He landed on his back next to her.
Shit.
That had been…
Her blurred vision hadn’t recovered its focus. “Damn, I was easy.”
He kissed her shoulder and her ear, scooping an arm around her. “Some things are inevitable.”
“I didn’t even know I needed that, but shit, I needed that. Do you do this a lot?”
“Pick up women in bars?” he asked. “No… Now that you mention it, I haven’t done it in a long time.”
“No takers?”
“I just got out of a relationship.”
So she was a rebound. Good. At least there was no expectation. How long had it been since she’d got laid? Months. Work was becoming her life. Routine and focus were her friends, and relationships rarely offered either.
“Was it true love?”
“Gabby? No. Maybe we thought so. Isn’t everything love until it’s not?”
“Anything that lasts more than a week, I guess. Why are we so bad at it?” she asked rhetorically. “Humans. In general. We’re so bad at this.”
“Not bad at this part,” he said, trailing his fingers up her body.
“Sex? No, we’re not. Is that why relationships are hard, because sex is so easy? Any of us could just fall into bed with anyone. Fluid exchange is simple, but when it comes to putting our thoughts and feelings into words… Language is where it gets difficult. Especially when we don’t know what our opposite is thinking and feeling.”
“It’s not easy. Picking someone to spend our lives with. We want to get it right.”
“It feels like pressure. Relationships come with expectation. We don’t want to offend or upset our partner, usually we have to face them again the next day. Or we share a circle of friends and everyone wants to get involved. Sometimes it’s easier to relax with strangers. We can be more of our honest self without worrying about fallout.”
“I don’t think we can call ourselves strangers anymore,” he said, kissing her hair. At what point did someone become a friend? Somewhere between kissing and orgasm maybe. “Do you want something to eat?”
After another kiss, he sat up to snag something from the nightstand and put it in her hands: a room service menu.
“You said something about a bar up here,” she said, laying the menu on his legs when he propped himself against the headboard. “Where’s that at?”
“We should eat something. Soak up some of the alcohol.”
“You worried?” she asked, flipping over to crawl to the head of the bed. “Think you took advantage of me?”
“I think you need your energy,” he said, perusing the menu. “That was just the opening act. The main event is still to come.”
“Yes,” she said, pushing the menu aside to slide into his lap, straddling him. “There better be more to come.”
His kiss spoke to her. The gentle touch of their lips, the angling here to there, the way they sensed each other’s needs and anticipated their actions was poetry. If the alcohol was responsible for their innate movements, she’d become an alcoholic trying to recapture the high.
As her hands landed on his shoulders, his fingers tunneled into her hair. They needed to touch, to be closer, to be more than just two people. Rising, she took him into her body again. God knew how long they’d been kissing. Time was irrelevant. Everything was irrelevant except the hard length of him occupying her.
“JD,” she whispered, her eyes closing.
But he kept her head, catching its weight when it tried to drop back. “Stay with me,” he murmured, slow and sure, like an order she couldn’t ignore. “Open your eyes.”
Her eyelids parted, though not much. Somehow, the visual contact heightened the pressure building within her. Moving faster, she grabbed for him, and he caught her hips, steadying her, moving with her to join her over the finish line.
“Oh, it’s so not fair,” she said, relaxing her whole body on his.
Her bones became rubber, malleable, incapable of holding her together. It didn’t matter that he was still inside her or that her skin was clammy from the exertion. All she wanted to do was stay right there.
“Not fair?” Stroking a hand down her hair, he scratched her scalp. “What isn’t fair?”
“That I’ll never find an orgasm like that again.”
It still tingled through her, quaking her thighs, shimmering within her sensitive pussy in small joyous jolting aftershocks. Like every time her body recalled the pleasure, a shimmer of memory teased her to arousal again.
“It’s not gone anywhere yet. Hungry?”
“We should carb up,” she said, scratching his bicep.
“Get ready for a marathon?”
She laughed. “It could be a long night, lover.”
***
They ordered food and got more drinks. She didn’t even care about the time. It was tomorrow already, she knew that, but it didn’t matter. In the cocoon of their intimacy, they were invincible, and the night was still young.
“You didn’t tell me about your business,” she said, accepting the drink he handed over before joining her on the bed again. “Do you make anything?”
“Money,” he said, offering a toast. “Tonight forever.”
She didn’t know what that meant exactly but touched her glass to his anyway. “Money? A lot of money?”
“Enough.”
Taking in their environment, her curiosity grew. “Is your company paying for this? The big fancy suite?” Not that she could claim to know anything about it beyond the bedroom and bathroom. “This can’t be cheap.”
“It’s company expenses. Start as you mean to go on.”
“You’re just starting?”
“God, no, and I wouldn’t go back to the start either. Stakes get higher in line with profits. Risks are more of a gamble when you’re responsible for people’s lives.”
“Your employees?”
He nodded behind his glass. “As we accrue assets, our employee numbers increase.”
She tilted her head. “Why do I feel like you get off on that?”
With a laugh, he put his glass on the nightstand. “Because you’re perceptive.” When she finished her mouthful, he took her glass to put it by his. “It’s an adrenaline high. And it’s not about the people as individuals, there’s a thrill to knowing good deals guarantee jobs. It’s a domino effect.”
“The butterfly flapping its wings thing?”
“Yes,” he said, sweeping her hair from her shoulder to kiss the flesh he revealed. “I make a good choice in one room and the house is secure for everyone.”
“You make a bad choice, and it all tumbles down. How do you sleep with the stress?”
“I don’t do stress,” he said, kissing her neck, her jaw, her ear.
She sank lower to lie down, and his mouth stayed the course, moving with her. “Everyone does stress. It doesn’t make you less of a man to feel stress. And suppressing it is not good for your body.”
“You think there’s something wrong with my body?”
That curled her lips. As he swayed over her, his drowsy eyes drank in the sight.
“Nothing I can see.” Her nails met his hips and tickled higher. Somehow, he’d got himself between her thighs again. “Do you think it’s possible to know someone you’ve never met?”
Whatever that meant.
But this didn’t feel new.
It did, in all the most sumptuous ways, but the way he slid into her, how his eyes seemed aroused and concerned all at the same time. It was like he cared. But he couldn’t. Could he? Did she care about him?
When the sun rose, they’d return to their lives, and this would be a dream, a fantasy, a figment of her imagination. Reliving the memories would never do the night justice. It wasn’t over and already it felt unreal.
“I know you,” he murmured like he could read her mind. Pushing higher, he drove himself in hard and her mouth opened in a silent gasp. “I know just how to get you off.”
And that should be all she wanted from him. Sex. Gratification. Climax. Shit, hormones had a lot to answer for. She wasn’t going to be the dumb little coed who fell for the sophisticated man, but he was so different from any guy in her past.
College was college. Work came with its own pitfalls. Usually, business involved much older men making promises they’d never deliver on for a quick fumble. She’d never been that woman. Never fallen for bullshit.
This didn’t feel like bullshit. But why? How was this moment any different? Because he didn’t want anything from her and hadn’t made any promises. It was a night. Like he’d said about life, they were just passing through each other’s journeys. After their tryst, they’d never see each other again.