The Sex Solution (14 page)

It took everything he had not to pull her into his arms, peel the shirt from her and return the attention she’d lavished on his own nipples the night before.

He focused on walking to the sofa and sitting down in his usual spot. She came around him and the blindfold slid into place. Next came the scarf at his wrists.

“We didn’t do this last night.”

“Because I needed your arms free to try out the samples on your skin. Tonight we’re isolating your sense of taste. So no touching.” She tied the ends into place and checked her work. “Unless you start to feel dizzy. If so, tell me and I’ll see what I can do.”

A few moments later, the couch dipped just to his left.

Several moments passed where Austin heard nothing save the frantic beat of his heart as he waited. And waited.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting ready,” she said, her voice soft and sweet and slightly amused. “Be patient.”

“I’ve got work to do—”

“Now,” she breathed. “I’m definitely ready.”

He should have known by the way she said the words that something was up—besides his dick, that is. But he was so fixated on getting started and getting out of there that nothing else registered.

“Let’s go,” he told her, his fingers clasped together. “Let’s get it over with.”

“Okay. I’m going to hold the first sample up. Take a lick and tell me what you taste in three descriptive words.”

His lips parted and his tongue darted out and he lapped a dollop of a creamy, puddinglike substance. The sweet taste of raspberries with an underlying hint of salty skin exploded in his mouth and he quickly realized that she wasn’t holding the sample with a spoon. She’d dipped her finger into the mixture and held it out to him.

He swallowed and his head snapped back. “What the hell are you doing?” he sputtered.

“Administering the sample.”

“With your finger.”

“So what?”

“So shouldn’t you use a spoon, or fork or…
something?
Anything but your finger?”

“I could just scoop it into my palm if you’d like.”

“It’s not about what I like. It’s about the fact that this is a taste test. Taste as in eat. Most people eat with a damned spoon or something.”

“I need to know how the subtle flavor of skin mingles with the actual sample, and how palatable the combination is. That’s why you have to taste the lotion as it was meant to be used—slathered onto a warm body. My warm body.”

The moment she said the words, he envisioned her peeling off her shirt and smoothing the sample over her ripe nipples and letting him take a nice long lick.

His jeans strained over his massive erection and he shifted for a more comfortable position.

“Are you okay?” Her whisper raised the hair on the back of his neck. She sounded so breathless, so sexy, so…
warm.

He tried to shake away the sudden image of wild and wicked Madeline stretched out on the couch, naked except for a thin sheen of lotion.

“I didn’t mean to surprise you,” she went on. “I figured it would be obvious that we need to do it this way.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, his voice tight and strained. It also made the situation much harder than he’d anticipated.
Harder
being the key word.

Descriptive words,
he told himself.
Just describe the damned thing and get this over with.

But he couldn’t. With all the talk, he’d lost the full impact of the taste and now he needed another.

“Let me try it again.” He opened his mouth. He meant to lick. At least that’s what he told himself. But instead, his damned mouth seemed to have its own agenda, and it wanted a taste. A real taste.

His lips closed around the tip of her finger. He suckled, drawing a gasp from her before he drew the tip deeper into the warm heat of his mouth. He sucked and laved her skin, savoring the taste of her mingled with the raspberries. A potent combination.

“Potent,” he murmured when he finally pulled back and drank in a deep breath. “Powerful.”

“And?” She sounded breathless, as if the contact had affected her the way it had affected him.

“Sweet.”

“That’s good. Now we’ll move on to number two.”

He expected a finger. Instead, she’d slathered the sample onto the inside of her wrist, which she touched to his lips.

He tasted sweet vanilla and sugar, like frosting, and he couldn’t resist. He lapped at the creamy substance until he reached bare skin. He licked the last bit of sweetness and pressed his lips against her frantic pulse for a long moment.

“I…” she started, seeming at a loss for words. Almost as if bold and brazen Madeline had suddenly lost her nerve.

The realization eased his own anxiety and turned it to something darker and more determined.

“Cupcakes,” he breathed as he pulled away. “You taste like cupcakes. Sweet and moist and…” He lapped one final time at the tender inside of her wrist and made her catch her breath. “Sticky,” he finished.

“I…” she began again, then cleared her throat. “I mean, good. That was really good. Let’s move on to number three. Try this one,” she said.

His tongue darted out and touched soft, fragrant skin smoothed with sweet lotion that tasted like…chocolate. It didn’t matter that Austin had always been partial to everything from vanilla ice-cream cones to Twinkies rather than Ding Dongs. Suddenly it was all about the mouthwatering flavor coating his tongue.

And what was one more little taste?

He licked and nibbled, his lips pressed to the delicate skin as he devoured the sample. Her breath caught and her free hand touched the back of his neck as if to brace herself. Or hold him close.

Either way, her fingers scorched him and made him even more ravenous. He ate at her until he sucked bare, salty skin that tantalized his taste buds even more than the delicious chocolate.

“Rich,” he breathed as his lips worked an inch up the tender inside of her upper arm. He felt the fullness of her breast against his cheek and it was all he could do not to turn and suckle her right through her blouse. But he wasn’t that far gone.

Not yet.

“Sweet,” he added, moving another inch higher. “Sinful.”

“No more,” she said, her voice slightly pleading.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” He kissed her skin.

“I mean the sample.” Her words pushed past the fog of desire gripping his senses. “There’s no more. We should move on to the next one.”

He pulled away, his heart pounding as he waited for what would come next. A dozen possibilities flashed in his mind before long, silky fingers finally threaded through his hair and turned his head sideways before guiding his lips down.

More luscious skin smoothed with the flavor of candied apples mesmerized his taste buds and he reacted like a starving man. He licked and nibbled until a frantic thud pulsed against his mouth and he realized his location.

Her neck.

Whoa, buddy. This is bad. Real bad.

But even as the warning echoed through his head, he lifted his bound hands and touched her neck with his fingertips, desperate for more than just a taste. He needed to feel her, to soak up her softness and consume it the way he was consuming the cream smoothed over her delicious skin.

Trailing his fingertips down, he felt his way to the deep vee of her cleavage. He lingered at the warm skin there for a moment as he nibbled. Then he touched one silk-covered nipple.

He circled the nub, feeling it ripen even more beneath his touch. He needed to taste her, to feel the hard tip against his lips and suck her into the wet heat of his mouth.

Despite his bound hands, he made quick work of the buttons, feeling his way from one to the next until he shoved the material aside. He kissed a path to her nipple and was about to close his mouth over her when she pushed him away.

“Wait.” She moved, scooting a few inches away. “We’ve got another sample.”

But he wasn’t of a mind to wait. Snagging the edge of the tie around his wrist, he pulled and the material loosened. He slid his hands free. Then he reached for the blindfold, pulling the silk down just in time to see her touch a dollop of burnt orange cream to her rosy-red nipple.

“Aw, hell,” he groaned. At the sound of his voice, her head snapped up and her hand froze.

“You’re supposed to keep your senses isolated.” Her words drew his attention to her face. To the flush of her cheeks and the desire burning in her eyes and the wet fullness of her lush mouth. Her tongue swiped across her bottom lip and his insides hollowed out.

He tried to find his voice, but he couldn’t. He hadn’t had the chance to really
look
last night, and Christ, she looked beautiful. Wanton. Wild.

“Go ahead,” she said, as if she mistook his silence for confusion. “Take a taste.”

Oddly enough, it wasn’t the bold, brazen way she said the words that made him grow even harder. It was the jolt of pure lust that shot through him, as if he hadn’t just had one of the best climaxes of his life not more than twenty-four hours ago. That, and something else. A need more fierce than anything he’d ever felt before.

He reached out, touched his fingertip to her nipple. The bud hardened even more, pressing and tightening, reaching out. He drew in a shaky breath and brought the dab of cream on his finger to his own lips. The warm flavor of pumpkin combined with cinnamon and sugar set his mouth watering and hunger gnawed at his insides.

“That’s not what I meant,” she told him.

“I know,” he told her. He kissed her roughly, his fingers threading through her hair as he held her for the onslaught of his lips and tongue.

Then he buttoned her blouse, stood and walked away before he stopped thinking with his head and gave in to his damned body again.

She was a one-night stand, as in one, as in temporary, and as much as he wanted to forget that fact, he couldn’t.

He wouldn’t.

Not with his land, and his heart, hanging in the balance.

T
HE DOOR SLAMMED SHUT
behind Austin and he drank in the night air, eager to calm his pounding heart.

“Damn, but that was close,” he muttered.

“You ain’t just whistling Dixie.” The crackly voice came from Austin’s left. He glanced to the side to see the old man braced against the porch rail. “You and Maddie been watching that
Exorcist
marathon that’s on cable tonight?”

“What?”

“’Cause the way you came barreling outa there, a fella would think the devil himself was right on your heels.”

“More like a she-devil.” As in red-hot and on fire, and the
last
type of woman Austin needed in his life right now.

“I think I need to sit down.” Uncle Spur stumbled toward the porch swing.

“It’s not your heart, is it?”

“My stomach.”

Austin frowned. “I gave your stomach a start?”

“Marshalyn did that. You just scared the bejeesus out of me.”

“I don’t think I’m following you.”

“You like pie, boy?”

“I’m from Texas, aren’t I?”

“Well, so do I. That is, until I just tasted Marshalyn Simmons’s famous fudge pie. See, I thought I’d mosey on over to the ladies’ choir practice at the church and she was there with this good-looking dish. Said it was her prize-winning recipe and I believed her. Women,” he shook his head. “You think they would just admit their shortcomings.”

“You ate a slice of that pie?”

“Damn straight I did. It was okay going down, but then it had this funny little aftertaste. Come to find out, she mistook a bottle of cod-liver oil for her vanilla. I tell you, it was god-awful, and I ain’t a religious man. I told her as much and you know what she had the nerve to tell me? That I was an insensitive old coot and she deserved an apology. When I said she should be the one apologizing for upsetting my digestive system, she busted out crying and locked herself in the ladies’ room.”

“You really said that?”

“’Course I said it. I always speak the truth. Insensitive,” he muttered. “Why, I should be so lucky. As it is, I swear I dropped ten pounds before I managed to leave the church’s rec building. If that ain’t sensitive, at least in the stomach area, I don’t know what is. Speaking of which—” he bolted to his feet “—I think I’d better get inside before the weight starts coming off again.

“An apology, of all things,” he grumbled as he reached for the screen door. “If she’s expecting one from me she’ll be waiting till the cows come home ’cause I ain’t done a cotton-pickin’ thing. She should be the one calling and begging my forgiveness.”

“M
ARSHALYN WON’T TAKE
any of my phone calls,” Uncle Spur announced three days later as he eyed Madeline over a bowl of Cheerios.

“You told her she was a rotten cook.” Madeline took a long drink of her diet cola and ate a bite of whole-wheat toast.

“She is.”

“But you didn’t have to say it.”

“I call ’em like I see ’em, is all. I’m an honest man. Ain’t women always yackin’ about how they want an honest man?”

“Honest as in
‘Honey, I’m going to the store,’
and that’s where you actually go. Not honest as in
‘Yes, dear, your butt looks monumental in those orange capri pants.’
”

He glanced under the table. “You ain’t wearin’ orange capri pants—not that I know what capris are, but you ain’t in pants—and your butt still looks—”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about, Uncle Spur.” She waved her piece of toast at him. “I know my butt isn’t the smallest in the state. Everyone else knows it, too. But there’s no reason for you to constantly point it out.”

“If you know it, then what’s the big deal if I point it out?”

“You can’t spit tobacco near as well as your brothers, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“About the fact that you used to chew and spit tobacco all the time. You spit on Janice’s shoe that time when we were kids.”

“I don’t spit anymore. It’s bad for you.”

“True, but that’s not why you gave it up. You gave it up because you came in third to your two brothers in the Waller County Spit-Off that time, right?”