She slipped two fingers inside the boxers and delved between her swollen folds.
Ah, so good. She bit down on her lip to keep her moan from finding voice. The slick heat between her thighs increased with every slippery stroke of her fingers. Just a few more seconds, just a few more. The build so intense, almost there, almost—
Brody’s moans increased in volume, and the strangest notion overcame her. She wanted to hit it when he did. The idea took hold, and she slowed her stroke, bit back on her pleasure as she listened to his ratcheting up. For someone who always appeared so contained, he was shockingly vocal and uninhibited.
His moans built, the coil in her belly with it, and she knew he was about to go over. She clamped down on her lip as her orgasm gripped her, fueled by a lusty shout on the other side of the wall.
They came together, though only one of them realized how freakin’ fine that was.
Slumped against the wall, wrung out from her pleasure, she tried to ignore the pang of guilt in her chest at having used his private moment like that. But she had no time for regrets. She needed to pull herself together because any minute now, he would be out of the shower.
“Emma.”
Or, how about this very minute?
She jumped and removed her hand from her boxers as if she hadn’t actually had her hand between her legs. “Fake it ’til you make it” seemed apt right about now.
Brody stood before her, still wet, a towel loosely draped around his hips. Her mouth went bone-dry, though she’d be hard-pressed to credit the precise reason. Embarrassment, mounting panic, or the most impressive chest she’d ever had the fortune to see up close. A light thatch veed over his pecs, shading dark copper nipples. The hair continued down his stomach, arrowing through his taut abs like an unstoppable train on the way to his… Rawr. Stopping at the border of his towel, slung disruptively low, she swiftly raised her eyes.
She had worked at Score Property for three months, had mind-blowing sex with this man in a strip club, but this was the first time she had seen him shirtless. And now, she was shy.
“Hi,” she managed. Hi?
“Hello.”
“I—I was just looking for Kevin and he came in here and I thought I heard something.” It emerged in a run-on gush.
“Something?”
He rubbed a second towel through his dark hair and eyed her like he’d caught her in the act. Hand in the cookie jar-slash-boxer briefs, so to speak. Well, he needn’t be so judgy. After all, he’d been the one flogging the log in that shower.
Do not go there. Do. Not. Go.
Ah, hell. As had been demonstrated several times already this week, her brain was not the boss of her.
She went.
Her gaze dipped to the towel, willing it to fall, calling on her X-ray vision to discern the exact nature of that tented bulge behind that damp, fluffy hotel-quality cotton.
A well-used cock.
Not well-used enough, her dirty mind chimed in. How could he still be primed after that steamy shower release? Her eyes shot up to find his locked on hers like silver magnets.
“You thought you heard something?” he repeated in complete seriousness as if the something they were talking about was not his husky moaning of her name while he jacked off.
“Yes. From the bathroom.” She waved helpfully in that direction. “I thought you might have been…in pain.”
Those silver-gray orbs of light widened, followed by a slow mouth curl brightening his forbidding face. Just shy of a smile, it made her heart flutter madly. His gaze raked her body deliberately. With intent. In that moment, it was clear he knew that she knew exactly what had been going on in that shower.
Fantastic. Everyone was in the know.
“Well, it was a little painful for a while. But I soldiered through. How about you?”
“How about me what?”
“I might not be wearing my glasses, but I don’t need them to recognize a woman with her hand down her panties. Or boxers, as is the case here.”
“I—I…” Oh, shit. “You got me.”
That surprised him. He had expected denials, and while she was embarrassed as all get-out, she wasn’t a prude.
Two nights ago in the club, he had fucked her hard, deep, and to the root. Just the sight of him rubbing a towel through his hair, each motion flexing shockingly large biceps for a man who sat at a desk all day, made her nipples bud to the hardness of bullets. How could they go back to employer/employee? The fantasy she could never indulge in again? Frankly, she was tired of being good. One night with Brody had unleashed that inner vixen she had crushed for the last year while she tried to redirect her life. Look where that had gotten her.
Homeless. In debt up to her stiffening nipples and stripping for her supper. Worried sick about her drug-addicted sister and her cat. Her life a train wreck squared.
This should have been her time. She wanted something of her own, something her father and Daisy couldn’t take away from her. The Stricklands might be white trash who thought they were better, but dammit, they were. Surely what’s inside decides the game: the needs, the wants, the ambition. Ten years after she had made her first deposit into the savings account that would fund her education and life plans, she was here. Only to have it taken from her protecting the one person she loved most in the world.
Perhaps she needed to spare some of that love for herself.
She wanted to take her pleasure where she could find it. All she had was a week. Less than. This job that she really enjoyed—this life she had been starting to love—would be kaput once she figured out her escape plan.
She met his dark gaze directly. “If you’re going to use me to get off, there’s no good reason why I shouldn’t return the favor.”
His eyes widened further. “Quid pro quo?”
“Exactly.”
He stalked toward her. She held her ground.
Stopping inches from her, he ran a finger up her arm and hooked the hem of the T-shirt she was wearing, a frayed Texas A&M tee that had a rip in the shoulder and had clearly been washed too many times. It smelled of him.
“Sleep well?”
“Better than I have in some time,” she lied. “You?”
“Terribly.”
“Rough night with Mr. Smythe-Osborne?”
That sexy mouth twitched. “Not half as bad as what came later.”
“Oh?”
“I lay awake in my bed wishing you were in it. Wishing I were buried balls-deep in you and you were riding my cock to oblivion. I jacked off twice. Still wasn’t enough.” He dropped his hand, stepped back. “Sorry, your honesty a moment ago inspired some ill-advised honesty of my own. Less than twenty-four hours, and it’s already more difficult than I imagined.”
“Doesn’t have to be.” Moving in, she placed a hand on his still-damp chest. Its hardness flexed beneath her fingertips. “I heard you saying my name in there.”
He shut his eyes briefly. “More Human Resources infractions.”
“Very inappropriate. Possibly”—she paused—“illegal.”
“What do I have to do to keep you quiet?”
That made her smile. “Well, I’m sure I could blow Score Property wide open with the secrets I’m holding in. How Mr. Dade sleeps in his cowboy boots on the sofa in his office and murmurs his wife’s name. Or how Mr. Cross is addicted to Goobers. I mean of all the candies, that’s pretty damning right there. But not quite as bad as the boss jerking off to his assistant.”
He gave that the consideration it deserved. “You could blackmail me. Make me give you anything or do whatever you want.”
She found it interesting how he tried to recast the dynamic to give her the power. Not especially believable, but she appreciated the effort.
“What will shut me up, Mr. Kane? Got any ideas?”
“One or three.”
The moment stretched as they both thought about what would make her quiet.
Your mouth on mine, your cock between my lips. That’d shut me up real quick.
Except it wouldn’t for long. She’d be a moaning, begging fool as soon as their skin connected in dirty, sweaty nakedness. All the heat previously flushing her skin in embarrassment now rushed between her legs. Pounding started up in her veins, the throb of memory at what he’d done to her the other night. What he’d done while thinking of her a few minutes ago.
How it still wasn’t enough.
“Brody, we’re both too keyed up around each other, especially after what happened at the club. All joking aside, you’re not taking advantage of me, not if I’m touching myself and wishing my fingers were your cock.”
“I imagine that would make typing difficult.”
She stared, wanting to laugh.
“If your fingers were replaced by my cock,” he clarified, “it would be hard to type.”
“Oh, I got it. I’m just amazed at you making a joke. You’re always so serious.”
His forehead crimped, remembering something. Perhaps a time before, when he wasn’t so serious.
“That’s what you think of me. Serious. Stick up my ass. Mr. Control.” He scrunched her T-shirt in his fist. The action pulled her closer to him and drew her gasp. “You think you’re the one to make me lose control, Emma?”
“I think I already have. You lost it at the club. You lost it in that shower.” She tiptoed up so her breath fanned his lips. Provoked. “And the way your erection is pointing at me like a divining rod tells me you’re not in control now. Ding, ding, ding, Brody. Your cock just found a wet spot.”