Beautiful Bastard: Beautiful Boss Part 3

"Exactly my point," he said, gently coaxing me back and pressing me to the bed. My legs fell open and he moved to his knees, hips between my parted thighs and his silhouette framed by the large windows. I looked up at him, struck in that moment by how much bigger he was than me, the way his wide shoulders and broad back were enough to blot out the city lights behind him.

I reached up, feeling the shape of him still in his pants, and squeezed, a little too tight, just the way he liked it.

With a grunt he lowered his head, leaning to lick at the hollow of my throat. The ceiling blurred and I closed my eyes, lost to the sensation of his mouth and teeth, the sc.r.a.pe of his chin, the pressure where his fingers worked to make room for himself inside my body.

I gasped, arching my spine against the bed and dragging my nails down his shoulder and across his back, hard, but not too hard. Not sure if he was ready yet. Will liked for it to hurt sometimes, asked for it. It was that thing that pushed him over the edge when he was so close he couldn't catch his breath or think or even ask for what he wanted. He only knew he wanted more.

Will must have seen the question in my eyes because he swallowed and took a shaky breath. "Make it hurt," he said.

I twisted my fingers in his hair, desperate and deep and just rough enough that his hips shot forward in surprise.

I rolled Will to his back and lifted my leg to straddle his hips. In the soft light I registered the surprise on his face and the way he dragged his teeth over his bottom lip when I reached up and unfastened my bra.

Cool air spilled across my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and my nipples hardened. Will freed himself of his pants and maneuvered my panties down and off my body. His skin was warm beneath me, his thighs firm and covered in soft hair. His hard c.o.c.k rested against his stomach.

I pushed up onto my knees and positioned him where I wanted, smoothing him against me, teasing him.

"Do you want this?" I asked.

He nodded against the pillow, thumbs pressed into my hips, fingers gripping my a.s.s. I lowered myself slowly slowly until he was fully inside.

Will groaned helplessly, thrusting up into me while I moved over him. His hands reached to cup my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and lifted, squeezed them together before he sat up and took a nipple into his mouth.

"Will."

He moaned around me, sucking harder before releasing it, his tongue drawing circles around the tip. He was so deep, and all I could think about or feel or hear was him. His stomach was slick with sweat where it moved against mine, his thighs firm against my a.s.s. His fingers where he held me down and lifted me up slipped as he held me tighter, tried to move us faster.

With a groan, he flipped us over, throwing me to my back, his head down and hair fallen over his forehead. He watched where he moved inside of me, in and out. Harder. Faster.

An eternity, but never long enough.

"f.u.c.k, Plum," he said, kissing me until it was too much and my mouth was practically raw. With one hand he lifted my leg and pushed it to my chest.

"Jesus f.u.c.k," he said, pistoning his hips faster now, each thrust pus.h.i.+ng against something inside me that had me seeing stars.

I reached up, fingers grappling for the headboard, needing something to hold on to. Each snap of his hips pushed me further up the mattress and deeper inside that place in my head where static roared and the growing tension inside my lower belly-the friction and heat between my legs-became impossible to ignore.

"Will," I breathed, gasping against his open mouth. I was going to come and I needed to come with him, feel him coming inside me and then again and again, on my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and my stomach, my lips.

Will reached for the edge of the mattress and pushed my leg farther into my chest and that was it. Heat exploded between my legs and ricocheted through every part of me. My toes curled, and I was coming so hard I couldn't cry out or even say his name. He rocked into me one last time, so deep it took the breath from my lungs and I could feel him, muscles tense as he came inside me.

Will fell back to the bed and pulled me with him, cradling me into his side. "Holy s.h.i.+t."

I blinked up at the ceiling, waiting for my breathing to return to normal. My bones were rubber; air cooled my fevered skin. I looked over to Will before reaching for the clock on the side of the bed. Six hours, twenty-two minutes to go. Not bad.

Sitting up, I filled two gla.s.ses from a bottle of chilled water on the bedside table, emptied mine in a single long draft, and climbed up onto Will's lap.

His eyes moved down my naked body before he took the other gla.s.s from my hand. I watched him drink, marveling at his throat as he swallowed, his bare chest, his messy hair. This body? Was mine. Once he'd finished, I took the empty gla.s.s and pushed him back down to the pillows.

"Now," I said, raising a single brow, "about that list . . ."

Three.

Will "Are you sure you don't mind postponing the honeymoon?" On the couch at my side, Hanna turned her face up to me, squinting in the late-afternoon sun that streamed through our living room window. "Are you worried it will feel sort of . . . anticlimactic?"

A wild wedding, a sleepless wedding night, another interview checked off the list, and there we were: one week later, already back in our apartment, back in our day-to-day life.

There was something rea.s.suring about taking the monumental step but then immediately falling back into pace with the rest of life. It reaffirmed what I'd told Hanna all along: The us beneath it all didn't have to change. We could still be exactly who we were before. Married folk definitely lazed around in their underwear on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

"I'm fine waiting." I kissed her nose, pulling her closer. "As long as you don't tack on any more interview trips in the meantime."

Our rescheduled honeymoon was already booked for a little over a month after the wedding-late October-with a job-interview-free week beforehand to pack, finish up anything important in the lab, and hold any critical meetings. I wanted as much time with Hanna at home as possible.

I felt her response to this in her tiny hesitation saw it in her small wince. "Hanna?"

"Not even for Caltech?" she asked sweetly.

What an odd feeling: to be fed up, to want to roll my eyes when my wife-holy f.u.c.k, my wife-received an interview request from Cal-f.u.c.king-tech.

"And when would it be?" I asked.

"Late October? We would still have a few days to get ready for the trip." Her smile was so sweet, so genuinely hopeful, how could I possibly tell her no?

How would I, anyway? This was her career, her dream. Hanna was being courted by academic inst.i.tutions all over the world. Her first interviews had been local: Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins. But then the invitations had spread: Cal, Stanford. Max Planck in Germany. Oxford in the UK. And now, Caltech.

The thing was, we hadn't really talked about how it would be if she wanted to move. We were in a holding pattern, stuck in a conversation on pause.

I kissed her nose again in answer.

"Does that mean yes?" she asked, studying me with a little smile.

"It means I would never tell you no, Plum. I think you should visit the universities you want to consider." Kissing her mouth, I asked, "Do you feel like you have a favorite yet?"

She scrunched her nose at this. "I mean, not really?"

I watched her blink a few times, the tiny panic a little flutter in her breath. This process was a daunting one. I remembered being at that point myself: out of my post-doc and ready to tackle the next phase of my career, yet unable to believe, no matter how good my publications were, or how many job interviews I got, that I'd be able to hack it day in and day out running a lab. Research is scary. Academic research is cutthroat.

It's one of the reasons I went into industry: I trusted my ability to determine whether a technology could be profitable and how to get it there more than I trusted my ability to come up with something innovative in its own right.

Likewise, Hanna knew her own strengths: her technical creativity was nearly limitless, and she had a rare ability to easily integrate everything she read into the broader scientific context. She would make an amazing professor. I simply worried it would take more out of her than she antic.i.p.ated.

Best to cross that bridge when we come to it.

She took a deep breath, looking past me up at the ceiling. "The head of the department at Caltech sounds amazing. She seems really happy. I sort of imagined this department full of old, awkward nerd dudes, but apparently it isn't like that at all."

"No?"

"Well, at least not primarily. I'm sure there are still plenty of awkward nerd dudes." Shaking her head, she continued, "Her name is Linda Albert. She made me feel like I would have time for things outside of the lab, which I never hear on these calls. She asked about you, about your job and how you're taking this whole interview process."

"She did?"

Hanna nodded, sipping from her mug of tea before stretching to return it to the coffee table. She snuggled back into my arms. "I told her you were amazing. I told her you're the most competent man I know."

I pulled away, gazing down at her. A smile tugged at my mouth. "Did you say it like that?"

Hanna shook her head, confused. "Like what?"

"Like there are categories of competence, and a competent man is a lesser category."

She laughed, holding up her hands. "No, no, I-"

I bent, tickling her waist, and she fell back on the couch. "As in, I'm not a bad driver . . . for a dog."

Laughing harder, she wrestled against my invading, tickling fingers.

"Basically, you told the head of biotech at Caltech that your husband is a water-skiing squirrel."

She grinned up at me, and I slowed my a.s.sault, bending instead to kiss her, to slide my lips on top of hers, feel her closed mouth opening against mine.

I moved my hand up from her waist, resting my first two fingers just above her collarbone, feeling her pulse there.

"Love you," she murmured lazily, eyes closed.

"I love you, too."

I watched her relax on our couch, listened to the sounds of cars and people outside. The early autumn breeze slid in through the window, cooling as night approached.

"It's so good in the quiet," Hanna said.

"It's always good." I smiled, absently humming a song I knew she liked lately, listening to the rhythm of her breath.

The pad of her finger traced the plum tattoo on my arm, and slid lower, to the black H on my hip, her favorite.

"What do you want to do tonight?" she asked.

I shrugged, running my fingers up through the soft tangle of her hair. "This. Be married. Maybe put on a movie. Order some dinner. Go to bed and f.u.c.k for a while."

"Can I switch up the order of that a little?" she asked, fingers sliding just under the waistband of my boxers.

But as if the universe heard our plans and laughed out loud at this bulls.h.i.+t, the pounding of footsteps sounded outside in the hallway before a symphony of fists met our door.

Hanna startled, bolting upright. "What the h.e.l.l?" she asked, turning to look at me.

"Bergstrom-Sumnerses!" Max shouted from the hallway. "Open thy door!"

"I think they went with Sumner-Bergstrom," I heard George correct.

My stomach dropped.

Before the wedding, we'd had no time for parties: Hanna was traveling, I was working, life was too busy for the requisite bachelor and bachelorette shenanigans. And to be frank, neither of us much needed them anyway; we didn't need any particular send-off for the single days-much to the friends' dramatic, and vocal, disappointment. In the past week, we'd fallen back into routine and planned for a quiet post-wedding weekend at home. Hanna wanted us to be together at our apartment before another flurry of work trips began.

The friends knew this.

They knew we were home.

s.h.i.+t.

They had promised us a party when the wedding was done.

"I think I know what this is." I stood, walking to the front door and not giving one single f.u.c.k that I was wearing nothing but my boxers. They wanted to come here unannounced? They'd get what they got.

The door swung open to reveal Chloe and Bennett, Max and Sara, and George, holding an armful of booze.

"Surprise!" everyone yelled in unison.

Everyone but George, who was staring at my boxers. "It's like you knew I was coming over."

"Wow. Hey, guys," I said flatly.

"You have no choice but to let us get you drunk and have our collective way with you," Chloe said, holding up an armful of lacy garments. "Some of these are for Hanna, but most of them George picked out for you."

"Well then h.e.l.l, come in," I said, stepping aside.

Max and Bennett lingered in the hall, looking guilty. I raised my brows, looking at them expectantly. "You guys coming in or . . . ?"

They hesitated, sharing a glance between them.

"The wives thought . . ." Max began, taking in my minimalist outfit.

"No, hey, it's cool," I said, giant fake smile in place. "The new wife and I were just about to enjoy some newlywed s.e.x, but, see, this is way better."

"Look," Bennett said, "we probably should have called first, but . . . Chloe."

"Called first?" I laughed, clapping their shoulders roughly and pulling them inside. These d.i.c.ks were getting so drunk they wouldn't be able to walk home. "No need to call! You're welcome to come into my house and hang out with me and my new bride in our underwear any f.u.c.king time."

Max slunk in, laughing quietly. "Well, s.h.i.+t."

"First shots for these gentlemen," I said, putting an arm around each of their shoulders. "They'd like to get these here festivities done started!"

Chloe followed George into the kitchen, while Sara went to the living room, hugging a still sh.e.l.l-shocked Hanna and putting on some music. An upbeat rock song filtered through the apartment, and they both came back to where the rest of us had gathered.

Hanna slipped her arms around my waist, meeting my eyes. "What just happened?" she asked me through a laugh.