What She Needs

by Anne Calhoun

  “Did you think that would work, baby?”

  I go utterly still at his smile-that-isn’t-a-smile, the dark power in his eyes, the sweat gleaming on his chest and darkening his hair at his temples. I tried to play him, but he won. My cunt spasms around his cock. I don’t answer, but he doesn’t push. He knows.

  “Take your claws out of my shoulders and hand me that case.” He nods behind me.

  Oh, God. I’ve actually embedded my short, blunt nails into smooth skin and hard muscle. When I lift my fingers he shrugs then rolls his head on his neck, and I realize he’s used the mild sting to focus on holding back…the better to torture me. Slightly off-balance I look over my shoulder again and for the first time notice a black leather shaving kit, the one he uses when he travels, on the low dresser.

  I have a fairly good idea what’s in it.

  I brace one hand on his knee and reach for the kit with the other. The movement seats him even more deeply inside me and I gasp as my outstretched fingers grab the kit. He slides one hand up my back to help me upright again, and I offer him the case.

  As casually as if we were seated at a table in a fancy restaurant, not naked and sweating and engaged in a power play in an anonymous hotel room, he sets the black bag between our stomachs and unzips it. He removes lube and a dildo, not nearly his girth but big enough to my widening eyes.

  We’ve played those games before, but only with fingers, never with toys, and certainly not with these dark undercurrents ebbing and flowing in the room. While I’m much the same person in this room and outside of it, he’s different here. Harder. Less likely to give quarter. Over the past few months he’s taken me places I hadn’t acknowledged I wanted to go. I never asked him to orchestrate elaborate evenings at an expensive hotel. Somehow he knew, just as he knew this lay in the back of my clouded mind.

  But that’s why I’m here. The colors coalesce for one brilliant, shattering moment.

  “Jack?” I barely hear the word, almost inaudible over the hum of the air conditioner.

  He looks me straight in the eye. I’ve always loved that about him; he doesn’t dissemble or cajole or shy away from his demands. He makes me stand toe to toe with him and either face my own desires, or back down.

  “You can take this.”

  As he says the blunt words, he’s looking in my eyes; I don’t know what he sees there because I don’t have words for whatever I’m feeling. Colors, perhaps, a deep, intense violet swirled with velvety chocolate brown. A blue the hue of twilight. When I don’t protest, don’t even respond, he matter-of-factly works the lube into my pucker, smears a bit more on the dildo, then positions it, his eyes intent on our reflection in the mirror.

  Heat flashes through my aching pussy.

  “Spread, baby,” he says, but he’s not asking and that makes me even hotter. He widens his legs. My bent knees rest beside his hips, the tops of my feet braced on his thighs, my nails once again digging into his shoulders. He cannot sink any deeper into my swollen channel and I’m now totally vulnerable to him.

  He’s still looking at my face, unapologetic, and there is no hint of quarter in his dark eyes. If I can’t handle his demands I am the one who must halt our play. My implicit, unquestioned trust in Jack stems from the fact that from our first time together I’ve been able to say no, always. I simply don’t.

  The pressure increases slowly, patiently. Jack never rushes, not even on the night fifteen years ago when he took my virginity in the more conventional sense. The head of the dildo expects entrance to my ass, but without meaning to I’m resisting. His free hand leaves my hip and slides into my damp curls to find my clit. Three liquid strokes, a shocking counterpoint to the insistent push against my ass, and I quiver, sensation leaping through me. I soften, relax and the head slides in, just a bit, just enough to make my eyes widen.

  I clench my fingers into his shoulders and while the tip of his finger continues to caress my clit with a feather-light touch, the dildo’s progress ceases immediately. Sensation, however, does not, but rather beats under my skin. My heart is thundering in all my pulse points, the rhythm a deep violet, and my nipples are throbbing caps on my breasts. Heavy electricity is collecting in my groin, sparks firing in my clit, in the stretched nerves of my passage and in the tight ring of muscle about to be unquestionably breached for the first time. Between the rhythmic stroke of his finger, the unceasing demand of his thick cock in my pussy and the heated promise of the dildo, tendrils of pleasure are weaving a net, dragging me into a whirlpool of desire.

  I want this. He’s given me a taste. Now I want it all.

  “Please,” I say, and while he makes no noise, I see his lips form the word fuck. Jack is eloquent. Fluent in Latin and French. My surrender has reduced him to single syllables of Anglo-Saxon origin.

  The pressure against my pucker is now a demand, and I wince as the head pops past the ring of muscle. At the same time, however, my cunt spasms from his wickedly knowledgeable attentions to my clit, and the line between pleasure and pain blurs, then disappears. I arch into his finger, inadvertently clasping the dildo, and oh, it feels so good. He works it in and out, shallow, easy thrusts that glide over astonished nerve endings and send pleasure expanding through me. And while his cock is stationary in my pussy, the dildo creates a heightened sense of fullness, each stroke contracting me around his shaft.

  “Look,” he says, his normally smooth, even voice a harsh rasp. “Look in the mirror.”

  I peer over my shoulder to watch him fuck me in the ass with a sex toy. My dark hair hangs in sweaty tangles around my flushed face, and the length of my spine reminds me of a string of pearls. The curves of my ass, round and even and perfectly matched are far less pure than pearls, though, as is the carnal image of the lifelike shaft working me over. I stare in shock, then my eyes meet Jack’s in the mirror. Connection arcs electric and visceral between us and suddenly need sears me. I can’t keep still anymore. I rise and fall, impaling myself on both his hard flesh and the dildo.

  He’s got one hand on my clit and the other on the toy; I’m balanced on his lap but using the strength in his shoulders to keep myself upright as I gyrate under his fierce gaze, back arched, reaching for it. The ache balloons, bursts, then collapses in on itself. I come in a wild surge of colors so sharp and jagged I envision only the shattering of an intricate, sunlit window.

  “Fucking amazing,” he growls when my shudders cease. “So goddamn tight. The friction…”

  Heated images explode in my mind—of the dildo stroking my forbidden passage but also of his cock. It’s too much; I sag against his chest as he seats the dildo firmly in my ass, then grips my upper arms. In a tumble of light and color I find myself on my back, arms flung over my head, legs spread and shaking from the strain as Jack looms over me. He hooks my knees over his elbows and leans forward, bracing his hands by my ribs. Before I can catch my breath, even anchor myself in the world, I feel the blunt tip of his shaft against my slit. He pushes in, stopping when I quiver, whimper.

  “Look at me.”

  My eyes fly open to find him looming over me, fierce need etched in the lines of his face. I see anguished lust, aching desire, and find the ground I need to take this, to take the fucking he has been promising me from the moment he called. My body softens as I reach that ultimate surrender. There isn’t a particle of resistance left in me. He groans as he plunges in, all the way to the hilt.

  The dildo forces his cock against the top wall of my pussy, and with each stroke he rasps over my G-spot in a way that lights me up from within. In moments I’m surging under him, writhing as bolt after bolt of sensation sizzles along nerves already raw and vulnerable. I dig my nails into his biceps and lift my hips for more. His control is tenuous, edgy as he pounds into me. I feel his cock swell, his rhythm grow erratic, but to my utter disbelief I am there, I am there. I sink my teeth into his shoulder as all color, all noise disappears from my head. All that remains is white light and silence as I shatter. Vanish.

  When
I re-form, return to the hotel room, he is poised above me, teeth bared in a fierce grimace as he fights his own release while thrusting strongly because he knows the strokes prolong mine. Our eyes meet, and now I’m not the only one naked and surrendering. As he balances on the razor’s edge of pleasure and pain, I lay my palms against his cheeks and pull his mouth down to mine. His lips tremble, open and wet, as he drives deep into my body, each thrust strong enough to make the flesh of my breasts quiver with the impact. I take them, one after the other, whispering into his mouth what he knows, has always known.

  “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

  A hoarse groan rumbles out of him as he braces himself on his palms and jets into me. His head drops forward. Sweat drips onto my cheek and collarbone as he jerks, gives a shallow thrust, shudders again. With a softer groan he eases down onto his elbows. After a long, long while his breathing evens out.

  My mind is a flawless pane of glass through which streams brilliant, pure white light as I lie underneath him, our breathing slowly coming together, his exhales wafting over my ear, mine softer, quicker against his shoulder. A minute passes, perhaps two, then he shifts his weight to the right. His fingers tremble as they trail down my belly; the muscles jump under my skin at his touch, then I gasp as he slides his hand between my legs to remove the dildo. I feel empty, yet replete.

  Without a word he slides off the bed, scrubs his hands through his sweat-dampened hair, then begins to dress. Underwear, jeans, the sweater he retrieves from beside the door, then in a gesture so familiar it makes my heart turn over, he pushes his sleeves to his elbows while he scuffs into his shoes. His hands on his hips, he surveys me for a long moment and I cannot help but think of the respectable woman who walked into the Embassy Suites bar two hours earlier. I am boneless, flushed and quivering, coated in sweat (his and mine), juices (his and mine), and I couldn’t stand if my life depended on it. A smile too masculine to be smug flashes across his face. He bends over, braces his hands on the bed and drops a quick kiss on my lips.

  “I’ll call you,” he says. The door opens, then closes behind him.

  Ten minutes later I’ve recovered enough to think about a shower when the door opens to admit Jack, an overnight case in one hand, the key in the other. As he tosses the key on the dresser he offers me a sweet smile, the one that makes his ordinary face magical in my eyes. I prop myself up on one elbow and smile back.

  “Your mother texted. The kids are in bed. She’ll take them to early services tomorrow and we can pick them up after brunch.”

  With the trip to his car my dark, demanding lover has disappeared and my husband is back. I don’t mind. The rasp of the cotton against my tender nipples is a delicious, sufficient reminder of my night with a stranger.

  “Mmmmm…I can sleep in,” I purr as he sets the case down on the luggage stand.

  “Not too late,” he replies, his voice gone hard again despite the smile. The incongruence makes me giggle.

  When Jack first took our children to spend the night at my mother’s and called me from the Embassy Suites bar, I was so sure someone had the wrong number I had to double check the caller ID on my cell phone. Eleven years into our marriage, the demands of his job coupled with the day-to-day tedium of stay-at-home motherhood had left me fractured and irritable. I wasn’t working in my studio, but I was picking fights. Frequently.

  One night, after a particularly bitter argument over something I can’t remember but which was probably stupid, like dirty socks on the floor, he asked me in a weary tone what I wanted. Equally weary, I told him that I wanted to stop thinking for a while. I wanted to forget the laundry, doctor’s appointments, meals, where his badge or keys or glasses were, whether I’d bought enough fish crackers for snack at Katie’s preschool, the dog’s incomprehensible urge to vomit only on the new living room carpet, all of it. I wanted to stop being responsible for just a couple of hours, and I really, really wanted to fuck more frequently than every few weeks.

  He sits on the bed and strokes my damp hair. “Thinking already?”

  I smile up at him. “No.”

  Trial attorneys are often very good actors, and Jack reads unspoken, barely acknowledged cues with experience honed in improv theater and the courtroom. He read what was underneath my impossible demands, because we both knew his eighty-hour-a-week schedule left no room for laundry or snack duties. I didn’t want help around the house. I wanted to be transported to another dimension, if only for a few hours. He couldn’t buy Goldfish crackers, but he could restore brilliance to hues and shut off my mind. I have no idea what it was about the unique, incessant demands of motherhood that made me crave surrendering to him in bed, and I have no idea how he knew what I barely knew myself, but when he gets this hotel room and strips me of the last shred of my control, I light up like a summer thunderstorm. The lashing, explosive releases give me what I need to go back to the routine, and back into the studio. For days after we meet, images flow through my mind and into the glass. My work is subtly changing. That artistic growth brings me almost as much pleasure as those moments when I become nothing but white light and his cock inside me.

  “Want to shower together?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Go start the water. I’ll call room service.”

  Still unusually pliant, I nod but lay my left hand on his jeans-clad thigh, my bare ring finger a gentle reminder. His cheeks crease into a smile as he winks at me, then he digs in his front pocket and extends his palm. Gold and diamonds flash as the rings tumble and tink against each other. I select his wedding band and slide it onto his left ring finger. The remaining three rings are mine. My wedding band goes on first, the one Jack put on my finger eleven years before and I take off only while I’m in my studio. Next is the tiny engagement ring he could afford at nineteen, then the sizable diamond eternity band he gave me for our tenth anniversary. We have forged a life together, and without these rings I feel unsettled, like I have left the oven on or forgotten to lock the door on the way to the airport. Being without them heightens the reality of the experience. I am not his wife, not the mother of his children. I am simply his.

  Married sex is the best sex. Married sex is the thrill of meeting for a hook up or a one-night stand in a hotel, but without any of the risk. It’s finding your sexual being again after two kids, a mortgage and payments on cars that smell of stale French fries. Tomorrow morning, before we pick up our children, we will make love in this room as Mr. and Mrs. John Underwood, and it will be good.

  In a few weeks the colors in my head will begin to dull, to clash with one another. Jack will know. One Saturday he’ll half bully, half cajole me into the studio then disappear with the kids. My rings will be in his pocket. He’ll call when I least expect it. I will likely be grasping for clarity through muddy colors and sloppy lines when my cell phone chirps.

  “Meet me at the Embassy Suites bar in an hour,” he’ll say, his familiar voice not quite his own.

  And I will.

  Hungry for more? Spice Briefs to suit every taste are available now at www.spicebriefs.com, including these recent titles:

  Blame It On the Moonlight by Tracie Sommers

  Sin’s Pride by Mandy M. Roth

  Everything Changes by Megan Hart

  For Your Pleasure by Elisa Adams

  A Gentlewoman’s Ravishment by Portia Da Costa

  A Gentlewoman’s Predicament by Portia Da Costa

  Private Party by Amanda McIntyre

  Special Delivery by Riki Kaye

  Knightley’s Tale by Destiny D’Otare

  Erotique: Alex by Susan Lyons

  For something a little longer, visit www.spice-books.com or stop by your local bookstore for stories that will ignite your senses!

  Think you’d like to write a Spice Brief? Submissions are always welcome at spicebriefs@harlequin.ca

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5152-0

  What She Needs

  Copyright © 2010 by Anne Calhoun

  All rights reserved.
Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  www.eHarlequin.com