Guilty Pleasures (14 page)

“I haven’t noticed that.”

“I don’t seem to have the usual trouble with you.” He tipped her against him, turned her face into his neck, and smoothed the length of her back over and over. “Kiss me, Polly.”

Kiss me, Polly. Such a simple request, with such complex possibilities.

Polly nuzzled his neck—and felt a tremor within him. She braced herself on his shoulders and raised her face until she could look into his again. He closed his eyes, and she surveyed the harsh, almost Slavic angles in his features. Uncompromising. But his eyes, turned to the amber she’d come to expect, had closed in a signal of submission. He gave up the power to her. The decision for what happened now he’d passed into her hands.

Polly rocked forward just enough to touch her lips to his. She heard him sigh, felt him sigh. Grazing lightly back and forth, she tasted mint on his lips and pulled back. “Gum,” she said. “I’m kissing a man who’s chewing gum.”

Nasty laughed. He had the kind of face laughter suited too well. She was grateful he didn’t do it often. And then she was unnerved by that gratitude—because it meant she wanted him too much, wanted him for herself.

“
I
swallowed it,” he said and tapped the end of her nose.

“The gum?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’ll stick your insides together!”

He laughed again. “Shut up and kiss me. I was just really getting into the mood.”

She glanced significantly downward, and said, “I’d say you’ve been in the mood.”

His laughter died. “I thought I told you nice girls don’t notice things like that.”

“You mean they notice, but
they don’t say anything. We’d
better be grateful we’ve both got clothes on.”

“Think so?”

This time it was Polly who closed her eyes. She closed her eyes, tucked her fingers into the hair on either side of his head, and brought her open mouth down on his.

She’d never kissed or been kissed like this before. He coaxed her to follow his lead, to use her lips, her teeth, her tongue. Music was part of her, part of her heart, of who she was. She felt music now like a rhythmic hum, a warm hum that vibrated her nerves.

Nasty tilted up her chin and buried his face beneath her jaw. He spread his hands on her shoulders, his fingers and thumbs extended as if he was afraid to close them in case he hurt her.

“That was lovely,” she told him, her voice thick. “I love kissing you. You make me hot all over.”

His chuckle had nothing to do with mirth. “Hot, huh? My dear Polly, I’m on fire. In fact, parts of me are going to explode shortly.”

She blushed and enjoyed it. “Do you think we should turn the heat down?”

“Do you think we’re hot because of the furnace?” The dips above her collarbones stole his attention. “You don’t think it’s that old thing called passion?”

“Arousal?” she suggested.

“You’re so much more succinct than I am. I was going to suggest we may be overdressed.”

“I don’t think I could trust myself if we took our clothes off,” she said. How funny that sounded.

“You can’t know how happy I am to hear you say that.”

“We’re talking a lot, aren’t we?”

“Nervousness causes that sometimes.”

She took a breath that pressed her sensitized nipples against her lace bra. “Have I made you nervous? I’m sorry.”

“Not quite the kind of nervous you’re thinking of. At least, I don’t think so. I’m going to take off my shirt before I die.”

“Of course. Would you like to go into the bedroom?”

Nasty regarded her solemnly. “Very much.”

She stopped breathing. “Just take it off here. It’ll work just as well.”

“Why don’t you take it off for me?”

“If you really want me to.”

“I really want you to.”

Polly undid the buttons carefully, concentrating on each one. When she reached the waist of his jeans, she frowned.

“Pull it out,” he suggested.

She drew back.

“The shirt. Pull the shirttail out of my jeans.”

“Of course.” Hurriedly she did as he asked. His cuffs were rolled up. She opened the shirt and stopped again. Leg men. Breast men. Butt women. Various other kinds of women. She’d never considered what turned her on but maybe she knew now. Polly Crow could very well be a chest woman.

“Problem?” Nasty asked.

“Your chest.”

He drew his brows together and looked down at himself.
“Your chest makes me feel…
Oh, this is awful. It turns me on—just looking at it. We’d better stop this.”

“Oh, no, we hadn’t.” Leaning forward, he took the shirt
t
ail the way off and threw it aside. “A man has to maximize his assets. If my chest is what it takes to convince you we’re meant to be an item, I’ll go without a shirt permanently.”

Overcome by what she felt, and by what she’d said, she curled into him and hid her face in his shoulder.

“Hey!” Gently, he settled a big hand on the back of her head and stroked her hair. “What’s this about?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You’re trying to make sure I can’t see what you’re feeling—and you’re doing that for no reason?”

“I’m embarrassed.”

“Okay. Let me help you out. There’s nothing about you that doesn’t give me a hard-on. Feel better now?”

She scrunched up tighter.

“If you promise not to scream, Polly, I’ll help you cool off.
I
could take off your dress, and whatever else you’re wearing, and you wouldn’t feel nearly so hot.”

Her yelp didn’t make her feel any less foolish.

“Is that a no?”

“Yes,” she told him, her voice muffled against his wonderful, naked chest.

“Yes? Yes, you want me to take off your clothes.”

“No.”

“I was afraid of that. Polly, you can just cuddle up against my chest and think sexy thoughts. That’s fine. How would it be if I said sexy things to you just to help out.”

Torture. This was some type of fantastic torture, and she was addicted to her torturer.

“I’ll assume you’re agreeing. I’m a man who makes a habit of doing what he says he’ll do. I told you I was going to take you to bed tonight. I still intend to take you to bed—unless you absolutely forbid me. If you do that, I won’t.”

Things like this didn’t happen to Polly Crow, social dropout made good. The new Polly Crow sang songs to children all over the country, and was held up as an example of motherhood, warm cookies, and cold milk, and how all the good things went together to make children feel safe and secure.

“Right beneath your round bottom, where your panties cover the important bits, my jeans are the only thing keeping me from slipping inside those panties, and inside you.”

She shuddered. Those bits between her legs contracted. They ached, and the ache spread upward and outward.

“But your friend Belinda gave me the benefit of her bag of Inspiration. Foreplay. I’m into foreplay, Polly. How about you?”

She was dying.

“You, too, huh?” he said. “I’d like to undo your bodice. Could I do that?”

He didn’t wait for her to agree. Instead he determinedly levered her hunched form from his chest, set her fists on his hips, and undid the row of small buttons between her breasts. “White,” he said, revealing her modest lace bra. “Pretty. I bet you’d be more comfortable without it. Your breasts look as if they’d enjoy being held by me a whole lot more. Do you think they would?”

When he’d threatened sexy talk, he’d meant it.

“Where does it undo?”

“At the back,” she heard herself say, with a sense that she’d become someone else entirely.

Frowning with concentration, Nasty considered his next move. He slid the sleeves of her dress far enough down her arms to make her movements difficult and reached around to unhook her bra.

“I told you,” he said, sounding triumphant when there was an instant loosening of the lace. “You’ll be more comfortable.” He slipped his hands down, beneath the fabric, to cup and lift her breasts.

Polly saw how tanned his hands were against her white flesh. Desperate to be free to react, she struggled to get the bodice of her dress all the way off.

Nasty helped her. He stripped the bodice to her waist, removed her arms from the sleeves, then got rid of her bra.

He held her legs just above the knees and looked at her breasts. “Dreams come true,” he said. “You’ve got perfect breasts. Exactly right—for me. Everything about you is exactly right for me.” As if to prove his point, he fondled her, smoothed her,
pushed her breasts together and pressed his face into them. He licked and kissed, not missing an inch of pulsing skin and flesh.

Polly wriggled. She plucked at his shoulders and dropped her head back. He didn’t miss an inch, but he didn’t take her nipples into his mouth. He drove her mad, but he had to know that.

“Lie down,” she ordered him.

His eyes opened, but didn’t completely focus. Sliding sideways on the big couch, he did as she asked, scooting until he stretched out on his back.

Getting rid of the loose dress was easy. It settled on top of Nasty’s shirt and her bra. Wearing only a pair of wispy, white bikini panties, she mounted him again, straddled his belly this time.

Xavier Nasty Ferrito made sounds she’d remember but never be able to describe. Polly stopped him from reaching for her. She laced her fingers with his and raised his arms above his head.

“Polly,” he murmured.

“I’m in charge now. Trust me. You’ll like it.”

Rising to her knees, she rocked her body enough to make her breasts sway just out of reach of his mouth. Nasty made jerking attempts to capture first one, then the other nipple.

“Aaah,” he yelled. “Gimme, gimme, you little devil.”

“You had your chance. I thought you didn’t want anything you haven’t already had.”

“I want everything I haven’t already had. Then I want it again. In my mouth, sweetheart. Please, I’m a starving man.”

And she was a sexually starved woman. Polly knew that truth about herself. Fact was fact, and she wasn’t a child—or even a virginal girl. She was a woman who needed a man—this man.

“Polly!”

Smiling at him, she lowered herself until the tip of his straining tongue made the lightest, most exquisite contact with a pebble-hard nipple.

Once, twice, three times she managed to repeat the torment—torment too painfully sweet to bear any longer.

But then the choice was no longer hers. Nasty rose from the couch, breaking her grip on his fingers, and reversed positions. He played with her breasts until she shrieked for more, or for mercy, in turn or all at once.

“My pants hurt,” he announced. “Polly, my pants are agony.”

“Take them off,” she told him. “Now. I wouldn’t want to break anything.”

He stood up, a golden man, his strongly muscled chest sprinkled with gold-tipped, dark brown hair, the same dark hair he revealed when he stepped out of his jeans.

His penis rose, heavily veined and massively engorged, from a thick nest of hair.

“See anything broken?” he asked huskily.

“What I see is very dangerous. And we’re still talking too much.”

“You mean you’d rather just do it and not talk about it?”

“I mean
I
want to do it, Xavier.” She couldn’t look away from his penis. “But what we want, and what ought to be can be really different.”

“Come here.”

She let him take her hands and pull her to her feet.

“Can you tell me—other than Bobby—can you tell me what’s holding you back?”

Polly couldn’t make words for the half-formed fears and feelings. She shook her head. “Kiss me, please. Make me stop thinking.”

The tenderness of his embrace surprised her, and it only served to deepen her need for him. His kiss was a delicate caress. She stood on tiptoe and locked her hands behind his neck. Back and forth he skimmed his mouth, skin on skin, tip
of tongue, to tip of tongue. The hair on his ches
t grazed her touchy nipples.

From the solid pressure of him against her belly, she could only guess what it must be costing him to stan
d still and simply hold her.

“You are the sweetest thing that ever happened to me,” he told her. “I wasn’t looking for you. It never struck me someonelike you might exist. But there you were.”

The gentle passion in his voice unleashed a fierce tenderness in Polly “And
now here we are. Look at us.”

She felt him smile against her lips. “That sounds like a great idea. At least, looking at you. But you’re not ready to make love, are you?”

How could she not be ready?

“You want the sex, but you
don’t want to feel the connec
tion.”

“You make me sound awful.”