by Megan Hart
Yet you make no attempt to turn or move your hands from their place on the wall, and this makes me smile.
I pull my dress to my waist. I’m bare beneath. I have to go on tiptoe to reach press my bush against your ass, but a hand thrust between your thighs moves them apart just enough to bring our bodies together. My fingers dig deep into your hips at the places I want to put my teeth, but later. Later, for that.
Now I rub myself against your ass, your back, your thighs. I rub your belly with the flat of my hand and pretend to ignore the tap of your cock on the back of it. When you push your hips forward I dig my nails deeper. The groan you make is mingled pleasure and pain, and my clit pulses at the sound of it.
Metal jingles again and leather swings as you lean forward. For a moment I think about putting you in a harness, a bridle. Leather criss-crossing your lean body, straps molding to the curve of your head. I could hook you to a carriage and make you pull me. I could snap the thin whip of braided leather against your thighs and ass to make you run faster.
I laugh when I tell you this, but your head turns and the look in your eye is not of pleasurable contemplation but alarm. Yet your cock taps again on the back of my hand, pressed flat to your rising and falling stomach, and your hips jerk, just a little.
“Would you like that?” I whisper. I can’t reach your ear. You’re too tall. But I have no doubt you hear me.
“Do you…want me to like that?”
It’s in me to say yes, that I would like to hook you to a carriage and make you my pony, but I know it’s really not. I don’t say so. I let my hand tell you what I really want. I cup your balls. I stroke your cock. I say nothing until you shudder and groan and duck your head again, and I know that you’ll do whatever I want…which is what I want, anyway.
“I want to fuck you.” It’s not the first time I’ve said it, and I doubt it will be the last.
I stroke harder and you push into my fist the way you’ll soon push into my cunt. I’m still behind you. I’m still rubbing myself against you, now and again. My breasts feel heavy. My cunt aches. I want you so much it’s like burning.
I slip into the small space between you and the wall. My arms go around your neck. I use the pressure of the wall behind my back to climb you like a tree. My legs go around your waist. My dress bunches around my hips.
Your cock, trapped between us, rubs my cunt. My clit. Delicious, but it’s not enough. I want you inside me.
“Fuck me,” I say, and you’re only too happy to oblige.
With one hand still flat against the wall, you use the other to slide beneath my ass. I’ve got my arms around your neck, my legs wrapped around you, your prick so deep inside me I feel it in my belly. And you move, not bothering to start slow.
You fuck me so hard we rattle the bridles and bits, we shake the wall. We shake the fucking mountains.
I watch your eyes flutter. It’s the look you get just before you come, and I come too. Hard. Like splintering. I kiss you when I come, your mouth beneath mine sweet and open, and I steal your breath.
I swallow your shout.
You thrust again. Your body quakes and shudders; so does mine. We come together with small, sharp cries that drown out the far away sound of the tractor and the soft, sweet chirpings of nested birds.
Chapter 19
The first thing Eve saw when the elevator door opened on the fourth floor was Lane. Today he wore a sleek, chest-hugging black t-shirt and a pair of jeans that gave her palpitations. They wanted to ride low on his hips, those damned jeans, but Lane belted them tight to his waist with a shiny buckled belt. He wore boots, too, scuffed and black and worn from hard work, but clean.
“Hey, cowboy.” Debbie gave Lane the slow, thorough, up-and-down appraisal Eve wished she could risk, but then Debbie was about as subtle as a wiener dog with a sock toy. “Nice buckle.”
Lane tipped an imaginary hat and gave them both a grin of such blinding brilliance Eve had to look away. “Well, thank you, ma’am.”
He looked at Eve, who felt the weight of his gaze even though she was unable to look at his face. “See you, Eve.”
Both women stared in silence after him as he strode down the center of the pod forest and disappeared around the corner.
Debbie nudged Eve with her elbow. “I would ride him like a pony.”
“I bet you would,” Eve said, but you couldn’t handle him, is what she thought.
“Tell me you wouldn’t? Lane DeMarco is ten kinds of sexy.” Debbie followed Eve to her pod. “He has an ass that just won’t quit. Did you see those jeans? Jesus, Eve. Tell me you noticed the jeans. And the boots!”
She’d seen them, all right. She’d seen all of it. The only thing that would have made him look any better would have been a battered leather hat pulled low over his eyes, and not even Lane could get away with that at work. He had been waiting for her to get off the elevator, she was convinced of that. His look had convinced her.
It had been a challenge, but then so had what she’d written, hadn’t it?
She settled into her chair, her hands moving to her keyboard automatically, though they felt too numb to actually type.
“Thank god for the casual dress code, huh? Gawd,” Debbie said with another peek around the pod wall. “Do you think he does it on purpose?”
“Does what?”
“He’s a cowboy, Eve. A cowboy!”
The last word ended with a squeak that made Eve look up. “I noticed.”
It would have been impossible not to.
“I don’t understand how you can be so immune to it, that’s all,” Debbie said, proving she really was clueless. “The man is a god, pure and simple. A sex god.”
He was more than that, Eve thought, her fingers tap-tapping on the keys. But someone like Debbie wouldn’t ever see that. “Don’t you have work to do?”
Debbie sighed. “Hell, yes. And dammit, nothing’s broken.” She gave a wicked chuckle. “Yet.”
Eve logged in, but her fingers fumbled too often on the keys and she made stupid typing errors. She messed up the simplest tasks, had to read the same customer replies two and three times to make sense of them and was, generally speaking, a mess.
How could she have not seen this before? He’d asked her about the monster marathon. He’d brought her coffee because he thought it was what she wanted. He a cowboy today for the same reason.
Lane DeMarco was tell_me.
She couldn’t deny it any longer. The subtle clues she’d chosen to ignore had been cast aside. He was challenging her to admit she knew it was him.
Lane was her online lover. Tears, of anger or sorrow, she couldn’t tell which, clogged her throat and blurred the computer screen. How could she have been so blind? And how long had he known?
“Move over.” The grumble-growl of Lane’s voice took her by surprise, but he didn’t wait for her to obey. He pushed her chair gently so it rolled to the side. His fingers tapped her keyboard.
“What are you doing?” Eve kept her voice pitched low but couldn’t keep the anger from her tone. “Get out of here.”
Lane threw her a glance. “They’re doing an inspection today. Too many complaints about slow or poor service. They’re checking all Internet usage. People who’ve been going online for personal use are going to get written up, Eve. Or fired.”
Her jaw dropped. “Can they do that?”
He nodded, mouth set in a grim line. “Haven’t you been reading the memos?”
“Yes, but –”
He typed faster. Scrolling lines of files appeared and vanished just as fast. Delete. Delete. Delete. He worked swiftly, without hesitation. He stopped and looked at her.
“I don’t need to ask how you knew I was online this week, do I?” Eve said.
Lane shook his head.
“It’s the same way you knew it was me all along, wasn’t it? From the time when you left the coffee.”
He nodded.
She let her gaze cover him from head to toe, every inch, and if h
er scrutiny made him uncomfortable he didn’t show it. At last she looked him in the eyes. He was the same Lane she’d known for years, the guy with the smile, but he was more than that, now.
And it wasn’t what she wanted.
“Thanks,” Eve said coolly and turned back to her monitor. “Wow. I’d better get back to work.”
She sensed him hesitating in the doorway to her pod, but he said nothing, and when she looked up, he was gone.
Chapter 20
Gone. All of it was gone. All the entries she’d spent so many hours crafting. All the comments, the compliments, the conversations. She’d deleted all of it with a few keystrokes, even her instant message account. Eris Apparent was gone.
She hadn’t been to work for the past few days. She wasn’t sick but had called in anyway, unable to face him. Unable to give him what he wanted.
“You let me down,” she scolded her computer in an attempt at levity she didn’t feel. “You were supposed to protect me.”
At least it would help her find a new job. Getting away from Digiquest couldn’t be a bad thing. She’d already sent in applications at two other, larger support firms where the pay and benefits were better. It would be good to make a break, she thought as she clicked through to another job listing. Two years was a long time to be stuck in a job she didn’t really like.
She’d ordered pizza, so when the doorbell rang she thought nothing of it. She should’ve known better, of course. Wasn’t a hot pizza delivery boy one of those clichéd fantasies she’d never written?
“Can I come in?” Lane leaned in her doorway looking more deliciously edible than any pizza ever could.
“No.”
“Eve.” If he’d tried to wheedle or charm her she’d have sent him away at once, but against his quiet plea she could do nothing. “Please.”
She stepped aside, granting him entrance without saying a word. He pushed past her. He looked too big for her living room. He turned to face her, his hands in the pockets of his faded jeans. Damn him, the ones she liked.
“You haven’t been to work,” he said.
“I took some personal time.” She didn’t sit or offer him a chair.
“Because of me?”
She meant to deny it, but instead a sigh slipped from her mouth. “Yes. Because of you.”
“You deleted your blog, too.”
“You should have told me it was you!” she cried suddenly, and he stepped back.
“Would you have replied if you’d known?” Lane challenged her.
“No!”
He smiled. “I thought you’d figure it out.”
“I did,” Eve said in a low voice. “I just didn’t want to believe it.”
“Why not?” He sounded curious. For an instant she saw the words on a screen as if she were reading them. How much difference his voice made.
“Because…” She trailed off. “The blog…it was a way for me to be someone else. And I really wanted to be someone else, Lane.”
“I like who you are, Eve.”
She laughed, scornful. “You liked Eris.”
“And you liked tell_me.”
“It wasn’t real!” she shouted. “None of it was real!”
“Is this real?” Lane asked, and kissed her.
She melted into him. His mouth parted, and hers did too. He tasted exactly how she’d always known he would. He felt even better than ever she’d imagined.
“This isn’t going to work,” she warned, voice hoarse, but made no move to step out of his arms.
“It will,” he promised, his fingers already going to her buttons. “I promise?”
“How?” Eve gasped when his bare skin touched hers.
Lane’s slow smile went straight between her thighs as usual. “Easy. Tell me what you want.”
She gulped in a breath at hearing him say it aloud. Something flickered in his gaze when she didn’t respond at once; she felt the reflection of it in her own eyes, just before she took the chance and took his hand.
“This is what I want,” Eve said, and led him into the bedroom to make all their fantasies come true.
THE CHALLENGE
Chapter 1
“You’re late. Again.” Katie Donato barely glanced away from her laptop as Dean Manion slipped the nonfat, sugar-free white chocolate latte onto her desk and his lean, long body into the chair next to hers.
“But I brought lattés.”
She glanced at him then, taking in the smug grin, the artfully careless hair, the slightly loosened tie. “You know, traffic is a good excuse for being late. Lost car keys. Forgetting you had to pick up your favorite suit from the dry cleaner's, even. But not last-minute blow jobs from the dude at the Copy Cabana.”
Dean laughed and sipped from his own cup. “Not last-minute, not Copy Cabana.”
At this, she swiveled in her chair to study him. “Don’t tell me you had a sleepover last night?”
Dean grinned in answer and drank deeply. “Ahhh, sweet caffeine. I’m going to need it.”
“Is that your subtle way of saying you were up all night fucking?” Katie lifted a brow and sipped at the drink, then tipped the cup toward him. “This is a peace offering but it still doesn’t let you off the hook. We have a meeting with Smith and Simon in half an hour and I’ve been here since eight putting this proposal together.”
“Sorry.” Dean’s brows knitted and he leaned forward to rub his knees against hers, but Katie pushed him away with a laugh.
“Stop. I’m immune to your wiles.”
“Bullshit.” Dean said this with the utter and absolute confidence of a man who oozes sensual appeal and knows it. He leaned back and propped his feet, shod in expensive Italian leather, on her desk.
Katie shoved them off. “It’s not bullshit. I know you too well, Dean. You’re like a Lladró figurine. Pretty to look at but too expensive to be practical and not at all useful.”
“Hey.” He frowned at this and set his cup on the desk to lean toward her again. He touched her knee. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
Katie, spreadsheet completed, hit the Print button and stood to smooth the wrinkles in her skirt. “It means you should’ve been here at eight this morning to do your part of this project and you weren’t, because you were too busy getting your dick sucked.”
She wasn’t angry–not really. Annoyed but not furious. She’d worked with Dean long enough to understand him, so when he sidled in late to work with a latte for her, she knew better than to be surprised. Didn’t mean he was free of blame, though.
“I said I’m sorry.”
She knew he meant it, even as she knew without even looking at him he was giving her a patented Dean sexy stare guaranteed to bring most anyone to their figurative knees. She pulled the papers from her printer and stapled them, then slipped them into the presentation folder she’d carefully prepared. She gathered the rest of her materials while he watched in silence, but damn it, lost it all when she could no longer stifle the yawn that had been doing its best to sneak out of her.
“Ha!” Dean stood, looming. “What’s that?”
Katie feigned innocence and swigged coffee. “What?”
“You yawned.” Dean had no problems invading anyone’s personal space if it benefited him, but he was one of the few who could get away with such a thing with Katie. Now he sidled up close, blocking her retreat by pressing a thigh against hers to keep her pinned with the desk at her back. “Up late?”
Katie bit hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from giving in to a grin. “None of your business.”
“Katie,” Dean said in a low, sultry tone. “Of course it’s my business. Who was he? Guy from the dry cleaner's? The gym? Don’t tell me he’s that loser from college who looked you up on Connex.”
“Time for the meeting.”
It was useless, and Katie should’ve known better. Dean put out one long arm and kept her from moving past him. “Spill it.”
She sighed. “Fine. You don’t know him because I’ve nev
er mentioned him before. I met him in a coffee shop a few months ago.”
“The Green Bean? Which guy?”
“No. The Morningstar Mocha. And you wouldn’t know him, he’s straight.” At least she thought Jimmy was straight. She hoped he was.
“A few months ago? You’ve been holding out on me?” Dean frowned. “Damn.”
“Not holding out.” Katie rested her butt on the desk, an eye on the clock, and drank her coffee. “There isn’t anything to tell you. Unlike you, I don’t bang just any guy who comes along.”
Dean put a hand over his heart. “That hurts. You act like I don’t have standards.”
It was nice to have a friend good enough to understand that a single raised brow meant so much. “Uh-huh.”
“He kept you up late. That’s something.” He leaned against the filing cabinet across from her.
“We weren’t fucking, Dean.”
He made a face. “Why the hell not?”
“I don’t know,” Katie teased. “Maybe I’m wrong and he is gay.”
Dean snorted into his coffee and tilted his head to study her. “You like him?”
“You like the guy you were with this morning?” She deflected the question easily enough.
“I like all the guys I’m with, at least at the time.”
Katie ticked off the list on her fingers. “You let him sleep over and were late to work because of him. Granted, that doesn’t mean much, but add to that the fact you haven’t been describing every inch of his cock to me in precious, explicit detail, and I’m pretty sure that means you like him.”
Dean’s gaze shifted. Ah, she was spot-on. Wow.
“Dunno what you mean.”
“You only keep quiet about the dudes you like, which are few and far between lately.” Actually, there hadn’t been any. Katie kept the tone light, not wanting to bring up old flames just for the sake of needling her friend–there was plenty to tease Dean about without bringing Ethan into it.