I hook my fingers into the waistband of her yoga pants and pull them down, dropping to my knees to bury my face in the front of her panties before yanking them down over her hips to join the pants on the floor. She gasps when I follow suit with the tank top and then her bra, pressing her now naked back up against the cool surface of the wall one more time before I scoop her into my arms and stride across the apartment to her bedroom.
She’s already panting when I lay her down on the bed, and she immediately goes to her hands and knees. My clothes are off in seconds and I climb on the bed behind her, the mattress caving from my weight, running my hands down the backs of her thighs, my cock ready to burst.
I’m dying to be buried deeply inside her, dying to be close to her, and Carolyn encourages me, sticking her ass out toward me and swaying her hips from side to side, inviting me in.
I don’t refuse.
I plunge into her in one swell movement, burying myself in her to the hilt. She’s soaking, ready, and holds herself steady until I bottom out and she bites back a cry. It’s so filled with pleasure, and something else I can’t name, that it sends me into a frenzy, fucking her so hard she has to brace herself against the comforter.
She only gets wetter, and at some point what she’s saying, over and over, becomes clear. “Yes…yes…yes….”
So I wasn’t the only one.
I fuck her until I’m right on the edge, and just before I go over, I reach around and find her clit with my fingers, bringing her over with me, both of us tumbling into a dark explosion of pleasure, and then sweet oblivion.
When I wake up, light is cascading into the room, but Carolyn is deep asleep, her mouth slightly open, and my heart is pounding.
This is my chance to find out what she’s hiding from me, if anything.
It makes my gut clench, to sneak around in her home like this, but if I’m going to maintain any semblance of control over this situation, I have to know.
I get out of the bed as carefully as I can and stand perfectly still, waiting to see if she’ll stir.
She doesn’t, and I take the opportunity to put my boxers back on. Doing this naked seems ridiculous.
For cover, I grab my own phone. I can always pretend to be making a call.
Then I go out to the living room, where she keeps her laptop.
I hesitate before I open the cover. This is fucking wrong. Maybe the Ace Kingsley of the past who didn’t give a shit about what women thought might not have any qualms about this, but I do.
I open the cover of the laptop anyway.
It’s password-protected, the empty box hovering next to a stylized image of a blue flower.
My muscles go weak.
I have no idea what the password is, but now I’m halfway off the hook.
The second thing I want to see: her phone.
She had it in her hand when I came in. What did she do with it?
Yes—she shoved it into her purse. I can’t remember when.
I slide it out of the bag with trembling hands. Unlike the computer, it has no password.
I scroll through recent messages, not clicking on any of them—somehow that crosses the line to me—and none of them seem to mention my name. I’m just going to look at recent calls.
There are several going to a contact marked as her boutique, but several that aren’t…and I recognize the numbers as international ones. From Italy.
My heart starts to pound.
What the hell is she up to?
There’s a stirring from the bedroom, and I swipe open the camera on my phone, take a picture of the call list, and dump the phone back into her purse.
Jesus Christ.
Then I go quickly to the couch and drop into it, pretending to thumb through my phone.
It’s not thirty seconds later that Carolyn appears in the bedroom doorway, hair a mess, face still pink from sleep. My heart tears in two.
Chapter 31
Carolyn
I reach for Ace, the gentle afternoon light filtering in through my eyelids, but he’s not there. I still feel half-drunk on the hot fuck that just happened—there’s no other way to describe it—but the cool, empty sheets put a damper on the warm buzz that I felt when I woke up.
Where is he?
I push myself up onto my elbows and peer over the foot of the bed. I can see one of the sleeves of his shirt from here, which means he hasn’t gone home, unless he left in a hurry and didn’t think about clothing.
Damn, he’s good.
I run a hand through my hair. I can feel how messed up it is, but I doubt he’ll care.
I just want him to get back in bed with me.
My heart picks up the pace a little, but I dismiss the tingling in my fingers. Why should I be nervous about the phone call I made just before Ace showed up? If he had a problem with it, he’d have said something. There’s no way he would have come in and pressed me up against the wall if he suspected that I’d just hired a private investigator in Italy seconds before he knocked on the door.
There’s just no way.
Right?
My shoulders start to tense up, but the memory of Ace’s hands on my back, on my ass, on the rest of my body, sends a flood of calm through me. It ends with a spark of need. I want more of him, and I want more of him right now.