House of Payne: Steele (20 page)

For an answer, she popped the button of her cutoffs and undid the small zip before she took one of his hands and pushed it past the hem of her panties. Her intimate flesh jumped as she brought his hand deeper, and she nearly lost her mind when she heard his almost-soundless groan.

“I want you to feel how… how you make it so I need to change my damn panties three times day.” She knew that wasn’t sexy, but God help her, she didn’t know how else to say it. “No one’s ever done this to me. It happens even when you’re not touching me. I can’t stop it. When it happens, I don’t even want to try to stop it because it feels so good, while at the same time it drives me so crazy I literally can’t be still. Give me more of this craziness.”

“It’s your arousal, sweetness, your body’s way of lubing up for me so that all you’ll feel when I get in there is nothing but a sweet, sweet glide.”

“I love it.” Her hips were rocking again, trying to get his hand deeper into her. “Oh God, I
love
it. Give me more.”

“Specifics,” he murmured, causing her to growl in frustration. “I understand you might not know how to ask for it yet, so let me help you out. Do you want me to finger you like I did at the bowling alley, or do you want me to go even deeper than that?”

Wild excitement nearly choked her. “Is it…can’t I get both?”

“That would be so very greedy of you.” It seemed like an admonition, but considering his hungry smile, she recognized it for the approval it was. “Do you want to be so very greedy, Pet?”

“Absolutely.” No need to be shy about it.

“Then give me my instructions. I promise I’ll give you exactly what you ask for.”

“Finger me like you did at the bowling alley, while also going deeper, whatever that is.” The words tumbled out of her in her eagerness, and as she worked the buckle of his belt she nearly missed his wide smile. “I’m assuming we’ll have to free you from your clothes for that whole
deeper
part.”

“No ma’am.” Smiling with all the anticipation of a kid at Christmas, he tugged at her shorts with his free hand. “But we do have to get you free of yours. I need total access to follow my orders to the letter.”

Essie couldn’t remember when she’d stripped so fast. In a handful of moments her shorts and panties were hanging off of one ankle as she repositioned herself over him, her hands on the fastenings of his jeans. “You sure you don’t need… uh, this?”

A low, sexy laugh escaped him as he brought his hand back to the juncture of her thighs. “This? You mean my cock?”

It was amazing, how she could still blush. “Mm-hm.”

“Say it.” When she didn’t immediately respond, the slow encroachment of his hand stilled. “Essie, I want you to feel free to say anything when you’re with me. Any thought. Any word. Nothing’s forbidden between us. You can say it.”

“Okay.” She huffed out an irritated breath and tried not to imagine what her mother would think of her for having such a dirty mouth. “Your, um… your c-cock.”

His hand instantly slid into her cleft, homed in like a champ on her clit and gave it one hard circle. She gasped, her head flinging back, but just as suddenly as he started, he stilled again.

“You stumbled a bit on that, sweetness. Say it again. It sounds so pretty, coming from your beautiful lips.”

“Your cock.” It was quiet, hushed, but she managed to say it this time without stuttering. She was immediately rewarded with a few more spectacular swirls of his finger, but just as she was dissolving into a pool of pleasure, he stopped
again
.

“Say it again.”

Goddamn it. “Your cock.”

“Louder.”

“Your cock, your cock, your huge,
fucking
cock.”

She thanked heaven and whatever deity that might be involved in dirty talk when his fingers began to move, but they worked her so slowly she couldn’t stand it.

“Do you like my huge, fucking cock, Essie?”

“Yeah. Oh,
yeah
.”

“How much do you like my huge, fucking cock?”

Feverishly she pumped her hips, trying to get him going, and her hands loosened the front of his jeans despite his claim that it wasn’t necessary. “I
love
your huge, fucking cock.”

“What do you love about my huge, fucking cock?”

“At the moment, I love that it can’t
talk
.”

He chuckled even as his hand retreated. “Anything else?”

Oh, screw it
. “I love your cock when it slams into me so hard I feel it all the way in my tummy. Now finger-fuck me good before you fuck me with your cock, or I swear to God I’ll murder you.”

A delighted laugh broke from him before he was suddenly rubbing her like he wanted to start a fire there through the heat of friction alone. “That’s my excellent Teacher’s Pet. You’re a slow starter because you’re so cute and shy, but I think you’re going to wind up getting an A on this oral test. Wanna go for an A-plus?”

Essie couldn’t immediately answer him except in a high, keening cry, as pleasure exploded in her. “
Yes
. Yes, yes, yes, yes…”

“Ooh. Look at you. Am I reading you right? Is my Pet feeling good?” She was so lost in the sharp, sweetly agonizing sensations stabbing through her, she could barely make sense of his words. “Tell me, Essie. Is this good? I’ll stop if you don’t tell me that you like what I’m doing.”

“No, don’t stop! Please don’t
ever
stop,” she begged breathlessly, her eyes closing as she pushed harder into him. “It’s so good when you…”

“When I finger you.”

Pleasure was her drug, and she was hooked in a bad, bad way. “
Yes
.”

“Say it.”

“It’s so good when you finger me, baby. So good, so good… Oh
God
.” Her body began to shiver, the breath panting out of her. She was close. So close, and it felt so unbelievably magnificent, she couldn’t stop herself from reaching for it.

“You told me to go deeper, so I have to do what you said. Those are the rules, after all.”

An involuntary cry was wrenched from her when the two fingers he’d been using to slide over her little nub moved away. But her protest didn’t have time to fully form as those fingers slid down her channel to her entrance while his thumb landed on her now-pulsating clit.

Oh… wow.

“I’m going in deep, baby, so try to relax. I think you’re going to be a big fan of this.”

His thumb rotated hard against her, making it impossible for her to put together a response that didn’t involve lusty moaning. But when he slipped his middle finger into her body she couldn’t help but tense up, more in surprise than outright rejection.

“Steele—”

“You’re lucky I’ve got nice, big hands, you know. I believe you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what I can reach with just my fingers alone. You’ve heard of the G-spot, right?”

His finger slid in and out of threshold, testing her. Distracting her. “Y-yes.”

“Every woman has one.”

Her blood was heating. Damn, but this was weirdly exciting. “Uh-huh.”

“Do you know where yours is?”

Her face went up in flames at her ignorance. “No.”

“I do.”

With that, he plunged all the way in until his finger was buried completely inside her. He pushed against her front wall while his thumb also pushed down, as though he were trying to pinch his finger and thumb together. Stars burst in front of her eyes. Every nerve and sense she possessed was inundated with savage pleasure, and all she could think was that she could never survive this… or would never be able to survive without it, at least a dozen times a day.

“You’ve felt this before, but when I’m inside you, I can’t pinpoint-target your spot with the accuracy I can get with my fingers. Do you want more?”

“
More
.” She moaned feverishly, the taut agony of pleasure straining every muscle in her body. She quivered everywhere, helpless convulsions twitching through her at each stroke of his massaging hand. “More, baby, please
more
.”

“Does that make you my greedy Pet?”

“I’m your greedy Pet, so greedy…”

“Yes, you are, and I fucking
love
that.” He slipped another finger in, and the bold strength of those two fingers stroking hard from the inside and his thumb pushing from the outside was simply too much. She writhed without knowing she writhed, cried out without knowing she cried out, and when the insane tension inside her finally shattered into purest rapture she very nearly fainted.

She hadn’t even begun to come down off her orgasmic high when he suddenly pulled his fingers out of her, reached into his front pocket and retrieved a condom packet. Tearing it open with his teeth and one hand, his other hand whipped his dick out through the loosened front of his jeans.

There was no more talk, dirty or otherwise. Essie was still shivering with the force of her release when Steele’s hardened flesh impaled her, its veined, thick girth stretching her walls so abruptly the tissues within her began to spasm anew. Shockwaves of pleasure hit her again even as he took her by the hips and bounced her over his shaft, burying himself to his hilt again and again. His groans joined hers, culminating in a near-anguished shout from him, his back arching, his head thrown back into the car’s headrest.

She reveled in watching him lose himself in his rapture. He was always gorgeous to her, but he was almost otherworldly in his perfection when he was coming. As addicted to his pleasure as much as her own, Essie worked at pumping her hips harder as the waves of his release tapered off, wanting to prolong his blissful expression for as long as possible.

“So good, baby. God, you feel so fucking good.” His breathing slowed… then began picking up again as his grip once again tightened on her hips. “Fuck me,
again
? Jesus H., I can’t believe how you do this to me when I’ve never… oh yeah, yeah,
yeah
.”

Her excitement soared in tandem with his as their bodies slammed together, and the wet and wild slickness between her legs had her shuddering for a third time in ecstasy. A delicate warmth filled her as his powerful grunts mingled with her whimpers of pure satisfaction, and when she’d wrung the last ounce of sensation from them both, she at last collapsed onto his chest, exhilarated and so exhausted she couldn’t imagine ever moving again.

“So,” Steele murmured after their breath had finally eased into a slow, steady rhythm and she was drifting in that peaceful place between wakefulness and sleep. “Before I give you your final grade on Oral 101, what are your impressions now when it comes to dirty talk?”

A low humming sound of amusement whispered out of her as she kept her cheek pressed to his chest. “I like it.”

His hand connected playfully against her naked booty. “You can do better than that.”

“It can’t be bad if it makes me hot for you, is how I’ve decided to look at it,” she managed, grinning while her butt cheek stung pleasantly. “I like the honesty there is in telling you what I want, and how good you make me feel when you give it to me. Honesty is hardly dirty.”

“Exactly.” His lips nuzzled into her disheveled hair. “That’s the point of communicating like that, sweetness. Honesty, sharing. Trust. You’ve got to trust your partner to really be open and say exactly what you mean. You get it now?”

“I get that hearing myself say all those things made me tingle in all the right places.”

“Good.” The hand at her ass trailed lightly over the curve of her cheek, drawing random patterns with the tips of his fingers, as if he couldn’t get enough of the feel of her, even now. “My next lesson, Oral 201, is going to be about what
I’d
like for you to do to me, and telling you how it feels when you do it. Think you can handle it?”

Damn it, there went the tingling again. “When can we begin?”

At that, Steele burst out laughing.

Chapter Nineteen

“At least you didn’t get banned from the car wash for lewd behavior. That’s something.”

Essie sent Carla a desert-dry look via the mirror in her miniscule bathroom, into which she, Carla and Mooch the cat were all crammed. A week earlier, Mooch had become her de facto pet when Thor abruptly moved out of the building, leaving a note behind for the super that explained he was leaving the cat “to the chick downstairs.”

In just one peace-filled, no-drumming week, Mooch had become a different animal. He’d become social and chatty, and sought snuggles every few minutes from her. His alarmingly skinny body was at last starting to fill out, and he was no longer losing clumps of fur or hiding in dark corners.

Amazing, how the removal of stress could make the quality of life skyrocket.

“I can’t believe you’re still talking about that.” Essie fastened a pair of glittery topaz and gold chandelier earrings to her lobes, then checked her makeup. Somewhere along the way—probably around the time Steele had called her beautiful—she had made peace with her looks, to the point where even she had to admit she didn’t look half-bad. “That’s old news, my friend.”

“Yeah, but since Steele’s been away for a week on business, it’s the only interesting news around. Tell me again about when he spanked you.”

“Who knew that beneath that sweet mommy exterior or yours beat the heart of a perv?”

“Girlie, I’m not the one who hung her bra out on a side view mirror for all the world to see, so I’m obviously not the only perv in this bathroom.”

“Mooch, you gonna let her talk about you like that?” Essie addressed the cat sitting alertly on the lowered toilet seat, his still-scraggly tail curled neatly around his feet.

“Don’t put pressure on that sickly looking thing, he’ll go totally bald.” Carla’s voice might have dripped with disdain, but the hand she smoothed over Mooch’s head was gentle and got him purring at first contact. “At least tell me you and Steele have had fun sexting and sending each other naughty pictures while he’s been away.”

“I would, but I’ve got to get going.” Essie checked her watch before heading out of the bathroom. “Sunday night means dinner at the Santiago house and woe to whoever rolls in late. Come on, I’m kicking you out.”

“Some friend you are.” But Carla was smiling as Essie herded her toward the door. “At least tell me when your guy’s coming back. Me and my dirty mind need more stories of Essie and Steele’s Excellent Public Sex Adventures.”

Oy
. “One, I don’t know. He just told me to look for him on the news during the U.N. summit in New York, and then he told me that if I did see him, he should be fired for doing a crappy job of being discreet security. And two, it’s not about having public sex, because we’re not exhibitionists. We just happen to be in public when the mood to have sex strikes. See the difference?”

“Nope, but whatever helps you get through the day works for me.” With a laugh, Carla waved as she opened her apartment door. “Tell Mama and Papa Santiago hi for me, and tell Twist and Nick I still think they’re hot.”

“I’m sure their wives will appreciate that just as much as Patrick would.” Shaking her head, Essie checked to make sure Mooch had food and water before securing her apartment, and in fifteen minutes she was driving along her parents’ quiet street in Humboldt Park. The residential street was lined with cars every Sunday, and not just because she and her two brothers and their respective families amassed for dinner. Humboldt Park had a large Puerto Rican population and, like the Santiagos, family and tradition were all-important in the close-knit community. That was something she had missed when she had been living in Austin. Texas had a hell of a lot going for it, but every big city was just that—
big
. The whole freaking state was much too vast and sprawling for neighborhoods like Humboldt Park to exist.

That homey sentimentality sank in nice and deep as she headed up the walkway to her parents’ sturdy, century-old Federal-style house, complete with its decorative widow’s walk and arched Palladian window over the front door set dead center in the house’s no-nonsense, rectangular front. As she approached, that front door suddenly flung open, and a tiny ball of energy with the trademark Santiago thick curling black hair appeared.

“Aunt Essie, Aunt Essie, you’re
here
!”

“My Maya, my Maya, you’re here too!” Their greeting was always the same, and with a laugh Essie braced herself for her four-year-old niece to launch herself into her arms. “Oof! You’re almost getting too big for me to catch, monkey. Will you still love me even when I can’t pick you up anymore?”

“I’ll
always
love you.” Maya planted a smacking kiss on her cheek before giving her a bright smile. “Fritzi was a bad girl today.”

“Oh, no.” Well aware that Maya blamed her toddler sister for everything under the sun, Essie tried to keep her face neutral as she headed inside, still carrying her niece. “What happened?”

“Fritzi pushed a chair over to the fridge during naptime ‘cause she wanted some grape juice, and she spilled it all inside the fridge ‘cause it was really heavy, and she made everything purple and soggy.”

“Fritzi did all that, huh?” Essie looked into the Santiago dark eyes and could only smile when her heart clenched with love. “She’s not yet two years old, but she did all that without any help? Maybe you were there just to make sure she didn’t fall off the chair and get hurt?”

Maya nodded vigorously. “Yeah, I was there, and I told her ‘no, no, no, Fritzi.’ But she was bad, and now there’s no more grape juice. ‘Cause of Fritzi.”

“You should have seen it. It looked like a purple tsunami had hit the inside of the fridge.” Her older brother Nick appeared in the entryway, taller and lighter than Twist and more wiry in build. Like all of Lynette Santiago’s children, Nick had been named after a Dickens character,
Nicholas Nickleby
. Since both Nick and Twist had gotten what Essie considered to be cool names from awesome characters, she would go to her grave feeling like she’d gotten the short end of the stick in the name department.

“A purple tsunami? Sounds destructive, in a delightfully colorful sort of way.” With one last cuddle, she handed Maya over to Nick, who settled his oldest comfortably on his hip. “This is getting serious. Something needs to be done about that wild child, Fritzi.”

“Something’s
been
done at our house, something that’s going to bring the whole blaming thing to an end.” Though Essie could see the amusement in her brother’s eyes, the severe look he cobbled together to level at Maya made the little girl hide from it by tucking her face into his neck. “We’ve got the house hooked up with security cameras, which means that whoever pulls something bad, we can now see who the culprit really is. Didn’t we, Maya?”

“Yes, Daddy.” It was so tearful Essie couldn’t see how Nick managed to not melt on the spot. She was prevented from asking how he did it when Nick’s wife Kara suddenly appeared along with Angel to announce that it was time to get washed up for dinner.

As always, it was a chaotic, noisy affair with nine people gathered around a table built to comfortably seat six. Kara helped alleviate the pressure by keeping the laid back and gentle-natured Fritzi on her lap. Angel was tiny, so she saved space as well, but facts were facts—they’d achieved critical mass around her parents’ dining room table. If even one more person joined them—much less the likes of a massive frame like Steele’s—they’d have to stack people on each other’s laps.

As Essie sat down to a mouth-watering meal of slow-cooked chicken fricassee, seasoned rice and beans,
tostones
—fried sliced plantains—and a tangy cucumber, avocado and red and orange cherry tomato salad, she tried to keep herself from imagining Steele sitting down to a Santiago Sunday meal. But it was almost impossible to keep her mind from picturing how it would be. Twist and Angel were tucked side by side, clearly happy they had to sit so close together they couldn’t help but touch. Nick and Kara were on either side of Maya, with a contented Fritzi curled up on her mother’s lap. The four were such an obvious single unit of togetherness, it filled her own heart with yearning. Even her parents, who took their usual places at either end of the table, had that unmistakable air of harmony that Essie had always wanted to find for herself.

She was the only one at that table who was alone, and that obvious aloneness had eaten away at her soul for so long.

But she wasn’t alone anymore. Not really.

As she passed dishes around and conversation ebbed and flowed around her, she considered the possibility of inviting Steele to next week’s Sunday dinner. Normally she wouldn’t hesitate over something as trivial as a meal, but Sunday dinner at the Santiago house wasn’t
just
a meal. It was a
statement
. And what that statement said to the entire family was that they needed to expect big things in the near future. Things like togetherness. Things like a promise of something meaningful. Things like happily ever after.

Bringing someone to a Santiago Sunday dinner was never about food. It was about announcing that the family could very well be growing.

She wasn’t sure if that was where she was with Steele. She had no prior relationship history that she could compare this relationship to, but she was certain that what was happening between them was serious. Serious enough, anyway, to have sex with him in public.

And to dream of inviting him to Sunday dinner.

And to know that she was hopelessly in love with him.

Her heart fluttered in her chest. That was what always happened when she consciously thought about being in love with Steele, but subconsciously she’d been aware of it for some time. It had taken one hell of an emotional commitment for her to break through her cocoon to reach for him. That willingness to emerge into the world should have tipped her off to what was happening. He’d done everything he could to pop her out of her safe but colorless place and into the real world, and she couldn’t thank him enough for that. But in the process of luring her out, he’d lured her heart to him as well, and there was nothing she could do but be thankful it was in such protective hands.

“You’re awfully quiet tonight, honey.” Her father, Ed Santiago, took the salad bowl she passed to him, his angular face serious. “Is it because of what’s been in the news today? I know it won’t win me a seat in heaven, but I’m not going to lie—I gave a little cheer when I heard.”

She frowned. “Heard what?”

He blinked. “That sonofabitch who attacked you—Zane Hildebrandt. He got himself killed in some kind of huge prison fight. We weren’t informed of anything, so I called the detective who handled your case to see if he could confirm what I’d heard on the news. It’s legit—that good-for-nothing monster’s dead and getting exactly what he deserves in hell, God willing.”

“He’s…dead?” The strangest sensation bloomed like a quiet miracle throughout her system. It was almost as though she’d suddenly been cured of a dreadful poisoning that had infiltrated every cell of her body. That poisoning had happened years ago, and it had been a poisoning that she’d survived. But it had always been there, leaking its shadow into every part of her like a low-level toxic spill.

Now, the source of that poison had been wiped off the face of the earth. That fact would never erase the damage, but the relief of knowing Zane Hildebrandt would never again harm anyone else—or have the capacity to reach her in any conceivable way—was a relief beyond measure. It was a wonder she didn’t float right off her chair.

“If it makes me a bad person to feel almost giddy over someone’s death, then I accept the label of a bad person. I feel so light and free inside—God, there are no words.” She laughed, pressing a hand to her thudding chest. “That chapter in my life is now truly, seriously closed.”

“Of course you’re free. You’ve won this game we call life, and he’s lost, and that’s the end of that.” Her father nodded decisively, clearly pleased with her response. “Now you can start writing the next chapter of your life, where you win that fashion contest thing going on at House Of Payne, and your fashion designs will be known the world over. This is only the beginning of you realizing your true greatness, my girl. I can’t tell you how proud I am of you and everything you’ve accomplished.”

“The House Of Payne thing isn’t in the bag by a long shot, Dad,” she admonished, though his words made her heart soar all the more. “Dizzy Izz and Olivier might be a couple of flakes, but if they were good enough to make it to the finals, that means they’re
good
. I honestly don’t know how it’s going to shake out.”

“Are you done with all the lines you were supposed to come up with?” Obviously listening in on their quiet conversation, Twist nudged his sister with his shoulder. “The fashion show’s less than two weeks away now, right?”

“Twelve days and counting.” And the more she thought about it, the crazier her nerves got. “I’ve got daily wear, activewear and outerwear all finished, so technically I could stop right there. But I’ve also decided to do a children’s line as well, and I’m closing in on being finished with that.” As much as she’d hated Steele being gone this past week, she’d put her alone-time to good use by polishing up her various designs. Once she’d been satisfied with that, she’d dived into a creative frenzy on her children’s line. The changeable Velcro tattoo patches to be used on onesies, shirts and outerwear had taken the most time to create, as she’d wanted to get each tattoo just right. She’d also put together a line of soft cotton long-sleeved undershirts that came in various flesh tones decorated with child-appropriate tattoo designs exclusive to the House. Her first prototype had been nabbed by Patrick, and she’d seen baby Dillon wearing it so many times already she suspected he was going to be forced to wear it until he learned how to dress himself.