by Lindsey Hart
“Jesus. I- I’m sorry.” Unshed tears glistened in her dark eyes, proving that she was truly sorry to hear it.
Byron shook his head. He downed the rest of his whisky and set the glass on the counter. “No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. That was a dick move. Let’s just forget I just dropped that bit of information. I’m okay. It’s been a long time. The pain kind of wears off after a while. Don’t feel bad, and please, don’t you dare cry.”
He stalked across the few feet separating them in the small kitchen, ignoring the flour, baking bowls, buttermilk sitting out, dusty, crusty mess the same way Noemi did. He’d put her up on what little counter space there was left. He wasn’t sorry at all about those waffles going to waste. They probably would have tasted like shit anyway.
Noemi stared at him anxiously, but she didn’t back away, not even when he reached out and pressed the back of his knuckles to her lips, so gently that he barely grazed them. She wrapped her hand around his wrist, holding his hand there and pressing her warm, full lips against it.
“What are you doing?” he asked darkly. Something sharp hit his stomach and twisted it up painfully, like he’d eaten what would have been nearly toxic waffles.
“I’m kissing your pain away. My dad used to do this for me when I was a kid. Mom too. When I fell down, scraped my knees, banged my elbows, hit my head, whatever it was. They were always there to kiss it better.”
The moment was getting pretty damn close to being way too intimate. Over the line intimate. He’d never let someone this close to him in his life, but Noemi didn’t need to know that. How was he supposed to consider making her his wife if he had zero walls when it came to her and she could piece right through the armor he’d hammered and forged over the years. That armor was pretty much foolproof. The rest of the world believed that he was happy, intelligent, driven, and loved shoes with a passion that bordered on unhealthy. Okay, the rest of the world probably thought he was a rich fucker with zero cares. He’d sold that persona to everyone because he didn’t feel like explaining, over and over again, how watching your mother waste away in the prime of her life and watching his father spiral down into dark depression, could really fuck a person up.
“Thank you.” I pulled my knuckles away gently but let my hand settle at her waist.
With anyone else, they would have been booted out the front fucking door in two seconds flat if they’d tried anything like that with me. For some reason, Noemi wasn’t anyone else though, and it had nothing to do with shoes or money or fucking deals with her father. I didn’t put physical space between us, but I rammed all the memories, emotion, and other painful shit back into that dark, dank hole I’d perfected over the years.
“Are you buzzed enough now to tell me about the other firsts you might want?”
Instead of shying away from him and making it awkward, Noemi’s shoulders straightened. She was actually going to tell him what she wanted from him, and god, it was hot as hell and refreshing as fuck to be standing there with someone genuine for the first time in a very long time.
His fault. Not theirs. He never went for the encounters that had meaning. That was messy and he didn’t have time for mopping up after. In a way, he guessed they were genuine. His quick encounters. Both parties knew what they and the other party wanted. It just wasn’t meaningful.
No, Noemi was genuine in a completely different way. The kind of way that was like water that insidiously worked its way into his cracks. It was the kind of water that froze and thawed and tried to bust him wide open.
“I- I want- well… okay.” Her golden, slender throat bobbed as she swallowed. She did as he had and downed the rest of her whisky in a single gulp before her luminous eyes swiveled back to his. “You didn’t have to do what you did. It was amazing, but I don’t want to be selfish. I was wondering if maybe you’d like- like the favor returned?”
Holy shit. Did she just seriously offer a BJ up just like that?
She could have asked for anything. To be screwed any which way and he would have complied. The pit of his stomach dropped out and something in there did a weird clench and release that throbbed in time to the rhythm of Noemi’s pulse point which jumped at her neck.
“No? It’s okay. You don’t have to say yes. I know I’m not very good at it anyway. I- I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking just coming here and making you- do- that, and then asking for this.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what you were thinking either, but I like it. You have the most beautiful pussy known to mankind. Even after that whisky, I can still taste you and it’s far better. I could get drunk off you, Noemi. I was just surprised. If you want to take my dick out and play with it, put it in that gorgeous mouth, I am not going to tell you no. In any lifetime.”
Some of the scarlet drained away from her cheeks. She bit her bottom lip. “Well, I was thinking, that while we’re doing all these things that I’m probably going to regret later, I might as well make them the best kind of regrets possible. I was wondering if you had a shower. And if you’d like to join me.”
Fuuuuccccckkkk. Is this seriously happening? God, he should say no. He should say no. Right fucking now. Yeah, there was no way he was going to say no. He couldn’t. Fuck, he wasn’t even married to Noemi yet and he was already completely pussy whipped. Although, in his defense, he didn’t know a single guy on earth who could turn her down.
There was the small matter of the fact that he felt like he’d just been stuck with a thousand knives and was bleeding out his pain all over the floor.
If she wanted to reinvent herself, he also wanted to forget.
Was it really so wrong to be an asshole just to give her what she wanted? Just for a night?
Of course it was, because she no doubt thought she’d never see him again. And he knew who he was. Who he truly was. He was a lying bastard and he had no idea how he was supposed to turn anything around. It wasn’t like he could just tell her who he really was after they’d fucked, or sucked, or whatever they were about to do, and then use that as leverage. Hey, Noemi, by the way, I’m that asshole you don’t want to marry. Since we’re good at licking each other’s privates, we might as well get married, don’t you think?
Yeah. Fucking. Right.
“Yes.” The word ground out of him like boulders being pulverized to dust. “Yes, I have a shower. Yes, I’d like to use it with you.”
She smiled and it was so dazzling, it hit him right in his lying, snaky, black as tar soul. “Good. Because I was talking about firsts, but I meant doing this with someone that I barely know. Not in a committed relationship. Not that I’ve never… you know.”
Fuck.
This woman, this woman who he was supposed to marry… she was going to get her way after all. In every respect. With him. Tonight. There was a good chance she was going to kill him to top it all off, with her sweet, naïve, innocence that was so fucking hot he couldn’t control himself. She’d straight up kill him and then she wouldn’t have to marry him at all, so unknowingly and unwittingly and completely ironically, she’d be well and truly free.
CHAPTER 8
Noemi
They both stood rooted to the spot. I am nowhere near drunk enough for this. She wasn’t even fully buzzed. Just nicely warm. Warm and full of resolution. In all honesty, she wanted this. She wanted to be naked with a stranger. To explore his beautiful body and make him feel good the way he’d given her the best orgasm of her life. She didn’t want it to be fumbling and awkward like it had been with Rob most times. She didn’t want to think about Rob again. Ever.
She just wanted to be her own person. To make her own decisions for really the first time in her life. Not that her dad controlled everything, but she’d been good. She’d been raised right. Strict. Her parents had a curfew. They expected her to be chaste. To date only when it meant something. To have marriage always looming at the end of the tunnel.
They wanted for her what they had with each other.
; Maybe it wasn’t that simple.
Maybe love wasn’t in the cards for her.
After she’d caught Rob cheating on her, she’d thought that maybe she was defunct. That something was wrong with her. All he’d done was cause the walls around her heart to harden and the roses there to turn to thorns. He’d taught her to be tough. To stand up for herself. Maybe she had him to thank for having the backbone to run away from a marriage that meant nothing.
Maybe she was running from marriage period.
Noemi straightened her shoulders and lifted her head. She offered a shy smile. She was doing this. She was doing this for herself. For Cason too, obviously. For both of them. But she was doing it because she was an adult and she got to pick what she did with her life. Who she wanted to be with. When. For how long.
“So… you do know where your own shower is, don’t you?”
He seemed to shake himself out of his trance. “Yeah.” His smooth grin tied her belly up into a series of knots and for a brief second she forgot about everything but him. “Yeah, I know where it is. I was just giving you a little bit of time to figure out you don’t want to do this and leave.”
“I do want to do this. I’m not drunk. This is me saying yes, and I’m sure.”
She wasn’t sure if it was endearing, Cason trying to act like a gentleman, or if it was a little humiliating that it was so obvious that she was a good girl and inexperienced in the ways of brief passionate encounters.
Cason erased the distance between them in literally the blink of an eye. He charged her, feral and hungry, scooped her up easily, like she weighed nothing at all, and hammered his mouth to hers. HE was delicious. All scorching hot heat and hunger. She loved the taste of whisky on his breath.
She loved the way his hands dug into her backside even more, as she wrapped her legs around his massive hips, and he carried her out of the kitchen. It was a mess, flour and ingredients everywhere, but he wasn’t bothered with it, with the mess or the cleaning, and in a way, that was hot. He’d forgotten all about waffles and whatever else he’d been doing, and it was just her.
A woman he didn’t even know.
A woman he was kissing beyond breathless just the same.
The house wasn’t large, and it only took a few seconds before he shoved her back against a door and it gave way. He fumbled inside, flipping a switch and the overhead light came on to reveal a modest bathroom with all the usuals. Toilet, sink, tub, and a glass shower that stood separate.
She’d never had sex in a shower before. It was why she’d suggested it. She truly wanted to do all of this for the first time. Not just bits and pieces.
He set her down on top of the sink vanity and stepped back. There was nothing slow or casual about his movements as his fingers flew over the buttons of his plaid shirt. He freed it and stripped the fabric off his arms, over his broad, rippling shoulders, and down a chest so ripped that it made her wish that washers weren’t actually a thing anymore. She’d love to scrub clothes on those abs. God, it wasn’t even a six pack, it was more like an eight pack, the muscles so defined that they made her mouth water.
He was spectacularly made, all man, all raw and hard, angles and planes, edges and bronzed skin. He obviously shaved his chest, because it was completely devoid of hair. The only place any of the crisp, wiry dark hairs appeared were around his naval. They thickened, leading lower, disappearing underneath his jeans.
It made her fingers itch to peel them away.
She watched him do it, even as her hands tingled. Cason’s stronger ones unbuttoned his faded, ripped denim. He unzipped his fly, the only sound in the bathroom besides their heavy breathing, and pushed his jeans, and his boxers, together down his legs. He stepped from them, peeled off his socks, and stepped back, letting her take him in.
Take. Him. In.
She wanted to really take him in, the spot between her legs pulsing like someone had just zapped her with a cattle prod. It wasn’t a good analogy, but it was the only thing she could think of at the moment. She’d never ached like that before. Throbbed. She could feel herself leaking all over the counter- again- but she never tore her eyes away from the beautiful specimen in front of her.
Cason was too gorgeous to be real. His legs were just as defined as the rest of him, muscles rippling there like in his shoulders and arms. She took in that masculine ridge, that place below the six pack, above the groin area, where all the muscles seemed to stem from or end at. Slowly, she let her eyes trail lower, down to the massive, thick erection that stood up proudly. She didn’t give herself time to really study what was below it, because her face flushed so hot it felt like someone took a blowtorch to it.
That cock was built- er- formed, just like the rest of him. Massive. Tall. Proud.
Her mouth watered, but fear pinched her stomach. She didn’t want to suck at this, but she’d already put the offer out there. She just wasn’t sure how she was ever going to get that into her mouth.
“Should I start the shower?” Cason wasn’t smirking. His face was completely neutral, and she had the feeling he was still giving her time to back out. She also had the feeling that once she hit that shower, it was game fricking over and neither of them were going to have much control.
“Yes,” she breathed. A heady sense of power filtered through her when she realized Cason was waiting for her to give the orders. “Turn it on. Get in. Watch me undress through the glass while I watch you get soaked.”
Lord. Even thinking about his body, slick and wet, her tongue licking away the droplets, before she tasted him a little further south, almost induced a spontaneous orgasm on the spot.
Watching him comply with her orders and get in, get that water pumping, and move to stand under the spray, was even hotter than her mini fantasy and the orders she’d issued in the first place.
Noemi hopped down off the sink. Cason’s eyes stayed on her the whole time, heating up her skin like his touch did. It was amazing, that he could make her feel that way, like she was hurtling and flying, like she was being turned inside out, like she was stripped bare when she still had her clothes on.
Those fiery blues kept staring while the water sluiced over him.
She’d never in her life stripped off her clothes while another person watched. Okay, not watched her like this. Her hands shook as she gripped the hem of her dress and tugged it over her head. It was stretchy, so it went easily. She stood in a matching set of red lace. The set was something she’d packed hastily, but when she’d found it, she hadn’t thanked her lucky stars or anything. On the cab ride over she hadn’t thought that Cason was ever going to see them.
Sooooo maybe she’d hoped. Was that illegal? Hoped and planned were two very different things.
Slowly, like she actually knew how to give a proper strip show, or at least be coy and sexy, she unhooked her bra from behind her back and let it fall away. Cason’s eyes darkened and his jaw ticked. She couldn’t believe that a man who look like he did was attracted to her. That he actually liked what he saw. She should be the one thanking him for existing, but he was looking at her like he wouldn’t mind devouring her all over again.
And that was before she hooked her fingers in the waistband of her panties, which were soaked for a second, third? fourth? time in the same evening, and slid them down her legs.
She stood there facing Cason, the only thing separating them the glass wall of the shower. His eyes branded her as they swept over her body. They settled on her breasts, which she thought were average. She was a B cup at best, but she’d never wanted to have big boobs. They were annoying, for the most part. She guessed that right about now would be the only time she’d actually enjoy them, but Cason looked at her like he was more than happy with what he saw.
His eyes swiveled lower, down the flat planes of her belly, over the gentle curl of her hips, down her slender legs. She’d always thought her legs were a little too long and thin, her knees too knobby. She wasn’t a short woman. She was five nine, just about taller than her ex
. He’d never let her forget it. He hated that she wasn’t just a few inches shorter.
Cason’s eyes lit up and they flicked back up and settled on her sex. She was hairless except for a small strip, though why she’d kept it up after Rob, who used to bug her mercilessly about always being shaved, she wasn’t sure.
It was all worth it to watch Cason’s beautiful deep cherry red tongue sweep out of his mouth to wet his lips. The very same lips that were on her earlier. That tasted like whisky and underneath, the hint of her musk.
He watched her like a predatory animal about to strike and take her down. She moved slowly, fully aware that once she got in that shower there was no turning back for her.
She’d like to think that way. Really, she knew that the second she got in the backseat of that cab and let it take her over to the stranger’s house, the very stranger who she’d been burning for all day since they’d met, she was done.
As soon as she opened the glass door, Cason stepped aside, letting the shower’s spray hit her. It was warm and felt like heaven sluicing down her body. Cason pressed himself nearly up against the glass, making room for her in the small space.
She didn’t wait for him to have seconds thoughts, because she was beyond sure. She dropped to her knees in front of him and reached out, wrapping her small hand around his massive girth. He was scalding, like molten velvet. She ran her index finger along the veins in his shaft, exploring him in a way that she couldn’t believe she was bold enough to do. Apparently, the new Noemi liked to take her time with strangers who were so hot they were out of her league. Apparently, the new Noemi didn’t care. He wasn’t doing her a favor. This wasn’t a pity fuck. He actually found her attractive. Maybe she was the one who had seen herself as less than adequate all along. Maybe the new Noemi would look at herself a little differently too.
Cason’s eyes closed and his head rolled back, hitting the glass with a dull thud. His cock kicked in her hand, enjoying the attention. She stared at it in fascination after she dropped her eyes back down from Cason’s face. The tip was swollen and red, and when she squeezed his shaft again, drops of pre-cum rolled out. She had to taste him. Her mouth watered to lap those drops up, so before they could roll off the tip and be wasted, she leaned forward and closed her lips around him.