by Lily Zante
“Curious?” he whispers, then makes a counter move and cages me so that my bottom is perched on the desk.
“It was an accident,” I managed to splutter.
“An accident?” He rolls the pen between his thumb and forefinger, then lays it flat against my arm and, holding it by the tip, he slides it down. A sigh escapes my lips. Sweet Jesus. I don’t understand how a pen can turn my entire body into one big erogenous zone.
“Mari,” he says my name as if it’s the sexiest word alive. Just hearing it from his lips makes the breath catch in my throat. “You wanted my attention, didn’t you? Well, now you have it.”
“You … you think I took your pen on purpose?” My mind blanks under the spell of his scent; a combination of conifers and pines, and zesty lemon wafts over me.
We’ve never been this close before.
Not like this.
Heat rolls off him and heats my skin. My body shivers in anticipation.
I should tell him to stop.
I should ask him what he’s doing.
But then he might stop and I don’t want him to. This slow sensual pen massage holds me captive.
I should say something, because I’m innocent. “It was an accident,” I rasp as he continues to run the pen along my arms, over my silk bouse, which is way too showy for being a housekeeper, but this is all I have of my working wardrobe. The sensation is erotic. He’s not even touching me but I am so turned on. I’d do anything he asked me to.
“I don’t believe in accidents,” he murmurs, his attention on the pen as he rolls it over me, then looks to see what effect it’s having on me.
“What are you doing?” I manage to say. I’m so aroused, and this is so abnormal, I need a normal question to break us out of this insane yet beautiful foreplay.
“I have no idea.” He stops for a microsecond and eyes me. His gaze is wanton. I want to give in. To give myself. How have I never noticed how gorgeous he is? I see him properly for the first time. There’s a dusting of stubble across his face. I decide I love this look the best of all; when he looks dangerous with a hint of wicked. Not mountain man with three inches of beard, or clean-shaven with smooth skin, but like this, dark and dangerous and brooding.
I stutter out a gasp and begin to wonder what it would be like without the pen, with just his fingers trailing all over me. He moves the pen lower, stroking my waist, making light movements from my hips to my waist and back up again.
A spiral of electric heat snakes in the base of my belly and moves lower, between my legs.
“Does it feel good?” he asks.
Another gasp escapes my mouth. “Yes …” The voice I hear isn’t mine. It’s low, and velvety, and steeped in desire. Desperation, even.
I need him—this big brooding man beast who is deliberately arousing me. And who I am wilfully letting.
He leans further towards me, an inch, maybe two. It is raw and carnal, the energy which drips off him and washes over me. Like a sexual tsunami. Smoldering heat envelops me as I hit the desk. I shuffle and sit back, resting against it. And just as quickly I get scared and try to move off the desk in case I mess up his work. He pushes me gently back.
“Your papers,” I protest.
“Screw the papers.”
In the next moment he moves the pen to my breast, holding it like a wand, running the tip against my breast, as if he’s drawing an outline. My eyes fly wide open, my lips part. I moan as he continues to roll it back and forth, back and forth. Teasing, touching, arousing. Under my silk blouse, my nipple rises to a peak. My mouth falls open. I huff out, bite my lower lip because I don’t want him to hear me moan.
“Tell me when to stop, Mari.”
I tilt my head back slightly, but I don’t have the willpower to close my mouth. This is too sensuous. Too dirty. Too unacceptable.
I love every moment of it.
“You thought I took the pen so that I could entice you?” I ask, as the situation suddenly becomes clear to me.
“Didn’t you? You know how much it would annoy me.”
I blink.
I want to set him straight. It wasn’t a crazy ruse on my part, despite what he thinks. Something in my expression must give him a clue because his expression suddenly cools.
He stops rolling the pen over me. I want to cry out and tell him to continue. He has no idea of how ready I am for him.
I eye the pen. I want it on my breast again.
His gaze drops to my lips. We’re transfixed in a crazy moment of lust and longing.
“What do you do when you get annoyed?” I ask. There is no logic to my question, but he has led me down a tricky path and I want to lead him away from the truth, from Jamie. There is no way he can ever find out that Jamie was responsible. He’d fire him in an instant.
Besides. This isn’t such a bad outcome, if this is what he chooses to believe. The air is charged with more than guilt and accusation. We’re bound together in a thick cloud of desire and I can’t think straight.
So I won’t.
Instead, I throw caution to the wind. I turn around and place my hands on the desk, jut out my bottom and ask him in a voice I never knew I possessed. “Are you going to punish me?”
He closes in on me, and I sigh with delight when his hardness presses against my bottom.
He’s erect.
And big.
He wants me.
I’ve turned him on.
I did it before, and I’ve done it again now.
He wrote my name because he can’t stop thinking about me. Nor I him. I occupy a space inside that head of his, and even with his fictional worlds and characters, he still thinks of me.
I must mean something to him.
He drops the pen onto the desk, then plants his hand beside mine. The other one slides under my skirt. I suck in a breath, and instinctively jut out my bottom, feel his steel erection poking me even harder. His hand skates over my thighs, then over my panties.
My insides turn to gloop. His touch makes me shiver. When he lifts up my skirt, tucking the hem into my waistband, exposing my panties, my legs turn to jelly.
“Do you want to be punished?”
A horror writer, a relative stranger is asking me this. A man I barely know.
And yes. I want him to punish me.
Jamie’s words come and haunt me.
Don’t rush head first into something. Don’t go for the first man you meet. Don’t make a mistake.
I feel as if I know enough about Ward. We connect on some deep, primal, raw level. I may not understand this man completely, but I understand his desire for me.
“Do you?” he growls.
I still don’t answer, because I’m gutless. Boneless. A mass of willingness. He pulls my panties to the side, exposing a bare bottom. I whimper. And then he slaps me. It’s not hard, not like a slap that makes a noise, but a light, quick slap. One that sends a signal directly to my core.
A gush of heat spreads all over my skin. I whimper some more then turn my head to the side. “Do it again,” I beg.
He kneads my buttock then runs his hand over it as if he’s admiring every inch of it, and just as I’m about to plead with him to do it again, he slaps it lightly one more time.
It’s the most turned on I’ve ever been.
“This is why you took the pen, no?” he rasps so close to my ear that I can feel his hot breath. I buck against his hardness, needing to press against his shaft.
“Mari,” he whispers. Butterflies threaten to erupt from my belly. He has me bent over in the most beautiful position, with his body pressed tightly against mine. I widen my stance so that I can feel more of his cock against me. Even wearing clothes, there is enough heat and hardness from him, against my slickness. It is beautifully sweet, and torturously taboo.
“How did we end up like this?” he whispers, sending shivers dancing along my neck and back.
“My name,” I manage to stutter. “You scribbled my name.”
“I was thinking a
bout you.” His hot breath against my cheek intoxicates me. He presses hard against me again, eliciting another moan from me. “I can’t help it. Ever since that day ...” He doesn’t need to spell it out. “That’s how I see you in my dreams.”
I sigh as he strokes my thigh. “Do you think about me?” he asks.
I can’t lie. “Sometimes.”
He shivers out a breath before nipping my earlobe and making me cry out from the sheer unexpectedness of it.
It’s too much. I push back, try to straighten up and he lets me. I turn around to face him. We’re both flushed, our faces red and heated. I gaze at him, needing to read his thoughts, wishing I could tell what he was thinking.
What now?
I need to gauge what’s going on behind those eyes. His gaze never moves from my lips and I wonder when we will kiss.
But the doorbell rings.
He stares at me before putting his hand to my waist—I don’t flinch, it’s like my body wants more—and he pulls out the hem of my skirt so that my skirt is hanging down and I am decent once more.
My chest is still heaving but my disgruntled nerve endings are pissed that he’s stopped stroking me.
I look at him with longing, and at the same time I try to smooth a hand over my hair, smooth down my blouse and skirt. “Jamie’s late,” I say, making myself presentable as quickly as I can. My eyes fall to his huge bulge between his legs.
“You won’t be ready to do a workout with that in the way,” I quip. I bite my lip, wishing, wanting, desiring that we had found some sort of release.
“It’s not Jamie. I told him not to come today. It’s Rob.”
“Rob?” I cry, running another hand over my hair. “What’s he doing here?”
“Take care of him,” he says gruffly. “Give him a beer or something.”
“A beer? This early in the—”
“I didn’t expect him here so soon. Give him anything.”
“And you?” I’m so aroused, glancing down I notice my erect nipples peaking under my blouse.
“I need to take care of something,” he grumbles, not looking at me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
WARD
* * *
This woman is going to kill me. If anyone’s going to die from blue balls, it’s me. She makes me do things. Behave in ways I never thought I would. We all have fantasies, but she makes me want to play mine out. She presses my buttons, and I can’t resist her.
In the safety of my room, I jerk off again, all the time thinking of Mari bent over my writing desk. I can still smell her sweet flowery scent, can still recall the way I touched her.
I haven’t been with a woman, much less spent intimate time with one, for so long. My memory fogs over at my past fleeting encounters. I have never come on to a woman like that. I’ve never jerked off so much either. My characters fill my brain. My plot twists and turns feed my imagination. I have no time in my life, or space in my head, to divert to anything but my writing.
Yet Mari has crawled into my brain. She has filled my head and taken over my thoughts so that I can’t think of anything or anyone but her. I’m not prone to obsession, but obsess about this woman I do.
I’ve crossed a line somewhere. She brazenly stood her ground that day in her bedroom, and I did my best to keep away, but when she hid my pen, it got me thinking. It’s hard not to think of her, to erase the sight of her on her yoga mat, in her clingy, body-sculpting gym clothes.
I’m only a man.
And she’s become a serious diversion.
And if Rob hadn’t shown up so early, what else might have happened between us? Since I’m almost done with my first draft, I’ll be able to return to New Orleans. I should return. It’s what I wanted to do before, but now I’m not so sure. Returning means no more Mari.
When I walk into the kitchen, Rob is sitting on the stool with his back to me, and Mari, standing, looks at me. She’s wearing an apron now and I wonder if she’s trying to hide her pebbled nipples. I grit my teeth, forcing my errant mind not to go to places that will give me another boner.
Rob turns around, then gets up to shake my hand.
“Hey there.”
“Hi.” I shake hands but can’t bring myself to look at Mari, even though the weight of her gaze feels heavy on my face.
She knows I was taking care of myself, jerking myself to a release, with her in my mind. Shame and embarrassment curdle in my stomach. I am used to not giving much of myself to anyone, but this stranger and I have shared many stolen intimate moments. It seems tawdry. Deliciously so.
“Shall we discuss this outside?” I ask. I need to move away from Mari. I can’t be here, in the same house as Mari, and act normal, not after what just happened.
“Outside?”
From the periphery of my vision, I catch Mari lifting her head in surprise. I have never left this house in all the time I have been here. Even when I got my hair cut, I summoned the best barber in Chicago to come here on that day when Mari was out. It’s amazing what people will do for vast amounts of money.
“It’s lunchtime.” I make an exaggerated point of staring at my watch. “We’ll go out to eat.”
“You don’t want me to make lunch today?” Mari speaks up.
“No.” It’s the first time I’ve looked at her. A dart of attraction flies through me to her. Can she feel what I’m feeling? Does she think about me the way I think about her?
“You’re right,” says Rob, getting up again. “He has changed.”
It makes me wonder what the two of them have been talking about.
Mari folds her arms. “There’s a whole new side to him I didn’t see before.”
“Thanks for the coffee,” Rob says to Mari.
“You’re welcome.”
“Good to see you again.”
“Likewise,” says Mari.
“I hope you’re taking me somewhere nice for lunch,” says Rob. I have no idea where I’m taking him. I haven’t been back here for decades. I don’t know what type of places there are, or where to go and eat but I’ve been told that there are some nice restaurants at The Four Seasons.
A short while later, we’re sitting at one of the restaurants in The Four Seasons with bottles of beer and burgers.
Except, I’m not very hungry. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” He can’t have flown all the way from New York just to come and see how I am. He called me late last night to say he would be over. That’s all I know.
“Sally’s aunt is ill.” He coughs. “She’s on her deathbed. We wanted to come and see her before it was too late.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I mumble.
“You were only an hour away. I thought it would be a good chance to see how you were doing.”
“I’m making progress.” Though what happened earlier between me and Mari isn’t the type of progress he had in mind.
“Garvey hit number one in the New York Times List,” says Rob.
“Great. Good for him.” I hardly know the guy, but he’s got a good twenty or so years on me. It’s not that I hate him. It’s that he perceives me as some sort of enemy. I wrote to him when I was first starting out, just as my first book was starting to take off, before it debuted so spectacularly, thrusting me begrudgingly into the limelight, I asked Garvey if he wouldn’t mind having a look through my book, and perhaps, if he could, supply me with a quote. This might have been rash and rather presumptuous of me, but I didn’t know any better. I wasn’t prepared for a letter from his secretary requesting that I never make such a demand again. She went on to say that he had read the first page but couldn’t read any more.
It shocked me that an author of his caliber and standing could be so rude.
“Great?” Rob picks up his burger. “The guy’s doing well. He’s going to stay in that position for a good while and probably hang around in the Top Ten for the rest of the year.”
“Great.” I don’t want to hear any more about James Garvey.
“I’m expectin
g you to knock him off the list when you release.”
“That’s a tall order.”
“You’ve made that list before.”
I’m not feeling it this time around. I’m not feeling this book. I’ve been writing, but I’m not getting the feels. I have too many other things to contend with. There are days when I think my head will explode. Or my cock.
“I’ll send you the first draft in the next week or so,” I tell him.
“You sure?”
“Yes.” He looks at me as if he doesn’t believe me. “Is that why you’re here? To assess me?”
“You had me worried when we last spoke, when you said you wanted to come back home. You’re up and down, Ward. You’re all over the place.”
“I’m making progress.”
“You are making progress, but I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
“I wonder if I did the right thing, putting you all the way out here and then getting you a live-in housekeeper. With your history.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“With your mom passing,” he says.
“You move me here, and put me in this situation and now you’re asking if you did the right thing? It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” Now that Mari and I are embroiled in some weird and sordid fantasy.
“I wanted you to get some closure. Let’s face it, who else is going to give you that kind of advice? You don’t have anyone,” Rob reminds me lightly. “I don’t want you to fall back down that hole again, and it looked like you were starting to.”
“I’m making progress not just with my writing.” I flex my muscles. “Can you tell?”
He nods approvingly. “I noticed right away. I noticed it from the moment I saw you. No hair growth on your face either and you finally got a haircut.”
I rub my hand along the smooth skin along my jaw. “It was getting too long and knotty.”
“You look ten years younger.”
I nod.
“You look like a new man. Well,” Rob clears his throat, “you look like you did when we first met.”