Page 17 of Awakening
Caleb would usually be here, but he’d taken a head coach position for the women’s basketball team at Winston Hills University, and the team was traveling for an away game. Dana and Ahmir had finally gotten around to taking their honeymoon and wouldn’t be back from their three-city tour of Japan for another 10 days, so it was just Yanna and me this weekend.
The party buzzed around me as the sounds of soft jazz, clinking glasses, and the usual shallow compliments dressed up in sequins and cologne carried through the venue. I told myself to breathe. Just breathe. Maybe he wouldn’t come over. Perhaps it was all in my head. The electricity that seemed to crackle between us was imagined by me and me alone.
Then I felt it.
That presence.
Maverick’s voice was low, smooth, and far too close to my ear.
“Didn’t expect to see you hiding by the punch bowl,” he leaned over, whispering.
I turned, slow, measured. He was closer than I’d thought close enough that I could see the faint dimple in his left cheek when he wasn’t smiling fully. Close enough to smell cedarwood, bergamot, and heat.
“I didn’t expect you to notice me standing here, people watching,” I responded softly, his domineering energy waking up my inner good girl.
“That’s b.s. and you know it Ms. Jeffries,” him remembering my name caused my body to respond, my nipples puckering as he continued, “I thought about you every day since you landed in my ER, I thought about that kiss that you etched into every fiber of my being, and I can tell by the way your body is responding that you’ve felt my eyes on you since we locked gazes earlier.”
God, his voice. Deep and steady like rain against a window at night. The kind that made you want to listen even if he wasn’t saying much. A shiver deliciously crept up my spine at his admission.
“So what brought you here tonight? I can tell your coworkers are surprised to see you here.”
“You.”
I froze.
Just for a beat.
Long enough for my stomach to twist and heat to crawl up my spine.
“I was praying there was a small chance that you might be here with Dr. Black.”
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. He just took a slow sip of whiskey and let his response hang there between us like a velvet rope.
“I—I don’t understand,” stumbling over my thoughts and words.
“You understand just fine, Freckles, but just so there’s no further confusion, you invade my thoughts daily as if I’ve known you in a past life, but now I need to know you in this one. You leave me wondering what makes you smile, what makes you cry, and what your favorite candy is. What makes you cum? What you taste like? How good you’ll feel when you fall apart beneath me as I stroke you into ecstasy,” he finished, kissing my neck, causing a moan to fall from my lips.
“There she is,” he spoke, the slowness he used to drag each word igniting my need and desire for him that I tried to keep hidden.
“My good girl,” the bass from his voice vibrating against my skin.
We held each other’s gaze, my body ablaze at him, unknowingly calling me by the nickname I’d grown to love hearing fall from my lovers’ mouths, the noise of the party falling away like it knew better than to interrupt whatever this was.
His hands hadn’t touched me. Not yet. But I felt him like a pressure in the air as his presence folded into mine, heating the space between us inch by aching inch.
“Walk with me?”
It wasn’t a question.
It was a door.
And God help me—I was stepping through it.
The holiday party was held at the Winston Hills Grand Marquis Hotel, and many of the employees had gotten a room tonight so they could eat, drink, and be merry. Yanna and I were staying in the penthouse suite, where Maverick and I were headed to…talk.
Us being the only people in the elevator, Maverick used gentle force as he grabbed my throat and pulled me to him, looking into my eyes.
“I’m going to taste you tonight, so feed me every hole, okay?” He demanded while his thumb stroked my throat softly.
