She swiped her thumb over him, spreading precum across the sensitive head. Wes’s thighs shook as she guided him right where she wanted him, and then, mercifully, he was pushing inside her.
Vivienne’s eyes drifted shut, blocking out reality, and she let everything go back to the way it was. When being with him had been full of possibilities. Her world narrowed to the heat of him, and she clung to his body, biting back a moan as he rocked his hips, plunging into her, driving her higher.
She breathed his name, trying to get closer, even now, when they were as close as two people could be. Physically, anyway. And that’s all this was about. The sturdy table shuddered beneath them as Wes picked up his pace, until each of his thrusts was harder and faster than the one before.
Vivienne gave herself over to the wild sensations building inside her as he pushed her back on the marble, half on top of her, so far inside her. The promise of climax was within her grasp, but when she reached between them to take it, he caught her wrist and pinned it above her head and her eyes flew open at the show of dominance.
“Not this time.”
His pupils flared, ringed with blue the color of stormy seas, and he thrust into her again, and again, hard and deep and perfect. It was too much sensation, too much everything, and Viv squeezed her eyes shut even as her body clenched in response to his precise invasion. And then she was drowning in the sharp, roiling pleasure that rushed through her with so much force that she was helpless to do anything but cling to him as they crashed together a final time. Light fractured across the backs of her eyelids and she held him close as she cried out, their bodies shuddering with shared release.
She was still panting as he straightened his arms, lifting his chest from hers.
“Shit.”
She frowned up at him at the assessment, but his gaze was focused over her left shoulder, and she shoved up onto an elbow to look behind her.
A pool of murky water dripped off the edge of the table, and on the floor, the vase lay splintered in a million glittering shards, dangerous and beautiful and dotted with dying tiger lilies.
Something shivered down her spine as she and Wes remained perfectly still, catching their breath as they stared at the resulting chaos of their mutual orgasms.
Goddamn symbolism.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WES SQUEEZED HIS eyes shut against the intrusion of the morning sun and pulled a hand down his face, though it didn’t feel like his. He still wasn’t used to the beard. But he was keeping it—a tangible reminder of his time at Terminal Island. Something to aim his focus where it belonged. On figuring out who’d framed him.
Not that the beard had helped much last night, when the only thing he’d been able to think about was how sexy and responsive Vivienne was, and how damn good it felt to be so deep inside her again. The primal satisfaction he got from making her come had been enough to set off his own climax.
Of course, after they’d cleaned up the botanical carnage, Vivienne had disappeared so quickly and completely that he might have thought it had all been a dream...if he’d actually been able to fall asleep. The couch from hell had done everything in its power to make sure that didn’t happen.
He cracked open an eye at the faintest whisper of sound to find Vivienne trying to sneak past him.
Not that he’d been listening for her.
“Pretty sure it’s not a walk of shame if your name’s on the mortgage.”
Bare feet aside, she looked far more untouchable in her charcoal power suit with a pair of high heels in her hand than she had last night in his T-shirt.
She sent him a distracted smile. The kind you gave a stranger.
“You’re up early.” Viv stopped at the end of the couch, resting a hand on it for balance as she tugged one shoe on, then the other, now that the click of her heels wouldn’t wake him.
He pushed himself into a sitting position. “I could say the same.”
“I have some research to do on your case. It will probably take all day.”
He could read her stubborn determination to make sure that it did in the set of her shoulders. Wes tugged the blanket, baring his left calf so that his ankle monitor was visible. “I’ll just stay here.”
She ignored the jibe. “Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. I’ll order some Thai for dinner.”
His favorite.
“If that’s okay with you.”
It was a purposeful hedge, an attempt to distance herself from him. The pretense rankled.
“Sure, sounds good,” he assured her, playing his role in this pantomime of pleasantries she seemed determined to enact. Not that he gave a shit. He had enough problems to worry about without his cock in the mix. She wanted to pretend they were polite strangers? He could do that.
In fact, that was better for his plan. If they were nothing but compulsory roommates, then he had no reason to feel guilty about his intention to loot her home office for whatever device he could jury-rig into internet access as soon as she left.
He listened to her go through her morning kitchen routine, which judging by the delicious smell wafting from the kitchen, still consisted solely of coffee. Like old times, he thought, and instantly regretted it when his mind used that moment of nostalgia to segue into a series of unwelcome flashes of morning seductions past. Steamy showers where they got dirty before they got clean, quickies where they raced the snooze button timer to climax, the dozens of debauched ways he’d tempted her into being late for class and the dozen more variations she’d used in retaliation to make him late
