Colin eyed him as if he’d sprouted two heads. “Did I miss something?”
If he had, then Dusty had missed it, too. People did change, but he wasn’t one of those people. He loved women and had no plans to spread himself thin with any one in particular. As soon as he gave Liz a real orgasm and erased that nasty niggling failure word from his mind, he would be back to working the playing field.
Dusty shrugged. “Nothing major. I made the mistake of hooking up with a flake one too many times. You know, the kind of chick that messes with your head?”
Jen set a cocktail napkin down on the bar in front of Colin and placed a bottle of his regular beer on top. Colin thanked the bartender, then, eyeing Dusty speculatively, took a long drink. He set the bottle down, hesitating a few seconds before asking, “This flake have a name?”
The look in his eyes made it clear that “Is the flake’s name Liz?” was the question Colin really wanted to ask. Dusty guessed he hedged to not ruin the conversation should he be wrong. For the sake of keeping things light, he lied. “No one you’d know. She’s not from around here.”
“Then why let her get to you? She’ll be gone soon enough.”
“Yeah. I doubt she’ll ever pass by this way again. Hardly my fault if she’s frigid anyway.”
Warmth returned to Colin’s expression. Slapping a hand on the bar, he let out a boisterous laugh. “No fucking way. You mean to tell me there’s a woman out there who isn’t interested in sleeping with you?”
Colin and he had tossed barbs at each other from the day they’d met. Obviously Liz’s accusations and behavior were working overtime on his ego, because his friend’s question pricked damned deep. “She’s slept with me a couple times,” he said humorlessly. “It’s the orgasm part she can’t handle.”
Colin’s look went from amused to stunned. “You can’t make her come?”
Once more the question pricked. If anyone had been sitting near enough to hear their conversation, they might well have been fighting words. As it was, Dusty chose to ignore the sting. “She faked it.”
“Ouch. Talk about the mighty falling. Did you ask her about it?”
About faking an orgasm? The only thing that would have accomplished was Liz decking him. “Like I said, she’s from outta town. Probably just a nutcase.”
“Maybe. Or maybe she’s the type who needs more than the physical, or a slow hand, to get off for real.” Colin reached for his beer, pausing with the bottle inches from his mouth to utter a sarcastic, “Way I hear it, not every woman falls into bed on the first date.”
“She’s not looking for love. Or shy when it comes to sex.”
Colin set his beer back down without taking a drink. He narrowed his gaze assessingly. “For someone just passing through, you know her damned well.”
Dusty shrugged, wishing he’d played his friend’s comment off as the joke it was intended. “You know I won’t sleep with a woman who’s after more than a night or two. She made it clear she’s not in the market for anything lasting.”
Colin continued to eye him, his gaze shrewd. Finally, he looked away and lifted his beer for a drink. He turned his attention to the NCAA football game playing on one of the two ceiling-mounted TVs behind the bar. A full minute had passed when he looked back. Dusty assumed it would be to comment on the game. Instead Colin said, “I never planned to have another relationship after the way Marlene screwed around on me.”
Mention of Colin’s cheating ex-wife had always bothered Dusty. Before it had been the kind of bother that had to do with sympathy for his friend. This time it was the kind of bother that felt aimed directly at Dusty and ate at his gut. “What’s your point?”
“Sometimes we’re the last to know what we want. Maybe there’s a commitment man in you after all. Maybe the reason you can’t shake thoughts of this so-called flake and your inability to please her is because you, God forbid, care about her. Maybe she’s the one you want to be committed with.”
Dusty didn’t bother to hold back his snort of laugher. Liz had him wanting to be committed, all right. Straight to the loony bin.
Whipped cream.
The food-prep area of the restaurant faded away as Liz stared at the sundae in her hand, waiting to be delivered to her family of four.
How could she be expected to serve something so overtly sexual to a kid?
A layer of fluffy cream had never looked so indecent. Then there was that ridiculously huge banana poking through the whipped cream in a display too phallic to miss. Gawd, there were even nuts surrounding the banana. A bunch of little nuts instead of two sizeable ones, but it didn’t matter.
Nope, it didn’t matter a bit; she was already long gone.
Her mind raced to the previous night and going down on her knees to take Dusty’s huge cock in her mouth. With any other man, oral sex was something she could take or leave. With him, she wanted to take it, again and again. Wanted to wrap her mouth around his luscious member and suck him dry.
Last night he hadn’t let her savor long. Not that it had been any hardship to stop fucking him with her mouth so that she could do so with her body. He’d had her wet from the instant he’d pushed her up against the refrigerator. Hell, from the instant he’d bent down next to her and talked about biting, sucking, blowing, fondling…
Her panties grew moist with the memory of his rough voice so near to her ear. Her nipples leapt to attention at the thought of the cool cream sliding over them, followed by his hot mouth and that wonderfully coarse goatee. She held little doubt that if she hadn’t ordered him to stop the nipple-play and get to the main event, he would have been able to turn her into one of those women who came from nipple stimulation alone. No doubt at all he could have popped her orgasm cherry.
“Something wrong?” Diane’s soft voice piped in from behind her.
Yes. She was turning into a bigger head case than ever if she honestly found a sundae sexual.
Liz broke from her ogling to look at the late-forties, graying brunette dressed in the same tuxedo-style uniform she wore. The difference was her friend’s ample chest combated the manliness of the outfit. “No. I was just thinking.”
Diane’s lips crooked in a knowing smile that brought small laugh lines to the corners of her mouth. “He musta been something.”
“Who?”
“Whoever it was that left you with thoughts hot enough to melt ice cream.” Amusement lighting her gray eyes, she nodded at the sundae in Liz’s hand.
Liz groaned at the soppy state of the dish. With all that melted ice cream and whipped cream, it looked like the banana had just gotten off in a major way. How pathetic was that? Even fruit was more capable of getting off than her.
Yep. Definitely a head case, to be envious of the orgasm of an inanimate object.
“He was no one. No one important, that is,” Liz corrected, remembering this was Diane, the woman who expected her to tell at least three wild sex tales a week, all of which ended with her coming so hard the force of climax left her temporarily blind. She forced a wicked smile. “But then, they never are.”
And they weren’t. No man was important enough to burn her pie over. Not even one who could conquer her jealousy over climaxing fruit. Not even one who, ever since he’d brought up his far-from-ideal youth, had left questions spinning in her mind. She wasn’t asking those questions, and she sure as shit wasn’t giving in to her jealousy by granting Dusty yet another try at providing her with a real orgasm.
So what if she never had her orgasm cherry popped? She would rather be an orgasm virgin who knew how to focus on those things that mattered than a hormone-driven slut any day.
”What are you doing here?”
Dusty bit back his laughter over Liz’s murderous expression. He glanced around the community center classroom and then back at her, feigning confusion. “It’s Wednesday night, right? The cooking class?”
She gritted her teeth, as if keeping her voice on a relatively calm level cost her dearly. “Yes, it’s Wednesday night and the cooking
class, but that doesn’t answer my question. Why are you here? You got what you wanted.”
Not even close. He wanted her quaking in his hands, too caught up in the throes of climax to consider faking it.
The last week had proven that Colin was partly accurate with his commitment assessment. Dusty was committed to Liz. Committed to giving her an orgasm that would remove any doubt of his pleasuring abilities. If that took a little time and patience, then he was in for the long haul.
He smirked. “Nice to see your ego’s still healthy as ever, babe. But like I told ya last week, I’m taking this class to learn to be a better cook. Anything I got after class was a side benefit.”
Liz studied him a few seconds, gaze narrowed, then said quietly, “I hope you enjoyed it, because that side benefit won’t be happening again.” She turned to the refrigerator to get out the ingredients for tonight’s class, but then quickly turned back. A naughty smile curved her lips, plumping them enticingly.
Dusty’s thoughts voyaged to the previous week and the feel of those satiny lips once again wrapped around his dick. His cock stirred to life, snugging his jeans tight in the front. He’d been an ass to speak words he knew would make her stop sucking him. From her hums of satisfaction, she’d enjoyed it a great deal. God knew he’d been ready to explode.
Liz retreated from the refrigerator to the counter he reclined against. Her hand settled on his forearm, stroking leisurely, while the muscles beneath her palm corded. Hundreds of women had touched him this way; never before had it made his pulse hammer. That hammering only intensified as she brought her lips to his ear and whispered, “I won’t lie, Marr, you were good, but then so were the rest of the guys I screwed last week. There are way too many men out there to waste my time on one who can only finish the job a third of the time.”
The feel of her warm breath warred with the cool accusation in her words. She was trying to piss him off. She was doing a damned good job.
As much as he would like to dismiss it, the roiling in his gut had nothing to do with the fact that she had yet to climax for him and everything to do with the mention of screwing other guys. It was because she was his friend’s sister, he reminded himself. A woman he’d known, at least marginally, for years. It only made sense he would feel a certain amount of protection toward her. Why that protection level had risen in the last couple of months wasn’t something Dusty cared to question.
“Right,” he said nonchalantly. “You don’t do relationships.”
She reared back as if he’d slapped her. “You know damned well I don’t,” she said loudly. Clearly too loudly, as she grimaced and sent a nervous look around the room. She shifted from foot to foot a few seconds and then returned to the refrigerator.
The hasty retort and her reaction further agitated his gut. Something told Dusty to change the topic. For the sake of figuring out what made her tick, he forged on. “Refresh my memory. Why is that?”
“That is none of your business.”
“I can ask Colin.”
Yanking the refrigerator door open, Liz shot him a glare. “Do I look like an idiot? No way would you bring my name and the word relationship up around him.”
No way in hell, and that just meant he needed to probe her for an answer all the more. She squatted and pulled open the crisper drawer. He pushed off the counter and came up behind her. “So, what’s on the menu tonight?”
Without looking at him, she handed out two cloves of garlic. “Shrimp scampi, and pull-eaze don’t expect me to believe you’re going to let that question drop. You’re going to try to pull the same kind of crap you did last week. Forget it. I’m not interested.”
He set the garlic on the counter. Still not looking at him, she stood, grabbed a stick of butter from the side bin, and held it out. Sliding his fingers up the stick, Dusty settled them over hers. He leaned inward, until he could feel the heat emanating off her body, smell her scent on the air, Ivory soap undercoated with a feminine musk that gave her away.
Not only was she interested in a repeat of last Wednesday night, she was wet for him even now.
Though he’d vowed to be patient, he couldn’t resist rubbing his fingers over the smooth backs of hers. “Warm butter on hot skin isn’t your thing, eh?”
Liz tensed. “I like it fine, with the right guy. You aren’t him.”
No? Then how could his touch get to her so completely?
That she was suggesting there was one right guy caught up with Dusty then. Releasing her fingers, he stepped back and set the butter on the counter, slowly digesting the idea that Colin’s commitment theory could be dead on.
Was it possible that Liz could only climax when emotions were involved?
She had the reputation of a woman who loved sex and regularly partook of it with strangers and friends alike. What if that reputation was a sham? Colin complained about Liz sharing the details of her many sexual exploits with him, but had her brother ever seen her come home with anyone outside of Dusty, or were the men she spoke of as big of a lie as her mystery man Aiden had turned out to be?
He pressed the idea. “Thank God for that. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not exactly Mr. Relationship. Makes me damned glad I’m a man.”
“Yeah, because that big dick of yours would look pretty odd on a woman.”
“I’m serious. A lot of women can’t do the straight sex thing. They can sleep with every Ron, Mick, and Larry who passes by, but the odds of climaxing aren’t good. They need the emotional connection.”
Liz spun back so fast it was a wonder she didn’t get whiplash. “You really don’t know jack about women, do you, Marr? Of all the asinine things you’ve said, that has to be the biggest load of crap ever.”
The words threatened to take a bite out of his ego. He pushed them aside to concentrate on her expression. Now it was amused, but for a second there he could have sworn he saw interest. “You don’t have that problem, then? You get off whether you’ve been dating a guy for months or only known him a few minutes?”
“I got off with you, didn’t I?”
No. She hadn’t. Not for real.
Liz had nearly convinced him that the problem was his, that he’d become a failure at the one thing he was truly good at. It seemed that wasn’t the case. It seemed the fault was neither of theirs, but a simple matter of him not being the right guy for her.
If Dusty wasn’t as thrilled about the discovery as he should be, it was because he’d never gotten the chance to set his ego right. Then again, there was nothing to set right. He’d never stopped being a champion lover, just tangled with a woman who needed more than sex.
“Right,” he said as she turned back to the refrigerator. “That isn’t a problem for you. You’re a regular coming machine.” A coming machine he would never get to experience firsthand. And that was fine. So what if she gave killer head? That didn’t mean a thing if, when all was said and done, he was the only one left sated.
Liz grabbed a package of raw shrimp and handed it to him. He accepted it along with the knowledge they weren’t meant to be fuck friends. That being the case, they might as well try at platonic ones. Now that he’d signed up for the cooking class, Dusty couldn’t miss the value in learning to be a better cook for the sake of the bar. Whether she liked it or not, Liz was stuck with him for the duration.
She’d shown an interest in his family the previous week. It followed she would be as interested in talking about her own. He knew Colin nearly as well as she did, but her mother was a mystery and her father almost as much so. “What are your parents like?”
“My mom’s a slut.” Audibly smacking her lips shut around the words and the disdain that dripped from them, she glanced tensely around the classroom.
If he’d been uncertain of her player reputation being a sham, he held no doubt now. Someone who got around even half as much as she claimed to would never hold such scorn for another’s behavior. “Take it you guys don’t get along?”
Liz crossed her arms and steeled her gaze
. “I swear I’ve said like a hundred times that my life is none of your business, but no, we don’t get along. It’s hard to get along with someone you see once a year if you’re lucky. And then if you’re even luckier, she doesn’t take off midway through the visit to fuck some guy who managed to get her panties wet from across the room.”
Ouch. No matter how quietly she’d spoken, the hurt in her voice couldn’t be masked. It was laced with a bitterness he knew only too well. The urge to comfort was automatic. Well aware of how she would react to his comforting, Dusty cast the urge aside to offer a grin, followed by a low, appreciative whistle. “Wet from across the room. Now, there’s a guy I’d like to meet.”
The response had the desired effect. The hurt evaporated from her expression, and she laughed loudly before slapping him on the arm. “Quit trying to get on my good side and get the damned skillet out, Marr.”
6
Liz tossed aside the suspense novel she’d laid down on her bed to read an hour ago. She’d yet to make it past page one. With a disgusted sigh, she sat, moved up the bed, and sank back against the headboard.
Reading was as pointless as anything else she’d attempted that required a brain in the last three weeks. Her thoughts always voyaged to one man. One idiot who’d managed to take up residence in her head and refused to budge.
Then there was the effect Dusty had on the rest of her.
Since the night she’d faked orgasm, the man had been living in her dreams, doing things so erotic with those killer hands and mouth and dynamite body that they had to border on criminal. In her dreams, she was no orgasm virgin, but a woman who came hard and plentifully. In her dreams, Dusty couldn’t get enough of her, needing to touch her, kiss her, impale himself inside her every few hours or risk insanity. In reality, he didn’t want a thing to do with her, outside of friendship.
Friendship, hah!
She’d guessed that once he thought he’d given her an orgasm, his attempts at getting into her pants would end, or at least lessen. She never would have imagined in a million damned years he would want to befriend her.
Operation G-Spot Page 6