Pleasure tore a series of whimpers from her throat and he groaned against her body, the masculine sound plucking answering strings inside her.
Adam pushed her back on the bed. He slid his hands down her body, from her breasts to her rib cage and stomach, all the way to the V of her legs, where he stopped to play a little. She sucked in a breath as those clever thumbs of his circled the damp fabric at her mons, but avoided touching her where she was wild to be touched.
He pushed her legs up onto the bed so that her heels rested at the edge, her feet dangling down. He spread her thighs and then dipped under her G-string to explore.
Nikki bucked as his fingers slid cleverly under the fabric, stroked her, and then zeroed in right below the tiny heart-shaped patch of hair.
“I have to see,” he whispered, and slid the tiny panties to the side.
For a moment, there was only silence.
She lifted her head and looked through her own knees at Adam’s face, which was a study in boyish awe.
“I’m gonna have a heart attack,” he said in strangled tones. “Pun intended.” And he stroked the little heart of hair with fascination, lust and an odd tenderness.
Her thighs quivered, and he dipped lower, slipped his fingers inside her while still manipulating the eager little nub right below the heart.
Her whole body began to shake with unfulfilled sexual tension. “Please,” she whispered, hoping that he’d put his mouth on her. But how did she ask a stranger to do that?
He didn’t, just as he hadn’t kissed her. But he did do blissful things with his fingers, with his thumbs. She was climbing, spiraling, wanting… She lifted off the bed in a mortifying frenzy of need. “Yes,” she said. “Yes…
more.
Do it.
Do
me!”
He laughed softly and obeyed.
She splintered into orgasm, losing control of her mind, her body and her dignity without caring. “Adam,” she begged, “take me into next Friday, okay? Like you said.”
“Oh, yeah,” he breathed. “Oh, yeah.” An eternity seemed to pass as he shucked out of his clothes and fumbled a condom out of his wallet. He rolled it onto the long, smooth, thick length of him.
Then he entered her in one hot, smooth stroke that left her gasping at the fullness, the sense of being possessed, the sudden different kind pleasure that streaked through her body.
She hadn’t seen his cock at all, but she didn’t need to, now that she felt it, now that she was deliciously impaled. He stopped only for a moment, as if to savor the act of penetrating her. Then he started to move, to pump, to groan with the pleasure of it.
She tightened around him and ran her hands up and down his back and buttocks as he stroked into her body.
“You’re so hot, so hot,” he murmured.
As if he had any idea. Her insides had melted into honey, and every time he slid along the cleft of her the temperature rose in streaks and flashes, liquefying her mind into her body until she was one sweet swirl of pleasure, her only focus to reach the very pinnacle of it.
He took her up, up, up…ever higher until she was saturated with his scent and his power, one with his motions and open, wide open to him. She lost herself.
And then he pitched her over the edge of climax and her body convulsed and thrashed, while she ignored the raw cries that came, uninhibited, from her throat.
Adam’s big body pinned her in place as sexual pleasure radiated through her in concentric circles, his soft groans echoing her own.
Then the aftershocks eddied away, leaving them in a tangle of limbs, gasping, wondering, damp with exertion. Adam rolled off her, his only words profane and heartfelt.
“You,” he said, “are…something else.”
She moaned, her body still throbbing in places she didn’t know it could throb. “No, you are. You made me… I mean, I—” She couldn’t possibly be blushing again, could she?
“Twice.”
“Twice, huh,” Adam said. He rolled toward her again. “You sound so shocked. Should we go for the magic three?”
She laughed raggedly. “I couldn’t possibly. I think something fell off.”
Adam propped himself up on one elbow. His hair was tousled and his mouth held a wicked curve. Lazily, he traced her nipple with a wayward finger. “You think something fell off, huh? That sounds dangerous. I’d better find it and put it back on.”
Before she’d registered what he was doing, he spread her legs again and rolled between them. He took a breath and blew it out slowly on her, which was the last thing she’d expected. It tickled; it cooled her; it sent a deep shiver of pleasure through nerves that she hadn’t thought could take any more. Her muscles trembled.
Clearly, he was fascinated by that tiny heart of shaven hair, because he stroked that as he blew on her again, chuckling as she squirmed.
Unbelievable, but she felt desire building in her again. If he’d touched her overly sensitive clitoris, she’d have knocked his hand away. But he didn’t. He leaned closer and she could feel his warm breath as he traced the contours of the little heart. She held her breath in anticipation. Would he? Did she want him to? Any moment now, his tongue would touch her.
But it didn’t.
And she did want it to.
Almost unconsciously she lifted her hips, searching for his mouth. And he chuckled again, damn him.
He slid his hands under the cheeks of her bottom and squeezed, then started to play her cleft, down low, with his thumbs. She bit her lip and pushed against them, lifted herself again and swayed.
She could feel her pulse pound all along that most private of areas, swollen from pleasure already and yet eager for more. He seemed to know. Still without touching that tiny nub at her center, he stroked the whole length of her, all the way down to her bottom.
Back and forth he trailed his fingers, and she thought she’d go crazy because it felt so good.
“You like that,” he said. A statement, not a question.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You’re wet for me again.” His voice echoed in her ears, vibrated in her bones.
“Oh, yes…”
That’s when he slipped three fingers into her. And when she whimpered, just a little, begging him for it, he at last brushed that bud at her core with his thumb, rubbing it gently until she came completely apart.
Still he didn’t let up, and it became too much for her to take. “Stop…you have to stop.”
“Why?”
She found his hand with her own and grabbed it. “Because I can’t handle any more. I can’t.” She clamped her thighs together, raised her head and shoulders and looked into his eyes, which held a sweet, if smug expression. He knew he’d done his job right—done it to perfection.
“Worn you out, have I?”
She could get drunk on the cognac of his eyes. She nodded, and released their clasped hands from between her thighs. Adam freed his hand from hers and held up a specific number of fingers, still moist from her body. He waggled them at her.
“Three,” he said, his voice a mixture of affection and raw, masculine desire. “Always a lucky number.”
Nikki blushed. Three orgasms in a row, from a guy she’d only met less than three hours ago? Yeah…she had to admit, she’d gotten pretty lucky.
And he had, too—at least she could tell herself that as long as she didn’t look too closely at his poor, swollen nose.
6
NIKKI TOOK FULL ADVANTAGE of Adam’s hotel-room shower, trying to soap and rinse all the “bad-girl” cooties off her body. The problem was that despite the niggling sense of shame she still felt at being scantily clad, popping out of a cake for dozens of men and burning up the sheets with an unknown guy—being bad felt really, really good. Being bad felt excellent, truth to tell. Liberating.
She felt as if she’d spent her entire life until now squeezed into a brutal pair of polyester support hose, and she’d just cut herself free. What a great feeling. She laughed out loud in the shower, and the sound bounced off the tiles.
She now had a delicious secret, like the famously nonexistent Victoria. Nobody ever had to know besides her and Adam. But as her laughter faded, spiraling down the drain with the water sluicing off her body, Nikki hugged herself.
For all that the sex had been spectacular, Adam had never once kissed her or touched her anywhere intimate with his mouth. Translation: he thought that she might have something communicable, like an STD. Translation: he didn’t believe that this was the first time she’d danced nearly naked for men. Translation: he thought she was at best loose and at worst some kind of—
She put that thought out of her mind. Adam may have given her three orgasms, but she would probably never see him again.
Well. That was for the best. She was quite sure he wouldn’t respect her in the morning. And it was up for debate whether or not she’d respect her
self
then. Though why women were somehow more worthy of blame than men in these situations, she’d never understand.
Oh, who cared? Sex wasn’t about respect anyway. It was about tossing panties on the lamp shade and having a good time. So there.
But Nikki scrubbed her privates again, until they practically squeaked. She rinsed off and stepped out of the shower, avoiding her own face in the mirror as she groped for a towel.
Nikki dried herself then wrapped the towel around her head. The terry cloth had aggravated the twin mosquito bites on her butt again, which completed her crazy emotional arc this evening: she’d gone from scared to slutty to horrified to ashamed to laughing-at-herself to orgasmic to euphoric to ashamed, part two, and now back to dorky.
To top it all off, she couldn’t stop thinking about how Adam hadn’t kissed her. Why she would obsess about that when the sex had been spectacular made no sense. He wasn’t her boyfriend, they weren’t dating, so there was no intimacy between them. She should be glad that he hadn’t put his tongue in her mouth or put his lips all over hers because that was like sharing something more. But she wasn’t glad.
Which meant she was just plumb crazy.
Nikki threw on the hotel robe and belted it. She had the weekend to recover and then she’d start her new job as administrative assistant to the dean at the medical school. She’d be covered from head to toe in a professional outfit, and nobody would ever guess that tonight she’d burst, mostly nude, out of a cake for a bunch of howling, wolf-whistling men. Nobody would ever know that she’d gone back to a hotel with one of those men. This embarrassing incident would remain her own sordid little secret.
Thank the good Lord.
Nikki wiped a pathway through the steam on the mirror and stared herself right in the eyes
. I may be fallen, but I
can
get up.
She did her best to get Adam’s comb through her wet, curly blond hair. Then she threw back her shoulders and drew herself up to her full height. She’d face Adam like a queen.
ADAM LAY SPRAWLED buck naked in the center of the bed, unable to move despite the call of his medical books and the throbbing of his nose. He knew he should turn his eyes to the texts and return the ice to his nose, but his body ignored his conscience and continued to make like an amoeba dug into the ocean floor.
When the bathroom door flew open and Nikki emerged breasts-first, like a blond battleship in a bathrobe, he did manage to blink, though. “Wow,” he said inanely. “You’re all clean.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
She seemed to be waiting for something.
Adam searched his amoeba-brain for what it might be and came up blank. Then it hit him: she was a dancer and she probably wanted a tip. Well, he didn’t have much, but—
Then it hit him much harder. Oh, no. She was a dancer whom he’d taken to bed. Easily. Way too easily.
Hooker, man. She’s a
hooker!
And after handing three hundred dollars to Gib, you have the sum total of forty-three dollars in your pocket, give or take some change. Better yet, after paying tuition a month ago, and your co-payment at the minor emergency center tonight, you have…
He did the math quickly.