Angela, Carla - Full Exposure (BookStrand Publishing Romance) (6 page)

Focus. On Lady Gaga and what she was warbling
.
One foot hitting the ground in front of the other.
But her mind betrayed her by focusing instead on her most recent client and how his member might taste in her mouth…

Jesus!
Lake was surprised by a fellow female runner in a bright pink singlet and navy leggings, rounding the corner toward her at speed, with a black Scottish terrier by her side. Lake almost fell off the track, which was languidly winding its way up the hillside, in her efforts to let them pass.

Once they’d gone, Lake paused to one side on the dirt track, bending her right leg behind her and holding onto the toe of her sneaker to stretch her calf. Perhaps she just needed some fuel to stay focused, motivated, to stop her mind from straying into dark, dangerous places.

She’d slotted a sachet of PowerBar energy gel under the waistband of her black leggings and now plucked it free. Ripping open the sachet, she sucked on the apple-flavored liquid inside, setting off on the path again at a brisk walking pace.

The saltiness, with a hint of apple, flooded her mouth. She sucked harder on the sachet, teasing the contents out with her tongue. Suddenly, the taste reminded her of cum,
apple-
flavored cum—
Hunter’s
cum—or how she imagined it might taste, deliciously sweet and sour.

This was ridiculous.

Tossing the sachet in a nearby bin, Lake turned around and set off full-pelt again for home, not even stopping when a stitch knifed into her side.

She had to get rid of this pent-up tension once and for all.

* * * *

‘Lake!’ Hunter called out, knocking on the front door of her unit, which he’d left just an hour ago before returning, realizing he hadn’t gotten his promised photos. It was a good excuse to come back at any rate, and she hadn’t been in the darkroom.

The unit was red-brick and ’60s in style, with quaint, white shutters and a neatly clipped rose bush out the front. For some reason, it reminded Hunter of Lake and her no doubt neatly clipped, rose-scented bush.

He tried again. ‘Lake!’ His knuckles rapped against the wooden door a little more heavily, and then suddenly, it gave way under the movement, creaking slightly open as though he’d tapped a secret code on the swollen wood. Oh, how he wished he had the password to make Lake’s legs part with such ease. She was a fiery one. She made his pulse quicken. If only she knew just how much. He’d had his eye on her for a while, longer than she knew, and he’d gone to great lengths to get her attention.

Hunter peered inside the unit—straight into a tiny lounge room—where a vintage-looking, olive-green, velvet sofa was a centerpiece, and there was a dark, wooden bookshelf to his left, adorned with quirky trinkets like a china owl figurine and a silver-framed, black-and-white print of a beach scene, with earthy strands of beads strung over one side.

He stepped inside, almost jumping out of his skin when something soft and velvety rubbed against his leg. He looked down. Oh, the cat. Of course.

Kneeling down, he tickled the pussycat under its chin and looked into its unblinking, green eyes. ‘Where’s your master?’

Cupcakes gave him a haughty look as if to say, ‘Who says she’s
my
master and not the other way around?’ Typical feline. Then the cat sauntered off with his tail in the air—still purring though.

Hunter took a few more careful steps inside, not sure whether to stay, secretly poke around and find out more about her—hoping she returned soon, pretending he’d just arrived—or do the right thing and leave.

Mid-thought he stopped, his head cocked to one side. He’d heard a noise coming from the far end of the unit—a splash of water. It sounded echoey like it was coming from a bathroom.

Unable to help himself, Hunter found himself tiptoeing forwards, through the lounge and light-flooded, compact kitchen toward a white-painted bathroom door, which was slightly ajar. Feeling utterly compelled, Hunter pressed one eye up to the crack between the door and the doorframe and swallowed hard. He’d found her. Oh, how he’d found her.

She was lying in an antique-looking, maroon bath, with a white lip and gold claw feet. The wet tendrils of her russet hair clung to her shoulders and snaked around her perky, cream-coloured breasts, like some kind of creeper. Water beaded from her collarbone down to her rosebud nipples. Hunter could imagine sucking those perfect strawberry tits. He felt the front of his pants growing tight, uncomfortable—his jeans imprisoned his member as it grew in size.

Lake’s head was tilted back, resting against the bath’s ledge, and her eyes were closed. She was seemingly content.

Her arm, he suddenly noticed, was thrust below the water’s surface, deep, deep below, moving slowly up and down.

Hunter could feel the perspiration beading on his own forehead, as much from the steamy room as from the steamy scene before him.

Then Hunter forgot to breathe for a second as a soft moan suddenly wafted from Lake’s pink lips. Her whole body now began moving along with the rhythmic pace of her arm, whose fingers were no doubt doing their own nimble work below the water’s surface, picking up speed. Her back arched back now, her breasts pointing toward the ceiling, like ripened honeydew melons.

Lake moaned again, louder this time. The sound ripped through Hunter. He wanted to touch himself. To imagine that her hands were on him and that they were in this together, that they were pleasuring each other, but he daren’t move and be discovered.

And then he heard it. ‘Oh, Hunter…Oh, God,
Hunter
!’

His name. His
actual
name. Wow. He liked the sound of it on her lips. It was like his member was plunging deep into those pillowy lips. She was fantasizing about
him
. He’d actually had an effect on her already. His quiet, steady efforts had paid off.

She was flailing about now, the bottom half of her head of hair, a dark mahogany now that it was wet, dipping in and out of the water, her eyelashes fluttering open and shut, like she were having some kind of episode.

Then she let out a moan that seemed to come from her pert bellybutton region and reverberated right through her. The sound bounced off the white-tiled walls—a moan of absolute, exquisite pleasure. Hunter felt his own eyes half closing, deep in the moment with her.

Then they flickered fully open again in time to see the trickle of bubbles form on the top of the water above Lake’s nether region. She’d come. Oh, how she’d come!

She lay back against the wall of the bath again, panting, her left arm, beading with water, hung over one side. Her ribcage moved up and down, her breasts bobbed in the water like bountiful buoys. It took all of Hunter’s physical control not to fling open that door, kneel on the wet bathroom floor, cup one breast in his hand, and run his tongue along the floral-scented flesh before sucking hard on its nipple, luxuriating in the strawberry sweetness.

Lake’s serene, unmoving face suddenly crinkled into a small smile. As though she were running over the fantasy again in her mind and reveling in it. The thought warmed him.
He’d
done that. He’d made her feel all hot, heavy, and happy, at least in her mind.

With suddenness, an idea hit Hunter square between the eyes. He’d leave her a gift.

The
perfect
gift. A gift especially for her.

Though he didn’t want to have to drag his eyes away from her—from drinking in every inch of her tantalizing, naked flesh—he had to. He was an intruder.

Turning away, his member still throbbing, he tiptoed toward the front door and out back to the darkroom.

* * * *

Lake adjusted the framed photo on the beige wall for the umpteenth time and then stood back. Overhead spotlights sparkled on the glass, lighting up every inch of the naked, feminine silhouette captured beneath it in black and white. Finally, she nodded to herself. It was, at last, about right.

‘Need any help?’

Lake jumped instinctively, lost in her own dreamy world, before turning in the direction of the lilting Irish voice. A young, dark-haired man with pockmarked skin, who worked at the gallery, had his head poked around the doorway, with a thick eyebrow cocked quizzically in her direction.

Finally, Lake shook her head, wiping her hands on her black jeans absentmindedly. ‘All good. I just have one more to hang up, and then I’m done. I’ll be out of your hair!’

‘Not a problem at all. Anyway, you know where to find me if you do wind up needing a hand! And, of course, good luck with the exhibition tomorrow. Or perhaps “break a leg”?’

‘Gosh, I hope not,’ Lake said, mock-grimacing. ‘Ha. But yes, thank you. Fingers crossed it all goes well.’

The young man disappeared again, the sound of his footsteps echoing down the aluminum spiral staircase. Being such a perfectionist, Lake was quite happy to do her own picture hanging, but she was grateful for the help offered nonetheless. And she realized she’d been too lost in her own world to even be slightly embarrassed by all the photos of her nude in front of the young man. Tomorrow night would be more of a test, though. She was hopeful people would see through any titillation to the art itself, to the photography she was proud of.

She turned back in the direction of the little raised stage area where there were draped silky, midnight-blue curtains and a dark wooden double lectern, where the pièce
de
résistance would hang above, suspended from a picture rail—a massive shot of her sitting cross-legged, her nipples standing to attention, and a bouquet of dark roses in her hands, strategically covering her nether region. The faceless figure looked vulnerable. Open. Ready to love again. Lake only hoped the gallery visitors would get it.

She reached for the metal ladder and tucked it under her arm, carrying it to the tiny stage area. Then she grabbed for the massive framed photo—the pièce
de
résistance—resting against the bottom of the wall to her right, biting her lip as she viewed it one more time before hoisting it up the ladder with her under her arm.

Resting the picture on top of the ladder, she slid its silver molding hooks over the picture rail so that it hung against the silky curtain backdrop
.Then she took a few tentative steps down the ladder to view it from another angle. Adjusting the way the picture hung a few more times, she made her way down the ladder again for the last time and stood back, her hands clasped in front of her. She was done. Finally. Well, until that night.

Suddenly, as though all the naked images were crowding in on her, a tingling sensation swept through her, like an electrical current, crackling from the russet hair on her head to the groomed triangle down south. An image had just flashed through her mind from out of nowhere. A filthy one. Involving Hunter, of course.

She’d imagined their stark-naked bodies, slick with sweat, entwined behind the dark wooden double lectern so that their feet were just poking out. She imagined the roundness of her lily-white breasts pressed against his hard, tanned chest and his tongue sweeping over her face, licking her cheeks and trailing down to the perfumed nape of her neck, as though she were scrumptious enough to eat.

All the while he was driving into her with his solid shaft, with a firm self-assuredness, driving her to the brink of insanity, to delicious, mind-blowing exhilaration, as though it was all in the world he needed to do.

Lake could feel herself growing clammy under her arms and her breath coming out in short, ragged puffs again, just like when she was running, and in the bath.
She felt like she had an endless pit of sexual heat ever since Hunter had strolled into her life all hobo-like. She’d never felt like that before, not even with Chase.

A door slammed down below, on the lower level, and it jolted Lake back to the present. The cold, lonely reality. She shook herself.

She had to stop. She had to get a grip. Hunter was about to enter the online dating world with vigour—if he hadn’t already updated his cyber profile, which she hadn’t dared check—and would no doubt soon have a bevy of beauties to choose from.