Real Women Don't Wear Size 2 (25 page)

She breathed in deeply, exhaled slowly, then wedged one big brown eye open.

“Good morning,” he said, running a finger beneath her chin.

Her cheeks rose as she smiled, then she slid the sheet above her mouth. “Morning,” she mumbled, both eyes open now and beautifully sleepy. A trombone sounded from the street, and she turned toward the window. “Oh no, the parade. We missed it.”

“Well, yeah, we missed the first one. The second one isn’t completely over, but for the most part, yeah, we missed it too.”

“Oh dear. You planned on going to those, didn’t you?” she asked.

“There aren’t any specific plans,” he corrected. “I had mentioned it would be fun to take in an early parade, but nothing is set in stone. Besides, there’s another uptown parade tonight. It’s a real showstopper. We’ll catch that one.”

“What time is it now?” she asked, squinting as her eyes adjusted to daylight.

“Half past two.”

“Two? Oh my.” She pushed up, and the sheet dropped to her waist, exposing the two full mounds that had pressed against him all night. His groin tightened, and he sent a mental directive for his dick to stay in line. Predictably, it didn’t listen.

Blushing, Clarise started lifting the edge of the white cotton toward her chest, but Ethan halted her hand.

“Don’t cover up. I’ve seen you. All of you. And it’s perfect.”

Her lids moved to half-mast, and her lips, still kiss-swollen from their middle-of-the-night sex, curved. “No one’s ever called me that before.”

“Their loss.” He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her face toward his.

She slapped a hand to her mouth. “Wait,” she mumbled into her palm. Then she stood from the bed, grabbed Ethan’s discarded shirt from the floor and wiggled into it.

“Where are you going?” he asked, watching her fingers fiddle with the hem.

“To brush my teeth,” she mumbled, shrugging in the oversized shirt, which slid off one shoulder. The bottom of the fabric fell just past the apex in her legs and made her look even sexier.

He watched her scoot into the bathroom and listened to the water run, heard the bristles of the brush moving against her teeth. Last night, he’d run his tongue over those teeth and she’d shivered. An erogenous zone she hadn’t known she had, as were the backs of her knees, her inner arms and her eyelids. He’d found them all last night, learned her most intimate secrets by listening to her small pants and gasps. And he’d never forget. Today, however, he’d delve deeper. Learn her mind and heart, and hopefully, in the process, learn how to gain her love.

“Didn’t want to scare you with bad breath,” she said sheepishly as she scurried across the wooden floor and jumped on the bed.

Ethan laughed. She looked like a little girl on Christmas morning, ready to open her first present. And from the way she drank him in, he knew exactly which gift she wanted to open first. Maybe he wouldn’t start with the one-on-one conversing, not until he satisfied that hungry look in her eyes, but eventually, before the day ended, he would. Surely he would.

Deciding that eating breakfast could provide a bit of a stall tactic before the next sexual interlude, he reached to the side of the bed and lifted the tray he’d obtained earlier from room service. Her eyes moved from the tent pitched beneath the sheet to the plate filled with beignets. He’d been thrilled to learn the restaurant downstairs offered the delicious French pastries for breakfast and had assumed Clarise would love the unique treat.

“Hungry?” he asked.

She nodded. “In a couple of ways.”

He couldn’t fight the smile at that acknowledgment. “Why don’t we try this way first, then we’ll move into satisfying that other hunger.”

“As long as you promise to satisfy it.”

An animal. Who’d have thought? Clarise Robinson couldn’t get enough, and although he still needed to move beyond the sex, eventually, he loved it, loved the way she eyed him as though she wanted to lick him from head to toe. He swallowed, wondered if that were another fantasy she hadn’t mentioned. “I promise to satisfy.”

She giggled, nodded toward the plate. “I’ve wanted to try beignets, but haven’t had a chance. So is there a trick to eating them?” She reached for one of the square pastries, covered in powdered sugar, and moved it toward her lips.

“Yeah. Don’t inhale,” he said, but his instruction was too late.

“Why—” Clarise had still been speaking as the powdered sugar neared, and sure enough, she got a blast of white powder on the back of her throat. Dropping the beignet back to the plate, she coughed until her eyes watered, while Ethan laughed until his did the same.

“Gee, thanks for the warning,” she said, swallowing past her tears.

“You have to admit, I tried.”

“Not hard enough, obviously.” She reached for the discarded beignet. “Dang, all the sugar fell off.”

“That’s what this is for.” He lifted the small silver shaker perched beside the plate.

“What is it?” she asked, her brown eyes wide.

He shook more powdered sugar on the bare pastry, then held it toward Clarise. Sprinkles of white snowy powder flitted to the sheet. “Extra sugar is a must with beignets.”

This time, she made it to her mouth with the pastry, chomped down and chewed, while her eyes rolled to the back of her head. “Oh man, that’s so good.”

Ethan swallowed, watched her throat pulse through the bites and her chest swell as the sweet substance collided with her tongue.

“Aren’t you going to have some?” she asked, finishing off the first, then licking the sugar from her fingers. One finger at a time. Ethan wanted to die right then and there.

“Yeah, I’ll have one.” He picked up a beignet and hoped eating would help his concentration level, but while he chewed, she started on her second one with even more enthusiasm than the first.

“This is delicious!” she exclaimed. Then licked each finger again, slowly but surely, one at a time, her tender pink tongue lapping each bit of snowy white powder away.

Ethan shoved the remainder of his beignet in his mouth and swallowed. “We need to add something to your list.”

Hell, he’d planned to be good. And he would, eventually, but first, he’d be damn good at it.

Clarise swallowed her last bite, ran her damp finger through the leftover sugar on the plate and plunked it in her mouth while Ethan spoke. She’d been enjoying the beignets so much she hadn’t seen his eyes change color, from that crystal, translucent blue to the stormy, smoldering blue she’d witnessed last night. Her pulse quickened.

His jaw clenched. Powerfully muscled chest moved steadily in and out as he breathed, deep and strong, the same way he inhaled and exhaled yesterday, and again last night, when he wanted her. Like he wanted her now. Her thighs quivered in anticipation. She was still sore from yesterday’s encounters, but she wasn’t too sore. She’d never be too sore to want Ethan inside of her, and the look on his face, in his eyes, told her that’s exactly where he wanted to be.

“Add something to my list?” she asked.

He lifted the tray, placed it on the nightstand beside the bed. “That’s right.”

“We haven’t finished everything that’s on the list now,” she reminded. Dang, she hoped he still planned on it.

“We will.”

Uh-huh.

He wore a pair of black boxer briefs and nothing else. They clung to the tops of his thighs and outlined the kind of quadriceps she dreamed of, along with a thick, hard erection, also the kind she dreamed of.

“I love those,” she said, boldly eyeing the briefs.

“I know.”

“I guessed right, didn’t I? Black briefs.”

“Depends.”

“On what?” she asked.

“On me. I wore them because of your guess.”

Okay. Wow. He wore black briefs for her. Maybe now was the time to tell him about the Velcro option. Nah, not yet. Instead, she’d make sure her next dream of Ethan in black boxers was intensely accurate, which called for a thorough examination. She moved her eyes to his chest, wide and sculpted, two hardened plates of muscle with dark disks in each center. Then she licked her lips and longed to flick her tongue across those disks, like she’d done last night.

Ethan slid back on the sheets, placed a pillow on her side of the bed. “Relax, Clarise.” He raised a brow and tilted his head toward the pillow.

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Then don’t relax,” he countered, and his lip quirked to the side. It was a sexy, seductive twitch. And he knew it. “But I want you to lie down.”

Her nipples hardened. “All right.” She began crawling to the head of the bed, but he placed one hand on her shoulder to stop her progress.

“Not like that,” he said.

“Not like what?”

“Not with your shirt—or rather, my shirt—on.”

She was completely naked under his shirt, and he knew that too, but because she wanted whatever new fantasy Ethan had in store for her, and because she wanted to feel the empowerment she’d experienced last night when she’d been nude in front of him, she shucked the shirt and boldly tossed it to the floor.

He hissed in a deep breath, and she grinned. Yeah, power was a good thing. A very good thing.

She put a lot of sexy squirm into the remainder of her crawl across the bed, but she lost track of her path when she noticed the damp spot at the top of his briefs. That telling dot of moisture from the tip of his erection. Oh yeah, he wanted her. Bad.

“On my back, or on my stomach?” she asked, leaning toward him and letting her breasts hover mere inches from his side.

He swallowed, eyes turned from blue to gray.

Clarise couldn’t hold back her smile of triumph.

“You’re evil,” he accused.

“I’m learning to be.”

“I’d say you’ve got it mastered, and I want you on your back, by the way.” He paused for a second, nodded toward the pillow. “Now.”

Clarise didn’t giggle this time. She shivered. Everywhere. What did he plan on doing? And how long would it take until he got going? Another marching band bellowed past, the drums beating a wild Jamaican theme that joined the frantic beat of her heart.

“What are you adding to my list?”

He lifted the silver cylinder from the tray, brought it to her hip and grazed the cool metal against her skin. Her entire body quaked. She watched him raise the container, move it above her heart, then slowly tilt it on its side. Soft, white powder snowed down upon her skin, tingling and tickling and making each nerve ending bristle. He sprinkled her nipples thoroughly while she fought the impulse to writhe beneath the substance.

“Sugar sex,” he informed. Then he grinned. “Don’t move, Clarise. I want to see you covered in sweetness.”

She held her breath while he coated her body in the powder. When he finished, she exhaled, slowly, so the sugar remained intact. Inclined on the pillow, she could see everything, every part of her body sprinkled with white sugar. Her breasts were white-capped mountains, her stomach a snowy valley, and between her legs—a fire hidden within a blanket of snow. But a fire Ethan would find.

Summoning up the courage to be the wild woman in her dreams, she licked her lips and tasted a hint of the sugar left from her beignets. The same taste he’d soon experience from her. “Are you wanting something sweet, Ethan?” she purred in the sexiest voice she could summon.

“That depends.”

“On?”

“On whether you’ll let me share.”

She blinked. Heck, she thought she had this figured out, but he’d thrown her, and she didn’t want to tell him she was too naïve to know what sugar sex was. Was it something everyone did while in Tampa? Because someone should’ve clued her in, since asking for details didn’t seem quite appropriate when you’re spread out on a bed thoroughly sprinkled like a first-rate dessert. It had looked fairly self-explanatory, like he’d sprinkle her with sugar, then lick it off. Wasn’t that how it—

He clamped his mouth over one nipple, sucked the sugar completely off and made her back arch right off the bed.

“Oh dear, I spilled some—”

Ethan’s tongue, sweet and covered in delicious powder, licked inside her mouth, mated with hers in a delicious, sugary ecstasy.

She moaned, while hot liquid pooled between her thighs. “Oh, my.”

But before he responded, he attacked the second nipple, sending her off the bed once more. This time, however, she was ready. Her mouth pressed against his and her tongue thrust inside in search of more of the delicious treat. Then, while she was still soaring from the surplus of sugar against her taste buds, Ethan moved down her stomach, licking and sucking and nipping. When he reached her thighs, he sucked each one thoroughly before returning to her waiting mouth. This time, she tasted more than sugar. She tasted her desire.

“Ethan,” she panted, as he passed her aching center and made his way slowly down her right leg.

Clarise thought she was doing okay, holding her own in this intense sexual onslaught, until he made his way back up and nipped her inner thigh. “Ethan, I can’t wait. Don’t make me.”

His laugh sounded nearly sinister, as though he enjoyed torturing her, and in a way, she was glad he did, because waiting for him to thoroughly lick, suck and nibble her other leg made her core pound harder than the drums outside their window. Slowly, he worked his way closer to her center.

Clarise quivered. She needed to be touched, and he knew exactly where. “Please, Ethan.”

As if he were waiting to hear her beg, he eased her thighs apart and lapped at her clit. She pushed toward the sweet invasion, and he held her there. Kneeling in front of her, he raised her hips until she couldn’t be more opened. Then he licked the white powder away. Thoroughly. Completely. Totally.

Clarise’s world unraveled, and Ethan Eubanks became the center, the part she refused to let go.

Chapter 17

E
than had never cared much for the whole aspect of personal shopping. Sure, he liked finding an incredible product and offering it to the Eubanks Elegant Apparel patrons, but he left it up to the capable fashion buyers to personally select the most exquisite garments. They were his eyes and ears for the industry, and they brought the best products back for the store’s selection. Ethan, his father and Jeff then personally selected the best of the best, and those items made the cut to be sold by Eubanks Elegant Apparel. He liked having the final say, and he’d thought he liked being completely out of the loop on the initial search for products. He wasn’t a typical shopper, but watching Clarise peruse the whimsical booths of the street festival, tasting the samples of Cuban cuisine, oohing and ahhing over the handmade jewelry changed his tune. Maybe he didn’t care about personal shopping in general, but shopping with Clarise was a hell of a lot of fun. Those big doe eyes lit up when she saw something unique, squinted in determination when she bargained the price and absolutely glittered when she acquired something she wanted. Ethan examined each reaction; all were downright adorable. Downright Clarise.