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I hiked up my skirt and pulled down my underwear, shivering when the cold air hit my already wet center. I knew I was cutting the timing close, and I hoped keeping my clothes on would allow me to greet Bex when she came home without scrambling. I closed my eyes, trying to focus on one of the typical fantasies I usually used to get off in under ten minutes, but nothing worked. Being taken captive by a notorious, vicious pirate who turned out to be a woman in disguise? Nothing. My strict boss keeping me after hours just to take advantage of me? Nope.
All I could think about was the feeling of Bex’s lips and fingers and tongue on my skin, the small cracks in her façade that I had been able to tease out over the last few weeks. Imagining what might’ve happened if she stopped pulling away, if she had let her fingers dip lower on my damp skin after pushing me in the pool. If her tongue had moved its way up my arm after she licked the blood off my finger.
Picturing her face was the only thing that got me closer to the edge of the cliff I was so desperate to tumble over. The face I was constantly trying to tease out of her, the one she wore when she was frustrated with me, blue eyes narrowed in a mixture of anger and exasperation, blonde hair tangled from where she ran her fingers through it in annoyance. But something was missing, and I groaned in frustration as the minutes ticked by without release.
A small noise had my eyes opening, the face that I had been picturing standing feet away, paused just in the doorway of my bedroom. I almost stopped, knees starting to shut, but the flicker of panic and disappointment that I saw in her eyes had me pausing. I slowly opened my legs wider, tilting my hips back. My blood ran hotter when Bex didn’t back up, but took a small, almost involuntary step closer.
The lust in her eyes was unmistakable, and I reveled at the crack in her armor, the display of something other than annoyance or anger at my presence. She wanted me, I hadknownit, and this was the proof I’d been craving as I weathered every disinterested look and ignored comment. Her knuckles were white where she still gripped the doorknob, almost as if that hold was all that kept her from entering the room.
The edge that I’d been stuck on for too long started to crumble under my feet as Bex watched me. My legs shook, and I watched as she tracked the motion.
“Say my name,” she gritted out, eyes flicking up from between my legs to my eyes for a moment to utter the command.
Her eyes on mine and the low tenor of her voice brought me to the edge that had been just out of reach. She had so much power over me already, the reminders having run through my head all day as I remembered her strong hands on my body and the way she could shutter her emotions so I never knew how she really felt. She was always playing games, and I felt like I was constantly losing, limping at the halfway point while she had already crossed the finish line. Saying her name now, despite the fact that my lips had already been forming the word before her command, would be admitting another defeat. So just before I fell over, I managed to shoot her a smirk as I told her, “No.”
The orgasm hit me hard, my back arching as I let out a silent scream of pleasure. I eased off the pressure of my vibrator, taking me through the end of it, everything feeling more intense knowing Bex stood there watching. But when I opened my eyes, spent and sated, the doorway stood empty.
Chapter12
Bex
I liked work.Not the bullshit work I had done since I turned eighteen, the series of short-term jobs that never seemed to stick. Not even the legal coding I had done for a few months before my ex-boyfriend had almost ruined my life with a prison sentence. Though the term ‘coding’ was generous, considering most true coding jobs wanted you to at least have a college degree. What I liked was this work, the work I did with Alex and Dev, that made use of the one thing I’d ever truly been passionate about: coding and computers.
I originally picked up the skill from taking a high school course, and at the urging of my teacher - an actual teacher, not an ex - took some night classes when I graduated. It had come so easily to me, the coding, understanding the language of computers, mostly because they never lied or died or stole your credit card information. I slowly learned more online, then from mentors I found over the past few years, until I surpassed them and started teaching myself.
The point was, I had always been good at coding, and I liked not only putting it to good use but having others recognize my skill.
But the job wasn’t just about coding. I liked spending time with my sister, and considering most of our work meetings took place in the house she shared with her fiancé, I saw her a lot. I liked working with the guys, both because they were talented at what they did and because I genuinely liked them. I liked that it scratched that itch in the back of my mind, the one that enjoyed impulsive decisions and slightly illegal activities.
More recently I liked work because it was the only thing that got my mind off the look and smell of Wren as I watched her yesterday.
When Dev texted me that Wren had gotten home early, I’d driven to her apartment with single-minded intensity. I planned to ream Dev out for leaving Wren alone, until I opened her bedroom door to check on her and instead found her laid bare from the waist down with her hand between her legs.
I knew he had picked up on the tension between us when we were carving pumpkins, the excitement in his eyes when he tracked how possessive I felt when Wren was injured. I had expected some teasing, a couple jabs to get under my skin. I didn’t expect such a low blow, and while I wasn’t sure how he knew, I was confident it wasn’t a coincidence that I walked in the apartment to find Wren naked and wanting and enjoying the way I watched her.
It had taken every ounce of strength to keep my fingers wrapped around the doorknob instead of crawling up her body and forcing her to say my name. The scent of her arousal and the slight flush of her cheeks as she came haunted my dreams all night. I tossed and turned, restless with lust and feelings I didn’t want to name, until I finally fell asleep and dreamed of her. But even in my dreams she kept her lips shut tight, refusing to speak my name as I begged.
When I woke up, teeth grinding in frustration, I planned on texting Dev to see if he’d be up to spar, desperate to get this excess energy out of my body. Instead, Alex texted about a meeting at his house, giving me an even better excuse to focus on something other than the look on Wren’s face and the sounds she made when she came.
I had left before she came down from her orgasm, knowing she’d immediately freeze and cover herself. I both wanted to allow her the space to regret the interaction and also keep myself away, knowing I couldn’t handle the shift, watching the regret I knew would bloom across her face. I heard her door close five minutes later, and she hadn’t emerged the rest of the day.
This car ride was the first time we’d been in each other’s presence since, and the layer of tension I usually enjoyed hung thick in the space between us. I compensated by keeping my face blank, refusing to let Wren know just how much the night before affected me.
Wren compensated by talking. About the weather, about a few arrangements she had to make later in the day, about a haunted house she wanted to visit that weekend. She kept up a steady stream of chatter until we walked through the front door and split up. Wren left to find Ames while I went up the stairs to find Alex and Dev for our meeting. Which of course was about the one thing I was trying to forget, if only for a moment.
It had only been a week since the break-in atIn Bloom. Not that long in the scheme of things, especially considering going the legal route would’ve taken longer, but the three of us had felt every minute of it. We prided ourselves on our respective skills, and when it mattered the most, when someone had the balls to threaten our family, each moment without retribution felt like failure.
Ames and Wren were downstairs, drinking mimosas and eating the pastries Dev picked up on his way over, while the three of us sat, simmering in the anger that hadn’t dissipated since we first discovered the safe in Wren’s shop had been tampered with.
We all knew the problem wasn’t our skill. We were just spread too thin, with Dev spending all his time on the Cillian job and me spending my time watching Wren. The two of us were pretty much full-time bodyguards at this point, leaving Alex carrying the brunt of the rest of our business while also tracking down a majority of the leads related to the threats against both Wren and Cillian.
I had spent some time following leads, working in the back room ofIn Bloomwhile Wren made arrangements or organized gift baskets. Alex and I had been cross-referencing facial recognition with camera footage from nearby businesses, trying to find any familiar faces within the criminal world we worked in. I helped with some of the coding but hadn’t had a chance to check on the results since yesterday morning.
“We get any hits on facial recognition?” I asked, breaking the silence that was slowly becoming suffocating as we sat in a loose circle in Alex’s office. I missed the early days of working with the guys, when Dev would sit on the edge of Alex’s giant L-shaped desk, wedging his hips between a few of the computer monitors scattered across the flat surface. He usually spent most meetings tossing whatever was within reach - a pen, a paperweight, a rubber band ball he found one day but Alex claimed he had never seen before - and cracking jokes in between planning upcoming meetings and discussing business.
Now, Dev and I both sat in our respective chairs, Dev slumped enough that the black velvet bucket chairs Ames bought for the office - ‘so you guys have comfy chairs when you’re planning world domination’- almost swallowed his giant frame.
Alex sat behind his desk, eyes unfocused as he looked at a picture I took of him and Ames at their engagement party, his lips catching hers in a publicly-inappropriate kiss while Wren squealed in the background.
