After Hours Read online

  He sank back on the couch and released her hands. Some part of her knew she was free, but that part wasn’t what controlled her feet. She remained rooted in place, frozen by anticipation, trapped by a hunger she didn’t fully understand.

  Brendan moved his hands beneath the hem of her T-shirt. She held her breath, waiting for his next move. “Do you mean where I go down on my knees and bury my face between your breasts?” His hands slid up over the lace of the teddy, pushing up her T-shirt in the process. She sucked in a shallow gasp as his fingers connected with the puckered tips of her breasts. “Where I suck on your nipples until they’re so hard they hurt with it?” He bent forward and settled his lips on the thin lace that covered her breasts. He nipped into its softness with his warm, wet mouth and swirled his tongue in lazy circles.

  Lust crashed through her with that intimate caress. Her clit tingled. She squirmed against his tongue and bit back a cry.

  “Where I go even farther down and slide my tongue deep into the heart of you?” He pulled back. She whimpered with the need to feel his strong tongue buried inside her, licking at her pussy, setting free her wild side once and for all.

  He didn’t follow up his words with his mouth. Instead he tipped his head back and looked up at her while he cupped her in his hand. He rocked his palm against her sex through the worn softness of her jeans. Cream dripped from her inner thighs. The pressure was just enough to make Jillian want to scream.

  “Is that the kind of sleep you mean, sweetheart?”

  “Y—yes.” She was aware of the desperation in her voice, of the fact that she was giving him the control and in doing so trusting him with much more than her body. She should stop him, but she didn’t want to. She wanted only to feel, to allow the ravenous lust that charged through her to be freed. To allow him into her life and her secrets completely.

  “So you agreed to this simply because you want to fuck me?”

  The directness of his words broke through her forbidden longing. She blinked but didn’t recoil. The words were a reminder: He wasn’t here to share her secrets, only her body. Her body that burned for him. The sensitive folds of her cunt were afire.

  Giving him the control hadn’t been the plan, but so far it was nothing to fear. So long as they kept things impersonal, everything would be fine. “Yes. That’s why. The only reason.”

  Demand flashed in Brendan’s eyes and he stilled his hand. “Say it, Jilly. If you’re bold enough to want it, you’re bold enough to speak the words.”

  He was right. She was. And saying it just kept this thing all the more remote. “I—I want to fuck you.”

  “You don’t talk that way very often do you, sweetheart?” Smiling up at her, he lifted his hand from between her legs. He turned her and pulled her down on his lap. His cock cradled against the seam of her bottom and she jerked up out of instinct. He wrapped an arm around her waist and tugged her back down, holding her too tightly for escape.

  The beat of Jillian’s heart thudded between her ears with his controlling grasp and she fought against a wave of anxiety. This wasn’t what she’d classify as personal. It was what she’d call intense. Too intense. Too much of him and not her. This was something to fear.

  She turned and met his eyes with the intention of demanding he let her go. The depth of longing in his dark gaze stilled the words on her tongue.

  His hand came up to rub the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. Her panic passed with that tender caress. There was no malice in his expression, no desire to exploit her in any way, just need. The same desperate, hungry need she knew.

  “It’s hot when you talk dirty, Jilly,” he rasped. “Everything’s hot about this mouth of yours. I love how full your lips are, how wide. How even when you wear those ugly-ass suits and pull your hair back in a knot, these lips still give away your sensual nature. I’ve been thinking about them all week, about tasting them again, about feeling them running over my skin. I’m tired of thinking. I’m ready for action.”

  Brendan’s thumb left her lip. Through the building haze of need he’d rendered with his look and the truth that seemed to fill his words, she was conscious of him scooping her into his arms and standing.

  “Down the hall,” she uttered before he could ask where the bedroom was. “Hurry.”

  He followed her direction, then stopped outside the bedroom door and glanced back.

  Jillian’s pounding heart came to a standstill. Why was he stopping? He couldn’t mean to change his mind, not when it was clear to them both how much they wanted this to happen. Or had she been wrong about him? Was his needful look and tone an act? Had he made her ache for him and believe he ached for her, too, as a way of paying her back for running out on him last weekend?

  “What?” she demanded when he remained motionless.

  “Have you fed Ginger yet?”

  Ginger? What did her dog have to do with this? “No. She doesn’t eat till ten thirty. She’s fine in the other room by herself. Just don’t…” Stop. Only, she couldn’t say it. If she’d been wrong about his look, his want, it would only give him all that much more ammunition with which to make a fool out of her.

  “I’m sure she is and I’m sure she likes her schedule, but tonight she’s not going to follow it.” Brendan settled her back on her feet and brushed a quick kiss over her lips. It was reassuring in that it made her believe he’d been sincere and had no intention of leaving her, and frustrating in that it only added fuel to a fire that already threatened to burn beyond management’s sake. “Go feed her and let her do her doggy business. Once we get started, neither of us is leaving the bedroom until we’re finished.”

  Brendan never would have guessed that the dog responsible for making Jilly leave him last weekend would be the same one bringing him a moment of much needed thinking time now.

  What the fuck was going on with Jilly?

  He couldn’t read her well, but he still thought he knew the way she’d behave tonight. Like a dominator. A control freak. A woman who would never completely succumb to a man’s will, particularly one she was determined to best professionally.

  True, he’d made her agree to give him the power, but he’d thought that would be all the more reason for her not to want to give in. She had put up a fight. A very small fight that lasted a few brief seconds and then faded to…what?

  What was the word for the way she’d given into him? Not subservience. That involved a second party who was in control. The truth was, as much as she might believe it, he wasn’t in control of the situation. The way she responded to his teasing words, to his subtle strokes, to the heat he knew was apparent in his eyes, made him want to give into her, as well. It made him want to know more, to ask questions about her that had nothing to do with sex and not even with work.

  Brendan wasn’t asking any damned questions. He couldn’t.

  He’d spent this past weekend in his hometown of Chicago avoiding people by the droves—women, the press, his father. All those who wanted something from him, be it his body or his time or his plans for the future. People who made him realize how much he valued the freedom his moving had rendered.

  He wouldn’t jeopardize that freedom because of something he thought he’d felt when Jilly looked upon him with need in her eyes. That’s all it had been. Need. Of the physical kind. For whatever reason, she too valued freedom, so it would be asinine to believe it could have been anything else.

  Jilly appeared in the bedroom doorway and Brendan pushed away his thoughts so he could concentrate on her clothing. She had entirely too much on. If this thing between them was about feelings, he would take great pleasure in slowly removing each article. But this wasn’t about feelings and he wanted her naked now before his mind could conjure up thoughts to the contrary.

  Sending her a wolfish smile, he patted the mattress next to his thigh. “C’mere, sweetheart.”

  She bit her lip and started over. “Sorry it took me so long. Ginger’s not used to going out this time of night.”

  Gi
nger might not be used to it, but he had a good feeling the dog wasn’t what had Jilly nibbling on her lip. She looked worried, as if she was having regrets. She couldn’t. They needed to do this. He needed to flush her from his mind. Time hadn’t worked, sex had to. The most it had ever taken in the past to get bored with a woman and want her out of his bed was three rounds. Hopefully with Jilly it would take only one.

  “Her schedule, right. I hope she’ll be able to forgive me for changing it. I hope you’ll be able to forgive me, too.”

  Jilly reached the bed. Brendan caught her hand and tugged her down on the mattress. He pushed her back, straddling her hips while he took her mouth in a hot, wet kiss. Fast was the solution. Fast and frantic allowed no time to think. No time to get too involved. Fast was good.

  Only, she wasn’t responding fast. Her lips had parted for him, but otherwise were still. Her hands were fisted at his sides.

  Regret. The word filled his head. Damnit, she couldn’t have regrets. He had to make her see that they needed this one time.

  Determined to get her response, to evoke the passionate woman she’d become every other time they’d touched, he stroked her tongue with his. He moved his hands along her sides and caressed the shallow dips at her waist, slid them lower to mold the rounded shape of her hips.

  Finally she came alive, licking at his tongue, eating at his mouth with a relish that was too frantic to ignore. This was supposed to be fast, mindless, but suddenly Brendan wanted to go slow, to savor. Releasing her hips, he buried his fingers in the silky waves of honey-blond hair she routinely punished into submission. The weight of it sliding through his hands was intoxicating, as was the sweetness of her mouth.

  Too sweet. Too much.

  Jilly murmured against his lips and shifted beneath him. The hard ridge of her pelvis scraped against his dick. Raw desire jolted through his system.

  He grunted and released her lips, aware of how wrong a direction the kiss was leading his mind. He couldn’t think about this. He had to play it cool. Had to be the careless bad boy Jilly expected him to be. The one he’d been with every other woman he’d taken to bed.

  He rose up on an elbow and forced casualness into his tone. “So, do you forgive me?”

  Her pupils were dark, dilated. Her expression one of mixed demand and euphoria. She was the reckless, wild woman she’d been when they’d first entered his hotel suite the previous weekend. And that’s exactly what he needed her to be.

  “Yes,” she breathed, “but I’ll change my mind if you don’t stop with the damned taunting and fuck me already.”

  Brendan chuckled at her impatience and the way she could change character in the blink of an eye. Then he pushed the thought from his mind—and her T-shirt up and over the swell of her breasts. The dusky pink shade of her nipples contrasted exquisitely against the white of the teddy. He brushed his hands over her breasts. The peaks strained against the lace, arching upward to meet his thumbs. His cock twitched while his mouth salivated for a taste. One more taste couldn’t hurt anything.

  Jilly moaned. He forced himself not to look up. If he saw the passion alive in her expressive eyes, it was sure to get his mind roaming again. He moved his hands to her jeans and tugged at the zipper, drew a nipple into his mouth through the lace.

  He bit down on the aroused tip. With a throaty cry, she bowed up and gathered his back in her hands. Aware he was breaking his one-more-taste vow, he moved to the other nipple. He kneaded the erect flesh between his lips, suckling through the lace while his hands liberated her hips of her jeans. He worked his way down, tugging her pants lower on her thighs. Finally he reached the one area he’d yet to see of her.

  He’d experienced the intensity of her pussy contracting around his fingers and letting loose her juices as she came. He’d never had her totally naked. She wasn’t naked now, either, but the lace at her mound was so translucent with its wetness that he could easily see the dark blond thatch of curls that covered her opening.

  The heady scent of her arousal filtered through his senses, obliterating his thoughts to avoid any area above her neck. As he pulled her jeans the remainder of the way down and tossed them aside, his attention went to her face.

  The slight part of her pouty red lips, the flush of her face, the awareness in her dark eyes all called out to him, made him ache to say words he had no right saying.

  Before he could voice them, he placed his hands on her thighs and pushed her knees up, her legs apart. Moving the damp material that covered her slit aside, he parted her curls to reveal the delicacy beneath. He shouldn’t allow another single taste, and yet he had to. Just one more sample.

  He bent his head and brushed his stubbled chin against the swollen, pink flesh of her cunt, then plunged his tongue deep and met with a salty-sweet nirvana that had his cock throbbing with the urge to explode.

  Jilly’s hands clamped tighter on his back, her short nails nipping inward. Her hips bucked up, pressing at his face. “Oh, God…you don’t have to do that!”

  He didn’t have to and he shouldn’t be, but, Christ, he wanted to, if only for a few more seconds. He licked at her cream slickened core, sank his tongue deep into her center, then allowed himself one tug at her clit before lifting his head and grabbing the crotch of the teddy in his hand.

  He held tight to the damp material so that the wet lace clung together. He rubbed the lace back and forth over the swollen lips of her pussy, grinding it with purposeful pressure, and was rewarded with a shout of ecstasy as she arched up off the bed.

  She looked at him through wide eyes. “What are you doing?”

  “You like it, don’t you? Yeah, I can see how much you do, smell it in the air. You’re so wet, Jilly, so fucking hot right now you want to come, but you’re afraid to give in. Don’t be scared. Give in to the sensation.”

  “I’m not scared!”

  The way she shouted the words, it sounded as if she’d used the same defense in the past. Brendan couldn’t afford to wonder over that. Only on purging her from his mind. He concentrated his efforts on grinding the lace over her aroused flesh, pulling it tightly against the lips of her cunt, chafing her most sensitive spots and making her completely helpless, in the hopes she’d come to hate him for it. “Good, because this is how it’s going to be between us, Jilly. I will always be in control. I will always be the one with the power. If you don’t like it that way, all you have to do is tell to me leave and I will.”

  She opened her mouth. The air lodged in his throat with the idea she would do exactly as he’d suggested. He wanted her to, needed her to, but he hoped to hell she didn’t.

  Her mouth remained open, as if she was trying to speak. No words made it out before her body gave in to the play of his fingers. Her limbs drew tight and her eyes slammed closed. She reopened them instantly, as if remembering he preferred them that way. Against his better judgment, he watched the myriad of expressions play out on her face, the hedonistic thrill of orgasm exploding in her eyes, and just managed to hold on to his own need to let go as she came with a scream.

  Jillian closed her eyes and savored the force of her release. She could never make herself come like that, with a vibrator or otherwise. No man had ever come close. But then, no man had ever tried to make her climax in such a way. She felt boneless, like she was nothing more than a puddle of melted flesh, like she couldn’t open her eyes if she had to.

  Brendan’s weight lifted from the bed and her eyes snapped open, disproving her last thought. “Where are you going?”

  She bit her tongue at the automatic question. He’d done his duty, he was free to go. Only, she didn’t want him to leave. She wanted to feel the heat of his skin beneath her hands, the hardness of his muscles. Wanted to experience the sensation of climaxing with a man buried deeply inside her just once this decade. She wanted that experience to be with this man. Between the professional issues between them and the reputation he claimed where women were concerned, he was the last person she should be so attracted to, to feel p
ulled to on a level beyond the physical, and yet she did, had from the moment they’d met.

  He turned back to her and tugged his shirt over his head. “Nowhere. I just thought this might work better if I was naked.”

  She barely heard his response as she took in the wisps of dark hair that covered his tanned chest. Renewed warmth coiled in her belly and fresh wetness seeped between her thighs. He wasn’t overly muscular, but he wasn’t out of shape either. His body was lean and hard in all the right places.

  All the right places, Jillian realized when he moved his jeans and boxers down his legs, then straightened to reveal the length and thickness of his jutting erection. His cock jerked under her perusal, pre-cum gathering on the dark head. Her pussy pulsed eagerly in response.

  Brendan retrieved a condom from his jeans pocket and rolled it on. He returned between her thighs. His mouth came down on hers. He brushed her lips once quickly before pulling back and flashing a cocky grin. “You thought I was going to leave, didn’t you? I told you I wasn’t leaving, Jilly. Not yet.”

  But he would as soon as they were finished.

  It was the way she’d wanted it, the way she should still want it, and yet she didn’t. She wanted to talk to him, to get to know him better outside of what she’d read in People and heard through the grapevine. That wasn’t part of the deal, and if she tried to make it part of the deal, he would end things. Or worse, he would both end things and spread the time they’d shared together throughout the office.

  She couldn’t let that happen. She had to play this out the way she’d planned from the start. She had to be the carefree woman who wasn’t afraid to go after what she wanted, the bold one he’d first met at the reception. The one she used to be.

  “I did,” Jillian admitted, adding a bite to her tone. “I thought you were going to leave and it upset me. It made me very angry. It made me want to punish you.” She pushed at his chest and, because she shouldn’t have been able to roll him over so easily, she knew he was enjoying her moment of dominance. She came up over him and rubbed her sex against his. A fresh dose of longing spread through her at the feel of him so near and the reality he would soon be inside her.