LUCY’S AWKWARDNESS WENT up in smoke the second Gideon kissed her. She’d expected... Well, she wasn’t sure what she’d expected. For him to take her into the bedroom and strip them down and just go for it. Preferably with the lights turned off to hide her mortification.
He stroked his hands up the sides of her face and tangled his fingers in her hair. The move pulled her out of their kiss, but Gideon didn’t let the distance stand. He dragged his mouth down the line of her neck, raising goose bumps in his wake.
A deep, hidden ember inside her burst into flame.
She was doing this. She was straddling Gideon Novak with his mouth on her skin and his hands on her body. Something she’d never even allowed herself to think about until she’d come up with this plan.
“You’re thinking too hard.”
“I can’t believe this is happening.”
He set his teeth against her collarbone. “If you change your mind—”
“I won’t.” She’d never dared fantasize about him—she hadn’t let herself cross that line, even in her mind—but she wasn’t missing this opportunity for the world. Warmth flared with each breath, the heat centered at her core, where she could feel his cock lining up right where she wanted it.
I want it.
The realization startled her, though it shouldn’t have. Gideon was sex personified and having all his considerable attention focused solely on her was a heady feeling. She wanted... More. All of it. Everything he could give her. She moaned. “More.”
Gideon took her mouth. There was no other way to put it. He claimed her, establishing dominance with a stroke of his tongue, engulfing her entire world in that single contact. He tasted like peppermint—a shocking sensation against her tongue. Unexpected.
Just like the man himself.
It wasn’t enough. There were too many clothes between them. She could feel his broad shoulders flexing, could test the definition of his muscles as she slid her hands down his chest, but his button-up shirt barred her from the skin-to-skin contact she craved.
Her breasts felt too tight, her nipples pebbling until they almost hurt. At least her yoga pants didn’t offer much in the way of a barrier as she rocked her hips against him. His slacks did little to hide the size of his cock, and that little movement felt deliciously good. Intoxicating. So she did it again.
Gideon dropped one hand to her hip. For one horrifying moment she thought he’d stop her—maybe tell her that grown adults did not dry hump in the middle of one’s living room—but he just urged her on. He never stopped kissing her, never stopped exploring her mouth. As if kissing was his be-all and end-all rather than just the first step to get to sex.
God, I am so messed up.
He squeezed her ass and nipped her bottom lip. “How we doing?”
“Good.” Was that her voice? She sounded like she was doing something requiring a whole lot more exertion than kissing Gideon Novak. If this is what kissing is like, am I going to survive actual sex?
Who cares? It’d be a glorious way to go.
He used his grip on her hip to pull her closer yet, lining up his cock with her clit. “And now?”
She hissed out a breath. Please don’t stop. She could come like this if they kept it up. “Really good. But—” She didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to do anything to make this stop, so she went in for another kiss.
Gideon tightened his hold on her hair just enough to prevent her from moving. “But?”
His insistence on honesty had seemed like a good idea at the time—how could she improve if she didn’t know what she was doing wrong?—but in practice it felt like he was stripping her bare in a way that had nothing to do with sex. She closed her eyes, because it was easier to answer when she wasn’t meeting his gaze. “Isn’t dry humping kind of juvenile?” Are you going to mock me if I orgasm from this? Maybe make a joke about cobwebs or how long it’s been for me?
His chuckle pulled at things low in her stomach. “Does this feel juvenile to you?”
“No.” It felt hotter than it should have and even a little dirty. She wanted it too much, and that was the problem. She forced herself to open her eyes and found him watching her with a contemplative expression. “What?”
“Pleasure isn’t something you can put limits on, Lucy. There isn’t a right way to go about it. Would you tell someone who was eating one of those double-chocolate-death desserts you love so much that they were eating it wrong if they did it differently than you?”
“Of course not.” She blinked. How had he possibly remembered her favorite dessert?
“Then why is this wrong?” He urged her to rock against him again. “Feels good to me. Feels good to you. No reason to overthink it.”
When Gideon put it like that, it sounded so simple. Deceptively simple. She started to ask another question but forced herself to silence it. This insecurity wasn’t her. This was the ghost of her relationship with Jeff coloring the current interaction.
Exactly what she’d been afraid would happen.
“Thank you for agreeing to this, Gideon. You didn’t have to and—”
“Lucy.” He framed her face with his big hands, preventing her from looking away. Those dark eyes were so incredibly serious. “Stop thanking me for this. The matchmaking shit? Sure. Not this. You’re crazy if you think I’m not getting something out of it—same as you. Enjoy it. Enjoy me. It’s as simple as that.”
Easier said than done. The malicious voice that had spent far too many years lurking in the back of her mind wouldn’t be silenced. Not completely. Pity fuck. She pressed her lips together. “I want to have sex now.”
“No.”
She frowned. “What?”
“No.” He sat up, forcing her to grab his shoulders to stabilize herself, and then stood, taking her with him. “You want me to teach you? Then we’re doing this on my terms. You were enjoying the hell out of this and something tripped you up.” He laid them down on his ridiculously comfortable couch. She sank into the cushions as his weight settled over her. It felt good. Right.
It scared the shit out of her.
“Gideon.”
“My terms, Lucy.” He kissed her again. Before it had been sweet, and then intense, but she hadn’t realized he was holding back until that moment. Gideon kissed her like he owned her. He took her mouth, urging her to meet him halfway.
She held back for all of one second; it was impossible to maintain distance with his very presence overwhelming her. So she let go, tangling her tongue with his. The second she did, he started to move.
It had felt good when she was on top, but it was nothing compared to him pressing her into the couch as he stroked his cock against her clit. One long slide up and then another back down. The desire that had been put on hold while she’d let her insecurities get the best of her seared her—with interest. As if it’d been waiting for her to just let go and enjoy this moment for what it was. Pleasure. No questions asked.
She arched up to meet him. “That feels good.”
Gideon hitched a hand beneath her knee and drew her leg up and out, opening her farther. He kissed her again and kept up that slow drag that had sparks dancing at her nerve endings. Her body wound tighter and tighter with each stroke until she teetered on the brink. Lucy writhed against him, trying to get closer, to get him where she needed him, to do whatever it took to reach that edge. “Gideon, please.”
He shifted back and she sobbed out a breath at the loss of him. But he didn’t make her wait long. He slid a hand beneath the waistband of her yoga pants and into her panties. His rough curse would have made her smile under other circumstances, but she was too busy holding her breath. So close. Please just touch me.
He did.
He made a V with his fingers and slid it over her clit in the exact same motion he’d been doing with his cock before. She lasted three strokes before she came apart in his arms, her pleasure drawing a cry from her lips and blanking out her mind into delicious static. He softened their kiss to the barest brushing of lips and then shifted to the side so his weight wasn’t completely on her.
Lucy blinked at the pale gray ceiling and tried to reconcile what had just happened with reality. I just came. Without pressure. Without having to force it or fake it. A world-ending orgasm and Gideon was the one who’d coaxed it from her. “Wow.” As soon as the word popped out of her mouth, she cringed. What a stupid thing to say. She was hardly a virgin and she wasn’t an idiot teenager, no matter what they’d just done.
Gideon gave another of those low laughs. “All flavors, Lucy.”
Against her better judgment, she couldn’t help comparing what they’d just done to her experiences with Jeff when they’d first started dating. Night and day. Even though it’d taken her and Jeff a bit to work up to sex, he’d always had an air of impatience about him when they were intimate—like he couldn’t wait to get to the next step. Add that to his competitive need to make her come multiple times every time they were together and the pressure had twisted with the desire until it made her jumpy every time they’d been alone together. Things had changed a little once they’d finally had sex, but then other elements had come into play.
Boring.
Uninspired.
Like fucking a doll.
“Lucy, look at me.” Gideon’s voice drew her out of the horror show that was her past.
She shook her head. God, I can’t even do this right. What they’d just done was so incredibly perfect and she’d had to go and ruin it by letting her issues with her ex creep in. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry.” He stroked a hand through her hair, the move so tender, her stomach tried to tie itself in knots. His dark eyes took on a distance as he looked at something she couldn’t see. “I knew Jeff was an asshole, but if I’d known what a piece of shit he was, I would have warned you off before he got his hooks into you.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered.” Six years ago, in the midst of her headlong rush into adulthood, she was so sure that she knew better, she hadn’t listened to anyone. Not her sister, not her friends, not her fledgling instincts. As nice as it was to think otherwise, she wouldn’t have listened to Gideon, either.
Being this close to him, talking like this while her body still sang from the pleasure he’d given her... It was too intimate. Too revealing. Just plain too much.
She slid off the couch and stood. A quick look at the front of his slacks confirmed that he was still, in fact, painfully hard. Nice job, Lucy. Bask in your post-orgasmic bliss and ignore the fact he’s still in need. “Do you want me to...?”
“These lessons aren’t about me.” He sat up. “They’re about you. And you need space.”
Yeah, she did. His airy living room was suddenly too small, the walls closing in even as her heart beat too fast. “I asked for this.”
“You don’t have to explain.” He gave her a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “We poked at some old wounds tonight. If that means you need some distance from the whole thing, then so be it. You’re being honest, and fuck if I’m going to punish you for that.” He grabbed his phone off the coffee table. “But if you’re headed home, I’m calling you a cab.”
She should push back. She was more than capable of calling her own damn cab and the subway would be running for hours yet. But if Gideon could respect her need to flee without his pride being injured and throwing a fit, she could respect his need to get her home safe. “Okay.”
He made the call quickly and set the phone down. “What’s your schedule look like tomorrow?”
The change in subject left her discombobulated. “I have court in the afternoon, so I’ll be doing last-minute preparations beforehand.” It was as close to an open-and-shut case as such things got. The cops had mishandled the evidence and the lead detective had an established vendetta against her client. She had every intention of getting the whole damn thing thrown out.
“I know that look on your face. You have this one in the bag.”
Her stomach gave another of those flutters that wasn’t altogether uncomfortable. He’d said that with such confidence, as if there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind that she would win. Lucy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I should be free in the evening.” For another lesson? She didn’t know if she’d look forward to it or dread it. Liar. You haven’t even left yet and you’re already craving another hit.
“Good.” He stood, suddenly taking up too much space. She tensed, half expecting him to touch her. But Gideon headed for the door. “I’ll have a list of preliminary candidates ready for you, and we’ll go over them at dinner.”
“That I’ll pay for.” She cast a pointed look at the way his jaw tensed at her words. “Don’t be like that. If I was a normal client, I’d pay and you wouldn’t blink because that’s how things are done.”
“You aren’t a normal client, Lucy. There’s nothing normal about this.” He motioned between them.
She couldn’t really argue that, but that didn’t mean he’d win this battle. “I’ll handle the reservations and text you the details.”
“Stubborn.”
The twisting in her stomach took on a sour edge. Jeff had thrown that word at her like a curse more often than she could count. Stop it. Oh, my God, stop. He’s in the past and he’s staying there. “It’s my best trait.”
“I wouldn’t dream of arguing that.” He held the door open for her. “Until tomorrow.”
“See you then.”
She headed for the elevator, stopping several steps down the hallway and leaning against the wall as she tried to calm her racing heart. She hadn’t known it could be like this. He’d just...taken care of her. Both physically and emotionally. Bringing her to orgasm and recognizing and respecting the panic driving her to leave. Lucy hadn’t expected that. She didn’t know what to do with a version of Gideon who was different than she’d expected.
What did I get myself into?