Corner Office Confessions

Heavy, drugging desire gathered low in Samuel’s groin. Even in his compromised state, it took everything in him not to wrest control of the pace and bury himself in her. “Yes.”

With fingers dug into his shoulders, Arlie lowered herself until their bodies met. Her succulent ass against the tops of his thighs.

“You’re so beautiful, Arlington Banks.” He wondered when the last time was someone told her that. Better not to know, actually. Though Kane Foods’ lawyers were East Coast sharks, they were unlikely to be able to get him out of murder charges.

Her eyes flicked away. A quick sidestep of the compliment.

“You are.” He lifted his hand to her cheek, guiding her gaze back to his. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”

As if to change the subject, Arlie’s hips began a slow, serpentine undulation, moving him inside her.

He let his hand trail from her cheek to the delicate shoreline of her jaw, down her throat and her chest until it found her breast. Brushing her nipple with the pad of his thumb, he felt her contract around him.

It was absolutely unbearable that he couldn’t experience her with every atom of his body. That he was held back from devouring her with both hands in addition to his eyes and his mouth.

She shifted, creating space to move her hips up and down his length, letting him slide almost entirely out of her before plunging down on him again. Their flesh met with a wet slap that made him want to break things.

Beginning with her control.

Releasing her nipple, he planted his hand against her tensed stomach, his thumb dipping down into her desire-dampened curls.

Her lips formed a round O of surprise as he teased the nub of flesh already made sensitive by his ministrations.

Her palms against his chest, Arlie leaned forward, their mouths fusing as she quickened her pace. He followed her lead, circling her clit more urgently as she lifted and dropped her pelvis, deepening the delicious friction between them.

Arlie broke their kiss, her lips hot and wet against his ear.

“I wanted you from the first time I saw you reading Peter Pan in your father’s library.” Her hot breath sent shivers flooding down his arm.

She was doing for him what he’d done for her. Telling him their story.

“I’ve measured every kiss against that night in the closet,” she said, punctuating the admission by tracing his earlobe with her tongue.

Desperate to send her over the edge before he lost himself entirely, Samuel gently pinched her clit. A thrill coursed through him as she gasped. Her torso jerked upward as her fingernails dug into his shoulders and she howled her pleasure.

The vision of her like that, head thrown back, lost in pure abandon, was enough to send Samuel spiraling into bliss. A dark, sweet pleasure wrung a cry from his chest. He surged beneath her, lifting them both.

As they eased back down into a stillness interrupted only by the soft sounds of their slowing breaths, Arlie lifted herself off him and gently burrowed against his uninjured side. Her leg thrown over his thigh, the small shell of her ear pressed against his chest, her hand banded around his opposite hip.

In all his years, he’d never experienced anything like this. A woman who fit herself around him with a perfection that denied explanation. Many clichéd metaphors came to mind, most of them involving puzzle pieces, but he rejected them.

“You should have asked me to prom,” she said in the sleepy contented cat voice he had already grown to adore.

“I wish I had.” He meant it. A long-time student of the butterfly effect, he couldn’t help but wonder exactly how their lives would have been different if he could go back and change this one small thing.

“Did you know,” she asked, a grin audible in her voice, “that Mason never really had a thing for me?”

An arc of fear punctured the thick of haze of Samuel’s pleasure.

“What?” he asked.

“He told me earlier today while we were working on setting up the booth.” Her index finger made a solitary voyage up his rib cage, tracing the edge of his sling. “The only reason he ever chased me was because he knew you were too shy to come after me yourself. He thought that, seeing as you mostly disliked him, the prospect of seeing us together might push you to make a move. I guess it finally worked.”

Inexplicably, the lights in the room dimmed. Samuel’s breath became shallow and quick as his heartbeat accelerated. There was no universe in which this had existed as a possibility in his mind.

That all those years ago, Mason had actually been trying to help him.

All this time, he’d been eaten hollow by his resentment for his own brother.

Driven to work that much harder in hopes their father would finally notice.

In his relentless pursuit to earn what Mason had always been freely given, Samuel had become the very thing he’d hated.

A man blinded by his own grudges.