Page 1 of Devil In A Suit, Vol. 2

Chapter 1

When I get home, I feel like I’ve just been yanked out of a wonderful dream that’s ended in a nightmare. My body feels loose, but my head feels fuzzy. Everything seems sort of tilted.

I’m back in my apartment, where I was just a few hours earlier, but nothing’s the same.

As I stare around at my shabby furniture, the mostly bare shelves, the brick wall outside my one and only window, I realize there will always be a before and an after for me now.

BeforeI walked into that restaurant and after. Before I let Jared King put his lips on me and after.

Before I knew how good I could feel and after.

It should have been amazing. But instead the after feels like trudging through thick sand.

What does it mean that Jared had shut down like that? Will there be, as Jared said earlier at the restaurant, “another time?” Will I never feel his lips on mine again?

The questions spin in my head until I start to feel like I’m on a merry-go-round. And as I spin out, I start to get angry. Not at him, but at myself. I can’t believe I let myself think it was going to happen — that I wanted it to happen — only to have him brush me off so abruptly. I knew his reputation. I knew how he’d treated me before. Why did I think it could be any different? Why did I think Jared, King of the Brushoff, would do anything less with me?

Why did I think I was special?

After taking a desultory shower and then getting into some comfy shorts and a t-shirt, I climb into bed and stare at the ceiling, willing myself to just sleep and forget all of this.

But try as I might to go unconscious, memories of the night keep playing on a loop.

The way he looked like he wanted to possess every part of me when he said I knew I wanted to fuck you. The way my body warmed from the inside out when I heard those words. His strong hand on my back guiding me through the restaurant and into the car. The feeling of his thumb brushing across my nipples, his fingers gliding over my skin and inside me. His tongue and his breath and the hum of his lips as he brought me all the way to the edge, then roughly pushed me over.

I can’t believe that after all that, I’m simply lying in bed alone.

And so I do the only thing I can think of.

I call Janet. And despite the late hour, she’s more than happy to listen when I start telling her about the restaurant and the limo. I tell her, with just a little bit of stumbling and blushing, about what happened between us in the backseat. The one thing I haven’t told her, was that this dashing sex god was Jared King.

I know what she’d say if I admit the truth. The same thing I’ve been saying to myself. Mistake. Disaster. Playing with fire. Gonna get burned.

I don’t need to hear it from her, not when I’m already mortified by my own stupidity and gullibility. To have started to believe that Jared King actually gave a crap about me—that is just sheer stupidity.

“A coworker,” I tell her when she asks, because I don’t want to hear her judgment. Or maybe I just don’t want to hear her tell me what I know to be the truth, that getting involved with your boss, who is the CEO of the biggest firm in the one and only industry you want to work in, is not just a bad idea, but the worst of ideas.

Luckily, the description of my orgasm in the back of the car is enough to distract her from too many questions as to the true identity of my mystery date.

“Jesus, if I knew staying a virgin until I was twenty-two would get me the holy grail of orgasms in the back of a limo, I might have waited, too,” she says now. “I guess this guy went all out, getting a limo for a date, huh?” he says. “He must really like you.”

“I don’t know. I guess,” I say, hoping we can move on.

“It’s not a typical date car is all,” she continues.

“I think he comes from money,” I say.

“Well, he obviously took advantage of the perks of having a limo for the night, didn’t he?” Janet chuckles.

Janet has never had my nervousness around all things sex. As a funky free spirit in the art department in college, she’d had her fair share of painters and potters and performance artists (and even that one organic chemistry major who she said made her toes curl), and I’d been more than happy to serve as her sounding board.

She’s more than happy to return the favor, apparently.

“Anyway, I don’t know if it was the holy grail of orgasms,” I reply. “It’s not like I have much to compare it to.”

“Quinn, you were panting while you were describing it. That’s a pretty fucking good orgasm.”

“Yeah, but I’m still a virgin.”