No strings attached (7 page)

“See anything you’d like?”

At Eric’s question, Chloe slowly straightened and turned. She’d been about to ask if he had time to whip up a late afternoon lunch, or an early evening dinner,
but he stood there wearing nothing but a head of wet hair and a knee-length towel around his waist.

Her hunger shifted, stirring her blood and her interest.

She saw a lot worth liking. He was fantasy delicious, with his hair endearingly spiky and messy, as if he’d tumbled straight out of bed. His chest was lightly sculpted and bare of hair, with more than a few drops of leftover water she longed to lap from his skin.

That reaction surprised her, coming as it did from a place she hadn’t thought she was ready to visit. A place, in fact, she’d told herself to avoid. But now that he was standing here half-naked, she had trouble remembering why enjoying his body was such a taboo.

His towel was actually nothing more than a wraparound length of terry cloth held in place by a wide strip of Velcro. The imaginary rip of the two sides separating zipped down nerve endings already tingling and charged.

She gestured at the refrigerator, the door standing open, the air cool on her back. Cool was nice. Cool she needed. “A couple of things look pretty good. I could go for that lemon cheesecake.”

Or the bottle of chocolate syrup and your skin.

Eric moved a step closer, his smile white and beaming, his bare feet a sexy slap against the floor’s black-flecked white tiles. He kept his gaze locked on hers, the distance between them growing sliver-width slim until with every breath she inhaled Chloe learned Eric’s scent.

Beyond soap and shampoo, she smelled warmth and the intimate essence of skin. He lifted a hand, reached behind her into the fridge, so close she could count the freshly scrubbed whiskers he hadn’t bothered to
shave and, when she looked down, the thatch of hair in his armpit.

He grabbed the bottle of water he was after, his mouth lingering near her ear to say, “You smell great.”

“Oh, please!” She smelled like stink and sweat. “You’re out of your mind.”

Grinning, he shook his head, regarding her while holding the bottle in one hand, twisting the spout with the other. “You smell like fresh air and sunshine.”

“And salty sticky skin.” She was glad, at least, that she hadn’t played in her jersey. It still smelled marginally clean.

“You know, princess, when you were learning all my secrets during Macy’s scavenger hunt, you should’ve asked about aphrodisiacs.”

Again he leaned in close, this time nuzzling the patch of skin beneath her ear. His breath warmed her there, where he lightly blew on her neck. Then he pulled away, winked and squirted a mouthful of water from the bottle.

Oh, but this was so unfair. Chloe hadn’t yet recovered from the brush of Eric’s hair beneath her chin, or the smell of all that clean male skin as he’d reached beyond her for the water. And now he was teasing her, heightening her senses unbearably with a touch she knew meant nothing.

What she
did
know was that she really needed to shut the refrigerator door before the food inside suffered from exposure to the room’s temperature and that of her body. But the cold air at her back was like the touch of an ice cube on sizzling skin, and she needed to ease the burn.

When the water spilled from Eric’s mouth before
he could swallow, when the trickle ran from the ridge of his chin down his neck to the hollow of his throat, when a single rivulet squiggled down the center of his breastbone to his belly, Chloe could barely find her voice to echo, “Aphrodisiacs?”

“I like a woman who’s not afraid to sweat. I like the taste of salt on her skin.” Eric drank again, dribbled again, again drew Chloe’s gaze down his nearly nude body to where the terry fabric at his waist soaked the drizzle from his abdomen.

She refused to allow her gaze to dip any lower. “You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”

“What?” He asked the question with all innocence, then poured a stream of water into the corner of his mouth, where it wet his lower lip and a whole lot more.

Chloe wet her own lower lip with a flick of her tongue in an effort to slake her uncommon thirst. “Doing that. With the water. Like you think I’m going to clean it up?”

He set the water bottle on the kitchen counter and tore a paper towel from the roll mounted on a silver rod set into the countertop next to the stainless steel stove.

She took the towel he offered, thinking she was tempting fate way too much, with their obvious mutual attraction and her body being so hungry and Eric having so many qualities that belonged to Cary Grant.

But still she beckoned him closer and, with the towel folded into fourths, patted him dry, keeping her fingers from coming into contact with his skin.

It was hard to maintain control, especially when she wanted to touch the flesh she’d felt in the past only
through his clothing. She handed him the used paper towel.

He took it, but then grinned and audaciously added, “The towel was for you. In case you needed to dry your mouth. After drinking.”

“If you want me to clean you up with my tongue, you’ll have to provide a more appetizing enticement.” She couldn’t help herself. And even after she’d delivered the dare, she felt no need for repentance or for taking it back.

So when Eric once again reached beyond her into the fridge and came away with the same bottle of chocolate syrup that had starred in her earlier fantasy, she didn’t say a word. She only lifted a brow and glanced from the bottle, which Eric set on the counter, to his guilelessly wicked blue eyes, before returning her attention to the contents of the fridge.

Without a word, she added a can of whipped topping and a colander of freshly washed strawberries to the syrup sitting on the countertop. That ought to do it, she mused, breathless, finally closing the refrigerator door. After all, she’d always wanted to act out her own food fantasy à la
9½ Weeks.

Eric briefly took in her additions to his enticement, then leaned his backside against the counter, his hands curled over the edge on either side of his hips, his feet crossed at the ankle. “Strawberry shortcake?”

Chloe took more than a slight pleasure in the labored rise and fall of his chest. Eric was doing his best to appear calm and collected, at ease, but she wasn’t fooled. His hunger was stirred, and the terry wrap at his waist no longer lay flush against his thighs. His excitement was evident, and Chloe’s belly clenched and released. Her thighs grew warm and heavy.

She reached for the can of whipped topping, shook it longer than required. But then the point of taking her time was not about ensuring the texture of the cream as much as it was about making Eric wonder and wait.

She squeezed a dollop onto her finger, then licked it clean with the tip of her tongue. Her gaze remained locked with Eric’s as she repeated the process, only this time she offered the dessert to him.

He parted his lips and she dragged the flat of her finger down his tongue, leaving the sweetness behind. His eyes flashed at the contact, and again as she returned her finger to her mouth to lick it clean.

She moved closer, putting her body directly in front of his. Wetting first her top lip, then the bottom, she finally squirted a shot of the creamy froth into the bowl of her curled tongue. She pressed the cold foam to the roof of her mouth, where it melted at the contact with her body heat.

“Mmm,” she hummed, and held up the nozzle toward Eric. He stuck out his tongue; she swirled a small peak onto the tip. And then, while the cream dissolved in his mouth, while his gaze remained focused on hers, steady and fixed, yet simmering, she shook the can again and drew a half moon over his chest, from collarbone to collarbone.

The chocolate syrup came next.

She squeezed a pool into the hollow of his throat. It ran down to spread out over the thick ribbon of cream. He hadn’t moved. He’d done little more than pull in a sharp breath at the first cold contact, but the tic in his rigidly held jaw, the pulse at his temple, his fingers tightly wrapped around the countertop edge were all Chloe needed.

She knew by looking into his eyes what she’d see if she dropped her gaze down his torso to his groin. But she didn’t. Instead she moved another step closer, keeping her eyes on his and bringing their bodies within inches of touching. Then she took up the largest strawberry she could find.

She dipped the point of the fruit in the chocolate pooled deeply in a bowl of creamy white. The chocolate topping was thick, but it wasn’t minutes from separating under the weight of the sauce. She grinned as she circled the plump end of the fruit with the tip of her tongue, the motion ripely suggestive, especially when she sucked off every last drop of chocolate.

The veins in the back of Eric’s hands, the tendons in his arms stood out in bold relief as he maintained a death grip on the countertop.
Very nice,
she thought and, her eyes at a sultry, sleepy half-mast, she pulled the fruit from her mouth, dragged it through both cream and chocolate and offered it up to Eric.

The same fruit she’d had in her mouth and teased with her lips and her tongue.

He bit into the meat, nipping lightly at the tip of her finger, which she then ran over the seam of his lips, down his chin, his neck, teasing the slight bulge of his Adam’s apple before sliding through the hollow of his throat and breaking open the dam of cream.

Chocolate syrup ran down the center of his belly all the way to the terry wrap at his waist. She hooked her fingers over the Velcro and tore it away.

Eric’s breath caught hard and he nearly choked on the fruit, but he managed to swallow. He also managed not to move, but to stand there naked without saying a word. Oh, how she longed to look down, to get a full view of what her fingers had brushed against. That
brief contact eloquently spoke to the state of his arousal.

And she was no less aware and aching. Her panties were damp, her sex awash in a cream warmer than the topping spread across Eric’s chest. But she wanted to wait and wonder. To prolong the excitement, making it hard to breathe.

Scooping up a glob of topping with one finger, she painted one well-defined pectoral white. And then she leaned forward, touched her tongue to his nipple, swirling through the sweet mess to find the sensitive disk. Eric shuddered, a tremor that ran the length of his body. Chloe knew she’d hit her mark.

Blindly she reached into the colander for another strawberry and teased the flat male nipple with the tip of the fruit. She squiggled her edible toy through the melting mess of chocolate and cream, drawing a line down the center of Eric’s belly, circling his navel.

When she opened her lips over his breastbone, she was the one who was trembling, her breasts swollen and aching, her nipples hard peaks inside her jersey and bra, begging for the touch of Eric’s hands. All she had to do was ask, but she wasn’t finished with his pleasure.

She kissed her way down his midsection, lapping at chocolate and spots of cream that had slithered down his torso. She dropped to her knees then, sent her tongue chasing the strawberry in and out and around his navel as the head of his cock thrust upward into her chin.

She nibbled lower, nipping at the skin above his thatch of dark hair and moving her hands to his hips and behind to his buttocks, squeezing that solid muscle while she continued to feast, slipping her fingers
deeper into the crevice between his legs, her lips drifting lower, blowing warm breath against the skin above his jutting shaft.

The wait was making her crazy, making Eric crazier still. He moved his hands to her head, flexed his fingers in her hair and pretended to be patient while subtly maneuvering her mouth into position.

As if she needed instruction. She knew quite well how to make love to a man, whether using her body or her mouth. Still, very few had enjoyed her oral talents. This particular intimacy was one she saved for the rare man with whom she shared a connection beyond the ordinary.

What that said about her feelings for Eric she wasn’t yet ready to examine, even as she took him fully into her mouth.

Eric pulled in a sharp whistling breath and held his thighs rigid. His hands returned to the counter edge for support. He uncrossed his ankles and braced both feet flat on the floor. And still his body shuddered.

Now that Chloe had him where she wanted him, his legs far enough apart for her to get her hand between, she reached back to cup the sac of his balls and hold them down and away from his body. She wanted to take her time. She wanted Eric to take his pleasure, but only when she was ready.

With long strokes of her tongue, she measured the underside of his shaft, concentrating her attention around the ridge of his glans. She took him into her mouth, from tip to base, holding her lips in a firm O as she pulled back slowly over the head until he popped free.

A tremor ran through his body. She felt it in the hand between his legs and in the one wrapped around
the base of his shaft. She glanced up briefly, long enough to get a look at his closed eyes, his raised chin and his head, pressed back against the door of the cabinet behind. He blew choppy breaths out through his mouth, and Chloe sensed his slipping control.

And so she let her fingers roam, releasing his sac to play between his legs and explore the places she loved to explore. And he let her, his body taut, his legs stiff, his penis so hard it had to cause a pleasurable pain. How could skin that soft stretch to cover such an enormously hard swell?

A swell that mirrored the one pressing with a vengeance in the region of her heart. Her heart, which wasn’t supposed to factor into her association with Eric. She pushed her unwanted reaction away, recognizing the folly of too little too late and returned her concentration to working him with her tongue.

For several more minutes she teased and she played, enjoying his texture, his scent, his responsiveness and his taste. And then she could tell it was time. She knew, just as Eric knew, because he moved his hands to hold her still.

“Either you stop or I’ll come.”