I want it too much.

I crave the deliberate seduction, the methodical, plunging, sweeping stroke of his tongue over mine. He angles me, fits his lips over mine, controlling the pace and depth of the kiss, standing and flipping our positions. He hoists me by my waist onto the cluttered desk surface and inch by inch, urges my skirt higher and higher until the hem collects at my waist. With a glance down at the triangle of black silk between my thighs, he groans, falls to his knees, raining kisses on my stomach through my blouse. The hot, wet suction of his mouth at my breast penetrates the flimsy layers of silk.

I can’t form the words that would stop him. Maybe I could have before he slid down my belly and buried his nose in my panties. I like to think I could have before he dragged the black silk down my thighs and past my stilettos. But I’ll never be sure. Because he did those things, and then he pressed me open wider and separated the lips of my pussy and sucked my clit.

“Ahhh.” A rumbling starts at my center, the warning tremors of Pompeii. A premonition of ruin. “Jared . . . Oh, God.”

His mouth never leaves me, but he presses one big hand between my breasts until my back hits the desk and my legs dangle over its side. Then he opens me like a flower, peeling back the petals and flattening his tongue against me, his mouth hungry, thirsty, needy, and my body surrendering every response he demands. His is unrelenting worship, and I’m his altar. I stretch my arms down, knotting my fingers in his hair and caressing the rugged beauty of his face. His jaw flexes under my fingers with the ardor, the wondrous labor of his mouth between my legs.

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

It’s an order. It’s a plea. It’s a breathless incantation tumbling past my lips in cadence with my hips thrusting into his face. I’m at the precipice, peering over the edge into an unlit well—a mystery my body begs to solve. Jared adds his finger, a thumb inside of me, while his mouth lavishes that bud of nerves that has become the center of my existence.

And I tip over.

I fall headlong into a wave of unmitigated pleasure that shakes my body. Entirely. Not a cell, an atom, a molecule is left intact when the orgasm touches down on my body like a tornado. Bones, flesh, muscle, sinew, blood. Insecurities, fears, reservations—everything I’m comprised of dissolves. I squeeze his head between my knees. I twist his hair in my hands. My body is wholly selfish, consumed by and taking the pleasure he promised.

“God, Banner.” Jared laps at the wetness inside my left thigh and grips my legs. “Better than I remembered.”

He rises from kneeling. Looms over me, pinning me to the desk with one hand and one look. The supplicant becomes the master, but I’ve marked him, wreaked the same havoc on him that he wreaked on me. I’ve twisted his hair into gilded chaos. I’ve poured myself over his lips and left them wet, shiny. I’ve never felt so possessive of anything in my life as I do when I see myself all over Jared Foster, but the hard set of his lips, the storm in his stare tells me it’s his turn.

Our eyes remain locked while he undoes his pants, the belt buckle jangling and the zip hissing in the deserted office. There is no way back, and as much as I know guilt, condemnation, shame await me on the other side, I can’t turn around. I want to rush ahead with him. He jerks me by my thighs to the edge of the desk.

“You have to say it.” The rough timber of his voice calls the hairs on my arms to attention. “Tell me yes.”

Ragged breath. Feral gaze. Dick like a brick against my thigh. He is the picture of primitive male, demanding entrance, but still offers me one last chance to escape. I know I should. I’ll regret this. I close my eyes and see Zo’s dear face, hear his voice saying he loves me, but it’s not enough. It’s never been enough, and my only sin was not telling him, not facing the truth that I don’t love him that way. That was my only sin.

Until now. Now I add another.

“Yes.”

The whisper barely clears my lips before Jared’s inside me. I’m translated from one state—empty, yearning—to another. Completely full. My walls strain to accommodate the girth of his passion. He’s big and aggressive. He does me like he does all things, ruthlessly, mercilessly. He pushes his hand under my blouse, traverses my belly, captures my breast and squeezes hard, his thumb scraping the nipple again and again in harmony with each thrust.

“Shit.” My startled curse is accompanied by my body contracting around him.

Loose papers rustle beneath me on the desk every time he pounds into me. He grabs my knees to anchor us, to hold me still while he plunders with no end in sight. Long, languorous strokes turn short, frantic the longer he goes. Jared tips his head back, the strong column of his throat working as he loses himself in the pleasure of these treasonous moments.

I want to touch him. I have to kiss him. I sit up, our bodies still joined, an unbroken line of carnality, and slide my fingers into the cool, shorn curls at his nape. He immediately takes my mouth captive. The kiss tastes desperate. Urgency tinges his touch along my thigh, climbing my torso and squeezing my face.

“Don’t regret this, Banner,” he says fiercely. “You don’t get to regret this.”

I drop my forehead to his, already crying even as another orgasm builds from the center of my body and fans out over every limb and extremity.

“I can’t promise I won’t regret it.” Tears slip over my cheeks and between our lips, sealing our kiss. “Only that right now, I have to have it. I have to have you.”

Our gazes hold. Mine, passion and apology. His, disappointment, determination. In a flash, we both know where the other stands. Then his head falls back and he growls.

“Fuck, I’m coming.”

Liquid heat rushes inside of me, and I link my ankles at his back, fitting our bodies together like lost puzzles pieces. A jigsaw joining that moves the desk with the force of his climactic thrusts. Papers fly, picture frames fall, my laptop slips over the edge and crashes to the floor. Everything topples around me. Everything inside shatters. My promises, my integrity, my relationship—my world falls apart. I’ve destroyed everything, and I can’t even care. With Jared’s body possessing mine, heart to heart and clinging to each other, I can’t even care. I can’t feel anything but this man’s name burning my lips.

22

Jared

“Never do anything you can’t live with

or walk away from the person you can’t live without.”

-Pee Wee Kirkland, Basketball Legend

“We didn’t use a condom.”

I say it, adding to the growing list of my transgressions. It’s the only one I care about, though. I don’t care that I made love to Banner because she is mine. It’s jungle-level, my understanding that Banner is my mate. Fit for, fashioned for me. It’s not civilized or rational. It doesn’t acknowledge Zo or what other people would view as infidelity. To them, what we did here was wrong. To me, it was the most natural expression of the truth, even if it’s truth at its most vascular. In my blood, in my veins.

I hesitate to say heart. I don’t know Banner’s heart. I easily read her body, all the signs that signal she wants me. That she likes me even though she may not always want to. I’ve never handed my heart over to anyone, and I’m not sure I should start with a woman who regrets me. Who sees the most earth-shattering sex of my life as a mistake.

“Yeah, I know.” Banner bends to retrieve her laptop from the floor. “I . . . I’m covered and, uh, clean.”

She glances up at me, silently asking the question.

“Me, too,” I answer. “I’m clean, of course. I’ve never . . . I always use protection. This time I . . .”

Forgot. Failed. Spiraled out of control.

I don’t have to say those things. She felt them. We felt them together. Neither of us cared or considered it. The only thing I paused for was her consent. I had to close that escape route. Not that she would say I took her by force, but that she didn’t want it as badly as I did. Her yes yanked the pin on a grenade. Everything from there was as instinctual as breathing. My brain took a back seat to my body.

“I get it,” she says, her voice low, subdued.

She stands, appearing as unraveled as I am. Her skirt looks like a stretched accordion from being shoved up around her waist. Her blouse is half-tucked in and missing a few buttons. Red lipstick smears her jaw. Dark, silky hair tangles around her shoulders. The office doesn’t look much better. Papers litter the floor. A vase of flowers lies on its side in a puddle of spilled water. Picture frames flat face on the desk. I could at least help.

I start setting the desk to rights and flip over a photo that arrests my attention. It’s a shot from the holidays. Banner’s family poses in front of a Christmas tree, all smiling. And there, sandwiched between Banner and a woman I assume is her mother, stands Zo, seamlessly integrated into the family like thread in a tapestry.

“Christmas two years ago,” Banner says, taking the photo and setting it on the corner of her desk.

“Zo spent Christmas with your family?” I ask carefully, practically feeling the shaky ground under my feet.

“He’s spent every Christmas with us the last ten years.” She swallows convulsively and brushes tears from her cheek. “Ever since his family died.”

For a moment, the weight of what I’m up against is crushing. I’ve known Banner longer, but he’s had the last ten years with her. I had what? A semester? One night? I can appreciate the sheer audacity of me barging into her life and dismembering a relationship, a decade-long friendship. It’s a hard road ahead of us, but I’m willing to walk it if she is.

I hope she is. I don’t feel remorse, but Banner feels enough for us both. It’s written in every line of her body. Stamped on her face. It’s beyond remorse. It’s sorrow— a union of grief and shame.

Because of me.

That does sting. I hate seeing Banner hurt. Always have. Even knowing I’m the source of it, I’m compelled to comfort her. She’s shuffling the papers littering her desk into neat stacks. I put my hands over hers, stopping her and pulling her into me. She looks up, tears standing in her eyes.