His Black Pearl (2 page)

Chapter Three

Dark turquoise satin cups, black lace, a garter skirt over turquoise panties. Hallie smoothed her hand across the boned skirt before she trailed one of the garter straps between her fingers.

The sales clerk, all blonde and bones, rang up the purchase. “Hot date planned?”

“Not… planned.” Handing the girl her bank card, she looked out the boutique’s window. “I mean, no. No hot date.”

It was Friday morning, the store just open and the sun still hanging low in the eastern sky. Her car was parked on the street; her portfolio, with three new sketches for Aaron, was in the trunk.

She turned back, signed the sales slip. “Do you mind if I go back in the dressing room and… uhm…”

“No problem.” The blonde smiled, the grin so knowing and big it reminded Hallie of the coyote she’d damn near hit that morning pulling out of her driveway.

She took the bag, ducked into the first stall to change. Clipping her nylons in place, she frowned at the black coat dress with its line of silver buttons she had picked out that morning. The dress had reached its tipping point. She’d worn it to one too many gallery showings and bank meetings and was sick of it now that she had it on again.

Too late to do anything about it now -- she had a meeting with Aaron in thirty minutes.

Out of the dressing room and in her car, she ran a fresh layer of pale salmon-colored lipstick across her mouth and added some fresh powder to her face. Her hair was out of braids, the soft, tight curls falling shoulder length.

Hallie slapped the rearview mirror back in place. It was a commission. Nothing more. Why did she care what she looked like?

Half a dozen reasons popped into her head and she rested her forehead against the steering wheel, trying to block each one out.

A year had passed since her last lay.

Aaron was hot, seductive, rich, insightful (in a pushy way), and, if that bulge against her backside was any indication, he was hung like Jesus H. Christ.

Hallie Brandt
!

She bobbed her head against the steering wheel. “Sorry, Mama, but it’s true.”

But why the new underwear? She wasn’t so desperate as to be so obvious.

Was she?

Her dead mother’s voice tickled her ear again --
And always wear clean panties
…

Ugh. So Southern Baptist. She could only imagine what her mother would say if she knew her only child was wet and ready to give a little sugar to that rich white boy in his fancy mansion. Scratch that, Mrs. Brandt wouldn’t have said anything. She would have dropped to the ground in a dead faint.

“Shit.” She turned the engine’s motor over, checked her side mirror for traffic. Now she was going to be late -- another sin in the departed Mrs. Brandt’s long list of unladylike behavior.

* * *

Aaron met her at the door as he walked two men out. Both were old and shriveled, one pale as the moon, the other a deep, sun-baked brown. They walked closely together, as if joined at the hip and shoulder. Aaron looked angry; the old men seemed ecstatic.

“Ah, Miss Brandt…”

It was the dark one who spoke. Hallie jerked her head in his direction, surprised by his use of her name. She peered more closely at his wizened face, sure she didn’t know him. Had Aaron mentioned her to them?

“So nice to see her again,” he said to his odd twin.

“So like her mother,” the pale one agreed.

She stepped back, a cool mask falling across her face. Her mother was six years dead and a generation younger than Heckle and Jeckle, here.

“Enough of that.” Aaron forced them down the steps. “You would not give me what I want -- you can leave.”

“Careful, my boy -- we could accelerate the timeline…”

“Oh, indeed, we could…”

Their heads bobbed like freakish twins. Hallie looked from one to the other, unsure which had spoken first. Each had a voice like dry wind over rice paper. Definitely unpleasant old coots.

Aaron grabbed Hallie by the elbow and ushered her inside. The door slammed shut, cutting off the two as they started chittering in some foreign-sounding language. She freed her elbow and turned so that she could see Aaron.

He was biting at his bottom lip, his mouth as pale and bloodless as the old man he’d just shut outside.

She couldn’t help herself, even if she had no business asking. “What were you asking them for?”

What she really wanted to know was how the one knew her name, and why the other had mentioned her mother.

His response was short. “An extension.”

Whatever he needed more time on, it must have been important. His blue eyes were dull for the first time since she’d met him.

She moved closer. “Are they your bankers?”

“My uncles.” He offered a grim laugh and reached for her portfolio. “But enough of that -- what did you bring me?”

Dodging his hand, she turned toward the library.

He called her back, his tone regaining a measure of playfulness. “I thought we might as well start in the dressing room -- to save time.”

She turned, cocked her head to the side, and tried to stare him down.

Grinning, he mimicked her stance, right down to putting his hand on his hip. “The lighting in there is excellent, as you may recall.”

She patted the portfolio’s side. “We won’t need another trip to your dressing room.”

“That confident, eh?” He was staring at her body, his gaze so intense she could have sworn he was able to see through her dress to the satin and lace confection she’d purchased that morning.

Aaron started toward her, his natural, swaying grace replaced by something more predatory. On instinct, she backed up until her shoulders and ass pressed against the wall. The utter silence of the house surrounding her, she pulled her portfolio case up to shield her torso.

She wasn’t going to have a repeat of last week.

She didn’t want a repeat of last week.

Damn, that walk of his was pure sex.

Aaron stared at her face, making her fell self-conscious. He tucked a lock of her tight curls behind her ear and then he dropped his gaze to the first button on her dress and the peek of satin and lace from her bra. “You don’t know what you want, do you?”

“Those men --”

He choked on his reply -- a coughing laugh that brought tears to his blue eyes. “I don’t think I can assist you on that one.”

She shoved the portfolio at him. “What I was trying to say was that Heckle and Jeckle freaked me out a little. No offense, but your uncles are…”

“Yes, very.” He took the portfolio and held it behind his back before closing the distance between their bodies. “Heckle and Jeckle?”

“Two magpies… didn’t your parents let you watch cartoons when you were a kid?”

He shook his head. “No, but magpies seem rather apt.” He pushed closer, his head angling to the side as if he might kiss her at any second. “Anything else ‘freaking’ you out?”

She didn’t have to think hard on that one. “Your staff…”

“My staff?” The double entendre exiting his mouth in a slow glide, Aaron molded his hips and chest against her.

She could feel his erection through their clothes. It ran in a hard line from up over her belly button down to the top split of her thighs. She shook her head, pretending it was just one of the garter skirt’s steel bones -- just longer and thicker and generating a flutter of muscles in her thighs and cunt.

“It’s just I’ve never seen them -- it’s a little like Dracula’s castle. Everything’s perfect, but where the hell are they?”

“Around. I like my privacy. You could go a whole day without seeing them.”

She’d gone two whole visits without seeing them. Weren’t rich people supposed to pay someone else to answer their doors and show their crazy old uncles to the stoop?

He tilted his head back, his sharp blue gaze dissecting her expression. “Are you sure you’re not just worried about being alone with me?”

Dropping his lips to her throat, he licked a line from her shoulder up to her earlobe. Shivers spread out across her body from where his tongue had touched.

He pulled back a little, leaving her an inch of breathing room between their bodies. “I could fuck you right here, Hallie. But that’s not what I want.”

Raising one brow, she pressed her palm against his erection. “All evidence to the contrary?”

Clearing his throat, Aaron shifted in her hand until the weight of his balls filled it. Heavy and thick, their size made her want to give them a rough squeeze and beg him to lift the skirt of her dress. Hell, she had two hands -- she could give them a proper tug and lift her own damn skirt. She leaned toward him, fingers curling, thumb and pinkie smoothing against opposite sides of his cock.

Sighing, he lowered his head to her throat once more. But, instead of another kiss or bite, he offered only a question. “The sketches?”

“Right, the sketches.” She fell back against the wall, shoulders flexing in disappointment as she tucked her hands behind her back and nodded in the direction of his dressing room.

The long walk was a challenge. An exquisite sensitivity possessed her body. The rub of her thighs, the slightest shift of her nipples against her bra -- these were delicious tortures that had her biting back moans. He’d caused this, invading her space, pressing the long, thick line of his cock against her, filling her hand with his heavy balls. She imagined the slap of them against her flesh and wondered at their flavor -- whether they would be all honey and clove like his scent.

Taking short steps, her thighs tensing with need, Hallie crossed the threshold into his dressing room, hoping that Aaron was hurting every bit as sweetly.

She stopped mid-step, her facing crinkling up in an annoyed moue. Apparently not. Sitting on the padded bench, Aaron already had the sketchbook open and was studying the third image. “This,” he said, “is very close.”

She had a thing or two she could teach him about close right now. Close to coming, close to slapping him upside the head. She pressed her thighs together and sat down, almost collapsing onto the bench. “Close?”

He put the pad down and motioned for her to wait while he went into the bedroom. He returned a few minutes later carrying a wooden case. “It’s off contract -- but, seeing the new prelims, I want it in the painting.”

Inside the wooden box was a fat black pearl mounted on a platinum setting and chain. She bit back a whistle. One hundred eighty degrees away from a choker of diamonds or something equally gaudy, it was probably half a mil worth of breathtaking.

She reached for her portfolio case. “I can sketch it in right now.”

He wrinkled his nose. She let the portfolio drop back to the floor. “Something else?”

“There’s still a lingering hesitation in what you’ve sketched.”

She drew a deep breath. Wasn’t this what she’d been hoping for? Another adjustment, another excuse for him to have his hands on her?

Aaron put the wooden box down and pulled Hallie up and in front of the mirror. Standing behind her, he began to slowly undress her.

At the second button, he kissed her neck. “I love the way you tremble.”

Was she? Damn, yes. She tried to remember the last man who’d made her tremble. Dark and light revolved in her memory. Not a lover, not from desire. The last man who had set her to trembling had been her mother’s doctor, reporting test results showing not that her mother was suffering from a urinary tract infection but stage III cervical cancer. He had given her a forty percent five-year survival rate. Mrs. Brandt hadn’t made it through year two.

“Where are you?” His touch along her cheek was gentle, more the caress of a comforting angel than a lover.

She turned against his touch, her lips grazing his knuckles before she answered, “Here.”

Aaron kissed her temple. His hand trailed back down, the line of buttons quickly surrendering to him.

Just as she had.

At the fourth button, when the front of her bra was exposed, he groaned and cupped the underside of her breasts. He squeezed them once, roughly, before he hitched the skirt of her dress up to attack the next button. The top of her nylons showed and he stopped at the last button, grabbing the hem of the dress and bunching it in his fists. His lips found her throat again. A kiss followed by a light bite.

The last button flew across the room.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to do that.”

He sounded almost sheepish and she tried to turn in his arms but he forced her to stay facing the mirror. “Close your eyes,” he whispered against her cheek. “I won’t last with you looking at me like that.”

Letting him slide the dress from her, Hallie obeyed. The bra was a front clasp and he unhooked it, his thumbs circling her nipples before he stripped the lace and satin from her.

Warning her not to peek, he slid the necklace over her head, one hand caressing her breast while the other positioned the pearl between her cleavage.

“I found this diving in the South Seas.” His hands were at the garter clips. The quiet snap of each clip opening punctuated his syllables. “It’s my favorite gem -- a perfect symbol of creation.”

Bending, he ran his hands down her right leg, then her left, as he removed the stockings. “Round, with all the promise of a woman.”

Standing, he cupped her ass, spreading her cheeks and letting his fingertips graze her sex. A second later, the garter skirt was on the floor and he had gathered the sides of her panties in his hands. Instead of pulling them down, he lifted, letting the seam of the crotch rub hard against her clit as he spoke.

“I always think of sex and creation when I see that pearl.” His words, rough in his throat, ended with the tearing of fabric, and then her panties were gone. He moved his hands to her exposed mound. “I still have the shell it was created in…”

He held her labia apart, the tips of his middle fingers toying with the plump head of her clit. “… black lipped.”

Gently pinching the flesh with his fingers, he ran a line from the top split of her pussy to the dangling hood, trapping and tugging at it until her whole body trembled.

“Look in the mirror.”

She opened her eyes slowly, half-ashamed at her complete surrender to his touch. She saw her pussy first, swollen and glistening in its readiness. The pearl hung between her breasts, as black and round as if it were part of her own body.