One That Got Away Read online

  He groaned. “Fuck, Emily. What you do to me.”

  “Mmmm,” she mouthed and his dick twitched in her mouth. She hummed again letting the vibrations flow on the rod she sucked.

  “Oh fuck!” he moaned.

  Encouraged, Emily nibbled on the underside of his cock and down to his balls. Here his scent was even more intoxicating, she could barely breathe. Her clit tingled and her own moisture slicked her folds. On an impulse she sucked in one ball, taking in the succulent globe, while massaging his cock with her hand.

  “Suck it, babe,” he breathed raggedly. “Damn, oh fuck, don’t stop.”

  Emily had no intention of stopping. The desire to please him filled her, and she forgot about herself as she concentrated on his pleasure. Her heart opened wide, loving how his cock throbbed to the beating of her heart. She wanted nothing more than to give him all the love she had. This act, which at other times and with other men seemed mean and crass, became the single fulfillment of all she held in her heart for him.

  For so many years they were apart, and every single day, compared to this moment, felt empty and hollow. Her heart became a glowing ember ready to burst into flames.

  She took his cock into her mouth as far as she could take it and he writhed under her. Luke muttered things she couldn’t hear as she was concentrating so hard giving him everything she could. She rocked back and forth, groaning around his hard male heat, frenzied with the desire to make him come.

  His fists beat the bed as if he was trying to hold something back and she sucked even harder.

  “Oh hell, Em. You gotta, I’m going, oh shit.” He vainly tried to push her shoulders away and off him, but she was a woman on a mission. She wrapped her fists around the base of his throbbing dick slicked with her spit and moved them in concert with her mouth.

  That did him in.

  His back arched as he pushed her head down onto him as his first shot flew down her throat. Yes! Luke’s release brought a triumph that excited her more than any sex she had in her life. As he throbbed, giving all of himself to her, she brought her hand to the sensitive source of her own fire. She stiffened and her nipples became hard nubs that tingled without being touched. A thousand sparks engulfed her body as she thought she would explode. Was that even possible?

  Finally, they both stilled and Emily rested her head against him with Luke’s cock still in her mouth.

  “Baby,” said Luke, raising his head. “Are you okay?”

  Emily raised her head, letting go of his softening manhood and smiled. “Never better.”

  His eyes widened when she spoke. She smiled again, realizing he hadn’t expected her to swallow. “Come here,” he said, reaching out his arms to her. She moved off his body and up his side to nestle in his arms. “Baby, you are so very good when you are bad.”

  “Good,” Emily said. “Now it’s your turn to show me how good you are being bad.”

  #

  The early morning light splashed through the blinds on the bedroom windows. Emily got up as quietly as she could and dressed in jeans and a shirt she packed in her overnight bag.

  “Hey,” said Luke sleepily. “Where’re you going?”

  “I’ve got to get ready for work. I didn’t bring any work clothes with me.” She was supposed to call her boss yesterday and with everything completely forgot to.

  Luke sat up and rubbed his face with his hands.

  She bent over, kissed him and scrunched up her nose. “Your beard feels like sandpaper.”

  “Good. I want you to feel it when I kiss you.”

  “Oh, I feel it.” She closed her eyes as she rubbed her cheek against the roughness. “I don’t know if I can leave you. I feel like I just found me because of you.”

  “It’s just for a little while.”

  “That’s what Romeo thought when he said goodbye to Juliet.”

  “I’m not Romeo. For one thing, I’m older, and the second, I have an iPhone. Makes communication a whole lot easier.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “When you see a blocked call, it’ll be from me.” He stared up at the ceiling a moment. “Should things get real dicey, here…” Luke pulled out a piece of paper from his desk drawer and wrote down an email address and a password. “That’s my qmail account. I don’t use it much. If you don’t hear from me, check the drafts file in my email. I’ll leave you a message there.”

  “That’s sounds cloak and dagger. Where did you learn this?”

  “From a television show,” he said with a shrug. “You feel free to do the same thing if there is something you want to tell me, but don’t think you can say over the phone.”

  “You expect things to get real bad, don’t you?” She shivered. All of a sudden it seemed too real. Like there was real danger. Not a fairytale ending.

  “I just don’t know, Emily. It’s good to have a backup plan. First and foremost I want you safe. If you have any problems, call this guy.”

  Luke wrote a name, Saks, and a phone number on the same piece of paper.

  “Who’s he?”

  “One of my employees. I’ll be keeping in touch with him.”

  “Okay.” Emily took the piece of paper. If she stayed any longer, she would never leave. Tears filled her eyes. “I have to go, Luke.”

  “One last kiss,” he whispered, standing.

  She smiled, a tear slipping down her cheek. “It better not be our last kiss.”

  “Okay. Last kiss for now.” Luke wiped the single tear and pulled her hard to him. He crushed his mouth on her lips.

  Emily’s knees got weak under her, making it difficult to pull away.

  Luke finally broke the kiss and swatted her butt. “Out, before I throw you back on the bed.”

  “Gosh. You just make it so hard to resist you.” She smiled despite the depression hanging heavy in her heart. She was terrified this might be goodbye.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mrs. Diggerty

  Emily sat in the chair in front of Mr. Hobson’s desk waiting for his response to what she just told him.

  “Miss Dougherty, I can’t have this kind of thing interrupting this office.”

  “I agree. I took steps yesterday and got a protective order.”

  “No, I mean you’ve lost so much time already, I think—”

  “Mr. Hobson, before you say anything else, you might want to call my lawyer.” She slid Justin’s card across the desk to him. “He’ll explain that Connecticut has employment laws that protect a domestic violence victim. It’s required by law that you give me any court time needed to protect myself.”

  “Connecticut is an ‘at will’ state.”

  “I know that Mr. Hobson. But there are protections for employees like me. I hope you understand. For too long I haven’t done the right thing to protect myself. Now it’s time I do.”

  “I can appreciate that, Miss Dougherty. But I’m afraid I’ve made up my mind. Security will stand by your desk while you clear out your things and then escort you out.”

  “What?” This wasn’t happening! She pictured a completely different scenario in her head.

  “Don’t make this harder than it has to be. If you don’t want to cooperate I’ll have security escort you out directly and I’ll send your things to you.”

  “Mr. Hobson, you can’t do this! The law says you can’t do this.”

  He looked at her sternly. “I suggest then that you talk to your lawyer. Good-bye, Miss Dougherty.”

  His phone rang and he picked it up, swiveling in his seat facing away from her.

  Emily rose on shaky legs and went to her desk. She sat there staring at her computer screen as cold shivers ran down her body. It was inconceivable that despite the law Mr. Hobson fired her.

  “Miss.”

  Emily looked up to see a security guard standing beside her cubicle.

  “You have to leave, Miss.”

  “Yes,” she said. She still didn’t move.

  “Do you need help with your things?”

&nbs
p; She shook her head and looked at her cubby. Emily didn’t keep much there. There was a picture of her and her family and a calendar. She didn’t care about the calendar. It was something she got for a grab bag gift at Christmas. When she opened the drawers of her desk, she found a few small personal items. Again, these weren’t important but she put them in her purse anyway. She picked up the picture.

  “I guess that’s it,” she said quietly. Emily rose and walked toward the front door. The people she worked with for the past five years didn’t even look at her. It was as if she didn’t exist. The guard opened the door for her.

  She barely realized when she left the building until she stood beside her car.

  “Are you okay, Miss? Do you want me to call someone?”

  “He fired me.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  “He shouldn’t have done that.”

  “You should leave now.”

  “Yes, of course.” Emily unlocked the car and sat in it. The guard stepped back as she started the car automatically and drove slowly out of the parking lot in a state of shock. The spring day was bright and sunny, but she didn’t notice. Swinging onto the highway was done without thought. Likewise, she didn’t realize it when she made it home or how long she sat in the car before she finally got out. Emily had never been fired from a job in her life. The way she was raised, getting fired meant that you did something shamefully wrong. Was it her fault Evan turned into a first-class jerk? Was it her fault she had to get a court order to keep him away? She’d made mistakes along the way, but she had been a completely competent worker until the past few weeks of hell when everything had exploded.

  The sun shone overhead, and the inside of the car grew hot. Emily was not used to being outside on a workday. The street sat empty of cars reminding her that everyone but her was already at work.

  She couldn’t help it. Even though her mind told her she had done nothing wrong, inside her gut she felt the rare bitterness of failure. Everything she worked for since she left Walkerville to go to college, after leaving Luke, came to nothing. Going to school, getting her CPA license, and getting this job, all of that work dissolved like a puff of smoke.

  She couldn’t imagine what her father or mother would say. All her life her parents drummed into her that achievement was the only option. Failure was for lazy people or losers. But Emily’s failure had nothing to do with how hard she worked for what she achieved.

  Emily couldn’t make sense of this in her mind. And worse yet, she couldn’t lean on the one person she could trust with her feelings. Luke was in trouble, bad enough he had to keep her away from the danger of being with him.

  She trembled with emotions roiling inside that threatened to burst out from her, carving her gut into a million pieces. Alternately she wanted to crawl into her bed and never get up or she wanted to hit something. Instead, tears of frustration and sadness rolled down her cheeks and she wiped them away with her hands.

  “Emily?”

  The rapping on her driver’s side window sent an electric jolt of alarm through her.

  “Emily, what are you doing home, dear?”

  She blinked, relieved it was Mrs. Diggerty and opened the window.

  “What’re you doing down here, Mrs. Diggerty?”

  “I just got back from shopping and saw your car.”

  “Oh, here. Let me help you.”

  “That would be wonderful, Emily. But, dear, why are you crying?”

  “I lost my job today.” Her face colored from embarrassment.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Diggerty said. “Well then, dear, you’re very fortunate to find out now what idiots they are. Anyone who’d let you go would have to be. You’ll find a better job with people who appreciate you.”

  “But I won’t be able to make my rent.”

  “Emily, dear. I’m too old to sweat the small stuff. The good Lord will make sure it all works out in the end.”

  After Emily helped Mrs. Diggerty put away her groceries, the older woman insisted that she sit and have a cup of tea. Emily didn’t want company but at the same time, her landlady was being so sweet and considerate, she couldn’t tell her no.

  “Now,” said Mrs. Diggerty. “Tell me all about it.”

  “Being fired?” Emily said surprised.

  “Of course.”

  “They let me go,” Emily whispered as she stirred a teaspoon of sugar in her tea.

  “Well, yes. But why?”

  “Because of all the trouble I’m having with Evan. I had to go to court yesterday to get a restraining order to keep him away and miss a day of work. That, with the other days, well, he had enough.”

  “Really? What a dick!”

  “Mrs. Diggerty!” Emily smiled, despite how sad she felt. No Luke. No job. No anything she valued left in her life.

  “What? You think you young people own the corner on swear words?”

  “No. I just never expected to hear any from you.” It wasn’t really a swear word but she wasn’t about to tell Mrs. Diggerty that.

  “Well, I call them like I see them. Someone once told me that you don’t live to work, you work to live.”

  “They did?”

  “Yes. That was when I was having trouble at my own job. That was in the sixties before all the changes and before I met my Ron. I had this boss—” She shivered as she said that. “You heard the expression Roman hands and Russian fingers? Well. That was him. And in those days they didn’t have laws against sexual harassment. A girl had to put up with some of that to keep her job. And if she couldn’t handle her boss, it was her fault. One day he was so bad, well, I left and I didn’t go back. I had to move back in with my parents, which was awful because I was so proud I could support myself.

  “Back then if you quit your job for any reason you could forget about unemployment insurance. I got another job eventually, but it was the same thing all over again. By then I had met Ron, so when he proposed I quit my job. He didn’t mind. He was glad I could take care of things at home. I worked with him to build his business and we did all right. But I always felt bad that I gave up. I shouldn’t have had to quit either of my jobs because men didn’t know how to behave themselves.”

  “Wow, I guess I didn’t know how far we’ve come.”

  “Have we, Emily? I wonder. You shouldn’t have to worry about jerks like your ex-boyfriend and bosses who have no compassion or understanding. It just seems like the same old shit, different day, as Ron used to say.”

  “Well, what’re we supposed to do?”

  Mrs. Diggerty leaned into the table. “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up. Dig in your heels and give it back to them. No one is going to stand up for us if we don’t.” She leaned back into her chair again. “But who am I to say? I certainly didn’t put in the good fight.”

  “I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself. It couldn’t have been easy. I can’t imagine having to put up with a boss with Roman hands and Russian fingers.”

  With Mrs. Diggerty’s assurances that Emily could slide a couple months on her rent if she needed, Emily headed back to her apartment. Reger ran up to her meowing his displeasure at her absence.

  Grabbing up the tabby, she shut her door behind her then walked to the kitchen to get a cat treat. “You,” she said as she pulled the envelope of cat treats from the shelf, “are the most—”

  She stopped when she turned toward the living room again and saw the word ‘bitch’ scrawled across the back of her door in red spray paint.

  Emily shrieked and dropped Reger. He yowled when he hit the floor and then flew off to hide behind the couch. All of a sudden she couldn’t breathe. She set her hands on her knees, her chest heaving in ragged gasps. “No! No! No! He got into my apartment?”

  Terrifying images flashed through her mind like a freight train as she grew more light-headed from breathing too fast.

  “How do these things happen?” she whispered out loud. “I have the order of protection.” The law’s supposed to protect me. “Why isn’t it protecting m
e?”

  She grabbed a paper bag and held it open over her nose trying to get control of her breathing. When finally it slowed, she stumbled to the couch and sunk down. She stared at the nasty red letters that violated her apartment. Taking her cell phone from her purse she dialed 911.

  #

  It took forever for the Walkerville Police to show up at her apartment. By the time they were done questioning her she felt like she had committed a crime. The order of protection didn’t seem to impress them. Her either, at this point.

  There were two cops, a younger one and an older one. The younger one seemed more sympathetic than the older man, but in the end it did little good.

  “We’re sorry, ma’am,” said the younger man. “There just isn’t any evidence that Mr. Waters broke in and entered your apartment.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t give him a key?” asked the older one with a sneer.

  She shot him an angry look. “I never gave him a key to my apartment.”

  “There’s no sign of forced entry, so whoever it was had to have a key.”

  “No one has a key but my landlady.”

  “Then I suggest you change your locks.” The older man headed outside.

  The younger policeman handed her his business card before they left. “If anything else happens, give us a call.” He looked at the word before shaking his head. “Maybe a fresh can of paint…”

  “Sure,” said Emily, feeling like the whole thing was a waste of time. She flopped onto her couch feeling more powerless than ever before.

  She called Justin, but was forced to leave a message. Angela would still be asleep and she didn’t want to call her parents. Emily stared at Luke’s number on her phone, knowing she shouldn’t call him. Yet he was the one person in the world she wanted to speak to right now. Maybe this once, it wouldn’t be bad. They had only just said goodbye this morning. Not that long ago, really.