Dating You / Hating You
Page 58

“Okay,” she says, her gaze falling to my lips. “Do you want to avoid discussing it and have sex again?”
I move until I’m hovering over her, marveling at how much of her body I can cover with mine. I look down between us, to where her legs bracket my hips. I rock forward, experimentally, and feel the way I easily slip across her skin, smooth and already wet.
She groans softly and I know that sound. I remember the way it echoed around the room.
Her hands move along my sides, nails dragging up my ribs and across my nipples to my shoulders. With a hand on the back of my neck she pulls me down and then there’s nothing between us at all, not even air.
For a moment I think we could come from this, two bodies moving against each other at just the right speed, in just the right spot, like we did that night in her apartment. But that’s not what I want.
Evie must be on the same page because her arm is already stretched to the side, fingers fumbling with the strip of gift shop condoms I tossed there at some point during the night.
My eyes nearly cross when she rolls the latex over me, and I give her a reproachful look, batting her hand away. There’s no waiting after that. The sheet comes up and over our heads, a tent of white. My heart is racing and she rolls us over to straddle my hips, taking me inside and moving in tiny little starts and stops until she figures it out, gets where she really needs to be.
Her palms press into my chest as she shifts forward and back, over and over, and it feels so good I put my hands on her hips to distract myself, line up my thumbs with the gentle contours of her navel. I thrust up and into her, harder and then harder still, and her mouth falls open, the headboard tapping near the wall, the springs creaking beneath us. Her eyes are closed, mouth partially open, and I wonder why we waited so fucking long for this, how we managed to let everything else get in the way, because this—fuck—nothing compares to this.
She rolls her hips again, a tight little circle, and swears, her fingers moving between her legs in a practiced motion.
“You gonna fuck me?” I ask her in a whisper, mouth watering at the way her nipples harden further.
Her response is wordless, a soft little gasp that gets lost against my own sounds when she comes down harder, takes more of me inside. All I can do is watch her, nodding in time with her movements and feeling the muscles in my stomach tighten, the pressure build.
Her hair is damp against her forehead and where it curls along the curve of her breast and I think she’s almost there, too, her movements getting choppy, rhythm frantic.
“Yeah?” I say, placing my fingers next to hers and circling.
“Tha—” she starts to say back when there’s a pounding at her door, followed by a frantic scratching.
Our eyes meet, bodies immediately frozen, neither of us breathing. “Oh my God! Did I dead-bolt the door last night?” she whisper-hisses. “Housekeeping could—”
But it’s not housekeeping, it’s about a million times worse, because following another knock, and some more scratching, is Brad’s voice.
Brad, our boss, on the other side of the door.
“Evie?” he calls, and knocks again.
I’ve never moved so fast in my life. It’s a flurry of arms and legs, sheets and pillows. Evie jumps into a T-shirt and a pair of sweats at a speed that couldn’t possibly be human. Meanwhile I’m naked, wearing a condom, and still pretty hard when she starts herding me in the direction of the closet.
“One second!” she calls, and then whispers, “I’ll get rid of him. Stay in here and don’t move.” Her face is flushed, cheeks rosy with a light sheen of sweat, and there’s no way he won’t know what she’s been doing.
I hold up my hand to object and she closes the door, shutting me inside. Shit.
I can’t see anything but a strip of light down the center, and okay, that’s mildly terrifying, but I’m an optimist so I’m going to see it less as this is where Brad could see me standing naked and still wearing a condom, and more as this is where all the oxygen is coming in.
They say when one sense is taken away, all the rest of them are heightened. It must be true because not only can I smell Evie’s perfume when she sprays it lightly in the bedroom—good call, by the way—but I can hear her footsteps as she crosses to the door, then the sound of the lock disengaging, and can almost sense the moment that Brad is there, less than four feet from where I’m hiding.
“Brad, hi.” Evie clears her throat. “Sorry, I was getting dressed. It’s—” There’s a pause and I imagine her checking her watch and giving him her best passive-aggressive smile. “Wow, it’s not even seven. What can I do for you?”
There’s some sort of scuffle and then Brad is yelling. “Bear, get back out here.”
“You brought your dog?” Evie says, and I stifle a groan. Brad has a Great Dane that is basically the size of a horse, and if he’s managed to escape from Brad and into the room, who knows what he’ll find. Namely, me. I’m briefly overwhelmed with the mental image of him easily barreling through these cheap veneer doors and dragging my naked ass out into the room.
“Maxine drove him up last night. Bear,” he yells again, but it sounds half-assed at best. “He’ll be fine,” he says more quietly to Evie, “just sniffing around. Now, I wanted to ask you about the schedule today. What have you planned?”
I can vaguely hear Evie rattling off the itinerary, and while I want to be furious at the way he’s talking to her, there’s a more pressing matter. Bear has obviously figured out that something about this closet isn’t on the up-and-up, and he’s sniffing around, his nose and dark eyes clogging up my oxygen crack.
I’m silently trying to will Bear away when he finds something more interesting and wanders off. Without the cloud of dog breath and sounds of his panting echoing around the closet, I can finally make out parts of the conversation again.
“And I guess I’m not really sure why you’re asking me?” Evie is saying. “The event planner put most of the schedule together; we just okayed it all and picked between the steak and the fish. I have to be honest”—a pause—“Brad, what is he doing? He’s in the trash.”
“Bear, get out of there!” Brad shouts, and claps his hands. “What are you eating?” By the tinkling of his collar, I think Bear has run back to Brad, and he continues.
“I also wanted to talk to you about your assistant,” he says.
“Jess?”
“Why are you having her email Kylie about vendors? Kylie doesn’t have time for things like that, and frankly, neither do you.”
“I was having her verify some of the—”
“You seem to forget I’m the coach here and I set the plays. Send all the invoices and receipts to Kylie to handle, where I’m assuming they were headed in the first place. I put you in charge of this event and that’s what you should be worrying about. Not—”
“Carter,” she interrupts, and I stop breathing. Whatever flagging erection I still had is no longer an issue.
“You put me and Carter in charge of this event, and yet I’m the only one you seem to be holding accountable. And you do realize none of this is anywhere in my job description.”
There’s a long pause and I’m afraid to move, afraid to blink, wondering whether my hammering pulse is actually audible outside the closet.