by Nikki Sloane
Her fingers splayed out on her thigh, curled into a soft fist, and her breath went shallow. Nervous.
“Can I ask why you agreed to let me drive you home,” I said casually, “if I make you uncomfortable?”
“I don’t know. Why did you offer? It seemed like a strange thing to do.”
“It was.” I flipped the wipers on and watched as they brushed the loose snow from the windshield.
“You didn’t answer the question.” Her voice was just louder than the swipe of the rubber against glass.
“You didn’t answer mine, either.” She was lit by the soft light of my dash, casting shadows across her angular face. Goddamn, she was pretty.
M touched her bruised cheek, wincing slightly.
“I . . . think you’re interesting.”
My pulse jumped at the admission. “Yeah? Maybe I think the same of you.” I wrapped my fingers around the gear shift between us, putting my hand closer to her body, and I could feel heat radiating from her. “Where are we going, M?”
“Lincoln Park.”
The Porsche slipped out of the alleyway, snow growling beneath my tires. “Where do you go to school?”
“Loyola, for my MBA.” After a few moments of quiet, she continued, “How do you like owning your own business?”
“It’s great. Busy, though.”
“I’m sure.”
The wipers continued their slow, slick slide over the glass, generating the only sound between us. I stared at the glowing taillights ahead of me. In downtown Chicago you’ll hit traffic at any hour, any day of the week, even Thursday at one in the morning. Technically Friday. And the snow didn’t help, either.
“I haven’t ever done this before,” she said.
“Done what? Ridden in a Porsche?”
She paused. “Gone home from a bar with a stranger.”
Is that where she saw this going? Was she going to invite me in when we arrived? “It’s going to be a long drive,” I said. “We don’t have to be strangers, Martha.”
“Martha?” Her laugh was light and warm. “You honestly think that’s my name?”
“You could give me a hint.”
She leaned back, relaxing into the seat. “Okay, here’s your hint. You’re not even in the ballpark. How do we get to know each other? Trivia questions? Or should we play ‘would you rather’?”
Her teasing tone got me to smile. “Questions should work. Favorite sex position, go.”
Her response was silence. I glanced over, catching the stunned expression on her face. I liked her off-balance and it only served her right, since she had been good at doing it to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I know you won’t answer any questions about your identity, so I chose to start there, with something fun.”
More silence. She wasn’t going to answer? I pressed too hard on the brake when the realization dawned on me.
“Don’t fucking tell me a beautiful girl like you is saving herself for marriage.” My stomach turned. Didn’t she realize how short life was? All the pleasure she could be missing out on?
“No, I’m not a virgin,” she said. “I appreciate the compliment, but the profanity, not so much.”
There was no helping the grin that tugged across my face. “Did I offend you, little girl, with my adult language?”
“Hardly.”
“Then, quit stalling and tell me your favorite position.”
“Wow, you’re ridiculous.”
I wanted to push her buttons. She’d seemed so confident in my office, and now she was slowly unraveling. “Let me guess,” I said. “Him on top.”
Her head turned away so she could stare out the passenger window. “Sure, yeah. You got me.”
Everything deflated. This wasn’t as fun as I had hoped it would be, and now the silence was tense and uncomfortable, her posture stiff. I’d fucked it all up. “Hey, forget it, I’m sorry—”
“I like when he’s behind me.”
Her soft, almost guilty voice was a caress of leather cat o’nines across trembling skin. It got me hot. “Oh, yeah? Why?”
She paused, as if unsure whether to continue. “I like . . . when he’s in charge.”
My grip tightened on the wheel. “Do you? You like it when he’s got his hands on your waist, fucking you?” She squirmed, so of course I had to go all the way to find her limit. “Or maybe,” I continued, “you like one hand wrapped around your throat and the other touching your pussy, as he’s slamming his cock inside you.”
“Oh my God.” Her face locked up in shock.
“That’s how I like it.”
I’d stuck the visual in her brain, and wondered if she was imagining me as the man with his hand wrapped around her delicate neck, the other stirring circles between her legs and making her moan while I slid my cock deep inside. She swallowed so hard I could hear it.
But my plan turned out to be a mistake, because now I was getting hard. I hadn’t touched her. She hadn’t taken off any clothes—in fact, she’d put her large coat on which criminally hid her figure. And yet my dick was swelling annoyingly against the fly of my pants.
I watched men worship the naked bodies of beautiful women every Friday and Saturday night at my blindfold club, using their mouths, their hands, their cocks . . . but I’d become desensitized. The scenes on the security footage did little to arouse anymore. But this girl with the shocked expression? She started a burn inside me and brought me to life. Dangerous and thrilling.
“Who talks like that to a stranger?” she asked breathlessly, although it seemed rhetorical. “Do you want me to jump from your moving car?”
“We both know you’re not going to do that.”
“Oh, yeah?” she snapped. “What makes you so sure?”
I laughed. “Because I saw your reaction, how your knees squeezed together, and your cheeks flashed red. It turned you on, little girl.”
“Don’t call me that.”
It wasn’t a denial. “Give me something else to call you,” I said. “Like your name.”
“It’s Martha,” she grumbled.
“Are you some sort of celebrity? Is that why you won’t tell me?”
She sighed. “At this point I’m not telling you my name just because it bothers you.”
The snow was getting heavier as I crawled onto Lake Shore Drive, but traffic was beginning to ease. “You like bothering me?” I asked.
“Perhaps.”
I caught her glance for a fraction of a moment, and the gleam in her eye only made the situation in my pants fucking worse.
“Are you originally from Chicago?” she asked.
“Yes and no. I was born here, but I lived in Tennessee for a while, before coming back. And you?”
Her expression went serious. “Uh-uh. Pass.”
Jesus Christ, she wasn’t going to answer that? I yo-yoed between interest and irritation. Her withholding information was cute only for so long. “Fine. Why are you going for your MBA?”
“Because my family . . . wait, no. Pass.”
“Pass?” I wanted to tell her to stop being a brat or I’d pull the car over, yank her out of her seat and into my lap so I could discipline her appropriately. I might have turned her on with some filthy talk, but aggressive actions were a whole different story. “Maybe we should just listen to some music.”
My finger clicked over the radio controls on the steering wheel, but then her small hand closed around mine. Hers was icy cold, and yet burned against my skin.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I swear I’m not trying to be pain. What else do you want to know? My favorite color is blue. I fell off a dock when I was six years old and almost drowned, and now I have an abnormal fear of seaweed. Favorite ice cream? Mint chocolate chip.”
My gaze went from the hand clasping mine on the wheel over to her hopeful expression.
“Better?” she asked.
“I didn’t give you permission to touch me.” My voice was guarded.
There was the qui
et sound of her sucking in a breath, and she tried to draw away. No. She’d started it. I would press further, until I found out where this thing between us was headed.
“But since you did,” I continued, “this goes here.” My fingers wrapped around her wrist and tugged her hand down, setting it on my thigh. Not on top of my dick, which was throbbing, but not too far from it, either.
It was a test. She’d touched me in a friendly gesture, but I could read beneath the action. M was curious, but nervous.
“Tell me a secret,” I demanded.
A long moment passed before she let out the breath she’d been holding. “I’ve lived kind of a sheltered life. Until last month, my parents were really involved, and that made it hard to do what I wanted. Tonight I decided to do things I wouldn’t normally.”
“Such as going home with a stranger.”
Her light, tentative squeeze on my leg sent every drop of blood in my body surging south of my belt, and I clenched my teeth. Jesus Fucking Christ, control yourself. “What happened last month?”
“A lot of stuff. My . . . mom moved out.” Her voice fell low as her hand inched upward. “And I broke up with my boyfriend.”
“How long were you together?”
“Two very long years.”
So her interest wasn’t so much in me personally, as it was in a little rebound action. Fine with me. The longest relationship I’d had? Maybe two months. I didn’t date because nothing lasted forever.
“So now you’re off the leash and out from under your parents’ scrutiny, and you came to my club looking for some fun.” I took her lack of an answer as agreement. “Did you find it?”
The hand slipped further along the length of my thigh so it brushed just against my hard-on, her movement hesitant. “Maybe,” she said in a shaky voice. “You tell me.”
I let out half a laugh. She was trying so hard to be bold. “If you’re going to touch me, honey, do it for real.” I repositioned her hand. “Feel how hard I am? You did that.”
She gasped. “Don’t call me honey.” Her scolding was whisper quiet.
Her fingers flexed, but once again, she didn’t retreat. She wasn’t backing down. Her hand brushed lightly, caressing me.
“Fuck, touch me, M.” I guided her, dragging her hand down every goddamn inch, pressing her palm hard against me. I spun the wheel, turning off of the expressway.
“Where are you—?”
There was a parking lot just one block down, and I maneuvered through the slush up to the automatic ticket stand. Snow battered me momentarily as I rolled down the window, stabbed the button, and yanked the ticket out of the feeder. The gate lifted and I pulled in.
“Joseph.” There was a tremor in her voice that I ignored, guiding the car under the bridge of the El track that ran over the lot, keeping us secluded from the one lonely security light. I parked in the shadows, sandwiching my car between two that were coated in ice, as if they’d been there a while. The snow was blowing sideways, and we’d be hidden in no time.
Not that it mattered; not a soul was around.
I turned off my headlights and gave her my full attention. No, not true. She’d had it the moment I’d spied her on the dance floor of my club.
“What’s going on?” Her cautious look was a warning, like she no longer felt all that safe.
“I can’t focus on driving and what you’re doing at the same time. This is what I want to focus on, don’t you? What would you normally do?” Again I guided her hand to massage me.
Stuttered breath dragged through her parted lips as she feathered a single stroke over my zipper and the flesh beneath.
“Yeah,” I encouraged. “Like that.”
Her next stroke was more confident and I choked back a groan. The girl’s effect on me was insane.
The interior of my Porsche wasn’t built for comfortable fucking, if that was where this was headed, but I didn’t care about comfort now. There was only the shocking need inside me. I wanted to extinguish it by sinking my cock so far inside M she’d forget everything else. So neither one of us would know her name.
The power seat slid back as far as it would go while she continued her teasing. “Take off your coat,” I commanded.
Her delicate hands abandoned me to undo the belt at her waist, then release the buttons one by one, her gaze stuck to me like she couldn’t look anywhere else. When her coat was off, I held out my hand.
“Climb over the console and get in my lap.”
She stared at my hand like she was making a choice, even though we both knew she’d already made it. “Is there enough space for me?”
“You mean because of my enormous cock?” I teased. “Get over here and finish what you started.”
I’d hoped the joke would break some of her tension, and it seemed to work. She put a hand on my shoulder, and after some maneuvering, she had a knee on either side of the driver’s seat, the steering wheel just a few inches from her ass. I tipped my head to look up at her, pushing back the blonde hair that tumbled into my face, and set one hand on her hip, urging her to settle down on me.
“Are you going to kiss me?” she asked.
I gave her a smirk. “Do you want me to kiss you?”
“I haven’t kissed anyone new in a long time.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
Her hips shifted down, setting her weight on my erection in a pleasurable and torturous way. “Yes,” she said. “I want you to kiss me.”
“All right,” I said, thrilled with not just her request, but how her choked voice made it sound like a plea. Nothing compared to the sound of a woman begging. I tangled my hand in her hair and tugged her close.
Couldn’t just go and do it, though. I teased, letting my lips hover over hers, enjoying the soft rasp of her hurried breathing. I skated my mouth over her cheek, sifting my hands through her soft hair that smelled really fucking good. A tremble built inside her, forcing her to vibrate.
She wasn’t cold. I’d made her take off her jacket, but I also had the heat on high, and the windows were already fogged. Her shudder was in anticipation, and I savored it for one final moment more before I captured her lips with mine.
Holy shit.
chapter
THREE
NOEMI
Joseph Monsato reeked of confidence, power, and authority. I’d spent my life around men like him, so I knew it in an instant, but his power was different than what I was used to. Persuasive and . . . sexual. He wasn’t a model, but his body sold sex and sin, and I’d never seen a more fascinating creature. I was thrilled to let my responsible self fall under his spell.
He was a stranger, and yet I sat in his lap, making out with him in the driver’s seat of his ridiculous Porsche. He held me steady with a firm grip on my jaw, while I was adrift from what his incredible mouth was doing to mine.
Ross, my selfish ex, in two years had never kissed me the way Joseph was doing now. Confident and skilled. Like an artist honing his craft, Joseph painted a new sensation with each brush of his lips or caress of his tongue. He didn’t ask permission. No, this man took what he wanted. He possessed only my mouth, but it felt like my entire body was under his command.
He’d ordered me to take off my coat and get in his lap, and I’d done it. I’d made the decision tonight to do the opposite of anything normal, sensible Noemi would do. Get in the car with a beautiful, strange man I’d met five minutes before? Cautious Noemi wouldn’t dream of it. This wild version of myself not only got into the car, but she flirted.
I wasn’t sure how much credit to give myself about hitting on him. Even when I made a move, he was pushing me further, directing my actions. Weirdly, I’d liked it. Following his orders made it easier to throw caution aside.
His lips pressed against mine, firm and demanding, which made sense. Every inch of Joseph was demanding. He wasn’t the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen, but he was beautiful. Tall and lean, as if efficient, compact muscle stretched on his narrow frame. Striking eyes bene
ath dark eyebrows, a long, straight nose, and a sexy mouth. The things that tumbled out of it were shocking, but I couldn’t deny those dirty words played a factor in his overall appeal.
His hand on my jaw drifted to my shoulder, and then his fingers curled so he could drag his nails lightly down my arm, all the while kissing me. His mouth was addictive with its wicked, teasing movements. He drew my bottom lip in and bit down gently, forcing a startled noise from me. I sounded as if I needed air, panting and gasping like I was drowning on dry land. I was.
I was drowning in his kiss.
My hands moved independent of thought, pushing his jacket open and I set my palms flat on his chest. Beneath his dress shirt, I could feel the hard muscle and the rapid thump of his heartbeat, which was beating only half as fast as mine.
“Are you warm enough?” he murmured into the side of my neck.
“I’m fine.” I was lying. I was going to rattle apart. I both did and didn’t want his hands to touch me everywhere.
“You’re shivering,” he said.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, stronger. I swallowed, although my mouth was dry, and closed my eyes when he sucked on my neck. The sensation surged through my center and the trembling intensified. Oh, God. I fisted his shirt in my hands and arched my back, shoving my breasts in his face.
He continued his wordless taunting. Joseph’s hands roamed over my thighs, up my back, cupping my neck, but never strayed to where I made it obvious I wanted them.
“Are you going to touch me, old man?” I’d hoped it would irritate him like his little girl comments irritated me, but he chuckled.
“Do you want me to touch you?” he asked. “Then say it.”
Couldn’t he just take control? I’d fallen into a pattern with Ross not to speak unless I specifically didn’t like something.
“I . . . want you to touch me.”
“Where?”
The sound of frustration slipped out before I could gag it. Joseph pulled back from me, his gaze focused and intense.
“If I could read your mind,” he said, “I’d have done it. I like communication, M. Tell me where you want me to put my fucking hands.”