Devil In A Suit (Book Three), page 3
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a bit of a slob?” he asks, eyeing the pile of laundry nearby.
“I thought you liked me dirty,” I reply, returning his taunt with a nip at his neck. He growls and gathers me in his arms.
“Damn right I do,” he replies.
And then, before I know it, his body is on mine, hot and strong and needing me completely. We stare into each other’s eyes as he slowly penetrates me, his hard cock sliding into my wetness, and I gasp as he goes in.
It’s only the second time, and yet it feels so right and so perfect.
“I love you,” he says again, going deeper still.
Soon, we’re sweating, our bodies slick as he fucks me, slowly, slowly, bringing me to my breaking point in the sweetest way possible. And when I come, he fucks me perfectly until I’m panting and clutching at him.
“Come in me,” I whisper, and soon, he’s sliding his long, hard cock in and out of my sopping mound, pumping me, fucking me, his abs tightening and loosening, contracting and releasing as he pushes in and out.
Soon, I’m climaxing again, and then Jared is coming too. He grabs fistfuls of my hair as the cords stand out in his neck. “Oh, fuck, baby, I’m coming,” he gasps, and then he thrusts and fills me all the way.
When it’s over, I’ve never felt so complete.
Chapter 6
I wake up the next morning with Jared’s arms wrapped around me, my head resting in the little nook of his shoulder, my leg flung across his muscled torso. We’re both naked, the sheets a twisted mass of fabric at our feet.
I blink into the sunbeams streaming through the old window, sun so bright that it’s made it’s way into the alley outside my window. Everything about this feels like a dream, but it’s reality. Jared is here. He’s in love with me. He said so.
Beside me, Jared begins to stir, which turns into a full-body stretch with his arms above his head, his toes pointed as he groans into the morning. Then he collapses around me, pulling me in close with a kiss.
“Good morning,” he says.
“It is,” I reply.
“It’ll be better once we get some food,” he says, his stomach grumbling like a cartoon character. It makes me wonder how much he ate in the last few days. Probably not much, from the look of him. “Up for some brunch?”
I glance at my phone, still plugged in on the floor next to the bed. “More like lunch,” I say when I see that it’s closing in on noon.
He glances over my shoulder at the display, his eyes widening at the time. “Holy shit, I don’t think I’ve ever slept this late.”
“Well I think you had some sleep to catch up on.”
“Ah yes, that reminds me,” he says. He ducks his head down and takes one of my nipples into his mouth. I moan, wrapping my legs around his waist to feel his hardness against me.
“Food first?” I ask, though I already have an idea of his answer as he slip inside of me, filling me in one swift motion.
“Food later,” he says, grasping my hips as he moves me on top of him. “You first.”
An hour and a couple more orgasms later, we’re reluctantly dressed and headed to Jared’s apartment for some clean clothes for him.
Since he walked the handful of miles from his apartment to mine, and because he usually doesn’t employ a driver on the weekends, that left us to take the T to his apartment.
When we get down to dark, dank depths of the Davis Square station, he squares his shoulders like he’s preparing for a fight.
“Down boy,” I say, nudging him with an elbow. “It’s just the T, not Thunder dome.”
He gives me a healthy side eye, which I realize is covering for the fact that he’s probably never actually ridden the T before.
When the train comes, it’s fairly empty for a Saturday afternoon. I take a seat, and pat the empty spot next to me. After a beat (during which I think he’s weighing the cost-benefit analysis of sitting on the seat versus holding onto the possibly tubercular pole) he sits next to me.
The ride is short, and thankfully uninterrupted by police actions or service outages. We exit at South Station and start the short walk along the Harbor to his building in Fort Point. The afternoon is sunny and mild, the first hint of impending summer, and I smile up into the warmth of the sun, my hair blown back in the breeze. I feel Jared’s fingers reach across and take my hand in his, and soon we are walking hand-in-hand down the street, past couples carrying coffee and pastry, walking dogs, pushing strollers, and just generally enjoying a warm spring Boston Saturday. It’s absolutely perfect.
Until we arrive at his building and I see a familiar face waiting on his stoop. It’s his father, and unlike Jared, who’s dressed down for the weekend, this Mr. King is still in an impeccably tailored suit, his gray hair in a sharp crew cut and combed into a perfect line. A line that perfectly matches the line of his tense mouth.
I expect Jared to drop my hand. I wouldn’t blame him. I imagine, if what he’s told me is true, he hasn’t brought a whole lot of girls home to meet Dad. Or any, I’m guessing.
But as we approach, I feel him thread his fingers through mine, squeezing me even tighter, like he’s holding on for dear life.
“Taking the day off, I see,” his father says in a clipped, steely tone, a voice that’s a mere shadow of his son.
Jared’s jaw clenches. “It’s Saturday,” he says.
“And on the seventh day God rested,” Mr. King replies. “Saturday is the sixth.”
Jared lets that one sail by. When he gets to the door, he starts reaching into his pocket for his keys. Almost as an afterthought, he says, “Dad, this is Quinn.”
If Mr. King heard him, he doesn’t let on. Instead he chooses to pretend I’m not there at all.
“I wanted to talk to you about the memorial,” Mr. King says, remaining rooted to his place on the sidewalk.
Jared whirls around on his heel, facing his father with a fire and thunder I hardly recognize. “I was under the impression you’d be skipping the memorial. Again.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a big event. Of course I’ll be there.”
Jared sneers. “Right. I forgot. You’d hate to make a bad impression in public.”
“Don’t be a child. There are some details we need to go over.” For the first time, his eyes dart to me, as if I’m some stranger on the street hanging around begging for scraps. “Alone.”
“We don’t have anything to discuss,” Jared says, gesturing between himself and his father. He turns to me, grasping my hand again. “We are going to brunch. I’m sure there’s nothing you and I have to discuss. I’ve handled everything for the memorial. All you need to do is show up, and frankly, I don’t care one way or the other if you do that either.”
Jared jams the key into the door, unlocking it and sending it flying open, nearly crashing into the back wall. He steps through, and I follow before he can pull me after him. He’s about to let the door fall shut behind him, when Mr. King steps in its way, blocking the door with his heavy frame.
Jared turns and levels a steely glare at his father that sends a chill through me.
“You need to leave, before I make you leave,” Jared says.
Mr. King stands stock still, but after a brief staring contest in which Jared emerges victorious, he steps back. The door slams shut, and we’re alone.
“You shouldn’t have had to see that,” Jared says. “Now I guess you know why I sent you home the other night.”
I nod, turning over the scene that just played out in my head. Jared punches the button on the elevator, and when the doors slide open I follow him in. We rise in silence, and I have a chilling bit of deja vu, realizing that the old Jared is on the verge of returning, the one who was cold and distant and didn’t know how to open up to me. I won’t lose him to that.
“What memorial was he talking about?” I ask.
Jared gives a little cough, that he tries to disguise and clears his throat. “It’s a thing I do for my mother,” he says. He blinks a few times rapidly, like he’s holding something back, and I realize that I don’t know anything about his mother. “I had a small inheritance from her when I graduated college, so I set up a foundation in her memory. To raise money for cervical cancer. We have a big fundraiser every year, and we include a memorial to my mother and other women who have died of the disease.”
All the tension that’s been boiling over from his father’s surprise appearance has simmered down, and he’s starting to look tired again. He places his keys in a bowl on the island in the kitchen. I cross the floor and wrap my arms around his waist, my cheek resting on his firm, muscled back.
“Brunch in bed?” I ask.
His body shakes with a slight laugh, and I can feel him relax further. “I don’t cook,” he says.
“I make some mean scrambled eggs,” I reply.
“I bet you do,” he says. “Unfortunately, because I don’t cook, the only thing in my kitchen are takeout menus and mustard.”
He turns so we’re face to face, his arms around my waist, clasped at the small of my back.
“I sure would like to order in some dim sum and take you to my bed, though,” he says, lowering his lips to mine and planting a peppering of kisses along my jaw.
“I like the sound of that,” I say. “Are we going to be able to keep our clothes on long enough to answer the door for the delivery guy?”
As his fingers play at the hem of my tank top, I feel him grin against my neck. “Won’t it be fun to try…”
Chapter 7
We keep meaning to go do things. We talk about brunch and dinner and maybe visiting the MFA or the ICA. We even have a ridiculous conversation about maybe taking a Duck Tour (which Jared has never done, and I’ve done once on a field trip in fifth grade).
But we can’t seem to bring ourselves to leave the bedroom.
Or the kitchen (where he gave me an amazing orgasm from his knees while I sat on the edge of the marble countertop). Or the living room (where he fucked me from behind while I pressed my palms into the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the harbor). Or the shower (where our talk of Duck Tours ended in a marathon so long the hot water ran out).
But on Sunday, we finally found ourselves back in his car and merging onto the Mass Pike. We had no choice. I promised my mom I’d be there for dinner.
When I’d told Jared about my plans, I’d pictured me running back to my apartment to get changed before hopping on the Commuter Rail out to Worcester.
“I’ll drive,” he said. “Please don’t make me take the train again.”
I paused. “I wasn’t going to make you do anything,” I said. “You really don’t have to come. It’s just dinner with my parents.”
“I’d like to meet them,” he said, and he only sounded a little uncomfortable when he said it.
I smiled, patting the back of his hand, which was resting on the counter next to several half-eaten cartons from the Chinese place.
“I know you’re serious about this relationship thing,” I said. “You really don’t have to do this to prove anything to me.”
“I’m not! I’d really like to go. I’d like to meet them.”
I ran a quick mental checklist of what Jared would be walking into. My dad would probably be glued to his Lazy Boy while the Bruins played.
My mom would be in the kitchen opening the oven about a million times to make sure the cheese on the lasagna got browned but not burned, pausing only to chop vegetables for an iceberg lettuce salad and bottled dressing.
Dinner itself would be a quiet affair, with my mom asking me lots of polite questions while my dad grunted and ate in near silence. At least having Jared there would shield me from the barrage of blind date proposals with the sons of my mom’s church friends. I’d been desperate enough to go on a couple of them back before Christmas, and each was more disastrous than the next.
“I really don’t think it’s such a good idea…“ I said, but Jared cut me off with a wave of his chopsticks.
“I want to be with you. You. And only you. And that means I’d like to know as much as I can, which includes where you came from. So unless there’s some compelling reason why you don’t want me there …” He raised an eyebrow and stared me down in a way that made me understand exactly how he manages to close so many deals each year and grow the company so fast. He’s a killer negotiator with an unflinching eye. And he’s sexy as all get out, which I’m sure doesn’t hurt.
Which is how I’ve ended up in the passenger seat of his vintage roadster, cruising down the Mass Pike with a bottle of wine in my lap that probably cost as much as my parents’ mortgage (when they had one — the house has been paid of for years).
Traffic is light leaving the city. Jared glances over at me, sitting stock still in the passenger seat.
“Nervous?” he asks.
“A little,” I reply.
“What do you have to be nervous about? Are your parents mobsters? Serial killers? Swingers?”
I cringe. “Ew, no. Nothing like that. My parents are as vanilla as they come.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t know, for someone who’s new to this whole love and relationships thing, I’m worried what you’re about to see isn’t going to be very encouraging.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that they’re boring. They’ve been married something like twenty-seven years, and they act like roommates. I’ve never even seen them kiss, save for a little peck over a Christmas gift. It’s hard to imagine them falling in love and deciding to get married. They don’t seem like the type to know what passion is, you know?”
Jared bobs his head, and I can’t tell if he’s agreeing with me or thinking. Or if he’s getting nervous himself.
Until I said it out loud, I hadn’t considered that maybe this dinner could actually act as a deterrent to our relationship.
Maybe Jared will take one look at what commitment really looks like and run screaming the other way. I wouldn’t blame him, honestly. I don’t want what my parents have.
I want passionate, romantic, can’t-live-without-you love. The kind of love that keeps you in bed all weekend eating nothing but leftover Chinese food, your clothes scattered throughout the house.
Twenty minutes later, with Jared following my directions, we pull to a stop in front of the house I grew up in, the house my parents brought me home to from the hospital.
It’s a little white cape cod with black shutters and a red front door, an American flag hanging from a pole next to the mailbox at the top of the stoop. My mom’s pansies, which she plants each spring, are starting to fill out in purple and pink blossoms, the yard cut to a perfectly uniformed height and in straight geometric lines by my father. My mom’s salt-crusted Subaru Outback is in the driveway, my dad’s old pickup, dotted with rust, parked next to it.
“Remind me what your parents do again?” he asks.
“My mom is a kindergarten teacher, and my dad is a mechanic for the MBTA.”
Jared nods, his gaze on the house. I have no idea what’s going through his mind, but I know what’s going through mine. This dinner is either going to be tolerable or a complete disaster. And tolerable would be considered a victory.
We’re halfway up the path when my mom flings open the door and takes the steps two-at-a-time. Her blond hair, now mostly streaked with gray, is twisted up at the base of her neck, but several strands are flying out behind her. She’s wearing khaki pants and a floral button-up, the sleeve rolled up at her elbows. I notice she’s pulled out her pearl earrings for the occasion, a gift from Dad on their tenth anniversary. I’d called ahead to warn them that I was bringing someone home in hopes that they’d be on their best behavior, and begged them to please not interrogate him.
I know the moment my mom lays eyes on Jared for the first time, because she comes skidding to a stop halfway down the path, her eyes wide and her lips open in a little “O.”
I plaster on a smile. “Mom, this is Jared King,” I say. “Jared, this is my mother Rebecca.”
Jared holds out his hand, his voice smooth as butter, the one I imagine he uses to convince CEOs part with large sums of money.
“So nice to meet you, Ms. Carson,” he says.
My mom immediately blushes. “Oh, you can call me Rebecca, please.”
He nods with a warm smile. “Thank you so much for letting me crash your dinner party.”
“Oh, it’s hardly a dinner party, just a home cooked meal for Queenie.” She turns to me, and I try not to grimace at her childhood nickname for me that’s stretched too far into my adulthood. “We so rarely get to see her these days.”
“Yes, I’m afraid that’s my fault,” Jared says. “I keep everyone working long hours at the office.”
“Jared is the CEO of King Advertising,” I explain, hoping she won’t say anything about the fact that I’ve brought my boss to dinner.
“Well isn’t that wonderful!” Mom says in the same tone of voice I recognize from when I’d bring home perfect spelling tests or good citizenship awards. “Ever since Quinn started working there I’ve been following the news. You’re doing quite well this quarter. Stock’s up ten points!”
I have to work overtime not to stare agog at my mother. I’ve never heard her talk about stocks, and I had no idea she paid any attention to the company I worked for.
Jared, for his part, looks completely charmed, and actually seems to be displaying some of the same pride I felt at my mother’s encouragements when I was a child. Hearing her praise his company’s stock price seems to have him practically glowing, and I’m struck by the realization that he probably never had that growing up, after his mother died when he was so young. It’s a subtle reminder that though my parents’ marriage may not be a shining example for me, their parenting sure was. I never doubted for a second that they loved me and were proud of everything I did.
