Designated Hitter (Reedsville Roosters Book 4) (6 page)

On the stupidity scale from one to ten, inviting Quinn over to her rental condo for what amounted to a late-night booty call probably scored a strong seven, but Marina had been good for so long.
Too
long, maybe.

When she wasn’t busy bouncing from project to project, she haunted fetish clubs to check out the local fare. She could remember the names of the men she’d played with in every major city where she’d done a flip, but couldn’t remember much about them beyond that. Hell, she didn’t even have sex with all of them. Sometimes, she just needed to remind herself that she was in control…and having a submissive male bend over backward—sometimes literally—to please her was a perfect way to bolster her self-assuredness.

But, Quinn wasn’t a man she was going to forget about when she moved on to the next place. She knew too much about him, and perhaps not enough. She was confused about what she wanted from him, but if she played her cards right, he’d let himself be controlled. After a couple of hours negotiating with that parsimonious realtor, Marina was desperate to feel on top of things again.

Quinn strolled into her short-term rental condo with his hands jammed into the pockets of his slacks, which made the fabric across his fine ass pull snug. He moved gracefully toward the luxe white sofa and turned to her. “Fancy digs.”

She closed the door and locked it. “It’s just a rental,” she said. “I’ve been looking to buy something in Miami, but haven’t found the right thing yet.”

“Beachfront?”

“Not necessarily. Close enough to a place where I can dock my boat. Want a beer?” She walked to the kitchen without waiting for an answer. He’d need a beer—just a little something to take the edge off and get him relaxed as she eased him into how she liked to play when she was in that needy mood.

She uncapped a stout and carried to him.

He was sitting on the sofa, legs spread and forearms leaning against his thighs. He sat up to accept the drink, and then saluted her with it. “Good brand.”

“I get something new as often as I can. There’s so much variety out there now.” She sat in the armchair across from him and crossed her legs at the knees.

His gaze fixed on the apex of her thighs where the plackets of her bathrobe failed to shadow. She was nude underneath, having not seen the point of being dressed given what she had planned for him.”

“I know it’s late,” she said.

“I’ll be at the house on time tomorrow.”

“I’m sure you will be. I just wanted to acknowledge that I know it’s late and that this is perhaps inconveniencing.”

“I think you overestimate how much sleep I get.”

“You said it yourself—cowboys wake up early.”

“And sometimes they go to bed late, too.” He took a long draw of the beer, pulled a coaster from the stack, and set the bottle on the coffee table.

She chuckled. “So, you
do
have manners.”

“Sometimes I act like it.” His grin would have made even the coldest woman feel warm all over, and Marina’s temperature was certainly ramping up to the caution zone. She felt it in her breasts. It pooled low in her belly and between her legs. It made her rub her thighs together and shift in her seat.

Quinn pushed up a questioning eyebrow.

Get on with it, woman.
It’d been so long since she’d had
The Talk
with a man she might have been more than superficially interested in, and their working relationship complicated what could have been no-strings sex.

“Listen,” she said. “I wanted to be upfront about why I invited you over so there are no misunderstandings.”

“Go on.”

“And so lines don’t blur. This has nothing to do with the renovation project. I’m asking for your time for completely non-productive reasons. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“That you’re not paying me to be here?”

Way to put a fine point on it.
She let a breath out through her parted lips. “I want you to know that you can leave, and that you have a choice to be here or not.”

“What is it that you want from me?”

“I want what you can give me. As much as you’re able to give me.”

He picked up the beer bottle, but didn’t sip. Just stared down into the amber liquid and made it swish inside the glass.

“Quinn?”

He shrugged. “You make it sound so clinical.”

“I’m trying to keep us both out of trouble. What I’m asking you for is ethically questionable given what you do for a living.”

“Being paid for sex, you mean.”

“I’m not trying to imply that—”

“Yes you are. You’re either implying or fishing about it to learn the truth.” He took a sip and shook his head. “People always assume instead of asking because it’s easier. But I told you in the doorway yesterday that I’m real picky about who gets to touch me. Did you think I didn’t mean it?”

She had thought that, and that was unfair. Had the tables been turned, she wouldn’t have wanted people making unqualified assumptions about her, either.

She crossed her legs at the knees and rolled the ankle of her dangling foot. “So you don’t have sex with your clients. And because you don’t like me making assumptions, I’ll ask you this, even though I have no right to ask. Do you ever make them think you’re going there?”

“Hoping they’ll keep me on so I’ll get a bigger payout? Fuck no. Because like you said, there is such a thing as questionable ethics. Sometimes, I do stupid shit that toes the line, but I wouldn’t do anything to compromise one of the best-paying gigs I’ve got. I get groped. Fondled. Needled.
Begged
to do more than I’m willing to do, but I always say no. I’ve been tempted, sure. But I say no.”

She laced her fingers and spun her thumbs around and around each other.
Maybe I should send him home.
She had no business feeling as jealous as she was. Quinn wasn’t hers, and she wasn’t keeping him. She should never have called him.

She looked at him and opened her mouth to tell him just that, but he set down his bottle again and stood.

He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “What do you want from me, Marina? Huh?”

“I…” She closed her mouth and furrowed her brow.
Don’t lie.

To start, she wanted to fire him so she could fuck him without guilt. But then she’d feel bad because he did a good job at that house and it wouldn’t be fair for him to dismiss him when it was more economically advantageous for him to stay on in the gig than to be assigned to a new one. She wanted to help him out, and
herself
at the same time in the most primal kind of way. Quinn was a cavewoman’s wet dream.

She covered her eyes with her free hand and scoffed at herself. “It was a mistake. Me calling you, I mean.”

“You don’t want me here?”

“It was a mistake because I
do
want you here. Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly. You should go.”

“I don’t want to go.” He hooked his thumbs beneath the plackets of her robe and parted them, exposing her breasts to the air, to his gaze. “Why do you want me to go?”

“Because tomorrow is going to be confusing. I’m paying the agency for you to work for me.”

“What does this have to do with work?” He pressed his palm to her chest and eased it down slowly. The calluses on his hand tickled her sensitive flesh and made blood surge to her nipples, and lower.

But his gaze wasn’t on her breasts. It was on her eyes, and she wasn’t so cruel that she wouldn’t meet it—wouldn’t
hold
it.

“You want to touch me? Or have me touch you?” he asked.

“Some of one,” she whispered. “A lot of the other.”

“Don’t go to the house tomorrow, then. Maybe that’ll help keep the lines from blurring. You could be with anyone right now, couldn’t you?” His hand glided across the underside of her breasts, tickling and arousing her—making her move reflexively toward his body.

“I could be. Yes.”

“But you don’t wanna be?”

“No.”

“’Cause you want me?”

“I shouldn’t.”

He laughed and scooped an arm around her back, drawing her close. His breath tickled her scalp and his erection, pressed between them and probing hard against her front—left no room for doubt in her mind that he wanted her, too.

She wanted to touch him, but without all the guilt and the blurred lines.

“You’re thinking too hard,” he whispered. He pressed her hand to his cock and let out a ragged breath, grinding against her palm. “If you want to touch me, touch me. If you want to fire me, fire me. But don’t let the two things have anything to do with each other.”

Compartmentalize.

She could. She was usually better at that, and she didn’t want to send him away. She craved his submission for the moment and her own release, so she was just going to
do
it.

Worry about tomorrow on tomorrow
.

She took his hand and, with one beckoning look over her shoulder, led him to the bedroom.

The room was impersonal, as every furnished rental she’d ever leased was. The personality in the décor wasn’t hers. Surprisingly, she found herself upset that he had to see that and that she was trotting him into some dim, uninteresting room that may as well have been a hotel she’d booked for the night. A place where secret trysts happened and not places where people connected.

It seemed like that was what they were doing.
Connecting
. It’d been so long since she’d tried she hardly recognized what wanting to be with someone felt like.

She turned him so his back was to the foot of the bed and pressed her hands down his hard belly. “Take off your clothes.”

His hand went immediately to his belt buckle. “All of them?”

“Everything.”

She left him to disrobe, but only to step a few feet away. Pulling the long bench at the foot of the bed back so she could walk all the way around it, she then walked to her closet where she kept useful things like condoms and lube and…
rope
.

She rifled through her Suitcase of Shame—the one the TSA opened and inspected damn near every time she traveled with it—and found a skein of silky cordage. For the moment, she left the rest.

Quinn had very efficiently undressed and stood near the bench with his arms crossed over his chest and his cock jutted toward her, awaiting her touch.

She used her foot to nudge his pile of clothes out of the way and walked a circle around him, studying him from head to feet.

Damn.

She gave his ass a pinch and he had the nerve to grin.

“You know what you look like, don’t you?” she asked.

“Pride is a sin and I have it, I guess.”

“You should be proud, but maybe you should keep it to yourself. It’s probably gotten you into a few fights.”

“A handful. Yeah.”

She trailed her fingers down his chest and swirled them around his navel. Peering up at him, she studied his beseeching expression, wondered what he was thinking. Wondered if he could tell what was going through her mind, too. She hoped he couldn’t. He might take her confusion personally when it wasn’t entirely his fault that she felt that way. Her emotional baggage choked at her and made her hesitate.

She led him to the foot of the bench and had him sit. “Spread your legs,” she whispered, jamming her knee between his.

He inched his feet farther apart, and she pushed them more until they were perfectly aligned with the bench’s legs.

On her knees, she set aside half the cord and worked the other half around his ankles, securing them to the bench.

“Don’t trust me not to move?” he asked.

“I don’t want to make you practice your restraint. I want a guarantee that you’ll be still. I need it.” She added in a whisper, “Okay?”

“Yes.”

He hadn’t even given her time to hold her breath. His answer was quick and sure. No sigh of reluctance or of mere tolerance. He
wanted
to do as she’d asked.

“Thank you.” Grabbing the spare skein of rope, she stood, skimming her lips over his shaft. She pulled away just before reaching the head, and he groaned.

“Too predictable, Quinn. Why would I be predictable?”

“I should know better.”

“Yes, you should.” She straddled him, letting her legs dangle over the sides of the bench as she leaned forward, pressing his arms into position. She brought his wrists together in a cross over his heart. “Keep those there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She didn’t have much rope to work with, but she was good at making do.

She fashioned a harness out of the rope and looped it around his neck, down his shoulders and over his arms. She wound it beneath the bench and made sure his arms were secure. “Okay?” she asked. “Too tight?”

He squirmed a little, his cock jiggling against the inside of her thigh. “No, it’s fine.”

“Good.” She wiped a bit of shed fiber from her palms and climbed off of him. “Stay right there,” she said.

“You don’t gotta be mean, Marina.”

She chuckled as she adjusted lights and turned up the air conditioning. The room might have been comfortable at the moment, but once Quinn’s blood starting racing, he was going to get hot. She didn’t know a single man who could maintain an erection once he started to sweat. She didn’t need him hard for long, but still wanted to acclimate him…just in case there was a
next time
. She didn’t think there’d be one, but wanted to enjoy the fantasy of it all the same.

She grabbed a bottle of massage oil from the bathroom and let some of the lavender-scented stuff pool in her palm. Kneeling at Quinn’s feet, she rubbed her hands together and stared up his long body at his face.

His lips parted wordlessly and he put his head back and gaze on the ceiling.

“Good boy. You know what to do, don’t you?” She started at his feet, rubbing the tops of them and working the oil up his shins, massaging his strong calves.

His muscles flexed beneath her hands as she traced along the edges.

She swirled her fingers around his scarred knees, pressed her thumbs into the flesh along the sides of his lower thighs and then rubbed higher.

She squeezed more oil into her hand and worked on his hips and haunches, paying special attention to the creases between his belly and thighs.