Going Down: The Elevator Series (19 page)

Cole stood abruptly with my body still wrapped around him. “Bed. Now.” His caveman mode was so sexy; I probably wouldn’t mind if he dragged me by the hair. He had the decency to pretend carrying me the short distance to the bedroom was easy. Cole removed my panties before I realized he’d even finished laying me on the mattress. He removed the rest of his own clothing with an almost magical speed. I wished I had a video of it so I could watch it over and over again in slow motion.

He crawled across the bed and hovered over me. I never wanted to forget the look in his eyes—hungry and needy. His arousal slid across the top of my sensitive mound. “Cici, I’m sorry. I really wanted tonight to be slow and sweet, but I’ve been staring at you for hours in that damn green dress, looking sexy as hell, and all I can think about is how much I fucking want you.”

Sexiest potty mouth ever.

“Yes, baby. I want you so much.” I shifted my hips up to show him how very much I wanted him, but I was quickly reminded of how sensitive that area still was. As much as I didn’t want to kill the mood, I also didn’t want to pass out from the pain in the middle of a pounding. “Um, baby, there was an incident earlier, and I kind of need to avoid any contact with that area. I… yeah… sorry.”

He paused. “Are you all right?”

I rolled my eyes at the memory of my experiment. “Yes. I just don’t want to permanently damage my delicate petal. I need it.”

“Yes, you do.” Grabbing my hips, he rolled me over in a much smoother motion than he should’ve been able to. “Get on your knees and hold onto my headboard.”

Oh hell yes.

I didn’t need to be told twice.

He wrapped his hand in the back of my hair, tugging to angle my head upward. He ran his lips along the side of my neck up to my ear. “Let’s wake up the neighbors.”

He plunged into me, causing me to shriek with pleasure at the sudden full sensation. One hand on my hip and the other still entwined in my hair, he pushed his hips upward with each thrust. We had only just started, but I could feel the tightening in my stomach already. His hold on my hip tightened as my moans intensified. Two thrusts later, and I fell apart under him. “William Goddamn Howard Taft!”

Cole didn’t break stride for a moment. If anything, his pace intensified. He breathed in my ear. “I love making you come, Cici, but I also want to hear you scream my name next. Is that something you think you can do?”

My brain was in a post-orgasmic haze, but I’d never been more certain I could take direction. “Yes, Cole. Please, don’t stop, baby,” I moaned between breaths.

He moved both hands to my hips. “I don’t intend to ever stop fucking you, Cici.”

Why is cursing so damn sexy in bed? I’m going to the hot place.

I inched my knees apart a little more so I could feel him even deeper. My fingernails dug into the back of his headboard.

“Cici, I’m not going to last much longer. Please come with me. Please, baby.” He ran his tongue along my upper back, biting the nape of my neck.

His words and the intensity of the situation were all too much. I tumbled over the edge again. “Yes, Cole, yes! Oh, fuck, Cole! Fuck!” His pace faltered for a moment as he shuddered inside me. He stilled after a few more thrusts, then rolled me onto my side, and pulled me toward him. He brushed my hair away from my face.

“That’s my girl,” he said and was the last thing I heard before I fell into a sated sleep.

Cole’s alarm was too early and too loud and too a lot of things. I must have stayed balled up on my side with Cole wrapped around me all night. I tried to stretch out, but every muscle in my body rebelled.

I rolled over to face Cole and plant a kiss on his forehead. “Good morning, sleepy head.” Speaking of heads, my hair felt big enough to have its own zip code. I tried to tame it with my fingers, but it became apparent I would just have to shave it and start over. Then I remembered how it got so tangled, and the tingly feeling returned to my stomach.

“I had a great time last night.” I hoped that didn’t sound too canned. I really did have a fantastic time.

He smiled my favorite smile. His mouth had the sexiest curvature, but his eyes had a misleading innocence behind them. “I did, too. I can’t wait to do it again.”

“Oh really?” I wagged my eyebrows at him in jest.

He hit me with his pillow. “Not that! I mean, yes,
that
, but I was talking about seeing you in general. I want to do that again. But now that you’ve brought it up, do you have time for a quickie before work?”

I snuggled closer into his side. “I don’t know. What time is it?”

He checked his phone. “Eight o’clock. Can you spare ten minutes? I would say five, but I have a reputation to protect.”

I jumped up, kicking him in the shin in the process. “Oh shoot! I’ve got to go! Where are my clothes? Crap! I have to go home and shower and change. I can’t go to the office like this!”

I ran in a zigzag pattern through his apartment, collecting my belongings.

Cole pulled on a pair of boxer briefs. “I’m sorry, Cici. I didn’t think about that.”

I’d reassembled most of my outfit, but my dress was going to be a problem. My hormone-fueled flippant attitude had abated, and I was left with the conundrum of how to get home in a dress that was ripped from the hem nearly to the armpit. A walk of shame I could handle, but I didn’t need a public indecency charge.

Cole seemed a little surprised at the damage as well. “Oh. I will replace that. Do you want one of my shirts and a pair of sweatpants?”

I weighed my options. “Your pants are going to be huge on me. The odds of them falling off and me mooning the entire Upper East Side are pretty high. Do you have a stapler? I can seal up the side of my dress.”

“I don’t. I have duct tape, though.”

“What is it with men and duct tape? All right, lay it on me. Desperate times and all.”

Two minutes later, I had a dress that was less put together than my life. A few vertical strips held the sides closed, and several crisscross strips reinforced it. It was a little futuristic looking, but beggars can’t be choosers. It would just have to do.

I grabbed my purse, rushed over to Cole, and planted a quick kiss on his lips. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you at the office.”

“See you in a little bit, Cici. I love you.”

I stopped so suddenly my purse swung forward and nearly hit his door. I wanted to turn around, but my feet were frozen to the floor. His apartment fell so silent; I could hear his neighbor breathing. Slowly, I turned to face him. “Did you—I—you what?” My voice was hardly above a whisper.

Cole’s eyes were cartoonish wide. “That’s not how I meant to tell you. I was going to say it last night after the restaurant, but then I chickened out, and then I was going to save it for our next date, but then it just came out, and when did I start rambling like you, and now that it’s out there. Yes, yes, I love you. There.”

The gift of speech had deserted me again. I picked at the edge of the tape on my dress and tried to remember the mechanics of blinking.

“Cici, can you say something?” I’d never seen him look this nervous. He ran his hands through his gorgeous hair three times in five seconds.

Too many things were flitting through my mind, so I grabbed onto one and went with it. “You’re telling me this in your underwear?”

He looked down at his lack of dress, then back at me. “Cici, we started our relationship in an elevator. We have sex on your office furniture. A lot. You’re about to walk the streets of Manhattan in a hardware store creation. We don’t do conventional.”

“Touché.”

“I’m not asking you to say it back if you don’t feel it. I know this is fast. I just want you to know how I—”

“I love you, too.” I had known it for a little while now, but I didn’t want to ruin what we had by opening my big mouth.

“You do?” Cole looked relieved but cautious at the same time. His hair tousling slowed to a rate of two tousles per ten seconds.

“I do. I love you.”

He closed the distance between us, scooped me up Hollywood-style, and kissed me with a new intensity. Neither of us wanted to break the connection, but oxygen requirements eventually won.

“Do you really have to go?”

“I do. Plus, it would be too suspicious if we both called in sick. I’ll see you in a few, though.”

“All right. Fine,” he whined. He released me, but his right arm was caught on some of the duct tape. I turned to try and help him free it, but that ripped the strip clean off his arm, taking a patch of hair with it.

He let loose a string of expletives that really didn’t make sense. “Do you have any idea how much that hurts?” He blinked back tears.

“Yes, I do. Let me get you an ice pack.”

***

Walking to the subway station wasn’t an issue. Trying to sit on a seat while wearing a dress reinforced with stiff tape was. I opted to hold the pole instead. I found myself wishing Cole lived in a less nice area. Most other parts of the city, I wouldn’t even be in the top twenty strange sightings. As it was, a woman with a rat’s nest for hair, obviously wearing last night’s dress, fused together with tape, drew some glances.

I had a force field around me, though. The most wonderful man I’d ever met loved me, and I loved him. Nothing could touch me. Except for a massive piece of gum on Houston Street. That ruined my favorite pair of flats, and I had to hobble the last several blocks like Quasimodo. Everything was still right with the world, though. The sun was brighter, the trees were greener, the pigeons were cuter. This would be a good day.

The week sailed by. My mood was euphoric. Maggie even accused me of taking some of those mood-enhancing pills I tested during a drug trial in college. I was trying to make a little extra money testing TM78430, a pill billed to boost endorphin levels in your brain. Two days later, the fire department had to pull me out of a tree where I screamed about my love for cake. I never went back to finish the trial, although I stood by my love of cake to this day.

***

Cole double-parked his car while he loaded up my suitcase into the tiny trunk. I knew absolutely nothing about cars, so I could only tell that it was the kind that only had two seats and could probably go fast. Clearly our firm didn’t handle a lot of automotive accounts.

The inside was roomier than expected, although Cole appeared pretty cramped near the steering wheel. “I like your car. Is that comfortable?”

He wrestled with the seatbelt before answering. “Not even a little. Felicity borrowed my car the last time she was in the city and now the seat won’t move back. I haven’t had time to get it fixed. At least this drive is less than two hours.” He winked at me. “I’ll see what I can do about cutting that in half.”

I tugged at my own seatbelt, checking that it was still firmly fastened. “What is it with you speed demons?”

He bolted into traffic, cutting off a cab and a bike messenger. This would be a long short drive.

I had grotesquely overpacked for a weekend. Cole had been short on details, and I wanted to be prepared for any scenario. Nice dinner? I was covered. Cocktail party? I was covered. Cookout? I was covered. Costume party? I was covered. Impromptu coup to overthrow the government? I was covered. Preparation eased my anxiety.

“Tell me about your parents.”

He turned down the radio. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, your father is a Yale professor, but you have this free-spirited sister and this silly brother. How do you get so many variations from the same genetic material? I’m just trying to figure them out.”

“Ah, that’s their super power. No one can figure them out. Just when you’re about to pigeonhole them into one category, they do something completely unexpected. They can’t be defined.”

“Like what? Should I sleep with one eye open?” Now I was even more curious.

Cole thought for a minute. “Like, when John came home drunk his senior year of high school, I thought they would blow a gasket. Instead, they threw him a Happy Hangover party at the crack of dawn the next morning, complete with a marching band and a yodeling club. I have no idea how they pulled it together so fast. John never drank again until college. I think they have a secret life as spies or maybe part-time superheroes.”

I was truly impressed. That was some commitment to an elaborate prank. I made a mental note to stay on my toes around them.

“Tell me about your parents.”

“My parents seem very humdrum compared to yours. They’re just average middle-class, middle American people. They work, they come home, eat dinner, and then they watch some TV, and they couldn’t be happier. They’re very opinionated but uncomplicated. I’ve long suspected Zach was switched at the hospital. That, or he’s got some kind of latent, troublemaking genes from a few generations past.”

Cole laughed. “And
you’re
not a troublemaker?”

I shook my head. “Not by comparison. Every once in a while I will see a very subtle hint of a flair for the dramatic with my mother, though.”

“How so?”

“She used to be obsessed with watching Dynasty. She still talks about that show. I think it was partly because our last name is Carrington, like one of the families. She thought I was a boy, so she wanted to name me Blake, but my father wouldn’t agree to it. I came out with girl parts, and I was very nearly Alexis Carrington—Joan Crawford’s character. They finally compromised by making Alexis my middle name and Cecile my first. I think my mother secretly had visions of me becoming a socialite.”

Cole was doing a good job of distracting me from how fast he was driving since we’d made it outside of the city. “Well, she has to be excited that you’ve made it all the way to New York and have a successful career.”

“I think they’re both proud of me. I think my mother imagined I would lead a much more glamorous lifestyle. They came to visit a couple of years ago. She probably envisioned me living in a penthouse suite and going to Bergdorf Goodman’s for weekly shopping sprees. It was a bit of a reality check to see the sweeping expanse of my apartment from my front door.”