Girl Gear 4: Striptease (6 page)

She’d known from the fit of his clothes that his body was sculpted and lean, but she’d never expected to have her breath sucked away. She was stronger than that; she wasn’t taken in by beefcake and bullshit. She knew better than to think a gorgeous body meant anything. But knowing, it seemed, worked better in theory than in practice.

He was absolutely beautiful, his shoulders broad and rounded with muscle, his biceps and triceps equally defined, his chest and abdomen dusted with dark hair. She stepped fully into the room, pushed the bedroom door closed and leaned back against it. The beat of her heart rapidly became a full-body flutter.

“I thought you’d be finished dressing by now.”

“Is that why you shut the door?” He slowly unfolded his bright orange hibiscus-print trunks, draped them over his duffel, moved his hands to his hips while she watched. “So I could finish?”

She inclined her head; her fingers flexed so tightly into the cloth of her shorts she expected to find permanent wrinkles in her permanent press. “If you don’t want the privacy, I can open it back up.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Well, you being here sorta limits the privacy I do have.”

“I’ll go then,” she said, though the longer she stood here unmoving, the harder it was going to be to ever put one foot in front of the other again. “Is that what you want me to do?”

“You could do that.” He left his trunks where they were and moved toward her, his body seeming so much larger in the flesh than she’d ever imagined
when he’d been fully clothed. His dark eyes flashed. “Or you could stay.”

Her heart beat painfully hard. “You want me to stay?”

“I’m not sure I can tell you what I want without getting graphic.” He stood less than three feet away. So close she could feel waves of heat rolling from his body. So close she could think of nothing but sex.

The hardest thing she’d ever done was not reach for him then. She lifted a brow. “More graphic than the recording I just listened to?”

His mouth quirked. “At least as graphic as your dance.”

“I didn’t watch the tape before I sent it.” She glanced away, breathed, looked back. “I knew things had gotten out of hand, but until I saw it just now…”

“I’d say you took things in hand quite nicely.”

She pictured shadow hands pinching at shadow nipples and wanted to disappear into the wood grain of the door. “It sounded as if you did the same.”

He took another step closer. “You made for great inspiration.”

“So did you,” she admitted, and her chin came up.

A chuckle sounded low in his throat. “I can’t say I’ve been anyone’s inspiration before. Don’t women look for that in their sexy novels?”

“You mean the same way men look for theirs in
Playboy?
”

He grinned like the devil he was. “I prefer
Maxim.
Except when I can have the real deal.”

She feigned ignorance and managed to find enough voice to ask, “The real deal?”

He nodded. “Flesh and blood. And warm. And will
ing. Not a glossy magazine page that never breaks a sweat.”

“A sweat?” It wasn’t ignorance that had her mimicking a mynah bird, but anticipation flexing its claws.

“Yeah. A sweat.”

One more step and he was close enough that she could grab him by the belt loops and tug him forward and into her body. She forced herself to wait. And she waited, because she could tell by his fiery gaze that she was about to sweat like she’d never sweated before.

“I like a woman who isn’t afraid to work up a sweat.” He dropped his gaze to her breasts, then to her belly, and finally brought up a hand, as if he was thinking about touching her. Taking his own sweet time. Torturing her on purpose. Teasing her unmercifully until she begged for what they both wanted.

The heady sense of being pursued made it so hard to stand still, to lean back against the door and pretend her weak knees weren’t on the verge of collapse. He looked back up then, ran a fingertip along her hairline beneath her bangs, where perspiration always beaded first.

“Are you the real deal, Melanie?”

“I’m not afraid to sweat, if that’s what you’re asking.” And she wasn’t. Neither was she afraid of what he made her body feel. Her only fear was that if she gave up control to this man she’d never regain any of the discipline she’d worked for her entire life. She loved the challenge, hated the threat.

“Good.” His finger slid behind her ear and down her neck, where he wiped the dampness from her nape. “Oh, yeah. Very nice.”

Cocky bastard. Far too pleased with her response.
“Thank you. I do aim to please.” How she got out the words she hadn’t a clue. She could barely draw a breath.

This time when he moved, he leaned his head forward, his hand cupping her nape as his lips drew within millimeters of hers. “Melanie?”

“Hmm?” she hummed back, feeling the warmth of his breath and his body, smelling his clean hot skin, wanting desperately to taste him.

“Can I have you?” he whispered.

She gave an imperceptible nod because she didn’t trust what was left of her voice to get the job done. “As long as I can have you.”

He leaned into her body then, touching her the way she’d wanted to be touched since he’d hovered at her back and beside her that day in the church. With his palms flat on the door above her shoulders, he brushed his lips from her ear to her temple and down her cheekbone.

Her eyelids fluttered shut and she raised her chin, giving him access to her neck. He took it, nipping lightly at her skin until she finally slipped her fingers beneath his waistband, urging him closer.

She felt every tremor of the groan that rolled up his throat. “Melanie?”

“Jacob?” She blew her answering question softly over his ear.

A shudder ripped through him. “You sure this is what you want?”

“I’m sure it’s what I want right now.”

He hesitated, then ground out, “And that’s enough?”

“You tell me,” she answered, her head turning and her open mouth moving toward his throat.

He stood still and let her explore his skin with her tongue, let her nip her way along the resilient flesh of his shoulder, let her leave a trail of tiny damp kisses beneath his collarbone. His skin was salty and wonderfully warm. And she wanted to taste more. To feast. To feed the hunger he’d driven her to feel.

She tingled and ached but not nearly enough. Not completely. Not in the way she wanted, the way his eyes and the sounds he’d made promised to provide. So when he backed away from her mouth and all the fun she was having, it was all she could do not to scream.

“Why did you make that tape?” He glared at her, his chest heaving.

“Because your tape pissed me off,” she answered, breathing equally hard.

“That wasn’t what I intended.”

She didn’t care that he seemed contrite. “Then your intentions fell short, didn’t they?”

“You say that like you know what they were.”

She didn’t care that he appeared defensive. “Does it matter?”

“I thought so at the time.”

She didn’t care that he looked put out. “And now?”

“Now I don’t want to talk about it.”

All she cared about was getting him out of his clothes. “Why’s that? You can’t talk and fuck at the same time?”

He took a moment before he answered, a moment in which Melanie’s frustration reached an unbearable height. A moment in which she panicked, wondering if she’d actually pushed him too far. Goading was so much more palatable than begging, but right now, here
with this man, she wasn’t above getting down on her knees.

He ran a fingertip from her temple to her jaw, her chin and down her neck to her chest, where he drew a line back and forth along the scoop edge of her tank top. “Are you sure talking is what you really want me to do with my mouth?”

Finally! “I’d rather you shut up and show me what you can do with your tongue.”

His face but inches from hers, he reached for the front fastenings to her khaki shorts. Melanie reached behind her and locked the door, praying everyone wanting to swim had already changed, because Jacob had opened the fly of her shorts and was now on his knees blowing warm breath on her belly. Her eyes rolled back and she closed them as the air-conditioned chill hit more and more of her skin.

She shivered from the cold, from the hot touch of Jacob’s fingers where they drifted down her inner thighs. He was even better at taking off her clothes than she was, slowly slipping her shorts down her legs, his hands and mouth following the downward path, tickling, teasing, tasting her skin.

She blew out several short, panting breaths, her hands splayed flat on the door at her hips to keep her from sliding to the floor. Jacob had returned for her panties, and she thought she was going to die. He snugged a finger into a leg opening, his knuckle grazing her sex as he dragged the back of that one finger from her clit to her core.

His mouth opened over the fabric, the moist heat of his breath melting her panties. Or so it seemed since, as damp as they were, they no longer offered any sort of barrier. And then the lack didn’t matter because she
wasn’t wearing them. Jacob had used that one finger hooked over the crotch to pull the scrap of silk to her feet.

She wanted to open her eyes, to read his face, to divine what he was thinking. Instead, she opened her legs and dropped her head back against the door. She wasn’t sure what to do with her hands, and wanted to help, wanted to use her own fingers to spread open her sex, giving Jacob full access. But then there was no need.

He’d taken his thumbs, dipped them briefly into her entrance, then used the moisture to spread open her folds, revealing the hard knot where sensation stabbed in sharp, prickly bursts. The bursts intensified with no more than a brush from his thumbs, from the hot breath he blew, from the pressure he applied on either side of her clit.

He rubbed both thumbs in circles, pushing into the bundles of nerves just beneath her skin until she had to catch a cry, letting it go as no more than a whimper. And then she felt the flick of his tongue and she moved her hands to his head, sliding her fingers into his hair.

Absolutely amazing, what he was doing with his mouth, the way his lips sucked at her there between her thighs, pulling at her flesh until the ache in the core of her body was the only thing she knew. She felt herself slipping—her back down the door, her fingers out of Jacob’s hair, her control toward an orgasm for which she wasn’t ready.

First she wanted more of what he was making her feel; she’d felt nothing this intoxicating in years, if ever. She’d lost her spine, her strength, lost all feeling but for the sex. Lost all awareness but for knowing it
was Jacob giving her this bliss. Jacob, whom she wasn’t even sure she liked, doing things with his tongue about which she’d only dreamed.

Licking and lapping and—oh, yes, yes—pushing into her, pulling out—oh, again, please again—eating her so thoroughly she wondered if she would ever get enough, knowing she might never have this again because this was all about a fling. All about the moment. All a part of the tension that had been keeping the air charged between them.

But the reminder fell on ears that no longer worked because she was a total morass of physical sensation, a sexual creature taking pleasure and forgoing thought. Engaging fully in the sort of behavior she’d prided herself on rising above. Right now she wanted to sink as low as she could go.

Jacob made it easy and beautiful, made her crazy with the way he used his fingers to stroke her, following with his tongue, opening her up to his attentions and humming his encouragement into her sex. He pushed two fingers inside of her, drew on her clit with a suction that was torturously slow and intense. Again and again. Fingering her. Sucking on her.

It was too much all at once, and she came. Shuddering, quivering. The spasms seemed never to stop, what with Jacob knowing exactly how to ease her beyond the first initial flash into the long lingering tremors that she thought would never end. Inevitably, they did, and when the end came she wanted to collapse onto the floor. She had absolutely no idea what had just happened.

She only knew she wanted more. More of what Jacob had given her. And more of Jacob. She started to reach for her shorts, but he lifted her foot and pulled
both her shorts and panties off her ankle. Then he got to his feet, his body heavy where he leaned into hers, chest to chest, belly to belly.

She closed her eyes, wanting to lie beneath him, to bear his weight, to take him into her body. Her hands again found their way to his waistband; she dipped her fingers beneath to his belly, where his fly remained open. Her heart thudded in wild anticipation. She’d come like she’d never come before, yet still arousal ran through her veins.

Moving her fingertips slowly from his hipbones toward the erection that filled out the front of his white Calvin Kleins, she opened her eyes, looking straight up into his, which flashed with a heat that raised her temperature by immeasurable degrees. She nudged her hands closer together, closer to his penis, and then she was there, the sides of her index fingers in contact with skin so amazingly soft for covering an erection so amazingly hard.

She took her time, stroking her fingers up and down the side of his cock’s head. He let out a long hissing breath, a sharp staccato curse, a deep rumbling growl that sent a shiver to settle at the base of her spine.

And then he took both of her hands in his and pulled them from his shorts before he grinned like the cocky bastard he was and said, “My turn.”

J
ACOB SWORE HE’D HUNT
down anyone who dared knock on the door and interrupt.

He didn’t have the patience to deal with bullshit. He barely had the patience to get Melanie across the room. Getting inside her sweet body was already taking way too long.

Forget bothering with kisses and foreplay and pretty pillow talk. Later. They’d get to all of that later. Right now his mind was in sync with his body and they shared but one goal.

He kicked out of his shorts and boxers, turned and dropped into the overstuffed easy chair in the corner of the room. Melanie climbed onto his lap, her knees hugging his hips. She raised up as if to settle down and take him inside.

It was all he could do to stop her. “Wait.”

“What?” she whispered hoarsely, sitting back on his knees.

“Grab my shorts. I need a condom.”

She did, coloring slightly as if embarrassed that she’d been so carried away.

But when he started to tear open the packet, she boldly took it from his hands, freeing him up to strip off her top, take hold of her rib cage and scrape his thumbs back and forth over her nipples.

He leaned forward, took one pebbled peak between
his lips and sucked until she whimpered and pushed him away.

“You’re distracting me.”

“No. You’re distracting me.” He moved to the other breast, flicked his tongue over the other nipple. She shuddered there in his lap and made him a very happy man. “I love your tits. They’re so soft. So sensitive.”

She snorted. “I thought bigger was better.”

He grinned against her skin, loving the softness against his, which was much rougher due to his fast-growing beard. “Size only matters when it comes to a man and his cock.”

“So say men, anyway.”

“Now, sweetheart. That’s just jock talk.” He leaned back in the chair, invited her to cover him up. Watching her slender fingers work their way over and around the head of his cock was torture, visually, tactilely.

Waiting until she was ready again was going to be damn hard. He’d be lucky not to come there in her hand, which held him so right. “We know it’s all about using what we’ve got.”

She kept her lips pressed together while rolling the condom to the base of his shaft.

“What? You don’t believe me?” he asked, and her lips moved in what he thought was a smile, though one that seemed directed inward rather than in response to his teasing comment.

And then she raised up on both knees, scooted closer to his hips and took him fully into her hand. “Oh, I believe you. I’m just afraid that if you use this even half as well as you use your mouth then we’re going to be seeing more of each other than either of us planned.”

“If you can live with that, I’m good to go.” And then, because waiting any longer wasn’t an option, he surged upward, driving himself into her body in one smooth thrust before he collapsed on his back.

She gasped. He stopped. She sat back with her hands on her thighs, blew out several short, panting breaths before she shuddered and groaned. He didn’t know if he’d hurt her; hell, he wasn’t that much bigger than average.

But something here was definitely not right. This was way beyond anything he knew about the way a woman enjoyed sex. “Melanie? Are you okay?”

She closed her eyes, shook her head, gave a derisive-sounding snort that started to piss him off until she said, “You have no idea how good you feel.”

Oh, well, that he could handle. Not to mention relate to. He chuckled, and then groaned because she moved, leaning forward and bracing her hands on his shoulders. Sitting as he was, the move put her breasts right at his mouth level where they belonged.

“You’re laughing?” she asked.

“No, sweetheart. I’m enjoying. I don’t think you know exactly how tight you are. How hot.” She lifted her hips and he hissed. He retaliated by nipping at the firm flesh of one breast, pulling on one nipple until she whimpered. “Crap, Melanie. You keep that up, I’m not going to be much good down here.”

“Keep what up? This?” She lifted her hips until only the head of his cock remained inside her, then sank back down slowly, burying him to the hilt, rotating her hips in an amazing figure eight as she repeated the entire process.

“Yeah. That. Mel, stop. Stop.” She did and he ground his teeth until he thought his jaw would break.
Sweat pooled at the small of his back. “The way you sound. Those noises you make. That thing you do with your hips. I think I’m about to die.”

“Die in a good way, I hope.” Leaning back into the palms she’d braced behind her on his knees, she tilted her pelvis upward, the motion putting everything right where he could get an eyeful when he looked down.

Her pussy spread open by his cock, her clit exposed there beneath the line of dark hair above her beautifully naked lips. Bare lips, so delicately soft. Her sex glistening with her juices, which he knew tasted like warm saltwater and sweet peaches.

Seeing himself there where he entered her, his cock thick and red, her sex a pale pink, the condom slick with the fluid of her arousal…he groaned and pushed upward, as far as their position would allow. He wanted more, wanted it harder. But she wasn’t finished making him wait.

Using nothing but her knees at his hips and the muscles of her abdomen to hold her body still, she brought her hands to her stomach and slid her palms down over her belly. She didn’t stop, even when her fingertips reached her mound, but went lower, pulling back on the hood of her clit, circling her entrance as he filled her.

He died a little more when her touch grazed the sides of his cock. Died even further when she leaned forward, sucking him into her vagina, and pressed her hands to his abdomen, digging the heels of her palms into the muscles there at the base of his shaft.

He couldn’t take it anymore. He grabbed her wrists and held her arms to her hips, driving upward, again and again. He held just as tightly to her gaze, refusing
to close his eyes or look away as his orgasm rocked through him. He had to know, to see.
Yes!

She followed him into completion, her mouth open, her chest heaving as she labored to breathe. Shudders swept through her body, swept through his; he felt the contractions of her climax and pumped harder, rubbing her clit with every thrust of his cock.

Finally spent, she had a series of quick tremors. He slowed, making sure she slowed with him. Her silent nod gave him permission to pull away. He exhaled, unbelievably sated. And sleepy.

He sat there for a long moment, sprawled naked while she backed off his lap and out of the chair. He continued to sit and watch while she found her clothes scattered across the carpet from the doorway.

She dressed without looking at him, and his lethargy faded. He didn’t want her to feel bad about anything they’d just done. He wanted her to feel good. And he wanted her to feel more. He wasn’t halfway finished with having her.

He pushed himself to his feet, disposed of the condom in the room’s attached bathroom, walked back into the bedroom buck naked just in time to see Melanie slip her feet into her shoes. He didn’t even stop to pick up his clothes. He headed straight for her, hooked an elbow around her neck and forced her head up. Her eyes were doe-wide and doe-bright, and she gasped.

“You scare me,” she said, but that was all she got out before he brought his mouth down on hers. He slanted one way, brushing his lips lightly at first, then with the pressure he’d been holding back. Her responsive nature made it hard to go slow.

But this time her response was to pull away, to step
back from his embrace, grab up her purse and the bag with her bathing suit. “I really need to go.”

“Go? Where?”
What the hell?
He frowned, bending down to grab his shorts and drawers and pull them both on. “You’re leaving? Just like that?”

She kept her gaze averted and headed for the bedroom door, digging in her bag for her car keys. “I’ve just…got to get home. I’ve got to go.”

He fastened his shorts, tossed his trunks back into his duffel and pulled on his T-shirt. This wasn’t happening. He didn’t believe this was happening. That she was running out after what they’d done here in this room, after having the sort of sex they’d just had.

Sex she’d been into just as much as he had, goddammit.

He was not going to start feeling guilty over…He didn’t even know where the idea of guilt was coming from. It wasn’t as if he was at fault here for whatever she was accusing him of. If she was accusing him of anything.

He didn’t know what was going through her head. He only knew he wasn’t going to let her get away without making things right.

Or not.

She was halfway through the door and obviously in no mood to talk. She hadn’t even looked back once. She’d just gotten up and dressed and the hell out of Dodge. Fine, he mused with more than a touch of irritation. He zipped up his duffel, stuffed his feet into his sandals and followed.

He’d just take Dodge to her.

J
ACOB PULLED HIS TRUCK
away from the curb and in behind Melanie’s sparkling black Infiniti Coupe. He
was not about to let her pretend nothing had happened between them—even if what had happened between them was nothing but sex.

If she thought what they’d done was something she could turn her back on, well, that wasn’t going to happen. He had his pride, but he also had a strangely vested interest in Melanie now. As long as he didn’t lose her on the drive to her place, he planned to let her know the extent of that involvement.

He needed to do it before she could get on the phone with one of her girlfriends and “bond” over the size of his dick or the way he played too rough or whatever it was about sex and guys women gabbed about.
He
sure wasn’t going to call her up and gab about whatever was going on with her.

Yet knowing all that, he still wasn’t clear on why he was chasing her down, why he had this urgent need to set her straight. Pure selfishness on the part of his dick was undoubtedly the biggest reason. He wouldn’t work this woman out of his sexual system anytime soon.

And, sure. His pride was involved. He didn’t like thinking he’d disappointed her. Or left her dissatisfied. Ego or no, however, he
knew
that hadn’t happened. She’d come twice during the, what? Ten minutes they’d been in the bedroom? Fifteen tops?

Women didn’t come like that if they weren’t having fun. What he couldn’t figure was, if she’d been having all that fun, why the hell had she taken off the way she had? He hadn’t exactly kicked her dog or burned off her cat’s whiskers.

What he should do was back away, let her tuck her tail and go. It wasn’t like he was looking for a relationship. Sure. He could get off nicely on spending a
lot more time with her naked. But soon enough he’d be outta here, off to New York, maybe to L.A., once he hooked up with the right project and made the right connections. He never had fooled himself into thinking a guy could afford a woman along with his career.

Career obsession aside, he’d spent enough time with Melanie in the office to know he wasn’t imagining the more personal tension sizzling between them. Acting on it had pretty much been inevitable. The when and the where there in the middle of the cookout might not have been his best-ever exercise in spontaneity, but the bait itself?

“Give me a friggin’ break,” he muttered, rolling over a freshly patched pothole and bouncing in and out of another. After seeing her shadow work that pole, he’d never flinched once about adding the voiceover to her video production. She knew her body; she knew what she liked. She knew what he liked. And his edited version of her video had shown her exactly how right she’d been.

He’d told her he was visually inclined and she’d given him a hell of show to watch, offered him more to look at than skin and lingerie. She was creative. Innovative. Spectacular. Not the type of woman to panic over a wrong step, a mistake. What they’d done was not a mistake.

No, he thought, easing his way down the narrow streets into Midtown, cursing foully as Melanie shot through a yellow traffic light, making him run the red. She had to be all bent out of shape about how she’d lost that control she prized so highly. He shook his head.

What better time to let it go than during sex? Any man would appreciate the way she’d come undone. As
smart as she was, as sharp, how could she not know that? She had to know that, and she had to be in denial. The woman was some piece of work.

And, for now, she was his.

He pulled through the security gate and into the parking lot of her small complex, stopping his truck in the space beside her car. She cast him a brief glance that he was hard-pressed to interpret before heading down the shadowed walkway between the converted condominiums. All he could do was follow and hope she didn’t bust his chops for stalking or trespassing or just plain pissing her the hell off.

It was when she reached her front door, shaded by a brick archway covered with ivy, that he realized how shaken she was. He walked up behind her and hovered at her back, watching her hand tremble as she tried to work the key into the lock.

The tremor turned the simple act of opening the door into what appeared to be a major feat of motor skills. And that made him feel like shit.

Without looking up, she took a shuddering breath, reached back and offered him the key. He took it, deftly shoved it into the lock and turned. With her push, the door swung open. Taking two steps inside, she held out her hand. But he’d already reached around her and dropped the key onto the table in her entryway.

Her bags slid from her shoulder to the floor. She let them fall, using one foot to shove both toward the table. But before she had a chance to move even a step away, Jacob took her hand and pulled her into the living room. He’d learned his lesson; he wasn’t giving her another chance to escape. This time—if the
fact that she’d let him inside meant there was going to be a this time—they were going to do this right.

She gestured toward the rear of the condo. “The bedroom’s in the back.”