I kissed him, soft and sweet and tender, tasting the gentleness in him, which was all the more poignant because he was so big and buff against me. Then I whispered against his lips. “This is the real world. You’re a forest nymph now. There’s no turning back.”
His eyes widened, as if he believed me which was adorable. “Blimey…”
“I know. Right? We can run wild and eat truffles and…kangaroo poo and whatever else we can find in the forest.”
He was having trouble hiding his smile. “And sleep in the leaves—”
“Fuck in the leaves.”
“Make love,” he corrected, and kissed my nose again. “Forest nymphs make love.”
I didn’t say anything. I just lay in his arms gazing at him, marveling at the warmth that was radiating from my midriff. Somewhere in there was a kernel of happiness that had cracked open and was shining its silly, happy bliss all through me.
“I love being a nymph,” I said. Because I loved saying love to him, in any sentence.
“I love…being with you,” he said, and my heart—which had stuttered a beat—kicked in again, but it was thudding erratically now, and suddenly, a part of me felt scared. Which was stupid. I wanted to stay in the warm bliss place, but he’d nearly said I love you. Or, at least it sounded that way. And even if he hadn’t meant to, he might one day.
My reckless live in the moment brain was being dragged into the future and it wasn’t comfortable there. This man had media attention on him. He’d be expected to date a glamorous woman. Not a forest nymph. Certainly not a twit like me. What had I been thinking?
Not that Max was proposing anything permanent, despite his offhand comment about liking my world—the truth was, he didn’t belong in it. Oh, I could see he liked me, and he’d liked fucking me. So maybe we’d be fuck buddies for a time. Surely I couldn’t expect, or want more than that?
Could I?
My stomach swirled low and sick, and my crazy I want a husband pity party at the wedding came back to haunt me. Fuck buddies wasn’t working for me anymore. Even before I met Max, I wanted more. Yet I’d stupidly done the same thing I always do with men I’m attracted to—my self-sabotage program had kicked in, and I’d pushed the relationship straight to sex.
Although…on this occasion I wasn’t racing to bail on him. In fact, I was wondering if we could have sex again before he left. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe I wasn’t shooting things in the foot before they’d even begun.
That would be a first.
He touched my cheek gently and said, “What just happened? You were smiling and we were in heaven and now…”
I shrugged. “I’m confused. I like you, but I’m not sure where this is going.”
There. I’d said the truth. Surely that wasn’t self-sabotage.
“Well I’m not confused.” His gaze was direct and commanding, almost as if I’d challenged him in a debate. “I know exactly how I feel about you, and how much I regret the fact I have to leave today. I’d prefer to stay. Here in your bed, if I could.” He cracked a smile and when those gorgeous eyes crinkled, I melted. “As to where this is going…I don’t know. But I like where we are.”
“But you didn’t want to have sex.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I was desperate to have sex with you,” he corrected. “From the moment you tossed those beautiful red curls and stomped that frightening blue high heel—”
“Teale,” I corrected.
“And snarled Don’t fuck with me, all bravado and innocence.” He shook his head in apparent admiration. “I’ve been wanting to run my hands up those long, nymph legs and…well, it didn’t seem proper.”
“It wasn’t,” His cheekiness had successfully distracted from my angst. “It was highly improper and I think I’m going to report you to the Ombudsman of the Fancy Food Critic Industry.” I nodded for good measure.
He arched a dark eyebrow, somehow managing to look devilishly sexy and annoyingly cocky at the same time. “Oh really?”
“Yes.” I poked him in the chest. “Because those orgasms—”
“You want to complain about the orgasms?”
“About the quantity, not the quality,” I said. “You’ve been at my house…” I pretended to look at a watch on my bare wrist. “…over ten hours, and so far—”
He rolled me onto my back and loomed over me. “What’s the going rate then?”
“Industry standard is one orgasm every three hours.”
“You’ve had two—”
“Which means I’m overdue for a third, with a possible fourth if you stay for breakfast.”
We gazed at each other, then he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “No gentleman would ever leave a lady unsatisfied, especially…” he said in a husky undertone, “…one who has been so…accommodating.”
My smile was slow, but I could feel it spreading through my body, like the delicious warmth of arousal his words had caused. “I hadn’t realized you were a gentleman.”
“I don’t have to be.” His hand ran up my side and cupped a breast, then his head lowered and he ran his hot, rough tongue over the nipple that had already budded in anticipation. “In fact,” he said, and paused a moment to tease that breast again with his tongue and teeth, making me squirm and moan when he sucked it hard. “…If I could distract myself from these delectable entrees, I might be able to move on to the main.”
He looked up from my breast and met my gaze with such a challenge I couldn’t help saying, “Do your worst.”
He shook his head. “I plan to do my best.”
If that was better than what I’d already had, I might well faint, but I kept my mouth shut—except for moaning—as he feasted on my breasts and then his mouth slid slower, and I was just starting to pant when a horrendous knocking sounding from the front of the house.
“Fuck!” I breathed, and Max looked up my body, his chin resting on my pubes.
“Ignore it?”
I shook my head. I so rarely had visitors at my house, it had to be something important, so I scrambled out from under him and snatched up my robe.
“Stay here,” I hissed, then I let myself out of the bedroom and ran fingers roughly through my hair on the way to the front door, where I should have looked through the peep-hole. But instead, I wrenched the door open and was confronted by Todd who took one look at my robe and my face and gasped.
“Did you sleep with him?” He stepped over the threshold and sniffed at me, as if he was my husband, accusing me of having an affair.
“What the fuck?” I grabbed his arm and tried to push him back out.
“What the hell are you doing having sex with Max Banks?” Todd hissed.
“What the hell business is it of yours?”
“He’s only just had a…turn.” Patient confidentiality was clearly the only thing that had held his tongue. “But you… You have to fuck every man you meet.”
He sounded genuinely aggrieved, although thankfully his tone was hushed, and I was just trying to work out what I should say when he added, “I don’t want you going near him again. In fact, I think you should leave—”
“This is my house,” I snapped back, probably too loudly, and I could have added, I think you should leave, only, I had no idea why he was over-reacting. Was he jealous? That was crazy. We’d slept together once. That wasn’t a relationship.
Into the empty space, Todd said, “I’m going to check on my patient.”
That galvanized me into action. “No you are not!” The last thing Max would want was a stranger barging in when he was naked in my bed.
But Todd put a hand on my shoulder to push me aside and the next thing I heard was Max roaring from the other end of the hallway.
“Get your hands off her!”
We both turned to look, and Max was outside my bedroom door wearing only his jeans from the night before and a glare that could have melted Antarctica.
“Fritha and I—” Todd started to say, but Max cut him off.
“Ar
e no longer an item.” He transferred his glare onto me, as though I was partly to blame, and I suddenly realized I had a hand on Todd’s chest, pushing him away.
I dropped it instantly and stepped back to point at the door. “I told him to go.”
“And why didn’t you?” Max said to Todd, his voice deceptively calm now as he strode barefoot down my Persian hall runner. “Should we phone the police? Are you trespassing?”
The lilting way he asked those questions was exactly the way he spoke on Pariah in the Pantry when he was about to verbally tear someone to shreds, and I would have felt sorry for Todd, only…I didn’t.
“Dr. Roshin,” Max said, when he stopped at my side. “Are you still here?”
I could smell the testosterone pumping off Max, and God help me I could also smell sex. He was so dominating in full criticism mode it made my knees weak.
Todd, however, just stared at Max, like a deer in the headlights. Maybe he knew he was about to be dumped on, but surely some self-preservation instinct would get him moving. In the end, I took pity on him and pulled the door open.
“Go.” I gave his arm a push.
Max didn’t look at me, but he said softly and distinctly, “Don’t touch him. Please.” Then he swallowed, and I suddenly realized this wasn’t theatre for Max. He was genuinely holding in some strong emotion.
So I stepped back and got in behind him, like a kelpie rounding up sheep.
Max glared at Todd for another ten seconds before the good doctor got his brains together enough to say, “I’ll go then.”
Max nodded.
“Call into the surgery if you want me to—”
“No.” Max stood his ground, and finally, finally, Todd backed awkwardly out the door and Max closed it, locking it for good measure. I had a sudden overwhelming realization that a man had just kicked out a boy, and I was surprised at how pleased I felt to be on this side of the door.
Some innately feminine part of me had just been fought over and won, and yesterday I would have argued against being a ‘prize’. Today, while I was still aching from how close Max’s delicious mouth had been to my needy clitoris, I was less inclined to quibble.
So I stood waiting for him to turn back and face me so we could laugh about how crazy that had been, but he didn’t turn back. He just stood facing the door.
“Max?”
He shook his head.
I don’t know why, but I said, “I’m sorry,” because I probably shouldn’t have opened the door. Although, in my defense, I had no idea Todd would behave like such a twit.
“That was awkward,” he said quietly, still facing the door.
I wanted to put a hand on his beautiful naked back, but I was scared that he’d flinch, so I didn’t.
Todd’s car started up outside and we listened while it drove away, and still Max stood facing the door.
“I’m…” Max’s shoulders rose and fell, as though he was taking a deep breath. “…not normally jealous.” He nodded to himself, then he turned back to me and although his face was composed, his gaze was dark and troubled. “But you were touching each other, and he’d told me that you were his girlfriend.”
Girlfriend? My mouth fell open, and I started to splutter, but he cut over me.
“I knew it wasn’t true. But you must have liked something about him, to have slept with him.”
Right in that moment I struggled to remember what it was. His pretty eyes maybe? His blond curly hair. Before we’d had sex, he’d seemed fresh and uncomplicated. Afterwards he’d seemed young and shallow and I’d congratulated myself on the fact that I didn’t spend time getting to know men before I fucked them. Because finding someone interesting to fuck would be needle-in-a-haystack territory.
Max, however, was fascinating, and even this jealousy intrigued me. I shook my head. “He’s just a young, pretty boy—”
“Who clearly thought there was more to what you shared than just a one-night stand.”
He’d said that almost accusingly, as if I was responsible for Todd’s behavior, and my first reaction was a spurt of defensiveness. Luckily for me, before my mouth could engage, it flipped into the realization that Max had just crossed a boundary. I didn’t need to defend myself, and that calmed me down.
“Am I answerable to you now?” I asked, pleased I could discuss this like an adult without emotional displays as Louella called them.
Max didn’t seem impressed. He just stared back at me.
“Because,” I added, self-righteously, “What I did with Todd happened before I met you. I’m single, healthy, and at liberty to have sex with whoever I want.” I pulled in a breath, intending to go on with And if Todd wants to invent a relationship out of one lame sexual encounter…but I didn’t get the chance.
Max cut in with, “By all means. You’re free to have as much sex as you want. Have a harem of young, drooling bucks waiting breathlessly for a second call.”
“That’s not—”
“Just don’t expect me to be one of them.” He glared at me, and the space between us throbbed with something powerful, some sexual energy I’d never experienced before. That beautiful broad chest of his rose and fell, and despite the fact that he was in the wrong, I felt so alive I thought my skin would burst.
I suddenly wanted to act on that, so I said, “I’d really like to suck that sizable dick of yours.”
His eyes narrowed even further, and he pressed those deliciously prim lips together while he breathed heavily through his nose. I could see he was struggling but I didn’t care. I wanted sex. With this man. It was that simple.
He swallowed hard. “What’s happening between you and me isn’t just about sex,” he said, but his eyes were glittering with hunger.
I nodded. “Right now it is.”
It took him almost ten seconds to say, “Yes. It is.” Then he stepped forward and pulled me against him, kissing me hard, as if he was punishing me for the turmoil I could taste swirling through him. When he pinned me against the wall and pulled open my robe, his breaths were ragged and I felt giddy with the force of his possessiveness.
“Nobody goes here but me,” he growled, and cupped a hand over my pubes, making my clitoris clutch happily in anticipation.
I nodded instantly, because if I could have him, I didn’t want anyone else.
“I’m back in a month,” he added. “I expect celibacy until then.”
My eyes widened and I croaked, “A month?” I hadn’t gone without sex for a month in my whole adult life, and in recent years, I hadn’t gone without it for a week.
“Promise,” he barked, all sexy and demanding, but his fingers had started sliding through the slickness, grazing over my clitoris and making it impossible to concentrate. “No accidental tripping and landing on some bloke’s dick. Are we clear?” He wasn’t smiling, so I put on my best serious frown.
“No accidental or on purpose sex,” I croaked, opening my legs to allow him better access.
“With anyone else,” he clarified.
I nodded. “A month. I can do that.”
His frown deepened, and he probably doubted my commitment, but in the end he slid the robe off my shoulders and when it had fallen to the floor, he let his gaze drift over my body, down past my B cup breasts with their ‘sit up and take notice’ nipples, over my ribs and the curve of my belly to my bright red pubes where his fingers were driving me crazy, then slowly down my legs to my feet.
When his gaze returned to my face he said, “Put your arms above your head.”
I resisted the urge to smile, because I knew he was cranky, but I seriously loved being bossed around. “Yes, sir,” I said meekly, and stretched them high, crossing my wrists at the top as if they were tied up—something I’d always wanted to try. But it was hard not to tremble when every grazing stroke over my clitoris was driving me closer to an orgasm.
“That’s good,” he murmured to himself, then his free hand slid up my arm to end at my wrists, which he held together. “I like you submissive
.” He gazed down into my eyes, his own were molten with some anticipatory heat. “Will you do everything I say?”
I nodded before I could stop myself, and only then felt fear at what he might want.
“Why?” he demanded.
I tried to shrug “Because I’ll like it?”
He shook his head. “No chance of that. You’re going to love it.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“…but that’s cold and I…oh.” His warm mouth descended onto the maple syrup he’d trickled over my breasts, and then I couldn’t think. The last half hour had been an agony of anticipation, lying on the kitchen table with my arms tied above my head, completely naked while he made miniature pancakes and cooled them enough to spread them across my stomach like little pads of fragrant warmth. Then he’d crushed strawberries and smeared the juicy pulp up and down my vulva which I’d hastily shaved at his demand, and the cool fruit on my hot flesh was outrageously sexy.
He’d gotten naked to undertake this culinary erotica, and from time to time when he’d leant over me, that sizable dick had come into my proximity and I’d had the opportunity to taste it, but he never let me get far before he pulled away, and I had to admit I liked his self-restraint.
In this moment, however, as he licked maple syrup from my breasts, I just wanted to be pounded, but I also didn’t want to rush, because the sounds and the smells and the textures of this meal he’d made of me, were so erotic I wanted to linger over them.
If there was such a thing as gourmet sex, this had to be it.
“You make me so hungry,” he growled, then he licked a path down over my ribs, stopping to munch a syrup soaked pancake on the way. Then he smiled at me and ducked his head lower to lick off some strawberry and his tongue slid agonizingly slowly over my clitoris.
I wanted to push my mound up into his face but my legs were draped over the end of the kitchen table and I had no leverage. “Please,” I said, but he just went back to eating pancakes.
Bastard.
“So,” he said, between lazily licking and munching at various parts of my body. “Do you promise—”
Husband Rollover (Husband Series Book 4) Page 13