Page 23 of Due South

She nods and I take a step back, testing her, before I make a break for my office, running down the hall in socks, my shirt and my tie. Like a sunglasses-less Tom Cruise fromRisky Business. I must look ridiculous, but if you can find me a straight guy who wouldn’t do the same thing with Lucy waiting for them, I’d hand over my car and have to roller skate to work.

The socks keep me from skidding on the carpet as I round the corner, and then I’m slamming desk drawers open and shut until I find the condoms and rip one off, scrambling back down the hallway, delighted when Lucy’s waiting for me. I’m the luckiest guy in the universe. For at least the past couple of days at any rate, and if Lucy doesn’t freak out and call it off like a sane person would do, for the next few days too.

She hasn’t changed her mind in the minute it’s taken me to get back, and in a crazy selfish way, I don’t want her to change her mind before I get inside her. I mean, she can change her mind whenever she wants and I’d listen, but I hold out hope she won’t, not quite yet. I want to hold onto this pleasure for as long as I can.

I roll on the condom and push a finger inside her, but she’s still soaked from her earlier climax and I slip right in. “Are you ready for me, Luce? Do you need anything first?”

She pushes onto her elbows and fumbles with the front of her blouse and then she’s dragging my hand that’s not working inside her toward her breast, wrapping my fingers around the flesh and squeezing. Holy—

“Will you do that while you fuck me, Evans?”

Words flee my head because, hell yeah, but I realize she can’t see me nod, so I gather up the letters and sounds and finally manage to say, “Yeah. I can do that.”

“Then do it.”

So I do, pulling my fingers out and replacing them with my dick. Slowly, gently, two steps forward, one step back because I don’t want to hurt her. I snake my other hand around to work at her other breast while I press inside. Yeah, this is amazing. She feels amazing. Sheisamazing.

Once I’ve worked my way inside, I squeeze her tits and she returns the pressure around my dick and it’s so good I almost die. “You feel so good, Luce. I love being inside you.”

Probably shouldn’t use the word love at any time with Lucy, don’t want to give her the wrong impression. Not because I don’t think I could love her because—not worth thinking of. I can’t have her, so why torture myself?Take what you can get, Chuck, and be grateful for it.

I hate that I hear the words in my brother’s voice. Hate that he always called me Chuck. To be fair, it hadn’t been just him. Everyone had called me that because Chanoch was “too weird.” When I was a kid, I’d been proud of my name, loved it, but after too many jokes at my expense, too many wrinkled noses when I introduced myself, and too many people butchering it because they couldn’t be bothered to take a second to learn how to say my goddamn name correctly—well, I’d become angry. And tired. So freaking tired.

If someone would say it for real, really see me and speak to me, I could enjoy it again, instead of getting my dander up. Maybe someone like Lucy. But that’s too much to ask for, and I shouldn’t let those cloying, intimate fantasies ruin a thing I can actually have, that’s right here in front of me in flesh and blood.

So I let my body take over, wallowing in the feel, the smell, and the sounds of her, abandoning any wishful thinking to pleasures of the flesh. Because no matter what else, she feels freaking incredible.

“Harder, Evans. More, please.”

And who am I to deny a request like that? No one. So I give her what she’s asked for and what I want, thrusting into her hard and digging my fingers into her breasts, finding her nipples to pinch, and then she’s panting underneath me and making those small, sexy noises that have meant in the past she’s about to come.

“I’m gonna—I’m gonna—”

She doesn’t even finish her sentence before she’s pulsing around me again and squeezing me tight which makes me spill. I can’t even help it, all my pent-up desire spurting inside her, transforming frustration and tension into satisfaction.

“Lucy.” I barely recognize my own voice, an animal groan so forceful it surprises me.

“Yes, yes,” she chants over and over again, and that’s the rhythm I push into her too, finishing out my climax until I’m wasted, wrung out, slumping over her prone form on the desk and breathing in the scent of her at the nape of her neck. Cherries, vanilla, sex, Lucy. I kiss her there and she purrs.

“That was good.” I can barely hear the words as she murmurs them into the desk, but it makes me happy anyway.

“Yeah, really good.”

Good enough to take a risk, for me anyway, even though I’m naturally risk averse. But this—Lucy, sated and warm, lying underneath me—worth it. I want to hold onto this for as long as possible. Even if that’s only a couple more days. I’ll take it.

Chapter Eight

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December 20th

Lucy

After we finishedthoroughly debauching each other, Evans and I went back to work. Because goodness knows we’ve got enough of it to keep us busy. Toiling over spreadsheets and the minutiae of this report are killer. I hate Ellington and Travers for sticking us with this, but at least I’m not the one who has to go home for the holidays and tell my family I got fired for messing up so badly other people won’t be going home to see their families for the holidays at all.

It’s coming up on seven, which reminds me I should call my mom. I said I would, but I don’t want to. She’ll lay a guilt trip on me again about not being able to come home, and I won’t even be able to act that sorry. I mean, I am, because I’ll miss everyone, but it’s always qualified.

I’ll miss my cousins, but I won’t miss them insulting the work I do. I’ll be sad not to be baking mountains of cookies with my mom, but I won’t be sorry she’s not asking me why I’m not married yet. Because clearly that’s my only worth. I wish I could be there to help my dad pick out a tree for the living room, but I won’t regret not having to go to church where too many people will ask me if I’m still living among non-believers and saying how they wouldn’t be able to do it. I don’t even want to know what they’d say if I told them I fornicated with a guy whose first name I didn’t even know.

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