My Front Page Scandal (14 page)

She reached around. “Yes. Quite obvious.”

He caught her hand, but not to still it. He guided her fingers around his cock, helping her stroke the burgeoning length. “What about us?” he whispered, insisting.

“I—I don’t know.”

“Do you want this to be it?”

The question was strange, almost amusing, considering the position of her hand.

Or not so strange, she realized. Even though she considered him a friend, no longer a stranger, she couldn’t say that their relationship should extend beyond the past week, unbelievable and transforming as it’d been. The Martinis and Bikinis dare was supposed to have emboldened her, but already she worried about how her family would react if they knew what she’d done at Passionfruit. Did David Carerra fit into her life any better? Or she into his?

She turned to face him. “Do I have to decide now?”

For a woman who’d planned every important event in her life, including a script for the breakup of her engagement, she was flying high without a net. And at the moment—the next hundred-thousand moments as long as they were naked together and too busy to think—she felt great about that. Maybe the dare had worked.

“I know this,” she said hoarsely, barely understanding herself. Men weren’t the only ones who surrendered their common sense to the demands of their physical self. “I can’t get enough of you.”

“So don’t stop trying.”

A faint, pinkish-gray sliver of light bisected the drawn drapes.

Dawn.

Either a new beginning…or the end.

Her thoughts were viscous. She blinked and put a hand to the sticky quills of her hair, with no idea of how long they’d slept. A couple of minutes passed before she noticed the stripes of sunshine at the curtains, the subdued sound of traffic from the street far below.

Morning.

Her whisper was loud in the quiet room. “Not yet.”

David was laid out in the same position, face-down and snoring lightly. She brushed some glitter off the back of his thigh, then let her hand hover above his luscious ass. Even in repose, it was tight, high and round. Yum. If her mouth had been capable of producing moisture, she’d have drooled.

She studied the ransacked bed. The blankets were on the floor. Her bikini top trailed from beneath a pillow, both of them smashed flat. At one point, they’d debated ordering champagne and strawberries, chocolate and whipped cream, until he’d tossed the room-service menu over his shoulder and said he’d rather eat her. The creased card still clung to edge of the mattress. When she shifted to brush it away, something hard bit into her calf. She reached down and pulled out the chain belt, its links chiming softly as she reeled it in.

Damned morning, coming so fast. Brooke weighed the belt in her palms, not ready to make the decision that awaited her. Instead, her lips curled with a more wicked plan.

It would be so much easier to chain David to the bed than face the inevitable departure.

But he was too far away from the headboard. Her eyes measured the distance between his out-flung arms. That’d work.

Moving slowly, she loosely wound the belt around one wrist, then the other. He stirred. She settled astride him, keeping her weight up as she reached past his head and, with one swift, decisive move, drew the chain tight.

“Huh? Brooke?” He tried to rise, but she sat down on him, pressing her belly to his twisting head as she wrapped and knotted the remaining length of the belt.

He struggled, working his wrists to test the bond. “What the hell?”

She slid down and put her mouth near his ear. “Don’t fight.” Her fingertip traced the line of his shoulder. “I’m not finished with you.”

He relaxed with a moan. “Did you think I’d complain ‘bout that?”

“Maybe.” She lifted his hair off his nape and blew lightly.

His skin flinched. “You’re the one who—”

“Silence.” She tugged at his scalp in warning.

“But I’m—”

“I said silence.” Spying the bikini top out of the corner of her eyes, she snagged it and wound the length of leather around both hands, sitting tall as she snapped it near his ear. “I’ll gag you.”

His cheek was pressed to the bed. He looked at her from one widened green eye, barely suppressing a smirk.

She tossed her hair, though it was too stiff with the products Katie had applied to actually move. “I am the rock diva goddess,” she proclaimed, “and you are only a lowly minion sent to service me at my command.” Her thighs squeezed his ribs. “Do you understand?”

“Sure.”

“Silence!”

His chest heaved with an amused huff, but he held his tongue and nodded.

As she eased away from him, she let out her own chuckle. An evil one. “You will obey,” she said, and cracked the twisted leather against his naked ass.

He reared up onto his elbows. “Jeez, Brooke. What’s this about?”

“Have you already forgotten? I’m the rock diva goddess.” She pushed him flat, on his back this time, and wrapped the bikini around his mouth. The fringe hung tangled across his chin and jaw. As with the chain on his wrist, he could have freed himself with little effort. She knew he wouldn’t, at least not until her erotic torture had reached the point where he couldn’t withstand it any longer.

That, she decided with a lick of her lips as she surveyed the gorgeous masculinity on display for her pleasure, wasn’t going to happen until she’d had her fill.

THE CEILING OF HIS hotel room was coffered with beams and molding painted dove-gray. The chandelier centered over the bed was black wrought-iron with dangling crystals. He’d tried counting them, to keep his brain focused, but he couldn’t seem to get much past twenty before Brooke’s fingers squeezed or her tongue swirled and raw pleasure shot through his veins, erasing thoughts of anything but the feel of her mouth on his cock.

She was determined to drain him. If he lived, if he recovered, he would have to send a thank-you note to the Martinis and Bikinis club. What the hell, maybe they’d let him become a sponsor. New clubs could open in every neighborhood across the city. The men of Boston would be back in their fallen hero’s corner long before spring training arrived.

The chains that bound his wrists had loosened. If she hadn’t insisted so adorably that she was in charge, he’d have filled his hands with her—the small but full globes of her breasts, the luscious rounds of her ass. He tasted leather, but he wanted her—the soft, fragrant skin, the glistening dew that had coated her pussy and the insides of her thighs when he’d had her writhing beneath him, half out of her mind with want.

The craving made him restless. Brooke raised her head, warning him to be still with a stern look and a pucker of her salaciously wet lips. Damn if she didn’t squeeze his balls, too.

He arched a few inches off the bed, swinging his chained arms down in front of him. His jaw worked against the leather, tickled by the dangling fringe. He breathed heavily through his nostrils. There was no use in trying to speak.

She knew as well as he did.

All night long wasn’t time enough.

But would she admit it—to either of them? And could he expect her to, when he hadn’t been entirely honest with her?

He fell back, prostrate. But only for a moment. Brooke had lowered her head and taken him into her mouth again, and the tight, moist heat and suction drew him deeper until he was fully consumed. Her lips formed a tight ring at the base of his shaft. When her throat convulsed, her lips retreated, agonizingly seductive as they slid over his throbbing dick, her flickering tongue teasing the sensitive vein that pulsed along the underside. He sucked in a cutting breath.

The chain around his wrists jingled as he sank his fingers into her hair, needing to hold on to some part of her.

She reached up without lifting her head. Her nails raked across his chest, no match for the hunger clawing his gut. She moaned around him and the vibration was too much for him to handle. His erection jerked in her mouth and his scrotum seized tight, signaling the climax that had built into an explosive force.

With a humming sigh, she pulled back, momentarily easing his torment even as she prolonged it. This time, she glanced up. He held her gaze, saying “Suck me” with his eyes. The cords of his neck and arms were strung taut. Sweat ran freely over his straining muscles.

Heedless of his state of desperation, her fingers petted and her tongue lashed against his balls before returning to circle the crest of his dick. He rammed his hips off the bed and she enveloped him once more in the hot, sweet heaven of her mouth. He gripped her bobbing head as best as he could, his teeth grinding the thong of leather as he urged her with primal grunts, all the communication that seemed necessary.

He thrust into her with short, hard strokes. Her hands surrounded him lovingly, the tight velvet pocket of her mouth and tongue accepting the release that burst from him in waves of fierce pleasure and glorious pain. He slammed his eyes shut and let out a shout made incoherent by the leather gag. The climax was so tremendous he almost passed out. He was left as weak as a kitten. The ceiling could have come down on them, or the bed collapsed, and he wouldn’t have been able to move.

Brooke cuddled against his lower body, her cheek resting between his hip bones, one hand lightly curled around his deflated erection. All she said was, “Mmmmm.”

Minutes later, he spat out the leather, shook free of the chains, and lifted his head off the bed. “Uh, so, Brooke…was that supposed to be me servicing you?”

She tongued his navel before looking up at him with a smile. “Any complaints?”

“ROOM SERVICE IS HERE,” David said, somewhere in the distance.

Brooke didn’t move a muscle, even when the door opened and the cart rolled in.

After David had left the bed, he’d lofted the sheet high above her and let it settle with a cool caress over her bare skin. Only the soles of her feet and the bent spikes of her rock-chick coif were exposed.

“Hungry?” he coaxed, after the waiter had set up the table and collected a tip.

She heard the clatter of silverware and the bell-like clang of silver domes being lifted. The delicious odors of hot coffee and crisp bacon drifted into the bedroom. “There’s orange juice. You need to replenish your fluids.”

She lifted her head. “Hah.”

“Right,” he muttered. “I’m the one who’s been chained up and sucked dry.”

“Was that kinky?” She supposed he’d think she was cute and innocent, having to ask, but she wanted to know. “Because I’ve always wanted to try something kinky.”

“Only mildly kinky.” He poured coffee and added sugar and cream, then walked the cup over to her. He stood beside the bed, looking down at her upraised face wrapped in the sheet. He seemed to be brooding. “What stopped you before now?”

“Modesty, I suppose. I always felt like the guy I was with would laugh at me.”

She took the cup, her brows knitting as she remembered his reaction to the chain. “You laughed.”

“I did not.”

“Then you snickered.”

He returned to the table, wearing only the pair of unsnapped jeans she’d stripped off him the past night. They rode low on his hips, the frayed cuffs dragging at his bare heels. Pinkened love bites and nail scratches dotted his chest and back.

Her doing. She’d never experienced the spurt of pride that realization gave her.

Never wanted to brand a man as hers.

David sat at the breakfast table and flipped open a newspaper. “There’s nothing wrong with a little humor in bed. Or kinkiness, for that matter. Any time you want to experiment, darlin’, I’m available.”

“Hmm.” She rolled over onto her back. Experimentation, huh? Not exactly a declaration of eternal devotion.

“Food’s getting cold.”

“All right.” She sat up, saw her totally bare body, and automatically reached for the sheet.

Why? That was what the modest Brooke would do. The Martinis and Bikinis Brooke should stand and walk brazenly across the room.

She rose, thinking no problem. David had seen it all. Touched and tasted it, too. But feeling his eyes on her as she strolled toward the bathroom was very different than lying naked in his arms, and she took the last few feet in a hurry, making him chuckle as she ducked inside and slammed the door.

He should laugh. She hadn’t noticed his business dangling free beneath the tablecloth.

Brooke arrived at the table wrapped in a white terry-cloth robe with the name of the hotel stitched to the pocket. “Any shocking news occur while we were, as my Great Aunt Josephine would say, indisposed?” She scanned the breakfast offerings. David had ordered enough to feed the entire Bosox batting order.

“They finished the Big Dig,” he said of the endless, multibillion roadwork project.

“Funny.” His warning about the cell phone pics and tabloid photographer was at the back of her mind—okay, the front—but the silver-dollar pancakes distracted her. She added a dollop of blueberry jam, one fresh, sliced strawberry and folded the tiny pancake like a crepe to eat out of her hand.

David put aside the Globe and picked up the Saturday morning edition of the Insider, which was always heavy on coupons and gossip. “You didn’t make the front page.”

“Whew.” After finishing her pancake and preparing another, she paged through the sections of the Globe. “Did you make the sports page?” The pages rattled. “Hey, you did! ‘World Series Hero to Attempt Comeback.’ Attempt? That’s a little negative.”

He grunted. “It is only an attempt.”

“You made the team once. The second time will be easier.”

His eyes appeared over the top of the Insider. “Does that mean amateur night at Passionfruit is going to be a regular thing?”

“Nah.” She stretched, letting the sports section fall to the floor. “Next time, I’m trying out for the majors.”

“Over my dead body.”

“How convenient.” She grinned, getting a charge out of bedeviling him for a change. “That way, you won’t mind the stiletto punctures so much.”

He thumped his chest. “Ow. If I didn’t have other proof, I’d say you’re cold-blooded.”

The hot blood he referred to worked its way up her throat. She patted her cheeks, felt silly doing that, and instead tried to smooth her hair behind her ears. Until she got a shower, taming her serious case of bed head would require a garden rake. “I thought sports heroes were into strippers. Also starlets and Maxim models and the girls who show up at Palms Park in string bikinis.”

“You’ve been reading the Insider.”

“Nmmph,” she said around a mouthful of pancake. “Common knowledge. Professional athletes live the life. Every man’s dream. Fame, money, fast cars, faster women.”