Do You Take This Man (56)

She pressed down on my thumb, and her expression cracked into a grin. “Gotcha.”

Her expression was so cocky, her thumb still pressing down on mine. No, I won’t tell her. “Lucky strike,” I said, swirling my thumb around hers. “So, what happened this morning? Someone’s threatening your win?”

“I’m assisting on a case where I believed someone I shouldn’t have. People are awful, and relationships make people exponentially more awful.” She pressed my thumb down once more for good measure and then pulled her hand away.

“Yeah. I guess so.” My hand felt strange suddenly without her fingers intertwined. “Not everyone, though. You’re not awful.”

RJ rolled her head to the side and met my eyes. Her lids lowered. There was a hint of a smile at the corner of her lips. Her hand slid over my chest. “What time is it?”

“Another response could be, ‘Lear, you’re not awful, either.’?”

“And yet . . .” Her face broke into a full grin. “You’re not awful, but we’re also not in a relationship. Those are messy and someone always ends up getting hurt.”

“Did you get hurt?” The skin on her back was smooth, and I ran my own hand along her spine, studying her expression and the way her lips twitched. It was a flash and then gone, but it made me want to know everything.

RJ avoided my question, shot me a wicked grin, and pushed the bedding out of the way, straddling me, her thighs on either side of mine. “We don’t have much more time.” She reached between us to stroke me. “So, we can talk about relationships or make better use of our fifteen minutes.”

She handed me a condom from the bedside table, but I held it out of her reach with one hand and held her hip in place with the other, my finger sinking into her curves and my cock jumping. I raised my eyebrows, expectant.

“You want to talk about old relationships?”

“You can’t always avoid conversation by mounting me.”

“It’s worked so far.” She slid her slick folds over my bare cock, and I groaned at the feel of her heat, soft against me. RJ pressed her palms to my chest and held herself above me, giving me just enough to want to sink into her. “And didn’t you say I wasn’t awful just so we could do this again?”

I was so lost in the sensation, imagining what it would feel like to be bare inside her, that it took me a moment to catch up to her words. “What? No. ‘You’re not awful’ is not a line I used to seduce you.”

She snapped the condom from between my fingers. “I don’t require sweet nothings.”

I held her hips, inhaling sharply at her touch. “Doesn’t mean you don’t deserve them.”





Chapter 31


    RJ



I PACED MY office while reading through a motion. The summer sun shone through my window and cast long rectangles of light on the gray carpet as it lowered in the sky. The act of walking around while I read put me in the right headspace: focused, but like I was ready to be in motion, to act. It was something I’d done since college.

On my desk, my cell buzzed, and I turned it over, Britta’s face flashing on the screen. “Hey,” I said, resting on the corner of my desk and sliding my feet out of my heels. “What’s up?”

“Wanted to check on a few details with you for your trip in a couple weeks.”

I glanced at my calendar, where I’d marked myself out of the office to head back to Chicago. It was a quick trip, a Friday through Sunday, but it was the most vacation I’d committed to since starting at the firm.

“But first . . .” Britta moved from somewhere noisy with the low hum of conversation in the background to a silent space. “Sorry, Wes has a study group over. How’re things with the guy?”

I rolled my eyes, but I caught myself smiling at my fingers, thinking of Lear’s laugh and how he’d known my signature polish color. “Things are fine.”

“Sounds like there’s a ‘but’ or ‘and’ coming,” she said with a laugh. “You’re still just banging it out?”

“How old are you?”

“Old enough to want details.”

“Then, yes, we’re still banging it out.” I grabbed the iced coffee sitting on my desk; the condensation had left a wide ring around the law school insignia on my coaster. “Why do you ask?”

“You seem a little different lately. I was just wondering if something was maybe evolving with him.”

A feeling like butterflies, or maybe wasps, flitted around in my stomach. I’d felt something familiar and unfamiliar lying in bed with Lear. The familiarity was being next to a man, close to him in a way where I trusted him to know my body. The other thing . . . For a few minutes I’d just told him things, private things, without thinking it through first again, without remembering to keep him at a distance. “I don’t think I can handle anything more evolved than banging it out.”

“He’s not your type?

I bit my lower lip, glad we weren’t on a video call. “No, of course not. I’m not looking for anything anyway.”

“I feel like there is something you’re not telling me.”

“There is.” I settled behind my desk, debating what I wanted to tackle after the motion I’d been reviewing. “That pink bridesmaid dress was hideous.”