Out of Control (8 page)

Possibly Jen. Definitely him.

As long as Jen wasn’t around, though, he could see the situation clearly. Jen lived in the moment, on the surface of her skin and by the seat of her pants. You probably had to be that way to be an artist, needed to be open to all sorts of new experiences, even if they were a little risky. Hell, even if they were downright crazy in retrospect. And since she was lovely and he was horny, he’d let himself be pulled into the moment with her.

But if he wanted to pursue anything with her—or, for that matter, if he wanted to share a house peacefully with her—it would have to be on his terms. Controlled. Negotiated. Passionate but within a framework of reason. Taking things step by step. Part of him wished they could continue with the spontaneity they’d shared earlier, but things couldn’t always be like that. Not for him. He could be in the moment as long as he was doing kendo, but the rest of life simply didn’t allow for it. His sex life certainly didn’t.

Assault charges weren’t sexy. More to the point, harming someone wasn’t sexy. And when your idea of sexual pleasure involved pain and bondage, you had a responsibility to be damn sure you and your partner were on the same page.

He’d talk with Jen, make sure she understood where he was coming from. With luck, she’d be intrigued and aroused enough by the idea of domination and submission, pain and pleasure—by
him
—to try things on his terms.

If not, his cock—no, all of him—thought it would be a damn shame.

Lost in thought, he headed to the front door and tucked his shinai under his arm to unlock it. He stepped into the front hallway, started to toe off his sneakers—and heard his name on a low moan.

It echoed through the big house, the primal sound of a woman so caught in the throes of orgasm that she didn’t care who heard her.

The bag holding his kendo armor thunked to the floor, unheeded. Inside his jeans, his cock sprang to attention, his balls tightening in anticipation of something he wasn’t going to give them.

Not with Jen, not now, no matter how much they both wanted it. They needed to talk first, and they needed to be clearheaded and clothed when they did it. If he followed the directives of his body, let the lust guide his feet up the back stairs to Jen’s door, “clearheaded and clothed” would be the last thing he’d be. He’d definitely let himself pull her into his bedroom, find the ropes and the crop and the Wartenberg wheel and the rest of his bag of tricks, and the attitudes that went with them. And Jen would let him, he suspected. She was sensual and adventurous and wouldn’t know what kind of Pandora’s box she was opening.

Some of the less evolved parts of his brain offered images of opening Jen’s box, and the more evolved parts of his brain quite enjoyed it.

No, he told himself, taking his shoes off as if that moan didn’t echo through every cell of his body. He would not take those stairs, would not take that risk, would not drag Jen unknowing into his world.

If she wanted it once he’d laid it out, he’d drag her there—and if all went well, some primitive bit of him proclaimed, he wouldn’t let her go.

But he wasn’t going to do it unprepared, no matter how much his aching balls screamed for release. And he wasn’t going to give himself release either. Not yet. That would give Jen, and more importantly, the out-of-control, hungry part of himself, too much power.

He headed into his study, shut the door and switched on the computer. He didn’t even take the time to unpack his armor and air it out. He’d do that later.

He didn’t often use headphones—he liked the effect of his music filling the space, surrounding him as he worked. But today it seemed like a good idea, just in case Jen got going again.

He needed Bach and numbers. The combination would help him get back to the calm he’d felt after leaving the dojo.

If he was lucky. If he wasn’t lucky, he’d still be horny and unsettled, but at least he’d get some work done.

Jen froze as the door slammed, not in embarrassment but in expectation. Drake must have heard her. Even if their earlier adventures had ended awkwardly, Drake wouldn’t be able to resist running up the stairs—she pictured those long, muscular legs taking two steps at a time in his eagerness, eating up the ground between them—bursting in the apartment door and finding her like this. Half-naked. Restrained by the jeans crumpled around her ankles. Face flushed a mottled red, fingers glistening with her own juices and moisture slicking her thighs from her drenched pussy.

Once he saw her like this, he’d have to take up where they left off. No, not exactly where they left off. It would be fast this time, no preliminaries, no foreplay. He’d tell her to step out of her jeans, bend over against the claw-foot tub and spread her legs. Then he’d enter her from behind, not even bothering to get his pants off, just unzip them. As he slammed into her, she’d feel the cool zipper and the rough texture of dark denim against her ass as well as the slap of his balls, the drip of her own moisture as he moved in and out. His hands would be hard on her hips, almost bruising but in a good way, and at the moment he came, he’d bite down hard on her shoulder…

An interior door shut downstairs, jarring Jen from the fantasy. Her clit throbbed gently, but the moisture on her thighs and fingers suddenly felt cold.

God, what a ridiculous position she was in: pants around her ankles, hand between her legs, mind in a tizzy, and all over a guy who ran hot and cold like running water.

She almost wished he’d run just cold, like the water at the studio. If Drake had squeezed her awkwardly and let her go when she’d hugged him that first time, she’d know where she stood. It would make sense. Everything would be one color, the cool pale blue-green of detached acquaintances, with the potential for friendship and flirtation hovering just out of the range of vision.

But he’d kissed her thoroughly. He’d hinted at a desire to date, or at least to mate like minks. He’d done the same when she came in to fix the window. And today, he’d done a hell of a lot more than hint and kiss. It might not have been screwing, but it was certainly sex, or close enough to it to have a similar emotional impact. On both of them, she’d thought.

Then he’d bolted, leaving her horny and boggled.

Well, fuck him if he can’t take a joke.

Or rather, don’t fuck him.

Maybe moving in here had been a big mistake. Great as the apartment was, the attractive neighborhood scenery was more like poison ivy when it turned that lovely glossy wine red in autumn—tempting to look at, but you’d regret it if you touched it.

And she’d called his name when she came.

Which worried her more than a little. She’d never been one for calling a lover’s name when she came—and certainly not if she was just masturbating and fantasizing. But with Drake, it just slipped out, and she hadn’t even fucked him yet.

Jen rearranged her clothes with quick, angry jerks—angry at herself as much as Drake. She’d invested too much in this hope, this promise of desire, and if she wasn’t careful, it would distract her from work. Determinedly, she rinsed her hands. She looked for a towel, but she hadn’t put one out yet. She ran her damp fingers through her hair instead, fluffing up the disheveled curls.

At least this bathroom had a tiny linen closet. Once she located the towels, she’d be able to arrange them by color.

Jen sighed with pleasure at that thought, an image pleasant enough to distract her from her confusion and frustration over Professor Hot-and-Cold Stuff.

Towels. Towels arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way so she could find the color she wanted—and right in the bathroom, not shunted into a distant drawer or the top shelf of her clothes closet where she could barely see them.

She could change towels whenever she wanted. The bathroom was hers alone, not shared with others who didn’t care about the color of the towels and used any old thing they could find. She’d want to change towels a lot, she expected, due to the simplicity of this bathroom. Luckily, towels were always cheap at thrift shops, because she knew she’d want a wider range of colors.

Okay, maybe she and her sexy new landlord had a few things to work out. But she was renting an apartment with a big claw-foot bathtub and her own, unshared bathroom and a turret—an honest-to-God turret!—for her bedroom, at an astonishingly good price. Not to mention the stained glass window.

She wandered into the bedroom to revel in the way the light broke through the jewellike panes of the window. The image was slightly different from the actual view in this room, which was just a sliver of lake and the curve of a neighboring hill, but she suspected it echoed the view from Drake’s room.

She wondered if she’d ever get to see that view. Then she shook herself.

This would be a good time to head to the studio for an hour or two. A bike ride would finish clearing her head. And the route took her past a thrift store, where she might find more towels in pretty colors.

Her daypack was crammed full of stuff from the move, not to mention a few stained glass tools she’d forgotten to return to the studio. She dumped everything but the stained glass tools onto the bed, thinking with a kind of malicious but healing glee that the additional disorder in the already messy room would irritate Drake to no end.

If he ever knew about it. Who knew if he’d ever find himself in her bedroom again, given the weird way he’d been acting? And maybe that would be for the best.

Although, she admitted to herself as she ran outside, taking care to use the back stairs rather than go through Drake’s part of the house, if he did come on to her again, she wouldn’t say no, good idea or not.

Chapter Seven

The thrift store was low on decent towels, but Jen found a purple bath towel and hand towel and a lonely bath towel in a deep rose. The color reminded her of a dress a particularly conventional grandmother might wear to a wedding, but it would look warm and pretty in that neutral bathroom on a gray Ithaca winter day. To her glee, they’d also had some crazy-cheap curtains in a retro teapot print that would make the weird color scheme in the kitchen look kitschy rather than misguided.

She arrived at the studio feeling accomplished and peaceful from knowing she was one step closer to achieving color coordination in her new home. Admittedly, maintaining this serenity required ignoring the need to find clean underwear and clothes, color coordinated or not, for her overnight shift at the bakery. Not to mention ignoring the problem of Drake.

Sean was at the studio when she arrived, working on something that involved slabs of bubbly glass in shades of amber and olive green. He was fitting them into a heavy wire armature that she thought was a conceptual nod to a bowl or serving piece. A lot of Sean’s work were things that looked almost functional but weren’t. She didn’t get it, but not as much as she didn’t get his penchant for muddy colors. The way she saw it, you could make lovely functional pieces or lovely purely decorative pieces and they were both great, but she didn’t get why Sean used his impressive technical skills to make things that were awkward and butt ugly.

But for all she knew, Sean thought her work was too bright and pretty-pretty, and, fondness for muddy colors or not, he was a great guy. She smiled and waved as she came in.

He looked up from his ugly work. “I didn’t expect to see you today. Weren’t you moving into the house of Professor Hot-Stuff, Ithaca’s buffest landlord?” He’d never met Drake, but he’d listened to Jen’s descriptions with avid interest.

“Got my stuff in, started unpacking, decided I needed to get away from the chaos.”

“So you came here?” Sean gestured around the studio. With three glass artists working in it constantly and a woman who came in occasionally to do batches of beads, it did define the term chaos pit, though a colorful, welcoming one.

“This is good chaos. Creative chaos. Not being sure where my underwear and coffee ended up is bad chaos.” She regretted that Ryoko wasn’t there. Ryoko would probably have something useful to say about the other chaos in Jen’s new place of residence, the chaos between her and Drake, but she didn’t dare bring the situation up to Sean. He might tease her about it forever. Or worse, he might take it very seriously and ask a lot of questions that she couldn’t answer without risking the entire gay community in Ithaca knowing her business and Drake’s.

She unloaded the stained glass supplies she’d had in her backpack and replaced them on the shelf.

“Trying something new?”

“Reverting to something old. There’s a stained glass window in my new apartment, and I fixed some damage to it in exchange for a rent reduction.”

“Stained glass?” Sean raised one elegant eyebrow. “You’ve come up in the world, girlfriend.”

“Stained glass
and
a turret. Of course it’s an itty-bitty apartment in a huge Victorian, but it’s still classy.”

“And I keep hearing how hot your landlord is.”

“Lies.” She said it so decisively that Sean, no fool, changed the subject.

“So did fixing the window give you the itch to try stained glass again? You have such an eye for color I’d think you’d be great at it.”

She shrugged. “Not really. I like shape and form fused with color. And I love blowing.”

Sean raised an eyebrow and looked like he was about to make a rude joke. Then he shook his head. “No. Too obvious. Every glass artist has heard a variation on that one a million times. You’ve used it on me. And I deserved it, I bet.”