by Eden Bradley
The bathroom at the Clift Hotellwas almost ridiculously luxurious. With its red-lacquer paneled walls, everything accented in bronze and gold. The sleek pair of sofas covered in caramellsuede in the lounge area. The little marble tables. Even the red marble stall was beautiful. The feellof that sleek marble beneath her hands as Gideon rammed his cock into her…
Her sex clenched once more. The man could fuck, like some beautiful, wicked satyr. She couldn’t get enough. And she was really learning to love these dirty little public encounters. It made them both even hotter, and by the time they made it back to her place, they were always ready for more. Hotter than if they hadn’t touched each other all night.
She pulled a small brush from her purse, brushed her hair. Then, digging in her purse again, she found a tube of lipstick. Her mouth looked swollen, even though he hadn’t spent more than a moment kissing her. Pink and swollen, like the lips of her sex. She squeezed her thighs together at the ache there.
She washed her hands, letting the coollwater run over her heated skin. Finally, she smoothed the black knit wrap dress she’d worn with her high black stiletto-heeled boots, straightened the heavy strand of silver and pearllbeads at her neck, and made her way back to the bar.
The Redwood Room was one of the most famous bars in San Francisco, with its polished redwood paneled walls, and the bar said to have been made from a single, massive redwood tree. It had been redone in recent years, the style a bit more modern, updated with sleek red leather couches, low tiled tables, the subtle custom-made lighting. But there was that air of old elegance that still spoke of the history of the place.
She joined Gideon at the bar.
“I ordered a martini for you,” he told her.
She nodded. She would drink whatever he wanted her to.
It was part of the power play that ran like a not-so-subtle undercurrent between them. She wondered sometimes how much of her attraction to him was that power play doing things to her head and how much was real. Because she was beginning to feellsomething powerfullfor him, and she couldn’t be sure how much of that was her infatuation with what was happening between them, the things he did to her, or if it was truly about him.
Gideon was so mysterious. So secretive. But that made him all the more attractive, while confusing her even more. And the fact that he kept her body, her head, buzzing with a constant series of orgasms wasn’t helping her to think any more clearly about it.
She slid onto the high stoollnext to him, crossed her legs. Unexpectedly, he leaned over, brushed his lips across her cheek. “You really are spectacular, Karalee,” he said quietly. “I’d like to fuck you right here. To slip my hand in between those crossed, ladylike thighs and get you off again.”
Her sex gave a hard squeeze, going wet once more.
He sat back, smiled at her as though they’d been having a perfectly normallconversation, sipped his own drink. Well, for them, this was a normallconversation.
She smiled at him. “I’d love for you to do that, Gideon. You know I would.”
He laughed. “I do know it.” He set his glass down, ran a thumb along the rim as he watched her, his dark eyes on hers. “I enjoy you so much.”
She felt warmed all over, at his words, his tone. He sounded perfectly serious. She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to respond when it wasn’t purely about sex.
She sipped her drink, the gin going down her throat in a smooth burn. She sipped again, wanting it: the burn, the resulting loosening of her limbs, her mind.
She leaned forward, saw Gideon’s eyes flick briefly to her cleavage. “Take me home and fuck me, Gideon.”
He grinned. “Say please.”
“Please.” Then lower, “Oh, please.”
He laughed once more, threw back his scotch on the rocks. “Drink up, then, darlin’.”
Why did that make her shiver? It was just one little word. She smiled, sipped her martini, set it down.
“I’m ready now.”
He helped her from her stoolland led her to the front of the hotel, had the valet bring his car. She sank deep into the heavy black leather seat as he drove into the night, the lights of the city spread below them as they made their way down from the top of Geary Street.
“I love these old muscle cars,” she said. “Have I ever told you that?”
“No, you never have. I thought you only loved to feellthe metallof the hood up against your naked skin.”
She laughed. “Well, yes. But growing up in the Midwest, these were the dream cars. The cars that were completely unobtainable. Oh, some of the guys would buy old junkers, try to fix them up. But in the town I lived in, anyway, they were mostly held together with baling wire and covered in Bondo.”
“So was this one, at one time.”
“And you had it restored?”
“I did most of the work myself.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Why would I be kidding?”
She studied his profile for a moment, the strong jaw, the chiseled cheekbones, the elegant bit of gray at his temples.
“You don’t strike me as the sort of man who would work on his own car.”
“You don’t think I like to get dirty?” He cast a quick grin at her before turning back to the road.
“Oh, I know you like dirty.”
“So do you.”
Gideon reached over and slid a hand up her thigh, pulling up the hem of her dress untillit was bunched around her waist. She was bare underneath. He glanced over, grinned at her once more. “Spread for me.”
She did, and he slipped a hand into her wet heat.
“Ah…Gideon, you’re driving.”
“I’m quite good at multitasking.” He pushed two fingers inside her.
“Jesus. I’m going to come again,” she groaned through gritted teeth.
“I should hope so.”
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the headrest, inhaling deeply of the scent of leather and Gideon’s cologne, that sophisticated, smoky scent. He was working her with his fingers.
Quickly. Expertly. The heellof his hand ground onto the tight nub of her clit while his fingers pushed in and out of her. She bore down onto his hand, pleasure shafting through her, making her shiver again. And the vibration of the engine rumbled through her body, making it all more intense.
She let her eyes flutter open, watching Gideon’s profile as he drove, a look of concentration on his face. He was so damn handsome. Beyond him the lights of the city flashed past in a blur.
He kept at it, his fingers in her sex, rubbing, pushing, pulling at her insides. And very quickly she was coming, a pure, stabbing pleasure rolling over her, the motion of the car rocking her. This time she cried out loud, gripping the edge of the leather seat with her fingertips.
“Jesus, Gideon!”
He smiled at her again, his eyes dark and glittering, kept his fingers inside her for a few moments more as the last waves subsided. Then he pulled them from her body, carefully put them in his mouth one by one and licked them.
“Beautiful,” he murmured.
She was still trembling. Her head was spinning. Was it just the sex that made her feellas though she would do anything for him?
Anything.
The idea of it made her feellweak. But she knew she wasn’t thinking clearly. No, better to stand back and allow things to happen, wait to see where it went.
Gideon didn’t seem in any more rush to be in a relationship than she was, so why was she worried?
Maybe because you do want more.
She shook the thought away. Impossible.
Wasn’t it?
They pulled up in front of her house, and he helped her from the car, took her house keys, and unlocked the door, guided her inside.
Ever the gentleman.
She’d left one low lamp on in the living room. He was moving toward her already, taking off his jacket.
Underneath it he wore a classic, starched white shirt, so pristine agai
nst his tanned skin. He rolled up his sleeves as he moved in closer, kept his eyes on hers as he backed her right up against the arm of the couch. With one hand on her shoulder, the other at her waist, he sat her on the edge. She could feellthe heat of his body, his hard cock through the fabric of his charcoallslacks pressing against her thigh. He bent and kissed her neck, trailed his tongue over her skin, paused to bite her.
“Fuck, Gideon, that hurt!”
“Yes,” he murmured.
But she was going warm all over again, her sex lighting up, needing him.
He pushed her down, untillshe lay on the sofa cushions, her hips raised still on the arm, her legs hanging over. A rather inglorious position. But she hardly had time to think about it. Gideon slid her dress up, spread her thighs with his hands, and bent in, planting his wet, sucking mouth over her cleft.
“Ah, Gideon…”
He went right to work, as he always did, running his tongue up and down her slit, pushing in between the plump lips, holding her legs wide open with rough hands. And licking her, licking her hard clit, then delving into her waiting hole. Everything so fast, so hard, it made her head spin. She was nothing but this sensation. His mouth on her. The heat. The wet.
His soft, slippery tongue.
Pleasure shimmered through her, into her sex, up into her belly. She threw her hands over her head, giving herself up to him, to the sensations, to that sense of utter helplessness beneath his hands, his mouth, his presence.
His tongue stabbed into her savagely, and he pressed on her clitoris with his thumb. And she came once more, crying out, writhing, barely able to breathe.
She shook with the force of it, her legs quivering.
Gideon pulled back, stood staring at her in the half-lit room, her thighs still spread, her hips raised on the arm of the couch, her sex naked and open to his gaze.
There was fever in his eyes. She saw his cock, hard and ready, beneath the woolltrousers. And no matter how many times she’d come tonight already, she wanted him.
His cock, yes. But something else? Something more? Too hard to think right now. She was too listless, her body spent. She moved to pull her thighs together, but he said sharply, “No.” She left them spread, felt the gentle, weightless pull of her legs dangling over the edge of the couch. Felt her wanton nakedness like a hand caressing her swollen sex.
He paced a little, rubbing the back of his neck, watching her. She’d never been looked at in quite this way before. She loved it.
Gideon moved in closer, stroked a finger over her cleft, dipped inside. Sensation shivered through her system, her stomach clenching.
“You are so responsive, Karalee. To every single thing I do. To everything I say. Fucking amazing, really.” He spoke so quietly, almost as though he were alone, speaking to himself. “I don’t know what the hell to do with you any longer.”
“Fuck me, Gideon,” she said, her voice low, breathless.
“Yes, that’s not a problem. I could fuck you all night.”
She started to sit up, wondering what was going on with him, but he quickly came to stand next to her, pushed her back down, leaving his splayed hand between her breasts. She would have been frightened if there was anything at all menacing about his voice, but there wasn’t. He sounded a little vague, in fact.
“I can fuck you, Karalee, but then what? I can fuck you some more. Make you come over and over, which you do all too easily. Oh, I don’t mean that as any kind of insult. Just the opposite. I can’t get enough of that, of making you come. Watching your face.”
She looked up at him, saw the way his eyes roved her body. And then he reached down and untied her dress, pushed the folds apart with his hands, baring her breasts. He caressed them, making her sigh. Yet a part of her mind was on edge, hyperaware of his shifting mood.
“Yes, see?” he said. “I touch you and your body responds instantly. And you’re willing to do anything, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, her throat inexplicably dry. “Yes, I am. Whatever you want.”
She was shaking now, her insides trembling, but it wasn’t about sex anymore. Where was he going with this line of conversation?
“The perfect woman. A woman any man would want.
Why do I want more from you?”
“I’ll give you more,” she answered, her throat dryer than ever. Her pulse was racing.
Yes, this was exactly what she wanted. But more what? She couldn’t figure it out.
He shook his head, moved away from her, pacing her living room again, his back to her. She sat up and pulled her dress together, moved down to sit on the edge of the sofa cushions.
“Gideon? Tell me what’s going on. What exactly are we talking about?”
He paused, standing in front of a small antique bureau, laid his fingers on the old wood surface. He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“It’s not ‘nothing.’ I can see that. Please talk to me.”
“We’ve never been very good at talking, have we?”
“What? Of course we have. We’ve talked about our pasts…all sorts of things.”
“Have we really?”
She had to stop and think about it a moment, struggling to get her thoughts organized. She’d talked about her own childhood, but he’d been rather vague about the details of his past, his life. He’d merely skimmed the surface. There were enormous chunks missing from what she knew about him, what he’d shown her about who he was. He remained, for the most part, inscrutable.
She asked quietly, “Why have you never taken me to your house, Gideon?”
She knew even before she saw his shoulders tense that she’d said the wrong thing. She didn’t understand why the answer to her question felt so important.
There was a long pause. Long enough to make her squirm on the edge of the sofa. Then he said quietly, “I’m going to go now.”
“What?”
But he didn’t say any more. He picked up his discarded jacket. His face looked as though it were carved from stone.
“Gideon, you can’t just…leave like this. What did I do? What did I say? Tell me. This isn’t making any sense.”
“I don’t want to have this discussion, Karalee.”
“So, you’re just going to leave? To walk out of here leaving me wondering what the hell is going on?
That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, Karalee.”
“Jesus, just stop it.” She was angry now, the heat of it lending her strength. “Just stop, Gideon, with all the secrecy, and talk to me. Or am I just your fuck buddy, so you don’t think we need to have conversations of any substance? Is that it?”
There was anger in his tone now. “If that were it, I wouldn’t be here. There would be no conversation at all. I would have fucked you in the janitors’ closet and that would have been the end. I wouldn’t have come back over and over again.”
“But you did.”
He paused, rubbed at the back of his neck. “Yes, I did. Christ, Karalee.”
He sat on the arm of the sofa, where only moments before he’d been going down on her. She couldn’t get over how strange the whole thing was. How had the evening turned into such a mess?
“Tell me what’s going on,” she said quietly, demanding for once.
He shook his head again. “I don’t take anyone there.
To my house. I can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Because that was her house. My wife’s. She lived in that house. And she died there.”
She was too stunned to answer for severallmoments.
“Jesus, Gideon. I…I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged, but his whole posture was as ramrod stiff as steel. When she put a hand on his arm, he didn’t move. But there was the slightest loosening, the smallest signallof acceptance of her touch.
He kept his eyes on the floor. “I married Alicia right out of college. We had a good life. A great life. We wanted all of the same things, the same lifestyle. It was a ridiculously ideallm
arriage, if you want to know the truth. We traveled every summer, spent a lot of time with her family.” He paused, rubbed a hand over his jaw. “We were in Italy with her parents when she got sick, had to come home. It was pancreatic cancer, so it happened fast. One minute we were trekking through Europe, and the next she was…gone. That’s when I moved to Santa Barbara. I couldn’t stay.”
Karalee’s chest was so tight she could barely breathe. Tight and warm with sympathy, and with something else…She couldn’t take it all in. And she could see the struggle in the tight lines around his mouth.
“You don’t have to say anything more, Gideon. I’m sorry I forced you into telling me this way.”
“You would have had to know eventually, if I were going to continue seeing you.”
“And were you? Going to continue seeing me, I mean?”
He turned to her then. She couldn’t read his expression. “Yes.”
Her entire body went warm and loose, as though she’d been holding her breath for a very long time.
Maybe she had.
She ran a hand over his forearm, over the soft, dark hair, the smooth, corded muscle. “Come to bed with me, Gideon.”
He ran both his hands over his hair, blew out a breath. “Alright.”
Standing, he dropped his coat on the sofa and helped her to her feet. He led her down the hall to her bedroom, silently undressed her, then himself. Her body was responding to him as it always did: her nipples hard, her sex damp and needy. But she wasn’t sure where his head was right now.
They got into her big bed, and he pulled her body in close to his. She breathed him in, that scent of elegance, of sex, of her own juices still on his skin.
She wanted him. No doubt about it. Enough that it nearly hurt. But she was also so full of emotion she couldn’t really think about anything. All she could do was feel.
His body was warm, his skin soft and hard at the same time in the way only a man’s skin could be. He felt good, every plane and angle, every strong rise of muscle. They’d never had this sort of quiet moment together for her to simply focus on the feellof his body against hers. No, it had always been fucking like mad, then collapsing in exhaustion. This was lovely. Confusing. She didn’t know how the hell to feel, what to think. She focused on his breathing, on matching the rhythm of her breath to his.