The Love Coupon Page 9

  “Go wild,” he’d said. “The place is yours for the weekend.” He’d looked relieved and it was bogus. Pre-rocks-off Tom would’ve been unable to stand the idea of Flick alone in his apartment for days and what it might do to the décor.

  Which meant the plan changed. Thursday night she made sure to be out of the Cassidy Strauss office in good time. She went to the gym, did a light workout, enough to build up a glow, came home and left her shoes by the door and draped a clean, dry towel—but he didn’t know that—over the sectional. Her gym bag in the hallway, right where someone might trip over it.

  His big meeting had been rescheduled for today but he’d gotten a cancellation email at breakfast and hadn’t been happy. He could well be in a bad headspace. She heard him come in. He didn’t trip but he did stop in the hall. She came out of her bedroom, wearing her damp gym gear, tight-fitted, her hair pulled up in a messy ponytail, and caught him before he could rearrange his features into regretfully cheerful.

  “What?”

  He frowned and pointed to her bag. “Does this have to be here? I nearly fell over it.”

  “You should watch where you’re going.”

  He blinked hard at that, his dark brows angling down.

  “That towel out there.” He pointed back to the living room. “Did you leave a wet towel on the sectional?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Seriously, Flick.” He looked away and back. “I don’t have time for this.”

  She peeled her tank off and dropped it on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” He put his laptop bag on the hall table with a thud.

  “What does it look like?”

  He closed his eyes and sighed. “I’m hardly in the mood for a striptease.”

  His headspace was decidedly not let’s-have-fun. It was I’d-like-to-rip-something-in-half.

  “I can see that.” She dropped her shorts, made a show of kicking them toward him.

  “Brat. You’re trying to rile me up.” He took his tie off. “It’s not going to work.”

  He doth protest too vigorously. “You’re trying to shut me out.”

  “I’m busy. We had sex. Hooked up. Homegrown Tinder. It was great. You’re the one who said it wasn’t a proposal. We’re roommates. It’s short-term. That’s it.”

  Vicious, except for the way he looked at her and that his tie had made it all the way to the carpet. He took his jacket off, tossed it toward the hall table where it caught and slid off. He didn’t glance at it and he wasn’t worried about a wet towel on his precious sectional. He was steamed up. She put her hand behind her back to undo her bra.

  “Don’t.”

  He could blow past her, leave her standing there in her underwear and a good idea gone bad, having damaged their fledgling friendship. But he was fixed on her as the source of his troubles and she was too far into this to abort.

  “What are you going to do to stop me?” Apart from eat her up with his eyes.

  “We’re not doing this.”

  “It’s simple. I want you. I want to feel you. I want you to feel me.”

  He broke eye contact and looked out toward the ignored towel, the block of marble coffee table and other people’s playlists. “Been there, done that.” His eyes snapped back. “It was all very nice, but let’s not make a habit of it.”

  The more he denied himself, the worse he made it. His hands were fists. He couldn’t step away. He couldn’t keep his eyes from drilling into her.

  She unhooked her bra.

  He crashed into her space and loomed over her. He was so close to losing his temper, but she wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t angry with her. He was angry because he wanted her and that messed with his plans.

  “If you drop that—”

  “What are you going to do about it?” His breath was in her hair. She pushed her chest forward, bra covering her precariously, dared him to touch her. “You going to kiss me? Ooh. You going to press me against a wall and make me feel good? I’ll take it.”

  “Stop.” He hissed it, face alive with the challenge.

  She dropped the bra.

  He was on her so fast she lost her balance, but he had her, hugged up against his torso, her feet barely on the floor. “You don’t know when to leave a thing alone.”

  “You don’t know how to take what you want without a ten-point plan and a week to prepare.”

  He kissed her meanly, punishing her with the delight of it. She’d climbed him before he had a chance to regroup. “Like this. Tom, like this. Take me like this.”

  A dozen strides and they were in his bedroom. He didn’t put her down, he threw her on the bed. She bounced, laughed. He stared at her, hand crumpling his shirt, his eyes lit with recognition. She was going to lose him.

  “It’s a wet towel, soaking, dripping wet.” It was the first thing she thought to say and it wasn’t going to be enough. His breathing was short. He closed his eyes. The rational part of Tom knew this was a game, knew she’d engineered this and he could stop it with a tilt of his chin. He was trapped between her manipulation and his own desire, and it made his hands tremble. “I’m wet too. Dripping for you. Come get me.”

  That did it.

  He groaned, dragged his shirt from his trousers, toeing out of his shoes. She stood on the bed to take her panties off. They got naked simultaneously, came together with searching hands and hungry mouths. Tom on his knees, Flick grateful, relieved and beyond excited.

  He urged her legs around him, took her down to her back. She locked her ankles behind his waist and bucked her hips, carved her fingers through his hair. His skin was hot and a fine tremor played through his muscles.

  “Trust you,” she whispered against his mouth, permission to go wild.

  He tore that breath up, ripped it from her throat and fed it back to her in sips and licks. “Safe,” he said, voice gone so deep and torn it sounded tortured. “I’m safe.”

  Teasing presses at her opening made her moan, but she went still when he entered her on one thick, easy push. “God. Tom.” Filled and pinned and wanting.

  “Feels—” he dropped his face into her neck “—feels perfect, this sweetness. You’re gonna turn me inside out.”

  He didn’t dominate. He wasn’t rough. He unwound her deliberately, a jagged edge to his consideration, a selfish calculation matched with desire he didn’t leash. He worked her over with steady drumbeat pulses of his hips, grunts of exertion, eyes locked on her face, glazed, not seeing until he reached a point of tolerance and the beat became a rabbit kick, fast and furiously aimed at striking both their pleasure spots over and over, wrecking her breath as his body took control, exploding her core, lighting her brain up.

  He came behind her with a shouted curse, taking her mouth for a kiss that was exhausted and possessive, his weight going heavy. A second of being crushed before he dropped to her side, face-planting a pillow with a muffled groan.

  In the breathless silence, it was clear they’d destroyed the bedclothes, been riotously noisy and everything had changed.

  Flick hoped it was for the better.

  Chapter Nine

  Tom needed Flick’s touch. He was scalded, his skin too tight. Like he’d walked through fire and burned off a protective layer he’d painstakingly built up to stop from feeling. Now he felt too much. Leftover splinters and sweat in the crease of his elbow, an ache in his eye socket, a wrinkle in the sheet under his hip, Flick’s panted breath, his own creaking lungs, the laughter they couldn’t contain.

  “Holy fuck, Tom.”

  She touched his shoulder with her hand then her lips, and it wasn’t too much, it didn’t sting. He rolled to snatch her up, bringing their bodies together, and there was no shock, no pain, only the gentlest, richest ease.

  He wanted to live in it.

  She kissed his cheek, his jaw, his brow. “Are you okay?”r />
  His sigh felt decades old, parched and stale, coming from ancient forgotten disappointments, and let go before he understood the danger.

  “Tom?”

  “You might have broken me.”

  She nipped his chin. “Don’t joke.”

  Pushed so he would stop thinking. Scalded so he could be comforted. Broken so he could safely risk. Hollowed out so nothing else mattered but satisfying himself with the sound and touch and thrill of her. The only danger was having the time to take his fill.

  “Gonna need to do that again before I have a definitive opinion.”

  “I don’t need a second opinion to know the earth moved.”

  So that’s what happened. He’d gone deep, struck the molten core, caught fire and walked out alive. “It’s a miracle.”

  She put her teeth to his neck, but he felt her laughter and echoed it. He half expected colors to be brighter, the air more refreshing. It felt like he’d woken from a deep sleep after a long period with a vague illness that’d left him lacking in energy and confused.

  Good sex had never made him feel that taken apart and put back together before.

  Flick played her fingers through his hair, not minding it was damp. “I loved that and I don’t think you hate me for baiting you into it.”

  “No such emotion as hate.”

  She laughed. “You’re drunk.”

  He pulled her harder against him. “Best post-orgasmic haze ever.” Kissed her bottom lip, then remembered. “Jesus, tell me it’s not a wet towel.”

  “Fresh from the washer-dryer.”

  She yelped when he pinched her ass. When he turned her over and soothed that spot with his tongue, she squirmed. He had a reason to squirm too. He’d gotten too carried away. “I got tested. I’m clean. I’m sorry, I should’ve told you.” He’d done it because it was the sensible thing to do. That’s what he’d told himself at the time. Probably not his motivation if he thought about it.

  “You told me.”

  Had he? Not directly. “I wouldn’t have risked you.”

  “I have no doubt of that.”

  She’d risked him. He eased her to a kneeling position, her ass on his thighs, her back against his chest. “How did you know I needed it like that?”

  She turned her face up to him. “Because I needed it like that.”

  It was too simple an answer, too greedy, when Flick had been the one to push, to give. A cupped breast, a rubbed tit, a press of his middle finger inside her, and he got the truth.

  “I wanted you to get the same thing from good sex I do. Wanted you to stop being so polite about it and live in it.”

  “Arrogant.”

  “Yes.” Her head clonked on his shoulder.

  “You’re less than half my size. How were you not worried I’d hurt you if I lost myself?”

  She palmed his cheek. “That’s a real concern with you?” He nodded, and that made her frown. “You knew this was a game. Maybe not before I started dropping clothing, but you knew and you almost stopped it. Losing yourself in pleasure isn’t about being mindless and out of control. You’re one of the most disciplined people I know. If I’d said stop, if I’d been uncomfortable, you’d have stopped, Tom. I know it, even if you don’t.”

  It was a nice idea. Wished he felt secure in it. He wasn’t sorry this’d happened. But it changed them. “What does this make us now?”

  “Landlord and roommate with extracurricular activities on the side. You cook and fuck like a god. I try to stay tidy and be your fuck goddess. We get to have a good time before we go our separate ways.”

  An hour ago, he’d have rejected that proposal outright. Seen it as irresponsible, damaging. It was still those things. It was harder to give words like irresponsible their due measure when a warm, willing woman pleasured herself on your hand. Thinking about it was for a time when he wasn’t still blissed, when he wasn’t hard, planning to take Flick on her knees.

  “Are you too sore to go again?”

  The answer was Flick moving to her hands and knees, showing him how wet she was. The question was, how would they feel when he got back from Des Moines?

  Des Moines was three days of wall-to-wall bore. Lifesaving drugs and medical devices, which he normally found fascinating, had never been so dull.

  Instead of being in the Holiday Inn conference center with America’s finest drug companies and device-makers, his head was back in the condo with Flick.

  He followed Wren down a corridor crowded with device and drug exhibitors flogging everything from robot pill dispensers for hospitals to cell-phone-controlled muscle stimulators for knee surgery patients.

  He was speaking on a panel about supporting patients and advocacy through social media. It was the dreaded 3 p.m. spot where half the audience was only seated for the after-lunch snooze. But it was important profile-building for Rendel, and since it was being live cast and recorded, he needed to be on his game.

  And his game wasn’t “how dare you leave your bag in the hall, let’s fuck.” Too bad.

  “Tom, you’re here.” Dr. Evan Modal, the session moderator, pointed at the small riser on which a mock living room had been set up. “You’re in the red chair. You speak last. I’ll do an introduction to all of you up front and then it’s ten minutes each and fifteen minutes for Q&A.”

  “Great. Thanks.” He sat in the red chair and grinned at Wren, who’d snagged a front-row seat. She made a face, then put her hands behind her ears so they stuck out sideways. The universal signal for Harry, who had wing-nut ears.

  Huh. How about that? He hadn’t known the boss was going to be here. His meeting with Harry had been canceled and rescheduled three times—it was starting to look deliberate.

  He waited while the room filled up with conference delegates, greeted his two co-presenters and listened to Evan’s introduction. Somewhere after the first speaker offered statistics on the reach of Facebook, he drifted off. At least half the audience already had.

  There was so much about that episode with Flick to unpack. And top of the list of oddities was that she annoyed the heck out of him but got him more turned on than he could remember being. That most certainly did not happen in any other situation in which he was even mildly irritated. The two states didn’t come together in any conceivable way, except when Flick was the irritant up his nose.

  The kind of annoyed she made him had a slippery edge to it. It dissolved into out-and-out necessity with an urgency to it that was frankly unnerving. Flick did it for him. Revved his engines like nothing else. And then mysteriously, he found a kind of peace and ease in bed with her that wasn’t so easily replaceable by a long hike or a favorite meal cooked.

  Did that say more about him or about her?

  She was playing games with him, that was certain. It was surprising how much he liked it. Was it the blatant sexual challenge? Maybe he had some unresolved authority issues and she flipped that switch with her personality and her deliberate insubordination.

  That had to be it.

  Christ.

  “Tom O’Connell, are you with us?”

  He still worried about the idea that with Flick’s games he might lose himself enough to—

  “It seems Tom needs a caffeine fix.”

  Fuck. He jerked at the sound of laughter, looked up and caught Wren with her hand over her mouth and her shoulders shaking. “I’d like to say I was demonstrating the soporific effects of social media, but Evan is right, I need caffeine.”

  That got another laugh, but it was a damn rocky recovery.

  Half an hour later he stood from the red chair to scattered applause, shook hands with his fellow presenters, and thanked Evan for inviting him on the panel as the audience raced for the door and the refreshment tables.

  Wren was waiting when he stepped down.

  “Think you sampled too many silicone breas
t implants today,” she said. “What happened?”

  He sampled his shoes. That was a regrettable screwup. All the more embarrassing because he’d never been caught out like that, with Harry in the audience and the session live-streaming and with no chance for the dead air to be edited out. His screwup was available forever. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “It was the vaginal mesh implants for incontinence that did it to me, broke my concentration.”

  Wren grunted. “Remind me to do my pelvic floor exercises every day.”

  Not touching that. “Grandma Bel will think I was wonderful.”

  “Everyone else thought you’d been sampling free drugs. What is going on with you?”

  Sex-struck wasn’t the best answer he could give. Vaginal implants of a wholly different nature. “You think there’s something going on with me because you’re bored and want a drama.” Way better to be defensive. I need a drink.

  “Fuck you, Tom.” Wren turned to go.

  “Wait. That was meant to be—not like it came out.” She gave him a look that said be very careful about what you say next. “I missed my cue. I was daydreaming, half the room was. It doesn’t mean anything is going on with me.”

  “You fell down a mountain. Fell. Down. A. Mountain. You’re still bruised-looking. Your promotion isn’t solid. Harry is obviously avoiding you. You went to sleep on a panel. You leave the office early. Tell me you’re not thinking of resigning. I just lost Josh, I think I’m about to lose you and I’m not ready.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Unless there was any truth to the swirling conspiracy theories that something was going on with Harry.

  “I’d rather do Kegels than listen to you pretend everything is normal right now.”

  That was not a visual he needed. They’d once launched a Kegel device for women with urinary incontinence. The program brainstorm had been unsuitably hysterical. Josh had been unable to keep a straight face the entire time, especially as the product’s tagline was “Pelvic floor exercises that are better than sex.” He’d walked around for weeks saying “Lift, hold and drop” at the least appropriate moments.