Stipulation (4 page)

There is my hunk of
burning love… my orgasm master, my energizer bunny, sprawled
out waiting for me on the bed.

Fast asleep.

I can tell he tried
to stay awake. He has one foot propped on the floor and the other on
the bed; his legs are wide open with his package all squarely tucked
in for a nice sleep. It’s no longer standing at attention and
seeking my interest the way it was five minutes ago.

Taking a moment, I
gaze at Matt. He is an unbelievably sexy man, absolute perfection in
my mind. He’s strong, confident, and quick-witted—an
alpha to the core.

But watching him lay
on my bed, sound asleep, with his mouth slightly open and a soft
snore emitting, he looks incredibly vulnerable to me right now.

The great sex god,
Matt Connover, is too tired to make love to me tonight.

And there’s
something about it that touches my heart.

Yes, that is someone
nibbling on my neck.

Not just someone…
that’s Matt nibbling on my neck.

As I start to wake
fully up, other sensations assault me. Matt is pressed up against my
back, my head resting on his arm, while the other is wrapped around
my waist. His cock is pressed into my backside, and his lips are
making a goose-bump trail along the skin of my neck.

I stretch my body
and then, for good measure, push my butt into Matt Jr., who is
insistently knocking on my back door. Matt Sr. groans in response,
and the arm that was wrapped around my waist travels south, his
fingers working their way between my legs.

Yup… that’s
on my list of
best way ever to wake up
!

“I can’t
believe you let me sleep last night,” Matt chides as he sinks a
finger into me. “You’re a bad girl.”

No words come out,
just a breathy moan that causes Matt to chuckle, and he adds another
finger. I feel compelled to converse with him… You know, show
him that I can multitask while he wakes my body up.

“You looked so
cute and vulnerable last night, I just couldn’t do it,” I
tell him. Truth of the matter is, I crawled into bed next to him,
pulled the covers over both of us, and watched him sleep. If he knew
I had done that, I’m sure he would have labeled me a psycho, so
I keep that knowledge to myself.

“Vulnerable?”
Matt growls in my ear as he pushes his fingers into me extra deep.
“Never call me that again. I’m the great and powerful
Connover. Vulnerable has no business being anywhere in the vicinity
of me.”

Giggling, I reach my
hand behind me and grab ahold of what has become my most prized
possession.

Yes… mine!

I stroke him in time
with the beat of his fingers, and we lay silently with nothing but
moans and grunts echoing through my bedroom. After only a few
minutes, Matt’s voice is raspy and harsh when he says,
“Playtime’s over.”

He pushes me onto my
stomach, rolling over on top of me. Supporting his weight on his
hands, he manages to kick my legs apart. I can feel him make a quick
dip with his hips, and he’s at my entrance. He’s not
seeking permission to come in either. He takes it upon himself with a
few rough pushes and then he’s all the way in, and God…
it feels so fucking good.

Feels better and
better every time.

To give himself
better leverage, Matt grabs my hips and raises them off the bed,
pulling out and slamming back into me. I let out a very unladylike
ooph
into the pillow, and then I just hang on for the ride.

And it’s
Matt-Fucking-Connover tunneling deep into me, so it’s the ride
of a lifetime. He alternates fast, then slow, hard, and then tender,
hands gripping my hips or sneaking around to my front to rub me just
right.

Long before he
reaches the pinnacle, I’m already shaking, shuddering, and
crying out words of praise for his performance. He soon follows me,
again whispering my name in reverence as he comes.

Once we get our sea
legs under us, we venture into the shower… where Round Two of
the Mac and Matt Show takes place. We’re not as graceful, and
Matt even slips on the soapy tile once as he tries to pin me to the
shower wall. He throws a hand out to make a grab at
something—anything—to stop us falling and manages to grab
onto my shampoo rack hanging around the showerhead. It slips off the
metal pipe, catching the showerhead with such force that it rips
away. It falls and hits Matt on the shoulder, for which he drops
seven “F” bombs, and water starts pouring out of the bare
pipe at an alarming rate.

Pride doesn’t
even do it justice when I think that Matt never even misses a beat.
His feet gain purchase and he balances out, never missing a stroke
inside of me. He pounds me into the tile wall until both of us are
groaning in orgasm.

And being a true
gentleman, he fixes my showerhead after we dry off.

Now I’m
feeding him pancakes and sipping at my coffee, completely content
with my morning sex-a-thon, the fact that Matt is sitting in my
kitchen, and that we’re talking about normal things. Oh,
nothing too personal, but we’re not talking about business. We
found we have a mutual love affair for
Criminal Minds
and
Family Guy
, and that we are not in alignment on reality TV. I
adore
Big Brother
and
Survivor
—he thinks those
shows suck brain cells out of your head. I then point out that he’s
not getting any smarter by watching
Family Guy
.

Our banter is light
and easy, and it’s hard to remember that he’s my boss and
I’m his subordinate. It’s even harder for me to remember
that this is just sex, and our conversation is probably nothing more
than the passing of time so that he can eat his breakfast.

When he finishes, he
helps me with the dishes, bumping his shoulder companionably against
mine. But then he says he needs to get home and take care of some
things.

I wait for him to
say he wants to see me tonight, but he busies himself with putting
his jacket on and grabbing his briefcase. When he walks to my front
door, I finally blurt, “So… what are you doing this
weekend?”

God… did that
sound pathetically hopeful?

Hopefully not.

He turns to look at
me with a tight look on his face. “I have plans all weekend, so
I’ll see you in the office on Monday.”

His words have a
finality to them. He’s not going to share what those plans are
and, clearly, I’m not included. A deep pang of hurt hits me in
the center of my chest, but I don’t let him see it. I keep my
smile bright when I tell him, “Cool. Have a great weekend, and
I’ll see you Monday.”

Kissing me on the
cheek, Matt says goodbye and leaves without a backward glance. He
doesn’t hold me in his arms and tell me he’ll miss me.

He’s already
dismissed me from his mind.

My plans may not be
with Matt this weekend—again, still smarting about that—but
I do have plans.

I’m in the law
library at Columbia doing a huge research project on how to pierce
the corporate veil for Lorraine that’s due on Monday. Yes, I
almost fell asleep just thinking those words.

Boring!

I could easily do
the research at the office. Matt and Bill spared no expense on the
online legal research software for Connover and Crown, but I love the
law library at my alma mater. There’s something about the dark
cubbies and green banker’s lamps on each table, emitting their
soft glow, that makes me feel smarter. Like I can absorb the
yawn-inducing material better. I’m always in my research zone
here.

I’ve been at
it for two hours, and I think I have most of my research collected.
Now I settle in to read it in detail. I make frequent trips back and
forth to the copier, and let my yellow highlighter mark the passages
that apply to our case, or could poke a hole in our case.

That takes another
three hours, and then I’m ready to begin typing a Memorandum
that will summarize all of this work into an easy, twenty-minute read
for Lorraine.

Yup… pisses
me off that I’ll have probably seven hours of work into a
Memorandum that Lorraine will be able to read in twenty minutes and
be well versed in the law. Such is the life of a lowly associate
attorney fresh out of law school.

Once my Memorandum
is finished, and I’ve proofed it three times—because if
Lorraine catches a comma out of place, I’ll get an
ass-chewing—I print it and head to the copier for one last
round of copies. One for Lorraine, one for me, and one for Matt, just
because I know it will piss Lorraine off that I think I need to copy
Matt on this.

As the papers are
shooting out from the copier into the collection bin, my mind
wanders. Of course, I think of Matt. I wonder what he has planned
this weekend, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was
obsessing on the possible fact that he could be hooking up with
someone else. Although we’ve been very clear and honest about
giving into our attraction to each other, we never talked about us
being monogamous. Matt has no need for loyalty to me because I’ve
not asked for it, and my stomach churns over the fact that he might
be screwing someone else tonight.

Someone prettier
than me. Smarter than me. Sexier than me.

Sighing in longing
and frustration, I don’t notice the man standing next to the
copier.

“Legal
research gives me the same feeling,” he says, assuming my sighs
have more to do with the law than love.

Looking up, I see a
very handsome man. He stands about six foot with dark blond hair and
warm brown eyes. Dressed casually in jeans and a polo shirt, he leans
one arm on the copier and pulls my copies out. Scanning it briefly,
he says, “Piercing the corporate veil, huh? Dry stuff.”

Nodding, I give him
a smile in agreement. “Yup. Just spent a lovely seven hours on
this puppy. I’m not entirely sure I’m not in a coma right
now. Am I talking okay?”

Laughing, he hands
me the copies and says, “You’re talking just fine. I’m
Cal Carson, by the way.”

He sticks his hand
out to me, and I give it a shake. “McKayla Dawson, first-year
associate and relegated to the law library on weekends.”

I take the copies
from him and slip them in my briefcase. Standing up, I look back at
Cal. “So, what type of law do you do?”

“Corporate and
insurance defense,” he says, with about as much enthusiasm as a
man getting ready to have his teeth drilled. “But I’m
thinking of a career change. You?”

“Oh, a little
of this, a little of that. Whatever my boss tells me to do,
actually.”

“Been there,
done that,” he commiserates. “It will get better over
time.”

We both start
walking out of the library together. “Didn’t you have
copies to make? I just assumed you were waiting for me to get done.”

“Nah… I
just saw you standing there and thought I’d introduce myself.
Say… if you want me to read your memo, I’d be glad to. I
just gave a symposium on this very subject.”

“Really?”
I ask, grateful to have another opinion. If I’m wrong about
something, I can get it corrected and save myself from a Lorraine
Special Tongue Lashing. “I don’t want to bother you or
anything.”

“It’s
not a bother and certainly no hardship to help out a beautiful
woman,” he says, his eyes showing a tad bit warmer than they
were before. I blush prettily because his words are nice, and I’m
in a Matt funk.

“Okay…
how about I buy you a cup of coffee across the street, and you can
take a gander at it?”

Cal takes my elbow
as we exit the law library. “I’ll agree only if I buy the
coffee.”

“But that
doesn’t seem fair.” I laugh. “You have to do work
and pay for coffee.”

“Trust me,”
Cal says. “Being able to spend half an hour in your presence is
payment enough.”

I look at Cal in a
different light right now. He’s clearly flirting with me, and I
like it. It’s been so very long since someone has done that.
Not even Matt has taken the time, because he knows I’m a sure
thing. He knows without a doubt that I’ll drop trou when he
crooks his finger at me.