My Ex Is Engaged to My Stepsister, and I'm Still His Wife novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Hold That Note

On her landing at twenty past midnight the contract is closed, and Josiah goes to his knees and teaches her the rule: hold the note or he stops.

Josiah took the earpiece out of his ear on my landing and put it in his coat pocket.

"It's twenty past twelve, Ms. Dunavant," he said. "The contract closed at midnight."

"I know. I watched the clock the whole drive."

"So you're not my client."

"No," I said. "I'm a woman with a key I can't get in the lock."

My hand was shaking too hard.

He took the key out of my fingers, touching only the key, and slid it in and turned it.

The door of the loft swung in on the dark and the smell of my own candles.

I pulled him in by the lapels and shut the door with my back, and I pulled his mouth down onto mine.

He kissed me slowly.

That surprised me, after the driveway, after two hundred phones, after how fast my heart had been going since the tent.

His mouth was warm, and he tasted of coffee and mint, and he kissed me with nowhere else in Nashville to be.

I got my hands inside his jacket and found the heavy leather at his hip and the shoulder rig under it.

"Take this off," I said.

"Yes, ma'am."

He unholstered it with two fingers, checked it, set it on top of my bookshelf, and shrugged out of the jacket.

Then he put one hand flat on the door beside my head and looked at me.

"Tell me to stop," he said, low, "any time."

"Don't you dare."

His eyes closed, and he made a sound in his chest that I felt through my own ribs.

His hands went everywhere except my left wrist.

They found my waist, my ribs, the zipper at my back, and he drew it down so slowly that I felt every tooth.

The black dress came off my shoulders and pooled on the floor around my heels.

I stood against the door in my bra and underwear, in the streetlamp light from the big window.

I did not cover myself.

He looked for a long time.

"You're beautiful," he said, in the voice that never moved. "I need you to hear that, because I'm about to be very quiet."

"Why quiet?"

"Because I've been working all night," Josiah said, "and I haven't been allowed to say a word."

I laughed, and it broke in the middle, and he kissed the broken part.

He kissed my jaw and my throat and the hollow under my collarbone.

He unhooked my bra with one hand and let it fall, and his mouth closed over my nipple, hot and slow.

I made a sound I had not made in six years.

I put my hands in his close-cut hair and held on.

He sucked harder, and my knees went, and he caught my weight against the door with one arm around my back.

"Careful," he said against my skin.

"I'm not careful tonight."

"I noticed."

He went down my body with his mouth.

He kissed my stomach and the line of my hipbone.

Then he knelt on my wooden floor in his good suit trousers and looked up at me.

"Ms. Dunavant," he said. "You sing."

"For a living."

"What's your best note?"

I stared down at him.

"A," I said. "The one above middle C. I can hold it forever."

"Then hold it for me."

He hooked his fingers in my underwear and drew it down my legs, and I stepped out of it.

He lifted my left leg over his shoulder, and the door held me up.

"Start the note," he said.

I hummed an A.

It came out thin and shaking, and then his mouth was on me, and it broke.

He stopped at once.

He sat back on his heels with his lips wet and his eyes dark and perfectly calm.

"Again," he said.

"You're serious."

"Hold the note, Ms. Dunavant. If it breaks, I stop."

I almost laughed.

I did not laugh, because I wanted his mouth back more than I had ever wanted anything on Music Row.

I found the A, and I held it.

He put his tongue flat against my clit and licked up slowly, and I held it.

He did it again, and my voice wobbled, and I held it.

He sucked, lightly, and the A went out of me in a gasp, and he took his mouth away.

"No," I said. "No, no, that's cruel."

"You said you wanted the best I had."

"I didn't say a thing."

"You said it with your whole face." His thumb stroked the inside of my thigh. "Again."

I found the note a third time and held it so hard my jaw ached.

He ate me with his whole mouth.

He was patient and thorough and in no hurry whatsoever.

The A stayed true in the dark because I would have died before I broke it.

He worked his tongue in a slow circle over my clit, and he slid two fingers into me and curled them.

My hips jerked off the door.

I was soaked, and I could hear it.

I could hear my own voice hold steady on one high clear note.

"Good," Josiah said against my pussy, in that low flat voice, and I nearly lost it. "That's it. Stay right there for me."

His fingers pressed up inside me where nobody had ever found me so fast.

He sucked my clit into his mouth, hard, and the note cracked in half and became a cry.

He did not stop.

"I broke it," I said, and I was crying out, and I did not care. "I broke it, I broke it."

"You did," he said, and he laughed against me, low. "I'm not stopping."

That was the last thing I understood.

I came with my head back against the door and his mouth on me.

My voice went up past the A into a register I only use on records.

My knees gave out completely.

He held me against the wood with one forearm across my hips and kept going until I begged him to be done.

I slid down the door and landed in his lap.

I sat there on his thighs in nothing at all, shaking, with my face against his throat.

He held me.

He put his big hand on the back of my head and rubbed slowly, and he said nothing.

His heartbeat was fast under my cheek, as fast as it had been in the driveway.

"Nobody has ever made me wait for anything," I said into his collar. "Six years. Colt took what he wanted, and I said thank you."

Josiah went still.

"Say that again," he said.

"He took what he wanted," I said.

"The other part."

"I said thank you," I said.

"Don't," Josiah said, very quietly, "say thank you to me."

I leaned back and looked at his face.

For the first time all night, the muscle in his jaw was working.

"I'm going to say your name," I said. "I'm going to say it right now, and I'm going to hold it."

"Not yet."

"Why not?"

"Because that one," Josiah said, "I haven't earned."

He lifted me off his lap and onto my feet, and he stood in one motion.

My legs were not working yet.

He took a clean handkerchief out of his trouser pocket, wiped his mouth with it, folded it, and put it back.

His trousers were tight at the front, and the shape under them was unmistakable.

I looked at that for a long time.

Then I went down on my knees on the wooden floor, in front of him, and put my hands on his belt.

"Ms. Dunavant," he said.

"You had a turn," I said.

"I did."

"Now it's mine," I said.

I undid the buckle and the button and drew the zipper down, and he did not stop me.

He was thick and hard and already wet at the tip.

He came free into my hand with a heat that made my mouth water.

I closed my fingers around him and stroked him from root to head, slowly, once.

His hand came down into my hair and tightened.

It was the first thing he had done all night that was not exactly measured.

"Look at me," he said.

I looked up.

His face was calm, and his eyes were not.

"You want to see if it moves," Josiah said. "My voice."

"Yes."

"Go ahead and try."

I leaned in and kissed the head of his cock, openmouthed, and then I hummed.

I hummed the A, low, against the wet tip, and I felt it travel through him.

His hips jerked, and his whole body went rigid.

The sound that came out of his chest was a groan he could not hold level.

It rose on the end.

"There," I said, and licked him once, slowly, root to tip. "There it goes."

"Ms. Dunavant."

"Say it again."

"Ms. Dunavant," Josiah said, and it was a full half step higher than before. "Get up."

"No."

"Ms. Dunavant," he said again, and his jaw tightened. "I am asking you."

"Then ask more nicely. One day you're going to say the other name, and I'm going to hold the note."

I took him in my mouth, as far as I could, and hollowed my cheeks.

He swore, softly, in a voice that was not level at all.

I moved my mouth on him slowly, wet and deep, with my hand working the base.

I hummed the A around him until his thighs shook under my palms.

I let him slip out of my mouth and dragged the wet head slowly across my lower lip.

Then I drew it down over my chin and my throat and the top of my breast, and I watched him watch it.

"You're doing that on purpose," he said.

"I'm doing all of it on purpose."

I rubbed the head over my nipple until it stood hard and shining, and his breath went out of him in a hiss.

His free hand opened and closed at his side.

He did not reach for me.

He was waiting to see how far I would go, and I wanted to show him.

He tasted clean and salty.

He pulled on my hair, not hard, just enough that I knew it was costing him.

"Enough," he said. "Enough, or this is over before it starts."

I let him slide out of my mouth with a wet sound and licked my lips.

He bent, put his hands under my arms, and lifted me to my feet in one motion.

"The bed," he said, and his voice was almost level again. "Now."

"Yes, Mr. Hardaway."

"Don't do that."

"Yes, Mr. Hardaway," I said again, and walked backward through the bedroom door with his hand in mine.

That was the warm-up, and we both knew it.

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