Work Violation (Cook County Book 2) Read online

  Then it happens, without a single word being uttered between us. His arm shoots out, grabbing the back of my neck, the other one grappling my hip and tugging me forward. My palms flatten on his chest, wedged between us as he lowers his mouth and takes my lips like he owns them.

  I flex my fingers to make sure this is real. That his mouth is really devouring me. That his tongue battling with mine is not just a crazy delusion. When his hands start to roam, holding me tighter, his kiss goes deeper. He releases the sexiest deep moan from his throat, and I let myself sink into him, letting him take me.

  I start moving, pulling him with me. His hands go to my ass, and I fly back onto the bed, his body soon following, pressing me into the mattress. I feel him everywhere. Opening my eyes, I see his wide open and watching me as the kiss morphs into something wild and rough, and oh so very hot.

  The atmosphere shifts, a new sense of urgency bouncing between us. I drop my hands down his back, tugging his shirt up his chest. He rips his mouth from mine, lifting up his arms just long enough to tear the offending piece of clothing off and throw it behind us before his hungry gaze drags down my chest. He lowers his lips to the base of my throat, sucking the skin between his teeth before running his tongue down between my breasts and doing the same thing there. My back arches off the bed, my body humming with want and need and growing desperation to feel his skin on mine, head to toe, inside and out.

  Thanking the high heavens I wore a front-clasping bra, I push up on my elbows, peppering kisses on his neck, shoulders, and those pecs I’ve imagined doing things to since I saw them the day we met. Then his body is sliding down mine until he’s on his knees beside the bed and his fingers are dragging my dress up my legs. Needing to be naked now, I lift up and expedite the process, grabbing my dress’s hem, lifting my butt, and ripping the offending fabric over my head so I’m lying there in my bra and underwear—thankfully, a sexy purple matching set—and nothing else.

  He takes over, his lips quirked in a devastatingly sexy smile. His hands hook behind my knees, and with a wicked glint in his eyes, he jerks me down the bed, draping my legs around his shoulders, my silk panties now barely an inch away from his lowered face. His fingers slide up and down my calves, a move that would’ve had me mounting his face if he hadn’t already made that decision for me. He looks up at me as he takes a long, slow breath in, then breathes out, closing his hot mouth over my clit. Warm air collides with wet heat, causing a shudder to contort my entire body from hips to head. Then his fingers slide up the inside of my legs, his nails providing unimaginable friction on their way to the apex of my thighs. His eyes stay locked to mine as he hooks his thumb inside the fabric of my underwear, shifting it out of the way before diving right on in, lips, teeth, tongue, mouth, touching every part of me. Licking, nipping, rolling, sucking… tasting. My head jerks back, digging into the bed. My hands go to my bra, unhooking the front clasp and rushing to tear it off me. Then they separate, one to his hair, one to my breast, his eyes flashing when I pull and twist my pert nipple. His ministrations speed up, his hands joining the party as he drags my arousal up to my clit and back down again before easing his more than capable index finger deep inside me and curling the tip.

  His head rocks against me, his arm down below his waist. Knowing he’s so far gone he can’t stop himself from jacking off while giving me head is almost enough to send me over the edge.

  The longer he keeps up his frenzied attack, the harder it is to keep my wits about me. My vision goes hazy, my give-a-shit meter on whether anyone can hear us rapidly dropping to dangerous levels.

  I feel my climax bearing down on me, my heart galloping forward at an alarmingly fast pace, making me not sure whether it’ll be the heart attack or an orgasm that will be my undoing. I can’t think of a better way to go.

  Then it hits me that there’s only one way I want this to happen.

  My hands drop to his shoulders, firmly pushing him back and his mouth out of reach. His brows bunch together as he meets my desperate gaze. I curve my lips and beckon him back up onto the bed. I quickly shuck my panties off, kicking them to the side as I spread my legs wide for him.

  He rises to his feet at the edge of the mattress, his eyes hooded and hungry as they roam up and down my naked body. My focus is completely transfixed on his long, hard cock pointing straight up from his open jeans, no underwear to be found. I’ve always loved a man going commando.

  His eyes drop to my curved mouth, my tongue licking my bottom lip when he digs into his jeans pocket to pull out a welcome foil packet. He rips it open with his teeth, one hand fisting up and down his shaft before he throws the condom wrapper on the floor and rolls the latex down to the base. Kicking his jeans off and away, he puts a knee to the bed and crawls back over me, his hips wedging between mine as he rests an elbow beside my head and slams his mouth down. I place my hands on either side of his face and hold him in place, tasting myself on his lips. I swirl my tongue around his, the kiss going wild as he notches the head of his cock at my entrance, and with a hard thrust of his hips, buries himself inside me with a deep groan. I cry out, ripping my mouth from his and burying my face in his neck to muffle my moans as we both set a manic pace. My nails rake his back, his teeth grate against my shoulder before latching on to my neck. I drop one hand to his ass, hooking my ankles behind his thighs, wanting to feel the power behind his dizzying thrusts as they drive me higher and higher.

  I run my hands up his back and over his shoulders, cupping his jaw and pouring everything I have into our kiss. He braces himself on one arm, my mouth chasing his, our lips fusing together as he snakes a hand between us, his thumb finding my clit with pinpoint accuracy. Proving he’s a quick study, he circles and rolls over the sensitive nub in just the right way, not missing a single stroke of his cock inside me—in fact, he drives harder and deeper.

  His thrusts get clumsy; his grunts get rougher. My blood pumps faster, pooling deep inside me and making me light-headed as my entire body tingles, ready to spark an inferno that could raze the entire city.

  Then he goes deep, once… twice… and when he plants himself a third and final time, I detonate, screaming his name into his mouth as he groans husky and low into mine, his body stilling, mine clenching him like a vise. He gently glides his cock back and forth, easing us back down to Earth from the heights we just traveled to. I tear my mouth from his, resting my forehead in the crook of his neck as I try to catch my breath and regather my scattered wits about me.

  I was a fool to think I could do this and remain unaffected. An idiot to imagine that something physical between us would be anything short of fucking dynamite.

  And now… I’m scrambling to work out what comes next because with Jax’s lips still placing gentle kisses against my temple, his breathing labored, his cock still throbbing inside me, my mind is blank.

  I’m not sure I even know which way is up.

  Or if I’m ever going to be the same again.

  Cheers to well-meaning plans that backfire.

  I’m barely starting to think straight before Jax sits bolt upright, his eyes glued to the door.

  He tilts his head to the side for no more than a second before I push his arm hard and shove him off the bed, making him land on the floor with a loud thump. I sit up and scramble under the blankets. He leans over with a wide-eyed, incredulous expression when there’s a creak of a floorboard in the hallway. I cover up just in time to save myself from indecently exposing myself to Mrs. Cook—Jax’s mother—of all people.

  Her mouth drops open when she sees me cowering in the bed, only my head and bare shoulders showing.

  “Oh, Veronica. I didn’t know you were up here. Did I wake you?”

  “No,” I reply a little too quickly, knowing I must look as guilty and embarrassed as I’m feeling right now. My stomach is in knots as she looks around the room. I see the situation she walked in on dawn on her.

  “Oh… oh…” she says with a knowing glint in her eye. “Well, I guess when needs
must, you’ve got to take matters into your own hands. Good on you, girl.” She shoots me a wink. “I’ll let you get back to it,” she adds before giving a short wave and pulling the door closed behind her.

  I stare at the space she left in stunned silence, my brain slowly engaging. My eyes bug out of my head, my cheeks bright red.

  Mrs. Cook didn’t spring me post-coitus with her son—that would have been infinite times better. No, she thinks I was up here rubbing the bean… letting my fingers do the walking… and during my best friend’s engagement party! Because apparently when people have a need, they have to run upstairs, get completely naked, and go to town on themselves. Um, NO!

  Before I give it any more thought, or remember what I was going to say to Jax before the unplanned interruption, I jump from the bed, scramble to grab my dress and bra off the floor, and hightail it into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.

  This was supposed to be my chance to act on my crush on Jax and finally make the man talk to me. Instead, I’m locked in the bathroom and too embarrassed to even face Jax, let alone talk to the man.

  However, there is one thing I now know for sure. I can never show my face around these people again.

  The curse that has hexed my love life seems to have struck again.

  And come Monday morning, I can imagine it’s only going to get worse.

  Jax

  Monday morning, I’m up at the butt crack of dawn for my first day of teaching. My class isn’t until this afternoon, but I’d already planned to meet up with Bry before his nine a.m. class to go over my lesson plan.

  I still can’t get my head around it—the guy who hated school and couldn’t wait to get out of there now being an adjunct professor teaching two photography classes at college.

  Yesterday, I woke up on my couch, my head throbbing, my mouth drier than a kitchen sponge, and a brain full of unanswered questions.

  Like why did Ronnie lock herself in the guest bathroom and not come out again? Why did she leave me standing on the other side of the door, asking—near on begging—for her to talk to me? Why did she shove me off the bed when she thought we were about to get sprung?

  And why, when Mom immediately jumped to the conclusion that Ronnie was in bed ringing her own bell, did the woman not set Mom straight? I’m a big boy, I’ve got a lot of experience facing my mother in embarrassing situations.

  That one is understandable. Maybe she regretted what we’d done. It’s possible she wanted to talk to me before telling my mother she’d just rocked my world. Or, maybe her brain was so scrambled by the hot-as-hell sex we’d just had that she couldn’t think of option A or B, so she went with none of the above.

  Following her up the stairs, I only had a brief moment of indecision. It wasn’t questioning what I wanted—which was Ronnie. It was giving a thought as to what would happen when I found her. Would one of us realize it was a disaster waiting to happen and walk away? Would we be able to stop at just once?

  When I saw her standing there, her eyes shining back at me from the dim light of the hallway, I didn’t care about any of the what if’s. When I saw her bare feet, I’d never seen anything more endearing.

  When I shut the door, crossed the room, and kissed her like it was the last thing I’d ever do on earth, I was done for.

  We didn’t say a single word before we were all over each other. Then momentum took over, and there wasn’t a part of her I didn’t want to touch, taste, kiss, and take.

  Thank fuck she was on the same page as me, because that first kiss was like putting a flame to a fuse. Once it was lit, there was no stopping the explosion.

  When it was over, I was trying to come up with the right words to say other than “let’s do that again until we die” when I heard Mom’s voice. I flew off the bed, landing on the floor with a thump, kind of dazed. Yes, I may have stayed frozen in a ball, naked as the day I was born, condom still stuck to my softening dick, and not exactly in a position to make my presence known. Then again, I didn’t expect the conversation that went down between them, or for the normally bright, bubbly, outspoken Ronnie to barricade herself in the bathroom until I left.

  I didn’t stop once I got dressed, making my way downstairs to grab my camera from the backyard, giving Bryant and Cohen a quick wave goodbye before hightailing it out of there and catching a ride home.

  That brings me to now, using the key to my new office, “Jaxon Cook, Adjunct Professor” on a slide-in name-card beside the door. Swinging the door open and stepping inside, I’m first struck by how small it is then next, how goddamn dusty it is, making me think it’s been empty since last century. Of course it sets my allergies off, one sneeze soon following another, my eyes watering like a girl getting named prom queen. I’m looking for a window, hoping to get some fresh air in the place to give me some chance of breathing freely again when there’s a knock outside. My grinning twin brother pops his head in.

  “Welco—whoa. What died in here?” he says, scrunching his face up.

  “Me, if I don’t clear this dust out.” I sneeze twice in a row, dumping my brown leather messenger bag on the desk and digging inside it for tissues.

  “Shit. Of all the things we don’t share, those death allergies of yours I’m grateful to miss out on.”

  I snicker and look him up and down. “Makes up for everything you missed in the dick department, doesn’t it?”

  He flips me the bird, shuts the door behind him, and takes a seat in front of the desk.

  “I thought we were meeting later?”

  “Oh, we are, but you avoided me yesterday and our lunch meeting is for work. Now, I wanna know why you ran out of Jamie’s with your tail between your legs.”

  “That wasn’t my tail,” I deadpan. He quirks a brow and uses our damn twin-sense trick on me.

  “Asshole,” I mutter, my smirk belying the word.

  “Seriously, though. What happened upstairs?”

  I run my fingers through my hair, shaking my head with a smile on my lips. “You probably wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  “It was incredible until we finished. I went to talk to her to ask what it meant and before I could, I was flying off the bed and she was talking to Mom about masturbation.”

  His eyes almost do that spring motion out of his head. “Say what?” he says with a laugh.

  “Yep. Then when Mom left, Ronnie was up out of bed and locked in the bathroom, refusing to talk to me, let alone come out and face me. So I left and went to the house to sleep it off.”

  “Explains the disappearing act. So now what?”

  “Now what, what?”

  He rolls his eyes and huffs out a breath. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “What can I do? I don’t even have her phone number, and it’s not like I can just call April and ask for it.”

  He rubs his chin and looks out the window. “You could ask Betty for it? You know she’s a sucker for a good romance.” Betty is April’s ex-mother-in-law and until recently, lived with April and Axel. She now stays in April’s old house next to the first Cook Construction house flip.

  I bark out a laugh. “Yeah… but that will raise other questions. Especially if she mentions it to Mom, which is highly likely since those two are almost joined at the hip.”

  “Good point,” he muses. “Well waiting until the next family event might be too long. You’ve gotta strike while the iron is hot. Or while the—”

  “Don’t even finish that sentence.” I smirk and he just rolls his eyes at me.

  “Right. Well, good chat and all that.” He stands and moves to the door. “Let me know if you get lost or fall into a deep pit of despair. Otherwise I’ll see you for lunch at twelve.”

  “Right. And thanks for not giving me shit about Ronnie.”

  “I’m the last person to talk about wanting a woman and not going after her. You made your move. It’s just that our mother had unfortunate timing—as always—and put a kink in your plans. You’ll
get your shot again. You’ve just got to be patient. Besides…” he says, pulling the door open. “You’ve waited almost ten months. What’s a few more weeks before the next gathering? Or you could orchestrate another meeting, hold a ‘pot-luck fix-up’ day at the new house. Tell April and Jamie to bring her along,” he says with a shrug. “I’ve gotta get to class. Have fun.”

  He gives me a wave then shuts the door behind him, leaving me alone with the dust and the dingy old desk. I look at the bare walls and decide it needs some colorful landscape photos to brighten it up. Distraction is key. I’ll put Ronnie out of my mind until the next time I see her, but then, it’s on like Donkey Kong. I wanted her, I had her, and she’s definitely not out of my system. I need another chance to do it right… without interruptions. Hopefully I won’t lose the ability to talk next time either.

  After a productive lunch with Bry at a local coffee shop, I’m really looking forward to this first class. Standing in front of the empty room, watching and waiting for the clock to strike the top of the hour, I’m filled with a nervous excitement. I have a unique, real-life perspective I can offer these thirty-one students in this Introduction to Photography class, something I’ve developed during more than ten years of professional experience.

  Quickly glancing toward the back wall of the room, I watch the hand of the clock count down the last few seconds before five to the hour, and as if a magic gate was opened, so does the door from the corridor. A stream of students—a lot of them wide-eyed and looking terrified—enter the room, taking chairs behind the rows of desks.

  I scan the room, nodding to some students, smiling at others, before taking my own seat and organizing my class plan and notes in front of me. There’s a buzz in the air, electrified with a new, fresh-eyed energy that comes with being green and untouched by professional and industry influences.