by Susan Stoker
“Hang on to me if you need to. Relax. I’ve got you.”
She slowly lifted her hands from the rail and they fluttered around a moment before settling over his hands. Making a move he never would’ve guessed she’d do, she pulled his hands off her waist and wrapped them around herself until they were crossed in front of her. She then moved her hands to his waist and hooked her thumbs into the belt loops at his sides.
Damn.
His breathing hitched and Crash closed his eyes for a moment. Yes. He liked this.
He liked it even more when Adeline put her head back and rested it on his shoulder.
“Is this okay?” she asked softly.
“Yeah, beautiful. This is more than okay.”
They stood like that without speaking for at least ten minutes. Watching as the sun got lower and lower on the horizon. Cicadas started their mating song in the warm air and lights slowly came on around the city below them. Porch lights, streetlamps, headlights from cars, even the downtown buildings lit up.
As if they were in a world of their own and the slightest sound would break the mood, Adeline whispered, “That was amazing.”
“Yeah,” Crash responded in the same low voice.
“I needed this after the week I had.”
“I’m sorry you had a crap week, beautiful. But I’m glad I could end it on a high note for you.”
“Me too.” She turned in his arms until they were face to face, chest to chest, legs against legs. Looking up, she licked her lips as if she was nervous, then told him, “Thank you for asking me out.”
“Thank you for saying yes,” Crash returned, not able to take his eyes off her mouth. It was getting dark, but there was still enough light to see her clearly. Her lipstick had long since disappeared, but her lips were still red and lush. Out of the corner of his eye he could see, and feel, her breasts rising and falling against his chest. He knew if he looked down he’d be able to get quite the eyeful, but he was too fascinated by her lips.
He wanted to taste her. Needed to feel her lips moving under his. To twine his tongue with hers. They had chemistry, there was no denying it, but he wanted to take it a step further, to see if they would be as explosive together as he imagined. But it had to be her choice. He didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.
“Do you think your friends can see us?”
The question shocked him for a moment. Crash wasn’t sure he liked that Adeline was thinking about Moose and Taco when she was standing so close to him. He shrugged. “Maybe. But they won’t be looking at us.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re my friends. They might be serving as safety monitors, but they’re too good of friends, and men, to make you feel uncomfortable for even one second. And you knowing they were watching us would make you uncomfortable. So they won’t do it.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’d do the same thing if it was me down there, and they were up here with a pretty woman they were desperately trying to impress.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
Crash smiled sheepishly. “Yeah.”
“Well, it’s working. I’m impressed.”
“Yeah?” This time it was a question.
“Uh huh. Know what would impress me more?”
“What’s that?”
They were both still whispering.
“If you’d kiss me.”
Crash waited one beat then without a word, dipped his head, just as she went up on her tiptoes.
Their lips met and Crash would swear he saw sparks behind his eyes. At first he lightly brushed his lips across hers, sipping and teasing. But when Adeline let out a small note of impatience…and desire…he couldn’t hold back.
One hand came up to the back of her head and the other went to the small of her back, under her shirt, seeking warm skin. He opened his mouth and ran his tongue along the seam of her lips. Without any more coaxing she opened for him. Crash’s tongue surged inside her mouth as he pressed his hand to her back and brought her flush against his body.
Without any finesse or thinking about his technique, Crash devoured her, wanting to get closer to her. Their tongues dueled together, and he growled deep in his throat when she sucked on him as if she were devouring his dick.
The thought went from his head straight to his dick, and before he could even think about trying to hold back to keep from freaking Adeline way the hell out, he was pushing her hips against his rock-hard cock. Using his tongue to show her what he really wanted to be doing to her body, he thrust in and out of her at the same time he rocked against her.
Adeline gasped and pulled back an inch, breathing as hard as if she’d run the dreaded 5k race she’d mentioned earlier. Not wanting to lose contact with her, Crash moved his lips to her neck, licking and nipping at her skin, loving how she squirmed against him.
He made his way back up to her mouth and teased her. Licking, but not entering. When she was chasing his lips with her own, he settled back in, letting her take the lead. Her tongue swept into his mouth and he moaned with the carnality of her actions, taking what she wanted and not letting shyness or their location hold her back.
Knowing he had to stop, but not wanting to, Crash ended their kiss by taking her bottom lip between his and sucking lightly. He let it go with a pop and moved his mouth to the sensitive skin below her ear.
His hand stayed behind her head, keeping her tucked into him, and his brain finally kicked in and realized that instead of warm skin, all he felt with the hand at her back was thick material.
Without lifting his head, he whispered, “What is this?”
“Corset.” Her voice was shaky and still low.
The word did the one thing he would’ve sworn he’d never be able to do—made him pull back from her.
“What?”
“It’s a corset.” Adeline looked embarrassed now. “Not like the ones from the eighteen hundreds or anything, and it’s not really all that tight, but I like how it makes me look and feel.”
Crash closed his eyes, assailed by a vision of her standing in front of him with nothing on but a sexy-as-fuck corset and a tiny pair of undies. His hand tensed at her back and he tried to bring himself under control.
“You don’t like it.” It wasn’t a question. “I know that men typically like skimpy lingerie on a woman, and I feel good in it, but if you don’t—”
“Hush,” Crash ordered.
“But—”
“Adeline. I swear to God…I’m hanging on by a thread here.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “I’m trying to be a gentleman, but between the most amazing kiss I’ve ever had in my life, and the vision of you standing in front of me wearing nothing but a corset and a pair of panties…I just need a minute. Okay?”
She smiled then. A wide smile that he could barely see in the darkness that now surrounded them. “Okay.”
Crash took a deep breath and decided he must be a glutton for punishment. “What color?”
“What color what?”
“What color is your corset?”
“Black.”
“Damn. And it’s got ribbons holding it together?”
She shrugged. “Sorta. There are snaps in the front, which makes it easier to put on by myself, but yeah, if the ribbons are undone in the back it’ll come off.”
Crash moved the hand that had been on the back of her head and traced her collarbone with his index finger. He really wanted to run it over the tops of her breasts, which he could barely see, but knew a first date wasn’t the time and this really wasn’t the place. “I’ve never seen a woman in one.”
“Really?” She sounded skeptical.
“Really. I’ve seen actresses wearing them in movies, and I might’ve seen one in a porn video or two, but I imagine that you’d look very different.”
“Yeah,” she breathed harshly. “I weigh way more than any of them.”
Not liking her tone, Crash leaned over and brushed his lips over the s
kin his fingertips had just skimmed. She shivered under him. “I wasn’t being derogatory, beautiful. Far from it. I can picture it. Your waist nipped in by the material, your tits spilling over the top, begging to be released. You have no idea the things I want to do to you while you’re wearing that corset.”
“Dean…”
“Yeah, beautiful. And I have a good imagination. You over me, the first couple of snaps undone so your nipples have popped free, riding me—fuck!” Crash let go of Adeline so quickly she staggered. He stepped away and turned his back to her, holding on to the railing as tightly as she’d done earlier.
“I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m so sorry. I was way out of line. Shit.” Crash took a deep breath, then another, trying to get himself under control. The vision of her riding his cock as he watched her tits bouncing up and down had been so vivid he would’ve sworn it was a memory rather than a fantasy.
Crash knew to the marrow of his bones, when—hopefully not if—he saw her in the corset, she’d be the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. And he wanted it. Wanted her. More than anything he’d ever wanted before.
“Dean.”
He felt her small hand on the middle of his back and he tensed. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“It’s okay. You weren’t out of line.”
“Yeah, I was,” he countered, still not turning around.
Adeline’s arms wrapped around him from behind and came to rest on his pecs. She laid her cheek on his back. “You weren’t out of line, because I imagined your lips moving from my collarbone down my chest, as you licked and sucked your way down.”
One of his hands moved from the railing to envelope hers on his chest. He stayed silent and held on.
“Not only that, but I had a sudden vision of dropping to my knees right here, high above the ground, and seeing if you’re as big as you feel. Taking you out of your pants and sucking you off right here, right now.”
Crash closed his eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks that he hadn’t repulsed or turned her off with his earlier words.
He turned in her embrace and pulled her closer. Not trusting himself to kiss her again; now he had the image of her in that damn corset on her knees in front of him, his cock between her lips.
“I guess it’s safe to say we’re attracted to each other,” he said dryly.
She giggled and nodded against him. “Yeah.”
“When can I see you again, beautiful?”
Adeline looked up at that and shrugged. “Whenever you want.”
Crash brought a hand up and smoothed her hair away from her face. It was too dark to really see any details of her face anymore, but he could still picture her clear as day in his mind. “I love that you don’t play games. Thank you. Unfortunately, tomorrow I start a seventy-two hour shift. Then I have forty-eight hours off. Then I do it again.”
Crash saw a flash of her white teeth as she bit her lip. “I have a new client and next week will be busy for me. It’s always tough when I first start with someone new. Lots of phone conferences and back and forth brainstorming about ideas. I’m usually exhausted by the time I get home.”
“Fuck. Okay. We’ll figure it out. Next Sunday for sure?”
“You’ll need to sleep, won’t you?”
Crash kissed the top of Adeline’s head. She was so sweet. “Not really. We sleep when we’re on shift. Yeah, we get calls, but we usually get plenty of shut-eye between them. Besides, I’d rather spend time with you than sleep.”
“Then I’d like that,” she whispered.
“We’ll text and talk on the phone until then though.”
“Yeah?”
Crash pulled back a bit. “You think we can go over a week without talking to each other?”
He felt her shrug.
“Well, I can’t,” he said definitively. “I like you, Adeline. I want to know how your day’s been. I want to know if Douglas has been giving you shit. How you’re feeling. If you’re thinking about me. What your sister thinks about our first date, ‘cause I know you’re gonna call her tomorrow and talk to her about me and tonight.” He smiled, remembering the text Adeline had received earlier that night from Alicia. She’d shown it to him. Her sister had wanted to know if she needed to put into motion “Operation First Date Dud.”
Adeline had explained that it was code for her sister calling with a fake emergency, and she’d let him watch as she’d replied to her sister that there was no need for the drastic measures, that she was having a great time and would talk to her tomorrow.
“We’re gonna make this work, Adeline. If you think I’m gonna let you go without getting to see you in that corset, you’re crazy.”
“Okay. Sunday. But this time I get to pick where we go and what we do.”
“Deal. You gonna let me pick you up this time?”
“Maybe.”
“Adeline,” he growled.
She giggled, and Crash knew he’d spend the rest of his life trying to make sure she always sounded as carefree and happy as she did right then.
It was insane. One date and he was already thinking long-term, but he knew a good thing when he saw it, and no way was he letting her slip away. No way in hell.
“Oh all right. You can pick me up.”
“Thank you. One more kiss and then we’ll head down.”
“Okay.”
The word was more a breath than an actual word and Crash’s head was already moving before it left her mouth.
He couldn’t see her very well anymore, could only feel her body against his, her lips against his, and her tongue brushing against his own, but it was as if he’d suddenly woken up from a long coma. He could see his future, with Adeline by his side, as clearly as if they were standing in the middle of a stage with every light focused right on them.
Reluctantly pulling away and licking his lips, getting one last taste of Adeline, Crash told her, “Cover your ears.”
She moved her hands up between them and put them over her ears.
Crash turned his head and whistled one long, loud note, and within moments the bucket started descending.
Adeline’s hands came down and wrapped around his waist once more, giving him her weight. Trusting him to help her remain balanced as the bucket jerked and bounced as they got closer and closer to the ground.
“Looks like y’all had a good time,” Moose drawled when the ladder reached the bottom.
The lights from the building shone on the truck and Crash could see the blush that bloomed on Adeline’s face. He ran his thumb over the apple of her cheek and smiled at her. “We did.”
“Thanks for letting Coco hang with us,” Taco told Adeline. “He’s a great dog.”
“I know,” she returned.
“Arms up,” Crash told her softly.
She did as he said and he unhooked the safety line from around her waist, then did the same with his own, removing the harness and storing it in a small metal box at their feet inside the bucket. “Come on, Cinderella. Time to get you home.”
Adeline ducked under the chain and took the hand Moose held out to her. He helped her to the ground and she crouched and greeted Coco, who acted like she’d been gone for weeks rather than only an hour or so.
“Thanks for your help,” Crash told his friends.
They nodded at him.
“Anytime.”
“No problem.”
The two men headed back into the fire station and disappeared.
Crash leaned over and helped Adeline to her feet. They walked to his car and he got her and Coco settled. The drive back to the parking garage in Southtown was done in relative silence. It was comfortable, and Crash held Adeline’s hand the whole way.
She told him what floor her car was on and he insisted on taking her all the way to it, rather than dropping her off at street level and having her take the elevator up to her car by herself. When she argued, saying it was silly for him to pay to drive up to the third floor, he shook his head.
“I don’t care about the
couple of bucks it’ll cost me,” he told her sternly. “Your safety is way more important than saving money. Now hush.”
“You’re kinda bossy, you know that?” she asked as he grabbed the ticket and entered the garage.
“I am. And I’m sure there will be a lot of other things you find out about me that might irritate you,” Crash said easily, not worried in the least. “I’m not perfect. Not by a long shot. I could list a whole litany of things that my friends and ex-girlfriends found annoying about me, but I’d rather you found them out on your own.”
“You would?” Adeline asked, her head tilted with curiosity.
“Yup. Because I’m hoping by the time you figure out what they are, there’ll be a whole lot of other things about me you do like, so they won’t seem as bad.”
“Do you leave dirty dishes in the sink for days so the food has time to dry on them, making it impossible to clean them in the dishwasher?”
He chuckled. “No.”
“Do your feet smell so horribly bad that I’ll need to wear a gas mask when you take off your shoes and socks?”
Crash snorted. “No. Although I would recommend you take a few steps back if you ever see me right after a fire. Our turn-out gear can get pretty rank…not to mention the boots we wear trap heat inside.”
“Noted,” she deadpanned. “Do you kick small animals and sneer at children when you see them in the mall?”
He reached over and tugged on a piece of her hair teasingly. “No and no. Now hush. Stop trying to figure out all my secrets.”
“I know you’re not perfect, Dean. Neither am I. Aside from the obvious illness I’ve got, I take off my shoes as soon as I get inside my house so there are shoes everywhere, forget to open my mail for days at a time, I’ve never dusted a day in my life, and have a weird thing about making sure my toenails are always painted. As long as you don’t have any bodies hidden under your house, I’m sure I can deal with any other idiosyncrasies you might have.”
He smiled at her. “Good. But I’m going to remind you that you said that the first time I do something stupid.”
They continued up the ramps until they reached her car.
Crash got out, grabbed a small bag from the floor at his feet, and met her at the side of her car.