Underneath It All (The Walsh Series #1) (13 page)

Lauren nodded, a shy, devious smile dancing on the corners of her lips. She held my gaze while her orgasm vibrated around me and I exploded inside her, her hums and shrieking whimpers filling the space between us in concert with my guttural rumbles.

Her hands traced my spine up to my neck and into my scalp and back down, and we stayed calmly entwined as our bodies quaked with aftershocks. From the crook of her neck, I inhaled the sweet scent of Lauren laced with sex and sweat, and wondered if she could feel my heart hammering against my chest.

I attacked her mouth and dug my fingers into the supple skin of her ass. The kiss started with teeth and lips and tongues warring, but it mellowed and ended with Lauren’s forehead pressed to mine and our lips barely touching. “You were saying something about me getting dressed?”

A sated, drowsy smile filled Lauren’s face. “In a couple of minutes,” she murmured.

LAUREN

S
hit.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

Shit.

How did I go wrong with the ‘croissant for breakfast, no dirty sex with Matthew’ plan? It wasn’t even a small cheat, like grabbing a few chocolate-covered almonds in the name of late afternoon protein. No, this was ordering lo mein, kung pao chicken, and beef with broccoli, and letting the delivery guy believe I had four friends hiding in my apartment.

I was really racking up points in the Didn’t Think This One Through category, but it wasn’t just the sex. No, I had other issues on my hands while we walked to the party.

First, it was too cold to be wearing this dress without tights, and the chilly evening air left my nipples painfully, awkwardly hard. Instead of honoring any after-sex customs like speaking or hand-holding, my arms were crossed over my chest while I stared at the pavement. I felt Matthew’s gaze on me, his raised eyebrows and expectant glances begging for some indication of why I’d shut down but I couldn’t tell him about my chilly nips, or that I shouldn’t have dragged him along to this party. Inviting him meant seeing my friends, and that meant they’d want
all
the details, and I could barely explain this situation to myself. Beyond that, going away parties were the territory of couples, not fucked-up ‘drinks but I actually mean sex’ arrangements.

And I needed a nap.

Specifically, a naked nap with Matthew as my blanket, and maybe some more wall sex.

“You ready?” he asked, his hand holding the door to the venue, Tia’s, open.

I eyed his dark jeans, white Oxford open at the collar, and charcoal suit coat with a pouty shrug.

“What the fuck does that mean, sweetness?”

It means my friends are going to want to know who you are and where you came from and why they’ve never heard of you.

It means they’ll ask questions about you next week, next month—when this little game is over—and they’ll want to know what happened.

It means my work is overwhelming, my friends are moving on, I don’t want my one-night stand to end, and my world is sliding into barely controlled chaos.

“Nothing,” I said, and ducked under Matthew’s arm into the restaurant.

Looking around at the floral arrangements and photo slideshow projected on the wall, I was relieved Steph, Amanda, and I made time last week for dinner together at Sonsie. This party was for everyone else, and it never would have given us the quiet moments we needed.

In reality, the past four months were our long farewell. Their announcements both landed in June, and from that point onward we arranged dinners, long beach weekends, and plenty of packing parties.

I was also thrilled I handed off the planning of this event to Elsie Moor. She organized parties by trade, and she approached every backyard barbeque with the same level of preparation she would for a massive charity ball. In fact,
Coastal Living
magazine photographed her Fourth of July party on Cape Cod. She’d worked that morsel into every conversation in recent memory.

Elsie knew Steph through one of those arbitrary connections that made you realize exactly how small the world was, and when she and her husband moved to Boston last year, she folded into our circle. Her personality was shiny, animated, and over the top, and I knew she was just waiting to star in her own reality series.

The second Matthew’s hand curled around my waist, I spotted Steph and Amanda gaping at us from the opposite side of the restaurant. They excused themselves from their conversations, elbowing through the crowd.

“We were just wondering where you were, and now you’re here! And looking freakin’ sexypants as usual!” Amanda’s chestnut hair fell in glossy waves over her shoulders as she motioned at my dress, then turned to Matthew. “Well hello there.”

I gestured between him and my friends. “Matthew Walsh, these are my friends—”

“From your freshman dorm at Williams,” he added. He’d pumped me for information about Steph and Amanda on the way back from the button mill but his sketches caught my attention, and I didn’t notice how much I shared while envisioning my school. “And The Dungeon?”

“That’s right,” I said. Steph and Amanda exchanged loaded glances and didn’t bother containing their amusement. “My friends, Amanda Rier, Steph Grasiani.”

His eyes twinkled as he pulled me closer, his palm spreading across my hip and his fingers an inch away from starting something naughty. It was still surprising to feel those butterflies beating against my chest. It was even more surprising to discover I liked the butterflies.

I didn’t want a relationship, I didn’t have time for a relationship, but the fact we were here together, his fingers tapping out a beat on my hipbone while he met my friends, only established that my head and my ladybits needed to calibrate their decision-making.

My friends kept glancing at me while Matthew asked about Amanda’s work as a financial consultant, and Steph discovered he managed the remodel—he called it a rehab and restore—two houses down from hers.

When another guest caught Steph and Amanda’s attention for a moment, Matthew turned his head and brushed his lips over my ear. “How about that drink, sweetness? The usual?” I nodded, refusing to acknowledge the layers of meaning in his question even when I felt him staring, waiting for a reaction. Finally, he pivoted toward Steph and Amanda. “Ladies, can I get you anything from the bar?”

“Pregnant,” Amanda said, pointing to her small belly.

“Breastfeeding.” Steph pointed to her chest.

“Uh, all right then,” Matthew murmured. “Congratulations.”

I watched as he moved through the restaurant before turning to face Steph and Amanda. I forgot all about texting them with a heads-up around the time my leg went over Matthew’s shoulder, and I was bracing for their barrage of questions.

“You have sex hair,” Steph announced.

“You totally have sex hair,” Amanda said.

“I do not have sex hair,” I said, but still ran a hand through my flat-ironed-straight strands.

“Where did you get that chunk of man candy?” Amanda asked. “And why the hell didn’t I get a memo about this? This is the kind of shit I’m going to miss out on in DC. You’re going to get freaking engaged and I won’t even know until I get the freaking Save the Date.”

I plucked Steph’s sparkling water from her hand and sipped, inwardly snorting at the idea. Not a month went by without a bridal or baby shower in our extended circles, and though I was happy to be finished with wedding season for a while, it was a matter of time until the pastel cardstock started rolling in again. Everyone was moving into quiet, wooded communities, shuttling between holidays with the in-laws instead of our Friendsgivings inevitably composed of eight different types of pie, three potato variations, vegan green bean casserole, and a partially burnt, partially rare turkey.

I was going to miss those pies. There was nothing better than cold pie for breakfast. Apple, pumpkin, blueberry, coconut cream. Why bother with bagels when you could have pie?

“I don’t care where she found him, I just want to know what’s under the hood and whether he knows how to use it,” Steph said.

“Oh, he knows how to use it,” Amanda purred. She wrapped her arm around Steph’s shoulders and they murmured in lusty agreement. “I bet he can use it. All. Night. Long.” She frowned at Steph. “Did I just say that out loud?”

I studied Matthew leaning against the bar, chatting with someone while he waited for our drinks. He glanced in my direction and met my gaze, but he didn’t offer an easy smile. The look he gave me was intense and searing, and it spoke words I was unprepared to hear.

“No but seriously, Lauren, where did that beautiful boy come from?” Steph asked. “We had dinner on Tuesday. Why didn’t you mention him?”

“We’re just having fun,” I said, my eyes still fixed on Matthew. “He helped me find a building for my school. It’s not a big deal.”

As the words left my mouth, I knew they were lies.

“You seem to have this under control,” Amanda said. “Is it?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“This is a major shift in strategy,” Steph said. “That chastity belt hasn’t come off in years. You’ve been a season ticket holder to the Waiting Games since…well, I don’t know. Since the summer we moved into The Dungeon, I think.”

“Yeah…” Steph followed my gaze and smirked. “And Man Candy Matt is giving every guy in this place the ‘she’s mine’ stare, he’s eating out of your hand and knows your drink order, and you brought him here to meet us with your sex hair, so I have to assume you either have it all figured out, or he fucked the taskmaster right out of you.”

Not terribly far from accurate.

The fucking part, not the figuring it out.

“Um, well—” I stammered.

“You know what? The waiting strategy needs a night off. You have been going a hundred miles an hour for the last year with this fellowship, and you deserve to have fun. What have we told you about losing yourself in work? You earned that drool-bait boy.”

“Yep,” Steph murmured. “Presuming he’s a decent guy and knows how to swing the hammer, don’t talk yourself out of it.”

Absurdly decent, and not even a little manwhorish.

“Of course he knows how to swing the hammer. Just look at her sex hair, Stephanie!”

Steph slapped a hand to Amanda’s lips when Matthew returned, and I shook my head as they swallowed their laughter.

“Hi,” he murmured. He kissed my temple and pressed a glass into my hands.

“Hi.” I glanced at the tumbler and back up at Matthew. I quirked an eyebrow, and he grinned at the pair of cherries floating on top of the ice. And he called me devious and filthy.

“In honor of your first time,” he whispered. “And your second. And
drinks
. And knowing what you need, even when you’d like to tell me otherwise.”

“Tell me Matthew: what do I need right now?”

“You need to spend the night with me. The whole night,” he said. His fingers brushed over the nape of my neck, and I leaned into him. “I wouldn’t be against finding a dark corner in the next five minutes, but you’re a bit of a screamer.”

I laughed and clinked my glass against his beer bottle. “You say that to all the girls?”

“I believe I’ve told you already, sweetness, no other girls. Before I forget…” Matthew retrieved his phone from his pocket and swiped it to life. He handed it to Steph. “Would you?”

She nodded and snapped a few pictures before returning the phone to Matthew. I watched as he scrolled through the images and attached one to an email. He met my inquisitive stare with a smile. “My sister,” he said, gesturing to the phone. “She asked for proof.”

Before I could stop myself, another rendition of Commodore Halsted’s Tales of Evil flew out of my mouth. “That makes me think you’re going to drug me and sell me into the slave trade, and that picture’s for your online auction.”

Matthew glanced at Amanda and Steph, and back at me. “That’s…no. No. My sister, she’s working on her doctorate in Europe. She spends a lot of time around volcanoes and doesn’t have much else in her life.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Steph said to Matthew. “Just wait until you meet her brothers.”

Yeah, that was going to happen right after I told my father I was having sex against walls. And windows. I still didn’t know who that person was or how she came to inhabit my body, although I had to admit, many of her ideas were admirable.

“We have to go mingle,” Amanda said. “In case we don’t see you before you two sneak out…it was very, very nice meeting you, Matthew. It would be awesome to see you again.”

“Enough with those comments,” I murmured, pulling Amanda into a tight hug and rubbing her baby belly. “Take care of this little one.”

Steph brushed her dark hair from her eyes and reached out for a hug. “I know we’ll talk soon, but definitely send me the dates you’re going to be in Chicago next month. I won’t have furniture or food in the house, but we’ll figure it out.”

I watched as they embraced other guests, and knew we would never be this close, this involved in each others’ lives again. And it hurt, a deep ache radiating from my bones. I leaned into Matthew, letting his warmth take the edge off.

“You’re going to Chicago?”

“Yeah,” I said, stalling with a sip of my drink. “It’s conference season, and I’m making a small marathon of it.”

“How does that work, exactly?”

I knew I should have brought it up sooner. Even if this was a one-night stand on steroids, a strange drinks-and-sex arrangement that couldn’t last much longer, I probably should have mentioned the three weeks of travel ahead somewhere along the way. After the window sex, before the wall sex.

“Instead of going to one event and then flying back home for a day or two, I’m filling the time between events with by visiting schools with similar educational philosophies. Conference in San Francisco, then observing at schools in Denver. After that, I’m going to Chicago for a few more schools. New Orleans for another conference the following week.”

“You won’t be back until October.” I nodded and met Matthew’s eyes. “When do you leave?”

“Early Tuesday morning. That’s part of my urgency around getting this building squared away.”