Chapter 9: Jessica - Forced Marriage to the CEO

Jessica

The apartment is dark and I don’t know where anything is. That’s what pops into my mind first, which tells me something about the state I’m in. I’m standing in the entryway of an apartment I have lived in for fourteen days and I cannot remember which side the light switches are on.

Jonathan is right behind me, and I can feel the warmth of him without touching. The city lights come through the floor-to-ceiling glass but still leave the penthouse in an intimate shadow.

Fourteen days and I know where he keeps the good coffee, what time he’s at his desk and that he reads standing up. I know that he takes his calls by the window like the city is something he needs to consult.

Tonight, that man stood between me and my father without being asked, without hesitation, without extracting anything for it. Then he kissed me like he’d been keeping it back for longer than the three weeks I’ve known his name. And now I’m standing in the entryway of his penthouse at midnight unable to locate the light switches I have used every single night since I got here.

That tells me everything about the state I’m in. I turn to find he is closer than I expected, or I moved without realizing. Either or, it doesn’t matter. The heat of his body reaches me across the small space. The memory of the kiss still lingers on my mouth.

“The hall light,” I say.

“Left side of the door.”

I don’t reach for it and neither does he. Instead, we both just stand there, not making a move.

There is a decision to be made here and he’s letting me make it. I could be sensible right now and not let the earlier events of tonight sweep me away down a path I may regret in the morning. I could flip a switch, go to my room, sort my feelings in the full light of day. I know that path, I’ve taken it my entire adult life.

And to what end? Then I decide. “I need to say something,” I say.

He waits. I can hear the quiet sound of his breathing.

“This.” I point a finger back and forth between us. “Whatever this is. I can’t do this beyond sex, the physical. I can’t go where this means something and then have it used against me. I’ve been there and I’m not doing it again.” That admission took a lot from me, but the dark makes me bolder and more honest about this situation. “So, if this happens, if we, it’s just this. It doesn’t change the terms. It doesn’t get complicated.”

“Just sex,” he says flatly, not mocking it. Just naming it back to me so we both know what we’re agreeing to.

“Just sex,” I say.

Most men would not hesitate a moment. But he looks at me in the pale window light and thoughtfully considers it before he responds.

“All right,” he says.

He said the same words in front of the courthouse steps. But the meaning feels entirely different.

He closes the distance and his hand finds my jaw, warm and slightly rough at the palm. Right before he kisses me, I tell myself that I can keep this just about sex, that it won’t change our contract. I’m also wondering whether I’m deluding myself. Then his mouth is on mine and all thought dissolves.

His kiss is sure and unhurried. I taste the faint remnants of champagne and the clean heat of his skin. I rise into it, fingers sliding up the front of his shirt; the fabric smooth and still warm from his body. A reckless spark catches low in my belly. The same bright, unpredictable spark I used to chase before I learned better. Tonight I let it burn.

I nip his bottom lip, just hard enough to surprise him. He makes a low sound against my mouth. It’s rough and almost startled, and he tightens his grip on my waist. When I pull back a fraction, smiling, his breath hitches warm against my lips.

“Bold move, Mrs. Atwell,” he murmurs, voice rough enough that I feel it in my chest.

Hearing him say my married name startles me. It sounds foreign and electric at once. I laugh softly and say it again, testing the shape of it. I like it. It feels freeing, like a cage door swung wide open.

I missed her, the young woman who would dance barefoot in the Public Garden at midnight simply because the moment felt right. I want her back tonight. With his hands on me and my heart racing, I want her more than anything.

He notices my attention drifting and he kisses me deeper, hungrier, pulling me back to the moment. My hands find his hair, thick and slightly damp at the temples from the evening. The sound he makes when I tug is answer enough. I laugh again into his mouth, bright and breathless, and feel him smile against me. A real one that feels like he rarely does it.

We don’t make it to a bedroom.

Clothes come off in pieces. His jacket hits the floor with a soft slide of fabric. My dress follows, the zipper loud in the quiet penthouse. His shirt is next; when I push it off his shoulders the heat of his bare skin meets my palms. We leave a scattered trail across the dark floor. When he lifts me, I wrap my legs around his waist without thinking. His hands are firm under my thighs, fingers pressing into soft flesh. He carries me like I weigh nothing, mouth never leaving mine, until we reach the wide leather couch and he lays me down. The leather is cool and smooth against my bare back, a sharp contrast to the heat of him above me.

His hands move over me with focused attention. Mapping the curve of my waist, the underside of my breasts, the sensitive skin just above my hips. When his mouth follows, slow and exact, I arch into him. The first touch of his tongue against my nipple draws a sound from me I don’t try to quiet. He lingers there, teeth grazing lightly, until the sensation edges toward too much, then he moves lower.

“Jonathan,” I gasp his name.

He settles between my thighs. The first stroke of his tongue is deliberate, flat and warm against my clit. There is nothing tentative in the way he tastes me. He works me with steady pressure, alternating soft and firm, then slides two fingers inside. The stretch is immediate; he curls them and finds the place that makes my hips jolt hard against his mouth. Pleasure builds fast and sharp, concentrated, higher than I was ready for. I clamp my legs around his head, laughing and half-crying at the same time because it feels so good to stop holding everything in. The wet sound of his mouth and the low, satisfied noise he makes against me only pushes me closer.

The orgasm hits hard. Heat floods outward from my core in long, shaking waves. I come apart under his mouth while he stays with me through every pulse, tongue gentling only when the intensity starts to edge toward pain. When I look down, he is watching me with his mouth still against my skin, a clear gleam of satisfaction in his expression.

He rises over me. The head of his cock brushes slick and hot against my entrance.

“Still just sex?” he asks, voice low and rough.

I pull him down and kiss him hard, tasting myself on his tongue.

“Shut up and find out.”

He does. He pushes into me slow and thick. The stretch pulls a long, broken sound from my throat that echoes through the quiet penthouse. He holds there, fully seated, letting me feel every inch of him. He is hot and heavy, filling me so completely my nails dig into the hard muscle of his shoulders and my body flutters around him as it adjusts. The pressure is almost too much and exactly enough. Then he begins to move.

Deep, rolling thrusts that drag against every sensitive place inside me. The leather creaks softly under us. I meet him, hips rising, legs locked around his waist. Sweat builds between our stomachs, slick and warm. His breath is rough against my neck; my name is a low, broken sound every time he drives home. The scent of sex and his skin fills the small space between us. I rake my nails down his back and feel the muscles jump under my hands as I command, “Harder, just like that.”

Something in him gives. The controlled pace breaks. He growls against my skin, low and almost feral, as the rhythm turns harder, more urgent. The couch shifts with each thrust. Pleasure coils tight in my core until I’m trembling on the edge, gasping. I laugh again, bright and helpless and giddy at this wild, freeing pleasure.

The second orgasm takes me harder than the first. I clench around him in long, strong waves, shaking, breathless, the edges of my vision going soft. He follows with a final deep consuming surge, my name torn from him in a rough, wrecked sound as he convulses, heat flooding deep inside me.

Afterward we stay tangled on the couch, skin damp and cooling, breathing hard. The city lights still lay pale strips across the floor. He presses a quiet kiss to my temple. The gentleness of it unsettles me more than the heat did.

I don’t speak. I only wonder how long “just sex” is going to hold against a man who can make me feel this free. Because the woman who laughed in his arms tonight feels dangerously like someone I could get used to being.