Polished (23 page)

“You bet. I can’t wait until they finish the renovations.”

“Speaking of which…” He pointed to the article. “Take a look at this.”

Rory leaned forward to read the headline out loud. “Redemption for Rothman Disgrace.” She looked wide-eyed at Spencer and then back at the paper. “Rothman Development to give GBLT resource center a pro bono facelift. After exposing his family firm’s habitual shortcuts and shoddy practices, Jack Rothman forced dissolution of the company assets and a corporate restructuring aided by an employee buyout. Now operating under a cooperative structure, Rothman Development has a new company decree, says CEO Jack Rothman, Jr. With a focus on eco-responsibility and sustainable design, Rothman Development seeks to become the city’s foremost authority on green engineering.

“Rothman Development was found to hold no responsibility for the July 25th water main break that trapped Mr. Rothman and demolitions foreman Spencer Hartley in an abandoned subway connection site. That did not stop Jack Rothman from revealing the questionable standards set forth by his former boss and father, Jackson Rothman, Sr. Sources close to the family say that Jackson Rothman is now retired and living in Boca Raton, Florida.”

Rory was speechless.

“Seems like Jack is doing a good thing,” Spencer said in a quiet voice.

“Yeah, probably just a PR stunt,” Rory replied, turning past the picture of Jack’s handsome face. “Your stop’s coming up. Meet you for lunch? My last class is over at two.”

“Crew breaks at one.”

“Damn.” She bit her lip. “Can I interest you in an extra special dinner instead?”

Spencer smiled. The tone in her voice hinted at more than a special dinner. Things had been a little off between them since that weekend in the Hamptons. Nothing obvious. Just not quite the way it used to be. He didn’t love her any less. God knew there wasn’t a minute he wasn’t thankful for the way she loved him. But something sad lingered in the air around them now, something that they just couldn’t shake. He didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what it was. The draft that chilled the air around them came from the door Jack had left open in their relationship. But it was a hell of a lot easier to act like there was nothing wrong.

“I’ll be looking forward to it all day, babe.” He bent forward and kissed her on the mouth. Her lips tasted just as sweet as always. “Be good.”

She smiled. “Yes, sir.”

* * *

Time has a way of putting things into perspective. After three months, Rory couldn’t say she was still angry with Jack. If anything, she was confused. Not once the whole time they’d been with Jack did she question the honesty in his smile, or the very real way he looked at her and Spencer. There was a certain deference in the way he’d treated them. It wasn’t fake. It couldn’t have been, or everything she knew about reading people was a crock of shit. Seeing what lay beneath the surface was a talent that Rory prided herself on, and she had chosen to study psychology because of her sensitivity to people’s real motivations.

Now Rory was simply confused about what she felt was true and what she’d heard with her own ears. She read the article again, having bought her own copy at the corner newsstand on her way home from class. The picture was a good one. Jack was smiling, looking pleased. She wrinkled her brow at him and the bell went off on her kitchen timer. She slipped the article into the junk drawer next to the sink.

“Smells amazing,” Spencer said, padding down the hallway and pulling on an old T-shirt after his shower.

Rory stepped into the archway of the kitchen, stretching herself tall against the frame. While Spencer was scrubbing the dirt and grime from the subway connection project off his body, Rory had slipped out of her clothes and into a frilly, fifties-style pink-and-white ruffled apron and red patent leather Mary Jane stilettos. He stopped dead in his tracks.

“I’m going to feed you a nice warm meal, Mr. Hartley, and then you’re going to treat me to a nice hot fuck for dessert.” She tilted her head. “How does that sound?”

He tugged playfully on the bow of her apron. “What if I want to eat my dessert first?”

“Bad boys who want to eat their dessert first get sent to bed with no supper at all.” She winked. It felt good to be playful and saucy. It was even better to have Spencer wanting to play along.

“Whatever you have planned, I like it already,” he said, taking a seat at their kitchen table.

She had planned plenty. Dinner was chicken bordelaise with wild mushrooms and braised leeks, accompanied by herbed roasted new potatoes and a mesclun salad. The wine on the table was a crisp chardonnay that she’d painfully selected in the local liquor store, hoping it would be right with the meal.

Rory stood next to Spencer and filled their glasses. “You know, I spent, like, half an hour staring at wine bottles trying to figure out which one I should buy. Who can make heads or tails of those labels?” It had been a little voice in the back of her mind that finally made her just go with her instincts and be satisfied with the choice. The voice had been deep and familiar…and firm.

“I’m sure it’s perfect,” Spencer said.

“If you say so. Perfection is a matter of opinion.”

“I do.”

She grinned. “So do I. And so it is…perfect.” They clinked. Rory went to take her seat.

“Oh no, you’re not sitting way over there.” Spencer patted his leg. “Come here, sweetness.”

The way he looked at her then made her feel all bubbly inside. It was going to be a great evening. Better than any they’d had in a long time.

They ate with Rory sitting on his lap, feeding each other bites of chicken, slurping on each other’s lips in between. It wasn’t a surprise when dinner didn’t last very long. Spencer’s fingers dripped with the garlic wine sauce. Rory’s tongue chased after them after he’d placed a torn piece of chicken in her mouth. She grinned at him playfully and caught the tip of his index finger between her teeth.

“Ow,” he said softly.

She sucked the finger back into her mouth and swirled her tongue around it. “Bad girl?” she prompted.
Please, please
. She wanted to be a bad girl.

He drew her lips to his. “I forgive you,” he said. His tongue swiped at hers sweetly, his hand cupping her face.

Rory swallowed her disappointment and kissed him back. But the guilt she felt for being disappointed in the first place wasn’t as easy to ignore, or hide.

“What’s the matter, baby?” he said, pulling away and wiping at her eye.

“What if we’re broken?” she whispered. Then, clearing her throat, she looked at him with teary, upturned eyes. “What if we’ve actually gone ahead and broken what we had?”

Spencer looked so concerned it made another tear fall. “Shhh. No, baby. Don’t say that,” he said, shaking his head, placing soft kisses on her cheeks. “Don’t ever say such a thing. I love you.” She bit her lip. “Rory, I love you.”

“I know you do. I love you too. That’s not what I meant.” She searched for a way to explain what she did mean. She clawed her brain for the words, begged them to appear in her mouth. But how could she hurt him any more than she already had? The whole thing with Jack had ended up so terribly only because it had been so amazing at first. It had been a roller coaster ride to hell that she’d accidentally designed. And now maybe they were broken because she needed something he couldn’t give her and he needed something she didn’t have.

A fatter tear rolled down her cheek. Spencer caught it with his lips. “You know I can’t stand to see you cry.”

Rory pressed her lips into a smile. “My own version of Chinese water torture.”

He laughed softly and kissed her nose. “You ready to go to bed?”

She nodded and he scooped her up into his arms, hands grasping her bare bottom and shoulders firmly.

“You know you look hot in that apron. Keep it on for me?” he asked with raised eyebrows.

“That was the idea.”

“Shoes too?”

Rory pointed her toes. “They are sexy, aren’t they?”

“You left sexy ten miles back,” he said. “Believe me, I’m going to show you just how not broken we are.”

Could it be that easy? Rory closed her eyes on his shoulder and licked at his earlobe. Maybe all she needed to do was focus on everything she had and stop thinking about what was missing.

He laid her down on the bed, brushing her hair from her face and tucking a wavy lock behind her ear. “I am so damn lucky,” he whispered.

She looked back into his deep blue eyes, as soft and sincere as ever. His head dipped and she buried her face in his mop of hair as his lips explored her jawbone. He smelled like home, like her own slice of certainty.

When he stood back up to undress, she took in the sight of him with greedy eyes. The simple act of pulling off his faded baseball shirt was more sensual than it had any right to be. She slept next to that body every night and still the long string of muscles marching down his torso gave her tingles in all the right places. And when he plied his just-fitted-enough, worn-to-death favorite pair of jeans down his sinewy legs she licked her lips, convinced that there wasn’t a better formed example of manhood on earth. Spencer was the full package, good to the core and hot as hell. Truly there was no place else she wanted to be.

Those eyes had her in their sights, not wavering for a minute. She felt that tremor of excitement. She hadn’t really been worried, had she? Three months had passed and their sex life hadn’t exactly suffered. After three years, they knew the cues, the special buttons to push. He loved her with his body just the same as before, nothing had changed that. But…oh God, no matter how much she wished there wasn’t, there was a big fat “but” in the way.

Now their secrets were out of their cages. Both Spencer’s secret and hers, the one she never really knew she had until Jack. Now she knew there could be more for both of them. She wanted that look of searing intensity back on Spencer’s face. She wanted to see him have everything that gave him pleasure and for him to grant her the same. And the very worst of it was that she wanted to know that the weekend they spent with Jack hadn’t been a mistake. She wanted to know the sheer amazement of it all had been real and right, like it had felt. She wanted Jack to be good, for Jack to be good
for
them. And tonight in a frilly apron that seemed a little sillier the more she thought about it, she was trying hard to make all of those wants go away.

She was trying
too
hard, Jack would say.

“Help me with this?” she said, tugging at the bow behind her neck.

“Thought you were keeping that on?” he said, helping her with one raised eyebrow.

“I want it to be just us. No props, no pretense.”

“I can do us,” he said, dropping to his knees on the edge of the bed, hooking her leg under his long fingers. He crushed his mouth onto hers and sucked on her tongue as his fingers found her center. In moments she was more than ready for him. There was a real need to be connected, to feel him fill her with everything he had. She called to him with grabby hands and he pressed into her, hot and deep, in one deliberate thrust.

He pushed her leg higher, resting it against his neck and then clutched her shoulder with his freed hand. All the while he pinned her other leg to the bed and stroked her innermost depths, as if he were trying to prevent even the slightest bit of space between them. Then he ground his hips against her for good measure. The effect was pretty fucking epic. She felt him within her, felt him holding her in his eyes as much as she held him within her core. Connection. Mind and body.

Rory wrapped her hand around his ass cheek, holding him to her with all of her strength. He managed another stroke in the narrow space she permitted. Rory clenched around him, trying to keep him there, buried inside her. He pulled her bottom lip between his teeth and then sucked on it softly. Another stroke and she started to shudder, her grip lessening. Spencer tore away and pulled to the very edge of her channel, stared at her with sharp eyes, and then whipped his hips forward, causing her to scream out his name.

Hearing his name roar from her lungs seemed to give him all the reason he needed to do it again, and again. It was enough to bring her to orgasm with ease. He knew exactly how to bring her there, never leaving her behind on the path to his own release. This was Spencer, loving and generous with his pleasure without fail. She had no right to want more than that. But an itch that needed scratching still nagged at her.

Flipping him over to his back, she took control and savored his look of surprise. She grabbed his cock, roughly because she meant him to know she was taking over. There was more to this than her playful grin revealed.

“You should brace yourself,” she said. He looked as if he liked the sound of that.

He pulled his legs up, holding his knees and striking a position she hadn’t seen on him since the Hamptons, or more specifically, since Jack. And then it struck her. “Just us” wasn’t “just us” at all. Jack was there in the undercurrents of her mind, of their sex.

Rory grabbed some lubricant from her night table and straddled him in reverse. “I’m going to make you want to scream, baby.” Sliding onto his rock-hard shaft was only half of it. She pressed two slick fingers to his puckered hole and applied only enough pressure to let him know what was coming. He moaned his approval and so she pressed farther, slipping past the tight rim. The thrill of penetrating her man coursed in her veins, potent and addictive. A rough sound came from deep in his throat when she tried pumping her fingers softly in and out. That sound—it curled her toes. Nothing was as satisfying as seeing her man reduced to a pile of goo. Rory concentrated on her rhythm, dragging her hips forward on his cock and thrusting her fingers into his ass in unison. Each time he received her with a raspy moan that made her want to never stop.

It drove her wild to have him like this, her big, strong guy spreading his legs for her and grunting at each of her strokes. He was the silkiest of iron rods inside her, captured deep as she rocked her hips on his shaft.

“Oh fuck, Rory!”