by Susan Stoker
Like his skin. Let’s talk about that for a minute. It was so smooth she was sure he did nothing for it. Irritation on behalf of all womankind who invested a fortune in skin products bubbled up.
Her hands found their way around his back, which, yep, was smooth as a baby’s butt. The injustices never ended.
“We were good together,” he said. “Weren’t we?”
“We were good at certain things.” The man had been amazing in bed, taking her in all kinds of positions.
“About those things…” His skin, warmth and male muscle, breached the final inch of space between them. “Feeling lucky?”
Okay, if her libido was going to be this stupid, then… “Yes.”
The sweatshirt she wore came off with ease. He shed her of her sweatpants and panties in one yank. And when he dropped his? She would have definitely known if they’d done the deed last night. Her hormones didn’t stand a chance.
Did she care he reached over to a drawer in his kitchen and pulled out a condom without even having to look? Not one iota. The man wasn’t a monk—and this woman who’d been living like a nun needed him to prove it right now with his deliciously large cock bobbing in her direction.
Still, she grasped his wrist. “I want to do it.”
His eyes fell to half-mast and he let out a long shaky breath as she used both hands to roll the material over him. Her younger self had taken so much for granted—like how amazingly beautiful this part of his anatomy was.
She captured his hips with her calves and pulled him closer. Her inhibitions had fled like lemmings to the cliff, which was alright by her. Modesty was so overrated when compared to the chance to get split wide by this new Lachlan.
He pushed into her, a long moan escaping into his shoulder. Nothing replaced the delicious stretch of a real, live man.
He stilled, grasped both sides of her face, and pressed his lips on her mouth. When his tongue dipped into her mouth, his cock firmly seated inside her, the intimacy hit her like an anvil. Oh, it was like being doubly impaled… locked in… claimed.
She grasped his hips in a leg lock worthy of a professional wrestler because she had to have more—more of his possession, more of him.
Maybe he’d drugged the pancakes with sex demon blood or something because she’d never been this wet—ever. Or maybe because she hadn’t felt good with a man in so long she’d feast on any scraps he’d toss her way. So what if she shouldn’t be doing this, wrapping her legs around an ex who’d broken her heart but whose body molded to hers like laminating film?
The room spun and her back met the cold metal of his refrigerator door. His hands must have pressed into the water dispenser because icy water splooshed out and down her legs. Whatever.
But ever the gentleman, another new Lachlan trait, he twirled her again back to the countertop. Only now, he’d slipped out of her and he stared down at her. “Are you sure we should…”
Oh, it was a little late for remorse.
She curled her fingers around his biceps, so large they couldn’t fully encircle them. “Lachlan. Please.” Enough hesitation. She needed to be taken.
His lopsided smile turned slightly evil.
He hauled her up and over his shoulder, her head instantly throbbing from the shift in blood. “Lachlan!” Except she didn’t really care about her head right then. How could she when her lady parts throbbed more?
He slapped her ass. “Tell me to put you down.”
No fricking way.
He eased her down onto his bed, completely bare except for a fitted sheet because she’d commandeered the top sheet earlier and the comforter had been kicked to the bottom sometime in the night. It was like the bed was waiting for them to crawl back atop it.
To think less than two hours ago Lachlan hadn’t been in her mind for years. Now?
He crawled over her body, grabbed full handfuls of her ass as he positioned them, and reseated himself inside her. Lachlan was now everywhere she was—inside her body, her mind, and most certainly her emotions. Scratch that. She didn’t have a mind anymore—just a driving need to get fucked.
His fingers spread wide as if he wanted to claim every inch of her. But it was when the tips of his fingers curled into her crack she really lost it. Little bleats formed in her throat, which seemed to egg him on because, whoa, he slipped a finger in her ass.
Okay, this Lachlan was most definitely not the leprechaun man.
His breaths puffed out in a rhythm as he rocked inside her, and the sensation between her legs built fast. He shifted the angle and hit that spot that knocked her right off the cliff.
“Lachlan, Lachlan, Lachlan,” kept coming out of her mouth as her orgasm went on and on.
Not long after, he groaned into her neck and his muscles relaxed. She knew because she’d clutched them like she’d float off the bed without doing so.
For a long minute, he panted into her mouth, neither one wanting to untangle. They probably shouldn’t have ever untangled.
Her eyes filled up and she squeezed her eyes shut. Two long drips fell down the sides of her face, which was so stupid. She’d just had great sex with a man she knew. And he was a good man. Always had been.
“Hey,” he whispered.
She opened her eyes to find a naked pain shining in his eyes.
“Wish you’d woken up with the leprechaun man?”
A choked laugh burst from her throat. She sniffed and shook her head.
“Good.” He grasped her hand, brought it up to his lips. “Because now that you’ve screamed out my name, can I ask you out?”
Stripped Love
Emery Rose
1
Sienna
“Have you ever heard of deodorant?” I ask the guy standing in front of me, his back to me. Thanks to him, I’m smashed up against the door of the train heading uptown from the World Trade Center. He’s wearing an expensive suit, but he reeks of alcohol and his sweat smells like garlic and dirty socks. It’s six in the evening and I’m never on the train this early. Or at all. Usually I take a company car home. Now I remember why.
“Who pissed in your Frappuccino?”
The subway lurches to a stop and the guy loses his footing and stumbles backward. The heel of his shoe crushes my toes and I grit my teeth to stop myself from crying out in pain. I give him a shove, but he barely notices.
Could this day get any worse? I stare down at my strappy Manolos and focus on my Mint Candy Apple pedicure, trying to breathe through my mouth so I don’t have to inhale the disgusting scent of body odor.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
How did I end up here? Is this Karma fucking me up the ass without lube?
My foot is throbbing. As of today, I am unemployed. But wait, it gets better. Next weekend, my sister is marrying my first and only true love. And my fresh start in New York City is a bust. Last April, when I was given the opportunity to transfer from the LA office to New York, I jumped at the chance. For the past year, all I did was work. I put in seventy-hour weeks at Kinley & Co. Consulting and what did I have to show for it? A three-month severance package. They could shove it up their asses with a red-hot poker.
I was undermined by a man. What else is new? A fledgling member of the Old Boys’ Club with an Ivy league degree, custom-tailored Saville Row suits, and a sense of entitlement I should have been used to by now. James reminded me so much of a younger version of my father, and of my ex-fiancé Chase. And every single day for the past six months, James Willoughby III made my life a living hell. I reported him to HR so many times, documenting each incident, and they assured me it would be ‘dealt with.’ Well, guess what? Today I lost my job because nobody likes a squeaky wheel. Meanwhile, James Fucking Willoughby was promoted to a position that should have rightfully been mine.
It’s a man’s world and anyone who tells you differently has never tried to claw their way to the top or break through that glass ceiling only to be told to ‘look pretty, don’t make waves, and smile like a good gi
rl.’
Finally, the train stops at 79th Street and I exit the station and stride up Third Avenue. Tired and hot and sweaty. It’s a warm spring evening and everywhere I look, I see couples. Happy people in love. Happy people headed to restaurants or bars or headed home to eat dinner together and have sex. New York smells like sex. It’s a sexy city. Me? I haven’t had sex since I broke off my engagement two years ago. How is that even possible? I love sex. I used to be pretty good at it.
I could go home, order sushi and binge-watch Netflix. Or I could go to a spin class and sweat out all my pent-up frustrations. But that would just prove how pathetic my life is.
Instead of going home to my empty apartment, I cross the street and walk into Rock Candy Lounge. It’s only a few blocks from my apartment and one of the only places I’ve hung out in since I moved to New York. It’s a chilled-out bar and it’s still early enough that it’s not packed with people yet. The décor looks like a cross between West Palm Beach and Little Havana.
“Hey Sienna.” Ella smiles at me from behind the bar. She looks so much like Camila Cabello, they could be twins. “How’s it going?”
I drop onto a stool at the bar and she tilts her head. “You know what? Forget I asked. What’s your poison?”
“Something strong. No. Make it lethal.”
“Do you want the Rock Candy Martini?”
“Laced with arsenic.”
She laughs like I’m joking. While she pours the ingredients into a cocktail shaker, shaking her hips to the beat of the Latin music, I run through my options. I could admit defeat and go back home to California. But then I’d have to deal with my divorced parents and my backstabbing little sister. Better yet, I could just throw in the towel and run away. Where would I go? Europe? The Caribbean? South America?
Ella sets the ice blue cocktail on a bar napkin in front of me and I thank her before knocking back half of my drink. It tastes like citrus vodka and exotic fruit juices. It’s so delicious and I’m dying of thirst so I down the whole thing and set my empty glass on the bar. “Keep them coming.”
Her dark brows arch. “O-kay. One of those days, huh?” She mixes up my next drink and gives it a shake, the ice clinking against the stainless steel while I stare at my reflection in the bamboo-framed mirror behind her. My SoCal tan has long since faded. I look like a pale New Yorker now. Overworked. Exhausted. In need of some sunshine and fun and ... sex. Why do I have sex on the brain? It’s the last thing I should be thinking about.
I’m twenty-nine years old and I thought by now I’d have it all figured out. I’ve read so many self-help books, I could write my own. On my commute to and from work, I listened to podcasts that promised to make me a better version of myself. Nope. Still me. A basic bitch in designer clothes with a closetful of designer shoes and handbags.
Full closet. Empty bed.
“You know what you need?” Ella asks as she strains the drink into a glass.
I suck on the rock candy twizzler and wait to hear what she thinks I need. I barely know the girl. But I guess bartenders are like therapists. I bartended weekends at a cool bar in West Hollywood during my last semester at USC. That was one of the best times of my life. Dylan used to drive up from San Diego and stay with me. We’d stay up all night having sex—rough and dirty, tender and sweet—and sleep on the beach during the day. No doubt he’s forgotten the good times, but even after all these years I still remember them. By the end of our eight-year on-again, off-again relationship he hated me so much he couldn’t bear to look at me. And it shouldn’t still hurt this much. I should have moved on by now. My heart shouldn’t still skip a beat whenever I saw someone who looked even a little bit like him. It shouldn’t ache whenever I heard a song that reminded me of him.
“You need a boyfriend.” Ella slides the fresh drink across the bar so it’s right in front of me.
“I’m done with boyfriends. I suck at relationships.”
She gives me a skeptical look. If only she knew how many relationships I’ve fucked up she wouldn’t be looking at me like that. “I don’t believe that. I think you’ve just been meeting the wrong men.” She smiles, this little secretive smile, her gaze darting to the front door. “Just what the doctor ordered.”
Without turning around, I check the mirror to see who she’s smiling at. When I see who it is, I groan and down the rest of my drink. Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse, Asher the asshole walks in.
2
Sienna
“Hey Ash.” Ella waves him over to the empty barstool right next to me. I purposefully set my handbag on it in the hopes nobody would sit there.
I don’t even turn to look at him. Bad enough I can see him in my peripheral.
“Ella.” He winks at her. “Cruella De Ville.” I earned that nickname when he saw me in my fur-trimmed cashmere coat this winter. He picks up my handbag and unceremoniously dumps it into my lap. I clutch it to my chest like it’s my firstborn.
“Why so glum? You haven’t gotten the chance to murder any innocent minks or chinchillas or baby bunny rabbits today?”
Ella puts her hand over her heart and makes sad eyes. “Not bunny rabbits. Say it’s not so.”
I give Asher my middle finger. He just laughs it off.
“Careful that crocodile doesn’t bite off your finger.” He eyes my emerald green Birkin bag. My father gave it to me for my college graduation, and it is crocodile, so I can’t even deny it. I don’t even know why I still carry this bag. I’ve cut off ties with my father and haven’t spoken to him in two years but I’m still carting around all this stupid baggage.
“Oh wait. My bad. That crocodile can’t bite. It gave it’s life so you could carry a handbag that cost as much as my year’s rent.”
“Shouldn’t you be banging one of your skanks right now, Magic Mike?”
“You’re such a bitch.” He says it matter-of-factly, sounding almost cheerful, like it doesn’t really bother him. And why should it?
We’re neighbors, nothing more.
“Have my extracurricular activities been keeping you up at night? Losing sleep because of me, Cruella?”
“Nope. I sleep like a baby.”
He pulls his stool closer to mine and I pretend I don’t notice that Asher is hot. If you’re attracted to cocky assholes who look like male strippers, he’s your guy. As it turns out, Asher Hawthorne really is a male stripper. Ella told me. She takes a few dance classes with him. “You know what you need? You need to get laid. We’ve been neighbors for how long... six months? And I’ve never seen you with anyone.”
“Unlike you, I keep my personal life private.”
“You don’t have a life. All you do is work. Your idea of fun is a Pilates class at ass-crack o’clock on a Saturday morning.”
The sad part is that I can’t deny any of his accusations. Not a single one. I’m a certified bitch. My social life is non-existent. And I have luxury items that some poor animals have sacrificed their lives for. I’m all out of witty comebacks.
“What’s that? Is that a crack I see in your armor?”
I shrug one shoulder and take another sip of my drink. I’m usually a better sparring partner but he’s hitting me when I’m already down and I don’t have the energy to hit back.
“Why are you living in a city you don’t like and working at a job you hate?” He asks this a couple minutes later, and he makes it sound like he’s genuinely interested in hearing the answer. If I didn’t know better, it almost sounds like he cares. Which is ridiculous. We only see each other in passing. Sometimes he’s just coming home from a night out when I’m heading to work. And we’ve never had a real conversation.
“I didn’t hate my job.”
“Doesn’t make you happy.” He takes a swig of his beer. “And what’s with the past tense? Did you quit?”
I shrug one shoulder. Asher is the last person I want to confide in. He’ll just revel in my downfall. After he figures out that I’m not going to give him an answer, he drops the su
bject.
“Hey Ella. Bring us another round when you get a chance.”
“You got it.” Her smile is so big and wide. She gives me a knowing look, her eyebrows arched as if to say, I told you so. But she’s wrong. The last thing I need in my life is a guy like Asher. He’s not boyfriend material.
“Put it on my tab,” I tell her when she sets our drinks in front of us. He’s drinking an IPA straight from the bottle.
“Put it on my tab,” he counters.
Ella looks from him to me. I turn in my seat to face him. I’ve never seen him this close up. He smiles, flashing his pearly whites. Asher’s hair is dark and longish, and his eyes are green. I’ve never noticed his eye color before. He’s tanned year-round and I guess that’s just his skin tone. It doesn’t look like a spray tan. Now I can’t stop staring at him. “I don’t want you to buy me a drink.”
“Loosen up. It’s just a drink. Not a marriage proposal. You don’t owe me anything in return. Not even a kiss goodnight.”
“Good. I have no idea where that mouth has been.” He gives me a wicked grin. “I’m not going to kiss you.”
“Whatever you say, Cruella.” This time, he smiles when he says it, like it’s a term of endearment, and my eyes are drawn to his full lips. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”
“In your dreams, Magic Mike.”
“Drop the Mike.” He gives me some jazz hands. “Just call me Magic.”
A laugh bursts out of me. “That was so lame.”
“Made you laugh though. Hey Ella, bring us some of the coconut shrimp and the satay. You know what? Just bring us everything on the menu.”
“You got it.”
“We’re gonna snag that table by the window.”
Before I even have a chance to protest, he’s grabbed our drinks and carried them over to a two-top in front of the sliding glass window that’s open to the street. For reasons I can’t even fathom, my feet carry me to the table and I drop down in the cane-backed chair across from him. There’s a potted palm behind him and the green leaves match his eyes. I don’t want to notice that or anything else about this guy. Yet here I am sitting across from him at a cozy little table, his denim-clad leg brushing against my bare one. Why haven’t I moved my leg away from his? Why am I suddenly noticing everything about this guy?