Beautiful Bitch (2 page)

Which led back to one of my favorite memories of Chloe and me: the morning after her presentation. Due to the heat and tension that came with actually admitting we were no longer hate-fucking but actually interested in something more,
we had had one of our biggest arguments ever. I hadn’t seen her in months, so I showed up at her presentation for the scholarship board to watch her nail it. And she did.

Afterward, though, despite everything we’d said upstairs in the boardroom, there was still so much
more
to say. The reality of our reunion still felt so new, and I hadn’t been sure where we stood.

Once we were on the sidewalk, I stared down at her: at her eyes, and lips, and her neck, which was still a little red from the biting kisses I’d placed there only minutes before. The way she reached up and rubbed her finger over what appeared to be a small hickey pushed an electric reminder from my brain to my cock: this reunion is nice but it’s time to get her home and fuck her into the mattress.

I wasn’t sure we were on the same page about that, though.

Outside in the daylight, she looked like she was about to fall over. Of course she was. Knowing Chloe, she’d probably been preparing and fine-tuning her presentation for the last seventy-two hours straight, no sleep. But I hadn’t seen her in so long—could I keep it together long enough to just let her go home to rest? If she needed to nap, I could just hang out and wait for her to wake up, right? I could lie down near her, reassure myself that she was really here and we were really doing this and just . . . what? Touch her hair?

Holy shit. Had I always been this creepy?

Chloe hitched her computer bag up over her shoulder, and the movement pulled me out of my thoughts. But when I blinked back into focus, I saw that she was staring off into the distance, toward the river.

“You okay?” I asked, ducking to meet her eyes.

She nodded, startling a little as if she’d been caught. “I’m fine, just overwhelmed.”

“A little shell-shocked?”

Her exhausted smile pulled at something tender beneath my ribs, but the way she licked her lips before speaking tugged inside me a bit lower. “I was so sad thinking I wasn’t going to see you today. And this morning, I spent the entire walk between your building and here thinking how weird it was that I was going to be doing this without you, or Elliott, or anyone from Ryan Media. And then you came here, and of course you pissed me off, but you also made me laugh . . .” She tilted her head, studied my face. “The presentation was exactly what I wanted it to be, and then the job offers . . . and
you.
You told me you love me. You’re here.”

She reached out to press her palm flat to my chest. I knew she could feel my heart slamming against my sternum. “My adrenaline is slowing and now I’m just . . .” She moved her hand away from me and waved it in front of her before it seemed to deflate at her side. “I’m not sure how tonight is going to work.”

How tonight was going to work? I could tell her exactly how
it would work. We’d talk until it was dark, and then fuck until the sun came up. I reached for her, slipping my arm around her shoulder.
Christ, she felt good.

“Let me worry about all of that. I’ll drive you home.”

This time she shook her head, pulling more fully back into the moment. “It’s okay if you have to go back to work, we can—”

Scowling, I growled, “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s almost four. I’m not going back to work. My car is here and you’re getting in it.”

Her smile turned sharp at the corners. “Bossy Bennett emerges. Now I’m
definitely
not going with you.”

“Chloe, I’m not kidding. I’m not letting you out of my sight until Christmas.”

She squinted up at the late afternoon June sun. “Christmas? That sounds a little gimp-in-the-basement for my tastes.”

“If you’re not into that, this relationship might not work after all,” I teased.

She laughed, but didn’t answer. Instead, those deep brown eyes stared up at me, unblinking and hard to read.

I felt so out of practice with this, and struggled to hide my frustration.

Placing my hands on her hips, I bent to press a small kiss to the center of her mouth. Fuck, I needed more. “Let’s go. No basements. Just us.”

“Bennett—”

I cut her off with another kiss, paradoxically relaxed by this tiny disagreement. “My car. Now.”

“You sure you don’t want to hear what I have to say?”

“Absolutely positive. You can talk all you want once I have my face firmly planted between your legs.”

Chloe nodded and followed when I took her hand and gently pulled her toward the parking deck, but she was smiling mysteriously all the while.

The entire drive to her place, she tickled her fingers up and down my thigh, leaned to lick my neck, slid her hand over my cock, and talked about the tiny red panties she put on this morning, needing that little confidence boost.

“Will it shatter your confidence if I tear them off?” I asked, leaning to kiss her at a red light. The car behind me honked just when it was getting good: when her lips were giving way to tiny bites and her sounds filled my mouth and my head and—
fuck
—my entire chest. I needed to get her naked and beneath me.

In the elevator on the way up to her apartment, it was wild. She was here, holy fuck she was here, and I’d missed her so much; if I had my way, this night was going to last for three days. She pushed her skirt up over her hips, and I lifted her, stepping between her legs and pressing my aching cock into her.

“Going to make you come so many times,” I promised.

“Mmm, promise?”

“Promise.”

I rocked my hips against her and she gasped, whispering, “Okay, but first—”

The elevator dinged and she wiggled herself free, slipping to the floor. With a hesitating look, Chloe smoothed her skirt back down, and walked ahead of me into the hallway and toward her apartment.

My stomach dropped.

I hadn’t been back here since we were apart and I’d conned her security guard into letting me up to talk to her. I’d ended up spending the entire time conversing with the outside of her door instead. I felt strangely anxious. I wanted to only feel relieved at our reunion, not think about everything we’d missed out on in our months apart. To distract myself, I bent low and sucked at the skin beneath her ear and began working on the zipper at the back of her skirt as she fumbled with her key.

She swung the door open, turning to me.
“Bennett—” she started, but I pushed her inside and back against the nearest wall, quieting her with my mouth. Fuck, she tasted good, a mix of the lemon water she’d been drinking and that familiar taste she always had: soft mint and softer, hungry lips. My fingers teased at the back of her skirt but I lost my finesse, yanking the zipper down and shoving the fabric to the floor
,
immediately reaching for her blazer.
Why the fuck is she still wearing this goddamn thing? Why is she still wearing anything?

Beneath her deep purple dress shirt, her nipples hardened as I stared, and I reached out to circle one with a fingertip. Her sharp gasp pulled my eyes to hers.

“I missed this. I missed you.”

Her tongue peeked out to wet her lips. “Me, too.”

“Fuck, I love you.”

When I kissed her throat, her chest lifted and fell with quickened breaths, and I wasn’t sure how this was going to go down, how I could possibly
slow
down. Would I take her here, fast and hard first, or would I carry her to a couch or chair, kneel down, and just taste her? I’d been thinking about all of it for so long—playing out in my head how every scenario would go—and in the moment I felt a little paralyzed by the reality of her here, in the flesh.

I needed it all. I needed to feel her sounds and her skin, lose myself in the comfort of her hand wrapped around me, watch the sweat bead her brow while she rode me, showing me how much she’d missed me, too. I’d see it in the way her rhythm would falter when she got closer, or she would clutch me when I would say her name in that quiet whisper she always liked.

My hands shook as I reached up and carefully slipped her top button free. It registered somewhere in the ever-shrinking evolved portion of my brain that I didn’t want to
destroy the buttons on the shirt she’d worn for her thesis defense.

I also wanted to savor this. Savor her.

“Bennett?”

“Mmm?” I undid another button, ran a finger across the hollow of her throat.

“I love you,” she said, her hands braced on my forearms, eyes wide. My hands faltered, and I lost my breath. “But . . . you’re going to hate what I’m about to tell you.”

I was still stuck on the
I love you.
My grin felt a little out of control. “What . . . ? Whatever you have to say, I’m sure I won’t hate it.”

She winced, turning to look at the clock on the wall. It was the first time it occurred to me to take a look around her apartment. I stepped back in surprise; her place looked
nothing
like I expected.

Everything about Chloe had always been impeccable, stylish, current. But her apartment could not be farther from that description. The living room was tidy, but full of worn furniture and
things
that didn’t look like anything she would own. Everything was brown and tan; the couches looked comfortable but like they were made out of the same material as a stuffed animal. A small collection of wooden owls was clustered on a shelf near a tiny television and, in the kitchen, the clock that she’d glanced at had a big smiling bumblebee on the face with the words “Bee Happy!” in garish bubble letters.

“This . . . is not what I expected.”

Chloe followed my attention around the apartment and then let a loud laugh burst free. It was the same laugh she used to let out before she would verbally eviscerate me. “What would you have expected, Mr. Ryan?”

I shrugged, not wanting to insult her but feeling sincerely curious about this disconnect. “I just expected your place to look a little more like you.”

“What, you don’t like my owls?” she asked, grinning.

“I do, yes, they just—” I started, running a nervous hand into my hair.

“And these couches?” she interrupted. “Don’t you think we could have fun on them?”

“Baby, we could have fun on any surface in this place, I’m just saying I expected your place to be less . . .”

Fuck.
Why was I still talking? I looked over at her and she had a hand over her mouth, laughing silently.

“Calm down,” she said. “This was my mom’s apartment. I love it, but you’re right. None of this stuff is mine. When I was in school it just didn’t make sense for me to sell it, or to get new things.”

I took another curious glance around. “You could buy yourself hundred-dollar panties but you didn’t want a new couch?”

“Don’t be such a snob. I didn’t
need
a new couch. And I
frequently
needed new panties,” she said quietly, meaningfully.

“Hell yes you did.”

With this perfect reminder, I stepped close to her, resuming my gentle attack on her line of buttons. Pushing her shirt
over her shoulders and down her arms, I stared at where she stood in front of me, in only a red lace bra and matching underwear. They were
tiny.

“Tell me what you want,” I said, feeling a little desperate as I pushed her hair behind her shoulder so I could suck on her neck, her jaw, her ear. “My cock? My mouth? My hands? Christ, I’m doing it all tonight but where does one start? I haven’t seen you in months and feel like I’m losing my mind.”