Page 14 of Love.V2 (Occupational Hazards #2)

Tess

“Dylan,” I moaned. His only response was to shove his tongue further into my mouth, like he would die if he wasn’t inside me.

If he didn’t get inside me soon, I was going to die.

His hips rocked against mine, hands squeezing my ass. The whole stumbling trip up the three stories of my walk-up apartment had been like this. Grabbing, desperate, choking on each other’s air in an attempt to devour.

I’d known I had missed Dylan. Seeing him, talking to him, being around him every day, had just sharpened that longing into a blade that cut something open between us. Everything was heat, light, more, please, please, more .

He grunted when my fingers wrapped in his hair and tugged. “Tess…Angel, if you don’t open this door right now, I’m going to fuck you against it,” he growled, leaving a trail of sucking kisses across my neck.

I shuddered, fumbling in my purse for my keys right as he licked up the length of my throat. My bag dropped to the floor. I drew his face to mine again, lips crashing together.

“Door it is, then,” he whispered. A sweet, searing ache consumed my heart as I felt his lips lifting against mine. Smiling as we kissed .

Only years of experience could have made him move as quickly as he did, fingers diving underneath the hem of my pencil skirt.

My whimper and his groan blended together when he met the stretchy barrier of my sheer pantyhose.

“You’re kidding me,” he growled, pulling back to meet my eyes. The same molten urgency I felt was reflected in his blown pupils. “Since when do you wear tights?”

“Hose are professional. We had a client meeting today,” I whined, hips churning against his, straining for his hand. The tension in the tights was keeping his fingers off me.

Rrriiiip.

The sound of the fabric tearing at the apex of my thighs made me gasp. He crowded me further against the door, claiming my mouth with his as he shoved my underwear aside. Fingers brushed hot, slick skin.

“Dylan!”

I had a handful of brain cells active enough to keep me from screaming his name in the public stairwell.

I only had one neighbor on the other side, that older woman, and she seemed nice enough, but she probably didn’t want to come out and see me writhing against my front door, my ex-boyfriend’s hand working literal magic between my legs.

I was hot and desperate, and he felt so good, moving in that way he knew drove me wild every time. Pure bliss.

“You’re so wet. Have you been this wet since the bar?” His breath steamed on the side of my neck, lips nipping and sucking .

I bit my lip, nodding. If I opened my mouth, I’d scream. It had been too long since I’d had him. Even longer since I’d had him like this. In the last few years, the sex had been fine. Good.

But this reminded me of sophomore year in college when Dylan had missed a whole midterm because we hadn’t been able to keep our hands off each other.

He pumped another finger inside, and a cry finally worked its way up my throat. His mouth covered mine. “I want you to scream for me, Tess. Just not here.”

I mumbled something in response, gripping the collar of his shirt tighter. My legs were shaking, pleasure shooting through my body as his fingers played and pumped, unhurried and purposeful. Despite his words, he wasn’t making any moves to open the door.

Was he so desperate for me he’d take me up against my front door like this? In public? Was I so desperate I’d let him?

I suspected the answer was yes, but he stumbled away from me before I could find out.

He looked disheveled and hot, hair wild from my hands, mouth red and swollen. Chest heaving.

“Keys, Tess,” he demanded, sucking his fingers in his mouth, tasting me while I watched. I nearly slid to the floor.

“Bag,” I managed to stutter, pointing helplessly.

In seconds, my bag and keys were in his hand. He pulled me in, arm wrapping around my back like he couldn’t stand to be apart, like he had to be close and touching me. Metal rasped against metal. Then nothing .

“You have to jiggle it…” I whispered, too busy skimming my fingertips along the side of his jaw to help. The stubble scraped against my skin. I had a brief second to register the wicked, silly smile that cracked across his face before he lifted me with his arm, shaking me up and down.

My door swung open as my laughter split through the air, louder than my previous cries.

Dylan clicked the lock behind us, then hauled me against him again, his lips on mine. “I missed that laugh. Missed you so much.”

“Dylan,” I sighed, arms around his neck. He couldn’t be close enough. “Bed. I need you.”

We stumbled across the tiny studio apartment, the table lurching to the side as we passed. A tray of watercolors teetered before smashing to the ground. Pigment scattered.

“I’ll replace it,” he promised, peeling off my tank top. Clothes trailed behind us in haphazard piles. He pulled back the edge of my bra to take my nipple in his mouth. “I’ll buy you ten more. A hundred. Just don’t stop.”

I worked his zipper down, his cock jerking when it touched my palm.

We tipped onto the bed together. The air whooshed out of my lungs, but his weight on top of me was perfect. Everything I’d been missing for months.

I laughed more when he cursed up a storm, shoving my hose halfway down my legs before ripping them the rest of the way. “I will not buy you more of those,” he muttered, mouth everywhere, fingers everywhere .

I found him again, pushing his pants down with one hand, stroking with the other.

“Fuck, I’m going to come. Let me…inside you, Tess, please. I swear I’ll make it good. Fuck, it’s so good…”

He wasn’t speaking in full sentences, but I understood every word out of his mouth. Every inhale, sigh, and curse. Being with him was like rediscovering a language I spoke fluently, but had forgotten until now.

“Yes,” I whispered, pulling him closer.

Then, he was right where I needed him. The head of his penis easily slid up and down, preparing to push inside where I craved him most.

We’d done this so many times, but now it felt new, exciting. Maybe because we’d been apart, or maybe because something had changed. Him or me or both of us?

I wondered what it would feel like to have sex with him again for the first time. If I was just some random girl he’d brought home from the bar, would it be this hot? This natural?

The thought, and the feel of him sliding closer to where no one else had ever been, made me freeze.

Had he done this with some random girl from a bar? We’d been apart for half a year. Just because I hadn’t dated or had a random hookup, didn’t mean he hadn’t. The thought was a splash of ice water on my libido, and I instantly hated myself for it.

I was the one who’d left. I couldn’t complain if he had moved on, or had a fling or, or, or touched some other woman the way he was touching me now. Gripping her skin as if he wanted to imprint himself on her .

“Wait.” The image was painful enough to give me pause, even though I didn’t want us to stop. But…I needed to be sure. And safe. “Should we…do we need a condom?” I panted, my hips churning against his, reacting to the feel of him even while my mind raced.

I was here, in bed with him, but I was also imagining the worst-case scenario: Dylan, back at the condo in Nashville, making some other girl gasp and moan. I was back at the bar with Meery, months ago.

“You’ve only had sex with one guy? Ever?!” She’d gasped, seeming both delighted and horrified by the admission. “Well, whenever you’re ready to get your groove back, you need to be careful. HPV is rampant these days. Rampant.”

Dylan’s head lifted. The question in his gaze clouded some of the lust in his eyes. “A condom?”

He sounded bewildered, and the implications of those two words swept around us, like a breeze we couldn’t feel, but we knew was there.

“I…should we?” I parroted the question back to him. I was clean and safe, but was he?

He stared at me like I had just asked him to solve an advanced mathematical equation.

“I mean…yes. Yes, sure, if that’s what you want.” All at once, we were two strangers, speaking different tongues. That common language began to disintegrate. I couldn’t read his face, he couldn’t understand my question.

I hesitated for a second, heart pounding now with uncertainty. “Sorry, I know it’s—”

“No, no…we can…yes, that’s a good idea,” he panted, lips planting again and again against mine. Even as his brow crinkled .

I reached into my nightstand, fumbling in the drawer to hand him a box of condoms. He rolled to his knees.

It was weird, watching him do this. I’d been on birth control for years, and we’d been faithful. Seeing the box in his hand stole several more degrees of heat from the air in my lungs.

He must have felt it, too, pausing the second he looked down. I gulped, scooching up on the bed, putting some space between our bodies.

“This…” he trailed off, staring at it for a beat. “This is open.” His brow furrowed.

A slick, cold feeling trickled down my spine. I knew exactly what he was thinking. “I didn’t use any,” I blurted, too quickly and frantically to sound sincere. His eyes flickered to mine, then back down at the box.

“O-okayyy…”

“I swear. Meery got them for me and then grabbed some because she had a date that night. I…it’s…I’d told her I was just getting out of a long-term relationship, and she wanted to be sure I was safe.”

Dylan sat back on his heels as I babbled, unable to tear his eyes away from the gold foil packages. “ Very safe.” I thought he was attempting a joke, but his voice was off, hollow.

Yes, Meery had gotten me a value pack. I had cringed when she presented it to me, but I completely recoiled now, feet drawing up, legs folding me into a little ball.

Dylan’s hand whipped out, snaking around my ankle to hold me in place. My movements seemed to break some sort of spell, and he finally looked at me, his expression carefully blank .

“That’s good. That you have a friend like that…” He broke off, blinking down at me, naked and splayed against my pillows. A little line appeared between his brows. “Sorry, I…sorry.”

“Are you alright? I promise I didn’t use—”

“I believe you,” he interrupted, glancing back at the box before setting it aside. It was ridiculous, of course, to feel so guilty about owning a box of condoms. I was an adult. A single adult .

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? These last couple of weeks, it had been easy to re-introduce small pieces of him back into my heart. His laugh, his smile. That hopeful look in his eyes when he handed me my coffee every morning.

Like tiny pieces of porcelain had pulled together one by one after shattering, reforming a pattern my heart knew like a beat.

Tonight, I’d sipped from the cup I thought was whole again, getting drunk off the knowledge that I could have him if I wanted. But we hadn’t been whole.

Everything we’d circled around over the last few weeks was just smoke, and icy regret pooled low in my belly, extinguishing what was left of the lust swirling inside me.

I pulled the sheet with me as I sat up, covering my chilled skin.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, watching me pull away from him.

“I’m fine. This is fine…of course…” He glanced at his lap, and my attention followed his.

Apparently, his desire had fled as quickly as mine did.

I drew the sheet tighter around me as he scrambled off the bed to locate his pants, babbling as he pulled them on.

“You are perfectly…I mean, obviously you don’t need permission to…”

I’ d never in my life seen Dylan babble, and any other time, it would have been funny. For now, though, it was just a reminder that things were different.

Dylan babbled, and I kept condoms in my bedside drawer.

“I’m sorry if—”

“Don’t apologize. You have done nothing wrong. I’m the one…” Abruptly, he knelt on the bed, hands skimming down my arms. His fingers felt cold. “We weren’t together. You…can…sleep with whoever…I mean, you could have…you should have…”

“I should have? ”

He pinched his nose, rocking back onto his heels once more. “That’s not what I meant.”

“No?”

“No!” His denial was sharp and immediate. He looked slightly ill. “But, I mean, we weren’t together, and if you chose to…do that, then I would have no place to comment on that. Or…judge. Obviously.”

“Right.” I wanted to ask if he’d been with anyone else since I left, but it felt weird to talk about this. I had never worried about losing him to another woman before. Just a corporation.

“Everything is fine. I just need a minute here…just a minute.” He was repeating himself, shoving his hands through his hair and glancing wildly around my apartment, searching for something I wasn’t sure he’d be able to find.

I only had to look at the foil packets on my bed to know everything was not fine.

I curled my knees tighter into my chest. “If you need to leave, you can.” My voice sounded small.

I felt small, and I hated that. Logically, I knew I had done nothing wrong.

The unapologetic feminist in my brain screamed, holding a big “my body, my condoms” sign, telling me he could fuck off if he had an issue with me exploring my sexuality as a single person.

But I knew the condoms weren’t the problem. It was what they represented.

“Leave?” Backlit by the dim lights over my oven, I couldn’t see his face well, but he sounded lost. My hands fidgeted in my lap.

“Maybe.”

He knelt in silence for a few more seconds. I couldn’t see his eyes. Couldn’t see what he saw. Me? The condoms? The dingy, dinky apartment I’d run away to? Possibly to have sex with other people?

Slowly, like the stomach-lurching start of a roller coaster, he shook his head back and forth, gaining momentum. “No, Tess. I don’t want to leave.”