Seduce Me Tonight (12 page)

I was completely naked under his scrutinising gaze, feeling alternately shy and wanton, while he was still fully clothed. I let him look his fill. My body was rounder and lusher now and I waited to see what he would say.

His words, when he finally spoke, sounded faint and rough. ‘You are so beautiful.’

The tears came again and rolled down my cheeks.

‘What’s wrong, baby?’ he asked, gathering me up in his arms. ‘What?

I couldn’t explain it all to him. The weeks of wondering how I was going to do this, alone or with him. The fear of his rejection, of me and the baby I was having. The rollercoaster ride of pregnancy hormones combined with self-doubts and insecurities over everything from my new body to how I was going to support a baby on a barista’s salary.

I shook my head, tucked my face into the curve of his shoulder and inhaled his unique scent. His T-shirt smelled like beer, but under that was the scent I’d missed. I had taken his Virginia Tech sweatshirt with me to Florida, as a promise to myself that I’d be back. Every night I’d curled up with that shirt and cried, wishing I could just call him and have him make everything be OK. After two months, his scent had faded – a faint memory of the real thing. Here, now, in Quentin’s bed, I was reminded of everything I loved about him.

‘I was an idiot for leaving,’ I said between sniffles. ‘I should’ve just told you. But we’d never even talked about having kids and neither of us really wanted them anyway and our schedules are so crazy and we already hardly see each other and –’

He laughed, a deep rumbling laugh I could feel as well as hear. ‘Is this some kind of pregnancy thing, all this crying and babbling?’

I hiccupped and swallowed and nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘It’s cute. I like it. I love you.’

‘Are you going to get naked?’ I blurted, grabbing his T-shirt in my fist and tugging. ‘This is kind of embarrassing.’

‘Why? You’re gorgeous and pregnant. I’m a grubby bartender who just pulled a twelve-hour shift and smells like it.’

‘You smell like home,’ I whispered into the curve of his shoulder, feeling suddenly exhausted. It was as much emotional as physical, I knew.

‘Aw, baby, you’re about to fall asleep on me,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘No, I’m not. I want you.’ I attempted to wriggle seductively against him, feeling the press of his erection against my naked ass. ‘And you want me.’

‘Very much,’ he said. ‘But maybe we should just sleep and talk more in the morning. Or later, since it’s after four already.’

‘Quentin, if you don’t fuck me right now I’m going back to Florida.’ He wasn’t the only one who could growl, I decided.

He laughed again. ‘Oh, so it’s going to be like that, huh?’ He jerked his hips, pressing his cock against me. ‘You want me?’

‘I do,’ I said, scooting out of his lap and reaching for his belt. ‘Now.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

He let me unfasten his belt and the button on his jeans before he stood up and stripped off his clothes. T-shirt, sneakers, socks, jeans, boxer briefs, all in a pile on the floor before I could even catch my breath. He had lied, though. He wasn’t a grubby bartender, he was beautiful. His body was well-muscled, from years of hauling cases of bottles back and forth from the basement of the bar, and lean, because he liked to go for a run when he got off work, to wind down so he could sleep.

I reached for him, wanting to feel the warm press of his body against mine. He eased down on the bed, keeping his weight off me. I grunted a protest, pulling him closer.

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he whispered, arching up over me.

‘You’re not going to hurt me. I promise.’

He searched my face, his brown eyes serious and maybe a little scared. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes! Please, Quentin,’ I said, my need raw and immediate. The surge of pregnancy hormones intensified everything, I was discovering.

He didn’t argue with me again. He lowered himself on top of me, his cock pressed firmly against my rounded stomach. I reached between us, stroking him, feeling the weight of them there, too. He dropped his head to my shoulder, trailing kisses along the curve of my neck, down my throat and to my breasts. I trembled as his mouth encircled first one nipple, then the other, leaving them wet and tingly.

‘Do they … hurt?’ he asked. ‘They’re bigger, darker.’

‘More sensitive,’ I gasped, as he flicked his tongue along one swollen ridge. ‘I don’t know how much of that I can take.’

‘I guess we’ll have to figure it out,’ he murmured, rubbing his stubbled face between my breasts. ‘I want you to tell me if it’s too much.’

I nodded, unable to speak. My skin felt sunburned, my sensitivity heightened. I fisted my hands in his hair, thinking I would pull him away in a moment because I couldn’t take any more, only to hug him to me when he moved to slide lower.

‘Let me go,’ he whispered. ‘I need to see how sensitive you are … everywhere.’

I whimpered as he slid down the bed to the V of my legs, where his mouth hovered above my pussy. I resisted the urge to pull his face into me, knowing he would make me feel good when he was ready.

He inhaled deeply and I squirmed in embarrassment at his appreciative moan. I couldn’t keep my fingers out of his hair – the only part of him I could reach now – tousling the brown locks as he gently parted me with his fingers. My body trembled with anticipation, waiting for that first touch of his tongue.

When I didn’t think I could stand it any longer and would be reduced to begging, he put me out of my misery with one long stroke of his tongue between my lips and over my clit. It was so startling, I felt like I’d gotten a dose of static shock. I shrieked, nearly coming up off the bed.

He chuckled and raised his head from between my thighs to look at me. ‘My neighbours get up early, so you might want to keep it down if you don’t want them knocking on the door wondering if I’m killing you.’

I gasped as he tongued me again. ‘I’ll try, but you’re not making it easy.’

‘I don’t want it to be easy,’ he mumbled, his mouth full of my wetness. ‘I want it to be hard. Very, very hard.’

‘Oh, God,’ I groaned, probably loud enough for his early neighbours to hear.

After that, I was reduced to incoherent whimpers and moans as he devoured me with his mouth. Pregnancy had brought on a new sensitivity there, too, and I revelled in every exquisite sensation of his mouth and tongue and teeth and beard stubble. It was all too much – and still not enough.

My body quivered on the edge of release, Quentin’s mouth working my swollen pussy to a sopping wet frenzy as he lapped at me and suckled my engorged clit. I dug my nails into my thighs, spreading myself for him, urging him onward with every lift of my hips. I was right there, so close I could taste it on my tongue. But I needed more.

‘I need you inside me,’ I gasped, clutching at his hair as desperately as I had clutched my own flesh. ‘I need to feel you.’

A few years of sharing a bed with me meant that he didn’t question my need. One minute his mouth was on my pussy and the next he was surging up over me, pressing the head of his cock between my swollen, sensitive lips.

I gasped, ‘Oh yes!’ and wrapped my legs around his muscled back as his cock found my opening and slid home.

It took no more than a few quick, shallow thrusts and I was going over the edge into a spiralling orgasm that had me clinging to him and screaming out my release. The neighbours would just have to deal with it, I thought hazily as I arched up to meet him.

His strokes turned longer and deeper as he sought his own release. I worked my hands down to the small of his back, then over the curve of his ass, pulling him into me, coaxing him deeper. Feeling the subtle changes in my body that made it difficult for him to go as deep as he once had. Wondering, again somewhat hazily because I was still in the thrall of my own orgasm, if I felt different or better or worse. There was no anxiety in my thoughts. I could tell how much he wanted me, needed me, by the way his body moved, the way he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me up to meet him, the way his breathing turned harsh and ragged as his desire exploded in a rush of heat and wetness. I held him to me, soothing the muscles in his back with my fingers, feeling the tension ease out of his body.

He rolled us on our sides, afraid I guess of hurting me despite my assurances that he wouldn’t. I hooked a leg over his hip to keep him inside me for as long as possible. I curled my fingers at the base of his neck and pulled him down to me for a long, lingering kiss. I laughed into his mouth, realising we’d hardly kissed at all.

He smiled. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘All these years together and we don’t even need to make out before we’re going at it like rabbits,’ I said.

His smile faded. ‘I’m sorry. I guess I should’ve taken my time and done it proper.’

I tugged a lock of hair that was in need of a trim. ‘I didn’t mind at all,’ I said. ‘Not at all. You’re my home, Quentin.’

‘And you’re back home where you’re meant to be.’ He reached between us, palming my expanding stomach with a protective hand. ‘You both are.’

I closed my eyes. We were going to be OK. All three of us.

They say life imitates art. More often I’ve found that art imitates life imitates art. Or something like that. I’d never had much interest in art – or painting, at least. I didn’t really understand it. Oh, I could appreciate it, stand still long enough to admire the brush strokes on a painting or the contrast and complement of colours, but I’ve always liked photography more. In photography, what you see is what you get. Photography is reality, painting is fantasy. Or so I thought. Until I met an artist who created reality from fantasy and captured truth and beauty in the strokes of paint on a canvas and the strokes of his fingers on my body.

What first caught my attention were his hands. His hands, with their long bronzed fingers and short buffed nails that often had half-moons of paint under them when he was painting. His hands stroked me and with his touch he memorised me with his fingertips. With his hands he turned me on, got me wet, got me off. Antonio’s hands. His strong, beautiful hands teased my fevered imagination long before he even touched me for real, after his scent faded from the air around me and his laughter was just a memory of the day before. His hands were as much a work of art as anything he painted on canvas.

Antonio was an artist struggling to put together a gallery show while teaching art classes to students with a fraction of his talent. I met him through a life drawing class at the college. I’m not an artist, I’m an actress. Correction: I’m an actress who doesn’t work enough to support herself, so I wait tables and do some modelling for extra cash. Modelling for an art class means stripping down to my birthday suit. There are worse ways to earn money and I didn’t have to worry about the art students pawing me because they’re too busy trying to capture the creases in my thighs and the dimples in my ass in their careful, self-conscious way.

It’s a good gig, being an art model. Good pay, good atmosphere. I’m a big girl, but I’m not particularly modest, so it doesn’t faze me to be the only naked body in the room. Granted, it can get a little tedious sometimes having to hold the same pose for an hour or more, but I have an active imagination. I keep myself entertained by practising my monologue for auditions or, when I’m lucky, running lines for whatever theatre production I’m currently in. Sometimes I spin stories to myself – ideas for screenplays I want to write.

Antonio’s class was composed of about a dozen students of varying ages, most of them edging closer to the retirement home than the club scene. They were all respectful of and almost deferential to Antonio, with his dark Mediterranean good looks and soft voice that would whisper, ‘Yes, very nice’ in their ear as they dragged their charcoal across the sketchpad in front of them. On the other hand, they seemed positively terrified of me, as if I had an explosive device strapped to my thigh. They spoke to me haltingly when I was naked and they weren’t much more comfortable with me when I was clothed. That was more than OK with me. I preferred the solitude of coming and going from the studio without having to make small talk.

The only one who would meet my eyes when I was naked was Antonio, but that had as much to do with his own self-confidence as it did with his familiarity with models. He didn’t acknowledge my nudity except to point out certain features to his students and then it was as non-sexual as if he was talking about the table in the corner – if the table had breasts and hips. But while he shifted his attention from my body to his students’ sketches, I would spend my time studying him. His body was angular and graceful – much like his hands. From his longish dark hair to his nearly flawless olive skin, he was beautiful. He wasn’t the type of guy I was normally attracted to, actually. I tended to go for the rough-around-the-edges guys, the ones with big bodies and big hands that made me feel petite in their arms. Antonio had a more slender build than most of the men I dated and wasn’t much taller than me. But it wasn’t his looks that kept me from approaching him outside of class. He seemed aloof, untouchable. Too striking for an actress-slash-waitress. I was the one who was uncomfortable around him, especially when I was naked.

I’d sat for three of his classes over the summer term and we were well into fall when he asked me to stay after class one evening.

‘Valerie, could I speak to you?’ he asked softly as the students filed out of the studio and headed for the coffee shop on the corner.

Idly, I wondered if he raised his voice when he argued or when he was happy – or in bed. I stifled a yawn and smiled at him. The ninety-minute art lesson had left me exhausted and stiff and I longed for a hot bath and my warm bed. But Antonio’s request felt more like a command and I nodded tiredly in agreement because I had nowhere to go but home and no one waiting for me there except my cat, who was probably sleeping on my pillow anyway.

‘Just let me get dressed,’ I said, tying the belt of my robe as I padded toward the workroom where I stored my clothes during class.

‘Could you wait?’ he asked. ‘It won’t take long. I want to show you something.’