Rogue Acts Read online

  He ran his hand down the outside of her thigh, reaching for the hem of her skirt, dragging it up with him on the return trip.

  “Yes,” she moaned into his mouth. “Yes, please. Hurry. Hurry.”

  Fuck. That was all he needed. He’d take his time on the second go-round. Right now, this was twenty years of wanting. Twenty fucking years.

  He pulled her close, lifting her weight up into his arms, and he turned, pushing her down on the couch. He stood over her, taking her in. Her state of undress. Her blissed-out eyes. Her chemise pulled taut over her full breasts.

  Maggie as he’d always imagined her. But better. Real. Here. His mouth tasted like her. His fingers remembered the silk of her skin.

  And he’d never be able to forget it.

  He fell to his knees on the floor between her spread legs.

  “What are you doing?” she breathed, her fingers in his hair. His beard.

  “Finding something out,” he said.

  “What?”

  “What you taste like.”

  She gasped, pulling in air like she was dying.

  “You going to let me?”

  She nodded and he reached up under her skirt and pulled down her nylons. She shifted her long, sweet legs, helping him.

  “Take…take your shirt off,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I want to feel you. Between my legs.”

  He grinned at her, his cock throbbing, and yanked off his tie and shirt. Stood in front of her in his suit pants and nothing else. He had no misconceptions about his looks. He ran when he could. Forgot to eat a lot of the time. His chest hair was going gray. And it was plentiful.

  But she looked at him like he was beautiful.

  So he felt fucking beautiful.

  And he planned on returning the favor. In spades.

  Back on his knees, he took his time spreading her legs, shifting her so she half-reclined on the sofa, her hips right up to the edge of the couch.

  “Hurry, Jay, please.”

  “No fucking way, Maggie. I’m not hurrying this at all.”

  Her skirt was hiked up to her waist and he left it there, liking the seduction of it. He pulled off her black silk underwear and the sight of her nearly made him come in his pants. The scent of her desire. The fat pink lips of her sex.

  “Jesus, Maggie,” he breathed. And he leaned in and kissed her, tasted her. His tongue found the edge of her slit and and slipped down until he bumped into the hard bead of her clit, and he kept going, mapping the area, getting to know her.

  She was salty and sweet and smelled like sex and lust. And his careful introduction of his mouth to her pussy was soon not at all enough. He pushed her thighs out wide, settled himself between them, and got down to business.

  “Yes, God…Jay!” She clutched at his hair. Carefully, because it had been a long time, he eased one finger deep inside of her and she arched up off the couch, pulling his hair, her thighs closing down on him like a clamp.

  He smiled and gave her another finger.

  Maggie. He’d known she’d be like this. All in. Real and sweet.

  “It’s been so long,” she said. “So long.” And then she was coming. Writhing and twisting against him. Holding him still, fucking against him.

  And when she finally let him go, he sat up, wiping his mouth. Licking his fingers.

  Remember, he told himself. Remember. This. Forever.

  “You,” she said, reaching for his belt, her hands shaking. He let her undo the belt and take down his zipper. He let her reach into the open V of his pants and the waistband of his boxers.

  Bracing himself the whole time. An old habit he couldn’t break.

  And the touch of her hand against him was everything he’d dreamed. Everything he’d wanted for so long. Everything he’d never thought he’d have.

  And after tonight he wasn’t sure if he would have it again.

  “Stop,” he said.

  “What?” She didn’t let go of him, and he stepped away.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said. He reached for her, pulling her to her feet, but she didn’t stand.

  “You’re lying,” she said. And this was the fucking problem of knowing each other so well.

  “I’m about to come in my fucking pants,” he said with a grin. Trying to play it off.

  “Why don’t you want me to touch you?”

  “Because I don’t know how to handle it, Maggie. I’ve spent most of my life trying to forget the way it feels when your hand accidentally brushes mine. How do I wake up tomorrow and forget how your lips feel on my cock?”

  “You don’t have to forget,” she said. “And if you do, I’ll do it again.”

  “Don’t—”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t pretend this isn’t…” He swallowed and turned away, his erection dying. She sat up, grabbed his hips.

  “Finish a goddamn sentence, Jay.”

  “Don’t pretend this isn’t a one-time thing. Don’t pretend this isn’t a mistake we might spend the rest of our lives regretting.”

  “You’ll regret this?”

  “No,” he sighed. “No. I won’t. I can’t. But I will regret when it blows up our friendship.”

  “I think our friendship is stronger than a blow job. I think our friendship might be stronger if we had a few more blow jobs.”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  ‘I’m not laughing. Did it occur to you, Jay, that I….” She blew out a breath. Pulled her skirt down. “That I might feel something for you, too? Or were you too busy writing yourself in the role of the martyr?”

  Hope surged in him. Undeniable and bright. Blinding.

  “What…what do you feel for me?”

  “Right now, lust. Most of the time, friendship. And frustration and more. I’ve felt…more.”

  Oh, this hope was going to kill him. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t say this because you feel like you should. Because you want to be polite. Because you’re worried about my feelings. I’m a big boy, and I don’t need to be stroked.”

  She scowled at him, her lips twisting in that familiar way that he loved.

  “And I’m a big fucking girl, Jay. I don’t lie to men to protect their egos. Shame on you for thinking that I would do that to you.”

  His cock was hard again. Something about her anger fucking lit him up like the Fourth of July.

  “You gonna let me suck your dick?” she snapped, and he laughed. He laughed and he laughed and shucked his pants as fast as he could.

  “Please, Maggie. Please.”

  She leaned forward, one hand at his hip, the other grabbing the base of his cock, and at the first warm brush of her breath, the soft, sweet lick of her tongue, the wet heat of her mouth, he was done. Gone.

  He was nothing but love and lust and a longing he’d never get over. It might have lasted twenty minutes or two. He didn’t know.

  “Maggie.” His fingers brushed her face, giving her the chance to lean away. To remain above something as base as swallowing his come. But she pulled him closer, took him deeper. He cupped her head in his hands, curled his body over hers. And he came in spurts in her mouth.

  “Fuck.” He staggered back, wincing at the brush of her mouth on his dick. So sensitive. His whole body. Every bit of his soul. Too sensitive for this. For her. He stepped back again. And then again.

  “Holy shit, Maggie.”

  “I have been…missing that.”

  He laughed. “So have I.”

  The silence between them was different. Not uncomfortable. Not nervous. Just different.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Why are you asking me that?”

  “Because I know when you’re getting too far in your head. And I don’t want you in your head.”

  “Where do you want me?”

  She stood up. “Your bedroom.”

  “I’m a forty-year-old man. It’s going to take me—”

  Her skirt fell to
the floor. Her chemise followed. The love of his life stood naked in front of him.

  She looked down at his stiffening cock and quirked an eyebrow. “You were saying?”

  “Nothing.” He crossed the room in three short steps and had her in his arms. Her skin against his. He picked her up off her feet and walked across the apartment, his mouth on hers. Breathing in her exhales, stroking her tongue with his.

  His bedroom was dark, and it was quiet, the city blocked out by the thick curtains he had on his windows.

  He laid her out on the bed, following her down, and she reached for him, her legs spread, her hands on his cock. And then he remembered how being a sad sack in love with a woman he had never thought he’d have didn’t give him much of a sex life, and as such—he had no condoms.

  “Wait-.”

  “No waiting.” She arched her hips up against him. “We talk all the time. Let’s not talk.”

  The head of his cock slipped into her body, and he felt electrocuted.

  “I don’t have condoms,” he said.

  “Do we need them?” she asked.

  “I’m clean, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “So am I.”

  “Pregnancy?”

  “I’m on the pill.”

  She didn’t need to say another word. And they didn’t. He pushed inside her, inch by agonizingly beautiful inch, and it was as if they each held their breath. Like they couldn’t believe what was happening. What they were feeling.

  He couldn’t look at her, because he was scared what she might see in his eyes. It was one thing to tell a person you loved them, another thing to show them the depth and breadth of that love.

  She was his world.

  And he was terrified of what he might see in her eyes. Or that they’d be closed so she could better pretend he was Ben.

  “Jay?” she gasped. He spread his knees out wide, still sinking into her. She was tight and small. And he felt so fucking big.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m good. Sooo good. I’ve never…been this good.”

  He smiled, laughed even. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto her breast.

  “Why aren’t you looking at me?” she asked.

  He bent his head, kissed her breast. Tasted the salt of his sweat and hers.

  “Jay!” she lifted her hips, taking him deep. All the way. “Look at me.”

  He was powerless. Under her control. So he looked at her.

  It was mindless after that. Fucking and grinding. Her skin so soft. Her teeth so sharp. It hurt in all the best ways.

  “I’m gonna—”

  “Yes—”

  “With me—”

  “Yes—”

  She came. He felt her come. The ecstatic pulse of it. The tight-limbed tautness of her.

  And then, like he always did, he tried to take her in pieces. To control what he felt. How he felt. Small things first. Her hands in his hair, her leg against his hip. Her hair a dark slash against his pillow. But then the details came faster and faster. Overwhelming him. Her breath against his lips. Her breast against his chest.

  The squeeze of her orgasm around his cock.

  And he was ruined.

  He didn’t know how he was going to survive this.

  Survive her.

  Maggie.

  5

  Maggie slept on her stomach, her face buried in pillows.

  She slept with her feet kicked out from under the quilt.

  And she mumbled. Nothing he could catch, but he stayed up listening to her anyway.

  The mumbles. The breathing. The soft, sweet reality of Maggie Perkins in his bed.

  Jay was forty years old. He had a bad knee from rugby. He needed glasses for reading but so far couldn’t be bothered.

  He was flawed. Flawed in a million ways.

  And she was, too. He wasn’t delusional. She was stubborn. She was optimistic to a fault. She believed the best about people when there was no reason to.

  And he thought, I can be anything to her. I can be anything for her. With one exception.

  Before tonight he would have gone on being her sword. Her right-hand man.

  But now…after this?

  He couldn’t even be her affair. Her dirty secret.

  I can’t be her second choice.

  There was no having this woman in pieces. He should have known that after all these years of practicing and never succeeding. Of trying to control how he felt about her.

  Tonight, he thought. He had tonight. And it would just have to be enough.

  He closed his eyes, pulling her deeper into his arms.

  It would have to be enough.

  * * *

  Curled in Jay’s arms, her back against his chest, Maggie fell into a sweet, dreamy sleep in which she was nineteen again. A college freshman watching a boy with hair that wouldn’t behave getting his ID picture taken.

  He kept trying to pat it down. He’d even licked his hand and tried to press down the brown curls. The girl taking the picture had laughed and tried to help. She was flirting, and Maggie wanted to rip off the girl’s fingers for touching him in a way Maggie had been too nervous to do.

  Jay, she said in the dream in the way she hadn’t in real life, let me help you.

  And when they touched everything started to ring.

  Like crystal wine glasses. Like…cell phones.

  “What the hell?” Jay muttered, and she was snapped out of the dream. Their phones were going crazy.

  “Make it stop,” she said, assaulted by cold ringing when the dream had been so sweet.

  “Good God,” Jay muttered, rolling over and getting out of bed. “We get it. We get it.”

  “Is that mine, too?” Maggie asked, pulling herself form under the covers, as well. It was harder than she expected. She was leaving something of herself behind in that bed. Something she liked.

  In the kitchen, Jay was standing over the counter looking down at a cell phone. He’d pulled on sweatpants, and he looked so much like his younger self her breath caught.

  “I thought yours was in the limo,” she said.

  “I have two. Your purse is ringing.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Five.”

  “Shit.” She got her phone out of her purse and answered her assistant’s texts. Hair and makeup were waiting for her at her apartment. She was on-air in an hour. “I have to go.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  She pulled on her skirt. Her chemise. Nylons? Where were her nylons?

  The phones kept buzzing. Text notifications coming in faster than they could reply.

  Coming, she texted her driver, who had been texting her steadily for the last half hour.

  “Here,” he said, handing her a fistful of black silky things. Nylons and underwear.

  She started to pull them on.

  His phone buzzed, and he swore reading the text. “I’ll draft a statement about my leaving the campaign,” he said. “Toby could do it, but—”

  “Don’t be hasty.”

  “There’s nothing hasty about it. I should have done it last night instead of getting drunk and—”

  “Laid?” she asked, smiling at him. He did not smile back.

  Uh-oh. Jay clearly had spent the night thinking.

  His phone buzzed again. “You have to go,” he said, reading the text.

  “How bad do I look?” she asked, smoothing down her hair.

  “Well, as the man who fucked you last night, you look amazing. As your former campaign manager…” He shook his head. “You still look amazing.”

  “I’ll call you after—”

  He shook his head, even went so far as to step away from her. “I’ve been thinking—”

  “No,” she said. “No thinking.”

  “It might be something good.”

  “It’s not. I know your face, and you’re thinking…we need to cool off. Not see each other.” Her phone buzzed in her hand. “Jeez, I have to go,” she breathed.<
br />
  “I spent the night thinking about this. And you have a lot going on, Maggie. And a lot that would be at risk. The election—”

  “You keep telling me things I know. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “I can’t be your second choice,” he said. Spat, really. The phone fell to her side, forgotten. “I can’t be casual. I can’t be a secret. I can’t…be with you and not really be with you. I thought I could. For the chance to have you. For one night. I thought I could be anything. But…now I’ve had you. Touched you. Kissed you. I can’t go back. So I think it’s best if we’re not together.”

  Their phones both started ringing again.

  “You have to go,” he said.

  She wanted to stay and fight. She wanted to tell him all the things he needed to hear. The things she needed to say. But—

  “I have to go,” she said.

  She grabbed her purse, tried her best with her hair, and turned on him.

  He opened the door. “Good luck,” he said, leaning against it. “Remember when you denounce me, make it good. Spit, maybe. Or make the sign of the—”

  She kissed him. Hard, right on the lips. Too hard, maybe. Her tooth hit her lip and she tasted blood.

  “We aren’t done.”

  It was obvious how much he wanted to believe her. And he would. When she was done, he would believe her.

  “I have to go,” she said regretfully.

  “You have to go.”

  * * *

  Jay called Phillip, his assistant, and told him he’d be in at ten to clean out his desk. He’d have a statement ready for Toby to release to the press in fifteen minutes. He called his personal lawyer, who told him it would be his honor to represent him against the bastard.

  And when all of that was done, he had no choice but to make coffee, turn on the TV, and sit down to watch the morning shows.

  He found her on Good Morning, New York.

  She was on a satellite feed from the office in her home in Brooklyn. He recognized the art from the students at her old grade school in Lackawanna. She looked good. Poised and polished. The skin of her neck revealed almost no beard burn, but what was visible made his dick twitch.