Guilty Pleasures

by Stella Cameron

  She took a breath that pressed her sensitized nipples against her lace bra. “Have I made you nervous? I’m sorry.”

  “Not quite the kind of nervous you’re thinking of. At least, I don’t think so. I’m going to take off my shirt before I die.”

  “Of course. Would you like to go into the bedroom?”

  Nasty regarded her solemnly. “Very much.”

  She stopped breathing. “Just take it off here. It’ll work just as well.”

  “Why don’t you take it off for me?”

  “If you really want me to.”

  “I really want you to.”

  Polly undid the buttons carefully, concentrating on each one. When she reached the waist of his jeans, she frowned.

  “Pull it out,” he suggested.

  She drew back.

  “The shirt. Pull the shirttail out of my jeans.”

  “Of course.” Hurriedly she did as he asked. His cuffs were rolled up. She opened the shirt and stopped again. Leg men. Breast men. Butt women. Various other kinds of women. She’d never considered what turned her on but maybe she knew now. Polly Crow could very well be a chest woman.

  “Problem?” Nasty asked.

  “Your chest.”

  He drew his brows together and looked down at himself. “Your chest makes me feel… Oh, this is awful. It turns me on—just looking at it. We’d better stop this.”

  “Oh, no, we hadn’t.” Leaning forward, he took the shirttail the way off and threw it aside. “A man has to maximize his assets. If my chest is what it takes to convince you we’re meant to be an item, I’ll go without a shirt permanently.”

  Overcome by what she felt, and by what she’d said, she curled into him and hid her face in his shoulder.

  “Hey!” Gently, he settled a big hand on the back of her head and stroked her hair. “What’s this about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? You’re trying to make sure I can’t see what you’re feeling—and you’re doing that for no reason?”

  “I’m embarrassed.”

  “Okay. Let me help you out. There’s nothing about you that doesn’t give me a hard-on. Feel better now?”

  She scrunched up tighter.

  “If you promise not to scream, Polly, I’ll help you cool off. I could take off your dress, and whatever else you’re wearing, and you wouldn’t feel nearly so hot.”

  Her yelp didn’t make her feel any less foolish.

  “Is that a no?”

  “Yes,” she told him, her voice muffled against his wonderful, naked chest.

  “Yes? Yes, you want me to take off your clothes.”

  “No.”

  “I was afraid of that. Polly, you can just cuddle up against my chest and think sexy thoughts. That’s fine. How would it be if I said sexy things to you just to help out.”

  Torture. This was some type of fantastic torture, and she was addicted to her torturer.

  “I’ll assume you’re agreeing. I’m a man who makes a habit of doing what he says he’ll do. I told you I was going to take you to bed tonight. I still intend to take you to bed—unless you absolutely forbid me. If you do that, I won’t.”

  Things like this didn’t happen to Polly Crow, social dropout made good. The new Polly Crow sang songs to children all over the country, and was held up as an example of motherhood, warm cookies, and cold milk, and how all the good things went together to make children feel safe and secure.

  “Right beneath your round bottom, where your panties cover the important bits, my jeans are the only thing keeping me from slipping inside those panties, and inside you.”

  She shuddered. Those bits between her legs contracted. They ached, and the ache spread upward and outward.

  “But your friend Belinda gave me the benefit of her bag of Inspiration. Foreplay. I’m into foreplay, Polly. How about you?”

  She was dying.

  “You, too, huh?” he said. “I’d like to undo your bodice. Could I do that?”

  He didn’t wait for her to agree. Instead he determinedly levered her hunched form from his chest, set her fists on his hips, and undid the row of small buttons between her breasts. “White,” he said, revealing her modest lace bra. “Pretty. I bet you’d be more comfortable without it. Your breasts look as if they’d enjoy being held by me a whole lot more. Do you think they would?”

  When he’d threatened sexy talk, he’d meant it.

  “Where does it undo?”

  “At the back,” she heard herself say, with a sense that she’d become someone else entirely.

  Frowning with concentration, Nasty considered his next move. He slid the sleeves of her dress far enough down her arms to make her movements difficult and reached around to unhook her bra.

  “I told you,” he said, sounding triumphant when there was an instant loosening of the lace. “You’ll be more comfortable.” He slipped his hands down, beneath the fabric, to cup and lift her breasts.

  Polly saw how tanned his hands were against her white flesh. Desperate to be free to react, she struggled to get the bodice of her dress all the way off.

  Nasty helped her. He stripped the bodice to her waist, removed her arms from the sleeves, then got rid of her bra.

  He held her legs just above the knees and looked at her breasts. “Dreams come true,” he said. “You’ve got perfect breasts. Exactly right—for me. Everything about you is exactly right for me.” As if to prove his point, he fondled her, smoothed her, pushed her breasts together and pressed his face into them. He licked and kissed, not missing an inch of pulsing skin and flesh.

  Polly wriggled. She plucked at his shoulders and dropped her head back. He didn’t miss an inch, but he didn’t take her nipples into his mouth. He drove her mad, but he had to know that.

  “Lie down,” she ordered him.

  His eyes opened, but didn’t completely focus. Sliding sideways on the big couch, he did as she asked, scooting until he stretched out on his back.

  Getting rid of the loose dress was easy. It settled on top of Nasty’s shirt and her bra. Wearing only a pair of wispy, white bikini panties, she mounted him again, straddled his belly this time.

  Xavier Nasty Ferrito made sounds she’d remember but never be able to describe. Polly stopped him from reaching for her. She laced her fingers with his and raised his arms above his head.

  “Polly,” he murmured.

  “I’m in charge now. Trust me. You’ll like it.”

  Rising to her knees, she rocked her body enough to make her breasts sway just out of reach of his mouth. Nasty made jerking attempts to capture first one, then the other nipple.

  “Aaah,” he yelled. “Gimme, gimme, you little devil.”

  “You had your chance. I thought you didn’t want anything you haven’t already had.”

  “I want everything I haven’t already had. Then I want it again. In my mouth, sweetheart. Please, I’m a starving man.”

  And she was a sexually starved woman. Polly knew that truth about herself. Fact was fact, and she wasn’t a child—or even a virginal girl. She was a woman who needed a man—this man.

  “Polly!”

  Smiling at him, she lowered herself until the tip of his straining tongue made the lightest, most exquisite contact with a pebble-hard nipple.

  Once, twice, three times she managed to repeat the torment—torment too painfully sweet to bear any longer.

  But then the choice was no longer hers. Nasty rose from the couch, breaking her grip on his fingers, and reversed positions. He played with her breasts until she shrieked for more, or for mercy, in turn or all at once.

  “My pants hurt,” he announced. “Polly, my pants are agony.”

  “Take them off,” she told him. “Now. I wouldn’t want to break anything.”

  He stood up, a golden man, his strongly muscled chest sprinkled with gold-tipped, dark brown hair, the same dark hair he revealed when he stepped out of his jeans.

  His penis rose, heavily veined and massively engorged, from a
thick nest of hair.

  “See anything broken?” he asked huskily.

  “What I see is very dangerous. And we’re still talking too much.”

  “You mean you’d rather just do it and not talk about it?”

  “I mean I want to do it, Xavier.” She couldn’t look away from his penis. “But what we want, and what ought to be can be really different.”

  “Come here.”

  She let him take her hands and pull her to her feet.

  “Can you tell me—other than Bobby—can you tell me what’s holding you back?”

  Polly couldn’t make words for the half-formed fears and feelings. She shook her head. “Kiss me, please. Make me stop thinking.”

  The tenderness of his embrace surprised her, and it only served to deepen her need for him. His kiss was a delicate caress. She stood on tiptoe and locked her hands behind his neck. Back and forth he skimmed his mouth, skin on skin, tip of tongue, to tip of tongue. The hair on his chest grazed her touchy nipples.

  From the solid pressure of him against her belly, she could only guess what it must be costing him to stand still and simply hold her.

  “You are the sweetest thing that ever happened to me,” he told her. “I wasn’t looking for you. It never struck me someonelike you might exist. But there you were.”

  The gentle passion in his voice unleashed a fierce tenderness in Polly “And now here we are. Look at us.”

  She felt him smile against her lips. “That sounds like a great idea. At least, looking at you. But you’re not ready to make love, are you?”

  How could she not be ready?

  “You want the sex, but you don’t want to feel the connection.”

  “You make me sound awful.”

  “I’m trying to understand, Polly. And to let you know I want to understand.” He sighed. “God, it’s tough. I didn’t know how badly I needed to be here like this until now.”

  Nasty’s touch drifted over her shoulders, started down her spine, hesitated when he could spread his thumbs to tickle the sides of her breasts.

  She wiggled, and gasped. “We’re tormenting each other.”

  “Can you think of a better way to be tormented?”

  “No.” She stroked his wide shoulders, pressed even closer. “I don’t think you’re losing interest.”

  He laughed shortly. “What do you expect?”

  “I’m not a tease.”

  “Neither am I.” He reached her bottom and followed the cleft slowly enough to drive her mad. “I’m just a man.”

  “Just?” Wrapping her arms around his waist, she echoed him, move for move, and dropped to her knees. “You’re anything but just a man.”

  Polly held his penis in both hands.

  He gasped and said, “I don’t think you’d better do that.”

  “I’d like to if you’ll let me.” With a sense of unreality, she pressed him between her breasts.

  “Polly! Please, Polly!”

  Slowly, she rubbed the tip over her nipples. His thighs tensed as if he was afraid of falling. “Is it okay, Xavier? Can I do this?”

  “Because you feel you owe it to me or something?”

  “Because I want to.” She could hardly breathe. “I want a lot more.”

  “But you’ve got the kind of will most men and women would kill for, and you won’t let yourself go.”

  “Maybe. I’d like to bring you pleasure.”

  When his fingers pushed into her hair, she filled her mouth with him, held his distended testicles and used her teeth lightly. His groans drove her to an edge she didn’t have the strength to resist.

  She wanted to feel him inside her.

  But if she did, he’d claim part of her, and she wasn’t ready to let even the smallest bit go yet.

  His hips moved. Polly closed her eyes and tasted the salty beginning of his ejaculation. She’d never wanted to do this before.

  “Don’t stop,” he cried. “Don’t—stop!”

  She didn’t stop. She made her mouth a receptacle for his passion, his drive. His power flowed into her and she took it willingly, and heard his shout of release, and felt the savage spasms rip through him. And she did her best to catch him when he was spent, and slid down until his knees met hers.

  Her best was useless. Xavier Ferrito was a very big man. They toppled sideways. He hauled her into his arms and settled her on top of him, his chest rising and falling hugely.

  Now there seemed to be no words left.

  They rested like that, entwined on the soft gray carpet, damp with perspiration, fighting for breath, their warmth the warmth of one, until he made a deliberate move.

  Purposefully, he rolled her to her back and stared down into her eyes. “I’m going to have all of you, you know.”

  Polly didn’t answer. She couldn’t look away from him.

  “Not tonight. But soon. You’re going to be mine.”

  Still she couldn’t say a word.

  The little white panties were defenseless against his swift tugs. Nasty lifted her legs as if they weighed nothing, and draped her knees over his shoulders.

  Polly kept on watching the changing depths of his eyes.

  “The loveliest thing.” His gaze went to her breasts and he leaned over to suck each nipple to a tormenting peak.

  He slid one thumb into the slippery folds between her thighs, found the straining spot that made her cling to his hair, and quickened the escalating throb of the climax she had to have.

  She tossed. Abandoned. This was the woman she’d always been afraid she could be. The mindless tossing away of herself when she hadn’t yet been a woman didn’t count. It had meant nothing—except as a measure of how little self-esteem she had.

  “I’ve waited for you.” Nasty’s chuckle, deep in his throat, sounded eerie. “How about that. And I didn’t even know you existed.”

  “I’m glad I do,” she said, disembodied now, all nerves and senses and sensations now. “And I’m glad you… Xavier!”

  The convulsion of erotic tissue silenced her. She raised her hips, helpless to stop the gyrations of her body.

  He replaced his thumb with his mouth and tongue.

  The sound that Polly heard, a sound from her own throat, came from far away. A scream. She blushed inside.

  His tongue made a parody of what he longed to do with his penis. Pushing in and out of her, curling around the center of aching pleasure that had become what she was—her entirety.

  He flicked his tongue over the place. Flicked hard. Again and again—and she came apart.

  “I want you,” she said in a tiny voice. “Make love to me, please.”

  “I am making love to you. I’ve been making love to you.”

  “You know what I mean, what I want.”

  “I know.” He held her until the waves of fabulous pressure subsided. “It’s what I want, too, but not tonight, my love.”

  “Xavier?”

  “Not tonight. Not until you tell me you want to make love before I make you forget you don’t want to.”

  Nine

  Not until you tell me you want to make love before I make you forget you don’t want to.

  He’d left a presence behind. Where there had been only the comfortable silence to which Polly was accustomed, an energy remained.

  When Nasty returned, he’d bring Bobby in and make sure they were safe. His words, not hers. He wanted to stay here with them.

  Impossible.

  Polly walked slowly from the foyer back into the great room. How would it be to share all of your life with a man you loved?

  Love?

  Now she was using that word so many tossed around. Often a meaningless word. Sometimes a destructive word. And, occasionally, the dearest word of all.

  The dearest word of all.

  She was falling in love with Xavier Nasty Ferrito, ex-Navy SEAL and enigma. Even the idea that she might never have met him made her stomach fall away.

  If he would give her time—he said he would—and she wou
ld give herself time, this could turn out to be what she’d waited for all her life, without knowing she was waiting at all.

  If he would give her time, and if the “could come to love,” didn’t turn into “it didn’t happen.”

  The intercom buzzed. Polly hurried to snatch up the phone, “Nasty!”

  The line was so scratchy she barely heard him say, “Buzz me in. Forgot my car keys.”

  “Here you go.” The crazy leaping of her heart, the instant dampness on her palms as she hung up, were best left unexamined.

  She did manage to fight the urge to rush out and meet him. Instead she opened her front door and went to locate the keys. Looking at the couch caused a weak rush. She still felt him, tasted him.

  By the time the front door slammed she still hadn’t found the keys. “Did you take them out of your pocket? I don’t see them.”

  The foyer light went out.

  “Nasty?” She went tentatively toward the front door, skirted the wall that separated the living space from the foyer. “Nasty?” The door must have swung shut before he came in.

  Polly went to turn the light back on.

  She never made it.

  An arm closed around her waist and clamped her to someone who stood behind her, someone tall enough to move the top of her hair with his harsh breathing.

  She scuffled to keep her footing and pulled at his hands.

  His fingertips drove into the soft tissue beneath her rib cage. Drove deeper, and deeper.

  “Please,” she said frantically. “Who are you? Let me go.”

  He dragged her backward into the living room and kept on dragging, switching off lamps as he went.

  Polly fought. She jabbed her elbows into him. He grabbed a handful of her hair and twisted, crammed her head forward so hard her chin hit her chest. Bile burned her throat.

  A floor lamp between the piano and the window provided the only remaining light. Polly tried desperately to see the man, but she was no match for his strength. Once again he used her hair to force her head down until she felt her neck would snap.

  He didn’t say anything.

  She screamed.

  The hand that covered her mouth was encased in rubber, thin black rubber gloves. Polly smelled the sickening scent of them and gagged.

  Her assailant jerked her upright and pulled until she lost her balance. He held her with grinding force, crushing her ribs and her breasts. His arms were covered with what looked like rubber, too.