AT THE FIRST stroke of Gideon’s tongue, Lucy forgot all the reasons this was a questionable idea. She didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was his tongue lazily circling her clit. As if he had all the time in the world and they weren’t in a public place.
A public place where every moan and sound could be heard by someone on the other side of the dressing room door.
She shivered, heat cascading through her body at the thought of someone listening. Someone knowing what they were doing. Someone thinking Gideon was so turned on by the lingerie that he couldn’t wait for the time it’d take them to get home.
He’d had to have her right then and there.
His dark gaze met hers as he licked her again. “What are you thinking?”
She was thinking she wanted more. To be dirty. To break the rules.
Lucy reached down and tugged on his shoulders. Without saying another word, Gideon rose and let her guide him to sit on the bench that ran along the wall in the changing room. He watched her through hooded eyes as she undid the front of his jeans and climbed onto his lap. After a quick detour to her purse for a condom, she rolled it onto his length. He opened his mouth but Lucy pressed a single finger to his lips.
His eyes flashed in understanding and his lazy grin made her pussy clench. Lucy guided him inside her and sealed them together. She leaned forward until her lips brushed his ear. “Someone could hear.”
“Yes.” The word was barely more than a whisper. He reached up and pulled her bustier down to bare her breasts. “Hope you locked the door. She knocks on it and it’ll swing right open. Give the woman the sight of a lifetime.”
Her nipples tightened at the image his low words painted. It didn’t matter that she knew for a fact the door was locked. It could be unlocked. Lucy held on to Gideon’s shoulders and started to move. Each time she lifted almost all the way off his cock, her breasts brushed against his mouth and he kissed first one and then the other.
Thrust. Kiss. Thrust.
“Look at how beautiful you are.” He gripped her chin and turned her face to the full-length mirror.
What a picture they made. Him fully clothed except for his cock disappearing and reappearing between her legs. Her mostly naked and riding him, her pale skin flushed with desire. Lucy couldn’t take her gaze away from where one of his big hands held her hip while the other maintained its grip on her chin, to the look on his face as he stared at her in the mirror. She licked her lips. “We are beautiful.”
He guided her back to face him. “Fuck me. Come on my cock. But be quiet or Agnes will hear.”
The words unleashed the orgasm that had been building from the moment he’d slipped off her panties. Lucy buried her face in his neck and tried to muffle her cry as she came. Gideon looped an arm around her waist and lifted her to reverse their positions, sitting her on the bench with him kneeling between her thighs, his cock still buried inside her.
He held her thighs wide and proceeded to fuck her. She had to cling to the edge of the bench to keep from smacking against the wall with the strength of his thrusts. Through it all, his dark eyes swallowed her up, so full of things she couldn’t put a name to. An expression almost like pain flickered over his face as he came with a muffled curse, hips still thrusting as if he never wanted to stop.
Lucy slumped back onto the bench and blinked at the reflection of herself. Gideon crouched in front of her, his dark eyes wild. He started to reach for her and stopped. “Your place. Now.”
“We could...” She trailed off. My place. Despite the outstanding and filthy sex, she wanted more. She wanted skin on skin and Gideon’s taste in her mouth. She wanted it all.
She nodded. “My place.” She lifted her shaking hands to finish undoing her bustier, but Gideon beat her there. He undid the tiny clasps carefully, the delicate lace looking strange against his massive hands. He slid it off her arms and folded it neatly on the bench next to her before giving the garter belt and stockings the same treatment. The panties finished off the pile.
He ran his hands up her legs. Lucy held her breath and arched her back a little. His pupils dilated, which was a reward in and of itself, but Gideon stood. “Get dressed.” Then he was gone, snatching the lingerie off the bench and striding out the door, careful to not let it open too much.
She stared after him for a long moment before she dredged up the ambition to move. It was just as well he’d shown a little restraint or she had a feeling they wouldn’t have left this dressing room for several hours. She wasn’t sure if she was disappointed that he’d walked out or excited for what was to come.
Excited. Definitely excited.
She dressed quickly and paused to check her appearance in the mirror. Flushed cheeks, slightly wild eyes, skin a little too glowy. It was a good look, but there was no mistaking that she and Gideon had been up to no good behind the closed door. It was becoming a habit of theirs, though Lucy couldn’t say she was sad about it. She liked the thrill of knowing there were people within hearing distance.
She liked that she was experiencing it with Gideon even more.
Lucy stopped short.
There it was. The thing she’d been doing her best not to think too hard about since their first time—since before their first time, if she was being honest. There’d always been an attraction simmering between her and Gideon, even when she’d been with Jeff. She’d gone out of her way to ensure she’d never given him any sign of it, because she’d been in a relationship.
Because she cared about Gideon as a friend, and if something had happened between them, she’d lose him.
There was no Jeff standing between them now, and her feelings for Gideon were significantly more complicated. There was lust, definitely. Her body craved his like she’d never craved anything—anyone—before.
But there were...feelings.
She gave herself a shake. It didn’t matter if there were feelings or not. She’d set out the terms and Gideon had agreed to them. Changing the rules without notice meant she really would lose him and she hadn’t come all this way to falter now. She’d missed him terribly these last couple of years, and the thought of going back to her life without him in it felt like she had a gaping hole in her chest.
Gideon wasn’t the keeping kind. A lot had changed, but she couldn’t afford to believe that had. He’d settle down someday, with the right woman, but he wasn’t there yet. Even if he tried to give them a shot for her sake, it would self-destruct sooner rather than later.
No matter which way she looked at the situation, the end result was the same—if she changed the rules now, she would lose him. If she saw her original plan through to the end, she retained the chance to keep Gideon in her life.
Lucy would fight for that, even if it meant hurting herself to do so.
She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. I can do this. Lucy opened the change room door and marched out. Gideon stood by the entrance to the boutique and she headed his way, very carefully not looking for Agnes. They might be the only people in the shop, but they’d been in that room far too long to be doing anything but exactly what they’d been doing. Focus, Lucy. She licked her lips as she stopped next to Gideon. “My place?”
“I changed my mind.”
She braced herself. “Oh?”
“That meal might have been sweet, but it won’t sustain us for what I have in mind for later.” He gave her a wolfish grin that had her warming even as she tried not to read into his words too much.
It won’t sustain us.
He didn’t mean anything by it—of that, Lucy was sure—but it served as yet another reminder that this was temporary and any effort to make it permanent would backfire spectacularly. She put on her best smile. “What’s the plan, then?”
Gideon’s grin dropped away and he studied her for a long moment, seeming to see through her façade. Finally he nodded, almost to himself. “Lunch. Then we’ll head back to your place to finish what we started.”
Not a brush-off, then, but a detour. She kept her shoulders from sagging through sheer stubbornness. “I could eat.”
“Good.” He touched the small of her back and ushered her out of the building. He didn’t say anything as they walked down the street, and she was too twisted up inside her own head to try for conversation. Nothing she said right now would change the truth, and the weight of it threatened to send her scurrying back to her place to barricade herself in with Garfunkel and the work files she still had to find time for this weekend.
Their destination was a little restaurant on the second floor of a converted apartment building. They’d left most of the interior walls up and designed low lighting so that even in the middle of the afternoon, it gave the illusion of a night tucked away. The hostess led them to a room that might have been a closet at one point, though it had two doorways now and space for a little booth for two.
Gideon waited for her to slide in and then took the spot next to her. The hostess left and Lucy became aware of a low jazz song playing in the background. She ran her finger over the rough tabletop. “I didn’t even know this place existed.”
“It’s new. A friend of mine bought the building a couple years back and construction just wrapped up a few months ago. The bottom floor is split into a clothing boutique and shoe store, and the third floor is privately owned.”
She’d definitely come down here to check out the shoe store in the future. She twisted to face him, but he spoke before she could. “What happened back there?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You were fine in the dressing room, and when you walked out, you’d put a wall up between us.”
She desperately didn’t want to talk about this, but his jaw was set in an all-too-familiar way. There would be no getting out of this conversation, short of crawling over the table and making a run for it. Since that was beneath Lucy’s dignity—and she didn’t know for certain that Gideon wouldn’t just chase her down—she sighed. “We have clear boundaries.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
That response gave her no indication of what he thought of that, so she hedged. “Very clear boundaries.”
Gideon drummed his fingers on the table. “Is the problem that you feel that I’m threatening the boundaries or that the boundaries themselves are the problem?”
Trust the man to just lay it out there with no qualms. She fought not to fidget. “I value our friendship. I know it may not seem like that after not speaking for two years, but I missed you terribly during that time and I feel like we’re almost starting to reclaim that lost ground.”
The guarded look on his face cleared. “You don’t want to jeopardize our friendship.”
“Exactly.” She didn’t mention the theoretical pending marriage or what their friendship might look like once she’d picked a man and followed through on that. The marriage might have sex included in the bargain, but it would still be a marriage without love. Having Gideon in her life, even on the outskirts, wasn’t something she was willing to give up.
Not now that she’d just gotten him back.
The waiter brought their waters and took their drink orders. Once the man disappeared through the doorway, Gideon turned back to her. “That gap in communication was as much my fault as it was yours. I let guilt get the better of me and figured that you didn’t want to see my face any more than you wanted to see Jeff’s.”
“You...weren’t wrong—at least, not at first.” She’d been so hurt and angry and embarrassed that she hadn’t wanted to see anyone for months after she’d broken off her engagement. The only person who’d ignored that was Becka, and even she’d had to come to Lucy. If Gideon had tried during that time, she would have slammed the door in his face.
By the time she’d gathered the strength to get back out into the world again, it was to find that her former friends had moved on without her. It made sense, in a way. She’d lost most of her good friends when she and Jeff had started dating—a sign she should have paid more attention to. He hadn’t missed a beat after their breakup, and most of their friends had been his first, so they’d moved along with him.
It was Gideon’s steady presence that she’d missed the most, but she hadn’t known how to reach out to him.
Or if she even should.
I’m here now. We are here now.
She held herself steady. “Regardless, I feel like I just found you again.”
“And you don’t want to lose that.” He said it almost as if musing to himself. When she tensed, he leaned back and slung an arm over the back of the booth. “I don’t want to lose it, either, Lucy. I missed you, too. I’m still missing you, if we’re going to be perfectly honest.”
Her jaw dropped. “What are you talking about? I’m right here.”
“Yes, you are.” He pulled her closer, tucking her against his body. “But we haven’t stopped to have a real conversation since you sat me down in your office and told me you wanted me to help you find a husband.”
Lucy opened her mouth to say he was wrong, but stopped and thought hard about it. Was he? “We’ve...talked.” But not like they used to. There had been nights where Jeff had passed out, or was occupied playing whatever his video game of the week was, and she and Gideon had sat and just talked. Shared things about themselves, about their dreams. She’d always chalked it up to being good friends—family, even—but even if they’d restarted their acquaintance, they hadn’t reestablished the intimacy they’d once had.
Sex, yes.
Intimacy, no.
She frowned. “I guess you’re right. God, I’m sorry, Gideon. I’ve been treating you like a prize stud.”
He chuckled. “I haven’t exactly complained. But I do miss us, Lucy. Whatever version of your future you’re aiming for, make room for me.”
That startled a laugh out of her. “You’re just as confident now as you were back then.”
“Two years can change a person, but it can’t change a person.”
That was what she was afraid of. Lucy had fought hard to shed the timid woman she’d become while dating Jeff. She’d even mostly succeeded, if one didn’t look too closely at her lack of dating. But she couldn’t shake the fear that, deep down, she was still that mouse of a person who’d let her boyfriend say such horrible things to her—worse, who’d believed him when he did.
“I should have known.” He spoke softly in the tiny space between them. “I said it before and I’ll say it again—I knew Jeff was an asshole, but I didn’t know the extent of it. I would have stepped in.”
Her heart surged even as she shook her head. “If anyone should have seen the signs and stepped in, it was me. I let myself get taken in by him, and I almost married him because I was too stubborn and too naive to see him for what he was. If we’re going to lay blame, there’s plenty to go around.” She covered his hand with hers. “I don’t want to talk about Jeff anymore. He’s taken up enough of both of our lives, and I don’t want to give him even another second.”
“I won’t argue that.” Gideon nudged her closer yet, until she was almost sitting in his lap. “I have the prettiest woman in all NYC sitting with me in a dark restaurant. I can think of a thousand things I’d rather say and do than talk about a piece of shit that we share a mutual history with.”
She laid her hand on his thigh, enjoying the way the muscle clenched beneath his jeans. “I can think of a few things to add to the list.” They were alone in this mini room within the restaurant. They could do anything they wanted to beneath the table and no one would be the wiser. “Gideon...” She slid her hand higher.
“Yeah?”
“What have you been up to since I saw you last?”
He blinked down at her as if he couldn’t reconcile her ever-sliding hand with her words. Finally he relaxed, muscle by individual muscle. “After you and...” He looked away and back. “Two years ago, I looked at my life and decided I was done dicking around. I went after the biggest accounts I could find and went head-to-head with companies that had reputations stretching back before we were born.” He laughed. “I figured I had nothing to lose, so I might as well aim for the stars.”
“You’ve made quite the name for yourself.” Even if her company didn’t make a habit of contracting headhunters to fill positions, Lucy would’ve had to be living under a rock not to hear news of Gideon. He’d beaten out several more well-known headhunters and developed an excellent reputation in the process. He always got his man—or woman, as it were.
God help the woman he finally sets his sights on. She won’t stand a chance.
The thought was bittersweet in the extreme. Lucy cared about him. She wanted him happy...but contemplating him with another woman made her want to throw things. Stop that.
He’s yours for the duration.
That will have to be enough.
But what if it wasn’t?