Heat explodes over my body, and all that second-round tension I’d been ready to spend in Natalie’s lush, sexy body comes roaring back. Before I realize what I’m doing, my fly is down. Cock in hand, hard and leaking, and ready to shoot like I hadn’t just come a few minutes ago.
Another sound, this one needy, pained even, like somebody covered his mouth to keep quiet. Why the fuck that gets to me, why any of this turns me on, I don’t fucking know. Right now, I don’t fucking care.
The echo of Natalie’s cries, the banging of the table against the wall—I replay all of it, but this time, I picture Nic on the other side of the wall, hearing every bit of it. He’d be hard as hell, stroking off as he listened to us, to her cries and the unmistakable smack and slide of skin on skin.
A broken groan and a sharp thud this time, like he’s banged a fist on the wall.
He’s coming. Right here, right now. The knowledge—not a thought, but the bone-deep, instinctive knowledge—triggers my own orgasm.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I slap a hand to the wall to hold me up, humping into my fist. As the blood slowly stops pounding in my ears, the silence becomes deafening.
He heard us. I heard him. There’s no way he didn’t hear me just now, too.
What the fuck just happened?
12
NIC
Pounding on Finn’s door at seven forty-five in the morning isn’t what I’d call neighborly, but fuck it. I’m not feeling particularly neighborly this morning.
“Nic? Everything okay?”
Finn answers the door, his dress shirt unbuttoned, cuffs open, barefoot. He lets the door fall open wide as he wrestles with the buttons on one sleeve.
“I need to get to the office. Should I go on without you?” I avoid his eyes, focusing somewhere over his shoulder, ignoring that he’s only half-dressed, thinking carefully about anything but last night.
Except there’s a long, heavy-looking table in the hall behind him.
Finn notices the direction of my gaze and clears his throat. A quick glance tells me he’s not looking at me either. His cheeks are burning.
“No, give me two minutes,” he says.
“Fine.”
“Do you want to, uh…” He points vaguely over his shoulder.
“No.”
“Right. Yeah. Of course. Two minutes.” The door snicks shut.
Jesus Christ.
I’ve been careful to think about other things all morning. Something else, anything else. Meal delivery. Cat’s litter box. Whether or not I could possibly double my caseload so I’d have to live in my office. Leaving the country for a while, perhaps. Anything but last night.
The air this morning hints at spring, not nearly frigid enough to cool me off. I’m not that guy. I don’t begrudge my personal assistant her personal life. On the contrary, Natalie deserves to have everything she wants.
Which is, evidently, wall-banging sex with my next-door neighbor.
I shiver as Finn opens the door. He hasn’t pulled his jacket on yet, so I get to see the leather straps of his shoulder holster and the pistol strapped in near his left arm. It’s hotter than hell, even hotter in person than seeing them in TV cop dramas I absolutely do not watch, and don’t ask me where the hell I picked up a leather kink, but in about five seconds, these suit pants are going to make it clear to anybody who looks just how I feel about the leather.
Maybe it’s not the leather. Maybe it’s the weapon. Or his shoulders. Or it’s the ease with which he settles his suit coat over the whole setup. Competence is sexy.
Which is irrelevant because this I do not need. The whole morning so far, combined with a nonexistent night’s sleep, does nothing to improve my outlook on this day.
The drive to work takes twice as long as it ought to because of an accident. Possibly also because the universe hates me. Either could be true today. So much for trying to avoid seeing Natalie this morning.
Not that I don’t want to see her. I always want to see her; that’s the problem. Today, it’ll be with the full knowledge of what happened last night. If I’d just stayed in my damn apartment last night, she’d never have known I was there at all.