Burning Offer (Trevor's Harem #1) (2 page)

“I imagined a blonde.”
 

“Men always imagine blondes.”
 

I get a little smile. I’m not sure what it means, but for some reason I’m sure that Alexander, or whatever his name is, has a different reason for picturing me blonde than the one I’m imagining. Like he knows something he shouldn’t, beyond the obvious things that no one should know.
 

“But we’re supposed to know the truth about it, aren’t we? That women with sexy voices are actually fat and ugly. I called that line on a dare. I don’t know what made me call back and ask for you when I was alone.”
 

There’s an elephant sitting between us. I won’t say it, or admit it. Everyone knows I’m a voice actor. I record audiobooks, and I’ve done a few commercials. A bit of video game work. But Bridget has never done phone sex. Not even if the money were excellent and it turned out she was pretty good at it.
 

“I knew you were beautiful. But I thought you were blonde.”

God help me, I pictured him exactly as he is. Doing my secret job rarely turns me on. I’ve even thought about telling my friends what I do because it’s typically a laugh. I can always hear the men panting as if they’re drooling over the ridiculous things I say. In my head, most are short, balding, too awkward for women they don’t pay for dirty talk. Socially retarded misfits, brave on the phone but cowards in person. I don’t resent them at all. But I do pity them, even if it makes me a bitch.
 

Except for that one night.
 

Except for that whiskey-smooth voice. His words reaching into my mind to evoke images I didn’t know were lurking there. I don’t date because I frighten men away, and I frighten them away because they always have it coming. But apparently, I’m still a girl inside. Apparently, I still have needs a strong man can invite with the right words. Here and now, I can try to pretend that I was only doing my job that night, that I was only saying what my phone sex clients expect to hear, and that I laughed with my girlfriends about it later. But he’ll know I’m lying. He’ll know I made myself come picturing him as he is now, imagining the big, strong hands as they did unspeakable things to my body.
 

The hands that are now so close to mine.

I feel myself blushing. Not just in my face but in body. My nipples are hard. And holy shit, I’m getting wet just picturing his hands on me.
 

How long has it been?
 

“Creep,” I say, moving to shove past him. But again, he catches my wrist. I shake it free, and a second later I’m out the door, into the alley, where I’ve been catching blasts of fresh air, trying to forget the stew of trouble that’s dogging me.
 

But it’s the wrong move.
 

Because ten seconds later, my phone sex stalker is out in the alley with me.
 

The door to the club has shut.
 

And we’re alone.

CHAPTER THREE

“Get the fuck out of here,” I tell him. “I mean it.”
 

“I’m just standing here.” But he’s not. The guy’s removing his coat. Folding it delicately in half with one hand as it hangs from the other. Then folding it lengthwise over his bent arm. He lays the coat on a box of something that the club has discarded. I’m reminded of an executive winding down after a hard day’s work, or a scrapper setting his finer clothes aside to prepare for a fight. As the blazer slips off, his white shirt shifts, and I see more of his tattoo atop striations of muscle. He’s built like a boxer. In my mind the two images collide: a well-dressed fighter preparing to dust up and get dirty. With me as his opponent.
 

“I don’t know who you think I am, but — ”

“Elle. You’re
Elle.”
 

“I don’t know any Elle.”
 

“All I know,” he says, stepping forward, “is that Elle sounded comfortable, but that
Bridget
— ” he says my name carefully, as if it’s fine china, “ — is not. One woman knows who she is, but the other is fighting it.”

He’s between me and the club door. Between me and the alley’s open mouth. The other way is a dead end, with a dumpster at the back.

“You’re turned on.” Then, like a scientist, his head tips, and he says, “Interesting.”
 

“Don’t you come any closer.”

“I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do.” And then he comes closer.
 

My breath is short. My heart is pounding against my ribcage like an animal plotting escape. I feel my pulse most in my neck. Which he’s eyeing like a lion.
 

“Elle told me she had fantasies. Rough, strange fantasies. I didn’t believe it. Not from you, of all people.”
 

From me of all people?
What the fuck does this asshole mean?
 

“I was trying to give you your money’s worth.”
 

But admitting even that much of what we did together — I’m ashamed as I think back, what I told him, and the things I let myself do for his pleasure — isn’t making me cower for some reason. It’s making me dizzy in a very specific way. In my mind I’m back in my bed, headset on. Jeans bunched at my ankles, panties pushed past my knees. My hand between my legs, rubbing my clit as I revealed my deepest thoughts to an anonymous stranger with a smoking- hot voice. Why not? I couldn’t admit it to anyone else, and I’d never see this man in person. And if I did, he wouldn’t be like he was in my head. Men who called for phone sex were scrawny or obese, dumpy, pathetic. It was safe, saying what I’d said. It was safe to touch myself at his command. To slip my finger inside as he ordered then use my juices to lubricate my fingers while they rubbed my swollen clit. I’d never have to face him. Or myself.
 

He’s right in front of me, and I can feel my body reaching out to him. It takes intense effort to keep my hands at my sides.
 

I’m not like this. I’m not this person. Brandon always said, ever since we met at our first shared foster home, that I was the toughest person he’d ever known — boys included. Once we were adults, he began making jokes about the poor, foolishly brave men who’d dare to date me, of which there were few.
 

But that’s Bridget. And right now, I’m Elle.
 

Who came in this man’s ear, imagining his touch.
 

Who was able, just once, to let go.
 

To admit what I felt. What I wanted. What I needed.
 

I force myself to speak, and I say the crassest, most sledgehammer thing I can think of.

“What, are you going to rape me?”
 

His head shakes. Slowly. He hasn’t touched me. Goddamn him, I don’t think he’s going to. His eyes are brown, deep, confident. Exactly as I saw him in my mind, the last time he fucked me.
 

“Touch me, and I’ll kill you,” I say.
 

I can hook my fingers into his eyes. I can bite. I can’t remember the number of times I had to fight as a kid. And I’ve had bastards as boyfriends who undid the old me; hell yes, I have. It won’t happen again. Fighting isn’t about strength. It’s about how far you’re willing to go, how insane you’re willing to be. My last boyfriend broke my fucking leg. And I’ll be damned if anything like that will ever,
ever
happen again.
 

But Alexander just stares at me. Inches away — close enough for me to smell his scent and feel his heat. Close enough that I can see the rising and falling of his slab-muscled chest.
 

I feel like a bomb is about to go off. I don’t know what this man is doing to me, but I can’t stop looking him over, from square jaw and asshole’s smile to broad shoulders, from fine leather shoes to the obvious bulge of his cock. I’m furious. I’m ready to attack. To offer retribution for what he’s refusing to do next. But there’s nowhere for that anger to go.
 

When he finally makes a move to grab me, I’ll knee him in the crotch. I’ll scratch. I’ll scream, and then I’ll yell.
 

But instead, his lips form a cruel little smile and he says, “You’re not so fucking tough after all, are you, Bridget Miller?”

Then he backs up a step. Away from me. And before I know what’s happening I’ve closed the distance between us. Wrapped my hands behind his ass and pinged his crotch into mine, compatible parts meshing with frustrating fabric between them. I feel his length press sidelong against my slit, and as our mouths mash together, he finally responds and grinds into me hard. I’ll come right here. Right now.
 

But a second later, it’s all hot breath and hands as our mouths come apart. He turns me around and presses me against the alley wall, his big hands pawing my breasts through my dress. I’m barely aware of the fact that anyone could walk by the alley or through the door at any time as he pins my arms to my sides and slips the straps of my dress from my shoulders. I didn’t wear a bra; my girls aren’t big enough to need one. His bare hands easily cover each from behind, and then I’m against the wall again as he hikes up my dress, sliding my panties down past the swell of my ass. Just far enough, once he forces my legs apart, to let him run his fingers between my folds from behind, to my clit, making me gasp.

“Say you want my cock,” he growls.
 

My face is against the brick. I’ve lost track of his hands, but I hear zipping and a rush of fabric, so I assume he’s taking himself out behind me. My breath is coming fast and hard. His hands are back on my ass, between my cheeks, slipping inside my dripping wet pussy.
 

Then his voice is right by my ear. In my hair. Where he was that night, when he made me come across miles of phone line.
 

“Say you want my cock.”
He demands it, sounding almost angry, his voice full of resentment and barbed lust.

“I want it,” I say. I’m barely coherent. I don’t know who I am, but I am definitely not myself. I’m bare from the belly up with my tits against an alley wall, a stranger’s rough hands between my legs, pussy soaking. The need is intense, like something burning. I can feel his body’s rhythm as he pumps his cock. I haven’t seen it, but I swear I can sense it, inches away, its heat pulsing at my wet entrance.
 

“Say it right.”
 

“I want your cock!”
I don’t even know what I feel. Angry? Humiliated? Incredibly, unbelievably, impossibly aroused? How long since I’ve had a man inside me? How badly have I wanted it,
needed
it?

“Tell me you want me to fuck you.”
 

“Fuck me!”
 

Am I panting? Crying? I don’t even know. I only know that if he doesn’t fuck me soon, I’ll collapse.
 

I feel the hard pressure of his tip, and then he slides roughly inside, filling me completely. I fucking swear, I almost come right away, just from relief. But then he starts to thrust, and his hand is on my back, pressing me harder to the bricks. He fucks like a sledgehammer, like a grudge. I come up on my toes a bit each time his balls slam against me, my pussy gripping him like a fist. Our sounds are wet and rushed. Primal. For a second, it occurs to me that he’s not even using a condom and that’s a problem, but then my first orgasm claims me and I collapse, practically falling. He holds me up, still fucking me, using me like a doll. Then he pulls out, and I feel a splatter on my back like hot glue.
 

It’s on my ass. On the small of my back. On my dress, by the feel. And damn if I didn’t feel something land in my hair.
 

It’s a long minute before I return to my senses, and then reality lands like a guillotine’s blade. I’m mostly naked in an alley, some hot stranger’s seed spattered all up my back.
 

And despite the distraction, nothing is better.
 

I’m still out of money.
 

I still can’t tell anyone why I need it, or even
that
I need it.

I should feel ashamed. And I do … sort of. Mostly, it’s lost in another sensation. Of having only a taste of something I’ve been needing, and now about to be left without.
 

Alexander, or whoever, is zipping up. I didn’t even see the cock that just fucked me, and for some reason I want to see it more than anything else in the world despite all that’s still wrong.
 

“Wait,” I say.

But now he has his coat. His hand’s on the club door as I pull my dress both up and down in a hurry, trying to hide what I’ve done.
 

“You’re tighter than I always thought you’d be,” he says.
 

Then he’s gone, and I’m in the alley alone, my panties still at my knees, pussy still shamefully craving more.
 

Only then do I remember something he said.
 

You’re not so fucking tough after all, are you, Bridget Miller?

But I never gave him my last name, and there’s no way he could possibly know it.