I peeked at him through traitorous eyes to see his arms wide open, not hiding a damn thing. “Oh, you...you!” Slapping his sides, my fingers ran up to his well-defined chest.
He lowered his mouth, kissing the curve of my lips from one side to the other. When I was good and cross-eyed with lust, he chuckled and bent toward the mirror. Nude. Still.
I studied the marble underfoot instead of his marvelous glutes. “What about Temperance?”
“She knocks.”
“I knocked.”
“I know.” He winked at me through the reflection.
Bracing his thigh against the vanity, swishing the blade in the sink, he added more foam to his face from a bristled brush he swirled over a dome of shaving soap.
Swirling, like his tongue on my nipples.
Oh fuck.
I perused him, pretty sure my tongue lolled out. A light layer of black hair arrowed from his chest to his stomach. From the ripped muscles of his belly, the line thinned until it bloomed at his groin before the edge of the sink shielded his cock from sight.
Sexy man fur!
Step away from the man fur, Shay.
Returning my eyes to their sockets, I asked, “You let just anyone in here?”
He stopped mid-scrape along his jaw. “No.”
Biceps bulging, broad back and toned waist and narrow hips, Reardon tilted his neck, pulling the razor through foam. Diamonds of water dewed along the muscles fanning out from his spine, gathering in the dimples above his butt. I never wanted to be a towel so much in my life.
I made a pact with myself: if I could keep my hands above the Promised Land, I’d hug him. I folded my arms around his waist. Mmm, warmth, soft skin, hard muscle.
His head bowed, he covered my hands with his. “Missed you.”
Pressing a kiss between his shoulders I murmured, “Me too, baby.”
His body bent and moved while he plied the razor. Every so often he rose up, the base of his shaft revealed. Solid, thick, Kegel-worthy clenching material. This was a far cry from waking to a sink full of Palmer’s stubble.
Screw
Playgirl
PPV. I was getting paid to look at this.
Right. Paid. We needed to talk.
“I have an idea, Shay.”
Me too. Most of them began with
Fuck
and ended with
me
.
“You should give it a go.”
He questioned my salon-paid lady-scaping?
He held the razor out to me. Oh, a go on him
.
I’d rather use my tongue.
I hopped onto the vanity, my legs opening like the two-bit whores they were.
Settling in, the hot turgid weight of his erection bore down on my thigh. “Takes a firm grip, that’s all,” he coaxed.
I knew exactly what he wanted me to grip, firmly, because it rubbed against my thigh. Scraping across his cheek, I revealed smooth skin ready for my kiss. Exposing his throat, I hummed, “Like this?”
“Hmm.” Shoulders relaxed, eyes closed, he luxuriated in my touch.
When I finished, he opened sultry eyes, rinsing the razor behind me in the basin, enclosing me in his arms.
We kissed, his hands in my hair, our tongues gliding slowly.
“We need to talk?” He nuzzled my neck.
“Yeah, we do.” Pushing him away, I leaped down. “I’ll wait in your office.”
“My office?” He whipped a towel around his hips, finally
.
“What about my bedroom?”
“Tempting, but no.” I wiped a last puff of soap from his face and left.
Caught reordering his periodicals, I pocketed the fifty cents I’d found in the leather cushions of the settee and guiltily blushed when Reardon joined me.
Carrying two tall drinks and not a goddamn shirt in sight.
Dirty tactics.
And barefoot to boot. So of course I was thinking about his sexy toes trailing along the back of my calves while he used his knee to part my thighs, leaning down to lick my hot, wet, waiting pussy…
I jammed one hand into my purse and took the drink with the other, relishing the cold ice over fresh mint and white rum of the mojito. “God, this is delicious.”
I referred to the drink, but I drank him in. Washboard abs, washed-out jeans. With the top button undone.
Refusing to be waylaid by the Never-Nether Land of his crotch when he sat down, legs splayed, I pulled the envelope from my bag with a flourish. “What the hell is this?”
“Now, now, Shay, language.”
I threw the check in his lap. “This, this, this!”
He didn’t touch it but twitched nonetheless as if the amount of money branded him, as it did me.
“What the hell is that?”
“Your paycheck.”
I simmered, “It’s astronomical.”
“Well, it is out of this world.” With a wink, he referred to his obvious endowments.
I growled and slammed back the rest of my drink.
“Time and a half?” he feebly joked.
I shook my head.
Drumming fingers on the desk, he seemed unnerved by my silent pique. “Isn’t that why you’re here, what you need, money?”
“You idiot. I want–”
you.
The unspoken word hung frail as a paper lantern between us, spinning gently, lighting all the ways we were going to get hurt.
“It’s not about the money then. I thought I was helping you,” he muttered.
“Helping yourself to me.”
“I’m not going to apologize for wanting you, Shay.” He placed the check in my bag. “Cash it, please.”
I wouldn’t look at him.
“Shay.” He offered his hand from across the room. “Come here.”
“No.”
“Stubborn.”
“You know it.”
“Okay.” He nodded, then frowned. “I’m going to my bedroom. You can leave. You can stay. But I’d really like you to join me.” His hand held out, he waited patiently. “Darlin’, it’s been a damn long week without you. I don’t want to waste any more time arguing.”
When my fingers wound through his, he let out a long breath.
On the deck beyond his bedroom, we stood at the base of an oak corkscrew winding against the outer wall of the penthouse. The stairs were timbered, joints flushed, wood rounded.
Taking the circular staircase, we emerged on the roof where late afternoon sunlight gilded pots of aromatic herbs and painted bright colors over beds of sunflowers, lantana, lilies. There was nothing above us but the azure sky traced in white puffy trails from airplanes.
“Oh!”
“You like the flowers?”
“How did you know?”
Bringing my fingertips to his mouth, he kissed the rough ovals. “You can’t take your eyes off the trumpet lilies, and your hands are used to hard work, your nails dirty.”
I snatched my fingers back.
Trapping me in his arms, he eased, “I wasn’t insulting you. It was a compliment.”
“You ever get your hands dirty?”
“Every day, in the boardroom.”
“Radaman-Slaughter?”
He poured two glasses of wine, passing one to me. “What do you want to know?” Lying on the picnic blanket, arms crossed behind his head–he still didn’t have a damn shirt on–he wasn’t as relaxed as he wanted me to think.
“Y’all aren’t happy with your business partner.” I kneeled next to him.
“I don’t do long-term partnerships well.”
Obviously.
“Used to be Radamanthus Slaughter, back before the Civil War.”
“You mean the War of Northern Aggression.”
The dimples in his cheeks deepened with a broad smile. “I’m from the Radamanthus side. My great-great-great-Granddaddy cut loose from the bastard cousins, the Slaughters. He worked in banking during the Reconstruction, but the family lost it all during the collapse of 1893. Took a century, but we built it again, minus the ne’er-do-wells. A few years ago I…” He dragged his arm over his face. “Something happened, I needed bailing out. Shepperd Slaughter came on board. End of story.”
Stroking the underside of his arm, I cajoled him from his black mood. “So, you were born with a silver spoon in your pretty mouth.”
“You think my mouth is pretty?” He lunged quickly, pulling me on top of him.
“So pretty.” I took three chaste kisses from his lips. “But what about–”
“Let’s not talk about my family.” Reardon sat up abruptly.
“What about contraception, then? We never finished that talk.” I returned his frosty tone.
“I’m clean.”
“Nevertheless, maybe you should use condoms.”
His short laugh cut me. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“Well, you certainly don’t want children.”
His eyes widened, he blanched.
“That’s right, and I’m barren, so we make a perfect couple, don’t we?”
Suddenly as he’d turned cold, he melted. Moving quickly, he captured me in his embrace. His hands running up and down my back lanced the ugly bitterness from me. But he didn’t correct me. Every unsaid word reinforced the job description. Family had no place in this arrangement.
“Let’s go for a walk.” Reardon’s lips brushed my ear.
“Is it safe?”
He helped me to my feet. “C’mon. We’re allowed to go outside.”
After he tugged on a shirt in the bedroom, we made our way to the riverside park. We strolled along the paths surrounding the playground, listening to screamingly happy kids. Jealousy stabbed me as I watched.
He tried to hook an arm over my shoulder, but I didn’t want to get caught out in public. He squeezed my waist instead.
I whispered, “I’m okay.”
At the end of the pier, with seagulls’ cries overriding the squall of children, we snuggled hip-to-hip on the wide, whiteboard swing. Tugboats blasted their horns, making way for sluggish container ships shuffling to the port terminals of Longpoint and Wando, dolphins dancing in their wake.
“Is it safe to kiss?” His husky words were followed by warm lips pursed against the pulse in my neck.
Slinking lower, I pulled him with me. Reaching into his hair, I slanted his face and made out with him like a teen on the bench seat of a pickup truck. I thrilled in the freshness of his taste, innocent in the first hesitant swipe of my tongue, desperate when we really got going.
He drew his hands beneath my top, cradling my breasts, roughly thumbing my nipples. “Somethin’ else I want to kiss,” Reardon groaned.
I grabbed his belt, yanking him hard between my thighs. The backs of my fingers brushed the skin of his abdomen.
Uncertainty, loss, culpability washed away.
I shivered with expectation.
“Cold?”
“Not with you.” My fingers dipped lower.
He caught my wrist. “Shay. We need to go inside.”
At the door of his apartment, he pinched the corners of his mouth, then settled his hands on his hips. “Stay with me tonight?”
Chapter 7
Fraternization
When I hesitated on the threshold, a flicker of panic pulled Reardon’s eyebrows together.
At my nod, he released a deep breath, leading me through the nighttime quiet of the grand space. Stopping short of the balcony, he jerked his head to the windows, toward the river. “My brother always wanted to be a sailor.”
Whoa. What? His brother? What happened to Reardon’s rules of engagement?
“The war memorial in the park, the one we passed, I usually take a moment.
On behalf of a grateful nation
, it says.”
I suspected emotional warfare from him. More dangerous than the weapon of mass seduction between his legs. “I’ve been around it before.”