“Will do,” Zane said in a voice edged with tension.
Naomi tried to pick up where she’d left off, but he grasped her by the arms and lifted her up, then covered her mouth with a hungry kiss.
“I want you now,” he whispered when he broke the kiss. “Before we have any more damn interruptions.”
Then he turned her around and propped one of her legs on the bench as he gripped her hips. She bent forward to accommodate him, resting her arms against the wall as a delicious swirling began between her legs. He pressed against her wet opening, and it took all her willpower not to cry out in frustration. She wanted him pumping inside her, easing the crazy ache in her, driving her toward a release that was building with his each and every touch.
And then he was gone for a moment, searching for his wallet. She heard the crinkle of a condom wrapper, smelled the scent of rubber, and felt him against her again.
Without hesitating, he held her hips firmly and pushed inside her all the way.
Naomi sighed, closed her eyes and braced herself against the wall as he thrust into her—each thrust more purposeful than the last, each pushing her toward a release she had little doubt she’d find.
As he stroked her breast with one hand, his other hand dipped between her legs and massaged. He was an expert on the subject of her body after only one night. He knew where to touch, and when, how much pressure to apply, when to let up and when to drive her over the edge.
She heard herself gasping but was helpless to control it, couldn’t have cared less if the salesguy came barging in to see what was going on, and a moment later, she felt a dam release within her. Waves of pleasure came bursting forth, convulsing her as Zane pounded into her, and then she heard the gasps of his orgasm, too.
His final few thrusts came on the heels of her release, drawing it out, causing her inner muscles to continue contracting around him as she tried to catch her breath.
They remained locked together for a few moments after, the room silent as they recovered. Then he withdrew from her, turned her around, lifted her up and pinned her against the wall. She wrapped her legs around him and kissed him again and again, grateful and satisfied, yet hungry for more.
“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.
Her sentiments exactly. But not before they’d done what they came here for. “Absolutely. After you try on these clothes,” she said.
Zane’s gaze darkened again, but a smile played on his lips. “You’re relentless.”
“Just trying to do my job.”
“What if I just keep you like this until you forget about this makeover thing?”
She smiled. “You’ll get tired soon, and you’ll have to put me down.”
“You’re right,” he said as he stepped away from the wall and set her back on her feet. “You’re heavier than you look.”
Naomi grabbed her panties from the floor and tugged them on. “You can start with the white oxford and the black pants.”
Zane made a growling sound, but he didn’t protest anymore. He may have thought he was distracting Naomi, but he was sadly mistaken. If she kept him satisfied sexually, he’d keep right on doing whatever she asked.
“WANT TO GRAB SOMETHING to eat?” Zane asked as they passed a chain restaurant near the mall entrance.
“Yeah, all that shopping and trying on clothes has made me hungry. The Mexican place at the north entrance of the mall is good.”
He was hungry, too, but more for her than for food. He’d never met a woman he couldn’t get enough of, but after twenty-four hours of a sexual frenzy with Naomi, he could hardly call himself sated. Maybe if they spent all night tonight doing what they’d done all night last night, he’d be feeling a little more balanced in the morning.
After three men’s clothing stores and two upscale department stores, Zane’s hands were weighed down with shopping bags, and he was pretty sure his credit card had a hole burned in it. Not to mention that after two sexual encounters in two different dressing rooms, he should have felt spent physically, too.
But he was nowhere close.
He was, however, damn sure he’d just bought a bunch of clothes he never would have picked out himself.
But he’d seen again how good Naomi was at her job. She might have selected clothes he wouldn’t have, but she’d found things that looked good on him, that were stylish but classic, and that didn’t make him want to run naked from the dressing room.
If he had to change his style to suit Mediacom, he couldn’t say he was dissatisfied with the style Naomi had picked out for him. Not that he wanted someone else choosing his clothes for him, but in the great scheme of things, it really wasn’t all that big a deal.
They headed toward the Mexican restaurant, and he had the odd sensation of being out shopping with a girlfriend. Not that he’d had a steady one of those in a while, but he’d had more than his share of the short-term variety.
Naomi should have felt like neither. She was shorter than short-term, a pretty little high-maintenance diversion that he had no intention of sharing more than his bed and his image overhaul with.
But…
She was more than her polished appearance let on. She was smart, funny and surprisingly in control, even when she was pretending not to be.
Like today, for instance. While he’d tried to distract her, she’d somehow turned the whole thing around and used sex as her way of luring him from one store to the next, from one dressing room to the next. He couldn’t help but admire the brilliance of her tactics, even as he was being sucked in by them.
They passed by a bookstore, and he saw Naomi turning her head to read the titles in the window.
“Want to go in?” he asked, curious to see if she would go straight to the self-help aisle, or to the fashion magazines. He had her pegged as one of those women who read nothing but books with titles like The Ten Habits of Highly Anal-Retentive People, but his brief encounter with her apartment last night and this morning neither confirmed nor denied his suspicion. He’d caught a glimpse of a Vogue magazine on her coffee table on his way out the door, but other than that detail, he’d been too tired to notice anything.
But she surprised him again by browsing the general fiction on the table at the front of the store. He went to the biography section and grabbed a new release at the end of the aisle, then pretended to flip through it while watching her from the corner of his eye.
Why the hell did he even care what she read, anyway? But he knew. He wanted to finally be right about some aspect of her personality. He wanted her to have some big, obnoxious flaw he couldn’t stand. If she wasn’t a self-help fanatic, then he at least wanted her to be the type who got all teary-eyed over amazing pet rescues or something like that.
Okay, so her outburst over his being late for their shopping excursion today might be considered slightly obnoxious, but really, he’d had it coming. He could have scheduled the meeting with a source he’d contacted on the Atchison Tyler story for another time, but he’d deemed it more important than shopping for polo shirts.
After Naomi read the back cover copy of a few books at the fiction table, she wandered to the half-off table near where he was standing and picked up one of his favorite humor titles. When she started flipping through the book, giggling every few pages, he muttered a curse and put the biography down.
He walked over to the table and started halfheartedly browsing the books. “So, do you ever read self-help books?”
She shrugged. “No, I like to be the one giving the advice.”
“How about cozy quilting mysteries? Or amazing pet-rescue tales?”
She looked at him like he’d just made quacking sounds.
“No, and no,” she said. “Are you okay?”
So much for that theory.
“I probably should eat soon,” he lied. “My blood sugar drops and I start talking like a lunatic.”
“Let’s go, then,” she said, looking at him curiously as they picked up their bags and left the store.
>
And as they headed for the restaurant, Zane battled a growing unsteady feeling that had nothing to do with low blood sugar—and everything to do with the fact that Naomi was throwing him utterly and completely off balance.
10
TALIA SHUT DOWN her computer, determined not to work on a Saturday night. With last night’s planned fun having turned into a get-to-know-your-booty-call date, she fully intended to make up for it by having twice as much fun tonight. Nightclubs, here she came.
She pushed away from her desk and headed to her bedroom to change.
She’d just shimmied into her favorite black club dress and was applying Kiss Me Red lipstick when the doorbell rang.
Great, someone with something to sell on a Saturday night. She continued her lipstick application, with no intention of answering. But once her makeup was done, the doorbell rang again.
Okay, so she’d have to tell the person more clearly to get lost. She went to the front door, jerked it open and found herself face-to-face with Ken. He held a bouquet of pink roses—her favorite. How the hell had he known that?
He was wearing a sage-green polo that accented his green eyes, and a pair of faded jeans that beautifully accented his package. He looked amazing, and if she hadn’t known he was the same Ken who’d ruined her night, she would have dragged him inside without a second thought.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted, realizing a second too late that it wasn’t the nicest response to a guy showing up at her door bearing flowers.
“Hi to you, too.” His gaze traveled down her body and back up, clearly appreciative of what he saw.
This wasn’t her favorite club dress for nothing.
“Sorry. What I meant to say is ‘hello.’ I thought you were some kid trying to sell me overpriced magazine subscriptions.”
“Can I come in?” he asked.
“I was just about to head out for the evening, but I’ve got a few minutes.”
“I was hoping I’d catch you before you went anywhere.” He stepped inside and handed her the flowers.
“Thank you. What’s the occasion?”
“You’re the occasion.”
Talia blinked. Could this whole Ken thing get any odder? Next he’d be telling her he’d given up casual sex.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I came to give you what you want,” he said, and Talia wondered if it would be too forward to strip her panties off right then and there.
Instead, she smiled. “Now you’re talking about something I want to hear,” she said as she dropped the roses onto the coffee table and closed the distance between them.
“You haven’t heard my condition yet,” he said, and Talia stopped, inches from him, inches from getting laid.
“Oh?”
“Here’s the deal. I’ll do whatever you want tonight in bed, if you’ll do whatever I want tomorrow night outside of bed—on a real date.” “A…real date. As in dinner and a movie, stuff like that?”
“Yeah. Stuff like that. We get to know each other, see if we’re compatible. You give me a real chance.”
“Oh.” She felt like she was becoming a broken record, but she couldn’t think what else to say. Ken had ignored all booty-call etiquette. Talia wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to trust a sex-only relationship again. “It’s like I said before, I’m really not a let’s-go-steady kind of girl.”
And she probably never would be. She liked her life just the way it was. Simple, career-focused, unencumbered by love. She’d tried the serious-relationship thing, and it had made her miserable. She didn’t want to go there again—especially not with a guy known to all her friends as strictly booty-call material.
He smiled. “That’s because you haven’t given the right guy a chance yet.”
“There is no right guy. Trust me, I’ve looked, and I’ve been completely unimpressed by the selection. No offense,” she added, feeling like a bitch now. “I have impossible standards.”
Looking undeterred, Ken shrugged. “All I’m asking for is one date. Give me a chance, and if you’re not interested after our date, I’ll never bother you again.”
His offer was tempting. She could do one date, certainly, if it meant a night of hot sex. And she did have a heart. Having a cute guy show up on her doorstep bearing roses and asking her out on a date was just so nauseatingly sweet and old-fashioned….
Okay, so he’d actually proposed a sex-for-dating trade, but still, he’d brought flowers—her favorites, even—and she couldn’t remember the last time a guy had done that.
“What made you bring pink roses?” she asked.
“I remember seeing some of them on your table when I was here last fall, so I saw these, and they reminded me of you.”
Again, she was speechless. Was he for real?
“You like them?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“So, what do you think?”
“I think I like your offer. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up—”
He smiled and pulled her against him, then silenced her with a kiss that likely melted her toenail polish. This was the Ken she remembered—the one she wanted to spend the night with.
She led him over to the couch, grabbed the stereo remote and queued up her favorite make-out CD—a compilation of Barry White’s greatest hits—then pulled her dress off over her head and tossed it on the floor.
Ken’s gaze traveled over her, from her pink satin-and-lace bra to her matching panties, then back up.
“Come here and let me taste you,” he said as he hooked a thumb in the side of her panties.
He slid them down her legs, and she stepped out of them, kicking them aside, her insides humming to find out what kind of tasting he had in mind. When he reclined on the couch and pulled her on top, urging her forward until she was straddling his face, her girl parts did an imaginary victory dance.
“Closer,” he said, tugging her hips down, and that was all the instruction she needed.
When his mouth came in contact with her pussy, she sighed, closed her eyes, and let her head fall back. His tongue traced her lips, then caressed her clit, and finally thrust into her. His pace was deliciously slow, and for once, Talia was fine with letting him take his time.
If this was going to be her last night of sex with Ken—and surely it was with him getting all clingy on her—she wanted to savor every delicious moment of it. Commit it to memory, because there weren’t many lays out there as good as Ken.
What was the likelihood she’d even find another one in her lifetime?
She didn’t have to ruin her fun with worrying because he started working her clit in a steady rhythm that obliterated all thought. Talia’s breathing grew fast and shallow, and she rocked her hips against his face.
Then he plunged his fingers into her, probing her most sensitive spots, working her fast toward an orgasm that she couldn’t have slowed down if she’d wanted to. When he found her G-spot with his thumb, and it was all over.
In only minutes since he’d arrived at her door, waves of pleasure swept through her. Talia bucked and cried out, gasped, moaned, lost all sense of time and place. And Ken, in his amazing expertise, knew all the right touches and tongue moves to keep her riding the wave of her orgasm long past when it would have ended with any mortal guy.
Minutes later, when she was resting on his chest and had caught her breath, she realized that was exactly what she’d been missing recently. Really great sex. She’d had good sex, decent sex, okay sex—but none like what Ken could deliver.
She placed a long, deep kiss on his mouth, then started stripping him of his clothes before he could change his mind and decide he wanted to play twenty questions. When she was tugging off his underwear, she looked up at him and smiled, her heart going pitter-patter at the sight of his long, hard cock.
“Condoms are in the candy dish,” she said. “Can you grab one?”
He glanced over at the end table and grinned. “Who needs candy when you’r
e around to eat, right?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
He plucked a condom from the dish and handed it to her, likely having remembered her talent for putting them on creatively. She tore the wrapper open with her teeth and withdrew the condom, then placed the tip of it between her lips. Her whole body humming with anticipation, she put her mouth against him and slid the condom down the length of him.
As he sat up, leaning back against the sofa, she climbed on his lap and pressed herself against his cock.
“You’ve got an amazing body,” he said, taking her breasts in his hands.
“So do you.”
She loved that his hands were big enough to cover her breasts, that his body was big enough to make her feel feminine, even kind of petite—and there weren’t many men out there who could do that.
Talia tossed her hair over her shoulder, arched her back and mounted his cock. He slid inside, filling her and easing her deepest ache. As she began rocking her hips, Ken closed his eyes and sighed. For the first time, she saw something vulnerable about his face, something entirely human.
And she realized he wasn’t a sex god, or a bedroom superhero, or any sort of supernatural hottie. He was just a guy, with feelings, emotions, opinions—all that stuff that came with being human. And she’d been treating him like anything but.
He cupped her ass with his hands and set the pace, slow and steady. Then his fingers began exploring, working their magic again, and the troubling thoughts disappeared.
One unforgettable night with Ken—that’s all Talia wanted. She’d let nothing stand in her way of having it.
ZANE WATCHED NAOMI as she lay next to him, looking around his bedroom. She was probably deciding what color he should paint the walls. He’d already figured out that she saw everything, critiqued everything and had an opinion on how to improve everything. It should have been annoying, but he actually kind of liked her confidence.
“You need a few more lamps in here,” she said, proving his theory.
“Thanks for the tip.” He grinned. “Do you want something to drink?”
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