No. No way in hell.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I said, yanking my hands free from her flimsy knot and standing to tower over her like a storm cloud forming in my own living room. “Go down the hall and get on my bed. If you even think of taking off your panties, I will take care of myself and you’ll lie there and watch me come.”
Her eyes widened into enormous pools of black in the dark room, and without another word she turned and sprinted down the hall to my bedroom.
And with that memory in mind, my day was officially shot. That night had been the single most intimate night of my life, and had launched our relationship from Giving It a Try into Fully Committed. I would never get over the way she turned her vulnerability into quiet command, or the way she let me turn the tables in my bedroom, tie her to my bed and nibble at every inch of her body.
I groaned as I realized I had no idea when we would ever have such a lazy night together again, and picked up my phone.
Lunch? I texted.
Can’t, Chloe replied. Meeting with Douglas from noon to three. Shoot me.
I looked at the clock. It was 11:36. I slid my phone back on my desk and returned to the article I was working on for the Journal. I was useless and I knew it.
After about two minutes, I picked up my phone, texting her again, this time using our secret code. Bat signal.
She replied immediately: On my way.
The outer door opened and closed, bringing the sound of Chloe’s heels tapping across the floor of the office just outside mine. It had once been Chloe’s, but when she’d returned to Ryan Media Group after finishing her MBA, she moved to an office of her own in the east wing. End result: the outer office now remained empty. I’d attempted working with a few different assistants, but they never really worked out. Andrea cried all the time. Jesse tapped her pen on her desk and the effect was much like a woodpecker going at a tree. Bruce couldn’t type.
Apparently Chloe was more of a saint for “putting up with me” than I’d given her credit for.
My door opened and she stepped through, brows drawn together. We used the bat signal primarily to notify each other of work crises, and for a moment I wondered whether I was overreacting.
“What happened?” she asked, stopping about a foot away from me, her arms crossed over her chest. I could see she was preparing for a professional battle on my behalf, but I wanted her to fight a far more personal one.
“Nothing work related,” I said, rubbing my jaw. “I . . .”
I drifted off, staring at each part of her face in turn: her eyes as they narrowed in concentration, the full lips she’d pulled together in concern, her smooth skin. And, of course, I let my eyes drop to her breasts because she’d pushed them together and . . . well, fuck.
“Are you looking at my chest?”
“Yes.”
“You sent me the bat signal so you could look at my tits?”
“Settle down, firecracker. I sent you the bat signal because I miss you.”
Her arms fell to her sides and seemed to stutter, fingers fumbling to straighten the hem of her sweater. “How can you miss me? I stayed over last night.”
“I know.” I knew this side of her. Forever knee-jerking back to self-preservation.
“And we had all weekend together.”
“Yeah, you and me—and Julia and Scott,” I reminded her. “And Henry and Mina. Not alone. Not nearly as much as we’d anticipated.”
Chloe turned her head and looked out the window. For the first time in weeks we had a perfect, sunny day, and I wanted to take her outside and just . . . sit.
“I feel like I miss you all the time lately,” she whispered.
The knot in my chest unwound a bit. “Do you?”
Nodding, she turned back to me. “Your travel schedule sucks right now.” She leaned forward, cocked an eyebrow. “And you didn’t kiss me goodbye this morning.”
“I did, in fact,” I said, smiling. “You were still sleeping.”
“Doesn’t count.”
“Are you looking for a fight, Miss Mills?”
She shrugged, struggling to repress a smile as she studied me carefully.
“We could skip the fight and you could just suck on my dick for ten minutes or so.”
Without another beat passing, she stepped close and slid her arms around me, stretching to press her face into my neck. “I love you,” she whispered. “And I love that you sent the bat signal just because you missed me.”
I was struck silent, for probably too long, and I finally managed to croak out an “I love you, too.”
It wasn’t that Chloe wasn’t expressive; she was. When we were alone, she was—physically—the most expressive woman I’d ever known. But whereas I told her often how I felt, I could count on two hands the number of times she’d actually said the words “I love you.” I didn’t need her to say it more, but each time she had, it affected me more profoundly than I’d anticipated.