Strangers with Benefits (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Jennifer Willows

  “Good morning.” She smiled, a sated grin he couldn’t wait to fuck clean off her face.

  “You have five minutes, better use ’em wisely.”

  She squinted and looked at the clock. “It’s noon already?”

  He chuckled. “You need glasses. It’s almost seven.”

  “In the morning?”

  “Yep.”

  She sighed. “I need a shower.”

  “I gave you five minutes and they start now.”

  She jumped out of bed and ran to his bathroom, where the water began to run immediately. It would have been nice to join her, but he really only had the five minutes before their private showing started.

  He took a quick shower in the hall bathroom and walked back into the room still dripping wet. Sidonie wasn’t in the bedroom yet, but he heard the water stop running and she emerged just a moment later.

  “So what’s on the agenda today?”

  “Sex. Then breakfast.”

  She rubbed her belly. “You shouldn’t have mentioned food. I’m starving.”

  “I can work with that.” He walked back into the kitchen and grabbed a couple of pieces of fruit that would serve to stave off hunger for a little while. At least long enough to get the job done.

  When he came back, she toweled off and he watched as she dried her damp feet last before she tossed the towel into a hamper he had by his closet door.

  “I see you have something for me to eat. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.” He took a seat on the window sill, where a small padded nook nestled in the French window he had opened to the sun.

  He slid on a condom and patted his thigh. “Come here.”

  His morning erection hadn’t gone down after he used the bathroom, only diminished in girth. But when he rubbed her cunt, she wasn’t ready. Not by a long shot, but that was probably due to the shower.

  She sat on his lap and he peeled a banana first. Sidonie took a big bite out of the thick fruit and she held out an apple for him to take a bite.

  Den looked out of the window and noticed that Jared pushed his lawn mower eagerly, as if the man had a war on grasses more than an inch high. But the determined strides didn’t last long. Jared practically rubbernecked when he saw Sidonie, even if she had no idea the other man was there.

  Jared ogled the view of them nude in plain sight. Den thought he noticed a quickly tossed up hand in greeting, but he didn’t acknowledge it as he wanted Sidonie in the moment and not outside looking in at herself.

  By the time they finished the hasty breakfast, she smiled in appreciation. “At least I don’t feel like my belly is touching my backbone anymore.”

  “That’d be a sorry way to start the day.”

  The apple core and banana peel were long forgotten when he rubbed her soft skin, still damp from her shower.

  She groaned and melted into his touch. He didn’t do anything special, just pulled her onto his cock, even though she wasn’t completely lubricated yet. He paid for it, as the lack of moisture made his entry a battle that he wasn’t certain he could win.

  But when he was finally inside of her, he realized he didn’t want Jared looking. The idea was a nice one, and the thought of being caught was pretty nifty, but that didn’t mean he wanted to share her with someone else, even vicariously.

  They rocked together, an easy pace in token to the early hour and their worn out bodies from the night before. Her thighs probably burned something fierce and he recalled the first day he overdid it, when his father brought Apple home.

  Sidonie laid her head on his shoulder and gasped her pleasure into the tough skin of his neck. It wasn’t his usual style, but their pace was so easy, so gentle that this was different than sex as he knew it.

  A romantic would likely describe it as lovemaking.

  The sun barely glinted over her skin as they eased against one another. The radio played a slow paced song he didn’t know the name of, but the cadence was perfect for such an auspicious moment.

  She swiveled her hips in a tight motion that spoke to how sore she was. He knew that the prior night had to be rough on her. He should have run her a bath and let her soak when they got in, but their mutual exhaustion was good for little more than him laying down and dragging her next to him.

  He was her pillow.

  He used a knuckle to force her to lift her head upright so he could look into her eyes. “Relax.”

  “I can’t.” She shrugged her shoulders.

  He leaned in and kissed her, her lips sipped at his, took ownership of the oral merger.

  She was good at that. Heck, she’d taught him a few things about kissing.

  He hadn’t realized until Sidonie that a kiss was just as arousing as intercourse. Maybe even more so. Den wrapped his arms around her back in a motion that kept the best parts of her hidden from view. He didn’t mind being looked at, but he didn’t like the idea of his neighbors ogling Sidonie.

  He didn’t want to hurt her, either.

  Well, he did like hurting her, but only in a sexual sense.

  Not in a real way.

  He laid her back gently and awkwardly slid his knees from under her.

  The end result was a bit odd, but she rested on the tufted cushion in the window seat with her ass barely angled onto the edge. He stood with one knee on the pillowed surface. His other leg bore his weight on the floor.

  “Cup your breasts and massage those beautiful nipples for me.”

  She did, both hands cups that runneth over with her flesh, with the nipples between the thumb and pointer fingers.

  “Den…” she whispered, the volume low but hungry, even as it seemed like she asked for something else. Something more.

  It had to be his imagination. “I’m here.” He dipped over and fastened his lips on hers.

  She rocked toward him, a wordless request for him to fill her.

  When he forged into her cunt, she was just as hot and wet as she always was.

  “I need you.” The words were a plea, but he couldn’t help but read between the lines.

  He needed to hear her say it. “I’m here.” His eyes met hers and their noses rubbed side by side.

  “Please.” She wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes.

  Shut herself off, boxed neatly in to some corner of her mind that his body couldn’t touch her.

  He wanted to ask her to look at him, but he couldn’t do it.

  Her eyes asked for something he wasn’t certain he was ready for.

  And now, her body beseeched him for it, too.

  Den couldn’t say it out loud and break the spell the environment had cast on the two of them.

  Their lips met again, the only safe ground either of them had to stand on.

  He melted into her, drowned in her, and as a man that was hard to admit.

  The spell was shattered when she realized Jared was standing outside of the window.

  Chapter Seven:

  Freak Street

  When Den snapped the blinds closed on their voyeurs Saturday morning, a small woman and a larger man, Sidonie was torn. She thought she might like the idea of being watched, but when the reality presented itself, she was embarrassed more than turned on.

  The worst part was that Den seemed so angry when she froze up.

  It was supposed to be nothing more than simple sex.

  But there was nothing simple about the situation at hand.

  She was feeling too much for him.

  Way too much for someone that was a fuck buddy she could trust.

  And because they weren’t even friends, the awkwardness couldn’t be dispelled as easily as she wanted it to be.

  Den didn’t say a word, but Sidonie assumed he wanted to take her home. He was probably disappointed in her performance and didn’t want to have to hurt her feelings by saying it.

  When she grabbed her bag from the floor and started to find a change of clothes, Den stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  “What are you doing?” he sna
pped at her.

  “Getting dressed?” Sidonie offered a small smile to show him she had no hard feelings.

  “We’re not going to talk about it?”

  “About what?” She deflected, but she knew he meant the fiasco from a moment ago and sighed. “Okay. We can talk if you want.”

  “You don’t want to?” he asked, but the question was posed in a way that made her afraid to respond.

  The question seemed so much deeper than she thought it would be. A minefield there was no safe navigation over.

  “It’s not that. I just didn’t think that you would care about the answer.” Open mouth, insert foot.

  He was silent and the look on his face could have scorched the sun. “You don’t think I care? Is that it?”

  “Yes… No… I don’t know?” She tossed her hands up in the air.

  “Which is it? Yes, you think I don’t give a fuck? Or no, you think I do? Or better yet, you just have no fucking idea?” he bit out.

  “Why are cursing at me!”

  He stormed over and looked at her.

  Really looked at her, in a fashion that stripped her bare to the bone.

  “Sidonie, what do you want from me?”

  “I–I…” There was no good answer to that question, either.

  Sex. It was just supposed to be simple sex.

  Not… whatever in the hell this was.

  He stepped even closer and stole what little personal space she had until she found herself with yet another wall at her back, and he in front of her.

  Unlike the other times, he wasn’t going to wrap her legs around him and fuck her into oblivion.

  “You off in space again?” He mocked her with his supercilious tone.

  “What right do you have to mock me? I haven’t done a damn thing to you except be a sex puppet that you have at your beck and call to scratch your every itch!” She was a fool. A fucking fool. There was no way she was going to be able to do this. He had her wrapped around his fingers, or rather his cock.

  “A sex puppet? Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle.”

  “You… you, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal!” she yelled at him.

  His eyes narrowed and he clenched his fists. She wasn’t afraid.

  Not of that.

  Not with him.

  The ways this man could hurt her had nothing to do with his fists, but everything to do with him.

  Sidonie felt her eyes water and she sniffed in a poor attempt to stave off an embarrassing release of tears.

  “You called me a Neanderthal. I might even be just that. But I know one thing.”

  “What?”

  “That you love every inch this Neanderthal fucked you with. Bet I could fuck you right now and you’d only beg for more.”

  The worst part, the part that burned the most, was that he was right.

  “Take me home.” She wasn’t even going to acknowledge what he said to her.

  He huffed at her, puffed angry breaths of air in her face, but she remained resolute and stood still, back to the wall.

  His face dropped to hers, nose to nose. “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?” How dare he?

  “Just what I said.”

  She poked a finger into his chest. “I am ready to go. Now.”

  “Too bad. The Dennis taxi isn’t leaving until eleven forty-five. And I need a smile to go with my service.”

  She was a grown woman with money at her disposal. He wasn’t holding her hostage if she wanted to go. “Well, you’re not the only taxi in town, buster!”

  “I’m the only one that you’ll catch around these parts.” His expression dared her to try.

  When it came down to it she hit him with the only thing she had left. “I hate you.”

  “You wish you could hate me.”

  He was right about that, too.

  Rather than admit it, Sidonie pressed her lips to his. At first, he refused to reciprocate, but then he wrapped an arm beneath her and pulled her up to his level.

  She thought she had gotten away with it.

  When he lifted his head and looked at her, Sidonie knew she had only delayed the inevitable.

  “Stop distracting me. I’m mad.”

  Sidonie sighed. “I know that already. But I have no idea why. I got dressed so I could get out of your hair. What more do you want from me?”

  “You have no idea.” He grunted.

  She smiled and rubbed his shoulder. “So guess that means voyeurism is a no-go, huh?”

  “You hated it and I couldn’t even finish.” He sighed and released her onto her wobbly legs.

  “How did you know that?” she asked as she thought she had put up a decent enough pretense.

  “You told me.”

  “I didn’t say anything!”

  “Didn’t have to.”

  Sidonie touched his face, where the rough hair had sprouted over his cheeks. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t think about what this would be like. Logically speaking that is.”

  “I know, but it was my half-assed idea to challenge you to begin with.”

  “But I agreed.”

  “Stop taking my side. An argument has two sides, pick the other one,” he grumbled, but she knew he was joking.

  She rubbed her fingers over his and released the hand when his eyes snapped to hers. “A conversation doesn’t have to.”

  “True. Still want something to eat?”

  “You cooking?”

  He shrugged. “If you call frozen waffles cooking, then yeah.”

  “I think you can do a little better than that.”

  “Maybe I could be persuaded to add in a couple of sausage links.”

  “What would I have to do for those links?”

  “We can work payment out later.” He winked.

  And just like that, they had started and finished their first fight.

  But a few minutes later, after they ate a silly breakfast that was an amalgam of things that only hormone-fueled kids liked, Den rubbed his taut belly and dusted the toaster pastry crumbs from his chest.

  Sidonie refused to touch them with a stick and she said as much.

  “Gross.”

  “I bet I could change your mind about that.”

  “Probably so.”

  When they sat back on his sofa, she assumed they would lounge a bit before he took her home.

  She was wrong.

  “You owe me for the way you treated me before. Don’t think I forgot about that.”

  “You started it!”

  “Nope, that was all you.”

  She wanted to fight about it, to delay the inevitable. Even as she knew that she would love it.

  And she did.

  He had her sit on top, facing away from him, and then he pushed her back until she draped over his lap toward the floor. When she was positioned to his liking, he slapped her ass.

  “You will ask me before you make assumptions. Right?” he asked her before he swatted the left cheek.

  Slap!

  Sidonie lurched from shock as he popped the right cheek. Smack!

  “Sidonie, you didn’t answer me.”

  “Yes!” she cried out.

  “You can do better than that.”

  He moved back to the left side. Slap.

  It stung, but she took it. “I won’t assume anything. I–I’ll ask you first.”

  “That’s better. But you called yourself a sex toy earlier.” Then he lashed out on the right side. Smack. She gritted her teeth and tried to not cry out. “You might be my fuck toy, but that goes both ways. Doesn’t it?”

  He slapped her twice in quick succession this time, back and forth as if her ass were a set of bongos that he got points for banging.

  “Yes!”

  “Yes, what?”

  “It goes both ways. I love being your fuck toy!”

  “That’s right. Mine. And I don’t share my toys.”

  He plunged inside of her and this time when he thrust inside her, she was not on
ly ready, but on a hair trigger.

  “Yess-sss!” Sidonie hissed.

  His hands left her sore ass, one fisted in her hair and the other gripped her shoulder as a tether that served to drag her back for more.

  This time when she looked out of the window and saw the freaky couple from next door fucking doggy style in the side yard, it didn’t bother her a bit. But maybe that was due to two things. One, they were much farther away than before and two, they were engaged in the act themselves.

  At least she didn’t feel as if her performance was being dissected by scientists this way.

  In fact, she laughed.

  “What is it?”

  “Your neighbors are freaks.”

  “Well, they probably think we are, too.”

  Sidonie rocked back into him. “Well, then teach them a thing or two.”

  And did he ever.

  By the time they finished, he was behind her. Their position mirrored the couple in the grass outside. Den forced her to watch the couple with a fist in her hair and a command.

  “Watch them, like they are watching you.”

  Sex with another couple. That almost constituted an orgy. Didn’t it?

  Either way, check.

  And that wasn’t even on her list.

  When the time came, Den parked in front of her home and Sidonie dragged her keys out.

  “Text me later.” She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “Fuck that.” He grabbed her chin and sucked her lower lip into his mouth.

  Their parting was hungry, despite the fact that she had enough sex to last her the week.

  Or at least she tried to stockpile the orgasms while she could.

  “Bye.”

  “See you later.”

  When she started up her SUV, the phone rang and Sidonie used the hands free to answer.

  “Hey, girl!”

  “Mimi? Hey!”

  “Don’t hey me. I haven’t heard from you in two weeks! Where have you been? The only reason I know you’re alive is your wall posts.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Uh-huh. So gimme the tea.”

  Sidonie had no way to even make the story short and she just blurted it out. “I’vebeenhavingsexwithimsincethebar.”

  “I didn’t catch that?” But she knew her friend had. “So you mean to tell me that you have been sleeping with the cop for two weeks?”

  “Something like that.”