by Lisa Cach
“Close your eyes,” he said.
She obeyed, feeling at once more vulnerable but also more intensely aware of the moist warmth of his breath upon her skin. He moved his mouth over her ear and gently breathed, then trailed the gossamer touch of air down the side of her neck, dwelling at the base, creating a pool of heat.
“Lower the top of your dress,” he murmured against her skin.
Her eyes popped open. “No!”
He raised his head. “You said you’d play along.”
“I didn’t think I’d have to undress!”
“I didn’t hear that as a condition. Do you forfeit, then?”
She bit her lip, hesitating.
He laughed softly and started to ease away from her. “I knew it. You lose.”
Anger flared inside her. He knew it, eh? “Who said I’d let you off the hook?” She sat up and untied her dress at the waist, enjoying the look of shock on his face. When the knot came free she hesitated again, caught for a moment on the reality of baring herself. “Are you sure no one else will see?” she asked, though it was his own eyes that concerned her.
“There’s no one here but us. For the moment, anyway.”
Still she hesitated. To be bare breasted in the open in a field with a man she did not trust … “You first,” she said.
“Me?”
“Strip. I’ll do whatever you tell me to, but only if I’m not the only one exposed.”
“Fair enough.”
Thirty seconds later, he was tossing his boxers aside. He sat beside her, uninhibited, seemingly indifferent to the evidence of his excitement. Grace couldn’t help staring at it, then forced her gaze away, following a trail of hair to his navel, then up to his broad chest where it spread into a wide pelt coating the muscularity of his upper body.
“Too hairy for you?” he asked, a laugh in his voice.
Grace flushed. “No, I just … I, uh,” she fumbled.
“Lower the top of your dress,” he said softly. “And take off your bra.”
She teetered for a long moment on the edge of forfeit, the idea of doing what he said—both disrobing, and whatever came after—having too much against it to let her continue. She felt like she had when as a girl she’d come to her turn to use a rope swing into a lake. She’d dragged the end of the knotted rope with her up the ladder nailed to the side of a tree, but when she turned around and saw the vast distance between where she was and the water, she’d frozen, images of all that could go wrong flooding her head.
“You don’t have to, Gracie,” her brother had said. He was next in line; half a dozen kids waited behind him, dripping in their wet bathing suits, their eyes on her.
She hadn’t said anything. She’d looked back at the lake and known that she either did it now or lived with the knowledge that she’d wimped out. Do it or not. Something inside her had disengaged from the fear, and a strange, disembodied calm had come over her. She gripped the rope and swung.
The same thing happened now. Feeling as if she existed outside herself, in a world without fear, she opened her dress, revealing the corset beneath.
She heard Declan draw in a quick breath, and gathered the courage to look at his face. His eyes were upon her body with the same intensity that she knew her own had had on him. She unhooked the front of the corset and opened it.
She had good breasts, she at least knew that. They were full but high, and cantilevered off her chest with no visible means of support. She had a small rib cage that made the breasts themselves look even larger than they were.
“Good God, those are natural, aren’t they?” Declan breathed.
“Every inch. And you don’t get to touch them.”
“Then you do it for me.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“Touch them.”
Feeling awkward, the protective safety of dissociation threatening to break, she placed a hand on her shoulder and started to slide it downward.
“Yes, like that! Slowly, slowly, down, down …” His voice went hoarse, his gaze fixing on her body as if nothing else in the world existed.
Grace followed his commands like a marionette pulled by strings composed of words. She’d never touched herself in front of someone before, but her awkwardness fell away under his fascination and she started getting aroused by his arousal. Her own hand became more sensual in its touch, lingering and fondling.
“Lie back.”
She met his eyes as she did as he bid, reading the excitement there.
“Close your eyes,” he commanded. And then he directed her, move by move, in how to touch herself.
She knew where he’d eventually send her hands. When the command finally came and she slid her hands down over her waist, her belly, her upper thighs, and began to pull up the hem of her slip to reveal the indecent panties, she opened her eyes to watch Declan’s reaction. Sunlight blinded her to all but the tense shadow of his body rising up beside her, a dark satyr naked with her in a field. She closed her eyes again, her mind filled with half-dreamed images of Greek myth, gods and maidens, satyrs and minotaurs, bacchanalian frenzies of naked flesh and wild, open spaces.
Grace felt herself approaching her peak, and in her mind images tumbled over one another of male joining female, of men and gods and mixtures of both pressing into women’s flesh; into her own flesh, as she became each maiden pinned and plundered upon the grass. In a desperate moment, she reached out blindly and grasped Declan’s arousal. He groaned, and she gasped and arched, her muscles going rigid with pleasure.
And then the waves receded, washing away, taking with them the fantasy images that had filled her mind. She let go of Declan and brought her hands up to her chest, resting them idly there as she came back into herself, feeling almost as if she’d been elsewhere and was just now settling back into her body.
Reality returned with the prickling of the ground against her skin and the chirping of the crickets. She sat up, blinking, and pulled her garments back into order, and as she did she met Declan’s eyes. He hadn’t moved: he was still nude, still erect, still gazing at her with unsatisfied intensity.
A shy smile touched her lips as she covered her breasts. “You weren’t bluffing. I’m not sure your methods were entirely fair, and technically I did it to myself, but if anyone asked, I think I’d have to say you did what you said you could.”
“Thanks,” he said hoarsely, still making no move to dress.
She glanced at his sex, so obviously primed and ready, and in need of relief. He was probably hoping she’d offer her hands or lips. That hadn’t been part of their deal, though, and her sated desire made it easy to shove aside the feminine guilt of receiving without giving in return. A small, wicked, shameful pleasure at her power over him and her first taste of revenge licked at her heart.
It was only when she reached for her shoes that the understanding apparently dawned on Declan that there would be no tit for tat, no reciprocal sexual attention. In a rush of movement he began to dress, so that by the time Grace was standing on shod feet, he was clothed beside her.
Grace remembered Sophia’s words of advice about compliments. She’d wandered far off the lesson plan today, and it was time to return. “Thank you very much for that lovely interlude,” she said, taking Declan’s arm as they started back toward the car. She tried to keep the wickedness out of her voice, drowning it with honeyed sincerity. “I’ve never experienced anything quite like it, and will remember this day for a long time.”
“So will I,” he said curtly. He was walking stiffly, his pants tight across his crotch.
Her inner vixen purred with cruel delight. Perhaps even more compliments were in order. “Every time I hear crickets I’ll think of today. Won’t you, too, every time you come here? You probably won’t be able to help thinking of your victory and gloating over it, every time you come. Do you come often?”
He slanted a dark look at her. “Excuse me?”
She blinked in innocence. “Do you come often? To this field.
The construction site.”
“Often enough.”
She squeezed his arm. “Good. I’d like to think that you’d be reminded of this day every time you come, even though I was the loser.”
He scowled. “Are you messing with me?”
“Hmm?”
“Nothing,” he growled.
They reached the car and got in. Grace resecured her hair in its ponytail, and was about to put on her sunglasses when she suddenly put her hand to her mouth in alarm and gasped.
“What?” Declan asked.
“I’m so sorry, I’ve just realized—we left things a little, er, unbalanced, didn’t we? I mean, you never got to …”
He looked at her, wariness and a flicker of hope in his eyes.
Grace blinked at him. “If it’s not too late, I mean, if the mood hasn’t been killed …”
The hope flamed. “Yes?”
“Maybe I could do my part to help you …”
His lids lowered seductively. “You mean … ?”
“Yes! It seems only fair. I could, well …” She saw the expectation in his eyes, the rekindling flames of lust, and it was like the scent of blood to the hunter. Her long-term plan to slowly win his heart and then crush it fell to the side, victim of this unexpected opportunity to inflict a wound. Her eyes wide with innocence, she took aim. “I’d be happy to tell you how to …” She faltered, the harsh go fuck yourself waiting in the back of her throat. She couldn’t say it, couldn’t pull the trigger on the crude words. “I could tell you how to do yourself.”
There was a long moment of silence, and then his face darkened. “You are messing with me.”
Grace feared that she’d pushed him too far, and knew her thoughts were showing on her face. Think of something harmless, something innocent! Something that will make you look ditzy and frothy! Out of her disturbed mental depths sprang an image of My Little Pony. Ponies! With strawberry-scented manes. Ponies dancing and singing and having their hair combed. She felt her face relaxing into the innocent happiness of a three-year-old. “I enjoyed what you did for me. Why shouldn’t I want to reciprocate?”
He started the engine. “It’s kind of you, but I’ll pass, thanks.”
Ponies! This one has bubblegum hair! “Are you sure? I really wouldn’t mind. You see, I’ve never watched a guy jerk off before.”
He gave her a look, warning her that she was on thin ice.
Grace put on her sunglasses and smiled.
CHAPTER
11
Declan didn’t talk to Grace during the drive to the restaurant, his mind spinning round his unsatisfied desire and the ludicrous notion that she had all but told him to go fuck himself.
She hadn’t really meant her words that way, though, had she? He kept glancing over at her, checking for signs that she knew she’d scored a point off him. All he saw was serenity, however, and a few times he thought he heard her singing under her breath, a bouncy, childish, vaguely familiar song about little ponies.
He was capable only of impersonal civilities until after they’d pulled into the gravel parking lot of a small, rustic restaurant with a view of the ocean. He opened Grace’s car door for her and kept up the polite facade as they went inside and were led to a table. He followed her through the restaurant, unable to keep his eyes off her full buttocks as she swayed ahead of him, and felt his hackles rise as he saw the eyes of several other men in the restaurant, both young and old, swivel to ogle Grace and her Marilyn Monroe curves. He shot them all dark looks.
When they ordered, Grace asked for the halibut. Declan scowled, and as soon as the waitress was gone said, “I thought you were a vegetarian.”
“I am,” she said, and laid her napkin in her nap. Her back was straight, her posture perfect. He’d have thought she was as prim and proper as a virgin princess, if not for her ridiculously voluptuous breasts and the image burned into his brain of her lying in the sunlight pleasuring herself through her split-crotch panties. Split-crotch panties and a corset, for God’s sake! How the hell was he supposed to have expected that?
“Halibut are animals,” he pointed out, quite reasonably, he thought.
“But not farmed.”
“It’s okay to kill a wild animal, but not a domestic one?”
“It’s the industrial farming practices I protest,” she said, beginning to look annoyed.
“Then eat free-range.”
“Why do you care what I eat?”
He laughed. “I don’t. I just don’t like it when people say they’re something that they’re not.”
She took a sip of water and smiled sweetly. “I’m flattered that you’d rather listen to me spell out all the details of my food choices than be satisfied with a single, imprecise word like ‘vegetarian.’ You must really want to know all about me.” She blinked innocently. “Shall I list every animal and animal product I will and will not eat, and give you the reasons why? It should make for a good lunchtime conversation; thank you for suggesting it!”
He narrowed his eyes, examining her face for telltale clues. A small twitch at the corner of her mouth betrayed her. “Goddammit, you’re messing with me again! Did Sophia teach you to do that?”
“Again? When was the first time?”
He leaned forward over the table and was pleased to see her eyes widen in alarm. “Not half an hour ago, as you very well know. You’re a cock tease, Grace Cavanaugh.”
She leaned toward him until their faces were only inches apart. To an outsider they must have looked like lovers sharing sweet nothings. Her expression remained pure, her voice sweetly high. “Can you swear to me, Declan O’Brien, that you have never in your life—no, make that never in the past year!—had a sexual encounter with a woman where you came but she didn’t?”
“I always reciprocate.”
“Always? Really! Well, you are an unusual man, aren’t you? So there was never a time that you rolled over and went to sleep, figuring she’d had plenty of foreplay and hey, women are different, they can be happy even without an orgasm?”
“I’ve never heard any complaints,” he said, an unwelcome note of defensiveness in his tone, embarrassing to his own ear.
“That’s because you were asleep.” Grace tapped the tip of his nose with her index finger, like the fairy godmother chiding Little Bunny Foo Foo. “She was probably lying beside you while you snored, fantasizing about another man as she finished herself off.”
His twinge of embarrassment was his clue that she’d hit upon a truth. Of course it never happened the first few times he had sex with a woman, but yeah, once they were more comfortable with each other, once he no longer felt he had to impress and win her, he did occasionally slack off a bit and pretend not to see that flicker of disappointment in his partner’s face. It was so sweet to slide into sleep afterward; what guy wanted to sit up and go back to work on a woman, especially when it could take another half hour to get her off?
“Pussy tease,” Grace whispered naughtily, making it sound like an invitation.
He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Even if that might have happened once or twice—if!—that doesn’t make it right that you left me hanging.”
She sat back, too. “So I’m to do as you say and not as you do?” The exaggerated innocence was gone from her face, replaced by a knowing wickedness that unsettled him. Where was the fumbling, uncertain Grace Cavanaugh he expected, or even the boringly righteous one?
“Those were past relationships,” he said. “Nothing to do with this one, between me and you.”
“Declan,” she drawled. “We do not have a relationship.”
“There’s sure as hell something going on,” he muttered.
“And even if we did have one, if I were you I would think twice about asking me to treat you as you have treated me.”
And there she had him. His behavior that first night was neither forgiven nor forgotten, nor should it be. He retired from the discussion in defeat.
Grace moved the conversation on
to innocuous topics and he gladly followed. Somehow she’d turned the tables on him, and he felt like a fourteen-year-old boy in the presence of a dangerous femme fatale.
What the hell was going on?
CHAPTER
12
“He didn’t touch you at all?” Sophia demanded, putting down her dinner fork.
“Nope. I took his arm a couple of times, but Declan didn’t lay a finger on me during our outing.” Grace speared a snow pea on her fork and nibbled it, trying to make it last. She had only eight of them on her plate. She’d counted. She was regretting her dietary restraint at lunch. Temporary sexual satisfaction and a purring sense of what she could only call vindicated bombshellitude had made her willing to forgo the bacon burger and fries she’d dreamed of.
The afternoon had left disturbing images in her mind. Ever since she’d parted from Declan several hours ago, she’d been having intrusive, arousing thoughts of him.
“How very odd,” Sophia mused. “Declan is usually such a physical man. Did it seem that he wanted to touch you?”
“There was a point at which I strongly suspected he did, yes,” Grace said drily, “but he didn’t give in to it.” There was no way she was going to tell her aunt that Declan had sat naked next to her and watched her masturbate in a field. She was having some trouble believing it herself. “Then at lunch I got a bit argumentative with him, and that seemed to kill any remaining attraction he felt.”
When did she ever lose herself in her own desires like she had in the field? She was always in control of herself during sex, always mute, a part of herself distant and observing, aware of the awkwardness of sex and how she wasn’t living up to the enthusiastic acrobatics and full-throated moans and cries of pleasure that were the standard for a liberated woman. Only repressed women were silent and still, right? But somehow, alone with Declan in that open field, she had disengaged from her self-consciousness. Her higher brain had shut off and the lower animal had taken over.