by Roxie Noir
“Try it on for size,” I suggest.
Ten minutes later, I pull into the parking lot of the Oak Crest apartments. There is neither a crest nor oak trees, but this was where the production team for The Spinster’s Panorama got everyone working on the movie a discount short-term-rental rate, so I don’t care what’s here.
It’s cheap and already furnished. What more do I need?
I practically race upstairs, throw my work clothes into the hamper, and jump into the shower. My roommate’s not even home, so I need to be finished by the time Liam shows up or he’ll be stuck in the hall outside my door for ages.
I don’t think about the things that could go wrong, or the things that already have. I know I’m not being cautious or smart, but it’s once, and I promise myself we’ll have a talk afterward.
Just as I’m toweling my hair off, there’s a knock at the door, and I shout “Coming!” as I grab my bathrobe.
“Not yet,” Liam calls back, just as I swing the door open.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Liam
Fuck me running, she’s wet and naked. Right, technically she’s got a bathrobe on, but I know what’s under that bathrobe and it’s nothing.
And here I was thinking I’d have to take her clothes off.
“That was fast,” she says. “I just got out of the shower, sorry.”
“Sorry I couldn’t join you?”
“Sorry I’m not ready to go on our date yet,” she says, tilting her head to one side. “You know, the one you promised where we leave my apartment?”
I step inside, shutting the door behind myself, and I raise one eyebrow at Frankie.
“You’re quite stuck on that, aren’t you?”
“I figure I should play hard to get sooner or later,” she says, eyes dancing.
“If it’s any consolation you’ve been quite hard to find, at least,” I say, stepping toward her. She doesn’t budge, of course. “I’d consider that portion of our time together already accomplished.”
“Would you?”
I reach out, tug on the cord of her bathrobe, untying the bow it’s in. It falls immediately, and I tug harder, undoing the knot beneath.
Her robe is still closed, but now her breathing’s gone uneven and I step forward again, out bodies only inches apart, her eyes dark and wide.
I put one finger on her collarbone, her skin incredibly warm from the shower, her pulse thumping away in the hollow of her throat, and I draw my finger downward, slowly. So slowly I can barely take it.
“Frankie,” I whisper, my finger reaching the level of her breasts, nudging the robe apart.
“What?” she breathes.
“Where’s your roommate?”
“Not here.”
I swing my finger to one side, pushing back her robe, one breast bouncing softly as I do. She shivers and her nipple puckers and pebbles, dusky pink, and I circle it slowly with the same finger.
“Are you still pretending you’d rather go out than stay in?” I ask. My voice comes out a rough, low growl, and I brush the pad of my thumb across her nipple, just for good measure.
I’m so hard it hurts, my whole body so tense I’m nearly shaking as I tease Frankie, make her say what I’m certain she’s thinking. Because after the months of looking, of thinking that she’d discarded me like a used napkin, I need to hear her say it.
That she wants this as badly as I do. That she’s been thinking about this every night, nonstop. That when she reaches between her legs for release, it’s me she’s thinking of.
“I think I’ve given up that charade,” she whispers.
“Tell me what you want,” I murmur.
She looks me dead in the eye, a wicked glint there that sends a shower of sparks through my core.
“You,” Frankie says, simply, and shrugs the robe off her other shoulder.
I’ve got my mouth on hers before it hits the floor, and electricity rushes through me like we’ve just completed a circuit. I’ve got my hands on her back, her arse, her hips, all while I’m pushing her backward into the living room of this apartment toward an ugly gray couch.
Frankie’s fucking perfect right now, gasping and naked, body luscious, the heat just rolling from her. She bites my lower lip and tugs at my shirt, her fingers fumbling with the buttons.
“Thought you were an expert at clothing,” I gasp between kisses.
She yanks. A button flies off, and she grins.
“I’m an expert at putting it on,” she says, pulling again. “I don’t care how it comes off, only that it does.”
My shirt is off in seconds, and Frankie tumbles backward onto the couch, her hands already unbuttoning my trousers as I kiss her yet again, our tongues snaking together, and then my cock’s out and her hand is wrapped firmly around the base.
She strokes me, hard, the full length, and I just groan, one hand on the back of the couch, holding myself up. I’m leaking precum like a goddamn faucet, I’m so worked up, and Frankie pauses for a moment at the tip, slides her thumb in a circle.
I get my trousers the rest of the way off, and somehow, I’m on the couch too, in a tangle of limbs, and then she’s on top of me. Straddling me. Her perfect tits are at eye level, so I grab them both in my hands, pinch her rock-hard nipples between my finger and thumb and Frankie moans, her hands on my chest, arching her back. Her hips press my cock into my own belly and she leans back, her hands on my knees.
“About thirty seconds,” I murmur, pinching again.
Frankie rolls her hips, her pelvis against my cock, sending bolts of white heat through my body.
“Thirty seconds for what?” she gasps.
“Thirty seconds to go from a nice, proper girl to fuck me Frankie.”
She looks at me, eyelids at half-mast, that smile around her eyes, and reaches forward to run her thumb along my jaw.
“You act like I’m the only person who came her brains out last time we did this,” she teases.
She leans forward, my hands still on her tits, until her hair is a wild curtain around the two of us.
“So you admit to coming your brains out,” I murmur.
“You couldn’t stand afterward for a full minute,” she says.
“I was—”
Frankie kisses me, slow and hard, one hand winding through my hair and the other grabbing my cock. I groan into her mouth as she pumps my full length, slowly.
“Liam,” she says, pressing her lips to my jaw.
“For once,” she moves to my neck, then lower, to my collarbone. “Shut the fuck up.”
Frankie slithers to the ground before I even know what’s happened, on her knees. Before I can even blink she’s got her lips around the head of my cock and she takes me in as far as she can all at once, her fist still tight around me.
“Fuck!” I shout, and Frankie pulls back slowly, her tongue tracing patterns along the underside as I pant for breath. I’ve wanked to this exact scenario probably fifty times, but not a one held a candle to the reality of her warm mouth on my cock, her perfect lips around it.
Frankie does it again and again. Each time the head of my cock hits the back of her mouth it’s exquisite torture, my toes curling in self-control. I want to take a picture of her lips over the tip of my cock, her eyes closed. Give myself something worthwhile to think about over the long, rainy English winter.
“Look at me,” I growl as Frankie pushes her lips back down, along my shaft.
Her hazel eyes flick upward, unwaveringly finding my own, and my balls tighten. I’m a visual man, and there’s fucking nothing like a beautiful girl looking at you with her lips halfway down your cock.
Then she winks, pushes her mouth just a few millimeters further down the shaft, and suddenly I’m seeing stars, my balls tightening against my body. Fuck, I’m seconds away from coming.
I can’t come yet. I’m not here for a blowjob, I’m here because I need to fuck her again, be inside her as she shouts my name and shakes.
I grab Frankie’s hair in one hand, pulling he
r up. She fights me, still looking me straight in the eye, but slowly — slowly — she pulls her mouth back up my shaft, a millimeter at a time. I’m holding my breath and I swear to god she’s torturing me, making sure I feel every last nerve ending in my cock.
I pull her hair a little harder. She doesn’t go faster, just looks me in the eye as her lips slide over the head, her tongue circling one last time.
For a second, my vision goes white. But then she’s there, on her knees, eyes teasing me even as she swipes at her mouth with the back of one hand.
“Do you want me to come in your mouth?” I growl, leaning forward, taking a kiss.
Frankie just bites my lip.
“Because I very nearly fucking did, you minx,” I go on, pushing her backward until we both land on the carpeted floor, her beneath me.
“Would that be so bad?”
“Well, I’d have to wait at least twenty minutes before I got to fuck you,” I say as she digs her nails into my shoulders. “Meaning I’d have to find something else to do to fill that time.”
She’s on her back, on the carpet, and I’m kneeling over her as she’s got her legs around me. Her chest rises and falls quickly, shallowly, and I take a moment to look at her, drink her in.
I didn’t think I’d see her again. I thought my only memories of her would be fuzzed and tangled, but here she is in sharp relief, sultry and waiting and twice as beautiful as I remembered.
“Stop looking,” she murmurs, reaching one hand toward me.
I grab her by the wrist, hold her hand away from myself, then grab her other hand for good measure as well.
“Or what?” I ask. “It’s been a long fucking time since I looked. I couldn’t even find you on Facebook, Frankie, God knows I didn’t find your naked pictures.”
I push her hands over her head, hold her wrists together tightly in my fingers, and she arches her back, her legs squeezing me tighter.
“What makes you think I’ve got naked pictures?” she says.
“Pure wishful thinking,” I say, snaking my other hand down her body, connecting the dots of her freckles, exploring a brand-new map filled with islands I’m longing to explore. “Nights and nights of stone-cold sobriety spent alone with nothing but the memory of you to warm me.”
I lower my head to her nipple, lap at it once, feel her body jolt below mine before I suck it in, teasing it with my teeth, running my tongue over it again and again as my hand continues down her skin, my fingertips electrified.
I brush them over her mound, softly over her clit, along the soaking-wet edges of her lips as she makes a noise that’s half-gasp, half-whimper, her hips rolling wildly against the carpet. I don’t let her hands go, just tease her, scraping my teeth along her nipple.
She whimpers again. Moans. Tries to break free of my grasp for one token second, then opens her eyes and looks at me, moss-colored eyes heavily lidded.
“I’m at your mercy,” she murmurs.
I circle my fingers around her clit, slippery with her juices, and Frankie bites her lip again, but her eyes don’t close.
“It’s not such a bad place to be, is it?” I murmur back. “Naked and wet as fuck on your living room floor.”
I circle her clit again with two fingers, feel her body jolt below me as my cock brushes her stomach, her belly expanding with every breath, and I sink them into her tight, wet channel.
Frankie sucks in another breath, her back arching, her wrists straining against my hand, but I’ve got her tightly, her small wrists in my strong fingers. Desperate as I am to fuck her again, I can’t resist this — her completely open to me, helpless, wordless with pleasure as I crook my fingers inside her, draw circles around her clit with my thumb.
She gasps, moans, whimpers. Her eyes roll up into her head and drift closed, her thighs squeezing my hips. I’m practically fucking dripping precum onto her, not that either of us cares.
“Liam,” Frankie whispers, and Jesus fucking Christ.
I move my fingers faster, harder. She bucks her hips, up off the ground now, and I slide a third finger in as she arches and rolls again, and I barely have to move, only watch as she fucks my hand desperately, with abandon.
It’s hot. It’s fucking miles beyond hot. It’s revelatory, life-changing, the kind of thing I’ll literally never forget.
Frankie moans again, writhing, her head to one side as her muscles flutter around my fingers once, twice, and then with a sudden jolt, she comes. Her fingers curl into fists and she turns her face against her arm, moaning, mouth open as she clenches around me in wave after wave.
I wish I could record it somehow. Not with a camera, that’s not nearly good enough, but to replay this whole exact scenario again and again, down to every last touch and detail.
Slowly, she stops, tremors passing through her body. I release her hands and instantly, they’re in my hair, on my shoulders, drawing me in.
“I told you—”
She pushes herself up on one hand, the other in my hair, and crushes her mouth against mine, practically devouring me as she presses her body tightly against mine.
Frankie pulls back slightly, my lower lip between her teeth. She bites me hard enough for it to sting, then swipes her tongue out and over the spot she bit.
“Shut the fuck up,” she whispers.
“And?”
But she’s on me again, her tongue roaming my mouth. Her legs are still half-around me, and she moves her hips in time with her mouth unconsciously, writhing with abandon.
“What do you mean, and?”
“I think you meant to say, shut the fuck up and fuck me, Liam.”
“Do I have to say it for you to do it?”
Without looking, I grab my pants, pull them to the floor next to me, slide my other arm around her waist and drag her onto me, kneeling on her floor. Both her arms tangle around my body, my cock pressed between us in pure, perfect agony.
“You do now,” I tell her, grabbing a condom from my pocket. “I’ve only been dreaming of it for months. Say it for me.”
Frankie reaches out, grabs the condom from my hand, tears into it with her teeth. My cock jerks as she pulls it out, letting the wrapper fall, places it on the tip. I groan as she rolls it down, her hand firm, her face against mine before her hand is in my hair again.
“Shut the fuck up and fuck me, Liam,” she growls into my ear.
In a split second she’s on her back again and we’re still tangled together, my lips on hers, her legs around me, and then I’m at entrance again and I slide into her with one stroke, groaning into her mouth as she gasps.
“Fucking perfect,” I gasp. “You feel goddamn fucking perfect.”
I drive into her again, harder, deeper, her short nails slicing ribbons down my back as she cries out. My lips fasten onto her neck as the pleasure encircles me like a tornado, Frankie underneath me half melting into the floor and half tearing me to ribbons like a wildcat.
I can only go faster, harder. I’ve forgotten all the English I know and now all I’ve got is the language of teeth and lips, of whimpers and moans, of my cock inside her. There’s no past, no future, only right now when Frankie is whispering fuck please yes Liam and I think it’s all I ever need.
She writhes, moans, squeezes me. I don’t know where my body is, only that it’s with hers. Frankie’s trembling, gasping, and then she whispers harder in my ear and I obey, somewhere beyond human.
Frankie gasps, trembles, flutters, and then she throws her head back, her body off the floor and only against me. She comes screaming and I come a half second later, driving myself into her again and again, helplessly. Unable to stop even if the building burned down right now.
We’re both gasping, sweating, shaking in the aftershocks. Frankie opens her eyes and kisses me, her tongue in my mouth again and I kiss her back, suddenly barely able to hold myself up. I feel high as a kite, like I could float away only I’m on the floor and slowly going soft inside her and I can’t stop touching her anyway, can’t stop kissing
her, my lips on hers, on her neck, on the spot below her ear that makes her nails dig into my back.
“You’re better than whiskey,” I murmur into her ear.
She kisses the side of my head, one hand drifting down my spine.
“At least I’m better for you,” she says.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Frankie
The moment I say it I wonder if it’s true, if I really am better for him than whiskey. As my brain clears I think of the time I brought him a drink in the sound closet at Elizabeth’s gala, when I was drunk and tried to flirt with him while Alistair was in the same building.
I’ve got a bad feeling that good people don’t bring alcoholic drinks to former junkies. I’ve got a bad feeling that good people don’t go on two-day benders with former junkies, that they don’t encourage a downward spiral like that.
Liam kisses me on the hair, rolls off. The carpet is itchy on my back, and I keep my eyes closed, because on the other hand, despite the fact that we might be bad for each other, I don’t want this to end. This is somehow beautiful and perfect and right, the two of us tangled and sweaty on the floor of my shitty rental living room.
I knew I missed him, even when I found out about the heroin and the overdose, even when I saw that video and had the sudden, horrible, wrenching realization of the first time we met. But I didn’t know I missed him like this, didn’t know that when he reappeared it would feel like the world clicking into focus again.
I bring his hand to my lips and kiss it, softly. I’m almost hoping he doesn’t notice, because there’s something about soft, tender hand-kisses that doesn’t line up with the way he growls I’ll make you come twice before we even fuck, but he does.
He laughs softly, pushes himself up on one elbow, and kisses my hand as well.
“There, now I’ve made it romantic,” he teases me, looking over at my face.
I don’t smile. Now that my lust is sated for once, my mind’s a whirlpool, and I’ve never been any good at lying.
“What is it?” he asks.