Quick Study (3 page)

She glanced behind her, hesitated, turned back. “I only have an hour.”

A surge of desire washed through him. He propped his forearm against the gate and smiled at her through the bars. “Great. Thank you.”

“I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into the gloomy hallway, returning moments later with a purse over her shoulder. She swung the gate open and marched ahead of him. “There’s more you should know.”

He lifted his gaze from the sway of her ass. It was even sexier than he remembered, as high as it was wide, and from the way she wore her jeans low and tight, she had to know she had something good. He wanted to see the tattoo again. Touch it. Lick it. But her words cut through the fog of lust. “More?” He inhaled deeply, forced himself to concentrate. “You’re married?”

She snorted. “Now you ask.”

He deserved that. “Kids?”

“Would you leave me alone if I did have one?”

He swallowed. Formative years of geekdom had left scars, and no matter how devoted he was with a naked woman, his romantic confidence at the onset didn’t match his looks. No matter how pleasantly surprised women were when they finally got in bed with him, he questioned his ability to get there with someone new.

He sighed. “Of course,” he said. “If you wanted me to.”

Her scowl softened into confusion. “What’s up with you, anyway?”

“I like you. I can’t stop thinking about you. But I don’t know you, and I want to.”

She continued to stare, there on the sidewalk with the winter California sun shining low and bright over her face, illuminating the golden flecks in her eyes. He realized that she had stepped closer to him, or him to her, and he could imagine the heat coming off her body. Her face didn’t look angry anymore, but it wasn’t smiling. Deep in his chest, his heart strained and began to pound.

“Touch me,” she said.

Two words, and he was hard. Just as he had in his dream, he reached up and brushed a corkscrew of hair off her cheek, aching at the silky perfection of her skin under his fingertip. Her mouth, that pink and inviting mouth falling open. He rubbed her full bottom lip with his thumb, back and forth, vaguely aware that his lungs were empty.

“I don’t have any children,” she said, closing her eyes. “And I’m not married.”

He managed a half-smile, letting his head sink down until his mouth was so close he could taste her breath. Smelling something sweet, like candy, on her lips. Gloss. Wet, shining lips. “Me neither.”

He licked. From the left, shadowy corner of her mouth, along the swell of her lower lip, grazing her teeth, then over to the other corner, where he lingered until he felt her hands come up behind his neck, burrow into his hair, and pull him closer.

They hadn’t kissed before, not on the lips, not with hungry, wet mouths wanting each other. Personal, real.

A car drove past and she jerked away. “God,” she said. “We’re on the street.”

“Sorry.” He cupped her cheek with his hand and nuzzled the hollow below her ear, felt her tremble under his touch.

“I don’t drink coffee,” she whispered.

He slid his arm around her waist. “Hate the stuff.”

“I want you.”

He groaned into her hair and pulled her hard against him. “Let’s go inside.”

Bonnie’s
knees locked, trying to hold herself upright when her body wanted to collapse, naked and limp, in his arms.

He was in that black leather again, and smelled like cinnamon and sex and that cologne she hadn’t remembered consciously but now was making her wet just from breathing near him. She hadn’t been able to make herself continue the social research she’d planned, even though she was already months past her thesis deadline. The idea of touching anyone but him turned her cold. Until she got this guy out of her system, she’d never be able to approach any other guy with a clear head.

What had he done with his tongue? She’d expected a kiss, but that
lick
—like an animal marking his mate, his prey, then waiting with that damn male confidence for her to follow.

“We can’t,” she said.

His eyes were black, gazing at her without blinking. “Why?” he asked, his voice like gravel.

He thought she was rejecting him. As if she could. “I have roommates.”

“I don’t.” He hooked his arm around her roughly to lead her down the sidewalk.

“Where—”

“My place. In Lafayette. It's just down 680. Ten minutes, max.”

They were going to do it at his place. He was so sure of himself. So natural, to invite—no, compel—a stranger to have sex with you. “You never even told me your last name.” Though she had found it out from her neighbor, that and a few other things, or she’d never be running off with him now.

“Ash,” he said. “Paul Ash. I'm thirty-two, grew up in Portland, have one sister, four nephews, one horny God-fearing brother-in-law, two parents, and a career in software engineering.”

This speech poured out in a low monotone near her ear while he guided her down the sidewalk, the whole time his hand was exploring her lower back, vertebra by vertebra, until his thumb was hooked under the band of her thong. Vaguely reassured by his biography (which matched the gossip she’d pulled out of Shannon), Bonnie let herself focus on the maddening sensation of lace and elastic underwear being pulled tight into the crack of her ass with each step. She stumbled over a patch of broken sidewalk.

“Easy.” He smiled down at her with that grin that had devastated her at the gate minutes before. Confident but self-mocking. Hot.

He probably practiced it in the mirror, and knew what it did to women. This was just a quickie to him, she didn’t need to feel guilty about not telling him about the research project—

The car was an older Prius, dusty powder blue and dented on one side, but clean. Not what she expected. “This is your car?”

His grin wavered. “Problem?”

“Harley in the shop?”

“Afraid so.” His cocky smile came back in full force. His hand lingered at her ass, his warm fingers tugging the thong upwards in an increasingly hard, kinky rhythm as he leaned down and brushed his lips in a feather-light kiss across the bridge of her nose. “Nice freckles,” he whispered, then released her and nudged her into the passenger seat.

Her underwear, a narrow band of thin stretchy nylon, was wet and slippery inside her jeans. As the car vibrated and rolled over the roads, her clit began to complain from teasing and neglect.  She wiggled in her seat, going mad with the growing ache. “Ten minutes?” 

He gave her a fast, wolfish glance, then reached over and slid his hand between her legs. “A woman like you shouldn’t have to wait.” His fingers wrapped around her left thigh, then edged up to the tight seam of her jeans, rubbing softly at first, then suddenly gripping her mound between his thumb and forefinger and squeezing roughly through the denim.

“God,” she gasped.

“Unzip your pants.” He wasn't looking at her. Turning onto the freeway, checking over his shoulder, merging. 

“Are you sure that's safe?” She heard herself ask the question and groaned inwardly.
Fuck safe
.

“Reverse commute direction.” He accelerated to pass a Wal-Mart semi that loomed over the road, the cab certainly high enough for the driver to see right down through the sedan’s untinted window into her lap. “I want to taste you,” he said.

Desire flared hot in her veins. “How are you going to—” she began, but the warning voices in her head were growing weak and unreasonable. “Never mind,” she whispered, and leaned back to open her pants.

The sound of the metal zipper sliding open filled the car. There was no question now of stopping, of taking it slow, of pretending they were strangers. They were going to take it all the way, wherever it took them.

The muscles along his jaw twitched, and he gave her a long, smoky stare of blatant lust. He jerked the car over into the slow lane with his left hand while his right reached over and dove down the waistband of her gaping jeans. Large, determined fingers thrust past the elastic of her undies and slipped deep inside her. She groaned and involuntarily lifted her hips to meet his hand. Nothing like this had ever happened to her. A man she barely knew, touching her, with the world driving by around them, looking in.

Hot, wet, reckless wanting overtook her.

Let them look. She was going to take what she wanted and let him take what he wanted.

He lingered just long enough stroke a deep circle, then pull his hand back out. To his face. Watching her with eyes almost black, he sucked his finger deep into his mouth, all hint of mockery or playfulness gone. The gaze was intense, a declaration of intent, and she shuddered as she recognized the primal satisfaction deep in her soul that he knew what he was going to do. And that whatever it was, he was going to do it to her.

“I don’t want to wait,” she said.

“I know,” he said, as though soothing a child. He reached over again and slid his hand back over her hot, needy sex, his palm flat and hard and sure. “Don’t be afraid of what you want.”

“I want a lot,” she said.

“I know.” He withdrew his hand, patted her between her legs, and moved his hand to cup the back of her neck. His thumb stroked along her nape, a tickle that sent shocks down her belly. She groaned and tilted her head to expose more of his neck to his touch.

“Almost there,” he said. His large fingers found a delicate band of muscle under her ear, traced the nerve with a fingernail, then retreated back to the steering wheel.

Bereft, Bonnie sighed and squeezed her eyes shut, imagining more. The car banked hard to the right and she looked out. Off the freeway now. They were driving away from the traffic, uphill into quiet, private roads and large homes shaded under twisted branches of giant live oaks and eucalyptus. He turned onto another road, narrow and steep, and they continued to climb.

She realized how rich he must be. Flatlanders didn’t even know places like this existed, they were so carefully hidden above the freeways and strip malls and riffraff. Big houses perched on cliffs. Gated driveways. Priceless views of winter-green hills and the valleys populated with millions of the less fortunate.

“One of the Haves, are you?” she said, not with bitterness, just surprise.

He stopped the car right there in the middle of the road, leaned over, and nuzzled her ear. “I sure am now,” he said, which was just what she wanted to hear, but his touch, nice as it was, was slowing them down from getting where they were going.

“Please keep driving,” she said, and he laughed.

“Don’t worry, Bonnie. You’ll get what you need soon.” And he drove the rest of the way with his hand between her legs, over the denim, but rubbing and squeezing and stroking until her head fell back against the seat and she gave up all pretense of control.

The car stopped.

He unbuckled his seat belt. They were parked in the driveway next to the detached garage, the main house on the other side quietly attractive and understated and probably worth a fortune, even these days.

These higher-brained thoughts were flimsy, distant things that she was only vaguely aware of, the bulk of her mind in a frenzy to guess what the man now walking around the car was about to do to her. 

He opened her door and leaned down to look in her face, the hint of a smile on his lips. “Did you ask your neighbor about me?”

Surprised, Bonnie nodded.

“My sister knows her, right?”

She nodded again.

“Then you know I come from a nice, respectable family. One that I love and respect in return.”

“Why are you—”

“So you have nothing to fear when I tell you to take off all your clothes right now, before we go inside.”

She couldn’t breathe. “Here?”

“Will you trust me? I think you’d enjoy it if I took over.”

She looked into his nice strong face and felt a flood of something sweeter than lust. Something she’d have to think about later. Her neighbor had told her a lot about him, from his sister’s perspective, making him sound like a guy who couldn’t decide if he was a playboy or a professor. The idea of having both, in one man, made her hot.

“Tell me what to do,” she said.

He nodded, eyes growing darker as he squatted down and put a hand on either side of her hips. Grasping the waistband of her jeans, he tugged her sideways in the seat until she was facing him, her feet dangling out of the car and her bottom coming out of her jeans. With her exposed backside rubbing against the upholstery, she lifted her legs to let him pull her pants down to her ankles, then over her feet, taking her flip-flops with them. He threw the bundle into the backseat, but when she tried to pull her underwear off all the way, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist to stop her.

“Leave them on.” He slid them back up over her knees and up her thighs. 

She would have to lift her bottom off the seat to help him pull the elastic back up to her waist, but she paused, suddenly shy about her nakedness, by the thatch of her dark pubic hair lit by afternoon shaft of sunlight so close to his face.

He didn’t comment, just forced the undies the rest of the way up by himself, roughly, stopping only when they were much higher than they needed to be. The sharp pain from the tight fabric slicing her apart made her gasp, and when he stood up to draw her completely out of the car, he maintained his grip on the fabric and increased the pressure.

The driveway was crushed gravel, cold and sharp under her bare feet. The sun, slanting low, was bright in her eyes, but too weak to warm the January hilltop, and she shivered.

 “Once you take off the rest of your clothes I’ll let you come inside,” he said. “If you’re good.”

“I’m not very.”

“Then I’ll have to teach you.”

She nodded, smiling through the thrill that overtook her senses, and took off her t-shirt. But he didn’t smile back, just stared with hooded eyes at her breasts. Feeling the power, she tossed her t-shirt back into the car, then turned back, took a moment to caress her nipples through the smooth cups of her bra while he watched. She pinched them, then looked down, tilted her head and continued to caress and touch herself as though he weren’t there.