Page 44 of With Love, from Cold World
None of this was like Lauren. She wasn’t the type to get carried away with passion, and she wasn’t the type to make out with a coworker after hours on the floor of her own office.
Shedefinitelywasn’t the type to straddle that coworker until she was sitting on his lap, but somehow his hands were on her hips and she found herself so close she could see that his eyes were a thin rim of gray around large, black pupils.
He pulled her in for another long, deep kiss. She tugged on the hem of his shirt, and he broke off only long enough to whip it over his head, before returning his mouth to hers. She slid her hands over the bunched muscles in his shoulders, the flat plane of his chest, letting her fingers brush lightly over his nipple. It was an experimental touch, tentative even, but for a minute he leaned his head back against the wall, breathing hard.
“God, Lauren,” he said. “You have no idea.”
He didn’t finish that thought, but she could finish it for him.You have no idea how good this feels. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.
He pushed the cardigan down off her shoulders, and for a minute she was trapped like that, her arms at her sides, his hands holding the bunched fabric around her wrists. Then he had her lower lip between his teeth, was sucking at the sensitive skin where her neck curved into her shoulder, was kissing along the swell of her breasts at the neckline of the dangerous red dress.
He pulled her closer, and the motion made her rub along the hard ridge of his erection. He swallowed her gasp with a kiss, but it turned into a moan as she felt the friction of him through the thin cotton of her underwear.
“Asa—” She didn’t know what she was asking for, but he released her wrists, his fingers biting into her bare thighs under her dress as he dragged her across him again. This time, the sound she made wasn’t like any other she’d made before—halfway between a grunt and a cry.
“Say my name again,” he said into her ear. “Please, Lauren.”
She’d say whatever he wanted as long as he kept doingthat. She said it over and over, until the hitch in her breath made the word virtually meaningless. Her hands were on his cheeks, her shoulder in his mouth, and their frantic grinding through clothes was already the most earth-shattering sexual experience she’d ever had.
She arched her hips, pressing into him, and he squeezed his eyes closed like he was in pain. His hands were warm and strong on her hips as he shifted her back a bit.
“That’s getting me close,” he said. “Sorry. Give me a second.”
“Oh.” Lauren chewed on her lower lip. “I, uh, don’t have anything.”
“What?” His eyes hadn’t totally lost their glazed look, and he pulled her back on top of him.
“Like a condom,” she said, embarrassed that the word could still make her blush when she was here, doingthis.
“Neither do I,” he said, grinning at her as he pressed a hard, hot kiss to her mouth. “Not exactly how I thought I’d spend my night. But we can still do a lot without one.”
“Yeah, but,” she said, trying to get the words out between his kisses. “You said you were getting close. But since we can’t, you know...”
He pulled back, his brow lowered as his gaze searched hers. “This isn’t just about me wanting to get off,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“No, I know—” She wasn’t even aware of what she was saying at this point, she just wanted to go back to when they were kissing and he wasn’t looking at her like she was defective.
“For that, I would’ve just jerked off in a bathroom stalllike I’d planned.” From the quirk of his mouth, she could tell that he was deliberately trying to shock her. But it was also like he was trying to make her laugh, trying to make her relax.
And damned if it didn’t work. “Gross,” she said, biting back a smile. “At work?”
“It’s not like I’d do iton the clock,” he said, pressing a kiss to just below her ear. “But when I was staring down a night of being trapped in a building with a very beautiful...” He kissed her cheek, and she let her eyes flutter closed. “...very stubborn...” He kissed the corner of her bottom lip. “...veryunattainablewoman...”
She hummed against his mouth. “Mm-hmm?”
“Extenuating circumstances,” he said. “I think I can be forgiven for the impulse.”
“Well,” she said, her voice a little unsteady as he burrowed his face into the curve of her neck. “I’m glad it didn’t come to that.”
She buried her fingers in his blue hair, inhaling the scent of him. He lowered her gently until she was lying on the floor, using her discarded cardigan as a makeshift pillow for her head. He ran his hand over her breasts, her ribs, her stomach. There was something erotic about still being fully clothed, about seeing his bare chest next to the siren red of her dress.
“What about you?” he asked, bunching up the material of her skirt around her thighs—not lifting it all the way, but enough that her breath caught.
“I wasn’t planning on masturbating in the bathroom,” she managed to choke out, and he gave a little laugh.
“No,” he said. He brushed his knuckles over the pulsing core of her, the sensation through her underwear making her hips buck. “I meant, what gets you off?”
She licked her lips. She couldn’t focus enough to answer the question when he was touching her like that. “It’s okay,” she said. “I usually take a long time...”
