INTIMATE STRANGER

by Donna Sterling

  She knew the moves he couldn't resist—the ones that would speed him along to a quick, hard climax. If both she and he were reasonably discreet, the high-backed booth, the solid wooden railing of the balcony, and the table with its overhanging linen would provide enough cover. No one would see anything more than a couple cuddling.

  "If you're really ready for the show to begin," she murmured in his ear, settling against his shoulder again, "think of this as a drumroll." Reaching into his lap, she brushed her fingers over the column of his arousal, hard and broad beneath the black denim of his jeans. She felt his reaction in the sudden tautness of his body. Lightly she scraped her nails up the length of his erection, surprising a harsh breath from him. Before she'd even reached the top, she felt it swelling beneath her fingers, until it strained behind the zipper of his jeans.

  His breathing grew openmouthed and erratic, and his hand moved in restless paths along her back, sending hot, sensual sparks through her. Determined to maintain strict control and build his anticipation beyond bearing, she tried her best to ignore his touch while she slowly unsnapped his jeans.

  "And now, at long last," she said, her own pulse roaring in her ears, "the curtain opens, center stage." She pulled his zipper slowly down the tight, imposing swell until she'd freed his erection within the softer, giving confines of his white cotton briefs.

  "Jen." He tightened his arm around her and pressed his jaw to her temple. "If this makes you uncomfortable, just say so. You don't have to—"

  "Uncomfortable? Me?" She drew back to gaze into his face, visibly taut with suppressed need while his erection continued to burgeon beneath her hand. The tip now protruded an impressive distance above the waistband of his briefs. Slowly, teasingly, she pushed the elastic band and soft white cotton down, down, until it bunched near the thick, pulsating base. "The excitement has just begun. The actors are about to enter the stage."

  "Actors?"

  She held up her index finger. "The star of our show." He narrowed his gaze at it, as if he didn't quite grasp her meaning.

  Inserting her finger into her mouth, she leisurely sucked on it, then drew it out, wet and gleaming. With deliberate slowness, she reached below the tabletop again. "Don't you feel the plot already thickening?"

  "Oh, yeah," he breathed.

  She smoothed her slick fingertip across the bare, velvety tip of his erection. At the initial contact, every muscle in his body clenched. She then brushed a soothing kiss across his granite-hard jaw … and circled the swollen head of his arousal with her finger, sweeping lower now and then across the sensitive ridges. "What do you think of the choreography so far?"

  He muttered something unintelligible, and as she shifted to grip him with her palm, he grabbed her hand and tightly held it.

  Surprised, she raised her face to his in silent question.

  "You said you wanted excitement," he said in a strained whisper. "Where's the excitement in a one-act play?"

  "That depends entirely on the power of the climax."

  "Oh, I'll agree with you there." He released her hand and shifted his large, lean body lower into the cushioned seat, pulling her down with him, into his arms, until she reclined against him at an angle in the U-shaped booth, eye-level with the tabletop. "I think we need a larger supporting cast, don't you?"

  "Supporting—?"

  He held up two fingers. Two long, tan, virile fingers, held straight and stiff and close together. As he slid them into his mouth, his smoky gaze fixed intently on her, and warmth leaped in her loins. He then drew his fingers out, where they glistened wickedly in the meager light. "Co-stars," he whispered.

  Reaction flared low in her womb.

  "Trev, w-wait." She could barely force the words from her throat. He was pushing this game too far. It was one thing for her to slip a discreet hand beneath the table—which was all she'd really have to do to bring him to climax, and all she'd be willing to do in a public place—but quite another for him to try anything of the kind. She couldn't possibly put herself into such a vulnerable position. "You … you don't have to … I mean, I really don't—"

  "You 'really don't' … what?"

  The expectant demand in his prompting reminded her that if she backed down, he would win the dare. As she searched her mind for a plausible excuse to sidestep the challenge, he drew her back into the game with a kiss—a hot, persuasive melding of mouths, lulling her into distraction, until she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave in to irresistible passion. The kiss grew steadily more urgent, more blatantly sexual.

  Dark excitement gripped her. She never had been able to resist his kisses … or his stirringly intimate touches.

  His hand wended beneath her dress, along her inner thigh. She didn't stop him. Couldn't bear to stop him. In fact, she hooked her leg around his beneath the table, granting him easier access. With a hoarse murmur of male appreciation, he stroked between her legs with the backs of his fingers, up and down in slow, light passes along the silk of her panties, until a tortured moan escaped her.

  He exhaled in a hot torrent against her neck. "Shh."

  While she fought to swallow another moan, his fingers slid beneath the silk crotch of her panties to glide in teasing paths. Fires lit in her blood. Her back arched. Her hips moved. And with a needful groan of his own, he thrust his fingers inside her. Deep. Deeper, in a pumping motion, while his thumb remained outside to stroke, circle and pull.

  Heat coursed through her with dizzying force as pleasure radiated and tension coiled. She was losing control, she knew. Her body writhed of its own volition, and she couldn't stop the sounds from rising in her throat. With every rhythmic slide of his fingers, her need heightened.

  And she realized that he watched her face, his gaze golden and hot, his jaw clenched, his breathing hard.

  "Trev," she whispered frantically, digging her fingers into the hard brawn of his shoulders. "Stop. We've got to stop."

  He paused, but didn't withdraw. "Why?" he asked in a low, drawn-out rasp that brought to mind steamy nights of the most provocative lovemaking. "Tell me why, Jen."

  "Because I … we…" She could barely speak between pants of breath, thunderous heartbeats and maddening moves of his thumb. Edging ever closer to climax, she stifled a gasp and caught his wrist in desperation.

  They stared at each other in hot, tense silence, while somewhere below them an audience applauded.

  Slowly he withdrew his fingers from the throbbing, intimate center of her, the movement itself engendering another small crisis of sensation. "You didn't answer me," he whispered. "Why stop?"

  She knew what he was after, of course. He wanted her to admit that she wasn't comfortable misbehaving like this.

  That she'd lied about all those edgy encounters she'd described in explicit detail. That she wasn't so brazen, after all.

  "If you're afraid of being caught," he said, running his hand in a slow, seductive path down her thigh, "or you're embarrassed to do something like this in a public place, just say so."

  Though his touch played havoc with her senses, she managed to murmur, "I didn't say I was afraid or embarrassed. But … but—" she searched for a leg to stand on "—why should I be the only one getting all the action? Like you said before, how exciting can a one-act play be?"

  "Pretty damn exciting." His hand ventured upward again while he leaned in close to her, nipped at her earlobe and whispered into her ear, "It doesn't bore me at all, Jen, to be inside you. To feel your heat, your tightness. To make you come while I hold you and watch you."

  She groaned in helpless arousal, trapped his advancing hand between her thighs before he could completely undo her, and prevented him from saying another stirring word by kissing him into silence. The kiss only made things worse, though, pushing them both farther along into heady recklessness. His hands surged across the thin fabric of her dress, beneath her blazer, where he caressed her breasts and worked her nipples into hard, aching peaks.

  Lightning spears of sensation spiked down to
sizzle within her feminine core. How easy it would be to surrender to passion!

  A roar of laughter from the audience brought her back to her senses. This was no place to indulge in passion. Though only their heads could be seen by anyone in the room below, neither he nor she had been watching out for waitresses or anyone else who might climb the stairway. Shaken by her lapse, she broke from his kiss, caught his hands at her breasts and laced her fingers through his to hold him securely captive.

  "You're an exciting man, Trev Montgomery," she said in a shaky, breathy murmur. "I don't need the risk factor to liven things up with you. What do you say we go find ourselves a bed?" The idea sounded nothing less than brilliant to her.

  He drew back slightly, his jaw clenched, and stared at her. Ah, the turmoil in that stare! Temptation reigned, strong and hot, but resistance held its ground. He hadn't proved his point, and that point seemed to have become something of an obsession with him.

  "What's wrong, Jen?" A crooked smile deepened the groove beside his mouth, but didn't lighten the intensity of his gaze. "Chicken?"

  Never had the man annoyed her more! But then, they'd always been good at pushing each other's buttons. Pulling her hands away from his, she glared at him. "No, I'm not 'chicken.' But I'm not stupid, either. Why do you think I haven't been arrested, like most of the other working girls I know? Because I'm cautious."

  "Like, doing johns on elevators?"

  "He kept his finger on the close button!"

  "Why don't you just admit you didn't do any of those things—that you wouldn't do any of those things—and if you've ever sold yourself to anyone but me, you despised every minute of it."

  Oh, this would never do. He was climbing up onto his white steed again, decked out in shining armor, ready to charge to her rescue whether she wanted him to or not. "Find us an elevator," she challenged, "and we'll see who calls it quits first."

  "I don't intend to hold an elevator button while I have you in my arms." His gaze burned into hers. "I've got better things to do with my fingers."

  A traitorous wave of heat flushed through her at that thought, and she averted her head, unsure if the darkness would prevent him from noticing the flush. He might read it as embarrassment, which would go a long way toward proving his case. Not that he would stop at that. He clearly intended to force an admission from her that she wasn't as uninhibited as she'd let on.

  He caught her chin and tipped her face to his. "Come on, Jen. You know we don't need an elevator. The waitress said she wouldn't bother us during the show, and no one from the ground floor can see what's going on beneath this table. It's dark. We're alone. And we've got everything we need, right here. You and me—" he reached into his back pocket and tossed a small foil pack on the table "—and necessities."

  She gaped at the packet. A condom. Did he really think they could engage in an activity that required a condom—here and now?

  "Careful. You're looking a little shocked. Not at all like the gal who danced on the air-hockey table to the tune of 'Cherry Pie.'"

  Jennifer met his gaze and realized that the bluff had come down to this moment. She could refuse him, and let him believe that he had found the limit to her sexual daring—which he would take to mean she'd lied about her other illicit activities. Or she could play along and find the limit to his sexual daring. Just because he'd initiated a little hanky-panky under a dimly lit, secluded table didn't mean he would actually engage in intercourse at a booth in a restaurant full of people. She didn't believe he would.

  "While I suit up," he murmured, retrieving the foil packet from the table and plying her with a deliberately suggestive gaze, "why don't you take off those pretty red panties of yours? Unless you'd rather wait for my help."

  No one but Trev Montgomery had the power to so arouse her ire and her keen sensuality at the same time.

  Feeling hot, charged, and so brilliantly alive that she swore pure adrenaline pumped through her veins, she reached both hands beneath her skirt and hooked her fingers into the lacy side bands of her panties. With a few discreet wriggles and tugs, she worked the flimsy silk down her legs, slipped off her strappy high heels and bent to retrieve her underwear from around her ankles. She then sat up and flourished the panties for his private viewing like a red silk victory flag. She barely refrained from proclaiming, Check, and checkmate.

  A slight smile curled his mouth, but his eyes grew darker and hotter as his gaze flickered down her body, reminding her that she sat naked beneath her sheer dress, rendered decent only by a thigh-length blazer. And he'd already touched her intimately; her blood still rushed from his bold ministrations beneath her skirt.

  He took the panties from her, tossed them onto the seat beside him, crinkled up the empty foil packet and dropped it into an ashtray. Realizing the implication of that empty packet, Jennifer glanced toward his lower body. The tails of his black shirt and shadows of the tablecloth prevented her from seeing much. Had he put the condom on? Did he really intend to make use of it?

  He slid his arm around her waist and drew her nearer. Her pulse quickened. Her blood rushed. Surely he'd call a stop to this craziness. But the heat in his stare and the set of his jaw suddenly gave her doubts. "Draw your legs up beneath you," he uttered tersely.

  Surprised by the instruction, she curled her legs beneath her on the cushioned seat.

  "Now put your arms around my neck."

  Again she obeyed, raising up on her knees to comply. Nearly eye-level with him, she searched his gaze for signs that he would soon give up the game—cry uncle—but the heat pulsating between them was so intense that she soon lost sight of her purpose.

  "Swing your knee across my lap," he ordered, sounding gruff and breathless.

  Thoroughly breathless herself, she slid her knee across his muscle-hard thighs to position it on the other side of him. As she straddled his lap, his strong, large hands splayed across her hips and guided her into place. He then tugged at her skirt and blazer to demurely cover her—at least, as far as any potential onlooker could see.

  She, however, remained hotly aware of their partial nudity—locked against him in the tight confines between the seat and table, her pliant curves molding to his well-honed muscles, her bare femininity cradling his hard, broad, pulsing erection. Sexual need, for so long denied, now flamed within her. Dizzy, she tightened her arms around his strong neck and inhaled the virile, provocative scent of his hair and skin—the fragrance she always associated with lovemaking.

  "Now kiss me," he murmured, his shining gaze shifting with hers, "and we'll get down to business."

  Business. The word had never stirred her before. It did now. With a surge of carnal desire, she closed her eyes and angled her mouth across his.

  But as their lips touched, he groaned, stiffened and pulled back from her. Her lashes fluttered open in surprise. Was he backing down, calling it quits, throwing in the towel? She wasn't sure if she was glad at that prospect, or keenly, blindly, madly disappointed.

  "The only way this isn't going to happen, Jen," he growled, clearly frustrated by her obstinacy in going this far, yet undeniably aroused, and so sinfully handsome it almost hurt to look at him, "is if you tell me you want to stop."

  She pointedly didn't say a word.

  With a fierce rush of breath and a gaze that threatened to consume her, he slid lower into the seat, wedged a hand between their bodies and touched her. Probed her. Entered her. She gasped at the initial intrusion, arched her back, dug her fingers into the sinew of his shoulders.

  He rose again to face her, eye to eye, locking her into close visual contact—a ruthless thing for him to do at a time like this, when her emotions ran so high and her resistance so low. But she couldn't, for the life of her, look away. With slow, subtle gyrations, he drove his immense hardness into her.

  The shock of sensation rendered them both still and silent, their eyes wide, their breathing suspended.

  Trev knew then that he had well and truly lost his mind. He was making love in
public, and to a woman he'd sworn not to touch. Worse, though, was the emotion pulsing through him. He was savagely elated to be inside her again. What she'd done or hadn't done paled in importance. Not even their surroundings mattered.

  The very intensity of the reaction set off alarms in his head. "What are you doing to me, Jen?" His voice sounded hoarse and desperate to his own ears. "I want you too damn much." As he said it, he pushed deeper into her tight, welcoming heat.

  She arched and uttered a cry.

  Digging his fingers through her upswept hair, he pulled her to him. "Shh."

  Nodding frantically, she pressed her face to his neck, but her body writhed, and her internal muscles clenched him. He thought he might die of the pleasure.

  Through a heated, sensual haze, he heard her tremulous whisper. "You want me only because of her. Diana."

  The words made no sense. Or maybe he just couldn't think beyond the blinding desire. He rocked into her again, keeping the motion as minimal as possible. The move, though slight, sent Shockwaves of sensation through him. When he was able to speak again, he swore, "Diana has nothing to do with me wanting you." And he realized it was true. He hadn't been thinking of Diana at all. Only Jen.

  "No. Shh. It's okay." She caught his face between her palms and kissed him—once, twice … then slower and deeper … courting the flames within him until they leaped and smoldered, and his hardness surged inside her.

  He fought to contain the intensity streaming from his loins and the dizzying heat rushing to his head. He had to remember where they were, and the risk of being caught. He realized then how impossible it would be to hide what they were doing if someone climbed those stairs. Her face was too expressive, her movements too sensuous.

  He longed to lay her down or brace her against a wall, and drive wildly into her, again and again.