Page 28 of Love at First Sighting

“I know. Trust me, I know. For all we know, we might just find two guys talking about whiskey or the stock market.”

He sucks in a deep breath and lets me slide my arms around his shoulders. I bury my head in his chest and squeeze him tightly, and it feels so good to offer him something—anything, really—and not want anything in return. Except for him to be happy.

“No matter what we find, I won’t go anywhere,” I tell him. I’m shocked at myself. With other people I’ve liked or dated, I’ve always been ready to flee. But Carter? “I know it’s not a lot, but I’m not going to leave you.”

His shoulders drop and he tilts my chin up off his chest. His gaze is lighter, easier. “It is a lot.”

Our eyes flutter shut, and as I lean in for a kiss, thunder cracks across the night sky and rattles the windows.

“Was that thunder?” he asks.

“Is that actual rain ?”

Outside, the sky opens up and torrential rain douses the city streets and thumps on the roof.

“Wow.” Carter sighs. “We needed this.”

It’s the quintessential SoCal line that unites us all when the sky opens up. “Yeah, we really did.”

“We should stay here.”

I furrow my brows. I am very much still in an evening gown. “Here?”

“Yes. I don’t want to—” He quiets. “I don’t like driving in bad weather. I’m…I’m a nervous driver.”

It’s why he grips my car’s safety handle for dear life, too.

“I can drive if you want?”

He shakes his head. “Look, the rain can’t go on for long, right? We can just…hang out here for a bit. If that’s okay with you.”

Really, I’d love to take him back to my place and strip off his uniform, but I suppose any time at all with him is good enough for me now.

Carter snaps a photo of the appointment in Marcus’s planner and slides it back into place.

He escorts us out of Marcus’s office and locks the door like we were never there.

We strip off our rubber gloves and tuck them into my purse so we don’t leave behind any signs of our subterfuge.

“So,” I start, “what do you do around here to kill time?”

“Truthfully, I’m not used to being here and not having someone tell me to go fix something.” He guides me to a desk with two chairs. “This is where I sit.”

“Two seats?”

“Yeah. The other one is for my trainee. His name’s Toby. Brad—he sits over there,” he says, gesturing to another desk with a huge pair of nail clippers in the pen holder, “is his brother-in-law. Not the brightest bulb, but we’re working on it.”

“I mean, not everyone can be as good at fixing the coffee machine as you are.”

“I have my uses.” Carter opens a lower drawer. His brows raise. “You want a drink that doesn’t taste like lighter fluid?”

He pulls out a midshelf bottle of whiskey and shakes it.

“Please.”

“This has been sitting in here since last Christmas. Derek, one of our other agents, got it for me for Secret Santa.”

I laugh. “The Men in Black have Secret Santa?”

“We sure do. Guess who organizes it?” He stands, covertly pointing to himself before disappearing into the galley kitchen we passed. He claims two glasses and sets them on the desk between us.

Carter pours each of us a decent shot, while I take a seat on the edge of his desk. I swirl it, giving it a sniff, and throw it back in one steady gulp. I set the glass down with a thump.

“Damn.”

“I forgot what consumable alcohol tastes like.” I laugh.

Carter refills my glass. This one I take slower.

The rain rages at the drafty old windows.

Normally, the rare sounds of rain in LA would lull me to sleep.

But not tonight…Not with the way Carter sits in his chair across from me, carefully sipping his whiskey, looking like an apparition from another time. I’m wide awake.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask.

He stands slowly, nudging my legs open to make space for him between.

One of his hands presses the outside of my thigh, smooth fingers running up my exposed skin through the slit.

“If you want to know, I’m thinking about how good you taste, too.

I didn’t want to get the taste of you out of my mouth. ”

I hear the crackle of an old radio in my head, smell the lingering burn of smoke in my nostrils and the biting chill of mint in my mouth, and as my hands wander to his chest, using his suspenders to climb his body to his shoulders, I’m glad he’s real.

Glad he’s a fully flesh-and-blood human I can touch and taunt and tease.

“And I don’t think you were acting when you kissed me,” he finishes. He cradles his glass at his chest in one hand, and traces my bottom lip with the other.

“It’s a bold theory. What makes you think that?”

“The sounds you made. Either you’re the best actress in the world, or you might have been looking for an excuse to kiss me.”

I might have been looking for an excuse to kiss him for weeks now. I think about it with every snap of gum and wry smile that lights me on fire.

Carter’s lips hover near my jaw, but he doesn’t kiss me. He’s going to make me work for it and admit how badly I want him to do it again. “Or the way you grabbed my suspenders like you wanted me to get on my knees for you right there.”

My body shudders at his words. “Maybe I did.”

“I would have,” he breathes. He drags his hand down my thigh, finding the bend of my knee and hitching my leg around his back. “If I’d had the time, I would have done anything you asked of me.”

“Does the offer still stand?” I ask.

“Mm-hmm,” he hums. He sets his empty glass down.

“Then kiss me again.”

Carter’s icy blue eyes darken as his grip migrates up my leg to hold firmly on to my waist. When he kisses me, it’s completely under his control.

His lips taste like sharp whiskey, but the laugh he lets out intoxicates me more than anything else.

Each kiss is drowning and deliberate, like he’s already figured out what undoes me: a nip of my lip between his teeth, his hands wandering up my body, a slow roll of his hips between my legs.

“It may surprise you,” he practically growls between kisses, “but I am very attracted to you.”

“I never would have guessed.”

There’s nothing accidental about the way he holds me, with his fingernails leaving red crescent moons on my thigh, with the hungry groans he lets out onto my skin, or the press of him growing harder between my legs.

I pull away to undo his tie, letting the black satin drape down his white shirt. The one that’s quickly becoming covered in my lip gloss and body glitter and is starting to smell a lot more like me with every touch. I want to leave my mark on him in whatever ways I can.

“I’ll be honest and say I’ve never pegged this place as romantic,” he says.

I grip the ends of his tie and keep him within my grasp. “You mean you’ve never gotten this turned on at work before?”

His brows raise. “Only because you’ve never been to the office before. However, sometimes you do catch me off guard on the job, like when you send me cute texts. I tell myself thinking about stripping you down on the job is how we defeat capitalism. I never imagined actually doing it.”

“What did you imagine?” I slide his tie out from under his collar and toy with the top buttons of his shirt.

“I imagined somewhere private,” he whispers, removing his hat and resting it on the edge of his desk.

I sense all of his thoughts with the way he works his hands down my body.

Carter’s hands slide beneath my ass, dragging me closer to him.

His grip tightens. Fuck. “I imagined maybe a bed. Or a wall…Or the floor. Wherever I could get you. But if I got to have you at all, I’d do whatever I had to.

There’s no place I couldn’t imagine finding a way to fuck you.

I can improvise in the name of making you moan. ”

His words send a shiver down my spine and desperate heat into the pit of my stomach.

Even if he hadn’t disabled the cameras, I’d take the risk in undressing him right here, because I don’t know if I can wait much longer.

He brands me with bites and nips and strokes of his tongue, and I want his mouth everywhere.

I want it between my breasts, between my legs.

I seize his suspenders again, carefully sliding one over his shoulder, then the other.

Between kisses, he unhooks them from his pants and groans my name.

They clang to the tile floor. No one cares where they land. I discard his jacket, which I’ve been wearing.

“You are so stunning,” he gasps. “Do you even know that?”

I nod. “I do. But I’ll hear it again. It sounds better coming from you than anyone else.”

His laugh ripples down my neck while he haphazardly slips one of my dress straps down.

“Keep going,” I plead.

Carter gives a silent nod as he slips his hand between my legs, inching the red sequined fabric of my dress to the side.

The heel of his hand brushes the thin lace of my underwear.

I shift with frustration and a need for more.

He flashes the sexiest teasing grin at the wetness he finds there. “Tell me what got you here.”

“You,” I breathe. “You and your dumb little hat and suspenders.”

There’s a cold shock of his watch on my lower stomach as he finds my clit and dips his fingers into me so slowly I could catch fire.

“Carter,” I gasp. I grip his hair tightly enough it should hurt him, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “Oh my god. Jesus.”

“Don’t bring him into this.” His voice is a thoughtless, sex-drunk command. “Not as my hand’s between your legs. Not as I’m trying to make you come. Fuck. You feel amazing.”

Moments later, he groans along my jaw. “Tell me how good it feels.”

But I can’t form words. Carter applies pressure exactly where I want him most, making me lean back and dig my nails into the edge of his desk. I can’t hang on any longer, so I let myself succumb to him. I shudder around his fingers and a cord snaps inside me, but Carter’s there to catch me.

My breaths are heavy and labored, but I’m not alone. His heart beats with a fury, too. He traces my bottom lip with his thumb and smirks.

“Good girl.” He uses his free hand to undo the straps on my heels and kisses the shell of my ear. “Show me what comes next.”

I move down to his button and undo it, unzippering his slacks.

“Fuck,” he says softly as my hands work to the inside of his boxer briefs. He rests a hand on the side of my stomach, wincing as I curl my fingers around him, as if he’s in pain, but I know by the sharp upticks in his breath that even if he is, this is the kind he welcomes.

There’s something in the way he touches me—maybe the soft kisses at the side of my head or the way his arms wrap around me like it matters if I stray from him—that is undeniably real. For the first time, I think someone might care enough to like the real me.

For the first time, I want to let him try.

I kiss the curved scar beside his eye, but he halts me. He turns my chin with a single finger, drawing me into a commanding kiss.

“After tonight, I don’t want to look at this desk and think of anything but you spread out on it. These perfectly painted nails leaving marks in the wood.” He laces our fingers together. “Leave your mark on whatever you want.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” I tease.

Carter digs into his wallet and manifests a single condom, then tears the foil open.

The only sounds are our heavy breathing, the ticking of the old clock behind us, and the pattering rain outside.

Once Carter’s eased the condom onto himself, he reaches for my hips again, finding the lace of my underwear and sliding them down my legs.

I lure him into another kiss as he slides into me in one fluid stroke. The gasp he lets out is enough to get high off of. Carter drags my hands up his body, silently instructing me to grab his hair again with one and use the other for balance as he rocks his hips into mine.

Each thrust sends a flood of ecstasy through my blood, and it’s all hypnotic—the fervent moans he lets out, the creak of his desk as he picks up speed. I kiss him again and again and again, only stopping for breaths and unrestrained cries.

I am not responsible for what sounds come out of me, the harsh gasps, and I rake scratches into his pressed button-down.

“I can feel how close you are.” His voice becomes desperate and ragged. “Let me get you there again.”

I put my trust in him as he shoves papers and pens off his desk. There are a few clatters and flutters of pages, but he gently rests my head on the wooden surface of his desk and tilts my hips up.

Carter holds my waist, keeping me in place as he pushes me closer and closer to another tipping point. No one’s ever felt like this before. Every touch feels steeped in care. He wants us both to remember this. He has sex like he wants me to come back for seconds.

I plan to.

Then more than that.

I grip his desk as the first wave of an orgasm rides through me.

My legs hook around his waist, fingers drifting beneath the fabric of his button-down and undershirt.

It’s a touch of skin I’ve never gotten before and I want so much more.

He comes with a sharp, slack-jawed groan, fingers weaving with mine at his sides.

Neither of us are able to move yet, then he pulls out and leans over the desk to kiss me.

He makes sure I understand that this meant something.

He’s soft and nurturing and I never want him to stop.

One kiss turns into another, and then it feels like losing each other’s touch would kill us both.

He only stops after my head bumps into his keyboard and the computer makes an error noise.

Carter collapses with a laugh into the crook of my neck before he backs away, carefully removes the condom, and hunts for my underwear.

Just as simply as he took them off, he slides them back up my legs and helps me off the desk.

We’ve marked each other so well here. My lip gloss paints pictures of what I’ve done to him along his neck and on the collar of his shirt.

I’m sure the shape of his grip is fading now, but I feel his phantom hands on my waist, and every silent moment between us will be filled with the memories of his groans and the way his words whittled away all of my composure.

Before I can get too far away so I can clean up, his arms sweep around my waist and he reels me in to him. This time, it’s slow. He kisses me like he’s falling asleep, with his hands cupping my jaw and brushes of lips so light, so careless, because he doesn’t have to think. Neither do I.

“You don’t always welcome people to the office like that, right?”

He shakes his head. “No. Just the special ones.”