Keep Me If You Can (If You Can #3)

6. Big Talk, Small Talk

Chapter six

Big Talk, Small Talk

T he sight of JP Marchand standing in my kitchen, suit jacket and tie hanging on the back of a chair and his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows while he dished out pad thai and spring rolls from takeout boxes onto the plates he’d taken from my cupboards, was horrifying.

Absolutely fucking horrifying.

“Do you not like pad thai?” JP asked, misreading the look on my face as I stared at the situation before me.

“I do,” I said, which was even more horrifying.

He raised his eyebrows. “Are you not hungry, or…?”

I was. I was crazy hungry, actually, and hadn’t even realized it.

But why did he want to have lunch with me?

And why was the stereotypical sight of a guy in my kitchen, being all domestic and cute and shit, as hot as it was?

And why was it completely, totally, horrifically terrifying that I liked it?

“Oh,” JP said when I didn’t say anything. “You thought I was gonna come over, fuck you, and leave?”

“No,” I said, which wasn’t even a lie. I hadn’t thought anything. Beyond cleaning my apartment and having sex with JP, I hadn’t considered what to… you know.

Do with him once we were done.

His mouth twitched in amusement and he started splitting the pad thai between the two plates. “I figured we’d need something to eat before I’m ready to go again. Gotta make sure the trip was worth it, babe.”

“You don’t think three minutes in my pussy was worth it?”

He put the empty takeout box on the counter and the plates in places he’d set on the table, then looked up with a smirk on his lips. “I’d’ve done it for the chance at ten seconds inside you.”

I willed the warm feeling in my chest to cool off before my neck and cheeks started turning pink. “You better last longer than ten seconds for the next round.”

“No promises, but I’ll try.” He motioned at the table. “Eat. Otherwise you’ll be trying not to choke on your noodles during round two since I’ll be ready to go again in eight-to-ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes?” I said skeptically, taking the seat he’d motioned at. “You think you’re gonna be able to get it up again in ten minutes?”

He grinned as he sat in the other chair. “Is that a challenge?”

“No.” I picked up the chopsticks he’d set next to my plate. “And why would I choke on the noodles? You wouldn’t wait until I finish eating to fuck me?”

“You’d make me wait to get back inside you? After I spent two hours driving to get here?”

“You spent two hours driving to get to a client meeting. I just happened to be here.”

“And yet I’d make the drive again to spend ten seconds in your pussy, as we’ve already established.”

“I didn’t realize you had so much trouble getting laid in Montreal.”

He smirked. “Maybe I just got spoiled with you.”

My face heated up and I ended the conversation by taking a bite of my food. I didn’t know what to say to any of it. For as long as I’d known JP—literally most of my life, since we’d first met when I was four—we’d never done anything like this before.

We didn’t hang out. Not without reason. The times we’d been around each other without the intent of hooking up always had a purpose. We saw each other at a charity run, or he came as my date to a gala, or we’d been literal kids who lived next door to each other and so were forced to tolerate each other’s presence at birthday parties and other such events.

But this? Sitting at a table, just the two of us, eating together?

This was new.

And I didn’t know how I felt about it. I wasn’t sure I liked the intimacy of sitting at a table and having a meal with him. Because somehow, even though I’d had him in every fuckable hole in my body, this felt like something else.

Something bigger.

Something wrong.

But something that was only wrong because it felt terribly, horrifyingly, confusingly right.

And it feeling right made it feel even more wrong because we were quiet, both of us eating, neither of us sure of what to say to make this entire thing feel less… something.

It wasn’t supposed to be something.

Which was how I ended up blurting a boring, generic, and entirely uninspired question.

“How’s work going?” I asked before taking another bite of pad thai.

“Work?” JP repeated.

“That thing you do to make money?” I said through my noodles.

He chuckled. “Yeah. I just never saw you as a small talk kind of person.”

Somehow, that seemed offensive, even though it wasn’t. I swallowed my pad thai and picked up one of my spring rolls. “Fine. Why are things so tense with your dad right now?”

The flicker of surprise on his face was satisfying. “There’s no line between small talk and big talk with you, hey?”

I shrugged. “You’re the one who didn’t seem to want small talk, so deeply probing personal questions it is.”

“Good to know.” He picked up some of his pad thai. “What makes you think things are tense with my dad?”

“Anne-Marie mentioned it when she was here.”

He frowned thoughtfully at his plate. “It’s that noticeable?”

“I guess. She said you moved out really fast. I said it was probably because you spend too much time around your dad, what with, like, working together and stuff.”

He nodded slowly, still looking at his food. “I mean, yeah. It’s helped being in my own place.” Glancing up, he smiled, though his mouth was tight. “It’s not a huge thing. My dad has certain expectations of me, which isn’t anything new, and when I don’t meet or abide by those expectations, he gets unhappy.”

I nodded. “Relatable.”

He half-laughed. “Things haven’t gotten any better with your dad, either?”

It wasn’t until later that I realized how smoothly he’d switched focus, how he’d given me an answer that was as specific as it was vague before guiding the conversation back to me. It should’ve concerned me how easily he managed it, but at that moment, I just rolled my eyes.

“Better, no,” I said. “But they’re not worse, so that’s something, I guess.”

“It is,” he agreed. “Are you gonna be back in Montreal anytime soon?”

I tried not to glare at him and succeeded by glaring at my plate instead. “Not you, too.”

“What?” he asked. “I’m just asking.”

I sighed. “My dad’s constantly calling to ask me to come to some event or another because he wants me to impress the Martelles for him again. He doesn’t seem to get that I ran into Claire, like, three times and barely know her. And that I have classes. He thinks I can drop everything and show up when he wants me there because what he wants is more important than what I’m doing. Meanwhile, I’m… well.”

“Well what?”

I picked at my noodles, not looking at him. “It’s just been a rough semester.”

“How so?”

“It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Are you telling me that or yourself that?”

When I looked up, JP was watching me. “What do you mean?”

He smiled as he collected more noodles in his chopsticks. “We’re friends, Nell, but that doesn’t mean I’m worrying about how rough your semester is. I don’t know that much about it.”

It was a good point. I nodded slowly. “Well, it doesn’t matter either way. It’s just a bad class schedule.”

“What classes are you taking?”

“Forensic Pathology, which is boring because Dr. Spitzki is awful.” I rolled my eyes. “And he hates me.”

“Your prof?”

I nodded.

“Why does he hate you?”

“Probably because I don’t put my phone on silent while I’m in his lectures and in his last class I took, I handed the final paper in printed on mustard yellow paper with purple writing.”

“Why?”

“Because he docked me points on my midterm essay for using one-point-five line spacing instead of double spacing it.” I picked up more pad thai. “So I made sure my final met all the standards he set out in the syllabus and then did whatever I wanted for the rest of them.”

JP burst out laughing. “I bet he was pissed.”

“Livid. I think he cried a little when he realized I was in his four hundred level course this year.” I ate a bite of my food. “But that’s not the worst class I’m taking.”

“What’s the worst?”

“Forensic Science and Law.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Law?”

“Mm-hmm. I hate everything about it, including the fucking case studies that we have to do every week . I have one due tomorrow and there’s no way I’m going to finish it, and my TA isn’t going to give me an extension. More proof that not only could I never be a lawyer, but all lawyers are the literal worst.”

“We do suck,” JP said. “What’s the trouble you’re having with it?”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because, Smarty Pants, maybe I can help,” he said, his mouth flicking into a grin. “Believe it or not, I’ve taken some law classes in my day.”

“‘In your day,’” I mocked. “Okay, Grandpa.”

He snickered. “I was gonna tutor you for the LSAT. I bet you I can help with this.”

“You said you didn’t actually want to tutor me for the LSAT,” I said.

“But I would’ve.” He motioned at my plate. “Finish eating and show me your case studies.”

I stared at him, not bothering to hide the disgust on my face. “You’re not serious.”

He looked amused. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I thought I had ten minutes to eat before you fucked me again. Now you want to do homework with me? I brought you here to have sex, not to learn shit.”

I thought he might laugh, but even though the corners of JP’s eyes crinkled and his lips pressed together in a roguish smirk, the way his eyes trailed down from my face to my chest—and they would’ve probably gone lower, had I not been sitting, but the table was obviously in the way—sent a shiver rushing through me.

“I can do both,” he said simply.

I rolled my eyes. “Sure you can.”

And yeah, it was sarcasm.

But if it hadn’t been sarcasm, it would’ve been right.

I don’t know how he thought of it. I don’t know why he thought of it. I don’t know why I agreed to strip to my panties and sit between his legs, my back against his chest, his chin resting on my shoulder as he looked over it at the laptop in front of me.

I don’t know why having one of his hands cupping my breast and the other between my legs, his fingers making slow circles over my clit, made something click in my mind as I read over the source material about a lab illegally retaining voluntarily submitted DNA samples. By all accounts, it shouldn’t have; it should’ve been distracting me, making it harder to focus, frustrating me as he teased my nipple and sent aches of desire shooting into my core.

And that was weird. It was so fucking weird to be turned on while I was studying that kind of thing.

But somehow, it worked.

Somehow, I typed faster than I ever had before, my pussy getting wetter and wetter as I explained the precedence and relevance set by the case, as I summarized the key points, as I shared an opinion on the lasting effect of that particular case on the forensic science field.

“Done,” I breathed when I finished writing. “Can we fuck now?”

“Mm-mm,” JP said. “I’m gonna read it for you first.”

The groan I let out was almost painful, my body desperate for release. “Please, JP. I want to come.”

“You’ll come when I say it’s good enough.” He kissed the side of my neck. “Turn your screen towards me a bit.”

Hands shaking, I moved my laptop so he could read over my work. His fingers kept moving lazily in my panties, barely giving me enough friction to survive, even though I was so wet I could feel it coating his hand and my folds and soaking my panties. I tried not to think about how badly I wanted those fingers to slip inside me, how I craved the sensation of being filled, how I could feel JP’s hard cock on my lower back. My eyes were closed and I opened them only when he found a mistake that needed correcting, my fingers trembling as I made the changes.

When he finally reached the end and decided my paper was good enough to call complete, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t tell me.

He just pushed two fingers inside of me, ground the base of his thumb against my clit, and laughed in my ear as I cried out.

“That’s it,” he murmured. “Now you can finish, Nellie. And when you’re in your midterms or your finals, you’re gonna remember how fucking hard you came all over my hand and sit there, wondering what kind of weird-ass person gets a wet pussy when they’re thinking about what the Criminal Code says regarding the destruction of DNA analysis for ruled-out suspects.”

“Shut up,” I gasped. “I’m not gonna remember any—”

But then he curled his fingers and pressed them against my G-spot, and my vision went black, and I came so hard my head went light and I thought I was going to pass out before finally coming down.