by Alyssa Cole
He let out a harsh breath. “I do know that Salomeh’s dance could bring any man to his knees, ensuring she got whatever she wanted.”
Her hands gripped his shoulders as they swayed. He wondered if the people around them could possibly tell she was so wet for him that she was soaking through his jeans as she worked herself on his thigh. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, and he could feel the hitch in her breath when he settled her more firmly against his leg, desperate to make her come and not caring if it was in the middle of a crowd.
“I’m not interested in your head on a platter, at the moment. That would be a buzzkill, don’t you think?” she asked before she worked her way slowly down his body and then back up again.
Julian stopped dancing and used his fingertips to raise her chin so she looked him full in the face. “What do you want, then, Salomeh?”
For a second, and only a second, panic flashed in her eyes. But then she smiled her new, mischievous smile before leaning up close to his ear.
“I want you,” she said, her voice sending a shot of desire straight to his core.
Julian ducked his head and brushed his lips over hers. Despite the fact that his mouth barely grazed hers, a shock jolted through his body. There was something potent, electrifying, in the way her mouth molded to his, the floral taste of elderberry mixed with her own heady flavor.
Her hands came between them, and he thought she would push him away, but instead she grasped at his shirt, pulling him closer. He deepened the pressure of the kiss, his lips clinging to hers greedily. He had to willfully gentle himself when her tongue flicked at the seam of his lips. Their tongues finally touched, first softly exploring and then fighting for supremacy.
One part of him screamed, Isn’t this the opposite of being professional? But most of his senses were occupied with how perfectly Salomeh fit in his arms. Nothing had felt this good, this real for as long as he could remember, and he intended to savor it. He gentled the kiss, no longer plundering her lips with his, but sipping, seducing. He took his time, kissing her slowly and thoroughly as he cradled her against him. He licked at her plump bottom lip, and nipped it lightly with his teeth. The music drowned out Salomeh’s moan, but the sound reverberated in her chest and her hips bucked beneath his palms.
He ran his hands down her arms soothingly as he resumed swaying to the music. His heartbeat kept pace with the song’s speedy backing drums, and his erection pulsed against her stomach. She didn’t pull away. Instead she seemed to focus the friction of their dancing to that specific area.
Julian’s voice was husky when he finally spoke. “Salomeh, I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but—”
“Let’s go,” she said, her voice nearly as thick with need as his.
Salomeh turned to search the crowd for Marta, who was dancing with a tall Asian woman, possibly more suggestively than Julian had been with Salomeh. Salomeh managed to catch Marta’s eye and held her thumb and pinkie up to her ear, signaling that she would call her. Marta smiled brilliantly before turning her attention back to her dance partner.
Julian already had his hand outstretched and waiting when she turned back to him, and she took it without hesitation as if they had been executing the maneuver for years.
“Lead the way,” she said.
Chapter Seven
Salomeh couldn’t breathe. Julian had her pressed against the elevator bank, crushing his mouth over hers and angling his hips forward, heedless of who watched. Lodged between the cinder block wall and the rival hardness in Julian’s jeans, Salomeh didn’t care much either. He felt so good. Everything about him was strong and sexy and enticing, and he didn’t treat her like a pedo or like a fragile flower. He was exactly what she needed right now.
She had intended to have fun chatting with him and then call it a night. Somewhere along the line that intention had upgraded into dancing her blues away with him, and then calling it a night, and now here she was. There was something so damned attractive about the man. He was hot, of course, but he was also smart and funny, and he laughed at her jokes without thinking she was a dork. Something about him rekindled the fire within that the past few weeks had threatened to douse permanently, which was as exciting as it was frightening. Part of her wished it was only a physical attraction. Julian seemed like the kind of man a woman could easily fall in love with.
She pushed the thoughts out of her mind, chiding herself for even thinking that particular four-letter word when there so many others presenting themselves at this very moment. Kiss. Lick. Fuck.
Salomeh captured his lower lip between her teeth, biting down gently just to see if he would let her. His hands moved from the wall at either side of her head to her face, cradling it gently as he kissed her with barely restrained fervor.
“You taste so good,” he groaned into her mouth. “I’ve been dying to know how you taste, everywhere.”
Other men had tried talking dirty to her, but it usually resulted in her laughing or telling them to cut it out. But it was different with Julian. She could suddenly see the allure of the gamekeeper in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. From the right man, a few naughty words could have almost as much effect as the actions they implied. She was fairly certain if Julian whispered the word “cunt” to her, she would come on the spot.
“You’ve only known me for a few hours, Julian,” she teased, slipping her hands under his shirt to feel his warm skin. “Are you that impatient?”
“You have no idea,” he said, before fusing his lips to hers again.
His fingertips traced a path down her neck and over her collarbone to cup her breasts, thumbs flicking at her nipples through the material of her dress. Salomeh gasped out a breath as she arched into his touch. His lips were on her neck now, gently nipping as his hands continued their ministrations.
Sensations overwhelmed Salomeh, the warmth at her sex diffusing slowly through her body, gaining momentum as it spread.
“The elevator needs to get here now,” she gasped, clutching at his wrists as he tweaked her hardened peaks between thumb and index finger.
“This elevator can take its time,” he whispered.
With a few deft steps, he maneuvered her around to the other side of the elevator bank, which was shrouded in shadows and facing an empty stretch of rooftop. The sounds of the party still surrounded them, but they were hidden from view.
“Should we take the stairs?” she asked, but she had already seen the way his eyes were dark with lust, and she knew hers probably looked the same. Every part of her body was screaming for Julian’s touch in a way she had never experienced before. She’d felt desire and infatuation, but this was something entirely different.
He grinned at her and shook his head in answer to her question, and her belly flipped in anticipation.
“Nope. The stairs are too busy, and no one else is allowed to see these,” he murmured as he undid the knot on her halter top. The panels covering her breasts released, and they tumbled free, exposed in the night air. She instinctively moved to cover them, but he pinned her wrists above her head with one hand. His hold wasn’t hard enough to restrain her, just to let her know what he wished of her. She didn’t resist, couldn’t resist, when the way he was looking at her was making her knees wobble. Goose bumps rose on her skin, but not from cold. She was all heat beneath his assessing gaze.
“You’re more beautiful than I could have imagined,” he said as he leaned in.
Salomeh mused that it was an odd thing to say to someone you’d just met, but then he was moving his mouth over her breast, laving the sensitive skin roughly and then sucking its hard peak into his mouth, capturing it tightly between his teeth. His tongue flicked relentlessly, and Salomeh was unable to think of anything but the way her body responded to his touch.
“Julian!” she cried out, her tone half pleasure, half alarm. She wasn’t sure she would be able to keep her voice at a whisper. She felt him smile against her breast, and then his free hand was on the move, fumbling at the hem of her dre
ss before cupping her mound. He stroked her lightly at first, and she rocked against his hand to show him she needed more from him. He didn’t disappoint, pressing down harder on her clit with two thick fingers as his tongue still lavished attention on her breasts.
Her body pulled away from the wall, forced into motion by the exquisite sensation spiraling through her, but he still held her wrists above her head, which turned her on even more. Salomeh allowed herself to submit to the feelings coursing through her, her body thrashing freely. She was safe in the knowledge that Julian had her. He wouldn’t let her fall.
“I need more, Julian,” she demanded. Her body seemed overly sensitive to everything: the noise of people mingling nearby as she let Julian have his way with her, the air streaming over her damp nipples. Her nerves were frayed with need, and everything made her hotter and wetter, every touch from Julian made her greedier.
“I’ll give you more,” he whispered as his hand stilled between her legs. “I’ll give you everything.”
He slid one thick finger into her quivering channel, and then another, twisting them as he pistoned them in and out. The initial friction shocked a cry out of her, and then she was gone, hips gyrating to drive him deeper, fucking his hand in the cool summer night as if she’d go mad if she did otherwise. Her entire being was focused on the overwhelming sensation that Julian was stroking into being with his talented fingers. Thrilling desire illuminated her from within, igniting her like an M80 as her orgasm burst through her. Her head dropped back and her mouth opened in a wail as innumerable frissons of pleasure rocketed through her body.
Julian caught her cries with his mouth, swallowing the sounds of her release as his lips captured hers in an all-consuming kiss.
He released her wrists, and Salomeh draped her arms around him, her body still trembling with the aftershocks of her climax. She didn’t trust her legs to hold her up, and his body felt good against hers. Right. Julian’s hard member pressed against her stomach, and despite the fact she was still coming down from his orgasm, her pussy clenched with need.
Salomeh didn’t know what to say. She had just opened herself completely to this stranger, in a way she had never imagined. What could that mean?
He looked lost too, but in a different way. His eyes were warm but hungry, as if he were barely restraining himself from taking her right then and there.
Salomeh was considering the ramifications of letting him do just that when the sound of a throat being cleared loudly and judgmentally triggered her common sense. A woman had approached from the side of the elevator bank and then turned back around with a self-righteous shake of her head.
Cockblocker.
Salomeh had often reprimanded her students for using the word, but it seemed appropriate given the current situation.
The interruption didn’t stop the small shudder of pleasure that jittered through her body when Julian retied her halter top, his fingers gliding over the nape of her neck. An electronic ding announced that the elevator had finally arrived. Of course, they had to share it with the obviously embarrassed woman who had caught the tail end of their rendezvous. Julian held Salomeh’s hand in the awkward silence, the motion sweet compared to the passionate encounter they’d just shared. His eyes met hers in the reflective surface of the door, and he looked lustful and sexy and sheepish all at once.
The silence continued as they padded down the hallway. The cinderblock walls and concrete floor retained from the building’s tenure as a warehouse provided an atmosphere that Salomeh had described to Marta as “cellblock-six chic.” For a second, she thought of sharing her critique with Julian, but decided against it. Despite the fact that he had just finger fucked her on the roof, she didn’t know the little things about him, like his taste in interior design or whether he would bristle at a prison joke. Salomeh was still having a moment of levity when they stepped into his apartment. She was going one hundred miles an hour in what was usually, for her, a school zone. She wanted him, more than she had wanted anyone, but some of her boldness had abandoned her.
She gently removed her hand from his under the pretext of exploring his digs, but she mostly wanted some space to refortify her nerve. The apartment was small compared to hers, but the high ceilings and large windows created an illusion of spaciousness. It was a corner apartment, and one of the windows wrapped around the right and front side of it, providing an unimpeded view of the neighborhood. The living room shared its space with a Pullman kitchen; to her left was a door she guessed led to the bedroom.
“If your business keeps you here longer than a couple of weeks, you might want to invest in an interior decorator,” she said as she gestured at the bone-white walls and modern, impersonal furniture.
His style philosophy could aptly be described as minimalist. She would have asked if he had renounced all worldly goods if not for a few framed photographs that were hung in the living room of the apartment. There were pictures of clear blue seas lapping against stony cliffs, of children in brightly colored garments, of people gathered together at festivities. One of the photos showed a youth holding a red flag emblazoned with what looked to be some kind of double-headed dragon. It reminded her of the heraldic imagery found in medieval tales.
“Did you take these?” Salomeh asked. She leaned closer to examine the youth holding the flag, disappointed to find that it wasn’t him. She wondered what he had looked like when he was young. Had he always been this handsome, or had he been pudgy with thick glasses like her?
“A couple of them I took when I was a kid. I purchased the others,” Julian said as he came up behind her.
“Is that the Albanian flag in this picture?” she asked when he didn’t say anything further. “That dragon looks pretty badass, much cooler than the old stars and bars.”
“It’s a shqipe, an eagle. It’s our national symbol,” he said. “When I was a kid, all the gangsters used to get them tattooed on their chest, and I told my mom that as soon as I was old enough, I would get one too.”
“Just what every mother wants to hear,” Salomeh said jokingly. “What did she say to that?”
Julian took a step closer but still didn’t touch her.
“She said a good man didn’t need the symbol branded on his body to remind him to be watchful and virtuous. ‘A real Albanian already has an eagle’s heart,’ she told me.”
Salomeh heard the longing in his voice, the adoration for a woman who would never share her wisdom with him again.
“I take it you don’t have a giant shqipe hidden under your shirt,” she quipped, trying to put him at ease.
“You’ll have to find out for yourself, Salomeh,” he said, his voice low and silken. The seductive promise in his words made her core tremble with need.
She tensed in anticipation, waiting for him to touch her, to hold her as he had when they danced, but he still kept a small space between them. “How long has it been since you’ve been home?” she asked, the heat of his presence tingling all along her back like an eclipse that could be felt instead of seen. Salomeh had wanted a moment to catch her breath, but now her entire body strained for him to make contact.
“Over fifteen years,” he said, running his hands over her bare shoulders and down her arms, pulling with the slightest pressure so she leaned into him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her, and the sigh she released was part contentment and part sadness at the longing in his words. He turned with her in his arms so they faced the window instead of the pictures.
“A long time,” she said, resting her hands on his forearms. She felt the raised burns under her palms and wondered at what pain lay beneath his charming façade.
“Too long,” he agreed benignly. His heart beat at a steady pace against her back, but Salomeh could discern his tension in his body. It was different from the strained lust that had radiated from him on the roof; there was something vulnerable in his hold on her, as if he needed something from her.
She was curious, and this strange and immediate kinship she
shared with him demanded that she know what caused him such pain. It was hypocritical—she would never tell him about Yelena or the man named Bardhyn who had ruined her life—but she decided to ask her question anyway.
“Why haven’t you been back?” He tightened his arms around her but didn’t speak. Eventually his head dipped down, his hair brushing against her ear before the warmth of his mouth pressed into her neck.
“There’s nothing to go back to,” he said against her skin, and Salomeh felt confusing pleasure at the sensation of his breath on her neck and dismay at the pain in his voice. Pain and loneliness. In the darkness of his apartment, it seemed as if she were standing with a different Julian, that the comedian she had met at the party had been replaced with his tragic shadow.
Her own loss began to work its way to the forefront of her mind, but she desperately pushed the thoughts away. She wouldn’t ruin this one oasis of goodness by wallowing in her past or forcing Julian to relive his.
She turned in his arms to face him, reached to push dark locks away from his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, standing on tiptoe to place a soft kiss on his lips. “Let’s pretend there’s nothing but tonight. No past, no bad memories.”
“There are several prescription drugs that can make that fantasy a reality,” he said. Suddenly he was the same smiling Julian from the roof, but he brought his mouth down over hers with an urgency that belied his tone. His grip on her became even tighter, his intensity leaving Salomeh gasping for breath as he molded her body to his. She had wondered at his strength earlier in the night. Now, as his hard pectorals heaved under her palms and his corded biceps held her in his thrall, she knew the feel of brute power tempered by adulation.