Naughty Bits

by Lacy Danes

  “There’s a bottle of Bombay Sapphire waiting for you in the passenger’s seat of my truck.” The words left his mouth as a whisper.

  But the deep timbre of his voice could never be mistaken for a true whisper—Jack’s voice was as solid as the rest of his big body. Perhaps from ten years of yelling to be heard over the chaos that ensued while fighting fires. Perhaps just because he was one damned fine-looking man—with thick, wavy black hair that matched his mustache and predatory blue-green eyes—and God had seen fit to gift him with a sexy-as-hell voice to match.

  Whatever the case, he was offering what I wanted. A chance to drown the tension and sorrows I had amassed over the last two hellishly long days.

  I turned in his arms, burying my face against the crook of his neck and inhaling his familiar masculine scent. Normally I had a serious loathing for letting my emotions show, even around Jack. Tonight, now, I just had to say “fuck it” to appearances and sniffle.

  I went with the need for a few minutes, blubbering into his neck, probably ruining his best dress shirt. Then I sucked back my grief, accepted the shitty hand fate had dealt me—first my mother walking out years ago and now my father gone as well. At least I still had my grandmother, irrational as her aging mind could be at times.

  At least I still had Jack.

  I stepped back from his embrace to offer up an appreciative smile. “What would I do without you?”

  His own smile flashed; a touch of the cockiness coming through which—along with our mutual take on relationships being for others—made us such compatible friends. “Get shit-faced drunk, hook up with an asshole, then wake up tomorrow wondering who the hell the guy in bed with you is and where the hell are you anyway?”

  Yeah, it was a damned good thing I had Jack. Just like that he refilled my laughter well with his spot-on observation of my character. Not with bust-a-gut laughter, but laughter all the same; it rolled from my lips and felt like everything I needed right then.

  Well, that, alcohol and an old friend to share it with.

  Turning to my father’s casket, my momentary amusement vanished with the roiling of my insides. I said a final goodbye, laying the last kiss I ever would upon his pasty cheek and shedding a few more of those unavoidable damned tears.

  Then I turned back to Jack and nodded. “Take me home and get me smashed.”

  Jack

  I’d been to Carinna’s apartment thousands of times—hell, I even had my own key. But something about tonight was different. From the moment I stepped inside her small but cozily decorated living room, something had my gut tightening and every nerve in my body going on full alert the way only an all-alarm fire could typically accomplish.

  I knew that something had to do with the weakness she’d let show back at the funeral home; those brief minutes when she’d cried and let me hold her. I knew that letting her more tender emotions show meant she was down and out in a way I’d never seen her before today, and for good reason. I also knew the last thing I should do was sit on the couch beside her and get hammered the way she was asking me to do.

  We shared a healthy love of sex, and experience had taught me that mixing sorrow, alcohol and a member of the opposite gender generally led to precisely that. I valued our friendship way too much to risk ruining it over a hasty screw.

  “C’mon, Jack,” Carinna goaded me from the couch.

  The bottle of gin I’d picked up on the way to the funeral home dangled from her fingertips, open now and several drinks shy of full. Those drinks seemed to be working their magic on her mood—all trace of vulnerability was gone from her gray eyes, the self-assured arrogance I knew and respected shining through.

  A teasingly sultry smile lifted her lips. “Be a man and drink up.”

  Precisely the problem here was that I was a man. One who had long ago noted she was more than an average woman. With her centerfold curves and Latin coloring, she was stunning, gorgeous. Thoughts of her body, nude and sweaty and on the verge of orgasm, had been my masturbation material for years.

  Those X-rated thoughts attempted to enter my mind and harden my body. I quashed them by grabbing the transparent blue bottle from her hand and crossing to the open kitchen. “Tonight’s a martini night.”

  Much as she might prefer to get sloshed fast, I knew she wouldn’t say no to martinis. They would still get her drunk, and possibly me as well, but with luck we would pass out before she forgot I was her best friend and I forgot I was a gentleman.

  I almost laughed over the irony of that thought—I liked my loving fast, hard and dirty, and for the time being, with no strings attached. I probably would have laughed if Carinna hadn’t chosen that moment to start undressing.

  First, the black slacks came down her long, toned, naturally golden brown legs and were kicked aside.

  Then the black, short-sleeved silk shirt was unbuttoned and shaken off her shoulders and down her arms.

  As a cocktail waitress for a tequila bar on the strip, she was required to wear a risqué uniform that exposed more of her stunning body than it covered. Still, that uniform concealed more than her miniscule black panties and matching bra.

  Or not panties, I realized on an indrawn breath as she turned and bent to grab her slacks from the floor. A thong that disappeared between her firm butt cheeks, and had my heart pounding like a jackhammer and my cock rock solid in the space of a heartbeat.

  Before I could disengage my brain from the vicinity of my balls and question her motive, she had her clothes in hand and was moving past me, down the short hallway that led to her bedroom. “I just want to relax and forget for a while,” she tossed over a slim, bare shoulder. “That isn’t going to happen dressed in this crap.”

  I grunted with the closing of Carinna’s bedroom door, the sound sharp enough to make my erection jump. Then I considered beating my head against the overhead cupboard in the hopes of knocking some sense into it.

  Shit, I was an idiot. Make that an ass. She wanted to relax with an old friend, and all I could think about was plowing into her from behind and fucking her stupid.

  While her emotions might be in turmoil, despite the confident, even teasing face she currently wore, I was damned glad her head was on straight. Much as I wanted to think I would be a good friend and turn down an offer of sex dealt at the hands of grief and gin, I honestly wasn’t sure I could be that strong.

  Carinna

  With my bedroom door firmly closed, I sank down on the edge of the bed, pushed my hands through my tangle of curls, and accepted the throbbing ache in my core for what it was: the raw desire to fuck Jack.

  The want came as no surprise, or was anything I could pin on alcohol—though the handful of drinks I’d downed before he’d confiscated the gin bottle did have my tension lessening and my belly buzzing with warmth. The truth was I’d had dreams of sleeping with Jack since I was old enough to appreciate the concept of fitting tab A into slot B.

  Tonight was no dream, and I’d long since moved past giving juvenile names to body parts. What I wanted was to strip him naked, put my hands and mouth all over his work-hardened body, and take his cock into my dripping pussy again and again. I wanted to forget the events of the last two days completely. Forget how weak my father’s death had left me, how emotionally drained and wrung out.

  I wanted to feel whole, and I knew Jack could give that to me.

  But would he?

  Parading around in my underwear had definitely roused his interest—I’d seen the flicker of male awareness in his eyes. Had it roused the rest of him, as well?

  Any other night and with any other man, I wouldn’t be sitting on this bed wasting my time by wondering. I would be out in that kitchen, pushing him up against the table, taking his cock inside me and riding him hard. But tonight was no typical night and Jack was no ordinary man. With him I had to consider the repercussions. All those many reasons that had stopped me from giving voice to my desire for him in the past.

  All those many reasons, and yet now I couldn’t
think of a single one.

  Maybe the gin had gotten to me more than I realized, beyond relieving my tension and warming me through. Maybe it had stolen away my logic.

  Whatever the case, I couldn’t see the disadvantages of sleeping with Jack. I could only see the pleasure to be found in his strong arms. The relief, the release…

  Everything I needed right now. And yes, I assured myself as the conceit I normally laid claim to slid mercifully back into place, everything I would give him.

  Confidence and a dirty-girl smile as my guide, I tossed my pants and shirt into the hamper and headed back to the kitchen, hot for it and ready to let Jack know.

  Jack

  My body and mind coming under control with the knowledge Carinna didn’t want anything more from me than a shoulder to lean on and a friend to reminisce about her father’s life with, I focused on making the martinis. After adding too much gin and too damned little vermouth—had I honestly thought we would consume less alcohol this way?—I dropped a green olive in each glass. Reclining against the kitchen counter, I sipped at my drink and waited for her return.

  She reappeared as the second swallow of martini hit the back of my mouth. Between her wickedly carnal smile and the discovery that she’d neither removed her sinfully tempting bra and skimpy thong, nor covered them, I nearly choked to death.

  Liquid fire scorching its way down my throat, I eyed her over the rim of the glass.

  First, her head full of untamable, rich brown curls that my fingers itched to bury in. Next, her toenails, painted the same shade of siren red as the Ladder 19 fire trucks. Then I sucked up my courage, told myself I could handle looking without touching, and sent my gaze upward to check out the parts of her I’d intentionally glossed over the first time around.

  I counted my blessings that the cut of her thong wasn’t as obviously erotic from this angle. The bra was a little harder to ignore.

  Her ample breasts strained hard against the black lace cups, the top edge of her large, dusky areolas spilling out. The scent of her excitement on the air was just as damning to my state of mind and body. A feminine musk coupled with her light vanilla perfume had my tongue anxious as hell to find out exactly how wet she was by pushing aside the crotch of her thong and licking deep inside her folds.

  With a seductive sway to her hips, Carinna joined me at the kitchen counter, her barely clothed body inches from mine. Heat emanated between us, animalistic, intense. Returning my cock to its stiff-as-stone condition and making me wonder how it had taken her father’s death to bring us to this fated moment.

  Were we fated to sleep together? And would it ruin our friendship or were we adult enough to share in a night of ecstasy and then return to the everyday?

  Lifting her martini from the counter, she stopped short of placing the glass to her lips. She looked over at me. Desire smoldered in her eyes, turning them the color of smoke. “Jack?”

  My shaft throbbed from the throatiness of her voice. Half fearing, half praying I knew what was coming next, I asked, “Yeah?”

  “I’ll race you to the bottom of the glass.”

  My laugh was rough, raspy, edged with the lust threatening to consume me. We’d been challenging each other in one way or another our whole lives. This should have been familiar terrain, easy to take on. But this challenge came spring-loaded with potentially shitty side effects.

  Still, I accepted. “You’re on.”

  I guzzled my drink, barely noticing the slow burn of gin this time as I watched Carinna down her own martini. Her throat worked in much the same way I could imagine it working as she took my cock between her lips and sucked me dry.

  After a handful of seconds, she slammed her emptied glass onto the counter. Parting her lips, she revealed the olive between her teeth. Carinna edged her finger and thumb into her mouth, sensuously sucking off the olive as she pulled it free and dropped it back into her glass.

  Her heated gaze fell to my lips and then far south, to the bulge of my groin pressing painfully against the zipper of my dress pants. “Can I suck off yours?”

  Though I knew damned well it wasn’t my olive she was after and she could undoubtedly tell that I knew it from my heightened breathing, I chose the path of feigned ignorance. Setting my drained glass on the counter next to hers, I nodded at the olive lying in its center. “Help yourself.”

  Or maybe it was my olive she was after. At least as a prop.

  Lifting the martini-coated olive from my glass, she sucked it for a second or two. Then, holding it in her fingers, she trailed it downward, from her chin to her throat, to let it slip from her grasp and disappear into the hollow of her cleavage.

  With the fringe of her long dark lashes half masking her eyes, her gaze met mine. Challenge simmered there. “Why don’t you get it out?” she taunted huskily.

  I swallowed hard as my blood sizzled and my cock pulsed. I’d never wanted anything more in my life. Still, that same question ate at my conscience.

  Could we handle this? Then there was the alcohol to consider—was it skewing her judgment? “Carinna—”

  “Jesus, Jack!” The challenging look gone, she devoured the inches between us, pressing the softness of her breasts against my chest as her fingernails curled into the front of my shirt. Her eyes pleaded with me to give in. “I need this. Can’t you see that? Can’t you see what this fucking day has done to me? It’s wrecked me.”

  Knowing how much both the silent pleading and those words cost her, how could I say no? Knowing how many years I’d spent wishing for this very moment, how could I refrain from touching her a second longer? Even so, I had to lay voice to my concerns. “Doing this—sleeping together—will wreck our friendship.”

  Stubbornness narrowed her eyes. Her chin jutted out. “It won’t. You know I’m not looking for love—ever—and you’re too focused on your job to want a serious relationship anytime soon.”

  Solid points, logical even, which made it seem that liquor wasn’t clouding her judgment and driving her need for me. Solid though they may be, those points weren’t what swayed my decision. It was her stubborn, pointy chin. That haughty look I’d been a sucker for the better part of my life. That look, and the intimate push of her pelvis against mine.

  Through my dress pants and boxers, I shouldn’t have been able to feel her heat and wetness. But my cock seemed to think it felt both and jerked hard in response. My mind was right there with my body, never wanting anything worse in its life. Never more ready to live out my fantasy of loving Carinna all night long.

  Pulse pounding in my ears, I lifted my hands to her back. The smoothness of her skin was in complete contrast to my work-callused palms, a fact that I pleasured in as I ran my fingers down the sweep of her spine to cup her supple ass.

  Aware that I’d crossed the point of no return, I shut out the last of my concerns and concentrated solely on ecstasy. On crashing my mouth down hard over hers, slipping my tongue past her lips, and tasting sweet, heady nirvana.

  Sultry air puffed into my mouth with her muffled growl. A sound I mimicked as her tongue went wild, twining with mine, sliding feverishly along my teeth, not leaving a single part of my mouth untouched. Her hands moved just as urgently, jerking from between our bodies to yank my shirt from my pants and then travel beneath.

  Shivers racked my body with the divine scrape of her fingernails along my back. Those shivers magnified as she pulled her mouth from mine and parted her kiss-swollen lips to demand, “The olive, Jack! Get the olive.”

  Carinna and I had been recounting our sex tales for years, and I knew exactly what her expectations were. She wanted to come at least twice before I found my own release. First, fast and hard, then slow and easy. My cock was too far gone with thoughts of finally surrendering to my hunger for her to deliver multiple orgasms all on its own. Fortunately, I also knew about her kinky side.

  Using my grip on her ass, I lifted her up my body. The rub of her pubis against my solid staff pushed a needful groan from the back of my throat. Sw
allowing it down, I set her on the edge of the counter, with her bare inner thighs cradling my lower hips. I would have loved to have taken the time to bare all of her and then look my fill of her succulent body, but she wanted fast this first time and she was damned well going to get it.

  I flicked my gaze to hers, saying what I didn’t have the time to say with words—how unbelievably hot she was, how excruciatingly hard I was. Then I shoved my face against her breasts and used my tongue and teeth to fish the olive from her bra.

  Biting down on the tender yet tart meat, I took the olive in my mouth while I used one hand to unclasp her bra and the other to find the gin bottle. The bra clasp gave way, the straps slipping partway down her arms and freeing her beautiful breasts from the cups. The olive left my mouth. Greedily, I brought my lips to one big nipple and sucked.

  Carinna cried out as first I sucked her nipple tight and then retreated just a bit to roll the hard crown with my teeth. I nipped at the hypersensitive point, then bit down.

  Her hips canted forward. Grasping the edge of the counter, she sighed out, “Oh God, Jack.”

  Oh God was right. The desperate throbbing of my shaft epitomized how long I’d wanted to hear those words, to hold her this way.

  To take her over the edge.

  Her thighs squeezed around my hips. Her hands moved into my hair, urging me to go faster, to deliver her to thought-fogging orgasm. Eagerly I obeyed, using my free hand to gather the sodden scrap of black material at her crotch and tug it aside to reveal her juicy opening. I dragged the damp silk back across her slit, burying it inside her folds a fraction, eliciting creamy juice from her pussy and a sexy-as-hell pant from her lips. Then, once more, I pulled the cotton aside and, bringing my other hand to her juncture, pressed the cool mouth of the gin bottle against her sex.

  She gasped at the contact, her hips bucking hard. Her fingers tugged from my hair to claw at my shoulders. “Holy shit, yes! Fuck me with the bottle!”