With a laugh, she sets the mug back on the counter behind her and winds her arms around me, stretching for a kiss. “Well, hello.”
“You just look so fucking fine in my shirt.”
She laughs again. “It smells like you.”
“You like that?”
Emery nods. “Sometimes you smell so good I want to bite you.”
“Be my guest.”
Grinning, she stretches, mouth open like a vampire, and gently sinks her teeth into my collarbone. It sets off a spark of need in my gut that immediately travels south.
There’s a heat to her skin, a greediness to her touch that reads as insatiable to me. Thinking back on yesterday, I get hard just remembering how she looked kneeling between my legs with her hand and mouth on me. I had to keep looking away, tilting my face to the ceiling so that I wouldn’t come too fast, and even then, I finished faster than I’d wanted. I suspect there’s no savoring with Emery; she’s unrelentingly sexy.
She’d climbed back onto my lap with a look of such victory, I’d nearly flipped her face down and lifted her hips to press my face between her legs. But I wanted to see her expression the first time she came again with me too much to do it, and, honestly, getting her off with only my hand was worth it just for that expression of euphoria alone.
But right now, there’s nothing stopping me from getting something else.
Lowering myself to the kitchen floor, I grin at her, reaching for her hand to coax her down with me, guiding her when she moves to straddle my hips. “Up here,” I say, and when I gesture with my finger for her to turn around, she grins knowingly and does, kneeling with her knees on either side of my shoulders, her perfect peach of an ass in my face.
“You remember,” she whispers, bending to kiss my thigh.
And I do. I don’t know why I know this, but I want to hold on to her ass while I do this, and she likes the angle better; my tongue flicking down against her clit rather than up.
The sweet heat of her comes over my lips and she gasps, pulling away, teasing me, making me lift my head to get back to the intoxicating taste of her, until with a giggle she settles over my face, taking notime before she’s gently rocking, digging her hand into my boxers to pull me loose. Whatever she’s doing feels good, but my focus is all on her: on the slick sweetness of her need, her tiny gasps and cries, the increasing weight of her on my mouth as she gets closer and closer before she’s bracing her hands on my abdomen and riding my face in earnest, so wet and warm and coming with the sexiest hoarse cry I’ve ever heard.
Slumping forward onto her forearms with an exhaled “Holyshit,” Emery goes ass up in the air and I give it a good slap, scooting back a little to sit up and stare at her. The view makes me feel lightheaded.
“Woman, you’d better get that pussy out of my face if we’re going to Yosemite anytime in the near future.”
She gives a little ass wiggle, looking coyly at me over her shoulder before she pushes to stand and, turning, reaches down to give me a hand.
“Tenaya, you said?” I ask, standing and staring down at her sated, disheveled self.
She nods. “Tenaya.”
“I tell you what: They’d better have thick walls.”
36EMERY
As we’re packing our weekend bags, my phone lights up with a message on the encrypted server.
I’ve thought about work so infrequently in the past few days that the sight of a message from Claire—which once would have sent my brain happily soaring—now makes my stomach sink.
I don’t want to leave my Luca bubble.
I haven’t put in a full day at BioNEX since Luca’s accident, and it hasn’t put a dent in the hundreds of hours of leave I have saved up. I always thought of our allotted vacation days per year as sort of a perfunctory gesture of goodwill more than time off I would ever actually use. On the rare instances we did go away, I found it hard to unplug and be fully present. With perspective, I see that the root of that was an emptiness I’ve carried since my parents died. I thought having a purpose would fill that void, but there’s a difference between being productive and being happy.
I was right to think that Compound Y was my calling in life. After all, it saved Luca. It did what I needed it to do, and now I can loosen my grip a little bit. I don’t know what that looks like, but for the first time in my career I’m determined to figure it out.
Before I open Claire’s message, I make a silent promise to myself:No matter what she says, I’m not going in to work today. It’s Saturday. We are going out of town.
Good morning, Emery. Leonard has asked whether you are able to come in today for a brief meeting about the BioVIVE project.
My stomach clenches. Does Leonard want to shut it down permanently or start it back up?
I suck in a breath, closing my eyes.No matter what she says, I’m not going into work today, I remind myself, and type out my response:
