Afternoon Delight (6 page)

The flavors in the first mouthful spread over his tongue, hot and cool and sweet and tart all at once, just hot enough to make him respect it. The dish rewarded his attention with a sensory explosion unlike any in his previous experience. It smelled like heaven, tasted like a dream, looked like something out of a magazine. He could hear it calling his name.

Without thinking it through, he reached out and scooped a bit of chocolate, cream, and raspberry juice onto his fingertip, then extended it to her. She smiled, leaned forward, and licked it off one cat stroke at a time. He stopped breathing.

“You were holding back with the beater,” he said when she'd finished.

“I don't mix sex and cooking,” she said matter-of-factly. “I'll do neither well, when both should be done to the absolute best of my ability.” She took another mouthful of the dessert. “And savored,” she said when she'd swallowed.

“Never?”

“Never. Much of what I make doesn't respond well to my being distracted. Also, it's really unhygienic for the kitchen, and the list of foodstuffs that shouldn't be introduced to a woman's private parts is actually quite long.”

He burst out laughing.

“You can't tell me you don't see all kinds of weird stuff.”

“The ER sees more vegetables in awkward places than I do, but every so often we get dispatched to cut someone out of a pair of handcuffs.”

“Always try the key first,” she said, then scraped the last bit of torte off her plate and ate it.

“Always.”

She cocked her head and looked at him. “Still want to stick around?”

“Hell, yes.” One part of him couldn't believe she'd go through with this. The other part knew she would and wanted to see it play out.

“Dishes first.”

He cleared their plates and wineglasses, then washed them while she covered the whipped cream and raspberries and put the dishes away. “You're a brave man,” she said.

“Don't push your luck, darlin'. One of these days I'll win.”

“And payback's a bitch?”

“No, payback's an increasingly frustrated man.”

She took his hand and led him into her bedroom. It was an odd mismatch of decoration until he realized that the room's actual occupant was gone for the duration of her stay. He stayed by the foot of the bed.

“I don't usually do this with an audience,” she admitted.

Some women wouldn't admit to doing it at all. He wondered if this was a California free love thing, then admitted to himself that he didn't give a fuck. As soon as she got into it, he'd make his move. “Pretend I'm not here,” he said.

A slow smile spread across her face. “Oh, I like that. Like, maybe I'll want you and maybe I won't, but either way you have to stick around?”

One day, one day very, very soon, he would learn to keep his mouth shut when it came to Sarah and challenges. It didn't matter what he threw at her; she took it and twisted it into something guaranteed to drive him fucking insane.

“Get a chair from the dining room, please,” she said.

He did. When he came back into the bedroom, he set it where she pointed, then sat down in it when she pointed at it again. She sat on the bed, her hands braced against the edge of the mattress, looking out the window at the Brooklyn skyline stretched into the distance. Automatically, Tim followed her gaze. He saw nothing but rooftops of bodegas, semidetached housing, green spaces that indicated boulevards or parks. For a long moment her gaze searched the view, an intense expression on her face. A puzzle piece clicked into place: She was shifting from food to sex, from one moment to the next, drawing on the meal and the conversation and the charged air between them. Fully alive, fully present.

He should get out of here. Now. Before he succumbed to the spell she was weaving.

Then her head dropped down. Her wild hair slid forward as she exhaled slowly. Lifting her head and gathering her hair in one motion, she straightened and tucked the mass at her nape. Then her fingertips slid over the spot where her neck met her torso, coming to rest on her collarbone. She lightly traced the gentle ridge from the hollow of her throat to shoulders and back, again and again.

He really should leave. What she was doing was the polar opposite of the speed he craved like a junkie craved drugs. It was slow and focused, completely savoring each moment rather than blowing through them with sirens blaring and lights flashing. He really, really should leave.

Except he couldn't move, and God, he hoped it lasted a really long time.

He watched. She had the hands of someone who immersed them in hot soapy water a dozen times a day, the blunt-cut and unpolished nails trailing over skin and a plain cotton T-shirt. Somehow the confidence with which she touched herself aroused him more than pale skin tipped with long, red nails caressing silk. She wasn't doing this to turn him on. She was getting lost in her body, starting with a spot he'd never particularly thought of as erogenous.

Ten fingers trailed down her sternum to the spot where her V-neck ended, then parted to find a nipple. A gentle scrape of fingertip over the bud, a circling motion, and her nipples stood out under the cotton when her fingers returned to the collarbone.

He swallowed and shifted in his chair. She didn't look up. Her jaw had slackened ever so slightly, an easing of tension, and her head tilted just a little. A slow path down, this time to the sides of her breasts, trailing over the full curves, the spot between breasts and collarbone, then the nipples, then collarbone.

Jesus. Left to his own devices, he'd be done by now.

Cock thickening in his jeans, he leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees, hoping to ease the pressure. Without looking at him she pulled her T-shirt over her head, then leaned back against the pillows. Her soft belly rounded between the waistband of her skirt and her bra, and the hem of her skirt pooled around her thighs when she drew one knee in. She gave him a look that was mostly about her eyelashes.

“Still with you, darlin',” he said.

The light strokes of her fingertips became full body strokes, down her abdomen, over her hips and up her thighs, revealing a little more thigh with each movement. She returned to her nipples and collarbone, pausing every so often to touch her lips. He wondered if she was putting on a show for him, or if she was trying to tell him how she liked to be touched, or if she was simply pleasing herself without any thought for him. With any other woman he'd suspect the first two, but with Sarah, it felt like an extension of her personality. No artifice, no subtle hints he was expected to read.

Still, he recorded each touch in high definition in his mind for future reference. He already couldn't stop thinking about her.

Her eyes were closed, her lips parted, and a pink flush had built on her cheeks before she tugged her skirt high enough to reveal her mound. She wore functional pink cotton bikinis, the last detail that registered before her fingers delved under the elastic waist and he couldn't see any more, just the suggestive rising and falling of her knuckles stretching the cotton. With a little gasp she slid down on the bed and spread her legs.

Without thinking he gave up on halting his forward progress and crawled onto the bed, planting his knees on either side of her hips and his hands by her head. Her eyes flew open.

“Hi,” he said.

She licked her upper lip, the move unself-conscious and hot as hell. “Can I help you?”

He smiled. “No, ma'am, but I can help you.”

Her hand still down her panties, the other cupping her breast, she looked him over. “Seems a shame not to put you to work,” she said. “Unbutton your shirt.”

That wasn't what he had in mind, but he'd go with it. He sat back and quickly unfastened his buttons, then tugged his shirt from his jeans.

“Come back here,” she said, her fingertip circling her nipple.

He resumed his position above her, his shirt hanging down to either side of them.

“Oh, that's gorgeous,” she said.

“You're objectifying me,” he said.

“I know. I'm going to feel really guilty about it later, too.”

He would laugh, except his cock was an iron rod in his jeans. He bent his elbows to lean down, but she turned her face to the side. “You can't touch me.”

“I want to.”

“No,” she whispered.

He suspected that if he pushed her, she wouldn't be able to articulate exactly why he couldn't touch her, but the last thing he wanted to do was ruin this. It was too perfect, the utter vulnerability in her body, quivering with tension and so soft. So he kept his face a scant breath from her skin and followed the curve of her cheek to her mouth, then over her chin and down her throat, obligingly arched for him. He paused at the hollow and inhaled, sweat and skin and chocolate and sweet whipped cream, then continued around the outer curve of one breast. Mouth open, breathing deep, he drank her in, scent and taste mingling in his mouth, until his mouth watered. Ribs, belly, her forearm, the muscles flexing as her fingers moved under her panties.

“Take those off.”

She whimpered, but struggled up onto her elbows and worked them down, revealing the darker brown curls covering her mound. No Brazilian here. Neatly trimmed but natural. When she left her panties at mid-thigh, he glanced up her body and found a knowing little smile on her face. He tried to find a polite way to call her a shameless cock tease, but then she parted her lips with her fingers and he forgot words.

Her clit was swollen and slick with her juices, flushed a dark pink, and the scent rising from between her legs made his head spin more than the white wine at dinner. Slow circles, his brain recorded. Not pressing very hard. Soft thighs dented by the drawn-tight panties. Teasing. Drawing it out.

Savoring it. This was insane, and so fucking hot.

Then she parted her fingers so the index and middle finger trapped either side of her clit, and rubbed. A little harder, a little faster. Leaving his elbows planted at her hips, he stretched back and trailed his cheek and nose over her belly, her inner thighs, not quite touching, close enough for the nerves to fire at imagined touch.

He paused above her hand and blew gently on her knuckles. “Good?” he asked.

She tensed and groaned. Her thighs were quivering with the build. “Good,” she said.

“It'd be better with me inside you.”

“God, yes,” she said.

“Let me,” he said. He wasn't asking. “Sarah. Let me inside you. I'll make it so good for you.”

“I know you would,” she said, nearly inaudible. “But not today.”

He growled, the sound rumbling from low in his chest, and watched, trembling with frustrated desire as her fingers rubbed faster, harder. Then her sex pulsed, her clit fluttering as she went rigid and cried out, soft and helpless. Her fingertip stroked slowly as her body shuddered with each pulse of pleasure. He'd never paid such close attention to a woman's orgasm before. It would be interesting if it weren't so fucking frustrating.

When she went slack, she lifted her knuckles to his chin and tipped it up, so he was looking at her face. For a long moment their gazes locked, her breasts lifting with quickened inhales and shallow exhales, his muscles trembling. Then she trailed her slick fingertips over his mouth, pausing to gently press on his lower lip.

He almost came in his jeans. Instead he licked each fingertip, the taste of her juices spreading over his tongue. But rather than licking his lips, he levered forward and kissed her. She moaned and opened her mouth, letting him lick his way in, stroke her tongue with his, nibble at her lower lip, then her upper lip.

“You are an absolutely rotten loser.”

“I am not. I just don't concede defeat,” he said, and kissed her again.

“You're touching me.”

“I'm kissing you. You didn't say I couldn't kiss you.”

“Your skin is touching my skin.”

He kissed her heated cheek, then her ear. “Darlin', if we were skin to skin right now, you wouldn't be arguing semantics with me.”

She put her hand in the middle of his chest, just touching, not pushing. The pressure and heat set his nerve endings on fire and made the hair lift at the back of his neck before racing down his spine to coalesce in his balls. “That was incredible.”

“Speak for yourself.”

One fine brown eyebrow arched. He was close enough to see a small chicken pox scar on her temple, another by her left ear, and a smattering of freckles on her forehead. “That wasn't good?”

“It was frustrating.”

“It's not always about the end result,” she said with a smile.

“The fuck it isn't.”

“Hot dog eating contests are about the end result.”

“You came. You're in no position to talk about this.”

“Double or nothing?” she said.

He stared at her. “What?”

“Double or nothing? We go again, no getting off until the next time we meet. If you fail, you get a repeat of tonight.”

“That's the nothing,” he said. “What's the double?”

“You decide.”

“You're actually going to send me home like this.”

She tucked one hand into the rat's nest of hair behind her head, not accidentally lifting her breasts, and watched her fingers move down his chest to his abdomen. “Unless you admit defeat, I am.”

“And expect me not to do anything about it.”

“That's up to you. We can stop any time. Go on dates like normal people. Pretend that we don't both have oversize egos,” she said sweetly, and stroked his ribs. “I'll pretend I'm a noble winner and you'll pretend you're gracious in defeat. Pretend that this doesn't turn us on. I knew you were watching me. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel your eyes on me. It was so hot.”

Her hand stopped in the sliver of space between his belly button and his cock; for a moment a primitive male urge swamped him. She was naked, spread under him, slick and ready. The smell of sex was all around, and total acquiescence in her face. He could fuck her. He totally could. He was literally trembling. The muscles in his arms quivered not with the strain of holding himself up but with the restraint necessary to not give in. The only thing keeping him from giving in was that he hated losing. He fucking hated it. Spending time with Sarah was like gambling, a rigged environment designed to keep him coming back for more.