Off-Limits

Chapter Nine: Bubbles and Bottom Lines

Veronica got home a little after midnight, still riding the particular high of a launch that had gone off without a single visible hitch — final numbers already trickling in from the client team, a signed contract for a second phase sitting in her inbox, the kind of night that would've had her calling her own mother to brag if it weren't so late.

Jake was on the couch when she came in, not pretending to watch whatever was on the TV, clearly just waiting.

"Hey," he said, sitting up. "How'd the rest of it go?"

"Winslow Group wants to sign us for their Q1 rollout too." She dropped her bag by the door, kicked off the heels she'd chased him outside in three hours earlier, and let out a long breath. "It went well, Jake. Really well. Despite everything."

"I'm glad." He meant it, she could tell, even under the visible guilt still sitting on him. "I owe you a real apology. Not the parking lot version."

"I'm listening."

He stood, crossing the room to her, and didn't reach for her yet, just stood close enough that she'd know he meant what he was about to say. "I should've come find you the second I felt what I felt. Instead I made a decision on your behalf — that leaving was the safer option — without giving you any say in it. You had to notice I was gone and come chase me down mid-launch, which isn't fair to you, whatever my reasons were."

"No," she agreed. "It wasn't."

"I keep thinking about what you said outside. About feeling like you needed rescuing, for a second, and hating it." He held her gaze, steady. "I don't ever want to be the reason you feel like the person you've spent ten years building — the one who doesn't need saving — gets undercut. Not even by accident. Not even by me trying to do the right thing badly."

Veronica studied him for a long moment, some of the last of the day's tension finally easing out of her shoulders. "You didn't undercut me," she said. "Not really. You left the room instead of making a scene. That's not nothing, Jake. The old you wouldn't have made that choice."

"I wanted to make the other choice. I want you to know that too. Every instinct I used to trust told me to plant myself in front of Marcus and make it very clear whose wife you are. I just don't trust that instinct anymore, because I don't know anymore where protecting you ends and my own ego begins."

"That's..." She let out a small, surprised laugh. "That's actually a really healthy thing to say."

"I've had a year of practice."

"Good practice," she said, and finally closed the distance between them, sliding her arms around his neck. "I forgive you, for what it's worth. Both for leaving without saying anything, and for the ten seconds of stupid, prehistoric jealousy I know you felt and didn't act on. I actually appreciated the not acting on it part quite a bit, in hindsight."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, light, a promise of more. "But we're doing better with communication going forward. No more disappearing acts, even well-intentioned ones."

"Deal." He kissed her properly this time, slow and grateful, some of the last of the night's tension finally dissolving between them. "I also may have put a bottle of champagne on ice about two hours ago, on the theory that the launch went well and you'd want to celebrate, regardless of how the conversation with me went."

"You're forgiven retroactively for a lot of things, with that kind of planning."

"I try." He took her hand, leading her toward the bathroom, where the claw-foot tub she'd fallen in love with the second they'd toured the apartment was already half-full, steam curling off the surface, a bottle of champagne sweating gently in a bucket on the ledge beside it. "I may also have started running a bath about twenty minutes ago, betting you'd come home wanting to actually unwind instead of just talk."

"You know me terrifyingly well."

"I've had a year of practice at that too."

• • •

She let him unzip her dress in the doorway, the fabric sliding to the floor in a whisper, and stood there for a moment in nothing but her underwear, unhurried about it despite the long day, letting him look the way he always did — full breasts, a soft, generous curve to her hips, thighs that had haunted him since that very first night on Priya's roommate's balcony. She'd never been shy about her body, not once in the year they'd been together, and Jake had never once stopped being grateful for it. She reached back and unclasped her bra, letting it fall, and stepped out of the last scrap of lace before sinking into the water with a low, grateful sound the moment it closed around her, her curves settling into the tub in a way that made Jake momentarily forget the entire conversation they'd just had, eyes falling shut as she leaned back against the sloped edge.

"Get in," she said, without opening them. "You're not standing there fully dressed while I do this alone."

He didn't need telling twice. By the time she opened her eyes again he was climbing in behind her, settling against the back of the tub, and she shifted to lean back against his chest, the warm water lapping at her collarbones, his arms coming around her waist beneath the surface.

"This is a genuinely excellent apology," she murmured, tipping her head back against his shoulder.

"I have more where that came from." He reached for the champagne, pouring two glasses one-handed with a practiced ease that made her laugh, and passed one back to her. "To the Winslow Group's Q1 budget, and to my wife's terrifying competence."

"To my husband learning restraint," she said, clinking her glass against his. "Miracles do happen."

They drank in comfortable silence for a while, the water cooling by slow degrees, her back against his chest and his hand tracing idle patterns over her stomach beneath the surface, the whole tense, chaotic day finally dissolving into something unhurried and warm.

"You know," Jake said eventually, his lips finding the curve of her shoulder, "watching you run that whole event tonight — before any of the Marcus stuff — was genuinely one of the sexiest things I've ever seen. You had forty people doing exactly what you told them to, and you didn't even have to raise your voice."

"Is that so." She set her glass down on the ledge, a slow smile spreading across her face as she felt his mouth trail up the side of her throat.

"That's so." His hand slid lower under the water, tracing the curve of her hip, and she let out a soft, involuntary sound, arching back into him. "I stood in that doorway for a full minute before Marcus ruined it, just watching you work. I've never wanted you more than I did in that thirty seconds."

"Careful," she murmured, turning in the circle of his arms until she was facing him, water sloshing gently over the tub's edge, straddling his lap in the warm water, her full breasts glistening wet in the low light, water beaded on the soft curve of her hips where his hands settled. "That kind of talk is going to get you exactly what you're asking for."

"That's the general idea, yeah."

She kissed him, slow and deep, her wet hands sliding up into his hair, and he groaned against her mouth, his hands finding her hips beneath the water and pulling her closer, the champagne glasses forgotten on the ledge as the kiss deepened into something hungrier. His mouth moved to her throat, her collarbone, one hand rising to cup her breast, thumb dragging over her n****e until she gasped and rolled her hips against him, the friction of it, even softened by the water, dragging a low groan out of both of them.

"I believe," she murmured, breathless, against his ear, "you were saying something about restraint."

"I've had plenty of that tonight already," Jake said, and flipped her, easily, until her back was against the sloped end of the tub and he was braced over her, water lapping around them both. "I think I've earned a break from it."

He kissed his way down her body, over the curve of her breasts, her stomach, until he was settled between her thighs with the water lapping at his shoulders, and when he put his mouth on her, she cried out, the sound echoing off the tiled walls, her hands gripping the edge of the tub for purchase. He built her slowly, deliberately, patient even here, even after the day they'd had, until she was shaking and gasping his name into the steam-thick air, and when he finally gave her what she was asking for, she came apart around his mouth with a long, unrestrained cry, water sloshing over the edge of the tub as her whole body arched into it.

She didn't give him long to recover his bearings, pulling him back up her body with water-slicked hands and pushing him back against the tub's edge, kneeling over him in the shallower water. "My turn," she murmured, echoing herself from a dozen nights before, and worked her way down his chest and stomach with slow, deliberate kisses before settling low between his thighs, the water lapping just below her shoulders. She wrapped one hand around him first, slow and sure, watching his face the whole time, and then took him into her mouth, hot and wet despite the water around them, her tongue working him with the same unhurried confidence she brought to everything else. Jake's head fell back against the tiled wall with a groan, one hand sliding into her wet hair, hips flexing up to meet her, and she kept it up — deep, slow, devastatingly thorough — until he was right on the edge, breath ragged, her name breaking apart on his lips.

She pulled back just before he lost it entirely, lips glistening, water dripping from the ends of her hair, a wicked, satisfied look on her face that undid him nearly as much as her mouth had.

She rose back up his body, straddling him again, her mouth finding his in a kiss that was all hunger now, no patience left in either of them.

"Condom," she said against his mouth, already reaching for the small dish on the ledge where they kept one, always, ever since the wedding night had taught them both the value of planning ahead.

He got it on with water-clumsy hands and a laugh that dissolved into a groan the second she sank down onto him, both of them going still for a moment just to feel it, the warm water and the warmth of her wrapped around him at once. She began to move, slow at first, her hands braced on his shoulders, finding a rhythm that had water surging rhythmically over the tub's edge and pooling on the tile, neither of them caring in the slightest.

"Jake —" Her voice broke on his name as she picked up the pace, riding him harder, his hands gripping her hips beneath the water to meet every downward roll, the sound of her gasping breath and the slosh of water and the low groan he couldn't hold back all tangling together in the steam-fogged bathroom.

"You feel incredible," he managed, burying his face against her throat, hips driving up to meet her. "God, Veronica —"

She came again with a sharp, unrestrained cry, clenching tight around him, her whole body shuddering through it, and he followed only moments later, groaning her name into her wet hair, both of them collapsing together against the sloped edge of the tub, breathless, laughing quietly at the wreckage of water on the bathroom floor, thoroughly wrung out and completely at ease with each other again.

"Best celebration in the history of client launches," Veronica said, much later, her cheek against his chest, one hand trailing lazily through the cooling water.

"Second best," Jake said. "First one's whenever they sign the Q1 contract."

She swatted him, laughing, water splashing between them, and didn't argue.

• • •

Chapter Ten: A quieter stretch — but a new complication arrives that tests everything they've built.