Starfire (Erotic Romance) (Peaches Monroe) (20 page)

It had been too long since I’d felt his lips on mine, but now that we were kissing, the time and distance disappeared.

After a moment, he pulled away.

“That was a great kiss,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

He smiled, looking almost shy. “Earlier today, at the airstrip, you made me a promise.”

I gazed into his beautiful green eyes, made brighter by the hot water of the tub. “I did? That doesn’t sound like me, because I make threats, not promises.”

He grinned wider. “I said that if I kissed you, everything would get complicated. You agreed with me, and promised me
nothing short of disaster
.”

That did seem familiar. “How do you have such a good memory? Oh, duh. From memorizing scripts. Wow, I’m going to have to be careful what I say around you.”

He kissed me again, then settled onto his knees before me in the enormous tub. “I do remember things. You and Shayla rented an apartment, sight-unseen, when you went away for college. You said the landlord must have taken the photos from a ladder, outside the windows, to make the place look bigger.”

I splashed some water his way jokingly. “Showoff. Let me think about this. Your first apartment had rats and a toilet in the kitchen.”

He laughed. “A tub, but close enough.”

“And look at us now, in this fancy-schmancy hotel bathroom. It’s a good thing one of us has talent and good looks, and the other is great at playing a vampire.”

His eyes flew open in mock anger. “Someone’s going to pay for that horrible joke.”

I was running through a few comebacks in my head when I noticed his attention drifting down to my breasts, looking like pale, flesh-colored islands in a sea of bubbles. I ran one hand down the middle of my breasts seductively, then cupped both of them and pinched my nipples to firmness.

His eyes didn’t stray from the waterline. I continued to stroke my fingertips around my breasts, enjoying the look of concentration on his face.

He swept the surface bubbles aside so he could see all of my body.

“That’s new,” he said, looking down at my new tattoo, on the inner edge of my hip bone.

“Oh, that. I had a lapse of judgement in LA.”

He traced the tattoo with his finger. “You had more than one lapse of judgement in LA.”

“But it’s cute, right? My tattoo?”

“
Doves Cry.
Of course it is. Everything’s cute on you.”

I smiled, and then relaxed in the warm water as he ran his hands along my thighs.

“Touch yourself,” he said, and I knew he meant further down than my breasts.

He waved more bubbles aside, so the water was clear. I settled down into the tub further, and I parted my legs so he could see everything. I slid my hand down my front and theatrically ran my index finger up and down over my clit. Damn, but that felt good, especially with him watching.

I could feel my cheeks flushing, but I couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment, or arousal, or both.

His voice deep and thick, he said, “Keep going.”

I opened my mouth to say something lippy about me doing his job for him, but the expression on his face was so serious. I slid down further, curving my spine to a comfortable shape. Self-conscious of how much I was hunching, I rolled my shoulders back and adjusted my position so my arm wasn’t squashing my right breast in half, but angled underneath. That small change, however, put my hand in an awkward position.

Dalton must have sensed this, because he said, “Don’t worry about a performance. I don’t want porn. I want to see the truth. Do you trust me enough to show me your true beauty?”

“I don’t know. Can you kiss me some more?”

“Yes,” he breathed, and he moved in close again, licking and sucking my lips, then kissing me as we shared one breath, back and forth.

As the heat built, I slipped my hand down and started again, with my hand down between us, the back of my wrist bumping his body rhythmically. We kept kissing until I was gasping, close to coming. He pulled back just enough to get a glimpse down between us.

I rubbed up and down, then in a circle, desperate for release, then angry with myself for my desperation, because that’s exactly how you chase an orgasm away.

“Grr,” I said, then I pushed him away so I could cross my legs. “Stage fright.”

“Don’t be frustrated. I saw exactly what I wanted to see. Thank you for showing yourself to me.”

I snorted. “Now it’s your turn.”

“Men are disgusting. Nobody wants to see that. We’re like those horny little monkeys in a nature documentary.” He reached for the bottles of hair product near the tub. “How about I lather you up and give you a scalp massage?”

“Are you serious?”

He raised his eyebrows as he took the cap off a bottle and poured the fragrant cream into his palm. “Try me.”

I dipped my head back to fully re-wet my hair, and then I let Dalton Deangelo, TV’s sexiest vampire, play hair stylist on me.

After he washed and conditioned my hair, I did his. I told him he had gray hairs (he didn’t) and we had a few tense moments until I admitted I was joking. He told me he’d had people fired from the set for less, and I got the sense he wasn’t entirely joking. I could relate, though. During my brief stint in LA as an underwear model, I’d encountered a couple of people I would have gladly had fired.

We finally climbed out of the tub when we both developed prune fingers plus an insatiable curiosity to see what kind of goodies were in the mini-bar.

Each clad in our white hotel robe, we sprawled out on the king-sized bed and dug through the packages of candy and nuts like two kids with their Halloween treasure.

“I’m not surprised you’re hungry already,” I said as Dalton tore into a foil-wrapped bag of nuts.

“I have a fast metabolism.”

“Maybe. But I noticed when we were at the restaurant, you only ate the middle of your burrito. You peeled away most of the burrito wrapper, which is the best part.”

“I’m just not willing to do carbs,” he said with a shrug. “Do you think you can sustain a fake marriage to a guy who doesn’t eat carbs?”

“About the fake marriage… will it be an actor who does the ceremony? Or will we legally be married? Because if so, I should probably make you sign a pre-nup, to protect my assets.”

He laughed. “You think I’ll go after half your country furniture and your used book collection?”

“Yes. You’re probably broke now, after buying a cabin and an airplane, plus no sane person eats the things from the mini-bar. That tiny can of Diet Coke you treated me to probably cost you seven dollars.”

“Nothing but the best for my fiancée.”

“In that case, let’s order room service.”

He rolled over to the side of the bed and grabbed the phone. “Name your pleasure.”

“I meant for breakfast, silly.”

He put the phone down and grabbed his crotch suggestively through the thick, white robe. “I’ve got your breakfast right here.”

I chucked a bag of peanuts at him. “Gross.”

He lay back on the bed and unfastened the terry-cloth belt. Without saying a word, he began calling me over to him with just his green eyes, set in that devilishly handsome face.

And me, I was powerless to resist. I crawled over to him—awkwardly, due to the fluffy robe. I snuggled up alongside him, aware of the heat and tension building between my legs. He curled up to look around us at the mess of wrappers on the bed, then he kicked everything off with his feet.

“You’re messy,” I said.

“You make my life very messy.”

“Nothing short of a disaster.”

“Get on top of me,” he said.

“Don’t tell me you have a crushing fetish? Or you want me to smother you?”

“I want to feel every ounce of your beautiful body, on top of me. Rest your legs on mine and your arms on mine. I want to feel you.”

“Is this a fetish?”

“What does that even mean? You like my body, don’t you? I see you admire my lean, cut muscles.”

I rolled away, onto my shoulder, facing away from him. “That’s different.”

The room was so quiet, I could hear him lick his lips.

I tightened the tie on my robe as an internal argument raged in my mind. I wanted a guy who appreciated my curves, but not
too
much… but why? Because a fetish objectified me and made me less of a person? Or was it because I couldn’t accept his adoration? Could it be true that despite all my attitude and pride in my curves, deep down I didn’t truly believe fat was fabulous? Tits are mostly fat, and everybody loves them, so why not celebrate a round, full ass, whether you’re into spanking or not?

“You saw the photos in my wine cellar,” Dalton said.

“Yes.” I had seen the vintage framed Polaroids of his LA home’s former owner. The woman wasn’t your average housewife. From the pictures, she was always naked at parties, and had an appetite for everything good in life, from cake to multiple lovers. Dalton had hung her pictures in his basement wine cellar, in a display that was somewhere between a shrine and a joke.

“I like those photos,” he said plainly.

“You don’t bring people down there to laugh at her?”

“Well, you do have to laugh at the clothes and the hairstyles. The giant beehives? Come on.”

Still on my side, I pulled my feet up into the robe and tugged the sleeves down over my hands.

“You’re a chubby chaser,” I said, my voice flat.

“We never talked about my childhood best friend, did we? Yours was Shayla. You two went swimming in the lake when it was full of tadpoles, and you were inseparable. If you met a girl tomorrow who reminded you of Shayla, you’d instantly feel something, wouldn’t you?”

“There’s
nobody
like Shayla. She’s one of a kind.”

“But you know what I mean, right?”

I stared up at the ceiling. In the dim light, with just a few lamps on, it was hard to tell if the ceiling was white, or painted a color. Trying to figure out the color of the ceiling was a good distraction from having to think about what Dalton was saying.

“My neighbor’s name was Chelsea,” he said. “She was a year older than me, and I followed her around like an adoring puppy. Her parents must have felt sorry for me, the kid whose parents were always having grown-ups-only parties and kicking me out of the house. I spent so much time at Chelsea’s house, I had my own spot at the table and chores written in a list on the fridge.”

“They sound like nice people,” I said.

“They were,” he said, and he went on to describe the dinners they made, the mother chopping onions with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth because she claimed the smoke prevented the onion gas from causing tears. When she fried chicken with another cigarette in her mouth, she claimed the smoke infused the meat with a barbecue flavor that was a gourmet thing.

Dalton described the family so well, I could see the striped wallpaper in the dining room, and see the father as he pushed the dinner plates aside and taught the kids how to play poker, all of them placing bets with stacks of Ritz crackers instead of money.

“Chelsea was like a sister to you,” I said. “Was she a plump girl?”

“There was no shortage of food and love in her house.”

“Oh.”

He chuckled. “She was not always sisterly, though. We would play these crazy games that she designed.”

“Doctor games? Shayla and I grew up with a ton of boy cousins, but none of us got the memo about doctor games. We didn’t do body examinations at all. Mostly we would mix together a bunch of gross things, like toothpaste and Kool-Aid, and we’d make each other drink the medicine.”

“We did that, too. Not the mixing, but we loved to play with those Alka Seltzer tablets and mix them with other fizzy things to try to make bombs.”

“That’s not how you make bombs.”

“Which is a good thing!” He shuffled around, changing his position so he was curled up facing my back, spooning me. “She and her family moved away just when things were getting interesting. Most of her new games involved her lying on top of me. My favorite was with her piling all the couch cushions and blankets on top of me, then she climbed on top of everything, and I had to escape the avalanche.”

I giggled. “That sounds fun.”

“I got my first major boners trying to squirm out from under that avalanche.”

“Oh my.”

“When Chelsea saw the bulge in my jeans, she would…” He trailed off.

“You’re killing me with suspense! What? What did she do?”

“She’d punch me in the stomach and chest. Not really hard, to hurt me, but it did distract me enough sometimes to make the erection disappear.”

I’d started giggling, and now I laughed even harder. “Chelsea sounds awesome,” I said.

“She’s probably working as a dominatrix or something. Her parents moved to Colorado, and we were just kids, so we didn’t stay in touch.”

“And she was a chubby blonde?”

“Actually, she had brown hair.”

I let this new information wash over me.
There was no shortage of love or food at Chelsea’s house.
Dalton had all these pleasant memories of having a big girl on top of him, so who was I to deny him this pleasure as an adult?

After a minute, I said, “Do you want me to pile all the cushions from the hotel room on top of you?”

He threw his arm over me and clinched me tightly to him, his hand squeezing one breast through the robe. “My dick is big, but not big enough to fuck you through all those cushions.”

“Who said anything about fucking? I was planning to punch you repeatedly in the chest and stomach.”

He nuzzled the back of my neck. “Mmm. Dirty talk.”

“Is that a boner I feel?”

He thrust against my buttocks, the padding of our robes making whatever he was doing feel less like foreplay and more like a general mashing. He nuzzled my neck some more, his breath hot near my ear. “The offer for you to climb on top is still open.”

“I bet.”

He nuzzled my neck some more, then rolled onto his back, the thick robe still covering his turgid member.

Climb on? Oh, what the hell.

With the encouragement from his eyes, I slowly climbed onto him and stretched out completely, my legs atop his, and our hands palm to palm. He had to bend his elbows for my hands to interlock with his.