Her life had become truly exhausting.

  It got just that little bit worse when she found her assigned seat. Perhaps because she hadn’t brought a date, she was stuck at the stag table with a handful of single men—and Micah. Actually, she supposed the ‘single’ category included Micah. He wasn’t like her, cheating with other people with her partner’s blessing.

  She tried to talk to the person on her right, Jay Somebody, one of the young men who regularly hung around Micah, but he turned out to be tongue-tied and awkward. Not that that stopped him from trying to sneak peaks into her décolleté.

  Rowan pulled her shawl tighter around her and tried again with the man seated to her left. He was a plump ginger from one of the branch offices, and his conversation was intensely boring but it passed the time until the food arrived and she could concentrate on eating quickly and getting the hell out of there.

  “So how come you ended up at the solo table? Where’s this boyfriend we’ve heard about?”

  Focused on her soup, it took Rowan a few moments to realize that the questions were addressed to her. She put down the spoon and looked up to find Micah’s friend Ethan grinning at her.

  “He had other commitments tonight.” Rowan spoke quietly, hoping that an answer, any answer, would satisfy.

  She shot a glance at Micah to see if he had had a part in the question. She couldn’t tell from his closed-off expression.

  Micah had changed into a gray suit paired with a light-blue shirt. The smart cut emphasized his broad shoulders and wide, well-built chest. Somehow the tailored clothes were more of a turn-on than seeing him half-naked on the beach earlier. This time, rather than having to withstand the way other women were ogling him, she alone could picture what lay beneath the layers of cloth—pure perfection.

  While the others made small talk, Micah kept his eyes on his soup bowl as if the contents fascinated him. Is he as uncomfortable in my presence as I am in his? She didn’t flatter herself to think that the desire flaring up in her chest was matched in his. Besides being wide and muscular, his chest looked iron hard and unforgiving.

  “Commitments other than you?” Ethan asked in a voice far louder than the volume at which she’d answered him. “Then he must have his priorities all shot.”

  Micah spoke without lifting his gaze from his soup.

  “He does.”

  Rowan didn’t look at him, didn’t want to see those green eyes glimmer with a look that she flattered herself was specially for her. She couldn’t afford to go down that dangerous path.

  Ethan looked from one of them to the other, and, though his brow creased, he refrained from following up on the byplay with a few obvious questions. He kept his attention focused on Rowan.

  “So what does your boyfriend do for a living?”

  “Stewart?” Damn it, why did she have to say his name? “He’s an editor.”

  “What does he edit?” Ethan persisted. “Books?”

  Rowan sighed inwardly, giving into the inevitable polite interrogation that so often went along with workplace gatherings outside of work.

  “He’s a magazine editor. Have you heard of SportFit?”

  Ethan’s eyes widened. “Are you frigging kidding? I love that website!”

  It was a good thing Stewart wasn’t there to hear that particular compliment. For years he’d been fighting a losing battle to keep the periodical in print, but more and more it was putting its content online. That was where the people were—in the virtual world and, somehow, no longer quite as much a part of the real one.

  The online fight was the one issue Stewart was passionate about in relation to his job. Otherwise, he spent most of his time complaining that his talent and literary degrees were wasted in a publication that valued page hits over grammar and composition.

  “It’s a good magazine,” Micah volunteered. “Though I prefer the fitness bits.”

  “And I only read the sports parts,” said Ethan, patting his soft middle. “Don’t have the time to work out.”

  But Micah did. That, Rowan knew intimately, as she knew every part of him.

  “For Stewart, it’s just a job,” Rowan told them, feeling a twinge of disloyalty, even though, had he been there, Stewart would have uttered the exact same words. “He’s not into either sports or fitness.”

  “Then what’s he into?”

  “Her.” This last contribution was from Micah.

  “For fuck’s sake, Grant!” said Ethan, turning on his friend. “That’s a little crude, isn’t it?”

  “It’s also true.” Micah caught and held Rowan’s eyes in a challenging stare. “Isn’t it?”

  He thought—no, he had to know she couldn’t have gone back to Stewart…didn’t he?

  Her next words were as incoherent as her jumbled thoughts. “It’s not— We haven’t…at least, not since…”

  She glanced around at the rest of the table, but no one other than Ethan was paying them any attention. The man named Jay was talking to the person seated next to him, and the boring orator beside her had wandered off. It was a small mercy for which she was grateful. If only Micah would say something!

  His sudden smile made her stomach clench.

  “Say that again,” he told her.

  Her breath caught. He couldn’t expect her to repeat that, not with Ethan watching.

  But those green eyes were more compelling than her embarrassment.

  Rowan lifted her chin. She might be embarrassed but she wasn’t the least bit ashamed. “There’s been no one since you.”

  Ethan laughed, a great bark of sound that made Jay turned his head swiftly, but Micah stayed silent.

  What is he thinking?

  But he wasn’t thinking. He was doing. Getting to his feet and holding his hand out to her.

  “Take a walk with me.”

  It was barely a question, but she loved the hint of command in his voice.

  Still, she gazed down at the plate the catering staff had just deposited in front of her. Pale chicken breast, steamed vegetables and a half-spherical mound of mashed potatoes.

  It was no contest.

  She took his hand.

  Chapter Five

  The beach was deserted…naturally. All their fellow employees were supposed to be eating their pallid chicken breasts and making nice with each other.

  Well, she and Micah were well beyond ‘nice’.

  “What are you still doing with that guy?”

  The low question was half-angry, half-wondering.

  “Both of our names are on the lease.”

  Micah tightened his fingers around hers in response to her flippant answer.

  He deserved better than that.

  Rowan tried again. “It’s complicated.”

  “That’s the answer you give your Facebook friends,” he said. “That doesn’t cut it with me.”

  In the darkness, she had little to go on except his voice. Its tone was no longer angry. He sounded…defeated.

  He was demanding answers as if he expected to be disappointed by them, as if their meeting again was for that mythical aim—closure, as if everything they’d shared was already long put away in the past.

  She wanted to remind him that the night they’d shared was only a few weeks ago, but perhaps time moved more quickly for people his age. He’d rightly pegged her as belonging to the Facebook era. He was probably on Instagram or TikTok most of the time. Actually, the platform he was on was probably one she’d never even heard of.

  What did it matter if she told him the truth? He wouldn’t remember it two weeks from now anyway.

  “I’m afraid of being alone,” she said. “Stewart is a stable, responsible, age-appropriate man. He was my best bet.”

  At the last moment, she stopped herself from saying he was her final chance. There was honest, then there was pathetic.

  Micah’s voice came out of the night, low and cold in contrast to his hard, warm grip.

  “Stewart wanted to sleep with other women and, to do that, he was willing to let you sleep with other men.”

  Brutal but true.

  Except Stewart hadn’t really wanted her to sleep with other men. He’d been willing to take the risk in order to fulfill his own desires.

  “What I don’t get,” he went on, “was why the hell you agreed to that.”

  “I don’t know,” she said miserably. Then, on a humorous note, she added, “I didn’t think then that I would come out on top.”

  There was no answering glint of a smile from him.

  “I’m not a fucking object.”

  Startled, she stammered out, “I know that.”

  “Or a lesson for your asshole boyfriend.”

  This time she sighed. “I know that, too.”

  He was entitled to be angry. She had used him—but she had wanted him, too. Very, very much.

  He was still holding her hand. The firm strength of it made her thoughts wander. What would it be like to stroll like this in the sunlight, in public?

  But she knew what would happen. People would stare, maybe even guess the truth—about their ages, their ranks at work.

  They were such an obvious mismatch.

  The two of them only worked in the dark.

  “So, are we going to try this or what?”

  His voice was rough and impatient, yet it still made her melt.

  Suddenly she didn’t care—about the age difference or the HR consequences or even the fucking lease. She decided to throw all her doubts into the lake and sink them. She only hoped they didn’t bob back up again when the tide turned.

  “I would like that.”

  Micah stopped walking then and turned to face her, except she couldn’t quite see his face since they were no longer standing near the building’s lights. She had to trust that he was smiling as he gazed down at her, that the warm glimmer was back in his eyes.

  Rowan didn’t have to take it on trust when he kissed her, hard and insistent at first, then his mouth gentling when he felt her meet him with tenderness.

  They kissed until they were both breathless. Then they simply leaned against each other, sharing body heat and something else, something tiny and precious. Something she knew would grow in time.

  “You need to text him,” Micah said. “Tell him you’re done.”

  She did it while he watched, helping her with the wording the way he’d done on countless work emails, tempering her bluntness.

  In the end, the message was a lot kinder than she thought Stewart deserved.

  She waited anxiously for Stewart’s response, but none came in the next minute…two minutes.

  “Put it away,” Micah told her, folding her fingers over her phone and moving her arm down to her side.

  Taking his advice, she tucked the phone into her purse and let it dangle, mute, by her side. It was a metaphor for her years with Stewart, she thought vaguely, but she was done dangling. Done waiting for his response. Done reacting.

  “Good girl.”

  The approving words made her shudder, and she wrapped both hands around his strong arm and let him lead her. This was how it was supposed to be, she reflected. Sometimes she would take the lead and sometimes he would. She liked Micah in the command role. It would take him far. She was proud of him. But she also wanted to be under him while he was in that mood, being fucked into submission.

  “This place,” Micah said, looking around.

  Immediately she understood what he meant.

  “You have your jacket,” she murmured.

  “My best suit jacket,” he told her, but he was already letting go of her and stripping it off. Then he walked away a few paces and laid it down on the sand.

  This was a first for Rowan. She told herself she was too mature, too dignified, to have sex on a beach at night.

  She was thirty-eight.

  But Micah wasn’t. And he didn’t appear to think it was a big deal to make do with what the occasion offered them.

  Clearing her throat, she told him huskily, “Sit down.”

  He sat, pulling her down on top of him, just the way she’d intended, her knees sliding to sink into the sand on either side of him. Beneath her, his lap was hard and hot and far too covered up.

  While kissing him, Rowan was busily undoing his belt, his zipper. He was bare underneath…sexy. She filled her hands with his cock.

  She had to close her eyes to savor it. Not that she could see much in the dark, anyway. Their phones were an option but that would signal to anyone walking along where they were, and right now they were well concealed by the darkness.

  It was just him and her and his erect penis, young and long and thick—and her dampening pussy.

  His kisses were better than the wine they’d served with dinner. Long, deep kisses that held nothing back. His mouth was agile and responsive, his tongue coming into play when she teased the tip of hers against his lips.

  They were sharing the same air, and the experience was uniquely intense…explosive.

  Micah growled when she began to stroke his erection. His shaft was too dry to get any real action going, so the movement was more of a tease. He wanted more, she knew.

  She wanted to give him everything he wanted.

  “I need you,” he groaned against her parted lips. “It feels like forever.”

  Laughing softly against his mouth, she said, “Yes, I know. It feels that way for me, too.”

  Maybe social media had messed up her attention span as well, because she was telling the truth.

  A day without him was too long.

  She didn’t have time to dissect that faintly troubling thought, because Micah was starting to repay her teasing by easing the straps of her dress down over her arms, letting it catch at her waist.

  With an almost feral sound, he filled his hands with her breasts.

  “Beautiful,” he muttered, holding her nipples with the sides of his fingers.

  Rowan loved the pressure of his grasp, measured as it was, and the feeling of being possessed.

  She loved being wanted, even though a small part of her still couldn’t quite believe that he wanted her. He could have any woman…and he chose her.

  When he bent his head to her breasts, she cried out softly. He sucked on each nipple in turn, never letting them be exposed, nestling them either in his warm mouth or the strong grasp of his fingers.

  She clasped his dick, pumping it gently while she rubbed against him. Her hips had a mind of their own, and she let them move the way they wanted to, drawing his own hips into a slowly building rhythm.

  The only sounds were the lapping of the water and the quiet suck of his mouth. Oh, and her gasps. She couldn’t stay silent. She whispered to him, crooned her encouragement, her need.

  Her hand never stopped moving between them.

  Finally Micah lifted his head and gasped out, “God, Rowan!”

  She smiled. Even in the dark, there was no mistaking who she was to him.

  He moved his hands to her back. “I need to be inside of you.”

  But before he could push her down beneath him, she lifted her skirt up and rubbed the velvet head of his cock against the silken wetness between her pussy lips.

  “Jesus!”

  He was calling on all the deities tonight.

  “I need—”

  Rowan stopped him with a kiss. “I know what you need,” she whispered a moment, a minute, later.

  “Christ,” he said. “You make everything exciting.”

  It was an original compliment, and she accepted it with pleasure. “Thank you, darling.”

  Micah lifted his head. “What did you call me?”

  His tone was suddenly intent, and it turned her response into a stammer. “I called you ‘darling’. I’m sorry if—”

  He thrust his fingers into her hair and pulled her down for a fierce kiss.

  When he broke away again, he didn’t go far. He spoke against her lips. “I like it. What do I get to call you?”

  Since she was feeling especially generous, she said, “Anything you like.”

  Then she braced herself to be called ‘bae’ or even ‘fam’ or, God forbid, ‘bruh’.

  Still holding her head, Micah’s lips ghosted her cheek and jaw, the tiny movement making her shiver.

  “How about ‘my love’?”

  Rowan had to swallow before she could answer, and even then, the words seemed to stick in her throat as she echoed him. “I like it.”

  She knew she must try not to read too much into those two words. They were an endearment. They meant as little or as much as the speaker intended. But still…my love.

  She wanted to be his love.

  This smart, passionate man… She didn’t deserve him. But she meant to have him all the same, for as long as he could put up with her.

  “I like this, too,” he said as he felt between her spread thighs and discovered the wetness he had created.

  Rowan closed her eyes as he moved his fingers through her slick folds, his touch deft and knowing. After only one time together, he seemed to know his way around pretty well. Had he replayed their night together over and over in his head, as she had done in hers, coming back to savor it whenever he wanted to feel better? Sometimes she had needed to reassure herself that it was real.

  He touched her explicitly with blunt fingers, and she loved it—loved his thoroughness and his restraint.

  She got even wetter as he touched her, so that when he entered her with a long forefinger, she took it easily.

  She wanted more.

  Rowan fisted his cock and guided it to the entrance of her pussy, teasing them both by rubbing his cockhead against her and just barely taking the tip of it inside.

  “Rowan!”

  Her name was both a groan and a plea, but it was a song in her ears. There was no mistaking his need.

  His fingers bit into her thighs as she lowered herself on his dick, inch by slow inch. She didn’t want to play with him anymore. She wanted him to fill her where she was empty.

  The half of his cock still within her grasp throbbed between her fingers, but he didn’t whine or complain. He accepted the pace she set, one that was just as agonizing to her as it must have been to him. But she needed this to go slow. She needed for him to feel it.

  And he was definitely feeling it. His body was rigid beneath hers, his muscles taut. She could feel the tension in his arms as they guided her, in his neck as he strained toward her.

 

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