“I want it any way you give it to me.” Because I’m desperate to take my mind off the thoughts that made it too difficult for me to fall asleep when I climbed into bed. I hadn’t warned him I was coming. I had simply gotten in my car and drove, blasting the same rock station he listened to whenever we were together. I hadn’t even bothered to change out of my night shorts and oversized tee shirt. “Don’t talk, Jace. Just … fuck me.”
He takes my face in his hands, fanning his thumbs over the outline of my cheekbones. “What happened, Lucy?”
“Nothing,” I whisper.
“Lucy, I think we should—”
“Please don’t talk.” My voice sounds desperate, and I’m sure my eyes mirror the emotion. When he draws away from me, he’s out of breath, but then he gives me an angry nod. Doing away with his boxers and kicking them into a corner, he hoists me up, positioning my legs on either side of his bronze body. The air floats from my lungs as he pins me against the wall by his front door, and I swallow a gasp.
He doesn’t apologize. Doesn’t say a thing. Instead, he shoves the center of my skimpy shorts to the side, rubs the head of his cock over my slick flesh, and drives into me with a force that rips the breath out of my body all over again. When I start to talk, to apologize, he cuts me off with a bruising kiss that makes my sex tighten and pulse around his cock. He sucks in a harsh exhale and grips the outsides of my thighs, picking up speed.
“No, you don’t fucking speak, Williams.”
So, I don’t. The only sound that falls from my lips are whimpers of pain intermingled with the sweet buzz of pleasure. I hold on to him, my fingernails raking over the tattoos on his chest and my head banging against the blue-gray wall behind me, as he takes me like this is the last time we’ll ever do this. After I come, he pulls out of me without a word, and I sink to my knees in front of him. My climax is still zinging through me, shaking me to my core, but I want more of him.
I need it.
The moan that breaks his silence when I wrap my fingers tightly around his shaft and stare up at him from beneath my lashes is the best thing I’ve heard all night. And when my mouth is full of him a moment later, and he gathers a fistful of my hair, I peak again at the tremulous way he whispers my name.
“Stay the night,” he orders long after we’re done and I’m sitting across from him on the foyer floor.
I take a moment to catch my breath, then I shake my head. “I can’t, I—”
“Then at least tell me what the fuck is wrong. You show up here telling me to shut up, let me fuck you raw, suck me off until I can’t stand up straight, and now you can’t even stay?” His blue eyes are hard as they take me in, and my breath catches when he moves across the narrow space to sit right beside me. He smells like a mixture of his cologne, my amber-scented perfume, and sex, and my mouth goes dry in anticipation of more.
“I had a rough night,” I admit.
He groans, dragging one large hand through his hair and over his face where he rests it over his mouth. “You shouldn’t tell me that. I’ve been known to be a bit of a tosser, and I might make your work environment a living hell just to get a repeat of that.” When I don’t crack a smile, his expression sobers, and he squeezes the inside of my thigh. “What happened, Williams?”
I consider evading his question, but then I release a harsh, painful breath, and I let everything out. It’s like the afternoon I revealed the truth about Tom’s relationship with Shane, but tonight, I detail my ex-husband’s visit and what had happened with my mother. I tell him how Mom had left shortly after I tried to speak to her, and how she hadn’t said a word to me when she returned home a couple of hours later.
I tell him that it hurts.
I don’t realize I’m pressing my palm to my chest until he pulls my hand into his and kisses the inside of my wrist. In one swift motion, he pulls me on top of him, and I drop my forehead to his, blanketing our faces with my black hair. “Are you embarrassed of what you do?” he asks after a beat passes. “Of working with me?”
Without hesitating, I shake my head. “I’m embarrassed that I was too chicken to tell my mother, that I let Tom get me into this mess, but I’m not embarrassed of working with you. You gave me a chance when nobody else would, I appreciate that. And there’s nothing—nothing—I would do to jeopardize that.”
Though I won’t say the words aloud, he must know what I’m saying. That I won’t let my feelings for him, my desire for him, ruin the work I do for EXtreme. I can’t because I’ve assured him all along that I can handle the intimacy.
“I understand, but I think you need to fix things with your mother.” He sifts his fingers through my hair, brushing the ends of my locks between his thumb and forefinger. He does this for a long time before he finally clears his throat. “When we were broke, and the chemo was killing my mum because she couldn’t take what it was doing to her body, I was angry with her for a long time because I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t ask for help. She died knowing I felt like that.” It’s the first time he’s directly mentioned his mother, and I swallow hard at the sharp pang that twists my chest.
“I’m sorry, Jace,” I whisper, but he shrugs it off.
“I don’t have many regrets but that’s one of them. I spent the year after she died homeless, bouncing around and living with neighbors and friends. Gwen’s dad, my uncle, finally found out what was going on and brought me to America. He took me in and gave me some sense of normal. It wasn’t the same, though. Didn’t feel like family. You know, it’s why…” He leans back from me, and I bite down on the inside of my cheek at the ghost of a smile lingering on his full lips. “It’s why there’s that pesky two-year difference between you and I.”
“I haven’t brought that up since our interview,” I say over the lump that’s taken residence in the back of my throat. I still feel pathetic for pointing out that, while I had graduated at seventeen thanks to skipping a grade in elementary school, he was nineteen when he graduated. Supposedly, he missed so much school his seventh year in England that he had no other choice but repeat the grade when he moved to the states.
"Didn't feel like going to school last year, so I fucking didn't," he'd once told a group of girls congregated around him at lunch, explaining why he was fourteen to everyone else's thirteen and my twelve. His flippant excuse only did wonders for his reputation.
Now that I know the real reason he’d repeated that year, my chest clenches and I feel so small for scoffing at his excuse.
My father died of cancer. Though I was lucky enough to have more time with him than Jace had gotten with his mother, my heart still breaks every time I pass the photo of us at my graduation from Brown. I open my mouth, a harsh sound whooshing from my lungs, but Jace shakes his head.
“Don’t say it, love.”