Breathless

by Maya Banks

  Nora turned her head so her ear was now at his mouth.

  “I’m still waiting to hear that safe word,” she taunted. Zach didn’t answer. A tendril of her hair brushed his cheek. He didn’t speak; he wanted her to do exactly what she threatened. More than anything he wanted to have sex with the world’s most erotic woman in the world’s most erotic car in a dank, dirty New York City alley where anyone who wanted to could stop and watch.

  Nora met his eyes again. Zach pulled his fingers out of her and waited. She lowered herself until the tip of his arousal pressed lightly against her wet outer lips. He started to lift his hips, to press into her. Then he heard a click as Nora opened the driver’s side door and she stepped out. The cool night air rushed in and Zach struggled to button his jeans back up over his straining erection.

  “Better let me take over,” Nora said. “You don’t need to be driving my baby in your condition.”

  Zach took a few calming breaths before exiting the car. He walked around slowly to the passenger side and got in. Nora dropped into the driver’s side and turned the engine on.

  “You okay?” Nora asked as she backed onto the street and headed toward his apartment building.

  “Haven’t decided yet.”

  Nora turned onto his street.

  “I’m just following your rules. No fucking until the book’s done. I guess I should hurry up and get that book finished.”

  Zach rubbed his face, breathed through his hands. “Please do.”

  “Better give me my homework then. If we’re going to play again, I guess I’ve got to get some work done this week. And for some reason I get the feeling you may want to play again.”

  Zach could still feel her heat on his hand. He could hardly think or speak and she was talking about the book.

  “I’ll email you tomorrow morning…when I’m lucid.”

  “Lucidity’s vastly overrated. I shall await your email with bated breath.” Nora pulled in front of his building.

  Zach opened the door and stepped out. Once exposed to the cold night air his senses finally returned to him. He walked around to the driver’s side and Nora rolled the window down.

  “What was that you said to Søren tonight right before we left? It sounded like Italian,” Zach asked, curious about their cryptic exchange ever since he witnessed it.

  “Cloro al clero. It’s pretty common graffiti around the Vatican. It means ‘poison the clergy.’”

  Zach laughed appreciatively. He could agree with the sentiment.

  “Are you ever going to tell me what you were doing when you disappeared for over an hour tonight?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Are you at least going to tell me if it was fun?”

  Nora looked at him and didn’t smile. But there was dark mirth shining in her eyes as if she knew a great joke that she wanted to tell him.

  “I’ll tell you this…I didn’t have sex with a man. And it was so much fun it oughta be illegal.” Zach took a step back as she revved the engine. She rolled up the window.

  Then she was gone.

  Zach stared after the car and felt Nora take a shard of himself away with her. It was his rule, his proclamation that they wouldn’t become lovers until the book was finished. But for a few moments he’d felt no guilt, and the world hadn’t ended.

  Zach entered his building and took the elevator up to his flat. He was out of his coat by the time he got to his door. He pulled off his shirt, yanked down his jeans and kicked his clothes into the corner of the room before crawling with the reluctance of a weary soldier into the bitter trench of his bed.

  Closing his weary eyes, Zach couldn’t stop himself from picturing Grace. Some nights she would stop his hands, desperate to undress him herself. Her brief flirtation with aggression over, she would turn timid as her fingers, earnest and nervous, unbuttoned his cuffs, his collar, slipping the shirt off his shoulders so slowly he would shiver. And she would look at him with such wonder, such desire that he, a married man, a graduate of dozens of beds, and so accustomed to the appreciative stares of women that they no longer registered as flattery, would find himself feeling suddenly shy. She looked at him as if she’d never seen his bare chest before, his uncovered arms, his naked stomach and back until he felt he had never been seen like that before and knew, likely, he never had. The next day he would yawn and stretch and stumble through the hours grateful he’d gotten a better offer than a mere good night’s sleep.

  Zach came hard on his hand and rolled over onto his stomach. God, he missed his wife.

  * * *

  Nora stood at the foot of her bed and stared at the black silk abyss before her. Like many of her characters she slept on black sheets. But unlike them, she did so for reasons more practical than seductive. She wrote in bed and often fell asleep with her pens uncapped and dripping. Wesley’s moving in over a year ago put a stop to any overnight guests. These days the only stains on these sheets were from ink.

  Nora pulled on her pajamas, grateful to be in comfortable clothes again. What a night…she’d been so stupid to take Zach with her to the Circle. It was a miracle they’d made it out without anyone telling Zach she wasn’t just a Domme, but a Dominatrix and that the Circle wasn’t where she played but where she worked. He’d stomached the Circle but just barely. Wesley loathed what she did. Zach wouldn’t be any more understanding than the kid was.

  The kid… The ghost of guilt passed through the room as she remembered Michael. But still…he had been so eager and ready and so desperate to know that he wasn’t alone in his strange desires. And if it hadn’t been her, it would have been some girl, vapid and foolish and completely unaware of the rare creature she fumbled about with awkwardly. Michael deserved better. He deserved the ceremony and the story.

  After they’d finished and she had untied him, he had curled into her arms and cried. She’d rocked him and let him talk. “I always thought there was something wrong with me,” he’d confessed. “I thought I was wrong to want this.” And she knew he wasn’t weeping because of sadness or shock, but because all babies cry when they’re born.

  Nora glanced around. The ghost was gone. But there was no way she could sleep in her own bed tonight, not with the memory of Søren’s taunts still echoing in her ears.

  She padded down the hall in her sock feet pausing outside a half-open door. Wesley lay on his side, his back to her, the sheet draped over his hip.

  “I’m awake, Nor,” Wesley said without turning over.

  Nora tiptoed into his room and sat on the edge of his bed. He rolled onto his back and looked up at her.

  “Can’t sleep?” he asked.

  “There’s a monster in my room,” Nora whispered unnecessarily.

  “Big baby.” He threw back the covers. “Get in.”

  Nora dived in with juvenile glee and wriggled next to him flipping and flopping over like a fish on land until Wesley grabbed her by the arms and pinned her down.

  “Why, Wesley. I never knew you cared.” She batted her eyelashes at him.

  “If you’re gonna sleep with me, woman, you have to behave yourself.”

  Nora tried to ignore how good it felt lying beneath Wesley with his hands on her upper arms and his naked chest in front of her face. She wanted to raise her head, kiss his shoulders, his strong neck.

  “Yes, sir,” she said meekly.

  Wesley raised a hand and brushed her hair off her face.

  “Your hair’s damp,” he said. �
��You took another shower.”

  Nora heard the worry in his voice.

  “I didn’t have sex with Zach. Or Søren. Sometimes a shower’s just a shower, Wes,” she said, conveniently omitting Michael.

  “Was he there?” Wesley asked, letting her go and stretching out next to her. Nora lay on her side to face him. It was funny how much more comfortable she felt in Wesley’s far smaller full-size bed than her huge luxurious king-size.

  “He was. We talked some. We didn’t play. He wanted to but I stopped him.”

  “You actually told him no?”

  Nora sat up and switched on the lamp on the bedside table. She turned her back to Wesley and unbuttoned her pajama top.

  “Nora, you don’t—”

  But Nora didn’t stop. She let her shirt fall off her arms. She lifted her hair and showed him her naked back.

  “See?” she asked. “Not a mark on me. You can check the rest of me if you want.”

  She waited for Wesley to speak but instead he grazed her bare back with his fingertips. His touch was so tenuous that it almost tickled.

  “Okay,” he said. “I believe you.”

  Nora pulled her shirt back on and buttoned it. She turned off the lamp and lay down again. For a few minutes they lay in silence together.

  “You stopped him because Zach was there?”

  Nora opened her eyes. Wesley was looking at her. She ran her hands through his tousled blond hair.

  “No. I stopped him because I promised you I would.”

  Wesley took her hand from his hair and held it.

  “You did?”

  Nora squeezed his hand and met his eyes. “Yeah, I did. Wes, I can’t lose you.” Reaching out, she laid her hand on Wesley’s chest over his heart. She leaned forward and kissed Wesley on the forehead. She wanted so desperately to lower her head and kiss his lips. But she remembered Søren’s warnings. She wanted to believe she could be trusted around Wesley.

  Wesley rolled over on his side so she could no longer see his face. She tried to settle in and let herself fall asleep. But Wesley’s body was so close, so warm and so inviting. Just to tease him, she reached out and ran a finger down the center of his back from his neck to his hip.

  “Nora, did you already forget the ‘behave yourself’ rule?”

  “Just returning the favor,” she said. “You touched my back. I get to touch yours.” Nora ran her finger up his back to his neck again. She delighted in the little shivers she instigated with every pass. “Why are you still a virgin, Wes?”

  He’s waiting for you to grow up. Nora heard Søren’s voice in her head and pushed it away.

  “Are you seriously asking me that?” Wesley grabbed a pillow and pulled it tight to his chest.

  “I’m very seriously asking you that. I want to know.”

  “Well, I’m a Christian and—”

  “I’m a Christian, too. And I’m not a virgin. Then again, I’m a bad Christian.”

  “You’re not a bad Christian,” Wesley said. “You’re just doing the best you can.”

  “That’s very gracious of you.” Nora grinned at the back of his head. “But you’re avoiding the question. Are you really waiting until your wedding night?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  Nora flicked him on his back.

  “What do you mean ‘not necessarily’? That’s not very devout of you.”

  “I’m not a fundamentalist, you know. I’m a biochemistry major. I do believe that evolution and global warming are real. I just think God’s real, too, and He wants us to be, I don’t know, honorable with each other.”

  “Honorable…that’s a very good word. So when do you plan on honoring some lucky girl with your virginity?”

  “Nora, this isn’t a very comfortable topic of conversation.”

  “Wes, we talk about sex all the time.”

  “No, you talk about sex all the time. I live with you and am forced to listen to it.”

  Nora flicked him again. “Come on. Tell me. I want to know.”

  “All right, fine. If you’ll stop flicking me.”

  Nora started lightly massaging Wesley’s neck and shoulders. She thought it would help with his tension but his muscles seemed to get more rigid the more she touched him.

  Wesley exhaled slowly.

  “I just want to wait until I know it’ll mean as much to her as it does to me. As much as it means to me, this might take a while.”

  Nora stopped rubbing Wesley’s neck and instead began slowly caressing his back with her fingertips.

  “Remember, I was still a virgin when I was your age. I was twenty before Søren and I made love the first time.”

  “Were you glad you waited so long?”

  “It wasn’t my choice to wait. It was his. I was ready and willing much younger than that. But I’m glad that it mattered as much to him as it did to me. I think you’ll make some girl very happy one of these days. For your sake I hope she’s waited for you, too.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You don’t want to be with another virgin?” she asked, utterly shocked.

  “No way. I’d like at least one of us to know what we’re doing.”

  “It’s not that hard to figure out, I promise. You just kiss her,” she said, dropping a kiss on the center of Wesley’s back, “anywhere and everywhere you want to kiss her and touch her anywhere and everywhere you want to touch her. And when she’s wet and ready you spread her legs open wide and slowly push inside her and—”

  “Stop, Nor.” She could hear the strain in his voice.

  “I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget I’m not in one of my own books.”

  “It’s okay,” he said a little breathlessly. He curled up around the pillow and pulled his legs into his chest. “It’s just…you’re… I’m…”

  “Turned on? I know you are. Your accent gets thicker when you get—”

  “Nora, please.”

  “You can tell me, Wes.”

  “Yes,” he confessed. “Very. I’m sorry. Just give me a few minutes to think about my dead grandmother and I’ll be okay.”

  “Can I help you?”

  “I don’t think so. You never met my dead grandmother.”

  Nora laughed. “That’s not what I was thinking. Here, just relax. Best thing to do is just get it out of your system.” She put her hand on his side.

  “I’m not going to have sex with you,” Wesley said with vehemence.

  “I know. I’ve met my virgin deflowering quota for the day anyway. Just think of it as a tension-relieving massage.” Nora slipped her hand under his pajama pants and caressed his hip. She tapped him where she knew his tattoo was. “Or I could blow your bugle.”

  Wesley laughed and groaned at the same time.

  “This isn’t a good idea,” he said, although she could hear the need in his voice.

  “Then I’ll stop. Or I’ll continue. Just tell me what you want.”

  “I want to be able to sleep on my stomach at some point tonight.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes then. Okay?” Nora waited, certain he would say no and send her back to her room.

  Wesley took a hard breath.

  “Okay.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “You really told Søren no because of me?” he asked.

  Nora didn’t have to lie when she answered a quiet, “Yes.”

  “Then yes. But no bugle blowing.”

  “Spoilsport.” Suddenly Nora found hersel
f feeling something she hadn’t felt in months, maybe even years—nervous. She let her hand slip over the hard plane of Wesley’s flat stomach, and she could feel the outline of all his muscles. She moved lower and found him. Wrapping her hand around him, she stroked upward.

  “God,” he whispered as his whole body shivered.

  “You’ve never even let anyone touch you before?” She ran her fingers slowly up and down his hard length.

  He shook his head.

  “No.”

  She took him with her whole hand and smiled as he flinched with pleasure. Pressing her body into his back, she kissed only his neck although she ached to kiss all of him.

  “You’re insanely hard,” she said, almost laughing. “You were working on the world’s worst case of blueballs.”

  “Tell me about it.” She could hear Wesley trying to be flippant but his voice sounded bated and breathy. She ran her hand from the base to the tip of him; it took a very long time to get there. Not only did she have a gorgeous virgin in her house, but she had an extremely well-endowed one. Yet another thing Wesley and Søren had in common. She closed her eyes and imagined she could hear God laughing at her from on high.

  “Wes, forgive the reference to your family’s favorite animal, but you’re hung like a horse.”

  “Really?” He sounded pleasantly surprised.

  “Definitely.” Still stunned by this incredible intimacy Wesley was allowing, Nora tried to keep her voice calm. “Probably a good thing if you never try sex with a virgin. You’d kill the poor girl.”

  “I think you’re about to kill me,” he breathed. She loved hearing his voice so hoarse and desperate.

  Nora turned her hand again and ran just her fingertips up and down him, grinning as Wesley’s breath caught in his throat and his shoulders heaved. She wanted to pretend it was only a massage, but she couldn’t stop herself from imagining him inside her, filling her body with his, coming inside her, being his first lover. She forced the image away and focused on Wesley again.

  “Wesley, I can do this all night. That doesn’t mean you have to. You can come whenever you want.”