Magnificent Bastard (7 page)

If I let myself pull Penny down to the couch and fuck her through our clothes, I know it won’t stop there. It won’t stop until that little white dress is off and her panties are on the floor and I’m actually fucking her. Jeans off, boxers gone, cock hot and hard and sliding inside one of my best friends.

If this goes even one step further, I won’t be able to stop.

Professional rules and personal ethics won’t matter. All that will matter is getting between Penny’s legs and making her come on my cock again and again until I go inside her so hard I see stars.

She rocks against me as her tongue dances with mine, each movement promising we would fit together with absolute perfection, and my heart blazes inside my chest. I swear I can feel the heat of her pussy through my clothes and I can’t remember ever wanting to be inside someone the way I want to be inside Penny.

The rules, asshole. They’re there for a reason.

Abort mission. Abort!

Pull away from this woman right now before you set a bomb to explode in both of your lives.

The inner voice is right—maddening as all hell, but totally fucking right.

With the self-control of a monk or a ninja or someone capable of eating only half a container of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, I rip my mouth from Penny’s and stagger back a step. Then another. And then one more because
shit
all I want to do is reach out and pull her back into my arms and straight into her bedroom.

She’s breathing fast and so am I, and for a moment, we both stand there staring at each other. She looks shell-shocked and I know I’m not pulling off anything resembling calm, cool, or collected, but I can’t think of a thing to say.

My brain has shut down and all I can hear is the racing of my pulse in my ears. Though I’m sure the Incredible Bulk would be letting loose a steady stream of profanity if he could speak. I can’t remember the last time I was this worked up, and I have never, I repeat
never
, gotten that close to dry humping a client.

“Convincing,” Penny finally says in a breathy voice, her head nodding loosely. “That was very convincing.”

“Good.” I clench my jaw, willing my raging erection to dial it back a notch, but I’m too far gone.

“So I guess that part will be fine.” She swallows, blinks, and then swallows again as her gaze drifts from my eyes to my chest and then continues the journey south.

Shit!

“It will all be fine.” I grab my jacket from the back of the armchair, using it as a shield to conceal my suffering, throbbing, desperate condition as I back toward the door. “Just meet me at the Good Bakery in the Chelsea Market at ten a.m. tomorrow. We’ll grab a late breakfast and coffee and then go shopping for armor for the rest of the week. With any luck, we’ll be done by two or three and you’ll still have plenty of time to come home and pack.”

“Okay,” she says, eyes flicking back to mine. “Are you leaving?”

“I should get home before it’s too late.”

“But you just got here.” She takes a step toward me that I counter with another step back. I can’t let her get any closer, can’t let her lavender and sugar cookie smell start swirling through my head, or there’s no way I’m making it out of here without breaking the rules. “And the pizza hasn’t been delivered yet.”

“Sorry, I’m just beat. We’ve evaluated the clothing situation; there will be time for everything else later.” I reach for the door but pause before jerking it open and fleeing into the night.

She still looks worried and I can’t walk out on a client, or a friend, without putting her mind at ease.

“And seriously, don’t stress,” I say, forcing a smile. “This will be the easiest job I’ve pulled in months. I’ll get to spend the week hanging out with a friend, eat too much wedding food, and make a couple of assholes feel terrible about themselves. Sounds like my kind of vacation.”

Her lips quirk. “Well, at least you won’t have to do any of the usual detective or hacker stuff. I don’t want to air my mom’s dirty laundry or get Phillip arrested. I just want to be able to keep my chin up during all the stupid festivities.”

I meet her gaze and hold it as I promise, “And you will. By the time we head back to the city, every woman at that wedding will wish she was you.”

Penny’s cheeks flush and her chest rises and falls and I’m forced to exert another Herculean amount of will power to keep my gaze from drifting to places it shouldn’t.

But it’s worth it to see the look in her eyes as she says, “Thank you, Bash.”

“You’re welcome, Penny.” I smile, a real one this time because I can see that I’ve made someone I care about very happy, and then I finally make my escape.

I pound down the stairs and out into the cool spring evening and set off at a jog toward the subway, hoping that putting some distance between us will help me forget how right it felt to have Penny’s body pressed tight to mine.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

From the e-mail archives of Sebastian “Bash” Prince and Penny Pickett

From: MagnificentBastard1

To: Penny4YourLobsterPot

Re: This e-mail address

Okay, I give,

What’s with the lobster pot in the e-mail, buttercup? Are you from Maine? Did you grow up a lobster farmer’s daughter? Or do you just have an inordinately strong love for large saltwater crustaceans?

Bash, who is bored and drinking alone because Aidan is working and you refuse to get out of your house and come enjoy the happiest of hours.

From: Penny4YourLobsterPot

To: Magnificent Bastard1

Re: This e-mail address

If I told you, I’d have to kill you.

Sincerely, Penny

p.s. Just say the word and I’ll share the new password for your LetsGoLove account. I’m sure there are some mildly psychotic women in Manhattan you haven’t been out on a date with yet.

Text from Bash to Penny: :p :p :p :p

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When I get home, I head straight to the shower even though I showered less than five hours ago and I certainly didn’t work up a sweat riding the train to and from Brooklyn.

But I need something to take the edge off.

Even after the walk to the subway station from Penny’s place, a twenty-minute train ride, and another ten-minute walk to my own apartment, I’m still hard. Every time my erection starts to subside, my glutton-for-punishment brain flashes back to the feel of Penny’s leg wrapped around my waist and her pussy rubbing against my cock and I’m right back where I started—hard, aching, frustrated, and desperate to come, preferably inside my assistant.

It’s wrong.

It’s so, so wrong, and the thoughts buzzing through my brain, the ones that wonder if Penny was as turned on as I was and if she laid down on her comfy blue couch and slipped her hand down the front of her panties after I left, are not helping me regain control.

I should not be thinking about Penny getting herself off, one hand rolling her nipples while the other strokes the slick flesh between her legs. I should be thinking about something else, anything else.

Or more accurately,
anyone
else.

Even if I can’t help having sex on the brain, I could certainly shift the direction of my thoughts. I’ve got plenty of spank bank material stored up. I’ve even got a sex tape or two lurking in the depths of my hard drive. Betsy, the woman I dated last summer, had a thing for watching homemade porn. We made our first video on our second date and by the time we went our separate ways a few weeks later, I had close to three hours of high definition fucking shot from every angle in my bedroom.

I could have some hot and filthy material pulled up on my laptop in a few minutes. But I don’t want to jerk off to the sight of Betsy’s ass rippling while she rides me reverse cowgirl.

I want Penny’s dark eyes flashing as I spread her legs and settle between them. I want to imagine the way her pretty face would twist with desire as I go to work, driving my tongue deep into her pussy as I reach up to tease her nipples between my fingers. I want to hear her calling my name in her sweet and sexy voice as she comes on my mouth and feel her hands clawing at my shoulders as she begs me to fuck her.

I want it so bad that as I step into the shower and take my cock in my hand, I swear I can almost see her standing in front of me, her chest rising and falling the way it was when I left her apartment.

But this time, she isn’t wearing a dress. She’s naked, her full breasts bared to my gaze, her dusky nipples pulled tight, and the look in her eyes leaving no doubt how much she wants me.

“Please, Bash,” she breathes, her fingers trailing down my chest. “I want you inside of me. I want it so much.”

“How much?” I palm her breasts, rubbing my thumbs across her puckered tips. She gasps and arches into my touch as her hands continue their journey south.

“It’s pretty much all I can think about.” She wraps her fingers around my shaft and strokes me up and down, drawing a groan from low in my throat. “I’m so wet for you. Feel.”

Penny takes my hand and guides it between her legs before her attention returns to my cock.

“Damn,” I curse, my breath hitching as I let my fingers glide through her slick flesh, teasing through her folds before I bring two fingers to her entrance and push inside.

Her head falls back with a sigh as I finger fuck her, granting me a heart-stopping view of her nipples only inches away from my chest. “I can’t wait to be with you. I seriously can’t wait, Bash. If you make me, I’m going to go out of my mind.”

“I won’t make you wait, sweetheart.” I’m panting now, breath rasping in and out and my dick leaking pre-come into her hand as she jerks me off, just as desperate to fuck as she is. “Come here.”

A second later, I’ve picked her up, hitched her curvy legs around my waist, pressed her back against the slick wall of the shower and shoved my aching cock into where she is so hot and wet I’m pretty sure I’ve died and gone to heaven.

“Fuck, Penny.” I groan against her mouth as I push deeper. “We should have been doing this months ago, years ago.”

“Yes, fuck, yes,” she agrees as I begin to move, sliding in and out while she rocks against me, taking more of me with every thrust. “You’re so fucking good, you’re going to make me come so hard. So fucking hard!”

Fantasy Penny drops the eff bomb way more often than Reality Penny, but it doesn’t matter. By the time my phone starts to ring, blaring like a foghorn from where it rests on the back of the toilet, I’m so turned on I’m seconds away from coming hard enough to drown a small country.

There’s no way I’m stopping to answer the phone. Whoever’s calling is just going to have to leave a fucking message.

I pump into my own hand, trying to recapture the feeling of being inside Penny’s slick, tight pussy, but I’ve lost her. I come staring down into one unblinking eye instead of Penny’s soulful brown ones.

My cock jerks in my fist and my balls call out Hallelujah as the pressure that’s been building inside them for the past hour is finally released, but the orgasm isn’t what it would have been. It’s a release, a relief, but it isn’t the soul shattering, earth-shaking, come-a-geddon I was on my way to achieving before I was so rudely interrupted.

“Fuck,” I grunt, gritting my teeth as I ride out the final waves. Breathing hard from a mixture of relief and frustration at having my fantasy ripped away seconds before the main event, I turn into the spray, letting the warm water wash away the evidence of my complete lack of professionalism.

I just busted a nut while thinking of an employee. I’m ashamed of myself, but not so ashamed I don’t have plans to try to recapture that fantasy again later tonight while I’m in bed.

But first, to track down something for dinner.

Five minutes later, I’m clean, dry, and plucking my phone from the back of the john to see I’ve received a voice message.

From Penny.

My pulse picks up. I feel like I’ve been caught come-handed even though of course there’s no way Penny could have known she was calling while I was busy screwing my fantasy version of her against the wall of the shower. Still, I can’t deny that anxiety tickles along my nerve endings as I bring the phone to my ear.

“Hey, Bash. Sorry to call,” she says, sounding a little out of breath. “I know you said you were beat, but I just wanted to tell you again how thankful I am for your help. You would have had every right to yell at me for lying and ruining your vacation and fire me on the spot. But instead, you’re helping me and I appreciate it so much. I promise I will make this as painless for you as possible, which includes not giving you any more crap about the clothing stuff.”

She laughs uncomfortably, and my mind spits up a mental picture of her nose wrinkling and her mouth shifting to the side of her face. We’ve only spent a few hours together, but I’m already memorizing her expressions.

I’m not sure what that means, but I’m guessing it isn’t good.

“So anyway,” she continues. “Just wanted you to know that from here on out I’m going to be the most painless client ever. No more stressing or causing you stress or worrying about things that I shouldn’t be worrying about because obviously you know what you’re doing. And um…everything is cool.”