Harleigh House Ch. 03

Five days in Seattle didn't clear Ryan's head. Instead, they intensified his confusion.

He wanted Rose like he wanted the neurons in his brains to keep firing, like he wanted his body to convert food to energy. Not just to fuck her—but, yes, of course to fuck her—but he just wanted her... present, in a deep, primitive way. So he could talk to her, hold her—so he could think about something else, and not have to wonder if his house manager, or one of the construction staff, or any of the dozen maintenance workers who came in and out of his house on a daily basis, or her goddamned next door neighbor or what the fuck did he know, anyone, was experiencing her.

He knew it was hypocritical—given the ring on his finger—to be so obsessed with Rose's fidelity to him. But the thought of another man...

He couldn't even finish the thought. He'd believed he was a good man. Since what he'd done to Jillian, he'd tried desperately to be. He knew he had no rights, where Rose was concerned. But he had no choices, here, and it was killing him to think that she did—that she might be choosing someone else while he was sitting in a hotel room in Seattle, drinking and trying to keep himself from going back to her.

Fuck it. She had a choice. Then—so did he, even if it wasn't much of one. He'd lay it before her and see if he could keep her in his life, for a little while longer yet.

XxX

Rose had just settled in for the night, a bowl of Thai takeout on her lap, her laptop open on the arm of the couch next to her, when the knock came on her door. She wasn't paying attention to her email. She was thinking about how interminable the day had been—Jillian had been throwing a cocktail party, and she'd had to stay until 9 to make sure the caterers' understood precisely how they'd have to break down the table settings and clean up, because she couldn't bear the idea of Mr. Palermano getting chewed out by the volatile lady of the house for upsetting one of her thousand pieties.

Then again, the whole last week had been interminable.

Now she was alone, at last. Her housemates were gone for the weekend on a beach trip up the Michigan coast, and she'd been looking forward to some alone time to regroup, figure out what to make of her life now that she'd become party to—was this even a word anyone used anymore?—adultery.

You wish you were, she reminded herself. Your fellow adulterer doesn't seem to be cooperating. Can't keep his conscience together. Keeps running away. Maybe you should take a hint. She sighed. Think about something else, Rose. Anything but him.

The knock came on the door again, more solidly, this time, and she pulled herself to her feet and threw open the door without bothering to look through the eyehole, assuming it was her elderly landlady, who lived downstairs and regularly checked in at odd hours.

But—no.

"Ryan," she breathed. "You're back."

His eyes ran up and down her form, taking in her bare feet and legs, her thigh-length pajama top with a faded pine cone on it, the remains of the day's makeup still on her face. A slow, faint smile broke over his face. "May I come in?"

She stepped aside. "I should... I can get dressed, if there's something..."

"No. I mean, if you want to..." he sighed. "There's no need." He cleared his throat. "I... oh, hell. Are we alone?"

"Yeah. My housemates are up at St. Joe's. It's just me, for the next few days. I, uh, was just eating..." She trailed off, thinking this was all relevant and inane at once. She gestured vaguely at her curry.

"Yeah." He'd been looking at the floor, but shot his piercing gaze to her eyes again. "You should eat, if you haven't eaten. I didn't mean to..." He swallowed, saw her notice, did it again. "I missed you."

She flushed, slowly. Let herself flush. "Yeah?"

"Had a hard time thinking about anything else. I wanted to call you, but I—you know, I actually don't have your number." He quirked his mouth up in a wry grin at that, and she had to laugh.

"I'll give it to you."

"Did you... Rose. I have to ask, because it's driving me crazy, and I know I have no right, but..." Ryan rubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw. "I'll just come out with it. Are you seeing anyone else?"

Her eyes flashed to his, surprised. "Did someone tell you that I am?"

"No, I just... you know, I see the way the men look at you on site. Christ, I have eyes. You're so funny, and kind, and you're so damned beautiful..." He blew out a breath. "I can walk away. I don't want to get in the way of... of your life, you know? I just can't seem to stop myself from wanting the hell out of you. So that's it. You have to tell me to get out of your life, if you want me out. I think you know I can't make you any promises. Jillian is... suffice it to say that I'm married and am going to stay married. But if there's no one else... and you want me..." He drew a breath in again, hard. A confident man by nature, this was shockingly difficult for him. "I want to know if you want to have a summer affair with me."

She looked away. "I was seeing someone."

"Christ."

"At school. An economist. Junior faculty. Before I came here for the summer. But we... we left it open."

He nodded, but didn't look back at her, too busy despising himself for the acid churning around in his stomach. "You're going back to him."

"I don't know. I guess." She sighed, and then, realizing that she'd wanted to punish him, that she had, finally relented. "It wasn't anything like this, though."

"I should hope not," he muttered. "For your sake."

"No, I mean... yeah, he's not married, but he also doesn't..."

"Doesn't...?

"Doesn't... preoccupy me like you do."

"Yeah?"

"You think I fuck every guy who comes into a storage closet I'm in?"

He ground it out: "No."

"God, Ryan, some nights I can't even sleep, I want you so bad. These days since you left...."

"It was the same for me."

"I was just aching."

"The same. I'm telling you."

She looked at him beneath her lashes, her mood swinging from confessional to sirenous. "And I would touch myself, try to get myself off, but nothing worked."

"Poor baby." His eyes darkened, and he let her change his mood. "I guess I'll have to take care of you. Let's see, I was gone five days... so I owe you one orgasm for every day I was gone."

Her eyes widened, and her temptress mood broke a little at the edges. "A little ambitious. I've never come that much in a day."

"Ah, but we have all weekend, don't we?"

The words hung in the air a moment, settling around him. He hadn't known what he was offering until he'd already done it, and he steeled himself to pretend not to notice when he saw her eyes fill with tears. "The weekend's three days long," she whispered.

"Yeah."

She smiled. "So you have to make me come eight times." She blinked back her tears.

He smiled back, helplessly, and he thought later that might have been the moment he admitted to himself he was falling in love with her. "I'm a persistent man." He gripped her shoulder and pulled her steadily toward him, then sank his teeth softly into her neck. She let out a low moan and tilted her head back, reflexively pushing her hips toward his.

"Ahhhhh," he breathed as she made contact. He leaned for her ear. "My dick's been hard for you for days," he whispered there, and she whimpered and pressed herself against him harder. "Have you been wet for me?"

She opened her mouth on his collarbone and began to lap delicately around his neck. "Answer me," he whispered urgently, lowering his hands to her hips. She just scraped her teeth over the part of his chest left bare by his shirt. He gave her ass a firm little slap in response. "Answer me," he demanded again, and was delighted when she pressed her cunt against his hip bone and began rubbing more urgently.

"So wet," she whispered. "I masturbated in your office desk chair this afternoon. I just went in to drop off some files, but I needed you so badly, and it smelled so much like you, there..."

"Did you come in my chair?" he murmured against her throat, his hands controlling the jerking of her hips as he brushed his lips lightly over hers. She clenched her teeth in frustration as he stopped her from rubbing her pubic bone against him.

"No. Mike came in looking for some contracts."

"Did Mike see you with your fingers in your pretty little pussy, sitting in my chair?" he demanded, his vision going dim at the edges, fighting to control his possessiveness.

"No! No, he just poked his head in, fished the files out of the slot by the door, and left."

"So you stopped. You didn't come."

"No. I told you, without you..."

"Show me."

"What?"

"Show me what it looks like when you touch yourself. Tell me what you think about." He nodded at the sofa behind her. "Relax." He grinned. "Just pretend you're in my office."

She laughed, and the flash of her throat made him catch his breath. "I've never done this," she said, but the hesitation in her voice was outweighed by the hitch of excitement.

"Mmm... sit down and slide your fingers in your cunt, baby, I want to see."

"You realize that if I make myself come..."

"It doesn't count against the total you're owed. I accept the risk. Now c'mon. Oh, yeah, that's it. Sweet syrup. So pink. Did you imagine I was fucking you there, in the middle of the day?"

She let out a low moan as her fingers slid around in her cunt, easing over her sensitive clitoris very gently, up and down, up and down. "You came back from Seattle and said you couldn't bear being without me. You said you'd tried to fuck other women and couldn't get hard for them. Just me."

His dick leapt at that as he eased down onto the chair across from her, watching her pussy with narrowed eyes. Christ, he loved a confident woman, loved the way she could say that she wanted to be wanted. "Not far from the truth. Not that I tried other women. Slide your fingers up inside your cunt, baby, let me see you fuck yourself."

She complied, and he watched her breasts rise under her pine cone pajamas as she tilted her neck back. "Ooooooohhhh."

"Is it good, baby?"

"Mmm. It's good. Makes me want your dick even more, though."

"Is that what you wanted this afternoon, in my office?"

She blushed. "No," she murmured. "I wanted..."

"Tell me, baby. Anything that makes your pussy clench that hard—I have to know."

"You were tonguing me, pressing hard up inside me, and your tongue was so firm and rough...." She shuddered. "And you were talking to me, against my cunt. Telling me that it was only for you, no one else's."

He ran a rough, impatient hand over his dick, still trapped beneath the zipper of his jeans, and let out a low, involuntary growl. "And that's what I was whispering—to myself—when Mike walked in. 'Yours. Only yours.' I was so embarrassed." Her middle and index finger were sliding furiously in and out of her pussy now. "So afraid he might have—ohh—might have heard me."

"You were turned on. I can see the honey seeping out of you, baby."

Her fingers slowed, even a deep shaft of pleasure when straight to her clit, and she clenched her thighs around it to harness the keenness of it. "It's not like that. I'm not—a tease. I don't—"

"Keep your fingers moving, sweetheart, let me see. Prop your leg up on the couch. Yeah, that's it. Fingers in and—stroke that clit for me, I know it's sensitive, just stroke it for me really gently, yes. Honey, that's beautiful." His dick was aching, now, as he watched her and he loved it, loved how right it felt. "I know you don't want Mike. Sweetheart, what turned you on wasn't Mike. It was the idea that Mike might find out that you're mine. The idea of people seeing that your pussy's mine—and that I'm yours—makes you so hot."

"I'm not an exhibitionist!" Rose protested, but her fingers were delving deep, deep, deeper now, and her free hand was squeezing her nipples, slowly but very hard.

"Oh, honey. We're all kinds of things together that we're not apart." He paused. "Imagine that I had been there, this afternoon. My tongue up in your cunt, lapping up your sweet juices, stroking delicately around your hard little clit, and I'm telling you that you're beautiful and tight and hot and mine, when Mike walks in. And I don't get up. I just look up from your beautiful pussy for a moment and say, 'Mike, you're interrupting. Shut the door and lock it behind you.' And you're embarrassed, but I remind you that you're mine, and I spank you, just above your clit, not too hard, and tell you I expect you to come, interruptions or not."

Her hips were arching off the couch, now, frantically thrusting toward the fingers she was trying to push inside her as far and high as possible. She was moaning. "I expect you to come, Rose."

He got up and slid into the seat just next to her. He leaned toward her ear. "Come for me," he breathed against her. "Because you're mine." And her legs jerked, and she let out a low scream, and then trembled.

Later—much later, because light was creeping in at the edges of the heavy yellow velvet draped over the window next to her bed—he asked her to say it. Spooning her from behind, his cock was in her, and he'd been circling it around in her, slowly, rubbing it up against her g spot—a spot she'd never believed existed—and strumming gently on her clit once in a while, almost idly, and she was mindless beneath him. She'd come more times in the last hours than she could have counted. Her cunt ached from overuse, and ached to be used more.

"More," she finally whimpered, when her mewls and protests and frantic arching didn't move him. "Please. I need more, Ryan."

"Tell me you're mine."

"I'm yours."

"Your pussy?"

"Yes. Please, yes."

"Your mouth?" He dipped his fingers into her open mouth, and she sucked instinctively. His cock jerked inside her.

"Yes," she moaned around his fingers.

"Your mind?"

"Yes. Fuck me. Hard. Now."

His cock jerked violently. He wouldn't have guessed he still had it in him to tease her. "Say please."

She was well beyond bartering. "Please, Ryan! Please please please please please please..."

He let go and slammed in hard and deep as she kept saying one word over and over. His thighs trembled from how hard he came, because that word she kept saying was enough for his cock. But not for him.

He knew because he patiently starting torturing her pretty, sensitive little clit all over again.