Hearts in Extra Time (An Atlanta Skyline Novella) Read online

He gave himself permission to fuck her fast and hard, her ass slamming against the wall, her breasts bouncing against his chest. She watched his every move, brows knit together, inarticulate pleas spilling from her lips. He grit his teeth to keep his climax at bay, but Stella tested the limits of his control like no woman before. Between the pace, the eye contact, the way her inner muscles clamped around him with every thrust, he was careening toward orgasm faster than he could handle.

  She tightened her thighs around his haunches, then let go of his shoulder just long enough to reach up and yank down her bra, framing her bare breasts beneath her scrunched-up shirt.

  He lost it. The soft, jiggling flesh, the rigid pink peaks, the innocent white lace shoved hastily out of the way—he was finished. He dug his fingers into her thighs as he gave himself over to the waves of his climax, holding himself deep inside of her, every muscle in his body clenching and twitching and then sagging with relief.

  “Fuck,” he groaned when his ears stopped ringing. He lowered Stella to the floor, wincing as he withdrew his still semi-erect, hypersensitive cock.

  “Damn, Stella, I’m sorry. That almost never happens to me. I’ll sort you out, just give me a second.” He tugged off the condom and tossed it in the trash, then yanked on his rumpled boxers.

  “Sort me out how?” She looked at him quizzically, straightening her bra and pulling down her shirt.

  “You didn’t come.”

  She shrugged. “Most of the time I don’t.”

  “Meaning, most of the time when you’re with someone new?”

  “Most of all of the time,” she clarified. “I was with my ex for three years and I could probably count my orgasms with him on one hand. It wasn’t his fault. It’s just how I’m wired.”

  He stared at her in disbelief as she calmly stepped into her panties and pulled them up over her thighs. He knew some women found it difficult to climax, but he’d physically felt her fierce arousal. Getting that hot and only that hot must be one of the most frustrating things he could imagine.

  “Did you try different things with your ex? Positions, toys? Can you come with a vibrator?”

  “TMI, Aaron,” she said, her cheeks reddening.

  “Is that a no?”

  She looked away. “Sometimes we used lube.”

  “Stella, that’s not… That doesn’t…”

  “I know,” she said sharply, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m not ignorant. I’m just… Not always good at asking for what I need. In that area.”

  “Ask me now.”

  “I’m fine. Really.” She began needlessly straightening the pillows, smoothing the barely wrinkled duvet on the still-made bed.

  He was about to remind her that she’d managed to ask him for what she wanted before, but then he remembered exactly what she wanted.

  An anonymous, heartless fuck. Probably the exact opposite of her well-intentioned, unfulfilling ex-fiancé.

  “Get on the bed.”

  She turned abruptly, eyes wide. “What did you say?”

  “Get on the bed,” he repeated sternly. “Now.”

  She just stared at him, and in two quick strides he was in front of her, getting into her space until she dropped onto the bed.

  “Lie down,” he instructed.

  She watched him for half a second more, then obeyed.

  He didn’t waste time. He stripped off her panties, listening for any slight sound of protest but moving quickly. He tugged her forward so her feet were flat on the ground, spread her knees and slid his arms under her thighs.

  “You really don’t have to do this,” she said, her voice half-choked by the effort of pushing up onto her elbows.

  “I want to. And I think you want me to, too.”

  “I do, but… Are you sure? We just had sex, it’ll be all sloppy and—”

  “Stella?”

  “Yes?”

  “Shut up.”

  She flopped back onto the bed with a sigh, and he couldn’t stop his smile at the exasperated sound. Like she was doing him a huge favor.

  He lowered his focus to her rosy flesh, still swollen and glistening. He lapped once, slowly, flattening his tongue, tasting latex and skin and finally her unique, heady scent.

  Maybe she was.

  He gave Stella the best oral sex he’d given in his life. Attentive yet coy, teasing and encouraging, alternating between lips and tongue and fingers to repeatedly bring her close to the brink before snatching her back. She guided him every step of the way, panting, moaning, tensing, twitching.

  Her movements became restless, jerky, until suddenly she shot to a sitting position, nearly knocking him backward. He tightened his grip around her thighs and she shoved her fingers into his hair, holding him in place, kneading his skull with such intensity that his cock jumped from a tired semi to a full-strength erection.

  He worked her clit with his tongue, let her pulsing grip on his head set the rhythm. Her breathing was hoarse and irregular, her back arched above him, the sounds issuing from her throat somewhere left of human.

  Then she went completely still. Her legs stiffened and she reared up and back, thrusting those magnificent—if unfortunately clothed—breasts toward the ceiling. Without releasing the pressure of his mouth, he looked up the length of her body, her curly hair chaotic and free, her eyes clamped shut, her lips parted in ecstasy.

  She wrenched out of his grasp and collapsed on the bed. Slowly he unfolded himself from his position on the floor, wiped his face with a Kleenex and stretched out next to her, sighing happily as the muscles in his legs and back uncoiled.

  For a few minutes they simply lay side-by-side, the silence interrupted only by the clatter of a rolling suitcase in the hall. He listened to Stella breathing, deep and even, and was about to check whether she’d fallen asleep when she said his name.

  “Aaron?”

  “Hm?”

  “I came that time.”

  He smiled, folded his hands on his stomach and closed his eyes. “I’m glad.”

  He heard her roll over on her side, felt the mattress shift as she edged closer.

  “You’re hard again,” she observed, sounding surprised.

  He nodded, not opening his eyes.

  She sighed, but this time her trademark exasperation was exaggerated and playful.

  “I suppose you want me to do something about that.”

  “If you feel like it,” he murmured, but her hand was already on his thigh, warm fingertips lowering the waistband on his boxers.

  He moved his hands behind his head, relaxing his shoulders and pressing his lower back into the bed as her palm closed over his shaft.

  “How do you like it?” she asked softly. “Hard? Fast? Sweet? Dirty? Tell me who you want me to be.”

  He appreciated the question, but with the taste of her still lingering on her lips, he had only one answer.

  “Stella,” he told her, the rhythm already tightening his throat and thinning his voice. “Just be Stella.”

  Five

  “This is a disaster. A total fucking nightmare. What the fuck am I going to do?”

  Stella spread her hand over her face, pressing her thumb and her middle finger to her pounding temples. The pain behind her eyes made her stomach tighten with nausea, and her jaw clenched so tightly she could hear her back teeth grinding together.

  “Don’t freak out. We’ll make a plan.” Aaron’s hands were on her shoulders, and she resisted the urge to spin around and sob into his shoulder. He wasn’t her boyfriend—he would never be her boyfriend.

  She didn’t have a word in her vocabulary to describe their night together. Amazing, fantastic, mind-blowing, life-changing… None of them quite managed to encapsulate the dizzy heights of pleasure she’d ascended not once but twice atop the now irreparably defiled hotel bed. Her whole body had felt loose and liquid as they chatted into the early hours, and even Aaron’s frank disclosure of just how many notches adorned his bedposts hadn’t stirred her from her dreamy, sex-softened h
aze. She’d drifted off with Aaron’s arm draped over her waist and slept deeper than she had in weeks.

  Then the alarm went off, and she’d woken to an empty bed, the sound of the shower, and the wide-eyed, ugly knowledge that the fantasy was over. There would be no more skeleton-shaking orgasms in her immediate future, just all the work she hadn’t finished yesterday.

  Aaron squeezed her shoulders now and she made a conscious effort to lower them. Last night was over, and soon they’d be strangers again. She couldn’t forget that.

  “Do you want to rebook?” The airline representative’s impatient question jerked her back to the dire situation at hand. They’d arrived at the airport—along with hundreds of other stranded passengers—to discover that there were no flights available for five days, and that the airline had evidently called in their rudest, least helpful customer service representatives to deliver this news.

  “No, I don’t want to rebook. I want to get to Atlanta,” Stella replied sharply, shoulders instantly hunching toward her ears.

  “Everyone wants to get somewhere, ma’am, but we can’t control the weather.”

  Stress tightened her chest so dramatically Stella could hear her own dragging, rasping breaths. How the fuck was she going to get everything done? She’d already rescheduled all of her meetings once, the clients would only wait so long, there was physically no way she could get everything done before it was due, not to mention on Friday she had that stupid—

  “We’ll rent a car and drive,” Aaron decided. He took her elbow and steered her away from the counter, past the long line of unhappy-looking customers.

  She barely registered her crowded surroundings, blindly following Aaron through a maze of people and luggage while her mind spun with a disordered list of all the work she needed to do. She needed to get to a hotel with free WiFi so she could log on. No, she didn’t have time to find a hotel. She’d get a table in one of the airport cafés. Would airport wireless be secure? Probably not. Okay, if she bought a mobile broadband stick she could charge it back to the firm—unless they were already so pissed off at her for going missing—no, she’d pay for it herself, no matter how much it cost. This was all her fault, after all. She should’ve booked that other cruise, the one that docked on a Saturday instead of a Sunday. Or she should’ve taken that late flight after her Sunday docking instead of the Monday-morning one, but then what if—

  “Stella.”

  She blinked up at Aaron, realizing for the first time that they’d come to a stop in front of the row of car-rental desks.

  Wait. Had he said they would drive to Atlanta?

  “Oh, no. No, no, no.” She shook her head, backing away from that unacceptably slow means of transportation.

  “How else do you plan to get home? Charter a helicopter?”

  “I’ll stay here. I’ll find a hotel, log on, and work from Miami until the snow clears.”

  “Look at this place, Stella. There must be a thousand people stuck here, and they’re piling up by the hour. If you can find a hotel room, it’s going to cost you more than that cruise. It’s a ten-hour drive to Atlanta. We’ll stop overnight and be back in the city by lunchtime tomorrow.”

  “It’s already noon—that’ll cost me a whole day of work. No,” she resolved. “I can’t waste any more time. I have to find somewhere with WiFi.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, looking closer to irritated than she’d ever seen him.

  “Staring at your laptop in a hotel for five days is not preferable to being in your office within twenty-four hours. That makes no sense.”

  “It’s called remote working, Aaron. People do it all the time.”

  “Do you?”

  She hiked her bag higher on her shoulder. “No, but I tend to have a lot of meetings.”

  “Do you have meetings tomorrow afternoon? Or the next day? Or the day after that?”

  “I can dial in,” she lied.

  He rolled his eyes. “Let’s get in two different lines. Hopefully one of these companies will have cars left.”

  “I am not driving to Atlanta with you.” The words came out like the shrill accompaniment to a stomped foot, but she held his gaze defiantly.

  “Look, Stella, I know you’re stressed about work, but we’re wasting time. Just pick a line and we can get on the road.”

  “You don’t know,” she flung back at him, hearing her voice leap from annoyed to hysterical but unable to pull it down. “You have no idea the pressure I’m under, the deadlines, the expectations… You’re an athlete, you’re living your dream, you’re not in the corporate world, and you have no concept of how ruthless and unforgiving it can be —or how easily people can be replaced.”

  “That’s the first time I’ve heard anyone suggest that professional sports aren’t ruthless and unforgiving,” he said dryly.

  Her cheeks heated as she recovered her composure, having lifted the lid to let off some steam. “I didn’t mean—”

  “You’re right. I’m living my dream. I get paid to play the sport I’ve loved since I was a little kid. I probably don’t earn as much as a hotshot corporate lawyer, but I’m happy as hell. Are you happy, Stella?”

  “No.” Her answer was immediate and required no thought. “But that’s because of my ex. Not my job. I’m good at my job.”

  “Do you love your job?”

  “Should I have to? Most people don’t.”

  “Just asking.” He glanced toward the growing line of people at the car-rental counters. “I’m going to make the drive. You’re welcome to come with me, but if you really need to stay here then I’ll say it was a pleasure meeting you.”

  Her heart dropped into her stomach. She’d been so focused on deadlines and emails and meetings that she hadn’t thought about a much more imminent reality.

  Saying goodbye to Aaron.

  He plucked her phone from her limp hand and started typing. “Here’s my number. Give me a shout if you ever want to see a Skyline match. I’ll set you up with tickets.”

  “Sure,” she said weakly, suddenly on the verge of tears as he handed her phone back.

  She should’ve known this would happen. She’d never been able to do sex without commitment. She always, always fell for the guy, and fell hard. And Aaron was by far the sexiest, funniest, most exciting man she’d slept with. No wonder the thought of leaving him felt like she was holding an axe, about to amputate her own arm.

  But what choice did she have? He’d made it absolutely clear that he didn’t do relationships—it seemed like he barely did second dates. She should let him go. Get back to work. Continue her quest to be the fun, easygoing woman she hadn’t been for her ex—and hope to hell that when she found Mr. Right he knew the same bedroom tricks as the man in front of her.

  “I had a good time,” she told him meekly, cringing at how pathetic she sounded, but his answering smile was warm and sincere.

  “Me too. See you later, Stella. Don’t work too hard.”

  He leaned in to brush a kiss over her cheek, then swung up his duffel bag and headed for the shortest car-rental line. She watched him go, long legs moving in an easy gait, jeans and jacket giving no hint of the chiseled body beneath. His scent clung to the air around her, cedar-stored sweaters and crackling fires and crisp winter mornings, and she couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t process anything beyond a primal, unstoppable instinct to be with him.

  Before she knew what was happening, she was on the move, running as fast as her bulky wheeled suitcase allowed. She dodged suited men speaking sternly into their phones, rounded a family of five, and nearly collided with an elderly man in a Hawaiian shirt before cutting into the line next to Aaron, ignoring the dark stares of the people behind him.

  Surprise turned into a big, back-teeth smile as he registered her presence, and it took everything she had not to kiss him.

  “Change your mind?”

  She nodded. “I’m coming with you.”

  His true-blue eyes sparkled with mischievous deli
ght. “Road trip.”

  “Well, if they won’t do the deal with that clause included then you have to walk away. I don’t care about your targets, Scott. I care about protecting your firm from enormous legal risk. Fine, you go discuss this with your managing partner, because I’ll tell you now he keeps that clause in every contract he executes. Yes, even the Stallion acquisition. Mm-hm. All right, then consider it signed off.”

  Stella hung up without saying goodbye, and Aaron glanced warily in her direction as she thumbed her phone.

  She’d been on the phone from the moment he’d squeezed behind the wheel of the tiny, bright-yellow subcompact they’d picked up from the very back of the rental lot. After nearly two hours listening to her respectfully eviscerate an all-male roster of colleagues, he was simultaneously intimidated and aroused, and the distracting combination seriously threatened his awareness of road safety.

  The phone buzzed in her hand and she raised it to her ear. “Rich. Hi. Somewhere north of Miami. I don’t know—traffic’s terrible. I have no idea. Did you look it up? No, not off the top of my head. Check the database. Okay. Bye.”

  “Moron,” she muttered under her breath in the split second before her phone buzzed again. “This is Stella. Hi, Jim. Sure, I’ve got a minute. What do you need?”

  Aaron focused on the busy highway, letting Stella’s indecipherable technical chatter fade into a background hum.

  He knew Stella was smart, and he was positive she earned significantly more than he did, but listening to her in action turned an unforgiving spotlight on the gulf between them. She sounded capable, busy, and stressed beyond belief.

  She sounded exactly like this parents.

  He tightened his grip on the steering wheel as traffic slowed. He knew his parents loved him and his sister, and intellectually he couldn’t blame them for working hard and trying to provide for the two of them. Yet it still stung when he remembered looking up after scoring a goal to see his mom engrossed in paperwork on the bleachers, or the number of dinners his dad ate standing up with the phone to his ear, or the palpable, hollow distance between his parents when they took seats on opposite ends of the couch to announce they were getting divorced.