Talk Dirty To Me (8 page)

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Authors: Ginny Glass,Inez Kelley

BOOK: Talk Dirty To Me
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With a gasp Nora arched closer to his touch, thrusting her breasts deeper into his hands. God, he felt so good, made her feel so good. Jarod’s fingertips grazed the edge of her bare skin, where she’d placed the tiny dab of perfume in her cleavage to tease him. That single brush of skin on skin ignited a bonfire. Jarod whispered her name against her lips and slid his fingers under the material.
Despite the arctic bite of the wintry air, his hands were hot and they scalded her in deliciously enticing ways. They left an aching trail of want across the upper curve of her left breast. Not even the scalloped edge of her bra thwarted his touch. He circled her taut nipple, catching it and rolling it between two fingers.
A squeal of tires ripped through the air and Nora stiffened. She’d nearly forgotten they were in the restaurant’s parking lot. Jarod pulled his hand back, sliding it down to cup her waist. Mist streamed from both their mouths when they parted. Hot, gusty breaths were sucked in to cool a fire that threatened to explode. Her heaving chest brushed his.
Jarod swallowed and framed her face in his hands. “I don’t want to let you go yet. Let’s go get a drink or go dancing or find a dark street and fog up the car windows. I’d beg you to come home with me but I know you’d say no and I really can’t handle the rejection right now.”
“You don’t know how tempted I am.”
“Tell me.”
Those two pleading, provocative words shrilled through her with guilt. James said that.
“Tell me, sweetheart. Talk dirty to me.”
Last night had brought her to another shattering orgasm to his decadent, husky voice. James’s voice, James’s words, Jarod’s face, Jarod’s touch—everything was blurring in her mind. Fragments floated like a kaleidoscope and she couldn’t separate the two. Was she responding now to Jarod or to James?
Shame lanced across her heart and she flinched. “I have to go.”
“Why? It’s the weekend. You’re over eighteen, you won’t turn into a pumpkin.”
“I’m expecting a phone call.”
Jarod jerked. His chocolate-brown eyebrows crashed together and formed dual lines between his eyes. He hadn’t worn his glasses tonight and she missed them. “From who? I mean, it’s kind of late for a phone call. It’s nearly eleven.”
“I know, it’s just…a research friend who’s helping me. He calls every night about this time.”
His jaw went stony. Straightening his shoulders, he stepped back, his body heat leaving hers. He jammed his hands into his pants pockets. The air chilled as cold as the ice in his gaze. “I see. Couldn’t you skip it one night?”
Could she? The image of a scale formed in her brain, one side weighted by the man in front of her, the other with a faceless stranger who knew her most erotic thoughts. The scale bobbed back and forth, up and down, never resting, never choosing one man over the other.
Jarod bristled with jealousy—that was plain to see—but Nora was too torn to pick one over the other. It had been less than a week since both men appeared in her life. She didn’t know what the right path was, which avenue held the truth. James awoke part of her she’d never known existed and it flourished under his silken tone. Jarod thrilled her mind and sped her heart rate. She didn’t know how to choose. So she didn’t.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” The smile on her lips quivered but she kept it in place. “Maybe we could ge—”
“I’m busy tomorrow.”
“Oh.” His brisk rebuff hurt, and her chest twinged sharply. “Okay. Are we still on for lunch Monday?”
Snow twirled down in lacy clusters, settling on his shoulders and hair. Sea-green eyes stared deep into her face and the forced lift to one side of his mouth did nothing to reassure her. “Yeah, Monday.”
Jarod dropped a brief, hard kiss on her lips and strode away, his spine stiff and his mouth pinched. She’d dropped her rose when she’d kissed him and glistening flakes dotted the flower like frozen tears. She bent and picked it up, touching the frosty cream to her lips. It felt like his mouth—slick and soft—and against her lips the petals were as cold as his eyes had been.
Nora climbed into her car and shook, both from cold and confusion. Tears blurred her vision and she blinked the hot, salty sting away. The rose spun in her fingers. An ironic snort burst from her lips. She almost envied physicist Ernest Rutherford. All he had to do was split the atom. She had to decide between James and Jarod.
The lotion bottle hit the wall and rebounded with impressive force. The plastic split along the side, leaving behind a cherry-almond scent and a splatter pattern worthy of a crime scene. It
was
a damned crime—an atrocity that, despite an hour’s worth of fantasizing and the usual man props, Jarod was unable to arouse anything but his own temper. In fact, the moaning and groaning streaming from his flat screen turned him off rather than on.
He jammed the power button, silencing
Moan-a and Her Ménage,
and paced the floor of his living room, the hardwood cool under his bare feet. He raked a hand through his damp hair. Damn her. Damn Nora for doing this to him. He refused to pick up the phone, even though he knew satisfaction was only eleven digits away.
Better than the worthless five digits you’ve been using. Call her.
He refused. He fought the urge. He fought the memory of her climaxing throatily into his ear, fought the way the sound meshed and merged with the real taste of her—a taste he now knew firsthand. He winced. Poor choice of words.
Nora didn’t want him. She’d made that clear when she’d brushed him off to go have her little play date with “James.” Jarod’s pride rankled to know that while she’d been with him, her pretty head had been filled with thoughts of someone else. He was jealous, he could admit it.
Except, yeah. He
was
James, and the gut-deep resentment that twisted in him was partly his own fault. Okay, more than partly, mostly. He’d given in to the sexual thrill of being with her in the silence and solitude of a phone connection. In person she stirred tenderness and romantic thoughts. On the phone his mind and body leaped straight to sex. Jarod got the slow simmer of brewing possibility. James got the raging boil of unbridled lust. He’d cooked his own damn goose.
Tonight had been fantastic. They’d flirted and talked, touched those sensual touches that bridged the gap between friends and more. He wanted more. He should’ve come clean with her tonight. Confession was good for the soul, right? Unless it blew up in your face, then it was bad. She would have either slapped him senseless and never seen him again, or she would have been writhing in his bed with the right name on her lips.
It was the former he was afraid of and the latter that tortured him. Nora had quickly become not just a disembodied voice on the phone, not even just a piece of ass he was after. What he was doing with her, the way he was confusing her, was wrong.
But it felt so very good.
He itched, no, he
ached
to call her. He couldn’t get it up—who knew if he could even sleep without the sweet wringing lethargy that set in after one of their amazing shared climaxes? She’d worried about him thinking she was some kind of a slut and he’d assured her he didn’t. Far from it. He thought of her as a goddess, a gift, a mystery he would love to spend hours unraveling, in and out of bed.
Though she had fallen asleep after their last session, the line had stayed live. The even cadence of her breathing through the tinny speaker of his phone lulled him to sleep. He’d wondered as his own exhaustion claimed him what it would be like to wake up next to Nora MacGregor. What was it like to hold her close and smell the spiced apple of her damp, sated skin? What would his name, his real name, sound like on her lips in the throes of orgasm?
Jarod scowled at the lotion mess smearing the floor and swiped his cell phone as he stormed into his bedroom. He didn’t turn on the light. He wanted the dark because that was James—dark and demanding and bold, not the play-it-safe nice guy who got left in the cold. After ripping back the comforter, he sprawled out and thumbed through the cell’s address book, hovering over Nora’s number.
He could call her and take her halfway. He could stay on the line just long enough to scratch his own itch and then hang up. He could call her and revel in the dishonest debauchery that satisfied his body but left his heart unfulfilled. He could tell her the truth and then beg to come to her place and spend a few consecutive days naked, making it up to her.
He could be told to go to hell, with directions and a map.
Groaning, Jarod sat up and lobbed his cell phone at the far end of the mattress, watching irritably as it bounced once, twice before landing on the floor at the foot of his bed. He flopped back and gritted his teeth. He was an intelligent thirty-nine-year-old man. How in the hell had he screwed this up so badly?
After a few rough scrubs of long fingers over tired eyes, he swung resignedly up out of bed and went back to the living room and the corpse of his lotion bottle. That mess was easier to clean up.
“Godda—”
This was a waste of time. She flung the obviously malfunctioning Bullet on the nightstand. It hit her phone and she dove to catch them both, nearly toppling off the bed. Her stomach plummeted as she read the screen. No new calls.
Nora’s head pounded and she ached, unsatisfied. She shoved the metallic egg under the pillow and stomped into the bathroom. She swallowed two Tylenol, snapping the bathtub faucet to high. Apple blossom steam filled the air as she tossed in a handful of bath salts with a frustrated flick. James hadn’t called. Her present was just a shiny lump that gave her useless, auto-reaction goose bumps and nothing else. It wasn’t the battery-aided vibrations she needed. It was his voice. Damn him.
She jerked off her clothes and sank in the too-hot water, hissing as her skin tingled. Relax, she needed to relax or she’d never get to sleep. Sliding back into the water, she used her foot to turn off the faucet. Damn James. He’d turned her into some sort of orgasm-crazed monster.
And damn Jarod Reed for being the man slowly replacing her faceless Romeo. The low ache returned with throbbing force at just the thought of Jarod pressing against her in the sharp chill of the night air, his green eyes on fire, his mouth sending hot desire charging through her. He’d wanted her tonight. She’d wanted him. He’d been tense with promise. She’d wanted to step back into his arms and take him up on his decadent offer.
“Find a dark street and fog up the car windows…”
It got her going instantly. Her nipples tightened and she pressed her knees together in the heated water of her bath. How was it that the sweetly seductive professor sparked the same reaction as James? James was her hardcore liberator, the man who made her feel as if sex and synapses were vastly disconnected, despite her theories. Jarod was, on the surface, a man she would compare schedules with to decide if they could steal a few sweet moments before her Advanced Chem class.
James was fantasy sex. Jarod was practical magic. She wanted both, but the choice wasn’t as simple as it should be. She was greedy after those frigid years for what James gave her—complete freedom to let go of her inhibitions and just be. What would gentle Jarod think of a woman who got off on the phone with a stranger, who had left him standing in a soft fall of snow to rush home and do it again? What would he think if he knew the raunchy, naughty thoughts she had about him while listening to another man?
Water lapped at the curve of her breast as she sank lower. She’d hurt him. She’d basically rejected his attention and wounded his masculine pride. Shame settled bitterly. She needed to apologize. But how? She didn’t even have Jarod’s number, that’s how new they were to one another. She couldn’t even call him and apologize—or explain.
Toeing open the stopper on the tub, Nora slid down and let the water drain around her. With each inch that flowed out, she felt her limbs grow heavier until she lay naked against the bare, chilly porcelain, tears stinging her already damp lashes.
Jarod’s phone woke him from a deep sleep, an exhausted sprawl he’d fallen into when he finally succumbed to frustrated fatigue. He jerked up from the pillow and fumbled toward the foot of the bed—the last-known whereabouts of his cell phone. He hung haphazardly off the edge of the mattress as he answered.
“Hello?”
Nothing but raspy breathing on the other end. Jarod pulled the phone away from his ear and squinted at the screen. Private number. Annoyance spiked.
“Look, is this some kind of joke?” His voice rasped, cracked and gruff. He cleared his throat. “This is not funny. I was asleep, you little shit.”
Jarod punched the disconnect. If he wanted to hear someone pant into the phone, he’d call Nora and put himself out of his misery. He buried his head under the comforter with a moan.
Cold shock descended like an ocean wave, crashing with a deafening roar. Her knees buckled and her back slid down the kitchen wall.
Jarod?
James?
Jarod was James?
She’d caved under guilt, called the head of Campus Security and told a fib. The older man had commiserated over a mix-up with computer files and supplied Jarod’s phone number. Nora had screwed up her courage and dialed as soon as the clock ticked to seven on the dot Sunday morning.

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