by Talia Quinn
“Persephone. I’m going right now. Don’t call again tonight. Call a therapist. Figure out why you keep committing adultery. But don’t call me.”
He hung up.
Now it was the two of us. I wasn’t a distraction. I was the main event. And I was in the middle of a striptease? What was I thinking?
I faltered.
“Don’t stop. Keep doing that.” Dylan’s gaze was intent, his tone authoritative.
Swallowing hard, I spread my legs, a wide stance, and ran my hands slowly down my body. The corset fell to the floor. I was naked except for my boots. And then I touched myself.
It was like and not like doing it at home. The movements, the feel of my fingers, that was the same. But at home, I closed my eyes and pretended I was with a virile man. Pretended he wanted to devour me whole.
Now? I watched an extremely sexy man closely, watched as his eyes lit with hunger. Watched his hand tighten around his cock. Heard his breath thicken.
I strode over to him, feeling powerful. Excitement zinged through me. I straddled his lap. He looked ready. I sure was. I took the condom I’d palmed a minute earlier, ripped it with my teeth.
I cocked an eyebrow—a question. He held his breath—an answer.
Unfurling the condom was another game. Another chance to touch him, to caress him. His cock at full attention, thick and strong, and oh man, that was going to feel amazing inside me.
I slid on top of him, against him, and finally, yes, took him inside me. He filled me, the tension unbearable.
I raised myself up, letting him slip partway out.
The phone rang.
“God. Don’t stop.” Dylan wrapped his hands around my hips, urging me on.
I slid back down, embedding him deep inside me as I grabbed the phone. “I’m going to answer it.”
He stared up at me, his face a wild mix of passion and shock. But he didn’t say no.
I thumbed the slider. “Persephone, sweetheart. I’m fucking your ex-husband. Find yourself someone else to screw up. He’s not available.”
I hung up on her choked gasp and threw the phone across the room. It clattered against some boxes.
“I can’t believe you did that.” But he wasn’t angry. He was turned on. “My God.”
I lifted myself up until he was barely inside me, and then slid back down, taking him all the way in. He groaned and flipped us around, pinning me to the couch.
He was laughing, relief and passion and a pure, piercing joy. I vibrated with his joy, with his laughter, and all the while he was plunging into me, making me moan in pleasure.
“You.”
He thrust, sending sensation cascading through me.
“Are.”
Again, and so good.
“Insane.”
I laughed and wrapped my legs around him, urging him on, boot leather against flesh. And he obliged. Oh, how he obliged. Laughing and groaning and panting and surging into me as I reared up to meet him. I kept my eyes open, watching pleasure tighten his stunning features, watching what I was doing to him. And he opened his eyes, gazing at me with a deep well of hunger and delight.
We moved faster, in perfect sync. I’d never been so in tune with a man in my life, with this stranger who was anything but. My body surrounded him, moved against him. We moved in rhythm as if we’d known each other forever, as if this night was kismet, meant to be. Perfectly insane. Insanely perfect.
I could hardly breathe from the pleasure coursing through my veins, every pore of my skin sexually charged.
He lifted me up, still joined, and walked us to the bedroom, where he set me down on a huge king-size bed. I rolled us around so I was on top again. With him still inside me, I unfastened my barrette. As my hair spilled out of its confinement, I leaned forward, letting it brush across his bare chest. The tingling got stronger, a wave of pressure building inside me, until I was about to burst. I wanted to bring him with me, so I reached down and fingered his testicles and rode him, slick and hard, until we both exploded, his pulsing merged into mine, and then I brushed my breasts against his chest, kissed him on the lips, and collapsed on him.
And it was all far, far better than I’d imagined. I felt free. No relationship drama. No complications looming. No I love you and freeze. Just a deliciously pleasurable intimate connection with an unexpectedly fascinating man.
Dylan murmured something into my hair. I rolled over to lie next to him, wanting to see him better. We hadn’t even gotten under the sheets. He brushed my hair out of my face, a surprisingly tender gesture. “Saffron. Spicy. Exotic.”
“Mmm.”
“What’s your real name?”
Panic pinged through me. But I shook my head with a saucy smile. “Saffron, of course.”
He laughed. A long way from the tightly wound man I’d met at the door.
I too felt boneless and wide open. Just not open enough to tell him the truth. “Gotta keep some secrets, don’t I?”
He traced the line of my cheek. “I want to do that again in a bit.”
I propped myself up on my elbows. “You want your ex to call so we can reenact the drama? A bit excessive, don’t you think?”
Now his finger traced loops across my chest. And yes, I felt stirrings of lust reemerge. Light from the night-bright city slanted across his face, revealing a look more tender than hungry. “I still can’t believe you did that.”
“Which? The striptease or answering the phone? I’m not one for social niceties.”
He laughed. “I kind of got that.” He leaned in for a kiss, first gentle and then more hungry. When we broke apart, he leaned back against the pillow. “I needed it, though. I won’t be able to listen to her on the phone again without thinking about this.” He gestured between us. “And then I’ll probably get horny. Do you have discounts for regular customers?”
“We’ll see.” I smiled in the dark, but I could feel my stomach clench. Regular customers? I knew Jeanine did that, but if I came back here, if I saw him again—it was treading dangerously close to a relationship.
I sat up. “Why think about the future? Why not work with what we have?” I brushed my hand lightly down his body, my mouth following suit.
Yep, he had an erection. Juicy and full and eager for my touch, my tongue, my heat.
This time I bent over the end of the bed, and he entered me from behind. I squeezed my thighs together and reached my hand down to touch the base of his cock, feeling every movement both within and without.
He withdrew, but only to roll me onto the bed and enter me from above. His arms were taut as he drove into me with an ever-increasing rhythm, the bed shaking with the force of our joining. When I came, I felt my throat clog with unshed tears, and I didn’t know why.
After a few boneless minutes, I got up and went to the bathroom, where I ran his comb through my hair and tried to make myself presentable. My hair was mussed, my cheeks pink from exertion, and half my makeup had rubbed off. I looked like a different person. Like someone well satisfied.
I hesitated before crossing the threshold back into the bedroom. Dylan leaned back against the pillows, watching me. The tension that had propelled him earlier was gone, but he didn’t look as relaxed as I would have expected. He looked alert. Focused.
I walked into the room cautiously, acutely aware of his gaze. We’d been so intimate, and now…well, now here we were. This was the hard part. The part where things always got awkward. For one thing, I had no idea what to say. That was great, thanks?
He spoke first. “Who hurt you?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said you’re not programmed for relationships. Why not? Who hurt you?”
“Nobody hurt me.” Not on purpose, anyway.
“Tell me the truth.”
“True confessions cost extra.”
“I’ll pay.”
I was tempted to brush him off again with a quip. It would be so much easier. But then I remembered watching Dylan on the phone, taut and tense. Remembered
the look on his face when I first touched him intimately, how it wasn’t only pleasure for him. He’d been guarded and tense, anticipating pain.
Remembered his expression when I left him on the bed two minutes ago, relaxed against the pillows, like a male model, radiating contentment.
He’d shared his pain with me. Thanks to Persephone and her incessant phone calls, he hadn’t had a choice. The least I could do was return the favor.
So, for the first time in my life, I didn’t run away. Instead, I sat on the end of the bed and draped a sheet over my bare lap, feeling acutely self-conscious. “It wasn’t on purpose. My parents—my father died of a heart attack when I was seven. My mother went to bed and did nothing but cry for two years. He’d been her entire life. With him gone, she became practically catatonic. So my grandparents, my mother’s parents, they took me in. And then after she committed suicide, they kept me until I graduated high school. They were…” I misted over, remembering, then angrily rubbed my eyes. No crying allowed. Not ever. “They were crotchety and old-fashioned and had stupid rules that drove me crazy.”
He watched me, his eyes dark with something dangerously like understanding. “And you loved them.”
“I had to. They were all I had.”
“Are they still around?”
“My grandfather is. We talk twice a year. I call him on his birthday, and he calls me on mine.”
“Thank you for telling me.” He sounded like maybe he was about to cry. He sat up so he could stroke my back. I leaned into it like a cat arching into a soothing hand, then shifted my body against his and turned around to slither into his lap.
This time we took it slow. He moved with great care and held me as if I might break. My orgasm ratcheted up gradually, like steam building in a teakettle instead of a tidal wave, but when it hit, it lasted for an incredibly long time. I opened my eyes and stared up into his deep brown gaze, and wished I could stay here forever, in this moment, in this bed, with this man, in suspended animation, this perfect moment with light from the city night streaming over us and the soft sheets and his hard abs and everything about tonight captured in this one embrace.
Afterward, while Dylan cleaned up in the bathroom, I fell asleep, boneless and exhausted. I woke when I felt the weight of his body as he got back into bed, and I struggled against the lure of sleep, forcing myself to sit up. “I should go. What time is it?”
“Three a.m. You might as well stay.”
I hesitated. This was starting to feel an awful lot like a date.
“I’ll pay the extra cost, if that’s your concern.”
Now I felt bad. “That’s not why.”
He leaned forward, brushing the hair from my face. His expression was too knowing. “You don’t sleep over, do you? It’s in your price chart, but you don’t ever do it.”
Too personal. He knew too much. I rolled away from him on the bed, searching for my clothes, before I realized I’d left them in the living room.
He followed me from the bedroom. I picked up my corset. I couldn’t face putting it back on, so I grabbed my coat from the couch. With the coat buttoned securely, I could fake my way into a cab. I’d bring the corset with me.
Dylan watched me. “You and I are alike in some ways, I think.”
I paused, one arm through a sleeve, the other bare. “How so?”
“You build walls around yourself. Protective.”
I turned toward him. “You seem like the opposite to me. You’ve been kind to your ex even after what she did to you.” And you were more than kind to me. His touch, his mouth. Giving, not only receiving.
His mouth quirked up. “Learned behavior. Persephone acts so fragile, it would be like kicking a puppy.”
I slid my other arm into the sleeve but let the coat hang open, my nudity half-concealed. “Are you saying I was cruel to her on the phone?” Maybe I’d taken it too far. I didn’t know her, didn’t know their relationship.
“You know you were.”
“Then why do you want me to stay?”
A small smile played across his face, almost mischievous. “I didn’t say it was wrong for you to be cruel. I can’t say the things you did. We have too much history. But someone should tell her she needs to move on, and tell her emphatically.”
I sat on the couch, sucked in despite myself. “That wasn’t the first time she slept with someone else, I take it.” I couldn’t exactly walk out on Dylan. Not with him standing there, his nude body sculpted by light, showing every supple muscle, the tension rippling through him.
“She’s a serial adulterer. She craves the excitement. Whenever I’d catch her, she’d deny it, then burst into tears and swear she loved me, only me, and beg forgiveness.” He heaved a sigh and sat on the couch. The leather squeaked, and I could feel the cushion rebalance with his weight. “I knew she’d do it again, every time. But she was like a wounded bird. I thought I could fix her and make it all better.”
“But it hurt. Her adultery.”
His silence was assent, heavy in the air.
“Is this the first time you moved out?”
He nodded. “The first time I’ve slept alone for more than a night or two. We were together for twelve years. No children, thankfully. We met freshman year of college. She was family. And now she’s not.” He ran his palm along the slick leather surface between us. “I don’t sleep well here. It’s not home yet.”
A truck backfired several floors down, out in the street. The wind rattled the windowpanes. “I’ll stay tonight.”
“Good.” He got up and went into the kitchen. I followed, still wearing the coat, feeling awkward and uncertain. This was no longer anything like a sex-for-pay encounter, but it also wasn’t a date. Without a label, without that definition of purpose, I didn’t feel right stripping off the coat and being naked with him. The coat was my defense. Feeble as that simple wool layer might be, it was symbolic.
The refrigerator door was open, spilling light onto Dylan’s nude form. I admired his silhouette, the outlines of his buttocks, the dimple in the small of his back. One fine man, for sure. He turned around, and I could see the plate he held, neatly arranged with pâté, a jar of fish roe, and a wedge of cheese.
“I can cut an apple.” I grabbed one from the fruit bowl and looked around for a knife.
Dylan handed it to me, then peeled the coat off, letting it drop, and pulled me against him. So much for symbolism. Or maybe that was the symbolism. This man wouldn’t let me have my shields. I could handle that for tonight. I’d never see him again, after all, so why not? So I cut the apple in neat slices while standing naked with a naked man pressed against my backside. It was wildly erotic but also strangely right.
We ate sitting cross-legged on his huge bed, the plate between us on the coverlet. I fell on the food, ravenous. I’d skipped dinner. The butterflies in my stomach hadn’t allowed for food.
Dylan cut a slice of cheddar and laid it neatly on an apple slice. His gaze flicked up to my mouth. I could tell he was thinking about feeding me by hand. I grabbed an olive and stuffed it in my mouth. If he fed me, it would feel too intimate. Too much like love.
He ate the apple-cheese combination himself in one bite and washed it down with a sip of wine. “So why a call girl?”
I froze, the next olive halfway to my mouth. But Dylan was focused on the cracker he was now spreading with a generous dollop of pâté, as if it was the most natural question in the world. After the events of the night, maybe it was.
“It’s a good living. I meet the most interesting people.” I flashed him a smile and slid my hand along the lightly furred muscle of his thigh.
He responded instantly, sighing under my touch, but apparently it didn’t distract him enough. “It’s not exactly a long-term career path. You’re obviously intelligent. Ingenious too.” His mouth twitched. I’d done some interesting things tonight, hadn’t I? “So why not grad school? Become, I don’t know, a lawyer. Or a surgeon. You’re good with your hands.” He gave me a sidelong lo
ok, and I blushed. “It’s not too late. You’re young.”
He looked so earnest. I almost blurted out that I was a junior architect at a good firm, but that would not only give the game away, it wasn’t fair to Jeanine. She deserved better. Her work-for-pay gig deserved better.
And it wasn’t Dylan’s fault he didn’t get it. Most people didn’t. “It’s only a problematic employment choice if you think sex is dirty. Think of it as a service profession. Giving to people. Helping them. Like I helped you start to get over your ex tonight. Sometimes it means giving clients something they can’t have otherwise. Companionship, or a satisfying roll in the hay after a long drought. Or kink, if they want that and can’t find it anywhere else. Or just a simple release.”
He took a bite of pâté-smeared cracker, chewing as if it tasted bad, which I knew it didn’t. “Don’t you ever want it to mean more, though? I know you’re not into having a boyfriend, but what if you did? How would you keep doing this and have someone serious in your life? How would you differentiate sex with him versus sex with clients?”
“You’re overthinking this.” I pushed the plate aside and put my hand on his thigh. He didn’t protest, but I felt his tension, and not the good kind. “I love what we did earlier. There was something so pure about it. I walked in here knowing I was going to feel you inside me, and that was such an amazing thing. No ‘I’ll buy the lady a drink, what’s your name, pretty girl?’ bullshit.”
He choked with laughter. “I never do that.”
“I’m sure you’re much smoother. Still, the point is, it makes it simple, doesn’t it? We both knew we’d get laid tonight from the moment I walked in that door. I like you, and I enjoy talking to you more than I expected.” My throat closed at this, and I didn’t know why. “But we didn’t have to talk at all. Purely optional. Bodies, that’s all we need to connect.”
I brushed my fingers lightly against his cock. Unbelievably, it stirred under my touch, though not to fullness. Even after all the times we’d brought each other to orgasm tonight, he was still turned on by my light caress. The thought was intoxicating. That intoxication stirred something inside of me too, an answering kindling, albeit a muted one after our long night together.