The Make Me Series

He pulled himself out of the pool and climbed to his feet. He’d been prepared to tell her no—to both the husband hunt and the lessons. Instead he’d invited her over tonight. What the hell was that about?

You know what that’s about.

Gideon wanted Lucy.

He’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen her across that crowded bar in Queens six years ago. She’d been so fresh-faced and, even too many shots in, he’d known there was something special about her.

Unfortunately so had Jeff Larsson, and that bastard had beaten him to the punch—meeting Lucy, dating Lucy, proposing to Lucy.

Gideon had tried his damnedest to be happy for his best friend—and to table his desire for his best friend’s woman—but it had never quite gone away. It didn’t matter how many girls he’d dated, because his heart had never been in it. When Jeff had made a passing remark on Gideon’s tendency to find willowy brunettes with freckles, he’d shelved dating completely and restricted his interactions to one night.

He showered and dressed quickly. It would be tricky getting back to his place before she arrived, but he’d had to do something to take the edge off or he was in danger of throwing caution to the wind. The temptation of Lucy in his bed, even for such a shitty reason...

He’d be a bastard and a half to do it.

No, Gideon would grab takeout, sit her down to her favorite Chinese and explain all the reasons why sex between them wasn’t an option. He’d be calm and reasonable and use whatever arguments he had to get his point across. She didn’t need lessons. No man with a pulse and a working cock was going to have a problem with anything Lucy had to offer.

His step hitched at the thought of someone else waking up next to her every morning. Of the long nights buried between her thighs and the friction of sweat-slicked skin and—

Fuck.

He glanced back at the gym, seriously considering calling the whole thing off and spending the next three hours back in the pool. Maybe if he was too exhausted to move, his fury at the thought of her with another man would subside.

He knew better.

If he hadn’t been happy that his best friend was with her—even before the idiot had started fucking around—he wasn’t going to be pleased with a stranger. There was no help for it. Lucy would charge ahead with this plan of hers whether he agreed to it or not. He might be able to talk her out of the sex bit, but he wouldn’t be able to convince her that she didn’t need a husband.

He’d failed her when it came to Jeff. Even as his best friend, Gideon had missed the warning signs until it was almost too late—and then he’d hesitated a full month before breaking the news to her. He’d well and truly fucked up across the board and it had cost him her friendship—something he’d valued more than he could have dreamed.

He wouldn’t fuck up again.

She wanted a husband? Well, then, Gideon was going to find her the most honorable man he could to make her happy. He owed it to her to do so.

He barely had time to drop the takeout on the kitchen counter when a knock sounded. He skirted the couch and opened the door. “You’re early.”

“I hope you don’t mind. Your doorman remembered me, so he didn’t bother to buzz you.” She gave a tentative smile that pulled at him despite his determination to do the right thing.

Lucy must have made it home because she’d changed into a pair of black leggings and a lightweight slouchy shirt that seemed determined to slide off one shoulder. She saw him looking and bit her bottom lip. “I know we talked about lessons, and this isn’t exactly seduction personified, but I went through my closet and, aside from work clothes, I don’t think I own anything that’s ‘seduction personified.’”

For fuck’s sake, she was killing him. Gideon stepped back and held the door open. “You look fine.”

“Fine.” She frowned. “I know you’re cranky about being cornered with this whole thing, but you don’t have to damn me with faint praise. I asked you to do this because I trust you to tell me the truth. I’ve always trusted you to tell me the truth.”

If she’d taken out a knife and stabbed him in the heart, it would have stung less. Gideon closed the door carefully behind her, trying to maintain his control. It didn’t matter how honest she thought he was, he wouldn’t agree to take her to bed. He couldn’t. “This won’t work if you’re going to jump down my throat every time I say something. I said you look fine. You do. I didn’t tell you to dress for seduction, Lucy. I said to get your ass over here so we can talk. That—” he motioned at her clothes “—is perfectly adequate for a conversation between two friends.”

“Right. Okay. I’m sorry. I’m nervous.” She pulled at her shirt, which caused it to drop another inch down her arm.

Gideon had never found shoulders particularly provocative before but he wanted to drag his mouth over the line of her collarbone. Keep it together, asshole. He cleared his throat and looked away. “You don’t need lessons, Lucy. Not from me. Not from anyone. You’re beautiful and any man would be lucky to have you in his bed.”

“If you don’t want to teach me, that’s fine. I did say that this morning.” She wandered farther into his apartment and circled the couch he’d bought six months ago. It was slate gray with dark blue accents, and the saleswoman had insisted it would pull the room together in a way he’d love. He was still waiting to love it. Lucy picked up one of the ridiculous blue throw pillows and hugged it to her chest. “I’m not fishing for a compliment, by the way, but thank you. Though, beauty only goes so far. Since you haven’t... We haven’t...” She huffed out a breath. “Can I be perfectly frank?”

“You weren’t before now?” If she was franker, she might actually kill him.

“Jeff might be a cheating bastard, but that doesn’t change the fact that even before he started sleeping around, he was never...satisfied. Since he obviously found that satisfaction with those other women, it’s impossible to blame the entire problem on him.”

Gideon watched her pick at the tassels on the pillow while he dissected what she’d just said.

“You’ve been with other men since him.”

“No.” She still wouldn’t look up. “I almost did once. But I kept hearing his voice in my head with those nasty little comments that he always wrote off as a joke and I just couldn’t. I know that’s pathetic, but after a while, the risk of finding out that Jeff was really right all along wasn’t worth the potential pleasure. So I focused on work instead of dating—and now here we are.”

Gideon wished he could go back in time and deliver a few more punches to Jeff’s perfect face. He’d known things weren’t perfect with Jeff and Lucy, but he hadn’t realized just how much of a dick his friend had been. “He’s a piece of shit.”

“I’m not arguing that, believe me.” She gave a faint smile. “Thank you again for saving me from marrying him. I don’t know if I ever said it before, but it couldn’t have been easy to say something. You two had been friends for so long.”

Gideon scrubbed a hand over his face. He read people for a living—both his clients and the people he found to fill the open positions. He was damn good at it, too. That skill made him the best in the business and ensured that he almost always got the secondary bonus for the position still being filled for a year after the initial contract.

Every instinct he had was insisting that Lucy’s sheepish smile covered up a soul wound. If he was a good man, he’d let someone else help her heal from that—someone who’d be there for the long term. Likely that theoretical husband he was supposed to find her. But Gideon wasn’t a good man.

He didn’t want it to be anyone else.

He wanted it to be him.

“Sit down.”

She dropped onto the couch, still clinging to the pillow. “Okay.”

There wasn’t a convenient playbook for how to go about this, but they did need to have a conversation before it went any further. “I will give you...lessons. On two conditions.”

“Agreed.”

He shot her a look. “Hear the conditions first and then decide if you’re good with them. First—you communicate with me. You like something? Tell me. You aren’t into it? You need to speak up. You fake anything and we call the whole thing off. I can’t help you if you aren’t honest with both yourself and me.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Fine. I’m an adult. I can talk about sex.”

He didn’t comment on the fact she seemed to be trying to convince herself. The confidence and ice queen bit she’d played in the office was nowhere to be seen now, which made him wonder who was the real Lucy—the cold and professional lawyer or the unsure woman sitting in front of him now.

Gideon leaned forward. “Second condition is that you’re not with anyone else for the duration.”

“Why?” She held up a hand. “I have no intention of being with anyone else, but I’m curious.”

“It’s respect.” Liar. It’s jealousy. He smothered the snide little voice and kept his tone even. “We’re exclusive—both of us—until the expiration date.”

“Exclusive.” She said the word as if tasting it. “When’s the expiration date?”

Never. Fuck, he was already in over his head and sinking fast and he hadn’t even touched her. “When you decide on a candidate for a husband, we end it.”

Lucy nodded. “That seems reasonable. Should we start now?” She reached for her shirt.

“Holy fuck, slow down.” He made an effort to lower his voice and held out a hand. “You want lessons? We start with the basics. Come here.”

She reluctantly let go of the pillow and rose to cross over to his chair. Lucy eyed his hand, but ultimately placed hers in it. Gideon drew her down slowly, giving her plenty of time to see where things were going. She obliged him by climbing into his lap, though she held herself so stiffly she felt downright brittle.

He kept hold of her hand and set his other on her hip. It would have been innocent if not for the fact that she was straddling him and his cock had not gotten the memo about moving slow.

She shifted, her eyes going wide. “Ah...”

“Are you uncomfortable?” He spoke before she could think too hard.

“No...” She bit her lip. “Right. Honesty. Okay, yes, this feels weird. Awkward. I don’t know where to put my hands and I can feel you, and it’s making me nervous.”

She was right. It was awkward as fuck. But Gideon wasn’t going to throw her off the deep end on the first night, no matter how surreal this whole thing was. She trusted him to take care of her and he’d do whatever it took to be worthy of that trust. Do whatever it took to keep her from changing her mind. He kept his voice low so as not to startle her. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

“Okay.” She licked her lips and carefully tilted forward.

Gideon moved his hand from her hip to cup her jaw, guiding her down as he leaned up to brush his mouth against hers. She smelled of citrus and he had to fight to keep a growl internal. Nice and easy. He nipped her bottom lip and then soothed it with his tongue. She placed her hands on his biceps and relaxed against him, bit by bit. Gideon took it slow. He kissed her, keeping it light, until she shifted restlessly against him.

Then, and only then, did he slip his tongue into her mouth.

His first taste of Lucy went straight to his head. He used his hand on her jaw to angle her to allow him deeper and stroked his tongue against hers. Slow and steady was the name of the game.

Lucy whimpered and went soft against him. Her body melded to his, her breasts dragging against his chest with each inhalation. She shifted her grip and tentatively sifted her fingers through his hair. As if she wasn’t sure of her welcome.

He wanted her sure.

Gideon shifted back to lean against the chair. The move settled her tighter against him as her knees sank into the cushion on either side of his hips. She gasped into his mouth and he ate the sound. He kissed her like he’d wanted to since that first night, when he’d heard her infectious laugh across a crowded bar. She tasted just as sunny as she smelled, as addicting as a summer’s day in the midst of winter.

He couldn’t get enough.

CHAPTER THREE

LUCY’S AWKWARDNESS WENT up in smoke the second Gideon kissed her. She’d expected... Well, she wasn’t sure what she’d expected. For him to take her into the bedroom and strip them down and just go for it. Preferably with the lights turned off to hide her mortification.

He stroked his hands up the sides of her face and tangled his fingers in her hair. The move pulled her out of their kiss, but Gideon didn’t let the distance stand. He dragged his mouth down the line of her neck, raising goose bumps in his wake.

A deep, hidden ember inside her burst into flame.

She was doing this. She was straddling Gideon Novak with his mouth on her skin and his hands on her body. Something she’d never even allowed herself to think about until she’d come up with this plan.

“You’re thinking too hard.”

“I can’t believe this is happening.”

He set his teeth against her collarbone. “If you change your mind—”

“I won’t.” She’d never dared fantasize about him—she hadn’t let herself cross that line, even in her mind—but she wasn’t missing this opportunity for the world. Warmth flared with each breath, the heat centered at her core, where she could feel his cock lining up right where she wanted it.

I want it.

The realization startled her, though it shouldn’t have. Gideon was sex personified and having all his considerable attention focused solely on her was a heady feeling. She wanted... More. All of it. Everything he could give her. She moaned. “More.”

Gideon took her mouth. There was no other way to put it. He claimed her, establishing dominance with a stroke of his tongue, engulfing her entire world in that single contact. He tasted like peppermint—a shocking sensation against her tongue. Unexpected.

Just like the man himself.

It wasn’t enough. There were too many clothes between them. She could feel his broad shoulders flexing, could test the definition of his muscles as she slid her hands down his chest, but his button-up shirt barred her from the skin-to-skin contact she craved.

Her breasts felt too tight, her nipples pebbling until they almost hurt. At least her yoga pants didn’t offer much in the way of a barrier as she rocked her hips against him. His slacks did little to hide the size of his cock, and that little movement felt deliciously good. Intoxicating. So she did it again.

Gideon dropped one hand to her hip. For one horrifying moment she thought he’d stop her—maybe tell her that grown adults did not dry hump in the middle of one’s living room—but he just urged her on. He never stopped kissing her, never stopped exploring her mouth. As if kissing was his be-all and end-all rather than just the first step to get to sex.

God, I am so messed up.

He squeezed her ass and nipped her bottom lip. “How we doing?”

“Good.” Was that her voice? She sounded like she was doing something requiring a whole lot more exertion than kissing Gideon Novak. If this is what kissing is like, am I going to survive actual sex?

Who cares? It’d be a glorious way to go.

He used his grip on her hip to pull her closer yet, lining up his cock with her clit. “And now?”

She hissed out a breath. Please don’t stop. She could come like this if they kept it up. “Really good. But—” She didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to do anything to make this stop, so she went in for another kiss.

Gideon tightened his hold on her hair just enough to prevent her from moving. “But?”

His insistence on honesty had seemed like a good idea at the time—how could she improve if she didn’t know what she was doing wrong?—but in practice it felt like he was stripping her bare in a way that had nothing to do with sex. She closed her eyes, because it was easier to answer when she wasn’t meeting his gaze. “Isn’t dry humping kind of juvenile?” Are you going to mock me if I orgasm from this? Maybe make a joke about cobwebs or how long it’s been for me?

His chuckle pulled at things low in her stomach. “Does this feel juvenile to you?”

“No.” It felt hotter than it should have and even a little dirty. She wanted it too much, and that was the problem. She forced herself to open her eyes and found him watching her with a contemplative expression. “What?”

“Pleasure isn’t something you can put limits on, Lucy. There isn’t a right way to go about it. Would you tell someone who was eating one of those double-chocolate-death desserts you love so much that they were eating it wrong if they did it differently than you?”

“Of course not.” She blinked. How had he possibly remembered her favorite dessert?

“Then why is this wrong?” He urged her to rock against him again. “Feels good to me. Feels good to you. No reason to overthink it.”

When Gideon put it like that, it sounded so simple. Deceptively simple. She started to ask another question but forced herself to silence it. This insecurity wasn’t her. This was the ghost of her relationship with Jeff coloring the current interaction.

Exactly what she’d been afraid would happen.

“Thank you for agreeing to this, Gideon. You didn’t have to and—”

“Lucy.” He framed her face with his big hands, preventing her from looking away. Those dark eyes were so incredibly serious. “Stop thanking me for this. The matchmaking shit? Sure. Not this. You’re crazy if you think I’m not getting something out of it—same as you. Enjoy it. Enjoy me. It’s as simple as that.”

Easier said than done. The malicious voice that had spent far too many years lurking in the back of her mind wouldn’t be silenced. Not completely. Pity fuck. She pressed her lips together. “I want to have sex now.”

“No.”

She frowned. “What?”

“No.” He sat up, forcing her to grab his shoulders to stabilize herself, and then stood, taking her with him. “You want me to teach you? Then we’re doing this on my terms. You were enjoying the hell out of this and something tripped you up.” He laid them down on his ridiculously comfortable couch. She sank into the cushions as his weight settled over her. It felt good. Right.

It scared the shit out of her.

“Gideon.”

“My terms, Lucy.” He kissed her again. Before it had been sweet, and then intense, but she hadn’t realized he was holding back until that moment. Gideon kissed her like he owned her. He took her mouth, urging her to meet him halfway.

She held back for all of one second; it was impossible to maintain distance with his very presence overwhelming her. So she let go, tangling her tongue with his. The second she did, he started to move.

It had felt good when she was on top, but it was nothing compared to him pressing her into the couch as he stroked his cock against her clit. One long slide up and then another back down. The desire that had been put on hold while she’d let her insecurities get the best of her seared her—with interest. As if it’d been waiting for her to just let go and enjoy this moment for what it was. Pleasure. No questions asked.

She arched up to meet him. “That feels good.”

Gideon hitched a hand beneath her knee and drew her leg up and out, opening her farther. He kissed her again and kept up that slow drag that had sparks dancing at her nerve endings. Her body wound tighter and tighter with each stroke until she teetered on the brink. Lucy writhed against him, trying to get closer, to get him where she needed him, to do whatever it took to reach that edge. “Gideon, please.”

He shifted back and she sobbed out a breath at the loss of him. But he didn’t make her wait long. He slid a hand beneath the waistband of her yoga pants and into her panties. His rough curse would have made her smile under other circumstances, but she was too busy holding her breath. So close. Please just touch me.

He did.

He made a V with his fingers and slid it over her clit in the exact same motion he’d been doing with his cock before. She lasted three strokes before she came apart in his arms, her pleasure drawing a cry from her lips and blanking out her mind into delicious static. He softened their kiss to the barest brushing of lips and then shifted to the side so his weight wasn’t completely on her.

Lucy blinked at the pale gray ceiling and tried to reconcile what had just happened with reality. I just came. Without pressure. Without having to force it or fake it. A world-ending orgasm and Gideon was the one who’d coaxed it from her. “Wow.” As soon as the word popped out of her mouth, she cringed. What a stupid thing to say. She was hardly a virgin and she wasn’t an idiot teenager, no matter what they’d just done.

Gideon gave another of those low laughs. “All flavors, Lucy.”

Against her better judgment, she couldn’t help comparing what they’d just done to her experiences with Jeff when they’d first started dating. Night and day. Even though it’d taken her and Jeff a bit to work up to sex, he’d always had an air of impatience about him when they were intimate—like he couldn’t wait to get to the next step. Add that to his competitive need to make her come multiple times every time they were together and the pressure had twisted with the desire until it made her jumpy every time they’d been alone together. Things had changed a little once they’d finally had sex, but then other elements had come into play.

Boring.

Uninspired.

Like fucking a doll.

“Lucy, look at me.” Gideon’s voice drew her out of the horror show that was her past.

She shook her head. God, I can’t even do this right. What they’d just done was so incredibly perfect and she’d had to go and ruin it by letting her issues with her ex creep in. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.” He stroked a hand through her hair, the move so tender, her stomach tried to tie itself in knots. His dark eyes took on a distance as he looked at something she couldn’t see. “I knew Jeff was an asshole, but if I’d known what a piece of shit he was, I would have warned you off before he got his hooks into you.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.” Six years ago, in the midst of her headlong rush into adulthood, she was so sure that she knew better, she hadn’t listened to anyone. Not her sister, not her friends, not her fledgling instincts. As nice as it was to think otherwise, she wouldn’t have listened to Gideon, either.

Being this close to him, talking like this while her body still sang from the pleasure he’d given her... It was too intimate. Too revealing. Just plain too much.

She slid off the couch and stood. A quick look at the front of his slacks confirmed that he was still, in fact, painfully hard. Nice job, Lucy. Bask in your post-orgasmic bliss and ignore the fact he’s still in need. “Do you want me to...?”

“These lessons aren’t about me.” He sat up. “They’re about you. And you need space.”

Yeah, she did. His airy living room was suddenly too small, the walls closing in even as her heart beat too fast. “I asked for this.”

“You don’t have to explain.” He gave her a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “We poked at some old wounds tonight. If that means you need some distance from the whole thing, then so be it. You’re being honest, and fuck if I’m going to punish you for that.” He grabbed his phone off the coffee table. “But if you’re headed home, I’m calling you a cab.”

She should push back. She was more than capable of calling her own damn cab and the subway would be running for hours yet. But if Gideon could respect her need to flee without his pride being injured and throwing a fit, she could respect his need to get her home safe. “Okay.”

He made the call quickly and set the phone down. “What’s your schedule look like tomorrow?”

The change in subject left her discombobulated. “I have court in the afternoon, so I’ll be doing last-minute preparations beforehand.” It was as close to an open-and-shut case as such things got. The cops had mishandled the evidence and the lead detective had an established vendetta against her client. She had every intention of getting the whole damn thing thrown out.