He was good.
He was really good.
I cleared my throat to gather what remained of my thin composure. “May I ask what is number one on your priority list?”
Half smiling, he tsked. “I’m more of a hands-on accountant. I like to get in there deep and pay close attention to those spots the other guys around town tend to skip over.”
Don’t laugh, Remi. Hold it together.
Mr. Tall, Dark, and Mysterious nerdy Sirfriend was sexiest when he was carefree and up to no good.
I batted my lashes. “Do all your clients receive such personal attention?”
Slowly, he answered with a cocked eyebrow. “Nope.”
“That’s a relief,” I deadpanned, all along having known better. “It would be a shame if I had to pray for an untimely bankruptcy for all the clients who stiffed you on their invoices.”
“That would be an awful shame. I might have to come to you for a loan.” Upon rising from his throne, he prowled my way, but I didn’t budge.
“I don’t loan money to friends. It always goes…” I paused and glanced down to my lap. “South.”
He took a knee in front of my chair and ran a warm hand up my thigh. “Baby, I was born and raised in the South, and I’ll gladly die there.” Inching forward, he opened my legs so that his hips fit between them when he pulled me to the edge of the chair. “I can’t imagine a better way to go than”—he stretched forward, placing an ever-so-faint kiss to my neck—“broke.” Another kiss, this time closer to my ear. “Unemployed.” He sucked my earlobe into his mouth and raked his teeth over it before releasing it. “Indebted to you for the rest of my days. Working off every last penny with this very tongue.” He licked the shell of my ear. “And if it helps, I don’t have to be friendly at all about it.”
I panted, “Friendships are dumb.”
He held back from chuckling and therefore causing certain hearing loss, but there was no mistaking the humor in his shaky breath against my skin. “I can’t wait for the day when our friendship ends.”
Hold up.
I pulled back. “What’s that now?”
He shot me a teasing wink. “Just that, someday, we’ll be more. A lot more.”
I smiled. A real, chest-melting grin that felt like it washed over my entire soul.
“And with your poor genetic financial traits from your father,” he continued, “your inability to pay in full, and my terribly unfortunate future bankruptcy, it’ll be the responsible thing to do. We could file jointly to save on accountant’s fees. And postage. Then we’ll create a few deductions, maybe benefit from a little hard-earned income tax credit.”
He was kidding. It was the only reason my adrenaline didn’t spike sending me into a panic. My emotional baggage when it came to marriage was a topic for another day—way, way, way in the future.
I giggled to myself. “Your nerd friends are going to bust when they hear this bit of seduction you have going on.”
He blanched. “I’m not telling them.”
“And why not?” I winked.
“You think I want them imagining what I’m about to do to you when we run into them at the grocery store? Think again, Remi. This…” His palms slid under my skirt to my hips and tugged my panties down before he stuck them inside his pants pocket. And just like that, he was unfastening his belt, lifting me to my feet, and then folding me over the arm of the chair. “This is all for me.”
Wanton and needy, I swayed, waiting for him to claim what was his. When it took a second longer than I was anticipating, I chanced a glance over my shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
Bending down to me, he answered against my lips. “Never, not in my whole fucking life, have I ever been better.” And then he crashed into me, kissing me with such passion and desire. All the humor was set aside for a while, and what was left was intensity and fire.
It wasn’t two naked bodies making love in a warm bed.
It wasn’t even a pair of lovers so eager that they couldn’t wait to get home, opting for a little back seat action.
We were a man and a woman working off debts to one another’s souls. It just so happened that we were doing that fully clothed, in broad daylight, hunched over the arm of an expensive club chair in an office downtown.
And it was perfect.
He wasn’t kidding about knowing the spots or going deep to find them, because Bowen knew every button to press and exactly the right order to push them in.
Within minutes he had me crying his name, but it didn’t slow him one bit.
“I can’t come again,” I said between inhales. “I can’t do it.”
One of his hands slipped between us and ran through my wetness. Then a sensation I’d never felt before surfaced in my consciousness. A light pressure. A gentle but firm nudge of a finger circling my puckered skin.
