Chapter Twenty
He picked up the phone with a brisk “Tom O’Connell.” He didn’t recognize the number, which was the whole point of Flick locking herself into a conference room at Cassidy Strauss. The other reason was she couldn’t do this at her desk and she wanted to make it count.
“You know, the sound of your voice, Tom—”
“Flick?”
“The sound of your voice is enough to make my heart kick.”
“Flick.”
“Yes, Tom, keep saying my name because I adore it when you say my name. Your voice close to my ear makes me hot. It’s like an instant reaction. Your voice in my ear and you can have anything you want from me.”
“Are you about to tell me we need milk?”
She clamped her hand over her mouth so he wouldn’t hear her laugh. He’d catch on in a minute.
“When I feel your voice rumble in your chest—oh, that, that makes me horny. So impossibly horny, Tom.”
“I’m in the office.” Now he sounded more fittingly suspicious.
“I know. You go off to work looking so badass in those suits. I know you have them tailored because you’re so broad across the shoulders. I can get wet looking at you in a suit. Did you know that?”
“Flick—are you—is this—? Jesus.”
“You didn’t know. I can look at you ready to go to the office in the morning and I want to go work myself over with my vibrator because I am so turned on and you’re fully clothed and you don’t even know the effect you have on me.”
“You can’t do this now.”
“Oh, but I’m doing it. You can always hang up, but you won’t because you want me to talk dirty to you. You chose the coupon—this is for your birthday, baby. I’m going to tell you what it is about you that makes me ready to come without your hands being on me, without you being inside me, and while I tell you, I’m going to touch myself.”
“Flick. Stop.”
She laughed. He sounded a little panicked. “Hang up, Tom, or hang on for the ride.”
“You’re a little punk, you know that?”
“Insult me again, baby, it feels so good when you get mad at me.”
The sound muffled. Oh, shit, did he hang up? Oh God, maybe he really was angry and she’d screwed up. She looked at the conference room phone; the screen said the call was still connected to an outside line. Then she heard his voice, but not clearly, then a door closed. He’d made it safe for work.
“I’m kicking myself; I didn’t see this coming,” he said, and his voice in her ear did all the things she’d told him it did. Spread heat through her body in an instant, a chemical burn that seared and liquefied in the very best way.
“Are you mad at me, baby? Because you get all steamed and there’s all this pent-up energy in you, makes you so tense, and you just need somewhere to put all that when there’s no mountain around to climb.” He did, she didn’t have to make this up for the show, it was real.
“I want to be your mountain, baby. Work your frustration out on me. Take all that wired, straining, inner turmoil and make me pay. I want your hands on my skin. I ache for that. I want you to strip me slowly like you did last night. Tom, that was mind-blowing. You had me shaking. You know you did. No one touches me like you. No one makes me shake like you. No one makes me want it so much.” So, so real. “I lose a part of myself when you get me like that, and it’s intense. You get all take-charge and there is nothing I can do to stop wanting more. You make me greedy for your body.”
“Are you really touching yourself?”
Oh man, his voice had gone all lower-register husky. No, she wasn’t touching herself—she was at work, wearing a pencil skirt. In a conference room that someone had probably booked and would insist on taking over any minute.
“I am so wet, Tom.” And oh, God, she was because she knew, she knew in every overactive nerve ending that fired an electrical impulse to her pussy that she was doing it for him.
“Fuck, Flick.” He sighed and it had an agonized quality to it, and now she did want to touch herself.
“No one makes me wetter than you, no one kisses me like you do. You kiss me like you want to eat me up, tame me.”
“No, I like you wild.”
Who’d have guessed that? “You make me wild. Sometimes I wake at night and you’re sleeping and I fantasize about waking you with a blow job.”
He let out a frustrated breath. “This is—holy fuck, Flick.”
“In my fantasy, you’re always hard and ready for me. I lick you like an ice cream, swirl my tongue around you, trace that vein that looks almost blue, and when you’re dripping I’d suck you like chocolate, melt you in my mouth and give you all the heat and friction you need to blow.”
He groaned and she inhaled sharply, pressing the heel of her hand over her skirt, into her mound. “Are you touching yourself, Tom?”
“That would be ill-advised.”
Oh God, the strain in his voice. “But you want to, baby?”
“I want to push you into the nearest wall and fuck you into the plaster.”
Ah! “I’d love that. I love how big you are, I love that you don’t know how gentle you are with all that strength. You make me feel like I can do anything with you. You would fuck me into the plaster with your hand at the back of my head so I didn’t get hurt and you’d watch my eyes, my face, you’d know if it got too much before I even did. And after. After.” Oh, she could barely catch her breath, and if she dared to move her hand...
“After, you’d treat me so tenderly. I didn’t think you’d be the kind of man who knew how to be tender. You have no idea how I love that about you. That tenderness that comes with the strength and the storm in you.”
Wait. That wasn’t dirty talk, that was, that was—not what this was meant to be about.
“I wanted to cry when you told me about your experience in college. Made me hurt to think you’ve been holding yourself back all these years, blaming yourself. You were young and it’s complicated.” Stop, stop, stop. Not dirty, the wrong kind of real.
“You can touch me like I’m precious to you one minute then slap one of those big hands around me the next as if I’m nothing but a possession. I want to be possessed by you.” That’s better. “I want to feel you growing harder and harder inside me, feel you hit all those places that light me up. I want to feel you tremble because you want to come so bad but know you’re holding off to wait for me. I want to hear the roar that hides in your body. It’s mine, mine when you come.”
He’d gone utterly quiet but for the ragged sound of his breathing, and she couldn’t keep her feelings from leaking into the game; she stopped trying.
“I want you to scream my name, Tom. I want to hear you own me.” Oh, she wanted that badly. And if she got it, what then, if she got him to do that? She’d have found a new home.
“And then when you’re done, emptied inside me, and you’ve made me into a rag, a deliriously happy limp puddle, I want you to curl around me and just breathe with me because that, that is the sexiest fucking thing ever, you and me replete, coming down off the sex high in each other’s arms.”
She blew out a breath, another. She felt shaky inside, hadn’t counted on this being more than a little embarrassing, at best a good laugh, and he was silent. “Tom?” Was he still there? Was it too much? Did she need to apologize?
“I’m late to a meeting. It’s going to be over before I can get there because I can’t risk walking out into the office like this,” he growled. It was part angry bear woken from hibernation and part raw hunger, and it made her mouth fall open. “Be naked and wet when I get home, because I don’t want to waste any time getting inside you.” He hung up without waiting for a response. Just as well—she didn’t have one in her.
It took her a few seconds to realize a colleague who wanted in the room was rattling the door handle and calling out.
The dirty talk was supposed to get Tom hot, and it’d almost put her on her knees.