Ashling went pale and her eyes shone bright as jewels. And then, as if seeing and recognizing something in Johnny’s expression, she said equally curtly, “No way. I told you—I don’t do relationships.”
Johnny smiled but it felt forced and hard. “Well, neither do I, darlin’. And I want you on that couch, naked, now.”
He was losing the ability to focus beyond the throbbing heat in his pants. Whatever this was, he needed her.
He was already taking his clothes off, and Ashling’s eyes widened. He stripped off completely.
“Well?”
Her gaze snapped up from where she’d been devouring his crotch area and she got out of her clothes so fast he almost laughed. And just like that, the anger he’d been feeling drained away. That sensation of light and fun caught him unawares for a moment.
He walked over and took her hand, tugging her toward the couch. He sat down and smoothed protection onto his erection, too hot to be embarrassed by the way his cock sat up straight, veins pulsing with want.
He looked up at her. She was licking her lips and he nearly spilled.
“Ash, no time for foreplay, I want to be buried so deep inside you, you can’t breathe. Now.”
She carefully straddled him, bracing herself with her hands on the couch behind him, and then lowered herself inch by torturous inch onto his cock, until the backs of her thighs met his and he was seated so deeply inside her he could have sworn he felt the beat of her heart.
And finally, as she began to move, something eased inside him and his mind blanked of anything but her and now. Whatever this was, he’d deal with it. Another time.
* * *
Ten days later
I looked at the figures in the ledger in front of me but they were blurring. I couldn’t focus. The truth was I’d told Johnny I needed to look at the books, but I just needed to get away from him for a moment. When he was near me I couldn’t think.
In the past week and a half since that cataclysmic and orgasmic midnight office-sex session, something had shifted between us. It was as if we were both just waiting for the moment one of us would look at the other and not have that same gut-wrenching need consume us.
But it wasn’t diminishing. It was getting stronger.
I’d been staying over at Johnny’s most nights. We’d have amazing hot, dirty, sweaty, earth-shattering sex, followed by a lazy morning session.
He’d come to the bar with me, either on the bike or in his car. And sometimes we’d have to go back into his apartment for more sex between brunch and coming to work. Fast and furious, just like that night in the office. As if we were dying of thirst in a desert.
I was becoming addicted to the journey over the Williamsburg Bridge, then onto the FDR by the river and into the Lower East Side to the bar. I felt like I’d never seen Manhattan before. It was all new and sparkling and full of infinite possibilities. I was practically seeing little cartoon birds twittering around me like Mary Fricking Poppins.
It was how I’d imagined feeling at the prospect of getting a new business off the ground and starting a new life. Not as a result of some guy I was fucking to get the urge out of my system.
Shit. Or as Johnny would say, shite.
Already I couldn’t imagine not being with him. I’d spent more time waking up next to him than I had with any another human being in my life. It was as if once we’d both agreed that we were in a no-relationship zone, we’d perversely started having a relationship of sorts. How screwed up was that?
In the past few days I’d caught Johnny looking at me thoughtfully a few times. Thoughtfully enough to make my pulse race, and not with desire. Something more like trepidation.
I heard a movement by the door and looked up to see the object of my thoughts leaning against the doorframe, arms folded, muscles bulging. My heart flip-flopped. Shit.
“Hey.”
I deliberately went for light and breezy, even though I felt slightly sick. “Hey yourself.”
He looked serious. “Ash, I think we need to talk...”
My stomach plummeted. Steve had said those words to me right before I?
?d seen an attractive woman holding a baby appear behind him. I joked shakily, “Isn’t that a woman’s line?” Evidently not in my world, a snarky voice pointed out.
Johnny came in and put his hands on the table and loomed over me, all dark and sexy and gorgeous. And just like that I could feel my recently sated body ache and yearn for him again. Aching for his cock to slide into me, that first delicious thrust, seating him so deep—