Beg for It (15 page)

“Yikes,” Caitlyn said at the look on Corinne’s face. “Don’t freak out!”

“I’m not freaking out, but you don’t really know…I mean…” Corinne shrugged and twirled more pasta onto her plate.

Caitlyn made a face. “I know you think it’s weird.”

“Actually, I never thought it was weird. It was the only time I ever felt like everything made sense.” Corinne cleared her throat, hating the way her voice rasped. “I think it’s rare, though. To find a connection like that…”

“When your kinks align,” Caitlyn said.

Corinne laughed a little self-consciously. “Yeah. That.”

“Hey, we all have them. Some of us have kinkier kinks, that’s all. And don’t you think he feels the same way? He remembers. Why else do you think he’s being such an asshole? I mean, he’s acting in the exact opposite way he did when you were together, right? He’s being all bossy and stuff.”

“He’s beyond bossy,” Corinne said with a scowl.

“Would it bother you so much if it wasn’t him? If some random dude had come in to buy the company and was throwing all this bullshit your way?”

Corinne shrugged. “I wouldn’t like it no matter who was doing it.”

“‘Corinne does not take direction well.’” Her sister cackled, pointing a finger. “That was on your report card in the fifth grade, remember?”

“Yes. Yours was ‘Caitlyn has difficulty coloring inside the lines.’”

Both sisters laughed. Corinne finally gave up on eating the soggy pasta. Caitlyn snagged another piece of garlic bread from the basket and used it to point at her sister.

“Point is, we are who we are, and we’ve probably always been that way. So no, you wouldn’t be happy if anyone had come in and started ordering you around, but it’s particularly egregious that it’s Reese.”

“Ooh. Good word.”

Caitlyn fluttered her lashes. “Thank you.”

“He used to be my boy,” Corinne said, suddenly angrier than she’d allowed herself to be. “My fucking boy, Caitlyn. He…he was mine.”

Her voice trailed into sadness.

“Now he’s just fucking with me, and I hate it. Not because he’s trying to prove to me he’s the boss or whatever. But that he would take what we had and try to erase it that way.” Corinne swallowed against the lump in her throat. “I mean, the whole reason we broke up was because he wasn’t able to commit. We’d been together for two years, I was just about to start working for Stein and Sons; everything could’ve been great. But he was dead set on running away from everything. Even me. When I asked him to meet me one last time so we could try to work on it, he never showed up. And he knew the consequences of that, Caitlyn, because I’d warned him if he didn’t show that we were through. That was it, he walked out on me, and he never came back. It was ugly and harsh and horrible, but it was also fifteen years ago. What’s the point of coming back around now to rub my face in how much he is not ever going to bend to me? What’s the fucking point, if it’s not to hurt me?”

“Maybe you should ask him that.”

“Ugh. Gross. That’s almost as bad as asking him why he can’t just love me. I’ll make sure to be drunk with my makeup smeared all over the place too, because that’s classy.” Her phone buzzed from where she’d put it on the counter to charge. When she didn’t get up to answer it, Corinne shrugged at her sister’s look. “What? The kids are with me. You’re here. Who else would be calling me?”

She got up anyway to look at it, her mouth twisting into a sneer when she saw the caller ID. Caitlyn’s brows rose as Corinne put the phone to her ear with a muttered greeting. Then her sister put her hands over her mouth to cover up the laughter.

“Reese,” Corinne said. “What do you want?”

Chapter Twenty

She should not have agreed to this.

The long farm lane of her memory was still there, though it had been paved into a much wider street lined with big houses on small lots. The house at the end was the same though. Two stories, white painted siding, green shingles on the roof and matching shutters. The barn and outbuildings were gone. She parked by the side porch, noticing that it looked a little newer than the rest of the house, as though it had been recently repaired.

She sat in her car longer than she needed to. Fussing with her lipstick and hair. Her clothes, her armor, were more casual than what she’d been wearing to work the past week, but only because showing up at his house late on a Friday night wearing a pencil skirt and kitten heels would’ve been weird. She’d settled for the pair of leggings that made her ass look fantastic, along with a flattering striped top and ballet flats. Now she was second guessing the choices though. She didn’t want to look like this was a…well, a date.

The truth was, Corinne wasn’t sure what, exactly, this was meant to be.

Reese opened the door almost before she’d knocked. “Hi. Come in.”

She waited until he’d moved aside before she entered into the small but cheery kitchen, decorated in colors that had been trendy so long ago they’d gone from outdated to vintage to trendy again. She hung her purse and coat on the back of a kitchen chair without waiting to be asked. Then she turned to face him.

“So,” she said.

“So, I guess we should…do you want something to drink?”

“I have to drive home.” Of course she had to drive home. She wasn’t going to sleep over. Fuck, why had she even said such a thing?

Reese had already been pouring a glass of red, but paused. “You sure?”

“What exactly do you want, Reese?”

He put the glass on the counter. By the look of the bottle, he’d already gone through a couple already. “I think we need to talk.”

Corinne crossed her arms. “About?”

Reese leaned against the counter, one leg crossed at the ankle. He wore a pair of low-hanging jeans and a concert T-shirt from a band she didn’t know. It clung far too tightly to his chest and arms. His feet were bare.

She hated him.

“Look, can we go into the living room? If you won’t have a glass of wine, at least we can sit on the couch. Be more comfortable.”

Eyes narrowed, she nodded and followed him down the short hallway and into the living room. It didn’t look much different from the last time she’d been in it, though at the time she hadn’t been paying much attention to the decor. “Same furniture.”

“Yeah, I never really did anything to it.” Reese drained his glass and set it on the end table as he took a seat. “Sit?”

He’d asked, not commanded, so she did, perched on the edge of the cushions, plenty of space between them. She wished she’d asked for a glass of water, at least. Her throat scratched.

“We didn’t get off on the right foot,” he said.

Both her brows rose. “You think?”

“Look…I just wanted you to know that I really did buy Stein and Sons because I thought I could turn it around. And I intend to do that. I’m good at it. Maybe you find that hard to believe…”

“Why would I find that hard to believe?” she broke in.

Reese fixed her with a look, one she remembered. He’d been drinking long before she got there. For courage? Heat kindled in her belly at the thought.

“I mean to make it a success. And I wanted you to know.”

She stared at him for a long, long moment before the question rose inside her, slipping over her dry tongue. “Why is it so important to you that I know, Reese?”

“I want…” he began and stopped.

His brow furrowed. Hands clenched, he got to his feet and paced in small, tight lines back and forth in front of her. The hems of his jeans whispered along the carpet. At last he stopped, head bowed, fingers still curled into fists at his sides.

“Because I want you to know,” he said. “I just…do.”

She could have stood, then, and left him to suffer whatever damage he’d caused. She should have. The past had happened and could not be lived over; nor could it do anything to change what was happening now. She ought to have walked away from him in that moment and kept moving forward with her life, away from everything they’d been and what they no longer were.

She didn’t.

“Shhh, puppy,” she whispered and opened her arms to him. “Come here.”

He wouldn’t, that’s what she had time to think before Reese pivoted on his heel and came to kneel in front of her. His face pressed into her lap so that her hands found the soft brush of his dark hair. She petted him, both of them silent. He heaved a sigh so heavy that his shoulders lifted and fell, and the heat of his breath caressed her through the thin material of her shirt.

They stayed that way for a while. She didn’t count the minutes, not by the ticking of the clock or the beating of her heart. They could sit like this for an eternity, she thought, and it wouldn’t seem too long.

His fingers slipped beneath her thighs, and he looked up at her with glazed eyes. Parted lips, slick from the swipe of his tongue. Corinne ran her hand over his face, then a thumb over his lower lip. Reese closed his eyes and pressed his mouth against the palm of her hand.

“I want you to be proud of me,” he whispered so low she almost couldn’t hear him.

The words were a fist, punching her in the gut. “Why?”

“Because everything I’ve ever done,” Reese murmured, words slurring, “has been about forgetting you or impressing you or making you proud. I’ve lived my whole fucking life for you without having you in it.”

“You’re drunk,” Corinne said.

Reese nuzzled into her lap. “Not much.”

She let her fingers tangle in his hair to tug his head up so he had to look her in the face. She whispered his name. He pushed up on his knees, so they were eye to eye.

“We haven’t been together for a long time,” she said.

“Yeah. I know.”

“You could have called me. Written me a letter, even. You could have done anything but ignore me, but that’s what you did. We had that fight, and I never heard from you again,” she said.

Reese flinched, eyes closing for a minute. Shamefaced. “I know. You told me if I didn’t show, that was it. We were over. I was angry.”

“But you never even tried.” When he didn’t answer, she added, “So, why now? All these years later?”

“Because…I could,” he answered simply, like that was supposed to make sense.

It did, somehow. Years had passed in which it might not have mattered if he’d called or written or hell, even friended her on Connex, because even if he’d come to her with an apology or a declaration of undying love, there’d been no room in her life for him. So here they both were, older and in different places in their lives.

“Look at me,” she told him. When he did, she took his face in both her hands to stare into his eyes the way she’d done so many times when they were young and had never thought what they’d had would disappear. “The problem is, Reese, that all those years ago, I fell in love with you. And I’ve never managed to find a way to fall back out.”

He kissed her then. Soft and slow and sweet and somehow yearning, his arms going around her. He tasted like good red wine. He broke the kiss, their foreheads pressed together, but before she could speak he was kissing her again. Harder this time, breathing a small sigh that turned into a moan when she gently sucked his tongue.

How many times has she dreamed about him, and this? For ages Corinne had imagined what it would be like to taste him again, only to discover now how fickle memory could be. He was even better than she remembered—or maybe she was. Both of them older, with more finesse, or maybe it was the years of longing that flavored this kiss. She didn’t care. He was kissing her, then pulling her into his arms and onto the floor so she straddled him. His cock was hard under her, and his hands went up automatically with her fingers curling around his wrists to settle on the floor beside his head.

Corinne paused, breathing hard. When she rocked the tiniest bit against him, Reese bumped his hips upward and rolled them until he was on top of her. In seconds he’d pinned her wrists to the floor by her ears. She didn’t struggle.

“What do you need, honey?” she whispered.

“You. I need you.”

She arched to press her body to his. “I’m here.”

His kiss moved over her mouth, down her throat to the scooped neck of her shirt. His hands slid up over the soft, loose fabric, pushing it up and over. Her nipples were already hard, poking the lace of her bra, and Reese mouthed each one as his hands cupped her. He moved back to her neck, pressing his open mouth to her sensitive skin. One hand went between her legs. Corinne cried out at the stroking slide of his fingertips against her, the soft material of her leggings no barrier to his questing touch.

Another moment after that, Reese slid his hand beneath the waistband and into her panties. His fingers pushed inside her before she was ready for him, and shocked, she cried out again. This was moving so fast, but there was no way to slow it down. Not with his mouth on hers and his fingers fucking into her, his thumb pressing her clit. It had been too long for her without anyone’s touch, but most especially his.

Reese moved down her body again, fingers slipping out of her so he could wrestle her leggings over her hips. Her panties came down too, leaving her bare to his lips and tongue. At the first lick, Corinne arched, helpless to keep herself still.