At Any Turn (Gaming The System) (3 page)

It fell open, revealing a black lace bra and matching panties. Oh, hell no—we weren’t
going
anywhere until there was
coming
involved.

I ground my pelvis against hers and she let loose a gasp. My mouth was on her neck again—sucking in the soft, delicious skin. “It’s like unwrapping my gifts on Christmas morning.”

“No,” she said with mock sternness in her voice. “It’s like opening presents early, the night before.” But she couldn’t disguise the breathy quality in her voice that I knew so well. She was turned on. Very turned on.

“I always was an impatient bastard,” I said, flicking open the front fastening on her bra. It parted like the red curtain at an old-time movie theater.

“Adam,” she breathed.

“Shh. My five minutes of convincing aren’t over yet.”

“They’re going to know why we’re late.”

I almost laughed to myself. She certainly gave in quickly—as horny as I was, no doubt. “We haven’t seen each other for over a month. It’s no big mystery.”

When she would have said more, I smothered the protest with a kiss, pressing her against the door, overwhelming her with my own need for her. My hands on her breasts, her hips, the silky insides of her thighs. My mouth on hers, tongue penetrating like I wanted to penetrate her in other ways. I was a man on fire and the only way to smother the flames was to dive in and drown in her.

Her taste, the feel of her curves pressed against me was pushing me past the point of no return. If she had any thoughts of stopping now, I wasn’t quite sure how I’d make it through dinner until we could get back at it.

I cupped her breasts, growing more urgent, licking her nipples. My erection was getting tight, painful. It had been a long-ass time and trying to keep the libido in check now was like trying to hold back that hungry tiger with a spool of thread.

She gasped and flinched when I groped her too tightly. Not the reaction you are looking for when trying to convince your partner in a short amount of time. She stiffened against me.

“Sorry,” I breathed against her mouth. “I’m too eager and a little desperate.”

She gave a light laugh and pulled her mouth away, raising her hand to where I must have hurt her.

“Can I kiss it better?” I asked.

She frowned for a moment as if she wasn’t listening, so I reached over and gently pulled her hand away from her breast and replaced it with my mouth, kissing, gently slipping my tongue out to taste her. She tasted like spiced wine and blackberries. And a hint of something I couldn’t describe—some flavor uniquely her own. The smooth, soft texture of her skin only added another layer to her essence. I licked her and she moaned my name.

I kept my mouth where it was and slipped my hand over her smooth stomach to rest on the warm mound beneath her panties. She rewarded my efforts with a tiny squeak at the back of her throat.

I rubbed her there and her breath caught, her hands tightening around my biceps. This was all a dance with steps we were still learning and discovering. And it was always different.

Her hands wandered underneath my shirt, which she had hurriedly untucked from my pants. Her touch was red-hot, palms traveling across my chest. I hissed out my breath. “You don’t have an ounce of fat on you. You’re rock hard.”

I shot her a wicked grin. “That’s not the only place I’m rock hard,” I said, unbuttoning my pants.

I had to get inside her. That goal was paramount now. And I wasn’t going to waste another minute.

My hand returned to her panties, stretching the crotch aside and she braced her hands against my shoulders. I looked into her eyes. “I need to fuck you. I can’t wait another second.”

And I pushed into her wet heat. She closed in around me, tight, encompassing. I growled in response. The satisfaction of sinking into her was short-lived because that knot of tension tightened in my groin. I was going to spill like a teen if I didn’t calm down.

She wrapped one long leg around my hips, locking me to her. She was so goddamn sexy—irresistible, really. Not that I wanted to resist her in any way. Instinct screamed in me to charge. And so I did, sinking myself all the way in, pinning her to the door. My mouth found hers again, forcing me to slow down.

It had been too long and I was so turned on, I was pretty sure this first time wasn’t going to last long no matter how hard I tried. After dinner we’d take our time, savor it. Maybe take hours if we felt like it. Shit, I wasn’t even done and yet here I was, planning for more. It was ridiculous, really, because I was inside her and she was amazing and swallowing me whole with her body, her lips, her eyes.

I reached between us and stroked her clit and she tipped her head back against the door and moaned. Her hold around me tightened as she clenched me tighter where we were locked together. She was about to come already and I could barely keep it together. I rocked my pelvis against hers, my own muscles taut and tense. Whenever I felt it near, I stopped and stroked her instead.

“Oh God!” she moaned, climaxing. I could feel the spasms tightening her around me. I blew out a long breath, ready to follow her over the edge. She arched her back, pressing her luscious chest into mine. The contractions from her orgasm squeezed the breath from me. I rocked into her one last time, letting go as I came, pushing deep inside her. Pure pleasure seized me, violently overtook me. I gasped her name.

When I relaxed and came back down from the high, I kissed her, tightening my arms around her. I knew I should just pull out and let her go, but I didn’t want to.

I kissed her neck. With just the slightest coaxing, we could start this all over again. With every shred of control I had, I pulled my face away and looked into her eyes.

I put my hands on either cheek and pressed my face close to hers.

“I love you,” she said.

“I know,” I replied, grinning as I echoed the famous retort Han Solo gave Princess Leia in
The Empire Strikes Back
.

She laughed and I kissed her again.

“I don’t
ever
want to be away from you for that long again.”

“No,” she sighed, content. “You need to stop leaving me behind when you go off on your grand adventures.”

I stared at her, cheeks flushed from our lovemaking.
She
was my next grand adventure. She was
mine
.

“Mine,” I said.

“What?”

“You’re mine. For good. And since you don’t like being left behind, you can come along with me on next year’s thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.” I was mostly kidding, of course. Just thinking about another epic hike made me ache all over.

She snorted that adorable laugh of hers. “Fuck that.”

I pulled away, grinning. “Let’s get put back together since I’m starving now.” I glanced down at my rumpled shirt. “They’re going to totally know what we were doing since you practically ripped my shirt off while you were shamelessly seducing me.”

She hit my arm with the back of her hand, laughing, then refastened her bra. “Let me get this tied up again and we can go.”

“Yeah,” I said, tucking in my shirt. “Get that pretty gift wrapped up so I can enjoy unwrapping it again later.” The thought of “later” sent a jolt of lust straight down to my crotch again. If I weren’t so goddamn hungry, I’d be ready for round two in minutes.

Next time I’d at least wait for us to get horizontal. She tied off her dress, we took a minute to clean up, and Emilia did her best to hide any indication of what we’d just done. She’d succeeded, except for a large dark bruise at the base of her neck, which she had apparently not noticed in the mirror and I refrained from pointing out to her.

My eyes fixed on it and I smiled to myself. In my own swirl of lust I’d branded her with my mark.
Mine
.

I put my hand on that delicious curve at the small of her back and guided her out the door. The process of arousing a woman was not unlike designing a computer program. Old-school designers used to lay out flowcharts before they’d ever crank out a line of code. Programming itself was all about cause and effect. Turning a woman on was like that—inputting certain information in order to receive the desired output; pun intended.

With machines, the initial state was always the same, but with a woman it was variable. The process followed a pattern, but there were different factors that affected her initial state: how her day was going, whether or not she was tired, how long it had been since the previous time. Look deep into her eyes with clear intent on a bad day and she’d sigh and turn away, brushing you off. But on a good day, you could push through your subsets and subprograms—stroke these places and you’d get her wet, kiss those places and you’d make her moan, lick her here and she’d open to you. It didn’t always work. Sometimes the subroutines you chose didn’t achieve the required results.

As with code, experimentation was necessary. If one spot did not produce a pleasure response, then it was necessary to try another, or another. Input parameters were very important: if a guy wanted to input
anything
into his partner, he was going to have to make sure the parameters were correct or the whole routine would fail.

So I’d used my five minutes of free seduction wisely—made sure my subroutines would achieve the highest yield. And in no time at all, I’d had her moving under my hands. Easy as coding!

When we made it to dinner, we interrupted Peter and Kim sipping wine over a plate of appetizers, laughing, their heads tipped toward each other.

They looked up when we sat down. I grinned. “Sorry we’re late.”

Peter and Kim exchanged a glance and Emilia blushed.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Kim.

“It was
my
fault. So what’s the special? I’m starving.”

When they weren’t looking, I turned and winked at Emilia.

“I hope you’ve recovered your manners and we aren’t going to see any more Jabba the Hutt imitations,” Emilia sighed dramatically, her lips twisting into a grin.

She had that well-pleasured, just-fucked look. Her skin was still flushed, her hair slightly askew, her nipples still erect and rubbing against her dress. I licked my lips. Right now, I was hungry as hell for dinner. Later, I’d be hungry for more of
her
.

Chapter Two

After we returned home from the national park, we had a wonderful lazy ten days to enjoy each other before I was due to return to work. And we made every second of our time count. Until that very last day.

But our time off ended on a dark Monday morning in late September. Sometime around 6 a.m., I heard her rustling around in the bed, turning over as if to get up. She reached for the alarm clock and fumbled with it, presumably to turn it off before it woke me up. When she grabbed the sheets to get up, I rolled over and hooked my arm around her waist, staying her. She froze.

“Sorry. Did I wake you?”

“Nope,” I said, pulling her back fast against me and pressing my morning wood to her pert ass. “I’m up.”

She laughed. “In more ways than one, I see.”

My lips grazed the soft, fragrant skin at her neck just at the juncture where it met her shoulder. “I didn’t hear any complaints last night. Or yesterday afternoon in the pool…”

She shivered under my touch, but heaved a weary sigh. “You’re definitely going to wear me out with all this extra endurance you built up from the trail.”

“Oh, I don’t think there’s a danger of that. But it doesn’t mean I won’t have fun trying—to wear you out, that is.” I chuckled against her neck and reached up to cup her breast. We were both still naked from the sex last night. It sure was good to be home.

“Hmm,” she said and I could tell she was going to try to play hard to get. I always loved the challenge of figuring out how to convince her. “I was going to go running.”

My tongue caressed her between her shoulder blades. “Go after.”

“But we have work today…” she said, her voice going breathy from the effect of my hands stroking her nipples.

I slid one hand from her breast, across her belly and down between her thighs. She let out a long gasp that ignited my blood. Sometimes it took an entire subroutine, and sometimes it was just as easy as going for the on button. I put my mouth to her ear. “I can pretty much guarantee your boss is okay with you being late.”

She rolled onto her back to face me. “You’re insatiable.” She hooked her hands behind my neck as I kissed her.

“Mmm hmm,” I agreed. “Because you’re irresistible.”

“Oh, so it’s
my
fault?” she said, eyes rounding, a long, slow smile crossing her lush lips.

She pushed against my shoulder, rolling me onto my back. Just as quickly she slipped on top, straddling me.
Oh, hell yeah
.

“Well, let’s make it quick, then.” She laughed.

It wasn’t quick. But she didn’t mind.

***

This was my first morning back to work after three months. And, for the first time ever, we were driving to work together. Oddly, it felt comforting and domestic.

The me from five years ago was rolling in his grave. But current-me couldn’t have been happier. Before I’d met Emilia, life was like an old-school video game played on a battered handheld. Small, requiring lots of imagination to spice it up and leaving lots of room for improvement. With her, it was like being engrossed in a full-immersion virtual reality, an experience unique to itself. There was no life before Emilia.

I glanced at her. She had her head down, focusing on her hands, which worked in her lap. At her request, I’d kept the top up on the car so it wouldn’t mess up her hair. After I reached out and downshifted, I took one of her hands in mine.

“What’s wrong?”

She sent me a worried look. “Nothing. Except that we’re late. And everyone’s going to see us walk in together.”

I raised a brow. “Is that a problem?”

She sighed. I pulled my hand from hers to shift again, then replaced it. “No one knows about our relationship. They’re going to know why I got the job.”

“You were hired to fill in for Cathleen’s maternity leave. Everyone thinks you’re doing an awesome job. Mac’s thrilled to have your help for DracoCon. Does it matter how you got the job?”