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“I just want to wait until I know it’ll mean as much to her as it does to me. As much as it means to me, this might take a while.”
Nora stopped rubbing Wesley’s neck and instead began slowly caressing his back with her fingertips.
“Remember, I was still a virgin when I was your age. I was twenty before S?ren and I made love the first time.”
“Were you glad you waited so long?”
“It wasn’t my choice to wait. It was his. I was ready and willing much younger than that. But I’m glad that it mattered as much to him as it did to me. I think you’ll make some girl very happy one of these days. For your sake I hope she’s waited for you, too.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t want to be with another virgin?” she asked, utterly shocked.
“No way. I’d like at least one of us to know what we’re doing.”
“It’s not that hard to figure out, I promise. You just kiss her,” she said, dropping a kiss on the center of Wesley’s back, “anywhere and everywhere you want to kiss her and touch her anywhere and everywhere you want to touch her. And when she’s wet and ready you spread her legs open wide and slowly push inside her and—”
“Stop, Nor.” She could hear the strain in his voice.
“I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget I’m not in one of my own books.”
“It’s okay,” he said a little breathlessly. He curled up around the pillow and pulled his legs into his chest. “It’s just…you’re… I’m…”
“Turned on? I know you are. Your accent gets thicker when you get—”
“Nora, please.”
“You can tell me, Wes.”
“Yes,” he confessed. “Very. I’m sorry. Just give me a few minutes to think about my dead grandmother and I’ll be okay.”
“Can I help you?”
“I don’t think so. You never met my dead grandmother.”
Nora laughed. “That’s not what I was thinking. Here, just relax. Best thing to do is just get it out of your system.” She put her hand on his side.
“I’m not going to have sex with you,” Wesley said with vehemence.
“I know. I’ve met my virgin deflowering quota for the day anyway. Just think of it as a tension-relieving massage.” Nora slipped her hand under his pajama pants and caressed his hip. She tapped him where she knew his tattoo was. “Or I could blow your bugle.”
Wesley laughed and groaned at the same time.
“This isn’t a good idea,” he said, although she could hear the need in his voice.
“Then I’ll stop. Or I’ll continue. Just tell me what you want.”
“I want to be able to sleep on my stomach at some point tonight.”
“I’ll take that as a yes then. Okay?” Nora waited, certain he would say no and send her back to her room.
Wesley took a hard breath.
“Okay.”
“Really?” she asked.
“You really told S?ren no because of me?” he asked.
Nora didn’t have to lie when she answered a quiet, “Yes.”
“Then yes. But no bugle blowing.”
“Spoilsport.” Suddenly Nora found herself feeling something she hadn’t felt in months, maybe even years—nervous. She let her hand slip over the hard plane of Wesley’s flat stomach, and she could feel the outline of all his muscles. She moved lower and found him. Wrapping her hand around him, she stroked upward.
“God,” he whispered as his whole body shivered.
“You’ve never even let anyone touch you before?” She ran her fingers slowly up and down his hard length.
He shook his head.
“No.”
She took him with her whole hand and smiled as he flinched with pleasure. Pressing her body into his back, she kissed only his neck although she ached to kiss all of him.
“You’re insanely hard,” she said, almost laughing. “You were working on the world’s worst case of blueballs.”
“Tell me about it.” She could hear Wesley trying to be flippant but his voice sounded bated and breathy. She ran her hand from the base to the tip of him; it took a very long time to get there. Not only did she have a gorgeous virgin in her house, but she had an extremely well-endowed one. Yet another thing Wesley and S?ren had in common. She closed her eyes and imagined she could hear God laughing at her from on high.
“Wes, forgive the reference to your family’s favorite animal, but you’re hung like a horse.”
“Really?” He sounded pleasantly surprised.
“Definitely.” Still stunned by this incredible intimacy Wesley was allowing, Nora tried to keep her voice calm. “Probably a good thing if you never try sex with a virgin. You’d kill the poor girl.”
“I think you’re about to kill me,” he breathed. She loved hearing his voice so hoarse and desperate.
Nora turned her hand again and ran just her fingertips up and down him, grinning as Wesley’s breath caught in his throat and his shoulders heaved. She wanted to pretend it was only a massage, but she couldn’t stop herself from imagining him inside her, filling her body with his, coming inside her, being his first lover. She forced the image away and focused on Wesley again.
“Wesley, I can do this all night. That doesn’t mean you have to. You can come whenever you want.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“It’s just me. We’re best friends. You don’t have to be ashamed or embarrassed, I promise. Just relax. Come for me,” she said, unable to stop giving orders even with Wesley.
Nora tightened her grip slightly and moved her hand faster. Wesley started breathing even harder. His back arched and she heard him inhale sharply. His whole body shuddered for a long time. Nora nearly gasped aloud at the intensity of his orgasm as her own inner muscles contracted with frustrated desire. While he breathed through the climax she held him before reluctantly letting him go. Grabbing a pair of his abandoned boxer shorts off the floor, she handed them to him. He said nothing as he cleaned himself off and tossed the wet boxers aside.
“Better?” she asked.
“Yeah, better,” he said, still panting a little. “Humiliated but better.”
Nora laughed and draped her arm over his chest.
“Wes, turn over.” Nora could sense Wesley’s unwillingness to obey. But he finally gave in and flipped back over. He lay on his side again face-to-face with her. She was relieved to see his eyes were as wide and innocent and unsullied as ever.
She placed her hand on his bare chest right over his heart.
“I’m going to tell you something that is completely true,” she said. “And you’re going to believe it’s true. And then we’re both going to go to sleep.”
“I’m listening.”
“It meant as much to me as it did to you,” she said and she did mean it.
Wesley nodded. “Okay, I believe you.”
Nora smiled at him, and he smiled back.
“Now go to sleep. On your stomach now if you’d like.”
“Good night, Nora,” he said and pushed her still damp hair off her face.
“Good night, John-Boy.”
Nora kissed him quick on the cheek and rolled over onto her side away from him. She tensed as Wesley reached out and pulled her back against his chest. It took her a moment to even believe he lay so close, that their bodies were shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. She settled in against him and let him hold her.
After a few minutes his breathing settled, slowing down until his breaths matched hers. He lay quiet for so long she thought he’d fallen asleep.
“I thought you’d be with Zach tonight,” Wesley said.
Nora found his hand and wrapped her fingers around his.
“No. I’m with you tonight.”
24
Zach spent the entire morning on the phone discussing the details of contracts and upcoming projects at Royal’s West Coast office. The meetings would normally have been rather enjoyable and interesting, but with Nora and last night’s events on his mind, he couldn’t concentrate. He rattled off information by rote, all the while thinking about how a few hours ago, he’d been wandering around New York’s most infamous underground S&M club with a Catholic priest and the son of John Fiske, the city’s most powerful financier. And then afterward in the car with Nora… He could still remember what she felt like on his fingers and how close he’d been to sliding inside her. Now in the Tuesday afternoon daylight, Zach had trouble believing it was real. He only had Nora as proof—Nora who seemed to pass from his world and into her world and back with frightening ease.
Meetings finally over, Zach got to sit down at his own desk in front of his computer. He discovered that he had twenty-five new pages from Nora and the promise of more to come.
I got up early this morning, Nora wrote. I was sleeping with Wes and he had an eight o’clock class. Microbiology at 8 fucking a.m.? Now that’s sadism.
You slept with your virgin intern last night? Zach replied after he read Nora’s email two more times to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. About fifteen minutes later Nora wrote back.
Don’t be jealous, darling. It was completely innocent. Well, mostly innocent. But you’ll have to excuse me while I get back to my homework. I’m not going to give you any excuse to pussy out on our deal.
I think I may live to regret those words, Zach wrote back.
You won’t regret a thing once I’m done with you. Now leave me alone. I’m Papa Hemingway today.
Nora was the opposite of Hemingway in every possible way. For one thing, she couldn’t write terse prose if she had a gun to her head. For another, Zach actually enjoyed reading Nora’s books.
Hemingway was the king of understatement, economy of words and brevity. Are you sure you of all people want to use him as a model? Zach replied.
Nora’s next email was answer enough.
Yes.
Zach was still laughing when J.P. came into his office.
“Smiling and laughter? This hall hasn’t seen nearly as much fog lately,” J.P. said. “Do we have a certain writer to thank for this astonishing change of weather?”
“We were discussing Hemingway.”
“Yes, a comic genius that Hemingway. How’s Sutherlin’s book coming?”
“Very well. We’ve got two and a half weeks left and two hundred pages to rewrite, but if she keeps up the pace, we’ll get it done right before I leave.”
“Tight schedule there, Easton. That’s a lot of quantity to expect a great deal of quality.”
“She can do both. She has drive and a strong incentive to get the book finished.”
“Yes, her unsigned contract’s still hanging over her head, isn’t it?”
Zach smiled and leaned back in his chair. It felt shockingly good to smile like that, like he had a wicked secret that was his to keep or tell. This must be what Nora felt every time she smiled.
J.P. must have seen the secret in the smile.
“It’s not just the contract that’s keeping her working so hard, is it?” J.P. said, stroking his beard with an amused twinkle in his eye.
“We’re not sleeping together. Haven’t so much as kissed her.” He omitted the office floor incident and last night in the car. Technically, they hadn’t kissed, not on the lips anyway.
“You can do a lot without bothering with kissing. I was young once.”
“Thanks to Nora I have enough disturbing images in my head to last two lifetimes. Please do not add to them.”
“At this point,” J.P. began, standing up, “I don’t really care how you get the book finished. Just get it finished before you go to L.A. and without getting on Page Six, and I’ll be the happiest man on the face of the earth. You are still going to L.A., aren’t you?”
Zach paused. Of course he was going to L.A. Wasn’t he? Then again, leaving New York meant leaving Nora. Leaving London had meant leaving Grace—he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to leave like that again. “Yes, I’m going to L.A. It’s all about the book, J.P.” Zach said.
“Keep telling yourself that, Easton,” J.P. said. He turned around and threw a small wrapped box to Zach. “You’ve got another present, by the way.”
Zach caught the box and sighed. His office prankster had continued sending little kinky presents every few days. With some trepidation, Zach opened it. He pulled out the contents and furrowed his brow at them. They looked something like clip-on silver earrings, lightweight and dangling. Hardly kinky at all. Was his prankster teasing him about cross-dressing? Zach put the earrings back in the box and stuffed the box in his messenger bag, not sure what else to do with them. He’d let Nora have them if she liked them.
He pulled her contract out of his top desk drawer and flipped through it again. He picked up a pen and thought about signing it. He could sign it now and not tell her; then when the book was finished, he could show her how much faith he’d had in her all along. A slight exaggeration considering how loath he was to work with her in the beginning, but he knew she would be touched.
Zach thought about J.P.’s question again. Was he still going to L.A.? Why wouldn’t he? The chief managing editor position was the reason he took the job at Royal after all. He said he was going and he would go. And he said he wouldn’t sign Nora’s contract until he read the last page and he wouldn’t. And when he told Nora they couldn’t sleep together until they were done working together, he meant it.
He refolded the contract with a clear conscience and stuffed it in his messenger bag.
