Extreme Bachelor

by Julia London

  “Go on,” he said, and watched as she reached behind to unfasten her bra, then slide it off her arms. She held that out to him, too. That, he pitched over his shoulder. When she put her hands on the panties, Michael shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I want you to wear those.” And then he was the one to take a steadying breath.

  “Jesus, you’re beautiful,” he said at last. “You’re so beautiful.” He reached for her breast, his fingers sliding beneath it, feeling the weight of it, then the other. “I’ve thought of you like this so many times.” His gaze was so dark, so hot, so intense that Leah began to reach for him, but Michael surprised her by abruptly grabbing her around the waist and lifting her off her feet with one arm. He moved two steps forward and dropped her roughly against the column.

  “Beautiful and free,” he said with a wink. “We can’t have that.” He took her hand, pulled it back around the column, then stepped around it and took her other hand, and using the end of his tie, bound her hands securely behind the column. She was tied with her back to the column, her breasts jutting out.

  Michael walked around to stand before her and peruse his handiwork. He was smiling as he touched her breast, her lips, and then traced a line from her jaw all the way down her body to the top of her legs. He watched her eyes as he slid his finger between her legs, moving back and forth over the fabric of her thong. “You’re wet,” he murmured. “You want me to continue?”

  Oh yes, hell yes, she wanted him to continue, and nodded.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Yes,” she whimpered, and closed her eyes, focusing entirely on his hand and fingers and the wild burst of sensual pleasure that was erupting in her. Michael slipped a hand behind her and pressed against the small of her back, forcing her into his body as his fingers worked against the silk fabric of her panties, going deeper into the slit of her body, twirling suggestively around her clitoris. His mouth moved on her lips in rhythm with his hand, gliding over them so delicately that her lips began to tingle savagely with the whisper of each kiss.

  And just when she began to breathe heavily, about to come, Michael withdrew his hand and stepped away from her. “Not so fast, baby,” he said, and casually removed his vest, tossing it aside. “I’ve only begun to play.”

  He unbuttoned his shirt, laughing a little at how hard she was breathing as he shrugged out of it. The man was magnificent—hard body, sculpted, strong. He put his hands on her arms, caressing her skin as he nuzzled her neck. Then he slid down her body, to her bared breasts, and took one in his mouth, his teeth nipping at her hard nipple.

  Leah felt dangerously close to falling and moaned, but that only made Michael suck harder, his teeth grazing her, drawing sensation from deep in her groin. Leah was floating now, on a cloud of pure sensation, buoyed by his assault on her senses and his firm grip of her body. With his mouth and his hands, he slid down her body, to his haunches, his mouth leaving a hot, wet trail on her belly. When he reached the thong, he grabbed the tiny string of it with his teeth and jerked, tearing the fabric. With his mouth, he pulled her panties down her leg so that now she was completely bare to him.

  “Ah . . . sweet,” he said. “So sweet,” he said, his mouth just an inch from the curly hair. “I remember the way you taste.” His tongue dipped in between the curls, and a hard shiver of delight coursed through Leah.

  He glanced up, ran his hands up her sides and to her breasts. “How do you feel?”

  Leah looked down at him, panting. “I’m burning up.”

  “It is a little warm,” he agreed with a salacious grin.

  “Untie me, Michael. Untie me so I can touch you, too,” she begged him.

  “No way,” he said, and roughly pushed her legs further apart. “This is all for you.”

  “No, Michael, let me—”

  “Shut up,” he growled, and flicked his tongue against her.

  Leah sucked in her breath; Michael gripped her hips firmly and began to lick her, his tongue dipping deep into her slit, tasting her, exploring her, teasing her at the core of her desire, then sliding down the slick pathway again, to where she throbbed for him.

  Above him, Leah’s chin dropped to her chest, and she moaned with the thrill of it. This was just as she remembered it—the man was a master. He knew how to interpret her moaning and heavy breathing; the stroke of his tongue became urgent and harder, his mouth covering her, sucking her as she moved, shamelessly grinding against him, seeking her fulfillment. She was so close, so close—

  But Michael suddenly fell back, stumbling a little before straightening and dragging the back of his hand across his mouth.

  “Michael!” she gasped.

  “Not yet,” he said with a laugh. “Not until I’ve made you absolutely insane with desire.”

  “You win, you win! Please don’t stop now!” she cried.

  “Oh, I’m not stopping,” he said and grabbed her chin, pushed her head back so that her face was tilted up to his, then plunged his tongue into her mouth, kissing her until she was panting for breath. He lifted his head; his gaze roamed her face, and he stroked aside a strand of blond hair. “You’ve got a long way to go before I’m done with you.” And with that, he reached behind her, felt for the slipknot on her wrist and yanked it free. Her hands instantly came up to his shoulders.

  Michael lifted her up and pushed her against the column. Leah instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist, felt his erection hard and hot pressing against her, and kissed his face, his lips, his ears, but then he dropped her down and let go.

  “Stand there. Don’t move,” he ordered her, and as she watched, he quickly shed his shoes and clothes. His erection was enormously thick and hot, a drop or two of moisture at the tip an indication that he, too, was almost there. Leah tried to take him in hand, but Michael caught her by the arms and roughly turned her around, so that she was facing the column.

  Behind her, he kissed the nape of her neck, caressed her back and her hips, then grabbed her thigh and lifted her leg. “Touch yourself,” he demanded in a whisper.

  Leah dropped her head back to his shoulder, slid her hand down between her legs, and began to rub her fingers against herself. She could hear Michael’s breathing quicken, could feel his hand on her breast, his mouth in her hair, his cock rubbing against her hips.

  She was so revved up, so ready to release the years of sexual frustration that had followed her after they had split up that her hand began to move faster. But then Michael’s hand joined hers, moving hers aside, and slowing the rhythm as he dipped down and eased himself inside her.

  “Ah hell,” he muttered as he slid deep into her. “Ah, baby,” he said as he began to move inside her, matching the work of his hand.

  “Don’t stop,” she begged him, lifting her hips and pressing against him. “Please don’t stop.”

  Michael groaned like an animal and began to move faster, plunging deep inside her, his hand teasing her to the climax he had twice denied her. Leah could hardly catch her breath; she clung to the column, moving with Michael, meeting each of his strokes, gulping for air as she sank into that sexual bliss that surrounded her.

  He slid deeper and harder into her, pushing her toward release with his body and his fingers. Leah could feel her release nearing the surface, could feel it on the verge of eruption.

  When it did, she cried out with ecstasy and fell headlong into a sea of pure pleasure. She crested in that wave, heard Michael’s guttural moan as he found his release.

  He collapsed on her, his dark head on her shoulder until he could get his breath. When he had, he pulled her down onto the carpet with him. They lay together, their limbs tangled in one another. Leah pushed her fingers through his hair as they quietly waited for their breathing to return to normal.

  It was just like old times. That burst of excitement and fulfillment and love trickling into every pore. It was several minutes before they had the energy to untangle themselves from one another, but still they lay on the carpet, str
oking one another, each of them lost in their private thoughts.

  Leah felt alive for the first time in years, and while she was afraid to think it, she was quietly wondering if this could really be, if she really could go back in time and pick up where they’d left off.

  After a moment, Michael asked, “What are you thinking?”

  She looked into his handsome face and smiled at the odds stacked against them. At that moment, she thought she could gladly live with the odds. “I was thinking about the soufflé,” she said, and laughed when he groaned and pressed his forehead to her bare belly and made a remark about her irrepressible appetite.

  Chapter Eighteen

  AT some point in the night, Michael enticed Leah into his bedroom, where they made love again, only this time, he allowed Leah to do some of the touching, too. They’d fallen asleep in the midst of an argument about where their favorite New York restaurant was—on the corner of 74th and Columbus? Or 75th and Columbus?

  The following morning, however, Michael woke up to an empty bed. But she’d left a note:

  Hey Raney, you gorgeous man, some of us actually have to show up at work on time. You looked so damn good sleeping there that I just let myself out. Don’t worry, I called a cab. I’ll see you later. L.

  P.S. I had an AWESOME time. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Absolutely 100% awesome, especially here in your crib. Seriously, it couldn’t have been better even if you’d turned out to be Prince William, heir to the throne. Kidding! That would have been a whole lot better, haha. You made me feel like a queen. Can’t wait to see you again. Leah 

  He smiled. It had been awesome. That was some of the best sex he’d ever had, and he was getting hard again just thinking about it. He couldn’t wait to see her, either. And he got up, headed for the shower, anxious to get to work.

  THE guys had the soccer moms down at the paintball course for the Saturday morning makeup training session, putting them through the paces with the real stuff while Michael was stuck in the office with a couple of studio people, who were now worried about the schedule as well as the budget. He spent a good part of the day in one long, mind-numbing meeting, going over the sequence of scenes they would shoot, making sure that T.A. would have the time necessary to set up for each stunt, of which, he was beginning to note, there was a huge number. How would they ever pull it off?

  The only bright spot was that at midday, when they broke for the weekend, Leah was waiting for him at his car, wearing a short little halter dress, sunglasses rimmed with sparkly rhinestones, and a huge smile.

  “Let me guess,” he said peering at her shades as he walked up to his car and tossed his briefcase behind the driver’s seat. “Trudy.”

  “Right on. And if you play your cards right, I think I can get you one of the Siesta shirts she bought in bulk.”

  “Why would she do that?” he asked, curious.

  Leah shrugged. “Who knows with her? I’m just thankful I don’t have to take one.”

  “So what are you doing?”

  “Me?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and coyly looked away. “Waiting on a guy.”

  “Excellent. Would that guy happen to be me?”

  “No,” she said with a laugh. “You’re not the only one with passes to movie premieres, you know.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said, putting his hands on his hips, “Don’t tell me one of my partners is trying to score with you on any level—”

  “God, no—”

  “That’s good, because I’d have to kill whoever tried it.”

  “No, your partners actually look annoyed most of the time I see them. The other guy happens to be someone with the lighting crew. And he doesn’t have tickets to a movie premiere. He only has tickets to a movie. Very pedestrian.”

  Thank God, he thought. “I hope he was at least offering dinner with the movie.”

  “Oh yeah, he offered dinner.” She wrinkled her nose. “Mexican food.”

  “Idiot,” Michael opined with a grin. “So let me take you to dinner instead.”

  “Okay. Where are we going?”

  “Mexican food,” he said, and Leah laughed.

  THEY spent the remainder of the weekend together, walking along the Third Street Promenade, bodysurfing at Malibu, and eating all the seafood they could possibly stomach at Gladstone’s, a popular joint in Malibu. When they weren’t eating, they were in his loft, making love.

  Somewhere in the course of the weekend, the years started to move away from them, drifting like little clouds out the expansive windows in his loft. It began to feel as if they’d never missed a moment—they fell into a rhythm that seemed so natural and real and completely unchanged in the years they’d spent apart. If Leah was harboring any lingering misgivings about him, he was not seeing it or feeling it.

  But the love affair they shared was snake-bit from the start, or so Michael would soon come to believe, because by Tuesday of the following week, when the women were being outfitted and meeting with production staff and the director, running lines, and practicing the war scenes, the replacement for the soccer mom with the broken leg showed up.

  That wasn’t a big deal—she was athletic and eager to please and learned the stuff so fast that the guys bemoaned the fact they didn’t have fifteen more just like her. What was a big deal, however, was that the woman—Ariel—was known to both Jack and Michael. She was Lindsey’s friend. The same Lindsey Jack was trying so hard to date, and the same woman Jack had talked Michael into accompanying on two dates.

  Now Jack had finagled a role in the film for her as a favor to Lindsey.

  Not that any of it meant anything in the greater scheme of things—nothing had happened between Michael and Ariel, and in fact, he’d found her to be young and sort of goofy. Of course he said hello to her. He even shared a laugh with her, and chatted about their afternoon in Malibu. He thought nothing of it; he had given her no indication that he was the slightest bit interested, and considered her just another acquaintance. But it obviously meant something to Ariel, who heard about the Spy who Loved Them from the other actresses and felt compelled to mention that she had “dated” Michael a couple of times.

  She also mentioned that she had “dated” Michael as recently as last week, which, when pressed by Trudy, who had overheard the conversation, Jack agreed that she had.

  Michael knew all this courtesy of Trudy. By Thursday afternoon, he couldn’t seem to catch Leah anywhere on the lot, but he caught up with Trudy. “Hey, kid,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “You’re mean with that paint gun.”

  Trudy removed her sunburst sunglasses and smiled up at him. “Ya think?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She smiled, clearly pleased with his praise.

  “So where’s the Yang to your Yin?” he asked.

  “Oh honey, who cares? Wanna get a drink? I can show you other tricks I can do with paint guns,” she said with a wink.

  He laughed. “I’d love to, but I can’t. I just need to talk to Leah.”

  “She went somewhere with Adolfo.”

  “With who?” he asked as a couple of red flags quickly popped up in his brain.

  “Adolfo,” she said with a shrug. “Some friend of hers.”

  A few more red flags and a couple of orange cones popped up. “I didn’t know she had any friends on set besides you.”

  “She does. And you should have one, too,” Trudy added, sidling up to him and touching the button of his shirt.

  With a chuckle, Michael grabbed her hand and smiled. “I’m tempted, gorgeous . . . but I really need to talk to Leah.”

  Trudy sighed. “She’s not going to talk to you, Michael.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, silly, she knows about your other date.”

  “What other date?” he asked, his confusion raging. “I don’t have another date.”

  “Ariel?” Trudy said with a slight roll of her eyes.

  “Ariel?”

  “Ariel. The new girl.” At
Michael’s baffled look, Trudy sighed and said, “The one you went out with just last week? At least she told everyone you did.”

  The light suddenly went off. “Oh,” he said, nodding unthinkingly. “Ariel. But wait, Trudy—I didn’t go out with her like that.”

  “You’ll have to convince Leah of that. And Nicole.”

  “Oh shit,” he muttered.

  Trudy laughed, punched him playfully on the shoulder. “But you don’t have to convince me.”

  He smiled, took Trudy’s hand, and kissed it. “I adore you, Yin. Thanks for the heads up.”

  Trudy sighed and looked at her hand. “God, you’re good,” she said, and smiled after him as he walked on.

  ACROSS the studio lot in the commissary tent, Leah was smiling at Adolfo, but she wasn’t really hearing anything he said. He was talking, she thought, about surfing. She smiled, picked up her bottle of juice, and drank, put it down again, and smiled.

  Adolfo suddenly paused in whatever he was saying and cocked his head to one side. “What is this frown?” he asked.

  “Frown?” she echoed. She’d been trying so hard to smile.

  “No, no,” he said, shaking his head as she tried to smile harder. “This is not a smile. This is a frown that is . . . how do you say . . . upside down.”

  So busted. “I’m sorry, Adolfo,” she said with a sigh. “I guess my mind is just elsewhere.”

  “Where is your mind?” he asked in all seriousness.

  She sighed, thinking back to what Ariel had said at lunch today, bragging about the luxury yacht Michael had taken her on the same weekend Leah was trying to call him and thank him for the Van Cleef perfume.

  Adolfo was looking at her expectantly.

  With a slight grimace, Leah spread her fingers across the table and tried to think of a tactful way to tell him she was thinking of another guy.

  “It is with a man, eh?” Adolfo surmised, startling her.