by Dani Collins
She knew how to walk in these shoes now and took her time parading through the lobby. The foyer was busy this afternoon with a conference of men in suits. For the first time, she embraced the power of her own sexuality. She walked with proud posture, aware that the clip of her heels drew attention.
Her hair bounced in loose curls against her bare shoulders, and her loins simmered, untouched since Dominic’s thorough pleasuring yesterday. Anticipation of another one of his mind-blowing orgasms had kept her from doing more than lightly stimulating herself with the showerhead before she’d dressed.
Today was oral sex day. She didn’t want to be so tender she couldn’t appreciate it. Oh, God, was she really going to let him do that?
The elevator bell rang and she was forced to enter a car full of men who smelled of smoke and gin. Aware that every pair of eyes traversed her from lips to bright red toes, she shook back her hair and let herself fall into the role of an exceedingly sophisticated woman whom no man could touch. The kind of woman who walked into a hotel room knowing a man waited for her and would devote himself to her pleasure.
Her nipples tightened and rose against the plush knit while her pussy muscles clenched in eagerness. The reality of what Dominic wanted to do would embarrass the heck out of her, but the fantasy—oh, yes, she very much liked the idea of Dominic easing her legs apart to lick her out.
“We’re having a party in one of the suites,” one of the men said. “Join us?”
Arianne slowly turned her head, met the man’s interested stare from behind her mirrored lenses. “I’m not available right now,” she said in her chilliest drawl.
“That is a pity,” he said, taking his gaze to her shoes and back. “Room twelve-twenty if you change your mind.”
The elevator reached her floor and she didn’t look back as she exited, her steps smooth and silent on the thick carpet.
“She won’t change her mind,” someone muttered as the doors closed.
Feeling irresistible, she strolled to where Dominic waited for her.
“You look like you just flew in from Paris,” he told her with a husky note in his voice that lightly abraded her taut nerves.
“Don’t I?” She teased him with a pair of air kisses beside his cheeks, incredibly self-conscious as she detected the faint scent of familiar aftershave. It wasn’t hard proof, but she’d never smelled it on anyone but Jason.
“This lipstick smudges,” she said as an excuse for her capricious avoidance of a deeper kiss. It was true. She’d used her own tube today, a daring red close to the polish she wore. Not her usual color—she’d bought it for a New Year’s party she’d eventually decided against attending.
As though to complement her pristine white dress, he wore an off-white shirt and buff-colored pants in a soft chamois, the laces a triangle at his crotch, his boots brown, loose and slouched. Even the mask and gloves were chocolate rather than black. Peasant colors.
“Tell me,” he said as he floated a forest-green sheet over the bed. “Have you been practicing your homework?”
“No.” She came to grip the rung at the foot of the bed, admiring the gold fringe and tassels on the sheet. “I wasn’t sure I was allowed.”
“It’s your body, Arianne. Do whatever pleases you. But I’m glad, my beautiful student,” he said, dropping a light kiss on her nose, “that you didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because.” He dropped a matching green cushion on the floor beside the bed. “I think you’ll enjoy this more if you’re aroused, but not recently satisfied.”
She let him peel her fingers from the end of the bed and draw her around to the side. Her breath caught and fluttered high in her chest, into the base of her throat. Would she be able to let go and—
“Are you ready to learn how to please a man, Arianne?” He tucked her hair behind her ear.
“I— Pardon?” She had thought…
He leaned down to nip her earlobe. “I want to fuck your mouth,” he whispered.
A streak of excitement pierced her, both from the words and the feel of his breath disturbing the tiny hairs at her nape. Performance anxiety edged out some of her intrigue, however, while the scent of his aftershave—clean, woodsy and sharp—imprinted on her memory forever.
“I don’t know how,” she admitted, unable to look at him. Her stomach muscles rippled as he ran his hands down her sides. His thumb briefly pressed her nipple to cause a detonation of pleasure at her clit.
“I’m going to tell you,” he promised huskily. “Here. Kneel down.”
He backed up another two steps, sitting on the edge of the bed so the green cushion was between his booted feet. Taking her hands, he drew her forward, maneuvering her with the firm touch he’d used yesterday when he’d photographed her, positioning her so her forearms rested on his thighs, her knees on the soft velvet of the cushion.
“Now open my laces.” He leaned back on his hands, his legs splayed in invitation.
“I wasn’t expecting this.” She hesitated, longing to touch him, but nervous. What if she screwed up?
What if this was Jason and she was about to fail at the one thing every man adored more than life itself?
“Take your time. The anticipation is half the fun.”
His accented words gave her the courage to haltingly try fumbling free the zigzag of leather cord across his bulge. Her nails got in the way and she felt like a gross amateur, but he didn’t complain at how long it took, only said when she was done, “Now peel out the flap.”
Like the tongue in a shoe, the flap pulled forward, revealing the wrinkled tuck of his raw silk shirt. She glanced up.
“Pull my shirt out of the way,” he prompted. His fingers moved to play distractingly at her ear.
Swallowing her panic, she gently lifted the fabric free, pushing it up to his navel and revealed—
“Oh.”
He was already hard, thick and dark with the flush of arousal. She’d been married. She knew what a man’s penis looked like, soft or ready, but this erection wiped out old memories and replaced them with an image both savage and beautiful. Uncircumcised, unmarred by bend or flaw, the veined shaft thrust out from black pubic hair—
She lifted her gaze to his chin, startled. Lots of people were blond on top and dark below, but body hair tended to match, didn’t it?
His brown eyes watched her. Compelled her.
Contacts, a little voice in her head said, and her heart tripped into an unsteady, racing flutter.
“Touch me,” he said. “Take me in your hands.”
It was Jason’s voice, growled and accented, but it was unmistakably his. She knew it as well as she knew those lips she’d been pretending weren’t his. She was infinitely familiar with both and was about to become familiar with the rest of him.
If she dared.
Oh, God, she couldn’t do this.
But she had to. This was Being Sexy 101. If she wanted any chance with him, she had to make this good for him.
Overcoming her hesitation, she touched him, partly because she couldn’t not touch that magnificent muscle. She handled him gently, careful of sharp fingernails as she learned the shape of him, traced the ridge that formed the helmet of his tip, called on some distant memory of an article she’d read at a salon and used her thumb to follow the arrow up to the tiny eye.
He caught his breath and his shaft jerked.
“Did that hurt?” she asked.
“Ha. No. Here, like this. Tighten your hand around me here.” He folded her fingers around the base of his shaft. “Now cup my balls with this hand and use this one to stroke up. Use your thumb to hit that spot aga— Ah!” He leaned back again. “You’re a fucking good student, Arianne.” He met her strokes with abbreviated thrusts. “That’s good. Really fucking nice.”
She smiled shakily, experimenting with how tightly she closed her fist on him, preferring a light touch because she was able to appreciate the heat and softness of his skin, but discovering that a tighter grip drew gr
unts of pleasure from between his clenched teeth.
Thinking about how much she had enjoyed being pulled open and stretched and held on the brink but prevented from toppling, she drew her fist tight and low, feeling him pulse, hearing his breath stop.
She was driving him crazy, she could see it, and the sense of power was so overwhelming she could barely stand it. “I want to feel you in my mouth.”
He jerked in her hand and crushed his fist around her own. His balls tightened and he seemed to fight an internal battle for a moment before his nostrils flared and he relaxed a fraction.
“I want that, too,” he said through gritted teeth.
“But I don’t know how to start.”
He let out a rusty chuckle. “You start by insisting the man put on a condom.” His hand wasn’t quite steady as he reached to where his mask knotted at the base of his skull. When he brought his hand down, he offered a dark blue square from between two long gloved fingers.
“But—” She eased her hold on him to the lightest circling of his shaft, stroking his velvet length tenderly. “I want to feel you.”
“You want to make me come before you even get those pillow lips around me.” He flicked her bottom lip with his thumb.
“You don’t have any diseases, do you?”
“No, because I always wear a condom.”
“I’ve been tested. My husband didn’t give me anything.”
“Arianne.” He cupped her jaw, the chamois of his glove soft against her cheek. “I’m going to come in about three licks without a condom.”
“Really? I’ve never seen a man come. I mean, you know, seen it.” She couldn’t believe she’d just admitted that, but she had completely lost it in front of him yesterday. She would die happy if she gave him the same incredible experience.
He groaned and eased his fingers into her hair. “Lick me right where you were rubbing your thumb, darling.” He tightened his grip in her hair just enough to stimulate and urged her head toward his lap. “Like you’re polishing an ice cream.”
She steadied him in her fist and flicked her tongue on him, surprised both by the way his penis leapt and by the musky taste of him. Like the difference between white and dark chocolate: where her own taste was light and tangy, his flavor carried an undertone of bitterness.
She licked again, exploring the smooth skin with the abrasive pad of her tongue, following the ridge, returning to the tip and feeling his fingers tangle in her hair.
“Now tighten your fist and pull dow— Ah, like that. Fuck, that’s good, Arianne. Now suck. Just the tip. Ahhh, yeah, just like that.”
Cautiously closing her lips around the ridge, she let her mouth relax around the shape of his head, slithered her tongue into the groove and pushed, as though carving it deeper.
“Oh, yeah, I like that. Now let your saliva overflow. Bring your fist up. Let it get wet. Lubricate all the way down my cock, sweetheart. All the way. Yeah.”
Hot spit puddled in the creases of her closed fist and she gently manipulated up and down, smearing him until her hand slid easily.
“Now keep your teeth behind your lips, darling. That’s the way. How much can you take?” His hand in her hair gently pushed her deep into his lap while he filled her mouth, hitting the back of her throat in a way that startled her and made her instinctively pull back. “It’s okay,” he soothed in a voice like black coffee. “It takes a few strokes to get it right.”
He urged her to go down on him again, not quite so deep this time, his shape sliding into her, and then she had to tighten her lips and suck to keep him from sliding out. She had to lift her tongue to ensure she found the sweet spot.
“You came in here looking like a high-bred duchess and all I could think about was feeling those lips pulling on my cock like this. Do you like this, Arianne? Do you like having your mouth fucked?”
She choked on a whimper of response, aware that she did, indeed, like this. Not just the sense of power and confidence growing as she drew groans from him, but genuine sexual pleasure. Nothing touched her pussy in this position, yet she felt her own juices gathering in a tickling trickle that followed the crease of her clamped thighs. If her hands weren’t busy manipulating him, she’d tug her skirt up and rub into that itch.
But he was growing thicker and tighter in her hands, bobbing her head faster, breathing harder. “Suck hard, darling. Fucking take it. Yeah, take me, take my fucking cock—ahhh!”
He yanked hard on her hair, pulling her mouth off him with a sucking pop. He clenched her hand tight around the base of his shaft while white spunk shot out of the top of his cock in hard, pulsing spurts.
Cock. That was how she was starting to think. Cock, come, pussy. Fuck. Lick me. Fucking lick my pussy. She thought about how good it would feel to say those words. How good it would feel while she watched his cock pulse and spit and finally relax with the repletion she’d felt yesterday. The flushed muscle didn’t shrink much, just lost tension and eased, looking hardworked, smeared with saliva and lipstick, his balls thick with the scent of sweat and sex.
She’d fought believing this was really Jason, but appalled certainty sank in along with the knowledge that she had just blown him and got him off good. That was both a glorious and mortifying feeling.
Trembling in reaction to a certainty that refused to shift back into doubt, she watched him fall back on the bed.
As his hand loosened from her hair, his glove tugged fine strands.
“Sorry,” he murmured, soothing briefly. “That hurt you?”
“No. Did I hurt you?” Of their own volition, her hands stroked his thighs, enjoying the lack of give in his hard muscles, but her insides were quivering with both delight and pure shock. Oh, Jason.
“You ripped the head off my dick, but I’m not complaining, duchess.” He raised his head to look at her, grinning. “You’ve got come on your cheek.”
She sobered, humiliated.
He chuckled and lifted on an elbow, caught the drop on his fingertip, then dabbed it into the indent of her upper lip, filling her nostrils with the thick scent of him. “Your lipstick suffered, too.” He sat up and leaned over her. The same damp, musky finger touched under her chin, tilting her head back so he could kiss her.
As his tongue invaded her mouth, a smaller version of his heavy organ, she sucked, letting him taste her arousal. In the back of her mind, she wondered why she wasn’t running screaming, but her body was beyond eager to continue their lesson.
She was ready to be kissed everywhere.
“Thank you, Arianne. I enjoyed that. Tomorrow we’ll work on your pleasure.”
* * *
Arianne interrupted Jason’s dinner preparations, just as he’d hoped she would. She halted when she saw how far along he was in the stir-fry.
“Hungry?” he asked, turning to reach for a second plate. He was nursing a strong appetite, a sexual one, despite living out a particularly dear fantasy today. He was starving for her and liked the meal she offered, packaged in that untouchable white dress with the spangles of attitude and her hair loose and slightly mussed.
The skewed lipstick was just the right touch. Any man with a cock in his pants would have glimpsed that slight flaw and had a good idea where that mouth had been. He couldn’t wait to crumple her dress around her waist and return the favor, munching his way to heaven. Maybe, just maybe, after he’d left her hungry for it today, she’d finally be willing to let him.
“What time did you get home?” She frowned in confusion.
“I’ve been working from home all day,” he lied, determined to maintain the illusion Dominic was separate from him.
She eyed the rice he’d asked his maid to start.
“How was your day?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Her baffled, almost forlorn tone lifted his gaze from admiring her curves. He found a woman not edgy with sexual tension but tense and carrying shadows of self-doubt in her troubled eyes. He hadn’t seen such scorned distress since the earl
y days after Craig and Celine had walked out on them.
He hated seeing that expression again.
“Did something happen after you left Dominic?” No, he’d barely made it in the door ahead of her. She must have come straight home.
She shook her head. Her skin was chalky, the corners of her pouted lips heavy.
“No, it was when we—” Her voice quavered and her searching gaze fell away from his. She cleared her throat and flashed another anxious glance his way. “When we were together. I guess I wasn’t good enough?”
The question went through him like a bullet, stopping his heart. The way her eyes delved into his made him feel like he was free-falling.
He couldn’t answer, not directly. Not when he was realizing Dominic had put this tragic expression on her face. Again.
She’d been exquisite. Fantastic. Enthused, attentive and wonderful—a hundred things that he couldn’t tell her because he was Jason and he hadn’t been there. No way could he admit now that he had been, not when he’d crushed her self-confidence as thoughtlessly as he had a year ago.
He didn’t know what to say, and into the silence she said, “I guess I thought there was more going on between us, but these really are just lessons. Is that right?” Her mouth quirked into a trying-to-be-brave smile and her brows hung like heavy clouds over her bleak eyes.
It didn’t take a degree in biotechnology to figure out that since Arianne didn’t know Dominic was trying to steer her into Jason’s bed, she didn’t know how to interpret his enjoyment and dismissal of her. In fact, as Jason watched her chew her bottom lip, he realized that his sensitive Arianne had concluded that since she hadn’t been on the menu, she had failed to appeal.
“Fucking asshole,” Jason muttered, making her jump.
“Who?” she gasped.
“Who do you think?” He had to turn away, hating himself so deeply in that moment he couldn’t face her. Damn it, this was exactly what had happened before. The controlling, manipulative side of his personality had come out in Dominic, just like when he’d whispered suggestions to Celine of forbidden fruit across the fence because he, Jason, had wanted Arianne.