Burn the Midnight Oil
JULES
I PRESSED MY FINGERS TO the cool glass.
Atlanta was never dark, but it looked more alight than ever from the forty-fifth floor of Jake’s apartment. Painted in a silver and gold wash, everything down below appeared almost magical. The streetlights resembled twinkling lights, and Lake Clara Meer seemed more similar to a reflective mirror than a body of water.
Yet, the reason I was there was about as far from magical as you could get. I was in way over my head. That was becoming clearer and clearer by the day. As if running Easton Design & Weddings into the ground wasn’t bad enough, now I had Finn risking his life to help me build it back up.
Things couldn’t go on like this.
I hated to admit it, but maybe I wasn’t cut out to run a business of such large scale. I loved planning weddings. I loved the parties. It was the business dynamics I sucked at.
Expenses. Invoicing. Checks and balances.
It was all too much.
The sound of a door closing had me whirling around. Jake had been in his guest room with Finn for over an hour, and I was a nervous wreck.
Barefoot and looking exhausted, he came down the hallway, running a hand through his damp hair. In fact, his entire body looked damp.
“How is he?” I asked.
Jake started toward the kitchen. “He’s going to be fine. Nothing broken. And as far as I can tell, a few bruised ribs and a mild concussion is the worst of it. I helped him take a shower and gave him some clean clothes. He’s sleeping now.”
Relief washed through me, and I sagged back. “Jake, I don’t know what I would have done without your help tonight.”
With his bottom lip in that state of semi-permanent pout he wore so well, Jake stopped at the small bar in the kitchen. “He shouldn’t have been there.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I know that, and I’m sure he does as well. He was doing it to help me.”
Lifting the whiskey bottle, Jake gave me a knowing nod, and then he started to pour the amber liquid. “I told your cousin I’d introduce him to a friend a mine whose father is the general counsel for the UFC. If he wants to fight because he has demons to slay, that’s his business, but he needs to be smarter about it.”
I started for the sofa where I’d left my purse and phone. “You’d do that for him?”
Setting the bottle down, he looked up. “Sure, if it will help him out.”
My eyes found his but dropped a little when I noticed the way his shirt was sticking to the sculpted muscles of his chest. “That’s really nice of you.”
Jake smirked a little and cupped his ear. “Say that again, I don’t think I heard you.”
I grinned at him. “You heard me.”
He reached for a bottle of wine. It was Pinot Grigio, and of the Cupcake variety. This made me smile. “I didn’t buy this for you.”
“Oh, I didn’t think you did,” I quipped. “I mean it fits so well among your bottles of vintage varieties, it’s like it belongs right where it was on your shelf.”
Looking up at the fine bottles of wine that obviously he had collected over a long period of time, he shrugged. “I figured I’d help the company out.”
When he started to open it, I stopped him. “I should probably call for a ride and go home. It’s late.”
Ignoring me, he poured the wine into a glass. “You can’t leave. You have to help me check on your cousin throughout the night.”
Alarm shot through me. “What do you mean? I thought you said he should be fine.”
With a glass of whiskey in one hand and wine in the other, he started toward me. “Finn needs to be woken up every couple of hours to make sure he’s alert. Nothing to worry about. It’s standard practice for concussions. And then he needs to be watched for the next three days as well.”
Suddenly, I felt nervous. He’d rejected me by ignoring my text. Oh, God, the text. Obviously, I’d gone overboard. “Yes, of course. I can sleep on the sofa.”
His lazy gaze drifted over me, warming my skin as if he’d touched me. When he handed me the wine, he said, “You do have other options, you know.”
Setting my purse back down, I took the wine and sipped at it. “Oh, and what might those be?”
He lifted a thumb and pointed to the hallway opposite of where Finn was. “I have a really big bed in there. I’m more than willing to put myself out and share it.”
I frowned at him. “Why didn’t you respond to my text?”
He finished sipping his whiskey. “I didn’t get a text, or unlike you, I would have responded.”
My expression turned to confusion. “You didn’t get the video I sent from my bathtub?”
A half smile curved his lips upward. “No, but I’m more than intrigued. Were you naked in the bathtub?”
Pulse racing, I tripped over the coffee table leg when I went to set my glass down and landed face first on the sofa. Crawling across the leather the few feet I had to go, I dove for my phone in my purse as soon as I reached it.
Jake sunk onto the sofa beside me, his gaze more than intrigued as he watched me intently bring up my messages.
Still on my knees, my heart was pounding against my ribcage when I saw what I’d done. “No. No. Nooooo!”
It hit me like a brick.
I’d searched the letters Ja and never noticed I hadn’t selected Jake Kissinger.
Instead, I must have tapped on Jaxson Cassidy.
Oh, my freaking God, Jaxson!
Quickly, I typed out a message.
Me: Jaxson, I’m so sorry. Please disregard the video.
Him: You have some explaining to do.
Me: I will. Later. Promise.
Without asking, Jake took the phone from my hand and looked at the screen. “Who’s Jaxson?”
Deflated, I answered in a pathetically sad tone. “My ex-fiancé.”
Jake’s eyebrows climbed. “You were engaged? What happened?”
I looked down at him. “Yes, but Jaxson and I weren’t right for each other, so I broke it off.”
“How long have been broken up?”
“Almost a year.”
He was quiet for a moment.
When I couldn’t take it, I tried to snatch my phone back.
Jake held it just out of my reach. “Oh no you don’t. I’m going to watch this.”
“No way!” I reached across him, but his hold on it was too tight.
His gaze met mine. “I’d think after everything I did tonight, you’d be more than willing to let me watch something that was meant for my eyes to begin with.”
Resigned, I flung myself back on the couch and covered my eyes. With my feet on the sofa, I peeked through my fingers just enough to see him.
How was this even happening?
He set his empty glass down and then angled one leg over the other as if settling in for a movie—of the porn variety.
As soon as the sound of running water filled the quiet, sparse room, I felt my cheeks flush.
My on-camera moans were loud, and I had to fight my physical reaction to his response. His pupils flared as if a raw hunger had ignited inside him. When he watched me climax, he sucked in a breath. Thinking about what it would feel like with his very real, very thick cock inside me, an uncontrollable shiver worked up my spine.
The sound of the water lapping mixed with the noises of my climax filled my ears, and I knew the video was almost over. By the time it ended, Jake’s chest was rising and falling at a very rapid pace.
He was turned on.
I could see it in the way his jaw tensed. The way he bit his lip. The rigidness of his body. The outline of his erection.
It only took Jake a moment to look away from the screen. When he did, his gaze was hot and heated, and on me. “Fuck, you’re so hot. Show me your pretty pussy.”
I blinked. Did he just ask me to show him my pussy?
He did.
I know he did.
Was it like you show me yours, and I’ll show you mine?
I looked down at his thick erection.
I wanted to see it. Touch it. Feel it. I wanted to own it.
And yet I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. But my body did. My nipples hardened and pressed against the silky material of my bra causing arousal to shoot through my body in a blast of heat.
He untied my Converse. “That was a tease.”
“In what way?” I managed to ask.
“You made yourself come for me but never showed me so much as a glimpse of what you were touching. I want to see it. Show me.” His voice was so husky it sounded like gravel.
My entire body was trembling. “Right here?”
His nod was slow and seductive. “Right now. I can’t wait another second.”
I was still on my back, and I was looking at him through my spread thighs. Like this, he had a bird’s eye view of my denim-covered pussy and would have the same view of my naked one. “But what about Finn?”
Pulling both of my sneakers off at the same time, he let them drop to the hardwood. “He’s asleep, and won’t wake up for hours.”
“You mean until we wake him up.”
“Yes, until we wake him up, in two hours.”
Two hours.
It didn’t get past me that we had two hours of time to occupy.
With shaky fingers, I unsnapped the cool metal. Was I really going to strip for him? I was.
The small noise that eked out of his throat convinced me I made the right choice. My panties were already damp. They’d been that way from the first moment I saw him, no matter how many times I’d changed them.
I wasn’t telling him that.
Pulling on my zipper, it ratcheted apart tooth by metal tooth. I could feel the cool air whoosh over my skin when my fly opened. I hooked my thumbs in the sides of the denim to push them down.
Jake’s features had turned almost primal as he watched me slide the fabric over my hips and thighs. The jeans were tight, and I had to lift my hips to ease them down.
Slow.
Slow.
Slow.
I kicked out of them.
“Take off your panties,” he whispered in a voice rough-edged with need.
My breath was coming in short, harsh pants as I easily slid the tiny piece of lace down and then kicked it off.
I gasped when he got to his knees and circled his fingertips around my ankles. “Spread your legs, Jules.”
Automatically, my legs went slack, falling open and baring myself to him.
With just his fingertips he brushed over my smooth pink flesh. “Fuck, you’re perfect,” he groaned.
Nobody had said that to me in a very long time.
Using a single finger, he dragged it along my folds in a teasing manner. “You’re so wet. I can’t wait to taste you, to be inside you, to make you come.”
I couldn’t stop the hitch of my breath or the thump of my heart or the smile on my face.
The tease was over, and he withdrew his soft touch and then rested both of his hands on my knees. “Take your top off, and your bra as well.” This time I didn’t have to think twice. With the way he was looking at me, I would have done just about anything.
Without waiting another second, I lifted the hem of my tank and pulled it over my head and then reached behind and undid my bra. Once I’d pulled my arms out of it, I tossed the pieces to the ground. And then hesitantly, I raised my gaze, holding my breath as I looked back up at him.
“Fucking perfect,” he said again, but this time his voice was a low growl of appreciation that sent a jolt all the way to my toes.
There was a discernible bulge between his legs straining at the denim fly, and I wanted to reach and unzip him.
“Do you even know how sexy you are?” he asked.
His question stunned me. “I know the way you’re looking at me right now makes me feel sexier than I ever have.”
And it was true, under his needy, heated gaze, I don’t think I’d ever felt this desired.
Ever.
The only way I could describe the intensity of the moment was to say it was like being brushed with fire every time he raked his hot stare down my body and back up.
I was completely naked now, and yet he didn’t pounce. His approach was slow. My toes curled into the couch cushions with the anticipation of what he’d do next, but he made me wait.
Of course, he made me wait.
Then he was crawling. Coming up and over me, his body was strong and looming. When his face was directly above mine, he began to lower his head. I tilted my chin upward and placed my palms against his chest. I ran my fingertips down to his abs, and he flinched beneath my touch, his muscles going tight and quivering. I hastily withdrew, but he caught my hands with one of his and guided them back. “Don’t stop.”
I didn’t.
And then all at once, his warm, sensual mouth was moving exquisitely over mine and one of his hands was sliding up my body, and I couldn’t move. The feel of his skin on mine was pure bliss.
I sighed into his mouth.
The kiss deepened. His lips moved strongly over mine, demanding, taking, owning, and his urgency bled into my mouth. “I can’t be the only one feeling I’m going to die if I don’t get inside you.”
The statement was filled with warmth, and seeped into my blood, traveling through my body. “You’re not.”
He dragged his lips away from mine. “Tell me,” he demanded.
“I want you. All of you. I want to taste you, touch you, feel you, have you. All of you,” I said breathlessly, my heart surging as adrenaline spiked through my veins.
His eyes were brimming with lust and arousal. “Wrap your arms around me.”
I smiled and did just that. As if I weighed nothing, he hoisted me up. His hands slid beneath my bottom to hold me as I hooked my ankles around his waist. He strode out of the living room and down the hall to his bedroom. I clung to him and captured his mouth to give him a wild and hurried kiss.
A kiss to remember.
A single light from the bathroom shone into his bedroom, and it, like the rest of his apartment, was sparse and barren of any color, but the air in the room crackled like electricity ran through it as soon as we entered.
Wasting no time, he leaned over and landed me softly on the bed with my head on a stack of pillows that made me feel like I was floating on a cloud.
Just as quickly as he’d set me down, he stepped back and started tearing his clothes off. As soon as he pulled his shirt over his head, I felt dizzy. Dizzy with exhilaration, lust, and need.
I grew impatient at the sight of him half-naked. His strong shoulders, muscled biceps, and hard sculpted abs had me licking my lips.
I lifted my head as he unfastened his jeans and yanked them down his hips. His desire for me was right there to see in every inch of his tightly coiled body. He was hot. So freaking hot.
Standing there, his erection was straining, and his eyes burned over me with blazing heat.
My pussy throbbed and ached for him.
Him.
His muscles bunched as he crawled up the bed. My heart never pounded so fast. Grasping my legs, he spread my thighs open wide. I had never been so vulnerable and so turned on at the same time.
“Oh God,” I whimpered.
Those eyes flared and then his head dipped.
“Oh God,” I cried out again when his hot breath blew over me, and he kissed me there. Right there. When he licked me, his tongue flicked and teased. I drew in a breath. It had been so long since a man had gone down on me. Too long.
His lips worked my clit as he pushed a finger, then two, then three, inside me. Rough, but not harsh. He found my G-spot, and I think I convulsed around his fingers. Pleasure took my voice away.
I could feel my climax building, the muscles in my thighs trembling and tightening. He sucked and licked at me and slid his fingers in and out. I pushed my hips upward, and he fucked me with his mouth and hands and tongue until I gasped and trembled. I was heading for the cliff’s edge. Fast.
Trembling, I looked down at him nestled between my thighs. Passion hazed my vision, but everything became crystal clear when he paused to look up at me.
“Don’t come yet.” His breath drifted over my wet flesh mercilessly.
“Jake, please,” I protested.
He moved up my body and captured my wrists with his hands as he pushed mine over my head. “No touching yourself.”
It was a tease of course, but it felt more like torture. “Jake,” I whimpered.
His head surged down, and he kissed me, his tongue moving against mine in such hard, quick strokes, it was almost punishing. “Patience,” he chuckled.
My fingers curled around the headboard to fight the urge to touch myself just for a respite of relief, and I watched him as he fumbled in his nightstand for the package of condoms and slid one on.
When he moved back over me, he positioned himself between my thighs. “I can’t go easy, Jules.”
“I’m good with that,” I breathed out, my voice a husky whisper.
With one hand on his cock to guide it inside me, he stared at me with those intense blue eyes, and then I felt the tip of his cock push into me. He paused only for a moment before surging fully into me.
The shock of his entry nearly sent me over that same edge I’d come so close to moments ago, but I didn’t want to fall. Not yet. This was too good to end so fast.
My eyes closed as he filled me. When he moved, I moved with him. His fingers dug into my hips, and then he slid his hands up my belly to my breasts, palming them and tugging at my nipples.
Unable to stand it, I let go of the headboard and slid my hands up his arms to settle on his shoulders. He was so strong, and I reveled in the idea of touching him everywhere, all night long.
His palms went flush against the mattress as he fucked into me faster. Then he was back up on his hands and driving his cock deliciously deeper. He withdrew and thrust forward again, jolting my body with the force of his reentry. “Did I hurt you?” he rasped.
I couldn’t even draw a breath. I was lightheaded from the exhilaration and anticipation. “No. Don’t stop,” I cried out when he slowed.
His gaze seared into me, so intense that I shivered. “I won’t.”
My gaze was riveted to him, to his mussed up hair, his hard body, his soft touch.
He reached down, grasped my legs and pushed them both upward to wrap around his waist, and then pulled us both into a sitting position. Oh, God. Like this I was so tight around him, I wondered how he could possibly even move.
“Jake,” I cried out at the same time he cried out, “Juliette.”
Juliette.
It sounded so right coming from him.
Our gasps mingled, and the sounds of passion filled the room. Like this, I lifted my body and slammed myself down on his cock.
This was raw. Real. Primitive. We fucked hard and fast. No boundaries. The thrill of the next surge only driving me higher and higher than I had ever climbed.
The brink of orgasm was right there, but I had to keep chasing it up the mountain. I closed my eyes to stop myself from reaching the top. I wanted to see just how high I could go. Just how good it would feel.
“Keep your eyes open.” He thrust deeper into me. “Fuck,” he whispered, “keep your eyes open.”
With my hands in his hair, I found his heated gaze and lowered my mouth to his.
“You feel amazing,” he grunted against my lips.
I moved faster against his thrusts, my heart racing out of control. “So do you.”
“Juliette.” His grip on my hips tightened. “Juliette.”
“Jake,” I whimpered back as he thrust at just the right angle and I knew I had reached the top.
“Fuck.” He started to pump even harder, faster.
I was shuddering against him in tiny jerks trying my best to stop the fall and stay on top for just a little longer. The feeling was almost surreal. One I never wanted to go without.
His eyes glittered. “Come for me, Juliette,” Jake commanded, his voice gruff with need. “You’re so tight. Come around me. Let me feel you go wild around my cock.”
He was deep. So impossibly deep that I could feel nothing but the pulsating hardness of his cock as it drove inside me.
I let out a sharp cry as my orgasm flashed, explosive and intense. The fall into oblivion was higher and longer than I’d ever experienced, and it was with an intensity that I never could have imagined. Suddenly all those clichés I’d made fun of seemed so real. The earth shifted. The ground moved under my feet. I was on cloud nine.
As I floated back to earth, Jake held me to him and his rhythm increased. A few seconds later, his face pressed against my neck, his hips jerked, and I felt the release of his climax.
I shuddered.
He shuddered.
We held each other tight until our bodies stopped trembling.
And when our gazes met again, we both fell to the mattress in a heap and laughed.
Jake moved to get rid of the rubber in a nearby garbage can and then slipped beside me. He rolled to the side with one arm and laid one leg over my body.
I looked at him. Watched as his hand moved lazily up and down my body in smooth, flat strokes.
“Jules.”
“Yes,” I said.
“That was—I don’t even know how to describe it.” His hand centered over my pussy, his fingers dipping into my wet folds.
I opened my legs wider, loving the feel of his soft touch, and craving more, even though we’d only finished having each other a moment ago. “Out of this world. Amazing. Fantastic.” I threw a few words out there.
He stroked my pussy. Up. Down. Soft. Softer. “Yeah, all of that,” he laughed.
“I like it when you touch me,” I told him.
A wicked grin crossed his lips, and he dipped his finger inside me. “I like touching you.”
“I like it when you call me Juliette, too.”
His breath puffed hot on my shoulder and he kissed me. His lips pressed to my skin. His fingertips settled on my clit, and he circled lightly. “Why don’t you let anyone but Monty call you that?”
I was on my back looking up at him with my legs spread wide. He was on his side looking down at me, stroking me. And yet I found myself sucking in a breath and saying, “I tell everyone it’s because I was teased so much in school about the whole Romeo and Juliette thing, but that’s a lie.”
He stopped his stroking. “Why is that a lie?”
I took his hand and started to move it for him, telling him in my own way I wanted to feel his touch when I divulged the truth, and he figured it out because he dipped his fingers inside me and then started circling my clit in slow, even motions. Not enough to get me off, but enough to make me feel that tingling sensation a woman wished she could hold onto forever. “I think it’s because it reminds me of my parents, and sometimes I don’t want to be reminded.”
Jake didn’t stop playing with my clit, but he looked down at me with such intensity I felt like he knew exactly what I meant. “Do you want to tell me about them?”
I arched up, letting the good feeling in and trying to push out the bad. “They were perfect. More in love than anyone I’ve ever known. And then they died, and I had to leave New York and come here to live with my uncle. That was sixteen years ago, and I still miss them.”
He drew in a breath and his hand stopped.
“Don’t stop. Please, Jake, don’t stop. Let me feel this instead of the pain.”
And he did. He brought me to orgasm. Taking his time in a slow and steady motion, and although I didn’t climb the highest mountain, the fall was equally intense.
When I settled against him, I took his straining cock in my hand and started to stroke it. He shivered under my touch. He was big and thick and beautiful, and his skin was so soft. I wanted to touch him forever.
He reached for a picture on his nightstand and brought it back to show me. The light was poor, but I could see it enough.
I stopped my stroking.
It was of an older man in a doctor’s coat and a young man who, although much scrawnier and smaller, was still the spitting image of the older man, and there was no doubt who the younger man was.
He set the picture back down and took my hand and started moving it. “Don’t stop.”
I didn’t.
I found his gaze. “Was that you?” I asked, already knowing it was.
He nodded and let his legs fall open. “With my father, before he died,” he said, and then he closed his eyes as if wanting to block out the pain that accompanied the memory with the pleasure of my touch.
I understood.
I stroked up, circled his tip, and back down to circle at his base, and then lower to cup his balls.
His mouth fell open.
My heart pounded. He was silk and steel in my palm. I moved a little faster. Up. Down. Circling his width, stroking. I wanted to make him feel good. To help ease the pain of what he had yet to tell me.
His mouth parted on a small gust of breath when I moved faster. He fucked into my fist, and then he was crying out, short and rough, as his orgasm jetted onto his belly.
I watched the rise and fall of his chest, and then he opened his eyes and looked at me. “How did your parents die?”
My lips trembled, but I held myself together. “They both died in the World Trade Center attack. They both worked there. My father was a K-9 unit officer in the Explosive Detection Division for the Port Authority and my mother worked for Silverstone Properties.”
Jake sucked in a breath, and then he was silent for so long, I wasn’t sure he hadn’t fallen asleep with his eyes open. “My father died there that day trying to pull people out. He wouldn’t have even been there if it wasn’t for me. It’s my fault he died.”
“Jake,” I gasped, rolling onto him, not even caring that his sperm was still on his belly. “Don’t say that.”
His gaze was distant, and I knew he’d gone to that place I’d been to so often. That place where the hurt was so intense, you thought you couldn’t survive it.
The thing was, I’d been there too, and because I had, I knew how to bring him back. “Tell me what happened,” I whispered, knowing if he did it was going to open old wounds that had never healed.
Jake wrapped his arms around me and rolled us onto our sides. I was facing him, and we were close, so close, and yet he moved closer. It wasn’t until we were a breath apart that he opened his mouth to speak.
I braced myself.
I heard my pulse start to race.
What he was about to tell me was going to hurt both of us, but this time we had each other to help ease the pain.
And I knew it would make a difference.
It had to.