Nights In Black Lace (4 page)

“Ah, I am a stylist.” That wasn't so very far from the truth.

“That means that you…style things?” He gave her a hopeful look.

“Yes.”

“Help me out here. I'm just a guy. What does that mean?”

Odette picked up another
frite
and ate it in two bites. Fried food gave her courage. “If I were to style an outfit for an American athlete, I would go to the flea markets and vintage clothing stores to buy exactly what you have on. A tank top from a famous beach and a wetsuit jacket—”

“Actually, neoprene is too hot to walk around in where I'm from, but Paris is cold in the spring, so it works. At home I wouldn't be wearing it except when I'm actually in the water.”

She glanced at the faded letters on his tank top. “Newport Beach? I have seen it on that TV show. The harbor is huge.”

Bryan nodded. “Yeah. And filled with luxury yachts that the owners never sail. They make pretty good roosts for the pelicans.” He nodded at the pin on her lapel. “I like that. Made me think of them.”

“Ah. What else is there in Newport Beach besides pelicans?”

“Beach shacks that sell for two million dollars. Hamburgers that cost twenty dollars. The real people got priced out a while ago. But there are a few crazy kayakers left.”

“Not surfers?”

“Farther south you get surfers. Newport Beach doesn't have big waves, as a rule.”

“Oh. I imagined you as a surfer.”

Bryan laughed a little ruefully. “Okay, you're not wrong. But I had to hit Highway 1 to get anywhere worth surfing.”

“I have heard of it. In
Le O.C.
”

He made a wry face. “Not my favorite show.”

Odette nodded. “It is for teenagers,
non?
”

“That's about right.”

She let her gaze move over his well-muscled body. Bryan was very much a man. “So what is it that you do?” she asked him at last.

“Short version?”

“If you please.”

“I'm twenty-five. No brothers or sisters. Raised by my mom. She's a dressmaker—I can't wait to send her the photos from before the show. She won't believe I got to see Paris fashion on the runway.”

Odette raised an eyebrow. So the interviewer from
Bonjour
hadn't been able to resist having photos taken of Bryan because of his raffle win. Not much of a story, that, but Bryan himself was delectable. No doubt the witch, as Lucie called her, had been all over him like a—like a wetsuit. And not just the jacket.

“Got a BA in marine biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, halfway through my master's,” Bryan was saying. “I took time off to travel. Went up the Amazon for a while and did independent study in Belize. Right now the Scripps Institute has me waiting to hear.” He smiled at her puzzled look. “It's in San Diego. The best marine lab in the US, outside of Woods Hole in Massachusetts. I applied there too. In fact, I applied to every university within swimming distance of a barnacle.”

“I see. So what brought you to Paris?”

“Last stop before my flight home.” He looked at her a little worriedly. “Not that I didn't want to see Paris. But I'm not that much of a city guy.”

“How much of the city have you seen?”

He pushed the plate of
frites
away. “I'm ashamed to say it. Not much. The Eiffel Tower. The cheap tour of the Champs-Élysées. The back end of Notre Dame, from a tour boat on the Seine. And the depressing lobby of my budget hotel.”

“And how much time do you have left?” Odette asked.

“Two more nights. Which is to say that I have to check out by Friday. After that I don't really have to be anywhere.”

“Then you can stay with me if you like.”

“What?”

Odette, per the unwritten rules of flings, didn't explain her invitation.

“For starters,” she said airily. “Do you like jazz?”

“Sure. Anything but techno. No offense, Odette, because you work for whoever runs that fashion show, but the music was the pits.”

“Then we will go to the Bistrot d'Eustache or the China Club. They have wicked gin fizzes.”

“Sign me up. And lead the way.” She began to protest but he held up a hand. “You have to. I'm a stranger in a strange land, Odette.”

“How melodramatic,” she said with disdain.

“I can see I'm going to have to prove I'm the man.”

Odette felt a secret flush of excitement steal through her. His tone of voice was teasing, but there was an underlying edge in it that made it clear he understood what she wanted from him. No-strings-attached sensuality. Fast and furious. Clandestine—she had no particular wish to tell him who she was. No, she wanted an affair with no limits except time. Necessarily brief.

But intense.

Later…

It was well after midnight when they left the China Club. Odette had gambled on seeing no one she knew there, and she'd been right. Marc and Lucie and the rest of her staff had gone off to a boîte in the Rue du Faubourg St.-Denis to celebrate—she'd received a text message from Marc that was a perfect combination of tact and innuendo as to the reason for her disappearance. The models had gone back to their hotels to collapse.

Giddy from one too many gin fizzes, they had hailed a taxi and come back to her apartment in the most exclusive
arrondissement
in Paris.

She hoped he wouldn't realize that.

The elegant buildings stood in regular rows, their mansard roofs neatly aligned, their stone blocks punctuated by wrought-iron balconies. It was too early in spring and too cold for flowers to spill from them—and even with the old-fashioned street-lights, rather too dark to see much.

He made no comment. Perhaps he thought the neighborhood was old-fashioned. She was counting on his lack of knowledge of Paris—after not wanting him to know she was famous, she really didn't want him to know that she was rich.

It would change the mood of this brief affair, from the happiness of a man and a woman without a thought for anything but their delight in each other and their mutual desire for each other to something very different.

She unlocked the outer door of wrought iron and the inner one, then led him up the curving marble staircase to the third floor.

“Oh my. Watching you go up the stairs is serious motivation.” A few steps behind her, he reached up to stroke the inside of her thigh. Odette paused, thrilled by the sensual tickle of a male hand on her silk stockings.

But Bryan didn't reach all the way up. Or grab. He sighed and let his hand trail down, then patted her calf. “Keep going or we'll never get there.”

Odette giggled and continued to mount the stairs, knowing that her short skirt was swishing provocatively only inches from his face.

She wouldn't mind if he lifted it and pressed kisses on her bottom, which was mostly bare. He didn't know that because he hadn't touched it.

A young man who wanted to wait, was able to wait, could savor every moment of the foreplay—sex with Bryan Bachman ought to be good. Very good.

She opened the door to her apartment and motioned him in, switching on a light.

“Wow. Nice place.” He looked around at the furnishings. “You have interesting stuff.” He ran a hand over an armchair made of slabs of clear lucite that had red roses embedded in it, stems and all. “Is this for sitting in or is this a work of art?”

“You can sit in it if you like.”

“That didn't answer my question.” He turned around and settled himself in it. “Not very comfortable. I prefer upholstery.”

Odette pointed to a sofa thickly padded in dark green velvet. “Then sit there.”

“Only if you do.” He looked at the naked nymphs carved on the legs of the low table in front of the sofa before he stretched out. “Now that's something you generally don't see on an American coffee table.”

“Why not?”

“No bare breasts allowed on the furniture, I guess. They seem to be everywhere in Paris. Even on the billboards.”

Odette held her breath. The taxi had passed a huge ad for her company screened onto vinyl and attached to the side of a building. Had he noticed the Oh! Oh! Odette logo?

Apparently not.

“I just have to get used to it,” Bryan was saying. “I bet you don't give bare boobs a second thought, not with a job like yours.”

“Not really, no.”

He gave the table an admiring look. “So where'd you get this thing?”

“Les Puces. The flea market. It's a Victorian piece. Not valuable. I just liked it.”

“Okay.” He leaned back against the cushions and looked around at the rest of the room. “Works with everything else. I like your style, Odette. I like everything about you. Come here.”

For some reason, the exuberant compliment and the command that followed it made her nervous.

“In a moment.” She sauntered into the kitchen, feeling very hungry and needing something to eat that would soak up the drinks they'd downed.

There was bread, plain bread, but it was exactly what she wanted. Odette extracted the long, uncut baguette from its crackling paper bag and went back into the living room with it, along with a corked, half-full bottle of wine and two glasses held dexterously in her fingers. He'd moved to the couch.

“You look like an ad for Air France,” he chuckled.

“Do I? The bread is very good. Still fresh.” She extended the long loaf to him. “Feel it.”

He gave it a squeeze and looked at her, laughing. “Is this some kind of crazy French sex ritual?” he asked, after she plopped down next to him. He accepted the morsel of bread she tore off and put into his mouth, and didn't talk for a little while.

“Yes,” she said. Odette had several bites and so did he before he took the baguette away and set it on the coffee table.

“Mmm. A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou. And a naked table. It doesn't get better.”

She planted a kiss lightly dusted with flour on his cheek. “You must be part French.”

He nuzzled her neck. “Don't think so.”

“What are you then?” she asked. What he was doing felt very good.

“A red-blooded, all-American man,” he growled. “That okay with you?”

“
Bien sûr,
” she murmured.

His lips pressed against the side of her neck for several sensual kisses before he opened his mouth and nipped her. The contact was immediately erotic, almost dominating.

Odette arched her back and let him do it, wanting only to melt into his arms and let him take over.

B
ryan's hand rested easily on her thigh and the sensation warmed her flesh all the way up to her pussy.

Odette wriggled, settling more deeply between his spread thighs. His old jeans were soft against the sheer silk of her stockings, and she found herself wanting to rub her bottom upon those strong thighs while he still wore them.

Of course, he still didn't know that only narrow garters covered that part of her. The scrap of silk that served to cover her labia—barely—was held on by the thinnest possible straps that curved over her hips and slid into the crease of skin where her thighs ended.

The thong ended there.

Bryan gave a sexually charged sigh as her ass, still confined by the short, hot pink skirt, pressed against his fly.

She could feel his erection. Ahhh. Long. Getting longer. She wanted to rip the already torn jeans open and see exactly what he had. But she had a feeling they were the only pair he had. Besides, they were probably irreplaceable. With him inside them, they were irresistible.

Odette wriggled out of her jacket and flung it aside. She still had on her black lace cami top, what there was of it. Her breasts were nearly overflowing it, thanks to the black lace bra underneath, which took the concept of push-up to a new high. She stroked his face, then began to kiss him the way she liked to kiss: deep and slow. And then she began to rub herself in his lap.

Bryan gave a soft groan that she captured, sucking it away along with his breath.

Poor man. He was having a hard time letting her pleasure and stimulate herself. She broke off the kiss and let her hands drift down, feeling his biceps under the neoprene jacket.

His hands were still holding her, but the muscles in his arms bulged, then released, then bulged again from the sexual tension that her pleasurable
frottage
was causing.

She whimpered sensually into his ears. “I like to rub this way. May I?”

“Jesus.” He gritted his teeth as the sacrilegious epithet escaped. “Do whatever you want. Just don't stop.”

Disobeying just to see what he would do, Odette rose slightly, bracing her hands on his broad shoulders, but she wasn't quick enough. Bryan grabbed her hips and pushed her back down, hard, groaning as the soft, feminine flesh of her bottom hit his hard cock.

And he still hadn't seen it, still didn't know her ass was, for all intents and purposes, naked and available.

Wantonly, Odette pulled up the hem and showed him what he'd been missing. First the front of the thong. And then she took one of his hands and moved it behind her.

He touched the bare, heated flesh with a look of mingled lust and wonder. “You mean you weren't wearing anything but this?”

“No. I wanted you to reach up and find that out for yourself.”

“Oh, Odette.” He made up for lost time, using both hands to fondle her behind.

“I like to be stroked while I rub a man's thighs,” she whispered into his ear.

“God. Do it then.”

Odette rose again but this time he didn't stop her, just kept his hands where they were while she stepped into a straddle that encompassed both his legs. She used hers to push his thighs together, despite their heavy muscle. Holding the hot pink skirt up to her waist.

His eyes widened and he seemed to be looking at something behind her. Odette smiled before she sat back down in his lap. The mirror on the opposite wall gave him a good view of that XXX-rated pose: seamed stockings, their wide tops pulled into points by the thin garters hooked into them.

Skirt up. Bottom bared. His hands on it.

Yes. She knew he saw exactly that because she felt his hands begin to spread her buttocks.

“Bend over,” he said hoarsely. “Like you're going to tease me with your beautiful big breasts.”

This time she obeyed. But she waited to hear what he was going to say next. He was still looking over her shoulder at the back view of her in the mirror.

Then he suddenly spread her ass cheeks completely apart, not gently, and she gave a little cry. He held her that way. She strained a little, tightening anally as her labia parted with a juicy noise. Odette began to pant. His unexpected but controlled moment of roughness excited her.

“Now I see pink,” he growled. “Your pussy is swollen. All that rubbing does you good.”

“Yes.”

“Put your fingers in yourself, mademoiselle.”

She rested her head on his shoulder and gave him a hot little show. One finger slid in, then two. He kept her behind fully spread and didn't say a thing.

“Do you like to watch women masturbate?” she murmured.

“Uh-huh. Your little anus tightens when you fingerfuck yourself. Did you know that?”

“No,” Odette said.

“Maybe it's because I'm spreading you nice and wide. I can really see everything.”

Now he was getting down and dirty. She loved it.

He gave her ass a final squeeze, then pulled her down into his lap.

“Don't you want to get undressed?” she asked.

“Soon. Not yet. If you like to rub your hot pussy on denim, then I want to see more of that. I like getting you undressed little by little.”

Odette straddled him again. He slid a finger under the patch of sheer silk at the front of her thong.

“Shaved but not all the way,” he muttered. “Good. I like some curls to play with too.” He twined the exploring finger into a few and gave a light tug.

Her clitoris was revealed by the move and she strained forward. “Touch me, Bryan.”

He kept the skin lifted by his light pull on her intimate curls, and did as she asked, touching a finger of his other hand to the very tip of her clit.

“Slick,” he said.

He applied infinitesimal pressure to her clit tip, pulling a little harder on her pubic curls to keep that sensitive bit of flesh forward and up so he could fool around with it.

But there was nothing foolish about what he was doing. If there was a term like sexual intelligence, that would apply.

He massaged her clit, just her clit, on the sides, then moved the hood of it back, beginning a stimulation that was so sensual it was almost uncomfortable.

Odette could imagine what he could do with his mouth if his fingers were this skillful. Oh God. That was going to happen.

She let him play with her tiny rod, looking down. His chest rose and fell with the deep breaths he took. Bryan was intent upon what he was doing, exploring every nuance of her sexual response.

Underneath his moving fingers was the huge bulge of his cock and balls, pressed back by his old jeans.

If anything could burst the well-worn denim, it would be a cock that size, she thought. The long rod was on one side of the fly, where the material had worn so thin that the head was clearly outlined atop the shaft.

She reached through his hands to run a finger down the hot curve of flesh. Restrained, his erection was forced against his upper thigh. She reached farther down.

His heavy balls strained against the frazzled seam at the center of his jeans, so big that he had to keep his legs separated far apart.

Her fingertips rubbed him there provocatively and Bryan moaned. Then he gritted his teeth and shifted on the sofa, taking his fingers away from her clit and bringing them to his nose.

“That is the most delicate scent of a woman ever,” he murmured. “Clean but extremely sexual. Your clit is giving it up.”

“Can it do that?”

“Seems so.” He put his finger back on the tip of her clit, and rubbed it until it tingled.

She leaned forward and whispered into his ear. “I used to wonder what it felt like to ejaculate. I always wanted to.”

“It's a rush,” Bryan said. “A pulsing, hot rush. Can't control it.”

“I want to come in your hand.”

“No coming.”

She pouted and he smiled.

“Let me amend that. Not yet.”

Odette didn't want him to take his finger away but he did.

“These haven't gotten any attention,” he mused, moving his hands to her breasts. He reached inside her cami top and felt one, then brought it out of her bra. Then the other.

Odette shivered. The difference between the cooler air of the room and the heat of the silken material that had cupped and uplifted her was noticeable. Her nipples stood out, long and pink.

She used her palms to warm and stroke her breasts, then made light circles over her nipples. “Ahhh,” she moaned. “Suck. They need to be sucked.”

“I love a bossy chick,” he said softly, “I don't have to wonder about what you want. You tell me, I do it.” He immediately applied his mouth to a nipple and suckled her tenderly.

“I like to be bossed too,” she murmured. The inside of her pussy tensed with each pull of his strong lips and tongue.

He stopped for a second. “We'll get around to that. Give and take.”

Her other nipple was happy with the lascivious attention it got next. Odette twined her hands in his thick, tousled hair, and worked with him to intensify her own pleasure, pulling back so that her nipple was drawn out, forcing him to suck hard to keep it.

She loved men like this, at the breast, squeezing and sucking and reveling in female flesh. She suspected that most were indulging fantasies from boyhood on, when they'd sneaked looks at every woman with a pretty bosom, longing to touch it freely and be held against it.

Bryan was no different from other men in that regard. His hand clasped one, his lips sought the nipple of the other, and he loved it with his mouth almost worshipfully.

Odette shifted on his spread thighs. Her thong did nothing to absorb the sensual slickness that made her intimate flesh smell so sweet to him. But she was so excited that her labia had swelled together, trapping the juice of excitement inside.

One rub from his hand and his palm would be wet. She wanted him to do it.

Odette straightened up, gently pushing his head back. Her nipple popped out of his mouth, which he wiped roughly with the back of his hand, his eyes on the tender tip.

He reached up to tug on the other, exciting it to the same length as the just-sucked one. “Gotta even them out,” he said with a grin.

“Mmm.” Odette took his hand and moved it to between her legs. “Rub my pussy,” she commanded, “the whole thing. Rub and squeeze.”

Lazily, he did just that, watching her eyes drift half-closed.

Just as she'd thought. The intimate caress made her swollen labia part and his hand became as slick as she was.

“You're so wet,” he murmured. “I feel like you came in my hand.”

“I didn't.”

“Good girl. I want to get you a lot more excited than this.”

She reached down and took his hand by the wrist, bringing it to her lips and darting her tongue into the center of his palm.

“Look at you licking yourself up,” he growled. “Dainty as a kitten.”

Odette cleaned his palm without replying, then took his fingers into her mouth, sucking each one just as clean.

“Like the way you taste?”

“Mm-hm,” she murmured, sucking and licking.

He let her finish, then let her cup his damp hand to her flushed cheek.

“Interesting,” he said. “Very interesting. What else do you like in your mouth?”

Odette answered by resting her hand on the front of his jeans. “It's time,
n'est-ce pas?
”

“Yeah.” He gazed into her eyes so long and so deeply that she was a little disconcerted. Then he moved her off his lap, half-lifting her with ease.

He stood as she sprawled sensually on the sofa, her legs far apart, watching him shuck the flexible jacket and the tank top in one go. His chest was perfect, carved out of ripped muscle and sleek skin with just a dusting of dark hair over his pecs.

Her eyes followed the line it made down his hard abs, dividing them and diving under his jeans.

No belt. He flicked the round steel button at the waistband out of its tattered buttonhole and fumbled for the zipper, distracted by the way she was staring at his crotch.

“Let me,” Odette whispered. She kneeled on the sofa and found the tiny shank of steel that opened the zipper, caressing his imprisoned cock as she pulled the zipper slowly open.

Her hands moved the two sides of the front of his jeans apart, and she pressed kisses to the soft cotton of the briefs beneath that still concealed his hard, hot rod.

From the root to the head, it was too long and too thick to spring out. Bryan groaned and eased a hand into her hair, pushing her head against his trapped flesh.

Odette pressed kiss after kiss to the shaft, then nipped it through the cotton knit. He stiffened, then trembled. She loved him like this, not knowing what he was going to get, up for anything.