He didn’t smile or look disappointed or anything really. But there was a recognition on his face. That I’d made my decision. That I needed more than he could offer me. That hot sex wasn’t enough.
I hadn’t made a decision. It was just getting made for me, because I couldn’t seem to take an intentional step.
I’d lived a lot of my life like that. Letting decisions happen, falling into circumstances, since they seemed to be the ones that happened. As I stood on the sidewalk outside the bar, I realized I didn’t want to keep living that way.
There might be regrets with both decisions, but making a real decision was better than just letting things happen to me.
“You all go on,” I said, as Donna and Jo started down the sidewalk. “I’m heading back to the bar.”
They both looked surprised. And then excited. They obviously knew why I was going back.
They might not know it was for a night of hot sex, but they knew it was for Josh.
So I said goodbye and headed back inside. I nearly plowed into Josh in the doorway. He was just leaving.
“Leslie,” he said in obvious surprise.
“Oh. Sorry. Hi.” God, I was an idiot.
“Were you coming back in?” he asked, his blue eyes searching my face in the streetlights.
“Yeah.” I looked down and then up again, telling myself that he had made the invitation so there was nothing to be embarrassed about.
He leaned in a little closer. “Did you change your mind?”
“Yeah.” I straightened my shoulders and met his eyes. He was a couple of inches taller than me. Since I was pretty tall, this wasn’t always the case with guys. I liked that I had to look up at him.
“You’re sure? About the no-strings thing?”
“Yeah. I’m sure. As long as you were serious about making me come harder than I’ve ever come before.” I couldn’t believe I’d actually said that out loud. Someone else must have said that.
He smiled. Hotly. Smugly. “I was serious.”
“You were talking pretty dirty in there,” I said, feeling less uncertain as an uncharacteristic wildness seemed to possess me. “Do you always talk that way?”
He lifted a hand to stroke this thumb over my cheekbone, the way he’d done a few weeks ago when he was talking about my freckles. Then he leaned down, like he would kiss me. But he said in my ear instead, “I can talk as dirty as you want.”
Five
An hour later, I was sitting on his couch, drinking a glass of wine.
I’d imagined us stumbling into his apartment in the middle of an embrace and falling right into bed—the way they did in books and movies. But, like last time, we were just chatting as we entered his place, and then he offered me a glass of wine.
It would be my fourth drink of the night, but there was enough time in between them that I was slightly fuzzy but not really drunk.
I started to feel a little awkward as he handed me the glass and then sat down with his own glass in the chair beside the couch.
I decided he was being polite with the wine and conversation—trying to treat me like a whole person and not a body to be fucked. He’d been the same way the first night we were together, making sure he wasn’t taking advantage of my grief, asking me to his home instead of an impersonal hotel. I decided I liked that instinct for consideration in him.
Still, though, casual sex would be easier if you got right down to it. Sitting and talking beforehand seemed to call attention to it.
“So are you going to talk dirty to me or what?” I asked at last, masking my self-consciousness with irony.
He laughed, low in his throat. Then said with a clever, teasing expression, “I’m going to fuck your hot, little pussy so hard you’ll be begging for mercy.”
Maybe the words would have turned me on in a different context, but sitting in his living room with a glass of wine, combined with the wry amusement in his eyes, they made me giggle. “Be careful or you’ll turn me into a puddle of lust with that kind of talk.”
“I’m all for puddles of lust.”
We shared a smile, and I felt comfortable enough to ask him something I really wanted to know. “So why are you so against serious relationships?”
He gave a half-shrug and slouched slightly in his chair. “They’re just not what I want.”
“Yeah, I get that, but there’s usually a reason if someone has decided against them on principle. Did some beautiful woman break your heart?” I kept my tone light because I knew the question might be too personal.
“No.” He was smiling still, and his tone was as light as mine had been. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think I’ve ever been in love.”
“Never?”
“Oh, I’ve been into women before, but I’m not sure if it was really love. I had a girlfriend all through college. I guess she was my most serious relationship. But we broke up mutually when I went to Africa after graduation. Since then…” He shrugged again.
I wasn’t oblivious to the fact that he still hadn’t answered my question. I normally wouldn’t have pushed it. I’m just not a pushy person, and I’m usually good at picking up on back-off vibes from other people. But I was here right now because I was determined to be someone else—someone who didn’t have regrets about holding back out of fear. That should apply to conversation as well as sex.
So I said, “Sometimes long-term relationships don’t happen for people, and that’s fine. But it seems like you’ve made a conscious decision against them—and, in my experience, there’s usually a reason for people to do that.”
“Yeah.” He’d been looking at me as we talked, but now he glanced away, over toward the other side of the room. “But people are different. And I’ve found that I’m better off alone.”
That was more of an answer, but it wasn’t a very good one. I wanted to know more about him. About what was going on beneath the strong, easy-going, sexy surface. But I could recognize a final word when I heard one, so I let the topic drop.
We weren’t here to bare our souls. We were here to get fucked.
“What about you?” he asked, sounding more like himself. “Why aren’t you in a serious relationship?”
I gave a huff of dry laughter. “You think I can just stand on a street corner and announce that I’m ready for a relationship so the love of my life should come and find me?”
His blue eyes lingered on my face before they slid down to my body. “I can’t believe you’d have trouble finding a man.”
I almost choked on the irony. “Are you serious? Men have never lined up to go out with me. In fact, no one has even asked me out in months.”
His eyebrows drew together as he gazed at me. His eyes were so thoughtful and so searching—and the look went on for so long—that I shifted in my seat, feeling exposed, strangely conscious of my body. “What?” I demanded at last.
“I’m just trying to figure out why guys aren’t asking you out. You are so gorgeous.”
My cheeks warmed with pleasure, although I still felt like squirming. “I am not gorgeous.”
“Yes, you are.” His look was serious, with just a little heat. “And I’m not the only man who can recognize that. But I think I can see now why they aren’t always falling all over each other to get to you.”
“And why’s that?” I tried to sound casual, but I didn’t feel that way. I really wanted to know what he would say.
“You’re too self-contained.”
“What does that even mean?” It wasn’t what I would have liked for him to say, and I was starting to get frustrated. I thought I’d come over here for sex. Not to have this strange, unnerving conversation.
“With some women, you know immediately, you know immediately that they want you, they need you. You can sense that they’d cling to you. And then it’s easy. No risk in asking them out. No challenge in being with them. They make you feel strong, important.”
“And I’m not one of those women?” I wasn’t sure I liked that idea. At all. I’d never tried to make a
man feel less than strong.
“No. You’re not. You feel…complete. Like you don’t really need someone to fill in gaps in your life.” He was almost smiling now, as if he liked what he saw when he looked at me. “It’s intimidating. A lot of guys wouldn’t go for you because it would feel too hard. It would take too much effort.”
I frowned, feeling even more self-conscious than ever. “I don’t think I’m that hard to be around.”
“That’s not what I mean. I just mean that, when a guy looks at you, he’s going to sense that being with you would change him. It would take everything he had.”
“I’m not sure I buy that.”
“You don’t have to believe me, but I guarantee it’s true. It’s not conscious—it’s instinctive. You’re complete—with or without him. To be with you, he’d have to summon up everything he had. Most guys are wimps, you know. They’re not going to want to do it.”
I shook my head, strangely touched and strangely bothered at the same time. “You don’t seem to have had any trouble coming onto me.”
His expression changed. “Yeah, but I’m not looking to be with you for real. I just want to rub up against you for a while.”
“So now here comes the dirty talk, I guess.”
He laughed, that low, sexy laugh that made me shiver. “You really don’t think you’re attractive?”
“I don’t think I’m unattractive. But I’m nothing special.”
“Nothing special? I don’t know how in the world you can think that.”
He looked so astounded that I shifted slightly, crossing my arms over my middle. “Are you talking about my freckles again?”
“The freckles make me crazy, but I’m talking about everything.” His eyes did a slow sweep of my face and body again. “You’re like this breathtaking paradox—sensual and…and transcendent at the same time. I mean, look at you.”
He was looking at me, and I’d never in my life felt this way—like he could see through me, like his gaze might eat me alive, like I was naked, even in my clothes, but not ashamed.
“Even just your hair,” he said, his voice growing thicker as his gaze grew hotter. He was sitting in a separate chair, but it felt like his look was touching me, caressing me. “It usually looks dark, but then the light will hit it unexpectedly, and it flames out in red. And your eyes are beautiful, but they’re more than that. It’s like they hold secrets. Treasures. Things that you’ll never say. And there’s this need to sink into them but also this fear that a guy could drown in them.”
I was quickly growing hot, breathless, overwhelmed by the words, by his sensual voice, by what he meant. No one had ever spoken to me like this before, and it touched something inside me I didn’t even know existed. I sat perfectly still, shuddering inside, listening as he spoke.
He leaned forward slightly, his eyes drifting lower than my face. “And that’s not even taking into account your body. Take off your sweater.”
I did, unable to resist the pull of his voice, even as I felt more overwhelmed and self-conscious. I laid the sweater beside me, wearing only a thin camisole, the room cool against my bare arms and shoulders.
His eyes crawled over my neck, shoulders, arms, and neck. “Seriously, Leslie. Just the curve from your neck to your shoulder is stunning. It’s that same paradox—sensuous, physical, but hinting at more than that. It’s like a promise that there’s more in the world than we can see.”
I was almost panting now, and I realized suddenly that I was deeply aroused—the deep response to his words combining with the erotic tenor of his voice to completely overwhelm me. “It’s just my shoulder.”
“But that’s my whole point. You’re not just a pretty face and a well-made body. It’s like your body is a promise of more than that—if a man is daring enough to reach for it. Like he wants nothing more than to touch it, but even if he does, he still won’t have everything you can offer.”
I was actually trembling a little, almost dizzy with my response. I’d never once—in all my life—felt so beautiful, so desirable. “Wow,” I managed to say. “That works better than any dirty talk.”
His eyes were hotter than ever, and I knew from his expression, from the tension in his body, that he was getting turned on too. But he said dryly, “What do you mean? That was my dirty talk.”
The unexpected cleverness surprised me into a laugh. When I focused on him again, I saw that his expression had blazed with lust. “There it is again. That impossible paradox. Like you embody everything a man wants but is afraid he can never have.”
If he didn’t touch me soon, then I was going to have to touch myself. “Well, you can have me. At least for tonight.”
He made a guttural sound in his throat as he finally got up from his chair. He moved over me, his hands sliding over my body, drawing my arms out from where they were crossed. Then he adjusted me until he was seated on the couch and I was straddling his lap.
He stared up at me for a moment—desire and need and heat shuddering in the air between us—and then he kissed me hard, deep.
I wrapped my arms around him and opened my mouth to his kiss, squirming in his arms as his embrace aroused me even more. I could feel him harden beneath my hip and felt a thrill at knowing that this incredible, sexy man wanted me. Needed me.
I’d never thought it was possible before.
Flushed and panting, he tore his mouth away from mine. “So how do you want it tonight?”
There was a strangeness in his asking me—instead of just letting the sex go the way it would have naturally. It excited me and made me nervous at the same time.
I felt like not-me again, and I wanted to move even further into not being myself. So I pitched my voice to say, as sexy as I could manage, “How do you want me?”
His hands climbed from my ribs to my breasts, and I gasped and stretched as he fondled them. His eyes never leaving my face, he murmured, “So that’s what you want? For me to take control?”
“Yes. That’s what I want. Is that okay with you?”
“Oh, yeah.” His face was slightly damp, and I thought it was from lust. “I’m your man, for whatever you want. I can take control. You just need to know what you’re in for.”
“I know. It’s what I want tonight.” It was easier that way. I could enjoy this strange, erotic interlude without the burden of responsibility, making choices.
Being here was my choice, and that was enough of a stretch for me, after a life of no risks at all. Letting him take control would be new and exciting. And hot.
I was absolutely sure it would be hot.
“I can take control, but you need to tell me if you don’t like what we’re doing or if you start to get uncomfortable. Tell me to stop. As soon as you say it, I will.”
I nodded, feeling jittery anxiety in my chest for a moment. I felt even more like someone who wasn’t me. “I understand.”
“All right then,” he said, sliding his hands down my body until he’d released me. “Then go to the bed and wait for me.”
My pussy clenched at the rough note of authority in his voice. He’d understood exactly what I wanted tonight, and he was going to give it to me.
But I still felt kind of self-conscious, since I’d never done anything like this sexually before, so I hesitated, trying to catch my breath.
“I said,” he added, when I didn’t move off his lap, “go to the bedroom and wait for me on the bed. And, since you were so slow, you can take off your clothes first and wait naked. Don’t cover up.”
This time, my whole body clenched in excitement. “Okay,” I said, swallowing hard. “If you say so.”
“I do.”
I stood up, feeling his eyes on me hotly as I straightened my skirt. Then, shaky and more aroused than I could ever remember being, I walked out of the living room and into his bedroom.
It was like a sexy book—like living out a fantasy. I’d never actually dreamed sex like this would happen to me in real life. I took off my clothes and then, feeling stran
ge and self-conscious, stretched out on the bed.
I was tempted to cover up with the sheet, but he had told me not to.
My whole body vibrated with anticipation, and goosebumps broke out on my skin. I tried to position myself attractively, but I wasn’t sure how to do so. Arousal throbbed deeply between my legs, and I hoped he’d hurry up and come in.
If he made me wait too long, I was going to get annoyed. If he pushed this too far, then I would just tell him to stop.
If he came into this room with handcuffs or a whip, then I would just have to leave. It was risk enough to have sex with someone not far from a stranger. There was no way in hell I’d let him restrain me.
I was just starting to get nervous when he appeared in the doorway. He didn’t have anything in his hands as he came into the room and stood beside the bed, looking down on me.
I let out a breath of relief. It would have really sucked to have to leave, just when things were starting to get good.
His blue eyes smoldering, he said, “Very good. You look just right, stretched out naked on my bed that way.”
My breathing grew erratic as my body responded to his voice. I felt my nipples tighten and my arousal pulse between my legs.
“Reach up to grab the headboard,” he instructed. “I want you to show me your body.”
I did as he asked, feeling more exposed than I could remember.
Also more turned on.
His eyes were still raking over me, and I felt hotter in each place his gaze rested. “Do you want me to touch you?”
“Yes,” I gasped. “Please.”
He stepped over until he was standing beside the bed. I could see from the bulge at the front of his pants that he was aroused too. It was a relief—that I wasn’t the only one so out of control.
He reached over to slide both hands from my stomach up to my breasts. He thumbed my nipples, and the sensations were so powerful that I made a whimpering sound and let go of the headboard to fist my hands in the bedding.
“Did I say you could move your arms?” he asked, lifting his hands from my body.
I realized my mistake in our little power game and immediately returned my hands to position. “No. Sorry.”