I shoved down my trousers and pulled out my cock, fisting it with my right hand as I sat down on the chair. With my eyes closed, I remembered vividly the weight of Audrey on my lap, remembered the pleasurable burn of her rubbing up and down along the imprisoned length of my hard-on. Remembered the press of her breasts against my chest, her nipples so taut they spiked through the layers of clothing between us. Remembered her mouth as it gave in to my wicked desire, my tongue caressing and schooling her at once. My lips memorizing her and debauching her.
My palm stroked angrily across the inflamed skin of my cock, faster and faster, punishing myself even as the pleasure built and built and built, like static on a balloon when rubbed against a headful of hair. Like stockinged feet, trudged across the carpet. Like too many plugs jammed into a wall socket, my orgasm surged through me with electrical shock. Cum spilled out over my fist as I tugged and tugged, past the point of comfort, until everything inside me had fallen in thick ropes across my bare stomach, dirty and filthy and obscene.
I sat for several minutes, staring at the mess I’d made, my hands shaking from the release as, little by little, the delirious flash of bliss dissolved into cold, hard reality.
I was alone. I would always be alone.
I’d learned the hard way that alone was the most sensible way to live.
There was no benefit of vulnerability. There was no “making love.” There was no reason to trust. Hearts were for pumping oxygen through the body. They didn’t break. They beat on.
Audrey had called me a liar when she’d suggested that I secretly believed in her religion of romance, but she was wrong.
I wasn’t a liar. I was a man who could no longer believe in the lie.
Four
Audrey
“He kissed you?”
Of course I told my sister.
I told her as soon as she walked through the door. Mostly, because I wanted to be sure it wouldn’t be a surprise if Dylan said anything to her, but also because I shared everything with Sabrina.
Well, almost everything. I never actually talked about sex with her, but that was because she had a barrier like a thirteen inch cement wall surrounding her when it came to the subject. Talking about sex made her tense and agitated. I’d decided that meant she was either asexual or into some weird stuff in the bedroom. Not that I’d knock her either way.
“More like I kissed him,” I said, since I’d initiated the whole thing. I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea about the situation. Because there had been absolutely nothing wrong about that kiss at all—except that it had been too short.
Just remembering the way Dylan’s mouth fit so perfectly against mine brought a swarm of butterflies to my tummy.
“You kissed my boss?” Sabrina seemed to be having a hard time wrapping her head around the fact. Obviously she was stuck on her own relationship with the man.
But I’d already thought about that.
I kicked off my shoes and pulled my knees underneath me on the couch. “Dylan is not actually your boss. He’s more like your boss’s equal, if you want to be technical.” And, to be fair, she herself was sleeping with a different man who was her boss’s equal. If there wasn’t an issue there, why would there be an issue with me?
She dropped her coat and purse on the back of the sofa and put a stern fist on her hip—one of the postures she took when she was assuming a motherly role with me. “If you want to be technical, he’s old enough to be your father.”
I rolled my eyes. “He is not. He’s just experienced and wise.” To be honest, I wasn’t actually sure of Dylan’s age.
“He’s twenty years older than you.”
Huh. I’d guessed more like fifteen. “Maybe I have a thing for dads.” I didn’t, I didn’t think, but I could. Could I? Was that the comfort I’d been unable to replicate with my previous boyfriends? “Don’t knock my kink. I don’t knock yours.” I was possibly more defensive than I needed to be.
Sabrina’s jaw slammed shut, and she got that tense, agitated way she did when sex conversations turned a spotlight on her.
So then she was definitely into some weird bedroom stuff. Interesting.
Finally, she sighed. “Fine. I won’t knock the age difference.” She came around to the front of the couch and sank down next to me. “I don’t actually care what you’re into anyway, as long as it’s consensual. I just don’t want you getting hurt. Dylan doesn’t seem into relationships. You get that, right? Not to mention that you live on entirely different continents.”
I had been defensive before, but now I was incensed. “It was just a kiss! God. I’m not planning to marry the guy.” I stretched my legs out in front of me and studied my toes so I didn’t have to look at her. She was being dramatic.
Even though it hadn’t been just a kiss.
It had been the best kiss. It had been grinding and thrusting and heavy petting. It had told me everything I needed to know about Dylan—that he was skilled and sensitive and seduceable. It had been the stars aligning, bringing a man who needed to be reminded to let his emotions loose together with me, a woman who needed practice getting physically loose.
But Sabrina was skeptical. “Just a kiss,” she repeated.
Did I mention she was being dramatic? Just because I’d fallen hard and fast for a few men that didn’t work out didn’t mean that I didn’t know how to protect myself. It didn’t mean that I wanted to change who I was, either. I was a girl who felt things. I knew who I was. I knew what I was made of—big emotions packed into a little body. And keeping all those feelings pent up in such a small space was impossible. I couldn’t stuff my passion into some dark corner of my soul the way Sabrina did. I lived from the heart. I loved with my entirety. I loved frequently and deeply, and if that meant I hurt sometimes—or a lot of times—so be it. My heartbreaks shaped me into who I was.
And I liked who I was.
All that being said, love wasn’t the reason I was drawn to Dylan. He was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up, a choice I almost couldn’t help but make. Opportunity knocked, but Fate had seemed to be at the door as well.
Seeing how the conversation had gone so far, though, I really didn’t think Sabrina was in a place to understand the whole truth.
I settled for partial honesty, peering up at her with a sigh. “I felt bad for the guy. All that doom and gloom. ‘Love’s dead. Grump, grump.’ He needed something nice for a change.”
She narrowed her gaze. “So you thought you’d kiss him and that would show him. Make him magically believe in hearts and romance again?”
“Shut up.” Now she was just being mean. Would she always think of me as the little girl she had to parent? She wasn’t my mother. And little girls grew up eventually.
I slumped in my seat and pouted. “You think I’m na?ve.”
She gave me a look that said she very much wanted to lecture me, but when she leaned toward me, it was just to kiss me on the head. “I think you’re amazing,” she said.
And I grinned at her. Not because she’d told me I was amazing—she was my sister; she was sort of obligated to think that—but because she was amazing. She’d basically been my mother since she was thirteen years old. I knew it took an effort for her to let me make my own choices, make my own mistakes. I was proud of her for fighting against her instincts.
Maybe her latest relationship was changing her for the good.
Which reminded me, she and I had parted this evening when she’d left with her “boyfriend,” and all we’d talked about since she’d gotten home was me.
I wasn’t amazing, after all.
I nudged her with my shoulder. “Hey. Tell me what happened with Donovan.”
We spent the next half an hour talking about her night and her kiss—seems I hadn’t been the only Lind girl to get some action from a Reach CEO. Then, after I’d convinced her to look on the bright side about her romantic situation, I said good night and slipped into her guest room.
It wasn’t even ten o’clock, still early, considering that I was used to staying up until two in the morning most nights with my graduate studies, but Sabrina had to work in the morning, and I didn’t want to be the reason she was dragging her feet come six a.m.