The One You Can't Forget by Roni Loren
Not until Wes eased her leg back down and she was panting her way through the aftershocks did she realize she was still clutching fistfuls of his hair and had slid halfway down the shower door. She quickly released him and steadied herself. “Wow, that was…”
But Wes didn’t let her finish. He stood, his attention hot on her, and cupped her jaw, giving her a crushing kiss.
There was so much in that kiss—need, desire, appreciation, not to mention the illicit flavor of sex—that her body, which had been fully satisfied, revved up again. The heat of his erection pressed against her belly as he kissed her like she’d never been kissed before.
She reached between them and wrapped her hand around him. He moaned into her mouth. “I’m gonna break land speed records if you do that. It’s been so long.”
The heat of him against her palm and the slick head were enough to have her inner muscles pulsing, her heartbeat relocating to that space between her thighs. “We’ve got all day, remember?”
He braced his hands on either side of her, his breath rasping against her neck. “Condoms are in my bedroom. I hope to God they’re not expired.”
“I have some in my purse in the living room. But…” An odd urge hit her as she stroked him, a deep, aching desire to feel him just like this, skin to skin. “It’s been over a year since I’ve been with anyone, and I’m on the pill. Have you been tested?”
“Yes. I’m good, but I can go get—”
She kissed him, swallowing the words and following her gut. She pulled back and met his eyes. “I’m okay with it if you are.”
Something dark and dangerous flared in his gaze. “I’ve never been more okay with anything ever. This will be slower the next time, I promise. But right now…” He guided her into the steamy space of the shower, the warm water cascading over her skin. “Right now I need you to hold on.”
He turned her around and she reached out, automatically grabbing the towel bar fastened to the tile wall. He pressed his body against her back, rubbing all that maleness against her slick skin—rough hair and hard muscle, the thick, hot need of his erection branding her and making the water feel cool in comparison. She nearly purred as she rocked back against him.
He sucked the water off the curve of her neck and then nipped at her ear. “You are the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. Spread your legs for me. I need to be inside you.”
A hard shudder went through her, and she did as he asked. He wrapped an arm around her waist, keeping her steady as she gripped the bar, and then he was pressing against her entrance, making her stomach flutter and her knuckles go white. When he slid inside, stretching and filling her, she let out a sound of relief, the emptiness finally abating.
He growled against her ear and rocked into her, deep and slower than she’d expected, as if he was still savoring, though she knew he had to be pushing his edge.
“Wes,” she whispered, hearing the begging note in her voice over the hard patter of the water.
The arm he had around her slid down, finding her sensitive clit as he sank deep again and picked up a little speed. She tensed, expecting the stimulation to be too much too soon, but the feel of his calloused finger along her tender flesh made an edgy need bloom. She was right there again. She could feel the demand of her body, the pulsing potential. It was just out of reach.
“Please.” The word slipped out, unbidden. “I need…”
“What?” he asked hoarsely as he continued pumping into her. “Tell me.”
Her hands tightened on the bar. “Fuck me, Wes. I need…fast.”
Wes made a sound deep in his throat and his hips rocked faster, thrusting into her while his fingers worked her to the point of being rough.
But that edge was apparently just what she needed because colored dots of light appeared behind her eyes, and an orgasm she didn’t think she had in her exploded through her. She cried out, the sound echoing off the tile walls and tightening her throat.
Wes made the sexiest grinding grunts—as if he was mad at her for making him feel so good—and thrust into her fast and deep. Then he went dead still, buried to the hilt, his muscles tensing against her. He made a pained sound and called her Bec and then was moving again, riding out the rest of his pleasure and stretching out hers.
When they finally slowed, sated and spent, he planted his hands next to hers, caging her in. They breathed hard together as they came down from the high, hot water tracking over them like some weird baptism into a new phase in their arrangement.
Wes finally pressed a kiss to her shoulder, eased out of her, and let out a satisfied sigh. “That was worth the wait.”
She smiled and turned around to face him. “You’ve only known me for a couple of weeks.”
He touched his forehead to hers, his eyelashes sparkling with water droplets. “No. The whole wait.”
“Oh.” The years. Something sharp-edged and sweet bloomed inside her chest. “For me, too.”
She knew he’d assume she meant the year, but that wasn’t the whole truth. Yes, it’d been a year since she’d had sex.
But it’d been her whole life since she’d had anything that felt like that.
She could almost hear Kincaid whispering in her ear, Enjoy it while you can, cupcake.
chapter
NINETEEN
“I’m going to have to get a bigger swear jar. When the kids see the bus, they’re going to lose their shit,” Wes said gleefully.
“You better add a dollar right now, chef,” Rebecca teased, keeping her voice low against the phone and letting her hair curtain her face from the open door of her office. “And I can’t wait to see their faces. Hopefully, they won’t be offended that it’s not totally clean.”
He laughed. “We did the best we could.”
“We did no such thing. We got it half scrubbed and then spent the afternoon in bed.”
“Well, not technically in bed.”
Her skin flushed at the memory. She’d left Wes’s condo late last night on a sated high. After the shower, he’d cooked her a ridiculously delicious pasta dish with random ingredients from his pantry and then they’d attempted to watch a movie on his couch. That’d been a wash. They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other and had ended up naked on the floor of the living room, even though the bedroom had only been a few steps away. “You know what I mean. We should’ve been cleaning poor Adele.”
“We were up against terrible odds. No reasonable person would’ve expected us to resist each other. But if it makes you feel better, I got up early this morning and finished the job. Adele is all ready for her debut,” Wes declared.
Rebecca’s lips curved, her chest filling with fizzy warmth for a different reason. Wes liked to play it cool, but she could tell how much he cared about those kids by all these little things he did. She could picture him at the crack of dawn, scrubbing down that old bus. “Did you wear a shirt?”
He chuckled. “Of course. Didn’t want to be randomly attacked by a neighbor.”
“Right. Safety first.”
“So will you be able to get here this afternoon to see the big reveal? I know Mondays can be crazy,” Wes said, his chair squeaking in the background, “so if you need me to postpone it, I can keep it a secret. I don’t want to do it without you. You made this whole thing happen.”
“I have two new clients on my schedule and one other meeting. I also planned on picking up my canine hero from your brother this afternoon, but Marco said Knight has a minor infection and wants to keep him a few more days.”
“Knight? He officially has a name now?”
“Yes, I figured with his black fur and his hero status, it was appropriate. I’m still going to stop by to visit him. Marco said he’s allowed to have a few treats now, so I’m bringing him some goodies, but I should be able to get to you around four. I want to be there for the reveal. I’m excited.”
“It’s already on the way,” she said.
“And bring some extra clothes if you want to jump in on the remodeling afterward. I’d bring some of my extras, but if I see you in those again, my mind is going to go to places it shouldn’t with children around.”
She smirked. “Have you no self-control, man?”
“Nope. Not when it comes to you.”
A tingly awareness moved through her, spreading out to the tips of her fingers. “I know the feeling.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She looked down at her desk and the big calendar she used to keep her schedule straight. She tracked her fingertip over the spot where she’d marked down the details of the charity brunch. She’d written it in hard, neat handwriting, indenting the paper. Angry writing. No, scared writing. She hadn’t even realized she’d done that. Everything else was in looping script. She’d been terrified from the start and all through that morning, until Wes had swept in and stolen her away from the whole thing. “And I forgot to say it before I left, but thanks for yesterday.”
“Thanks?” he scoffed, his incredulity echoing through the phone. “Rebecca, that’s the last thing you need to say to me.”
“I just mean for getting my mind off everything after the debacle at brunch yesterday morning. I was kind of a mess. You are…excellent at distraction.”
He was quiet for a moment, and she wondered if she’d said something wrong, but finally he cleared his throat. “I’m happy to distract you anytime, but know that if you ever want to talk about…anything, I’m here. Remember the friend portion of this arrangement. You don’t have to pretend that yesterday morning was about skipping breakfast.”
Her ribs cinched tight. “Wes—”
“I’m not saying you have to. I just wanted to put it out there. I’ve worked with these kids long enough that they’ve taught me a few valuable lessons, and one of them is being able to listen to the hard stuff.” His voice had gone quiet, tentative. “So I know we’re having fun and keeping things light, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be real with me. Don’t act like everything’s cool if it’s not.”
The truth welled up in her like a tidal wave, ready to bust through the levee and flood out. What would it feel like to tell someone? To tell all of it? What had really happened back then, what she’d seen these last few months, the tricks her mind had played on her. But she choked back the urge as quickly as it came. Yeah, that’d be a fun way to annihilate this new thing with Wes in one fell swoop. Hey there, Guy I Just Slept With, I’m a horrible person, and I might be seeing dead people. What time do you want to hang out tonight?
She forced an ease into her voice that she didn’t feel. “Thanks, Wes. I appreciate that. But it really was just a breakfast malfunction.”
He didn’t respond for a moment, but when he spoke again, his tone lacked the ease of earlier. “Okay, but for future reference, my offer stands.”
“Noted.”
His chair squeaked again, and he let out a breath. “So, see you around four?”
She drew an X over the Sunday square in her calendar, blocking out the brunch and trying to erase it from her mind. “That’s the plan.”
“Great. See you then.”
She hung up the phone and pinched the bridge of her nose, a headache threatening. She didn’t want the ugly stuff to seep into this thing with Wes. He was her escape right now. She wanted to park him in a place in her life and put an impenetrable dome over it.
No past. No drama. No ghosts.
A firm knock on her door broke her from her thoughts.
Rebecca looked up, bracing herself for her father and the inevitable lecture about her behavior at the brunch, but her assistant, Marian, was in the open doorway with a grandmotherly smile instead. That smile was a diversionary tactic, though, because there was a shrewd look in her eye—her bat signal to Rebecca. Something was up.
Marian was like the ninja assassin of executive assistants beneath that sensible gray suit, which was why Rebecca had happily taken her on when Marian had come back to the firm after two years of retirement, declaring that being home with her husband all day was going to drive her to drinking. “Morning, Marian. What’s going on?”
“Your nine o’ clock is running late.” She leaned in deeper. “But two police officers just showed up, saying they wanted to talk to you. Do you have any idea what that’s about?”
Marian looked ready to defend her and give her an alibi if Rebecca was being accused of something.
Rebecca straightened. “Oh. I… Yes, please send them in. There was…an incident a few weeks ago.”
Wrinkles appeared around Marian’s mouth as her lips pinched together in concern. “An incident? Is everything okay?”
Rebecca waved a hand, trying to minimize the incident because the last thing she needed was her mugging getting around the office gossip chain and back to her father. “Yes, I’m fine. It wasn’t a big deal, but please let them in.”
“Of course.” Marian slipped out of the doorway, and Rebecca could hear her down the hall. “Right this way, officers. Ms. Lindt is ready for you.”
Two cops in plainclothes with badges on their hips walked in, and Rebecca stepped around her desk to greet them and shake hands. The younger Hispanic woman, Detective Flores, was the one who’d called and asked some questions the day after the mugging. The other one, an African American man with graying temples, Detective Montgomery, was in charge of the case.
“Thank you for seeing us, Ms. Lindt,” he said, giving her hand a firm shake. “I know you’re busy, but we had some new information that we wanted to run by you.”
“Of course,” Rebecca said, shutting the door behind them and inviting them to take a seat. “Would you like some coffee?”
“No, thank you. We’re fully fueled up already, ma’am,” he said, sitting in one of the chairs in front of her desk.
Rebecca slipped back into her spot behind her desk, and Detective Flores set a big, yellow envelope on top of Rebecca’s calendar. “We’re sorry to interrupt your morning, but we were able to get security footage off one of the cameras from a business a few doors down from where you were attacked. It’s a challenging angle and the distance didn’t give us sharp photos, so we wanted you to take a look.”
“Sure,” Rebecca said, her voice steadier than she felt.
She wanted to find out who had done this to her and to Knight, but she also was terrified of thinking about the mugging again and having that trigger something. Her memories felt like a minefield these days. One wrong move and boom, the flashbacks and panic would overtake her.
Montgomery opened the envelope and pulled out a few black-and-white photos enlarged to the point of graininess. He turned the first one toward Rebecca. The shot was a front view of her on the sidewalk. She was mid-stride, takeout bag still in her hand, a bland look on her face. But a few steps behind and off to the side there was a hunching figure just out of the pool of light thrown by a street lamp. She couldn’t see a face, but the baseball cap was visible. She pointed to him. “That was the other guy, not the one who had the gun. This one ran off when the dog attacked.”
“Okay, we figured that. We recovered the hat on the scene,” Montgomery said and pulled another picture from the pile and spun it toward her.
Rebecca sucked in a breath, and her heart picked up speed. The other attacker was behind her now, the one in the hoodie. He had the gun pressed to her temple, and her bag was on the ground. Wine from the broken bottle pooled like blood by their feet. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Even without the fine details, just seeing the fear on her face was enough to make her stomach roil. But she tried to focus
Young. White. A strand of dark hair hanging out in full view.
She swallowed past the sudden tightness in her throat. It could be Trevor. If he were still alive. But she knew that wasn’t what was making acid burn the back of her throat.
The guy—no, boy—with the gun could easily be Steven. Wes’s student. The kid who was excited to make waffle chicken.
“Do you recognize him?” Flores asked, her gaze probably keen enough to catch Rebecca’s flinch.
Rebecca knew what would happen if she said yes. She could see the cops rolling up to the after-school program, pulling Steven out of class, singling him out, calling his police officer father. If Steven was the one who’d done this, he needed to be brought in. But on the chance he wasn’t, she would cause him all kinds of trouble he hadn’t earned. Plus, if the kids found out she was the one who’d called, she’d ruin any chance at building trust with any of them while working on the project.
Steven hadn’t shown any kind of recognition when he’d seen her that day in class. He probably wasn’t the one. Plus, she’d seen the effect false accusations could have on people. After the Long Acre shooting, so many accusations had been flying around—who had been friends with the shooters, who had known something was up, who had angered them. No fingers had been pointed her way because she’d been lying in a hospital bed. She’d gotten an undeserved free pass. But sometimes it didn’t matter if someone had actually done something, anyway. The suspicion alone was enough to ruin lives and relationships.