Page 26 of Separate Lives

Smiling invitingly at him, she let her eyes rove over his beloved form. Resting her palms against his broad chest, Jess reversed their positions, and pushed forcing Reece onto his back so she could straddle him. With a glint of lecherous mischief in her eyes, Jess teased all the naked skin she could reach, savoring, with her lips, his nipples, the center of his furry chest, his chiseled stomach, and would’ve continued her deliberate exploration if she weren’t brought to an abrupt halt, short of breath, when his magical fingers begun to probe her pleasantly aching mound.

“I’m so sorry that I hurt you yesterday.”

“You didn’t.”

“I was rough.”

She just looked at him smiling, forgiving his forceful assault, knowing their mad passion for each other was as much to blame.

“I swear on my honor that it will never happen again,” he murmured, turning her onto her back before he lithely let his lips roam down her length to replace his hand.

At the first touch of his tongue between her thighs, Jess shuddered. When that same tongue separated the tender folds protecting her sex, tracing a line along the pink flesh to then delve inside her musky opening, Jess was sure she’d die.

Raising his head, Reece climbed his way back up her body grazing her outstretched nipples with his chin. Her hands loosely cupped his dear face, allowing him the freedom to explore every part of her he chose to. In the next heartbeat, Jess felt his warm, moist lips along the column of her neck, and tilted her head back to allow Reece better access to it.

“Let it come,” he murmured in her ear, nibbling the sensitive lobe. Grazing with the ridge of his teeth a path around her jaw and finally her lips, Reece brought Jess closer yet to the brink of release.

“Please,” she begged, hardly recognizing the rusty voice as hers.

“What?”

“Inside me,” she attempted to articulate.

“Here?” he whispered, sinking a finger with maddening slowness inside her pliant flesh.

“Ah,” she exhaled, arching towards him. Jess wanted him inside her. She didn’t like to climax empty, but voicing that was impossible. She was out of breath, out of mind, out of everything. So she touched him, showing Reece with frantic hands what she wanted.

“Oh God,” he hissed when she took him in her hands, coaxing a drop of semen from the velvety tip.

When he next entered her, a few fluid thrusts were enough to send them both over the edge. Clinging to each other for dear life, they savored the moment for all they were worth. Every nerve ending, tendon, muscle they possessed was alive and stretched to its limit. Their release went on forever until, still joined in an intimate embrace, they gradually soared back to reality.

“So much time wasted,” Reece whispered in her hair after recovering his breath, holding her spoon-fashioned against him. “Had you not let your stubborn pride interfere, we would have reached this stage ages ago, and still be married.”

Her heart sunk heavily with disillusionment. Like a cold, unwelcome shower, his words had shattered the magic of the moment, and crushed her hopes. Nothing had changed. His kindness had indeed been only a mood swing. Reece was still the arrogant, selfish bastard who’d never understood the first thing about her.

* * *

The following evening,when Reece went back to Jess’s apartment, he found an envelope taped to her front door. His name was written on it. Puzzled, he read the note three times to be sure he understood it correctly. Then, furious, he balled up the paper, tried the doorbell twice, and when nobody answered him, stomped back to his car and sped off not caring about the other drivers, or the rules of the road.

ChapterTen

“How was your day?” Johnny asked Reece as he walked past him, after entering the office they rented in The Loop. Reaching his work station, Johnny dropped his body into his chair like a deadweight.

There wasn’t much in the way of furniture. Two white, wooden desks with a few essential items on them like portable PCs and land phones, stood in the middle of the room, facing each other. Two black, wide, high-backed leather chairs complemented them, leaving space for a coat hanger on the wall next to the door, a tall file-cabinet sharing the wall with a large window, and a coffee-maker placed on top of a small fridge. The space was rather small and sparse because almost all the paper-work and filing was handled by their capable personal assistant in the tastefully decorated reception area right outside the office. And then, they spent most of their time on assignments, not behind a desk.

“I can see it has been quite a party,” Johnny commented with a sardonic smile, answering his own question. With his spine slouched back against the chair, elbows resting on its arms, feet crossed at the ankles stretched out in front of him, fingertips of one hand flexing rhythmically against those of the other hand, Johnny let his eyes linger pensively over his friend and colleague, who was beating his pen with an impatient rhythm against the edge of his desk.

“I’m beat,” Reece sighed, dropping the pen onto the desk and raking both hands over his face. Then he stretched his arms above his head, and relaxed his body against the back of his own chair, unconsciously mirroring Johnny’s posture. Those high-backs were truly the only luxury the two men had allowed themselves when they’d set up their business with as little as a $ 10.000 budget –the chairs alone had cost them about a thousand each. But it was nice, after a hard day spent escorting a particularly difficult client, to come back to the office, and write a report while sunk back into the soft, black leather.

“Looking forward to the weekend ahead?”

“Looking forward to seeing the end ofthisweek,” Reece returned, scowling. “These reports,” he picked up some of the sheets spread in front of him, “are so dull to read, I’m having a hard time concentrating on them. You know, I didn’t realize until now how much we’ve worked.”

It was their habit each Friday to go through the reports on every assignment they had dealt with during the previous four days, to assess first-hand how their business was faring. Reece and Johnny could’ve easily dispensed that job to their assistant, but what was essentially a hassle, habit had made it steadily become a tradition.

At the beginning of their careers there had been no assistant to take care of the administrative side of their business, so while Johnny scouted new clients and oversaw the initial accepting-or-refusing-a-request process, Reece had been left with the task of keeping their files up-dated, paying the bills, and generally caring about the financial aspects of their venture. It had taken them almost two years to save enough money to employ a full-time assistant, and since her first day with them, Reece had entrusted Madeleine Hitch with the financial aspects of their venture, and had never looked back. She was good, competent, thoroughly enjoyed her job, treated Johnny and Reece like nephews, and would’ve dealt with their daily reports with the same aplomb she did everything else, if asked. But call it habit –since day one at the police academy, it had been drilled into them the necessity to write reports, call it the need to keep everything under control, call it twisted psychology, Johnny and Reece liked to maintain close tabs on what concerned their job, and checking the daily reports was the best way of doing it.

“I think we reached the point in which we can safely employ another part-time person to help Maddie at the front office, and at least one other full-time person to share the load of leg work with us,” Reece commented.

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