Page 30 of Puck You Both

I hook my fingers under his waistband. That's when he looks past me.

His hand closes around my wrist. "Lock the door."

I hold his eyes. "No."

Confusion fights through the lust. He looks at the gap, then at me, assembling facts with a brain that has most of its blood elsewhere. Understanding takes several long seconds to reach him. Then his lips part. There it is.

I lower myself to my knees.

For a second his hand stays on my wrist. Then it loosens, and something feverish and bright takes over his whole face.

"You absolute menace." His chest heaves. "This is the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for me."

The praise warms a place in me I have no intention of examining. I pull his briefs down and his cock springs free, flushed and wet at the slit, bobbing once in front of my face.

Below us, the bar hums through the floorboards.

No footsteps yet.

I look up at him. "Quiet now."

Then I close my mouth over his cock.

Chapter 6

WALL

MY LEGS START shaking on the third stair.

Inconvenient, given there are at least nine more.

Behind me, the bar roars along under the campaign banners, packed wall to wall, nobody looking up. I check anyway, over my shoulder, twice, because a man on his way to review sponsor numbers has nothing to hide and apparently checks for witnesses like he's about to rob the place.

Sponsor numbers.

That's what's upstairs.

Patrick said so, and as co-chair, reviewing the live tally falls squarely within my duties. Every word of that is true.

He also said it against my ear and I've spent the thirty-two minutes since translating a sentence that never needed translating.

Stair five. Somewhere overhead, something thumps.

I stop with one hand strangling the railing.

A voice follows the thump, low and unmistakably Patrick. And then a second voice answers, and the second voice is the problem, because the second voice is Theo's, and it's ragged.

Below my belt, my body files a report.

I decline to read it.

On stair seven, I make a deal with myself. I'll glance at the tally, and if the office is occupied, I'll leave. On stair nine, the deal gets amended: I'll leave unless leaving would be rude.

Whatever committee in my brain is drafting these terms has stopped pretending by stair eleven, because stair eleven's version doesn't mention leaving at all.

The landing is dim. At the end of the short hall, warm light spills through an office door standing half-open.

I know that gap. I've been watching Patrick not close that door in my head for half an hour.