YesYesYes, I think as his tongue, firm and agile, wraps around my fingertips, making every part of my center pulse. But I can’t bring myself to give him the satisfaction. Yet. “Never,” I say.
“Say it,” he says, kissing my knees bent over the desk, my legs dangling uselessly, tense like every other muscle, but somehow also liquid, contracted but weak from his touch. “I know you want more of this.” He licks my groin muscles along my panties, first the left and then the right, long and slow, and the nearness of his face to my wetness makes my clit feels like it’s going to explode. “But only if you follow my rules.”
After leaving England, I promised myself that I only follow my own rules now.
But that was before tonight. Before I met Ryder. And his tongue.
“You’re in charge,” I whisper.
“Louder,” he says, grazing my opening with his fingers, grinning at me like someone who has a secret.
Of course, what he has is no secret. What he has is me.
“You’re in charge, you asshole,” I say.
“That’s more like it,” he says. “That’s what I like about you, Cassie. Never afraid to speak your mind. Though if I were such an asshole, I wouldn’t do this, now would I?” He rolls my panties down my hips, past my knees, nuzzling his head between my thighs, and with the tip of his tongue, he draws circles against my slick *, smaller and smaller and smaller until he is batting my clit quickly, forcefully, hungrily.
I clutch Ryder’s soft hair, my legs tensing around his head as I get closer and closer to coming.
“Oh my God,” I pant, my nails digging into his scalp. “Ryder. Please—”
He doesn’t let up for a second, just groans into me as he licks and sucks even harder, and I can feel the vibrations every place that his mouth touches. I gasp for breath, loudly, and hearing my response he groans again, drawing it out, knowing exactly what he’s doing to me, unrelenting, and I feel it so deep, the sweet pressure building faster and higher, and then I’m stifling a scream—
OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod
Ryder reaches up and covers my mouth with his hand, so when I come calling his name, biting that hand, the sound is muffled within the quiet office.
Every muscle, every fiber, every cell release, and my insides feel like a never-ending meteor shower, a million watts of energy. I try to catch my breath. My whole body is limp, wrung out, spent.
What the fuck just happened?
I don’t know. But the way I feel, like I’m floating on the surface of a deep, warm pool, I kind of want it to keep happening.
Ryder stands and kisses the corners of my mouth, one and then the other, and I grab ahold of his hips, pulling myself closer to him. I untuck his shirt and bend forward to kiss the ridge of his V-muscle as I blindly try to undo his zipper, which seems barely to be holding up against the firmness between his legs.
“Hey, Ryde?” Jackson’s voice from outside interrupts us, breaks the spell of Ryder’s body in my hands. A rap on the door, the creak of its opening, a couple clacks of Jackson’s fancy loafers on the hardwood—it all must take just a few seconds, but it feels like it’s slow motion, like when a monster walks into a really nice dream and you realize now you’re in a nightmare.
It’s Jackson’s office, too, I guess, but would it kill him to wait for a Come in?
“Hang on, dude, hang on,” Ryder says, pushing down his erection as he tucks in his shirt. He throws me my jeans, and I scramble to get them on, hopping around on one foot and then the other in the dark, falling into a stack of boxes full of accounting files in the corner, my post-orgasm legs not quite returned to full strength. “Give us a sec.”
“Oh, shit, sorry,” Jackson says, swiveling his head away from us, as it dawns on him, I imagine, that we weren’t just doing some late-night number crunching in here. “I didn’t know anyone else...” He trails off as he turns to leave, his hand on the knob to pull it behind him, and still putting on one of my shoes, I scurry out into the hallway before he shuts it, not looking at him, not looking back at Ryder.
What the fuck did I just do with my boss?
I think about that question the rest of the night as I serve drink specials and plates of tuna tartare like everything’s normal and avoid Ryder like it’s part of the job.
I never do come up with a good answer.
CASSIE
CH. 11
What the hell have I done?
The thought wakes me up this morning, followed by, or maybe simultaneous to, the memory of Ryder kissing me—and more than kissing me—last night. I lie in bed on my back, the covers pulled up to my chin, as though leaving just my head exposed to the world is somehow going to attract information to my brain.
Sunlight gleams through the curtains in my bedroom. It looks like another beautiful summer day in the South. I wonder what Ryder’s doing right now?
My hand drifts over my belly, tucks under the waistband of my pajama pants.
No. I push the thought, and my hand, away. I will not fantasize about him. I will not think about him. I will not imagine what might have happened with him if Jackson hadn’t barged in.