Maximum Exposure (14 page)

“What about after then?”

“You’ll be fine. Trust me.”

“Will you be fine? Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

“Right now, no. But I’ll fill you in as best I can later.”

“Is that a promise?”

Oh, baby. Oh, sweetheart.
“It’s the only one I can make.”

He slid his hands beneath that damn tempting fringe to her breasts, molded, squeezed, found the rings she wore there, and pushed the ends of his little fingers through before dipping his head to find her nipples with his tongue. She groaned, her head rolling to the side, her hands flat against the wall at her shoulders, as if stapled there.

He’d been waiting for days to taste her, wondering too many times if she’d be sweet or spicy, when, after all that writhing and dancing, she was salty and musky and warm. He licked his way around the rings, which he held away from her breasts, lapping at her areolae and nipples until he couldn’t take it anymore. The scent of her sex drew him down.

He dropped to his knees, tried to take care with her skirt but couldn’t find any fastenings, so he did what he had to do, tossing the torn fabric behind him, hearing it slide across the floor. The ring piercing her clit gleamed gold in the light from the spot he’d dimmed.

He sucked it into his mouth, caught it with his teeth and tugged, slipped the tip of his tongue through, and teased her there, back and forth across the top of her swelling sex, which pulsed with the flow of her blood.

She gasped when he spread her open, moaned when he pushed two fingers inside her. She was wet, and his cock throbbed with each stroke, in and out, in and out, her hips pumping against him, fucking his hand.

He didn’t care that they hadn’t taken any time. His hand was not what he wanted her fucking. He stood, reached for his fly. Her fingers were already there, helping him, in the way, pulling him out of his pants while he pushed his boxers and jeans to his knees.

She hooked one leg around his hip and reached for his shaft to position him. He surged forward, burying his cock up to his balls in her heat. She was tight, and she held him there, squeezing, releasing, gripping, easing. He groaned. This was seconds from being done.

“It’s okay,” she whispered against his neck, looping her arms around him, her hands flat beneath his nape. “Make it hard and fast. I’m all yours.”

He wanted to laugh, to toss back his head and roar. Right now, as jacked up as he was, he couldn’t give it to her any other way. And knowing she felt the same? Well, that cut this encounter’s life span in half.

Nothing aroused him more than being wanted this fiercely. And hot? Didn’t even begin to describe the sensation or the full scale of his desire. He gripped her hips; buried his face between her neck and her shoulder; and gave her what she wanted, what he wanted, pounding into her, bouncing both of them off the wall.

She gasped and panted, and he could barely breathe. He didn’t have time to breathe, to think. This was all about his cock, and the tight, wet glove of her pussy, and those damn gold rings where they dug into his skin.

He slid in, pulled out. The wet, sucking sounds as he slapped at her filled the cavernous room, along with her rhythmic groans and his own coarse grunts. Mindless fucking at its finest. That was what this was. And then she squirmed, jolted, and cried out as she came.

She was still shuddering when he followed, one powerful shot after another, his knees shaking, his quads weak. But even when he finished, he didn’t move. And she didn’t move. And so he stayed inside her, pulsing, wondering if she could feel him hardening again.

He did smooth her skin where he’d been digging in with his fingertips, turning his head to rest it on her shoulder. “I might have left bruises. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t respond. Not right away, though she didn’t make any attempt to move or reject him, and she did keep him inside her as he grew thick and long. So when she finally did speak, he wasn’t sure how to take her soft words.

“Don’t blame me for this.”

Was she kidding? “Why would I blame you?”

“I danced for you. I led you on.” She paused, swallowed. He felt her throat convulse where his face rested. “I asked for it.”

He lifted his head, looked at her. Something was going on here. Something deeper than he knew how to deal with. Something important that he didn’t understand.

“You danced for me because I told you to. If you led me on, I was the one who let you. And you didn’t ask for anything at all except what you wanted.”

Her head was back. Her eyes closed. She was still holding him, with her hands, with her sex, though she had lowered her leg, relieving the strain from standing on the other. But then he thought he saw her lower lip tremble.

She caught it, pressing it tight to her top lip, but he’d seen it. He knew. There was something very wrong in her world. He didn’t know where to start making it right, so he did the one thing that seemed the most obvious.

He kissed her.

He cupped her face in his hands and softly rubbed his lips on hers, soothing her, gentling her, making her see that this was all about shared pleasure, not about casting or taking blame. Blame. Where had that come from, anyway?

It took several seconds, but the tense moment faded, and she parted her lips beneath his urging and kissed him back. It was a perfect kiss, a meaningful mating of tongues, an accidental clash of teeth, laughter, coaxing and teasing, and then hands began to roam.

That was when the kiss changed, grew potent, intense, lustful. She arched her back, her shoulders against the wall, her pelvis forward, and ran her hands down between their joined bodies, where she fondled her clit, cupped his balls, stroked the underside of his shaft when he pulled out to give her room.

But then he pushed right back in. She felt too good to leave, though he did break away from her mouth so he could kiss more of her: her neck, her throat, her collarbone, the upper swell of both breasts. She moaned as he discovered her, and then she threaded her fingers into his hair and lifted his head.

Her eyes were glassy with desire. “Could we…not stand?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, thinking,
Anything you want, say the word.
“But the floor’s pretty hard.”

“I’m sure your back can take it,” she said, a queenly demand, and that made him smile.

It would’ve been beyond cool if he’d been able to maneuver them down without ever pulling out of her. But this was real life, not fiction, and so as much as it pained him, he slipped his penis free, keeping his arms around her as he tumbled.

She climbed on top of him, straddled his thighs. His cock stood at attention against her belly. She held the head in one hand, thumbed the seam on the underside, slid her bottom farther down his legs, and leaned forward to take him into her mouth.

She toyed with him, teased him, tortured him until he hurt, using her lips and her tongue, her hand tight at the base of his shaft. He could have been lying on a bed of nails for all he felt of the hard floor.

What he felt was the tip of a match, a short fuse sparking. He reached for her shoulders, hooked his hands in her armpits, and pulled her mouth back to his. She kissed him with the same fire that burned through his groin when she took his cock deep inside her again.

She ground her hips against him, rose up and down, long, sweet, agonizing strokes all the way from his balls to his slit. She rolled, doing a figure eight, taking him with her, breaking him, burning his chest and his belly with the metal hoops heated by the friction of their bodies.

And then she sat up, braced her hands on his knees, and leaned back. He propped himself up on his elbows and watched her ride, watched the slide of his cock between the lips of her pussy, watched her hole swallow him, watched the light catch and glint off the gold as she moved.

She was gorgeous, a goddess, all bronzed skin and brown-sugar hair, the tips of her breasts dipped in dark caramel. He wanted to devour her, to feast until he couldn’t move another muscle and his cock fell off.

And then she came, shuddering, quaking, falling forward and into his arms, then whispering into his ear, “Roll over.”

She didn’t have to tell him twice. He stayed with her, moving on top of her, still tangled in his pants as he braced his feet and found his rhythm.

Next time,
he told himself. Next time he’d do this right, make it last for hours, for days. This time he didn’t have it in him to wait.

She didn’t want to think so. She didn’t want to think that he’d planned for sex, set the stage for sex, set her up for sex. Yes, they’d talked about the chemistry that sizzled between them, acknowledged its existence.

But they hadn’t done more than talk. Or really, they hadn’t talked about more than it being an important part of their working relationship. They hadn’t talked about sex.

They’d shared a few looks that, granted, could easily have served as tinder, feeding the fire that had flared up between them there in the dark. Even now, the morning after, as she climbed the stairs to her office and his room, her body was still aflame.

What she was having the most trouble facing, however, was the way she’d panicked, how she’d begged him not to blame her for what they had done. He had no reason to. He’d been as caught up in the moment as she had, as aroused, as ready. He’d been the one to come to her. She’d been the one to accept him. She could have told him no.

Yes, she’d tempted him. She’d used her body to get what she wanted. They were both adults, healthy, sexual, aroused. Satisfying that desire had been a mutual pleasure. None of which explained why she was feeling the need to put space between them now.

Or why she was bringing coffee to the room where he might still be sleeping.

She knocked, heard a groggy “Come in,” and turned the knob, pushing the door open to find him sitting shirtless on the edge of the futon.

“You can fold that out, you know. It makes a bed.”

He shoved both hands through his hair, scratched his scalp. “I know. I was too lazy.”

She’d had him inside her, but she had yet to see his chest. As she crossed the room to hand him the latte, she tried not to stare, but he looked all sleepy and cuddly, and she wanted to run her fingers through the patch of hair in the center and play with his nipples, and sniff his neck where it met his shoulder, and kiss him until her face stung from being scraped by the stubble of his beard.

“Thanks,” he said, reaching for the coffee and thankfully oblivious to the thoughts running through her head.

“Did you get your deposit back? On the warehouse?” Business. It was all about business.

He nodded as he sipped. “They’ll put it in the mail. Should be there next time I check the box.”

“That’s good,” she said and walked to the window for something to look at that wasn’t his bare body. She’d noticed his jeans crumpled with his T-shirt on the floor and assumed there was nothing beneath the blanket wrapped around his hips but his boxers.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Eight thirty. I hesitated waking you, but Saturdays are usually crazy at the store, and I wasn’t sure I’d be available until this evening if you needed me for anything.”
Like more sex. Or even more sex.

She heard him fumbling with his clothes, the clink of coins and keys in his pockets as he pulled on his jeans. “Would you mind if I hung around the store today? Watched you at work?”

She didn’t mind, no, but…“It’s not exactly the right environment for taking pictures.”

And then she turned. She couldn’t take it anymore. She needed to see him, needed a hint of what he was feeling, why he’d disappeared on her after the warehouse, when she’d waited the rest of the day for him to call.

“I wasn’t going to take any pictures today,” he told her, his gaze meeting hers above the cup as he drank.

She leaned back, her hands on the window ledge, crossing one ankle over the other. “Then I don’t mind, no. Though if anyone asks you to cut them a deal, don’t.”

He returned her smile, set the coffee on the floor next to his duffel, and dug for a shirt, pulling it over his head before, barefoot, crossing the room to where she stood.

“I want to ask you something,” he told her, his eyes focused sharply on hers.

Not about the blame thing, please.
She was having enough trouble explaining that to herself. “Sure. What?”

He turned, planted his palms on the window ledge, next to her hips, without touching her, and leaned forward to stare at the delivery access below. “The day you came to Dustin’s condo. You came because you wanted to convince me to take this job, right?”

That, and the fact that she hadn’t liked the way they’d left things after the showing, with his crack about whether they should sleep on things together or alone. She’d wanted to see if things had settled after their time apart.

“Yes, why?”

“I’ve been thinking about your clothes.”

“My clothes?”

He nodded. “You wore sandals, a sarong, and a tank top with a very modest neckline. You hardly showed any skin. There weren’t even any accidental peekaboo moments with the slit in your skirt.”

She shifted uncomfortably. He’d put more thought into what she’d worn than she had when getting dressed that morning. Or had he? “Did you want there to be?”

“It’s not so much what I wanted. But what I expected. From the first time we met, you haven’t been shy about letting me look. I eventually figured out why, you wanting to hire me and all. So when it’s make or break the deal time, and you’re completely covered up…”

He shrugged, pushed away from the window, and went back for his coffee, taking a sip before he continued. “I wasn’t sure if you were serious or not. Or if it was your way of letting me off the hook.”

He thought because she’d dressed more conservatively than usual that she wasn’t serious? That exposing herself was the only way she got anything done? That because she hadn’t let him look, she was no longer interested in doing business with him?

She glanced down at what she was wearing now, a turquoise and vermillion and sunset orange print tank dress beneath a matching sleeveless vest. Her arms were bare, as were her legs between her ankles and knees, as were the hollow of her throat and the edges of her collarbone in the shallow scoop of her neckline.

The outfit might not be acceptable boardroom wear, but it was de rigueur in her line of work. It showed that she understood her clientele’s specialized tastes, tastes that didn’t sit well on everyone’s palette, she knew. But then she wasn’t competing with chains and department stores for their one-look-suits-all business.

She catered to shoppers more interested in branding themselves or finding themselves than wearing labels belonging to somebody else. And showing off her cleavage, her body jewelry, her body…well, that was her way of defining herself, of being herself, of controlling the spin of the circles in which she moved.

“I’m always serious about business,” was what she finally said, feeling a strange, unbalancing rush as doubts and denial escaped the box where she kept them locked away. “I wouldn’t have come to you with my proposition on a lark.”

“Then I don’t get it.”

“Don’t get what?”

“The looking thing. I thought I had it figured out. That it was about getting your way or at least giving yourself an edge.”

“Then you thought wrong, didn’t you?” she responded before walking out of the room.