Player: Stone Cold MC (10 page)

I’d been with women who were technically hotter than Alex. Bigger tits, better ass, smoother skin, a tan. But none of them had had the personality Alex had, and that was what pushed me over the edge with her. That was what made her so irresistible. If only women understood that looks meant nothing when all you did was give away sex like loose change.

Alex wriggled out from underneath me and waited until I was on my back. She tried to straddle me, but her one leg came up against the back of the couch.

“Wait,” I said and turned so that I was half-sitting against the back of the couch, my ass on the very edge of the seat. She got on top of me, more than enough space for her legs on both sides.

She made small movements, grinding her hips and moving her chest in a movement that looked a lot like a lap dance. I was thinking about coming, and she wasn’t even on me yet.

She sat down, and my tip was in her slit. She lifted herself slightly and then dropped back down so that I slid up and down in the fluids that we’d mixed together.

She was driving me crazy, building suspense and being a cock tease.

Then she sat down on me, and I slid into her, deep. She gasped and moved around a little, finding her groove.

I put my hands on her hips. She moved her hips forward and back, moving me with her. I guided her with my hands, but it wasn’t necessary—she knew what she was doing.

She started rocking on me. Her breasts bobbed at my eye level; her hands were on my chest. Her hips undulated, her muscles contracting and releasing around me. The rest of her rubbed against my pubic bone, and she closed her eyes moaning. Her hands went to her own breasts, giving me a show as she pulled on her own nipples and massaged her engorged breasts.

Her cheeks were flush, lips slightly parted, and she gasped.

She was getting closer. I could tell by the way her hips were bucking harder and a natural rhythm took over, sex becoming instinctive. She put her hands on my chest again, bracing herself against me.

I could feel my own body responding to her rocking. She moved faster and faster on my cock, and she was so tight and getting tighter. My balls squeezed tighter.

A moment later she orgasmed, crying out and then curling onto my chest, burying her head in my shoulder. Her body convulsed and a spasm rocked through her.

She was still moving, but barely, and I took over the motion, rocking my hips into her, using the edge of the couch as something that would let me topple over the edge.

The renewed motion and her clenching on my cock sent me over the edge. Just as her orgasm subsided, I launched into mine, my balls tightening and releasing my load deep inside of her. She moaned again, and I knew she could feel me coming. I pumped into her for what felt like forever, and she was right there with me, her nails digging into my shoulders and her breath hard in my ear.

Her body shuddered on top of me, and when my orgasm finally died down we were both gasping and panting, breathing hard.

After a moment, she pushed up and looked at me. Her eyes were shimmering, her pupils still dilated. Her skin was slick with sweat, her hair stringy around her face.

She leaned back and then lifted up, letting me slip out of her. I felt how tight she was, rubbed raw. She was swollen. Sexed. Delicious.

All of that was because of me, and I loved it.

“I’ll be right back,” she said softly and lifted her leg to get off me. She looked like she tested her balance for a second, and then walked away from me, ass swinging, still not making any move to cover up.

When she’d left the room, I found my boxers and pulled them back on. I found my shirt, too, and shrugged into it without buttoning it up. A couple of minutes went by. I found my smokes in my jacket pocket and walked to the kitchen where I opened the back door and lit up.

It was dark, street lamps in the distance beyond the perimeter wall, the cherry glowing red inches from my face as I inhaled.

“Here you are,” she said behind me. I turned around, flicking ash into the garden as I did. She’d untied her hair, and it hung in waves over her shoulders. She wore men’s boxers—I tried not to think who they could have belonged to—and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt.

“I needed a smoke,” I said. “I didn’t want to be rude and smoke inside.”

“Thank you,” she said and switched on the light. It drove away the darkness and the calm; the magic of the night disappeared with it. “Would you like me to make you something to eat?”

I nodded, blowing the last mouthful of smoke into the night so the streetlights blurred behind it. Then I flicked the butt into the flowerbed and turned around to sit at the table.

“Why are people always hungry after sex?” I asked Rip when he sat down at my kitchen table. I didn’t usually like smokers—it was a bad habit—but the smell that hung in the kitchen now was a mix of his cologne, cigarette smoke, and sex, and it smelled good.

It reminded me of the sex with him, both times. Rip always had the faint smell of smoke clinging to him, and I was starting to relate that to good memories.

“I think it’s because it’s such hard work,” Rip said. When I looked up at him, he was smiling slightly, a glimmer in his eyes more than the curve of his mouth. Hard work was right. It had been short and sweet but definitely not watered down. I’d realized during the past week with Rip that nothing he did was watered down. He did everything so intensely that he almost overdid it. His eagerness was endearing. I smiled too.

“It doesn’t feel like work,” I said.

Rip chuckled.

I looked around the kitchen like there were answers in the air between us. “What are we having?” Food was the best thing I could think of now, and if I weren’t so lazy I would suggest we go out to grab something. But I was comfortable in my pajamas, and I didn’t want to break the lazy sexy spell that was cast between us.

Cooking it was.

He shrugged. “What do you have?”

I opened the fridge and stared at the contents. It was running on empty; I had to make a run to the grocery store in the morning. However, I had eggs and Feta cheese, and we could make toast with it.

I took out the eggs and pulled the toaster from one of the cupboards and balanced it on the counter with one hand. I stepped from side to side, moving my hips. My muscles were stiff from our activities, and I could still feel Rip inside of me, an echo of his body penetrating mine. An erotic shudder travelled through me, and I felt it lick up my core again when I thought of his mouth, holding me at his mercy. My body got hot, and I considered round two, but that was pushing it.

“When are you getting the cash to the brothers?” I asked. We had to get it sorted as soon as possible. They’d invited Rip to that game, and they were going to expect returns. I also wanted to know when I was getting my cash, but I didn’t ask that out loud. It seemed like a hell of an anti-climax, talking about finances after what we’d just done.

I just had to trust that he would leave me my share when he went. I was going to put my trust in him—even though it wasn’t who I was—because I had to trust someone at some point, and if there was any place to start, it was with my business partner.

“I’m going to pay a visit to Rumor’s Lounge tomorrow night,” he said. “Thugs don’t have bank accounts, apparently.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think they do a lot of things the legal way. Bank accounts leave paper trails. Can you see any of them standing in the queue at the bank to cash illegal drug money or something?” The imagery was funny, and we both chuckled. It all made sense, but it was inconvenient. Having to look them up personally didn’t always go down very well. But that was how it was, it was a fact you had to deal with if you decided to play this game.

And we were playing it.

The smell of eggs and toast filled the kitchen, replacing the smell of smoke and sex, and it filled me with warmth in a different way. Breakfast with someone was so much better than breakfast alone. 

“That smells fantastic,” Rip said. He leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, fingers interlinked behind his head. With his arms up, it made his biceps and his pectorals pop, and he had a body on him that was worth looking at. With his eyes closed, I took the opportunity to stare. He looked at home in my kitchen. With his eyes closed, the stark planes in his face and his black hair and tan skin made him look like some sort of Adonis.

It was nice having a male around. I hadn’t had testosterone in the house for so long, I’d almost forgotten what it was like.

“Eggs on top of the toast or next to it?” I asked when the eggs were done and the toast had popped. Rip opened his eyes only halfway, leaving him with drooped eyelids and a sensual look on his face. I forced my attention away from his lips. I wasn’t attracted to him that way.

The sex was good, but I really wasn’t.

“Let me butter it,” Rip said, as he got up and walked to the fridge. A man who did something around the house? That was rare. In my opinion, men were just there to tell me how to serve them.

“And on top,” he added, answering my question.

When I’d dished up, we sat at the table together, eating in companionable silence. The toast was perfect, with just the right amount of butter melted into it. My eggs were next to my toast, and I appreciated how he’d slathered the bread as if butter was going out of fashion. The more calories the better. The clatter of the knives and forks on the plate was the only sound in the kitchen.

“What’s next?” I asked, breaking the silence. I put another bite of eggs in my mouth and chewed, looking at Rip.

He swallowed. His blue eyes were electric, the kind of color you didn’t just see in real life. 

“How about we go on a date?” he asked.

I blinked. “I meant with the cards,” I said. I was a little caught off guard. A date? I didn’t do dates. Not since Tom. I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to get involved with a guy like that ever again. Being open to a man was being vulnerable, and I wasn’t going to be vulnerable. Rip took another bite and nodded while he chewed.

“I know what you meant,” he said with half his food still in his cheek. “But I’d like to take you out on a proper date. We’ve slept together twice and we haven’t really spent time socially to make up for that. Isn’t that what women need so that it doesn’t feel like men just want their bodies?”

What relationship books had he been reading?

“But this isn’t a relationship,” I pointed out.

“So? It doesn’t have to be. It’s just dinner.” He smiled at me with a brilliant smile, teeth white despite the fact that he was a smoker and he was in the middle of a meal.

He shrugged. I thought about it. He was being nice. He didn’t want it to be just about my body, which was a refreshing change. And this wasn’t a relationship, it was just dinner. Like he’d said. Nothing wrong with that, right?

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not like other women. I’m quite happy with just sex.” That wasn’t exactly true, but I’d resigned myself to that fate, so it was close enough. After all, I didn’t want to tempt fate. If you started dating the people you worked with, especially in the circles we were moving in, you ran into trouble.

Rip looked at me, expectation clear on his face. It seemed almost cruel to say no to him. But what was the alternative? Let him woo me and—God forbid—fall for the guy?  Get my heart broken?

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because if we get romantically involved, it can compromise what we’re trying to do.” That, and it could also compromise my own heart. I was willing to lose almost everything in my life, but my heart wasn’t one of those things.

He shrugged again. “Fine,” he said, and he cocked one corner of his mouth up in a lopsided smile. “We’ll just make it about sex then.”

I couldn’t help but smile. He was being really nice about it. And he was right, it wasn’t as if we were going to get involved with each other. It was just sex. I didn’t care—so that made it uncomplicated. And if he did end up falling for me, I wasn’t the one who was going to lick my wounds.

“You know that I’m not attracted to you that way, right?” I asked. I had to be sure he knew where I was standing. After all, women were the ones who got emotional and attached after sex. I didn’t want him to generalize with me. 

He nodded. “I don’t think you’re attractive either. At all.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re a liar,” I said.

“Yes. I think you’re hot. But it’s just dinner, as I said. I’m not going to expect you to sign your life over to me. And the last thing I need right now is to have some woman depend on me.”

“Because you don’t make enough money,” I interrupted. He pulled a face at me.

“I just think it would be good if we spent time together in a friendly capacity. Not just work. You know what they say about all work and no play.”

I laughed again. Rip was funny. Funny and interesting. And he was right, we couldn’t focus on work alone. Besides, maybe if we knew each other better as people, it would work in our favor while we were hustling people. A team had to know each other. It was always like that. Why not get to know each other in the right capacity? It didn’t help that he didn’t know who I was as a person but knew my favorite positions.

I pushed the last bit of food around my plate, trying to weigh out the pros and cons. Being involved with him wasn’t going to work. But it would if we did it the way we were doing it.

I finally nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Sure. A date. But you can’t make it romantic.”

He smiled and nodded. “I don’t know if you noticed, I’m not romantic. No flowers. Ever. Exes used to complain.” I laughed again. “And I have terrible habits. I really just think about myself.”

“Good” I said, still smiling. “So do I.”