blades but it took me a moment to connect the sensation with Luke’s hot, wet mouth. The city was gone. I was gone, well and truly gone, floating in some alternate dimension where nothing existed but his body and mine. Him and me.

When my breathing quieted he pulled out and helped me turn to my back. He slid into me again, no less insistent than before, the stroke of his thick cock over quivering, sensitized nerves forcing a whimper from my arched throat. I curved my arms around his shoulders and pulled him down so I bore most of his weight, using his body to anchor me to reality.



“Luke,” I said in a voice so hazy and faint I hardly recognized it. “Luke, give me a minute. Please.”

He groaned but held himself immobile, buried deep inside me, his breath harsh and quick next to my ear. With my eyes closed it was unspeakably intimate, his hips holding me open under him, his hair-roughened chest and belly hard against my breasts, the edgy control to his breathing, the smell of sweat and sex and that potent earthy lust I would forever associate with Luke.

I felt him shift to his elbows, his finger lifting the damp strands of hair from my cheeks. “Corryn,” he said.

An unfamiliar shyness kept me from opening my eyes when he spoke my name, but eventually I found the courage to meet his gaze. Sweat streaked his face, dampened his hairline. Tremors shivered through his muscles. He was riding the razor’s edge of ecstasy and agony, holding back for me, something unreadable glimmering in his dark eyes.

Then we were both trembling. I brought one hand down to cup his jaw, rubbing the heel of my hand against the stubble once, twice, then I pulled his head down to kiss him. His mouth against mine, my hand on his jaw and the other at the small of his back, I lifted my hips to meet his as he thrust, intent on nothing more than making him feel good, but as long, hot minutes passed need cracked through me once again. This time I found myself sobbing into his neck before I arched into him and came apart. Panting and shaking, I dropped back into the mattress, my eyes half-open when he let out an agonized groan and shuddered in my arms. The line of his throat, so exposed and vulnerable, transfixed me as he buried himself deep inside me and came.

With a sigh he eased down against me, tension slackening from his muscles. I found the energy to kiss his shoulder, savoring the salty residue left on my lips long minutes later when he pulled away and headed into the bathroom. I curled up on my side, tucked my arm under my pillow and watched him with heavy-lidded eyes.

Completely unselfconscious about his nudity, he stopped at the foot of my bed, hands on hips, and looked at me. Three floors down the front door slammed, and two voices, one deep, the other high-pitched and giggling rose up the stairwell and continued to an upper floor. The rush of a cab, then another, as traffic noise once again registered in my consciousness. I stared back, saw Luke as I might never see him again, aroused flush fading from his cheekbones and chest, dark hair dusted over the long lines of his body.

Silence stretched between us. I felt a little sad for the women who angled to go home with Luke and lost, because Lord, oh Lord, the way he listened was nothing compared to the way he understood a woman’s body. But I didn’t feel that sorry for them. They saw a VP at an investment bank, a bonus check and an apartment in Battery Park City. I saw Luke, and that seeing made this…what?

I didn’t have words for what this was. It wasn’t just sex, it was a union  , creating something less than two but more than one, something eternal yet ephemeral. Once again he’d left me speechless. But when he reached for his jeans I found the only word that mattered.

“Stay.”

A pause, then he dropped the jeans.

Just like that, I wasn’t alone in my bed.