Goddammit. He’d thought getting her out of the Bay Area might help. It hadn’t. After the long flight, she was probably pissed he’d goaded her into the trip. He tried engaging her anyway. “How was the flight?” He was pretty sure he’d already asked. He couldn’t remember if she’d answered.
“Fine.” Monosyllabic.
Fuck. Dominic breathed deeply. The Florida air was sultry, the December weather unseasonably warm even for Orlando. He’d worn short sleeves. Erin arrived in jeans and a jacket she’d removed to reveal a tight, long-sleeved white T-shirt that scooped low on her cleavage and seemed to make her red gold hair a richer shade. Back in the airport, he’d intercepted many a male glance Erin hadn’t noticed.
Fine. He’d try again. “Were you able to sleep on the plane?”
“No.”
The street was noisy with cars and people, vacationers in summer wear still strolling the sidewalks despite the late hour. Garish neon lights reflected on the water to one side, high-rise hotels like behemoths against the night sky on the other, the ubiquitous palm trees lining the road.
“I downloaded a mystery from the library,” she said.
He glanced over. She wasn’t looking at him, but gazing out at the darkened shoreline instead. All he could think was that at least it was more than one syllable. A whole sentence. “Great.”
“It helped pass the hours.”
He couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten out her MP3. Never one to sit down and read, she’d listen to a book while doing chores, making dinner. Always multitasking, that was Erin. But she hadn’t taken out the player in ages.
He capitalized on her sudden talkativeness. “You can hang out on the beach tomorrow and listen to a book if you want.”
“I’ll come with you to the show. See you in action.”
She was talking, but she still wasn’t looking at him. He watched her a few seconds too long and almost ran a red light. A young guy in the crosswalk, neon light playing colors across his shaved scalp, shook his fist.
“That sounds great,” he said once the light had changed and they were moving again. It would be better if he knew what she meant by in action. Good or bad? He wanted action, but not in the exhibit hall. Might as well lay out his plans now and get the fight over with. “I got us a party invitation for tomorrow night. It’s out in Windermere.” Windermere was a posh burb on the Butler Chain of Lakes about twenty minutes outside Orlando.
“Isn’t that where Tiger Woods lives?”
“I don’t remember.” But it wasn’t unlikely. The area was home to a lot of celebrities. “There’s the Crown Royal.” He pointed, the hotel a block ahead, lights blazing across a semicircular drive, fountain, rock garden, and palm trees.
She turned in her seat, hooking a leg beneath her, and braced a hand on the dashboard to look up at the facade through the windshield. “Nice.” A pulse fluttered at her throat, and he noticed again her odd intensity, foot bobbing on the floorboard as if nervous tension vibrated through her.
He passed the entrance and took the next drive heading into the underground parking garage. Circling once and finding nothing, he took the ramp down another level. Erin stretched, shoved her hands through her hair and fluffed it. Her nipples beaded beneath the thin T-shirt material.
Dominic suddenly felt parched. The tires squealed on the concrete despite the fact that he wasn’t going more than five miles an hour. Spying a spot just past the end of the last row and flush up against the wall, he wheeled in.
She was on him the moment he shut off the engine, fingers at his belt.
“Do me,” she whispered, her breath minty from a freshening strip she’d popped in her mouth.
His cock was hard before she even got to the button on his jeans. “Here?” Late, the lighting unexceptional, the back window of the rental car darkened with some film against the heat, they may or may not be seen. But he’d sure as hell hear the squeal of tires announcing another car’s arrival.
“Here,” she insisted, tugging on his zipper. Her lips were close but not touching, her skin flushed with heat, her eyes bright with something close to fever.
“We could get thrown out of the hotel or arrested.” He didn’t stop her as she shoved her hand in his jeans, found his cock, molded her palm to it.
“Do you care?” She squeezed.
“Christ.” He felt his eyes roll back. “No, I don’t care.”
“Then fuck me, Dominic.” She hadn’t said his name in a year’s worth of post-midnight sex.
In that moment, he was hers completely.
4
DOMINIC FELT GOOD BENEATH HER HANDS, HIS FLESH SLICK AND hard within her grip. Smelled good, too, his subtle aftershave muskier and more sensual on his skin than when sniffed from the bottle. Touching him drove Rachel’s words in the car right out of Erin’s mind. Sleeping on the plane had been impossible, and the audio book didn’t help. Erin hadn’t stopped thinking. Not until this moment, when there was only the impulse to take him. Here, now, not waiting for the room.
Hand on her nape, he pulled her close, his touch hot, his eyes dark. “Kiss me.”
“Taste you,” she said, pulling back and bending down to his lap, feeling only the slightest bite of guilt for not giving him what he wanted. A bead of pre-come on the tip of his cock seemed to glitter in the garage light falling through the side window. She closed her eyes as she took him, reveling in the physical, where there was nothing but his salty-sweet taste, the harsh sound of his breath, his fingers fisting in her hair, and his body surging deeper into her mouth. The console and handbrake between them dug into her abdomen, and even that was good, physical. She slid her hand deeper into his jeans and squeezed his balls as she sucked.
“Aw, Christ,” he whispered.
Tires squealed on the concrete. The risk fueled her. Like that time in the woods, someone coming. Do it anyway, she’d told him. She hadn’t cared, her excitement drowning out all common sense, all thought. Just as his musky sexual scent did now.
She sucked harder, deeper, then slid all the way up to circle the ridge of his cock, darting her tongue in his slit. He groaned; the sound was her reward. She used him, took from him, but he got something in return, even if it was only physical.
She was still thinking too much. With one last suck, she let him pop from her lips. A vein pulsed along his cock, his skin glistening with her saliva, the crown purple with need. She swiped away another drop of pre-come with her tongue, swallowed, and raised her eyes to meet his hooded gaze.
“Tell me what you want,” he said.
She tore at the snap of her jeans. She should have worn a skirt. It was warm enough, the Florida night sultry compared to the Bay Area.
He grabbed her chin, held her still. “Tell me.”
“Make me come.” She didn’t know what he wanted to hear, but what she said seemed to be good enough.
He helped her tug on the zipper, then she rolled in her seat, toed off one tennis shoe, and shoved her jeans and panties down. One free leg was all she required.
“Come here.” Dominic helped pull her over. She slid her bare leg down by the side of the door, her jeans trailing her on the other side in kinky disarray.
He held her a couple of inches off him, his cock between her legs. “Someone might see,” he said, his gaze dark in the shadowed interior of the car.
Her hair brushing the roof, she hunched slightly, braced herself on his shoulders, and glanced through the back window. Fluorescent lighting gleamed on the concrete, but their spot was to the right of the aisle, not clearly in the line of anyone’s sight unless they were actually getting in or out of a car. “Yeah,” she answered. “It’s hot. Getting caught in the act again. It’s what you always used to talk about.” In long-ago phone calls and fantasies.
“Fuck, yeah,” he agreed, his fingers flexing at her waist.
He’d always been that way, liking things a little left of center, kinky, making her like them, too. When he’d called to check on her last night
, he’d tried one of those sexy phone sessions. She’d shut him down; it just hadn’t felt right. She had little to offer these days, had fought going on this weekend trip even as she knew he needed more from her. The connection between them would never be the same. This—kinky, mind-numbing sex—was all she had left to give. Like an addict used drugs, she used him to make the pain go away, but at least when she did it, she made him feel good. Somehow, this place, away from home and the real world, made letting go seem all right. Here, it didn’t have to be in the dark. It didn’t have to be silent.
She wrapped her hand around his cock, grazed her pussy with the tip, leaving a trail of moisture along both of them. “Oh my God,” she whispered, keeping her gaze trained over his shoulder. Then she lied. “There’s a couple walking to their car.”
Dominic played the game as he raised his hips to breach her with half an inch of cock. “What do they look like?”
She made it up. “Our age.” She gasped at the feel of him filling her, sensitizing her skin but numbing her brain cells. “No, wait, he’s about fifty, she’s more like thirty.” She bit her lower lip. “Blond, blue eyed, and buxom, the way you like.”
“I like red hair better.” He curled his arms around her waist, pulled her flush against his chest until his breath caressed her ear. “Tell me when they see us.”
He was hot, hard, and high inside her now, pumping out a slow, mesmerizing rhythm.
“Now,” she told him. “The woman’s caressing his arm and indicating our car with a jut of her chin at us.”
Dominic thrust deep at her use of the word us, and she closed her eyes a moment to relish the sensation.
Holding her hip, he shoved a hand between them to find the button of her clit. “Tell me more.”
“They’ve stopped completely . . . watching . . . like they’re in a trance.” Just the way Dominic entranced her with his touch on her clit, swirling, circling, and driving his cock deep in smooth motions. She let him do the work despite the fact that she was on top. He could pat his head and rub his stomach the same time, too. That used to be their joke about how good he was at bedroommultitasking.
They hadn’t joked or fantasized like this in so long. These days sex was relegated to silence and darkness. Erin felt a dangerous wave of emotion rising.
“Tell me when he starts to touch her.”
She let Dominic’s voice drag her back, concentrated on it. “He’s running his hand up her skirt.” Of course a fantasy woman would be wearing a skirt to make it all easier. “He’s pulling her back against him, his hand moving between her legs.”
Dominic’s breath ratcheted up a notch, and her body swelled to the rhythm of his touch inside and out. On the phone, he used to drive her crazy with the after-show parties, describing the naughty doings, telling her how he wanted to watch her. Dominic had always loved talking sex. There were so many things she hadn’t given him in such a long time.
“Oh, Nickie, he’s shoving her skirt over her hips now,” she teased him. “And he’s huge. So thick and long.” Then she chuckled. “Not as big as you, though.”
He harrumphed and punctuated with a plunge of his hips she felt clear to her chest. She had pretending down to an art form now, yet it had been so long since she’d done this kind of pretending with him. For this short space of time in the cramped confines of the rental car, nothing else existed but his cock, her beating heart, and the imaginary couple.
Her ears hummed with the rush of blood through her body. She closed her eyes, chanting her little story. “He’s shoving her against the car. Taking her hard. Pounding into her.” And Dominic took her equally as hard, pinning her to him as he plunged deep. “Oh God, he’s fucking her, and she’s screaming out how good it is.”
The orgasm came without warning, a burst of heat shooting out. She clamped down on his neck with her teeth like an animal taking her mate instead of the other way around. Dominic’s come filled her, warmed her insides. For long moments, there was only exhaustion and mindlessness, exactly what she’d been searching for, the fix to drive out everything else. Maybe in Orlando, away from home, work, memories, and bad thoughts, she could let go of the lassitude. Maybe, for this one weekend, she could give Dominic the closeness he’d been silently begging for, and find a respite from her guilt for longer than one night.
NICKIE. SHE HADN’T CALLED HIM THE PET NAME, THE BEDROOM name, in more than a year. She hadn’t played voyeuristic sex games that tied in with their long-ago hike. She hadn’t talked to him while she fucked him.
Yet now she lay peacefully beside him in the hotel bed, no bad dreams disturbing her sleep.
She’d left him sated yet strangely nervous. Dominic couldn’t gauge her mood, so different from the desperate forays in the dark of their own bedroom. Edgier, for sure, and he’d loved the added risk factor. Loved that she’d played into his desire for sexual banter and fantasy. He didn’t know what had changed, but his heart raced with the memory. The transformation might not last through the weekend or even past the first rays of morning light, but she was here, she’d brought the cocktail dresses he’d requested, and she wanted to man the DKG booth with him instead of spending the day alone on the beach.
He’d take what he could get.
IT WAS BARELY TWO THIRTY IN THE AFTERNOON, AND ERIN FELT AS if her head might explode.
“Honey, come and meet Ryan.” In the cacophony of the exhibit hall, she read his lips as Dominic waggled his fingers at her.
The man called Ryan folded her hand in both of his. He was short and slight like a jockey, blond and good-looking in an ethereal way, his skin pale, blue veins close to the surface. She preferred a hardier type, like Dominic.
“It’s so nice to meet you, Mrs. DeKnight.”
“You can call her Erin,” Dominic said, adding the name of the team Ryan either owned or worked for. His words, though, were washed away in a burst of laughter from the next booth.
Her head ached beneath the overhead lights beating down, accompanied by the noise magnified in the high-ceilinged hall and an overabundance of cologne that didn’t quite mask the odor of too many sweaty male bodies.
Dominic loved it all—the people, the loud voices, the activity, the endless schmoozing. He actually seemed proud showing her off to the cast of characters he’d met over the years. Now let’s see, Ryan was the one who liked . . . She couldn’t remember.
“Yes, please call me Erin.” She echoed Dominic.
Ryan—was that his first or last name—dropped her hand as if sensing he’d held on too long. “You’re as beautiful as your husband claimed.”
Dominic stamped her with a hand on her nape, drawing her closer. He leaned over to whisper in her hair—“More so”—then raised his voice to include Ryan. “I’m glad Erin could finally make it here with me this year.”
Most men would shrivel having to introduce their wives at this traditionally male-dominated trade show. If the parties afterward were anything to go by, trade shows and conferences were where guys went for a week away from the wife. But not Dominic. He was different.
She owed it to him to put on a good face for his friends. They were her customers, too. She searched for a topic . . . and Ryan’s preferences hit her. He liked twins, as in a threesome with female twins. She hid a smile. Okay, not the topic she’d bring up now, but maybe she’d tease Dominic with it later.
But while she was thinking of what to say, Ryan moved on to the reason he’d stopped by the booth. “I hear you’ve got a through-coat gauge now.”
Erin could feel each breath in and out of her chest. Dominic had been working on the gauge last year when . . . She swallowed past the lump in her throat.
“Sure we’ve got one.” Dominic’s voice had gone oddly flat, his eyes darkening. He bent to pull the sample locker from beneath the table.
The gauge had become one of their top sellers this year, yet this was the first time during the trade show that Dominic had brought out the sample, let alone set it out among the others he’d put
in the display cases.
Rising, Dominic laid the instrument across Ryan’s palm. “Check it out.” He held up a painted metal pipe. With an ultrasonic gauge, you didn’t have to cut the pipe to measure the center thickness. Only one available side was necessary, an important characteristic when you were trying to measure corrosion on the inside. With the through-coat gauge, you could obtain accurate measurements even on a piece of metal with a coating such as rubber or paint, which made it essential in high-performance racing.
Dominic was knowledgeable, personable, and he loved talking with people. He knew something about everything, could offer an insight on almost any subject. He was a charmer, not in a male-female way—though he was certainly capable of that—but he knew how to put people at ease, how to talk to them, how to bring them around to his way of thinking. If there was something wrong with a hotel room, he sweet-talked the front desk clerk into fixing it and ended up with accommodations twice as nice.
The trade show was more about showing off your wares, making an indelible impression, getting people to call you on Monday morning with the order. Yet with this gauge, Dominic was monotone, almost an automaton, reciting the features as if he were a disinterested telemarketer reading lines from a brochure. He didn’t look at Ryan. He didn’t look at her. A tick fluttered momentarily beneath his eye.
Still, Ryan walked away after ordering five of the gauges. Dominic laid the instrument back in the sample locker and shoved it out of sight under the table again.
In her worst moments, she’d hated Dominic for how easily he put aside his guilt, how easily he forgave himself, as if all he’d done that day last year was miss a meeting. She’d even envied his ability to forget. Yet watching him now, her whole body trembled. Maybe the only difference between them was that Dominic was better at hiding his grief and guilt. Suddenly, she couldn’t stand his silence, his brooding. And that gave her the tiniest inkling of how he must feel when she was in one of her moods.
Past Midnight Page 4