Balancing Act (The Santa Monica Trilogy Book 3) (11 page)

Rather than reel off a glib response along the lines of what every applicant offered when interviewing for admission to law school, Zach studied her for several long moments. “My parents divorced when I was in college,” he finally said.

When he lapsed back into silence, Angie prompted him. “And…?”

“You never met my mother, did you?”

“No.”

“Consider yourself lucky,” he said. “She had a real problem with anger management. And impulse control. It was one of the reasons Dad often let me tag along with him even when I was a little kid. Much safer to be on a construction site than at home with her.”

Angie couldn’t fathom growing up in such an environment. “I’m sorry.”

His lips curved into a smile devoid of humor. “I used to pray they’d get divorced. A lot of my friends’ parents were divorced, and it didn’t seem so bad. Then when I was ten, I walked in on her with my rugby coach, and I thought,
this was it
.”

“But it wasn’t…?”

He shrugged. “S&L was just starting to turn a profit then. I guess she wasn’t willing to let that go. And Dad was working too hard to pay much attention.”

“They say love is blind.”

“It must be deaf and dumb, too, because they stayed together another decade after that. She had a thing for sports—or at least the coaches. After rugby, it was soccer, then baseball. The only team sport she didn’t manage to ruin for me was hockey—and I’m guessing that was because the coach was gay.”

The contrast between what Zach was describing and Angie’s own happy childhood was so stark that she found herself at a loss for words. As difficult as it must have been for him growing up, she sensed that he wouldn’t welcome any expression of pity from her. His pride and strength of will—and even his attitude toward women—were probably a direct outgrowth of those early experiences, and whatever she said at this late date wouldn’t make an iota of difference.

But the fact that he was willing to trust her enough to open up this much was a testament to how far he had come. Was it enough for
her
to trust
him
, though? To set aside all the assumptions she’d made and defenses she’d built over the years of observing Zach with other women?

“Anyway,” Zach continued, “she kept jerking Dad around. When they finally did get divorced, she nearly bankrupted him. He had to scramble for years to recoup.”

“I never knew.” She hesitated. Oh, to hell with self-restraint. If he didn’t want her sympathy, he could tell her that directly. She touched the back of his hand, relieved when he laced their fingers together. “I’m so sorry. It sounds like you and your dad both had a pretty rough time.”

“It would have been a whole lot easier if he’d had some legal savvy.”

His knee bumped hers beneath the table, and she had to remind herself to breathe. “So you figured you’d get the legal savvy your father didn’t have?”

“Something like that.”

“But why real estate law? Why not family law?”

He looked at her. “I could ask you the same thing.”

She dropped her eyes to their joined hands. It appeared that confession time was over. Not that she minded. He had already told her more than she’d ever expected him to.

A thrill shot through her as he stroked the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. She cleared her throat. “I kind of fell into it when I was at Baker/Roth. And then I realized I liked it. Nice when you can do what you enjoy doing.”

“Sure is,” he agreed.

“So you enjoy working at S&L?”

She watched his face light up as he described the rush of negotiating an acquisition, participating in every stage of planning, design, and construction, and ultimately seeing a piece of dirt transformed into something beautiful.

When the waiter came to clear off the table and offer them a dessert menu, she sighed and reluctantly drew back.

“You can’t go wrong with the Tiramisu,” the man said, as he ran a crumb scraper over the tablecloth. “And if you like chocolate, you should try the
Tartufo di Cioccolato
. It’s chocolate gelato dipped in milk chocolate, covered with chocolate sprinkles, and served with chocolate sauce.”

Angie barely registered his description. For once, food—even a decadent chocolate dessert—held very little interest. How could it, when all her attention was focused on the man sitting across the table from her?

The man who was at this very moment leaning forward, asking her a question. “What would you like?”

What she would like was to wrap up this dinner, and get Zach home and naked. What she settled for was a breathless request for the check and a silent prayer that they wouldn’t get stuck in traffic.

Zach followed Angie up the stairs. Throughout dinner, he kept getting distracted by the way she looked in that body-hugging dress. Now, with her delectable ass swaying in front of him, pulling the fabric taut against her thighs, he could barely suppress the impulse to reach out and
grab.

He wanted to run his hands over every damn curve that his eyes had been feasting on, sink his fingers into that thick mass of hair, cover her lips with his and ravage her mouth.

His fingers flexed, imagining the feel of her: the silky slide of her hair against his hand, the supple smoothness of her skin beneath the gossamer shawl where the dress dipped low in the back, the nervous tension of her muscles as he skimmed her waist and hips and cupped her ass, the slight quiver of her inner thighs as he stroked up between them.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, listening to her fumble in her bag for the keys. A distraction, that’s what he needed. Otherwise the evening would be over before it had even begun. He  floundered for something, anything, to temper the fire raging through his veins, falling back on an old standby: a mental roll-call of Supreme Court justices, in reverse order, starting with the most recent appointment. He was up to William Brennan when he heard her curse beneath her breath. His eyes flew open.

She’d managed to unlock the door, but in the process had dropped her purse. The contents spilled across the landing at their feet.

Zach knelt to help her gather her things, barely noticing what he was picking up. His attention was too focused on the close-up he was getting of her long, sleek legs in their impossibly high heels. He pictured those legs wrapped around him as he sank into her slick heat, the bite of those heels against his back as she squeezed tighter and milked him until he spilled himself inside her.

Fuck.
If he hadn’t already been hard as tempered steel, that image would have done the trick. He wanted her. Now. In every which way. Up against the wall. Bent over a desk. Draped over him in bed. Fast, slow, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was burying himself inside her again and again until she was gasping his name and pulling him over the edge with her.

Their fingers brushed as they both reached for the last item: a square foil packet that communicated better than any words that he was not alone in his desire. She licked her lips, and it was almost his undoing. 

“Angel.” His breath hitched.

She leaned into him, maintaining eye contact the entire time, and tucked the condom into the breast pocket of his sport coat.

As far as invitations went, that was unmistakable.

He surged to his feet, bringing her up with him. Her mouth tasted of black cherries and plums, sweet and intoxicating, like the wine they’d been drinking earlier. His hands spanned her waist, pulling her closer, aligning their bodies until she was plastered against him, clutching his shoulders for support.

Blindly, he maneuvered them over the threshold, shouldering the door closed and plunging them into darkness. Without knowing the layout of her apartment, he did the only thing he could to avoid breaking their embrace. Keeping her firmly anchored against him with one hand, he pivoted, so their positions were reversed. Another step, and he had Angie backed up against the door, his hand cradling her scalp as a buffer against the hard wood.

His tongue tangled with hers. Dimly, he heard a soft thud—her purse hitting the floor?—and then it was just the sound of her breathing and his heart pounding like a jackhammer in his chest.

Time slowed. The world outside faded away. There was only this room, this woman, this moment.

He inhaled her scent. Subtle, sophisticated, erotic. Like Angie herself.

With his lips, he traced the contours of her face, familiar despite the fact that until just a few weeks ago, he’d never touched her. But her image was seared across his brain as indelibly as the ceramic glaze on a prized Ming vase. And so, too, was the softness of her skin, the slope of her cheek, the stubborn angle of her jaw.

She trembled as his fingers grazed the hollow of her throat, then followed the line of her clavicle to where the wrap began. He pushed it from her shoulders, and she let go of him to allow the material to slither to the floor.

And then her hands returned, one palm resting briefly over his heart, the other sliding down his chest and abs to tug the shirt from his jeans. That was as far as she got before he caught her hand and brought it back to his shoulder.

“Don’t move,” he whispered against her skin.

“Why?”

Instead of answering, he drew a finger along her décolletage to the low V between her breasts, dipping beneath the edge of the fabric as he slowly retraced the path, inching ever closer to the nipple before finally closing his hand over her breast completely, kneading, plucking, teasing the peak to full attention.

He followed with his lips and tongue, drawing the neckline of her dress and bra down and out of the way, sucking the nipple into his mouth and swirling his tongue around it, before releasing it and blowing on the wet skin. He repeated the process with her other breast, until she was panting and moving restlessly against him.

Only then did he continue his exploration of her body, fingers tracing each rib, the dip of her waist, the outline of her hip and thigh, all the way down to where the skirt ended, and then slowly raising the hem as he worked his way back up.

Easing his knee between her legs, he gripped the back of her thigh beneath the skirt and lifted, until she was nearly draped over his hip, completely open to him. Warm skin gave way to a damp triangle of silk, and he groaned.

His already engorged flesh flexed against her and she responded by rocking her pelvis, wringing another strangled sound from his throat. He clamped down on her hip, stilling her movement. Then he returned to what he’d been doing, stroking beneath the scrap of material that covered her sex. Up and down along the seam, dipping just the tip of his finger inside and then spreading the moisture along the delicate folds toward the little nubbin that was just starting to protrude from its hood.

She gasped, tipping her head back. “Please…”

“Please, what?”

“I need—”

He sank his finger deeper inside, using his thumb now to rub circles around her clitoris. “This? Is this what you need?”

She didn’t answer, but he could feel her inner muscles starting to tremble. He added a second finger, and it too was soon coated with her juices.

Her sudden intake of breath as he increased the speed and pressure of his thumb had him gritting his teeth and resuming his silent recitation of justices.

“Zach. Please…”

He lost track and had to start over.
Elena Kagan. Sonia Sotomayor. Samuel Alito.

Her breath was now coming in rapid puffs, interspersed with tiny sounds that had him fighting to hang on to control. He changed the angle and depth of penetration.

John Roberts. Stephen Breyer. 

She clamped down around him and shuddered. “Oh, God…”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

Her tremors peaked and then slowly subsided. Zach eased his hand away and gently lowered her leg back down to the floor. His palm settled  on the small of her back, stroking softly as her body relaxed.

Several minutes passed, with only the sound of their mingled breathing.

Finally she stirred in his arms. “You didn’t…”

His lips brushed her temple. “No.”

“I could…um…”

He smiled in the dark.
Now
she was feeling self-conscious? His cock twitched, reminding him that they were far from finished. She must have felt it, because after a brief hesitation, she tilted her pelvis forward and rubbed against him.

He stilled her movement. “Give me a minute, okay?”

“Okay.” Her fingers found his jaw. A second later, her lips followed. “By the way…”

“Yes?”

Her lips curved against his. “That condom in your pocket?  From a whole new box I got this morning. The rest are in the bedroom, in case you’re wondering.”

~

A faint wash of moonlight spilled through the open window. She should probably get up to pull the curtains, or risk getting awakened by the sun—she glanced at the LED display on her bedside alarm clock—in another three hours.

But at the moment, Angie felt like a marionette whose strings had been cut, limbs splayed every which way, unable to move even if she’d wanted to.

Zach nuzzled her neck. “What are your plans this weekend?”

“I don’t know.” She covered a yawn with the back of her hand. Apparently she was capable of moving, after all. “The usual, I guess.”

“Which is…?”

“Run. Do laundry. Go over some briefs. Have dinner at my parents’.”

His fingers drifted lightly over her bare skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “Want some company?”

She turned her head to look at him, but the light was too dim to make out his expression. “You want to help me do laundry?”

His fingers paused. Had she misunderstood? Surely he wasn’t asking for an invitation to meet her parents? She held her breath until he resumed tracing lazy patterns across her abdomen, dipping into her belly button, then reversing course to travel up and around her breast. He pinched the nipple into a stiff peak.

“Maybe,” he said. “I can be pretty handy when it comes to doing things around the house.”

“I bet.”

“You don’t believe me?” His erection nudged her hip. “Sounds like I need to do a better job of convincing you.”

“I don’t know.” She pushed against his chest, and he obligingly rolled onto his back. As she surveyed his body, her memory filling in what the semi-darkness obscured, she marveled over the fact that all this rugged strength and physical perfection was hers to enjoy. At least for tonight. And maybe even this weekend. She swept a hand over his pecs and washboard abs, following the treasure trail all the way down. “There is such a thing as trying too hard.”

He groaned, whether at her pun or the feel of her fist wrapping around his rigid length, she couldn’t tell. She stroked him a few times before his hand closed around her wrist. “Angel…”

Her pulse quickened. “Yes?”

“You talk too much.”

“I’m a lawyer.” She leaned over him and reached inside the bedside drawer. They’d already made a sizable dent in her condom supply. At this rate, she might have to stop by the pharmacy again before the weekend was over. “Goes with the territory.”

He swatted her bottom.

She yelped, rearing up. “What was that for?”

“For being all talk and no action.” He pulled her into a sitting position atop him, thighs straddling his hips.

“You’re not into any kinky stuff, are you?”

His teeth flashed. “What kinky stuff?”

“I don’t know. Whips and chains and paddles and things. Fifty Shades of Human Bondage.”

“I think you’re mixing your genres, Angel. Somerset Maugham is serious literature. E.L. James—not so much.”

She couldn’t figure him out. Clearly he was well-read in the classics, but it also sounded like he knew what he was talking about with regard to the breakout phenom that had introduced erotica to the masses. Did that mean he had some experience with the BDSM lifestyle, or an interest in exploring it? Or was it simply a reflection of how attuned he was to popular culture, especially insofar as it concerned women?

She tore open the wrapper with her teeth and rolled on the condom. “So are you?”

“What I am—” he grasped her hips, positioning her entrance right at the tip of his erection “—is all suited up, and ready for action.”

And with that, he effectively ended the conversation before she could pin him down. Typical, she thought. And then she stopped thinking at all, too swept up in the pleasure of the moment to be able to string together a coherent sentence.