“Why?” I wanted to know if he’d confirm my silent guess. But I also wanted him to stop talking altogether and return to what he’d been doing.

“Because you’ve never asked. I told you I wanted you to ask.”

Oh. That. He had said that, hadn’t he? Maybe I was the one who had avoided it because of the intimacy level.

“But now I can’t wait any longer. So I’m giving you a pass.”

I started to say thank you, but was distracted by another lick. Then he spread my folds with his fingers and sucked at my clit.

Fuck, it felt insane. So fucking good. Like a fire had been set directly to my nerve center and now I was aflame.

I fell back on the piano, unable to stay up any longer. I gasped and moaned and wriggled. When I tried to push back, to get some relief from the overwhelming sensation of pleasure, he gripped my hips and held me closer. A storm gathered underneath his lips. I grew wetter with each pass of his tongue and the muscles of my thighs tightened as my climax made its impending arrival known.

My foot slipped off the piano, and JC threw it over his shoulder. He drew back to speak again, but this time he replaced his mouth with the expert attention of his thumb. “With as vocal as you’ve become while being fucked, I’m sure this is very hard for you right now.” He spoke evenly and controlled, the exact opposite of how I felt. “But now that you have to work to be quiet, you’re going to be surprised at how amazing it’s going to feel when you come.”

It was hard. I was already struggling with it, my moans having turned into soft, jagged cries.

“If you need to,” he suggested as a finger now dipped lower to circle my rim, “bite down on these.” He dangled my panties in the air. Still holding my underwear up, he bent back down to suck on my, clit simultaneously plunging several fingers inside of me.

I snatched the panties from his grip and stuffed them into my mouth to stifle my scream.

I was vaguely aware of the vacuum in the next room turning off. But it was background noise. Irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was the growing ball of tension inside of me. It tightened as JC stroked and licked me. Tightened and stretched until there was nothing for it to do but burst.

My back arched and rose off the piano as the release slammed through my body, shaking my very core, igniting every cell in my being. My jaw clenched around the muzzle in my mouth as my pussy clenched around JC’s fingers. I was spinning, dizzy. Overwhelmed.

Even as I came, JC didn’t relent. He continued to fuck me with his mouth, with his hand, and while my first climax hadn’t quite ended, I could already feel another building. It was too much. I wanted it to end. Wanted to cry out and beg for him to stop.

And I wanted him to never stop. Wanted to die in the exquisite pleasure of this moment. Felt sure that when he let me finish, I’d be reborn as something new and wild and strong.

Stars burst across my vision as my next orgasm took hold.

Then the whole room flooded with light.

It took a second to register what was happening, especially since my head wasn’t exactly in a place where thought came easily. But JC made it clear. “Shit. We have to go.”

Disoriented, I sat up and, after blinking a few times, realized that the brightness wasn’t from my orgasm but from all the lights being turned on. I spun toward the doors we’d come in through. They were open. A woman dressed in the uniform of the hotel’s cleaning crew was pushing a vacuum through it. She saw us immediately. “Hey, what’s going on over there?”

I didn’t look to see if she came after us. I was too busy hopping off the piano and running with JC out the door closest to us. We fumbled blindly through The Boardroom and out into the corridor, where we sprinted to the elevators.

JC pressed the call button repeatedly, as if it would make the doors open any faster, while I kept glancing behind me, sure that we’d been followed.

But the doors opened and we slipped in before anyone came after us. Inside the car, we looked at each other. Then burst into laughter.

“Sorry,” I said, when I realized we weren’t alone in the car. That was also the moment I realized I had left my panties behind. I tugged my robe tighter around myself and elbowed JC.

He peered over at the couple sharing our ride. Then angled back toward me. He pulled me close—so close that I could feel the ridge of his hard cock through his jeans—and spoke low at my ear. “You were such a good girl. I promise I’ll finish you off in the room. In fact, now that I’ve tasted you, I don’t think I’ll be able to keep my mouth off you, whether you ask for it or not.”

Though his voice was quiet, I felt certain the others could hear him.

I didn’t care one bit.

I grinned, leaning in to nuzzle his neck. Immediately, he stiffened. I pulled away, puzzled. I’d just let him bring me to climax with his tongue and his lips, yet he couldn’t let me caress him? Couldn’t handle the intimacy of my hug?

I studied him, looking for an answer, but he turned away, suddenly intrigued by the changing numbers on the elevator panel. When the door opened on our floor, he took my hand and pulled me out behind him without looking at me.

I tried not to let his demeanor disappoint me. It wasn’t what we were to each other, I reminded myself. We weren’t intimate like that. We weren’t personal. I knew what I’d signed up for.

The problem was, I was changing. JC was changing me. Little by little, he’d been tearing down my walls, letting me out.

But his walls stood just as tall and strong as ever.

Chapter Ten

I didn’t fall asleep with JC again until more than a month later.

This time it wasn’t a little catnap, either. I’d dozed off somewhere around two or three, and when I woke up, the sun was streaming in brightly from the terrace.

I sat up with a panicked feeling similar to sleeping through an alarm. “Oh¸ shit.”

JC bolted upright beside me, his hair messy and eyes seemingly bleary. “What is it?” He’d obviously been sleeping, too, which was almost stranger than me having nodded off. One thing I’d learned in our weeks together—the man hadn’t been lying when he said he never slept. Even though he was on a different schedule than me, he always managed to make it through our time together without a hint of tiredness.

I glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Nine-oh-seven. This was the time we usually parted. I’d get dressed, not bothering to shower, then take a cab back to my apartment where I’d fall into bed, exhausted, until it was time to wake for work on Thursday night.