But his fingers trailed down, and he unfastened her slacks and began shoving her pants and the elastic of her panties down her hips.
He released her breast and glanced downward, and then he squeezed his eyes closed. “Good God, your panties match your pink golf balls.”
Tiffany was a girlie girl sometimes. “I like pink.”
“Do you always match your golf balls to your panties?” He growled into her neck. “When I see what color golf ball you’re playing with, will I know what color your panties are that you’re wearing under your clothes?”
Maybe not before, but she was going to from then on. “Yes.”
“I’m never going to be able to golf with you again because I’ll be thinking about your panties and slipping my fingers inside them the whole time.”
To make his point, he stroked through her folds with one finger, sending a tingle through her.
She gasped at the shock.
“Or my tongue.” He grabbed her around her waist and back and lifted her like she weighed nothing at all. Maybe testosterone turned him into the incredible hunk. Tiffany didn’t know, but he carried her in his hands like she was a kitten.
He slung her onto the bench against the wall and pressed her chest with one hand until the wooden wall met her back. Grabbing her pants and underwear in his fist, he yanked downward.
The waistband of her slacks caught on the top of her knee brace. Stripping the Velcro, she helped him wrestle the fabric and her brace off of her leg.
“What’s that?” Jericho asked, shoving her backward and nipping the inside of her thigh.
“Nothing,” she told him. Good Lord, if he wanted to stop and talk, she was going to burst into tears or stomp out of the shelter into the rain.
But his lips followed her pants down the curve of her stomach and lower, until he stripped her clothes off one of her ankles and fell to his knees between her legs.
Oh, wow, he was going to—
His lips and tongue stroked up the inside of her thigh where his knee had rested, and he parted her folds with his mouth.
A wave of yes rushed through her. Not an orgasm, but a deep, coiling, relaxed anticipation because everything was in the right place and felt good.
His tongue caressing her was velvety and firm, a perfect sensation that was instantly building inside her.
Tiffany braced one heel on the bench and slid her other thigh over his strong shoulder as he devoured her, sucking and tonguing every bit of softness.
Hard, blunt pressure at her opening amidst the velvet onslaught of his mouth caught her by surprise, but she tilted her hips farther up. His fingers pushed inside, a counterpressure to his tongue that drove her harder, faster, as he devoured her with his mouth.
And then her whole body was opening to him, her skin begging for him, and she could have sworn he licked every inch of her from her fingertips and inside her mouth and her breasts while he was sucking her clit, and then the waves broke over her.
Shudders of pleasure poured over her skin, crashed over her head and drowned her in bliss, and became a throbbing that did not stop but only slowed, drifted inward, and returned to her heartbeat.
As she batted her eyes open, thunder rumbled, but it was farther away. The rain pattered on the roof, and the sky outside the windows had turned pale gray.
She sighed, “Oh, wow.”
Jericho’s strong arms surrounded her, and her cheek pressed against his shoulder. “You good?”
“I’m good for a year,” she sighed, snuggling closer to his warmth.
He chuckled. “I might not want to wait that long.”
“I’ll do you in a second, I promise, but my legs are overcooked spaghetti right now.”
His arms tightened around her. “The rain is letting up.”
“Yeah, just give me a minute.” Her arms encircled his trim, damp waist, and his warmth soothed her.
Jericho said, “We should probably get back to the clubhouse before they send the National Guard out after us. My phone is blowing up with texts from Kowalski and the pro shop asking if we got hit by lightning.”
“Oh!” Tiffany checked her phone and found the same. She texted everyone back, assuring them that they’d been in the storm shelter off the fifth green and were soggy but not dead. “Oh, jeez, yeah. Coach is going to have my hide for worrying him.”
And then she realized she wasn’t wearing pants, and her bra was unhooked, her boobs swinging, and Jericho was completely dressed.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Oh, my God! Turn around!”
Jericho cracked up but rolled over to his other hip to face away from her while he texted. “I literally just had my tongue in your—”
She muscled her boobs into her bra and hooked the front, and then she yanked her panties and pants up. “Don’t say it! And oh God, Jericho! You can’t say anything to anybody!”
“Well, I wouldn’t,” he muttered.
“No, I’m serious,” Tiffany said.
“Why, are you worried that if your reputation is tarnished, no one in the ton will think you’re marriageable, and you’ll be ruined?” he asked, laughing at her.
“Hey! Seriously! I’m a Black woman in a very white job. I cannot have people thinking I slept my way into this job or that I sleep with any guys at work. You got me? I don’t need that, too!”
“I understand,” Jericho said, and his voice sounded low and serious. “I wouldn’t talk about us in any circumstance, but definitely not now. You have my word.”
It seemed like he’d taken her seriously, and there was evidence—twelve—that he listened to her when she talked. “Okay, then.”
She finished strapping on her knee brace and arranging her clothes. “I’m decent. You can turn around now.”
Jericho stood and turned around, tapping on his phone as he texted.
His pants were mostly dry and much less form-fitting, and his shirt was beginning to release its grip around his flat stomach.
As the rain on the roof sputtered above them, finally trailing off, she remembered something. “Um, I didn’t—”
“Yeah, what?” he asked, looking up from his phone and tucking it in his pocket.
She sidled up to him, swinging her hips a little, and crooked one finger in his belt. “You’re up next.”
He smiled and stepped closer, so their bodies were a scant fraction of an inch apart, and he ran his hands up her arms. “I’ve got a better idea.”
She stroked her arms up his chest, feeling his thick muscles under his shirt. “You’ve got a better idea than a blow job? I’ve got to hear this one. Oh, no butt stuff. We just met.”
He chuckled, and he smiled down at her from practically up near the dang ceiling. He was so tall. “Have supper with me Saturday night.”
She looked up at him. “That’s your idea of better than a blow job?”
“I didn’t say instead of a BJ. Why not both?”
“Okay.” The wooden shack was getting chillier as the storm front blew through, and Tiffany’s clammy clothes sucked the heat right out of her skin. Without even thinking about it because Jericho was so much warmer than she was, she scooted forward that last fraction of an inch and leaned against his chest.
His arms wrapped around her, and it almost felt like some affection might be there.
Dang, she was chilly. She huddled closer, scooting her feet until they were between his.
Oh, it was cold in the shack. When guys got cold they—
She almost giggled.
Jericho might be worried about not presenting himself at his best.
Okay, that made sense.
Tiffany slipped her arms around his waist. “Okay, I’ll have dinner with you.”
“Saturday, here at the club.”
“Did you not hear me tell you that I don’t want people around here to know anything that we did or that we will ever do?”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll text you with the name of the restaurant.”
“Not too close to
here.” She had swarms of cousins waiting tables in the greater Newcastle area. “Somewhere a little ways away, where we can relax.”
Last Chance, Inc
Jericho
Jericho was lying in his bed in his hotel room at the Newcastle Inn and Spa, working with spreadsheets on his computer as he analyzed the flow of money in and out of Newcastle Golf Club—mostly out—and listening to the Golf Channel.
The mattress sank under his butt, and he was leaning over one leg as he scrolled through the matrix of numbers. Making NGC profitable was going to take an Act of God. Buying it in the middle of the night had been a foolish leap he shouldn’t have taken.
Surely, he hadn’t bought it just because a beautiful woman had shown him around. Surely, Jericho wasn’t that easily swayed.
From the first time he’d seen her swing a golf club, he’d wanted to see if she had firm muscle under that enticing, soft roundness he’d watched while she walked.
As far as Jericho was concerned, there was just nothing more fun than an athletic woman who could keep up with him.
And then she’d turned out to be fun to hang out with on the golf course. He was still chuckling over what she’d written on her golf ball.
And then in the storm shelter when she’d hooked her finger in his belt and offered—
Down, boy. I’ll get to you in a minute. I need a shower anyway.
And he’d taken the chance to ask her out to dinner because Jericho had had plenty of blow jobs in his life. At boarding school, adult supervision in the dorms essentially ended when the students started in the upper school at thirteen. His latest string of relationships had all ended in less than eight weeks, and he’d come to the startling hypothesis that maybe he shouldn’t screw around so much.
Perhaps, just perhaps, he should try something else.
It was going to be difficult for him to keep his hands off of Tiffany, though. Even after less than an hour alone with her and watching her lips move when she talked, and listening to her soft, dulcet voice had led to his tongue between her—
I said, down, boy.
As a matter of fact, being around Tiffany for less than an hour had influenced Jericho to buy a bankrupt golf course.
Yeah, it had.
On the other hand, if NGC rose to even a ten percent positive return on investment, that would be an enormous increase in its net value because at his time of purchase, it had been worth zilch.
Indeed, the club had been worth less than zilch because it hadn’t even been able to meet payroll for the month.
It was a bad investment.
NGC was a bottomless money pit that Jericho was going to shovel cash into, because otherwise, he stood to lose a hundred million bucks.
He wanted to go back in time and drown New-Year’s-Eve Jericho in the freezing Atlantic Ocean any time before he’d signed that damn wager. At least he wouldn’t have died in debt. If they all lost their bets to The Shark, seventy years might not be enough to recoup those losses.
Just as Jericho was beginning to curse the other Last Chance guys, his phone buzzed.
Might be Tiffany.
He scrambled across the bed to the phone, slipping on the dark blue duvet, but the name on the phone was Mitchell Saltonstall.
Damn.
He answered it. “Hey, Match. What’s up?”
“I heard you bought a golf course,” Match said.
“It’s a country club. Or a ‘golf club.’ I don’t know, Match. I don’t think it’s going to have the ROI to win the bet. You guys had better come up with something good if we’re going to have a chance to beat The Shark.”
“I haven’t found jack squat yet,” Match said. “It’s not easy to find a ‘golf-related establishment’ that you can increase its net value. Most of them aren’t run by idiots.”
“I found one that was. Or at least it was run by a board that was more interested in its own aggrandizement and control culture than it was in profitability. They were running a seventy-percent-off sale on initiation dues, and they still had no takers.”
“Yikes.”
“Because it’s a private club, there are some state rules about advertising, but they were doing nothing. The board was more interested in making sure they retained their feudal right to snap up prime tee times than the asking price.”
“Did you let them keep their tee time privileges?” Match asked.
“Hell, no.”
“Are the greens burnt to death or something?”
Jericho mused, “Nope. It’s in fair shape. They just didn’t know how to price it or negotiate.”
“Okay, so you might have a better chance at increasing its value and winning the bet than we thought.”
“So to speak.”
“Right,” Match said. “Well, we might not be able to consult officially, but how about you comp the three of us a round of golf on your new course tomorrow? Maybe we could take a look and see what’s going on with it.”
They showed up when the sun shone high above the course, shrinking the shadows down to tiny pools around their feet on the grass.
Jericho was working in his office on the second floor of the golf club when he glanced out the window overlooking the parking lot and saw three familiar sports cars parked around his Jaguar.
Just as he was getting ready to text something snarky to those guys, Morrissey Sand texted him, “Were we supposed to meet you on the driving range? Because we’ve only got half an hour until our tee time.”
Jericho strolled down the narrow path leading from the clubhouse to the driving range that Tiffany had introduced him to when he’d been scoping out the club. The weeds had grown a little higher in the days since, as weeds did.
At the range, he found Morrissey, Mitchell “Match” Saltonstall, and Kingston Moore pounding balls. The four of them had decent golf swings because their boarding school regarded sports as one of the few acceptable pastimes for the progeny of the uppermost class. All four of them were excellent golfers, skiers, sailors, and horsemen.
The training in golf and sailing had come in handy in making business deals.
As Jericho approached the other three, he raised his hand and called out, “Hey, imagine meeting you assholes here.”
Morrissey, who stood at the end of the driving range closest to Jericho, raised his head at the sound of Jericho’s voice. His dark hair was bound in a short ponytail at the back of his skull. “At least you’ve got a grass driving range instead of mats. That’s a good feature.”
Beyond the three guys hitting balls, a sharp crack detonated like a firecracker, and a golf ball bulleted down the range.
Jericho leaned and looked beyond his friends.
As he’d suspected, Tiffany Jones stood a few tee boxes behind them and was smacking golf balls down the fairway like they’d offended her. Her swing was a graceful twist of her waspish waist like she might pirouette and unleash that coiled power like a whip.
After she uncurled from her swing, Tiffany glanced up and caught Jericho’s eye. She smiled and bent to place another golf ball on the tee in front of her.
He must’ve grinned at her or something because Morrissey, who’d had his head up, turned and looked behind himself. “What? Is something going on?”
Tiffany’s head popped up again, her ribbon-like braids swinging from the sudden movement. She glanced at Morrissey and then shook her head at Jericho.
Jericho said to Morrissey, “Nope, nothing. Just glad to see you guys. I mean, I haven’t seen you in what, a week and a half?”
Behind Morrissey, Kingston Moore laughed. Though Skins was musclebound, he still managed to turn his shoulders for his backswing, but his golf club ended up at an odd angle instead of parallel to the ground above his head. “We knew you couldn’t get along without us.”
“Yeah, that must be it,” Jericho said, smiling like his three asshole best friends weren’t standing a few feet away from Tiffany Jones.
Morrissey looked back over his shoulder again, took a thoroug
h look at Tiffany, and then turned back to Jericho. “Is that Miss May I see behind me?”
“No,” Jericho said. “Ms. Jones is the assistant pro here.”
“So, you’re not fishing off the company pier anymore?” Kingston asked. “You must be hard up after Miss April threw you over the side after only two weeks.”
Running out onto the driving range and hoping to be instantly killed by a speeding golf ball to the head seemed like an attractive option. “Can we just not—”
They laughed at him.
Mitchell Saltonstall was in the third position, swinging three clubs at once to stretch his shoulders. “Yep, nice range, but our tee times are in fifteen minutes. We should start walking over there so we’ll have enough time to tell you how to tear this country club apart and put it back together so that it’s profitable.”
Behind Match, Tiffany straightened with her arm extended and her hand resting on her golf club as if it were a walking stick. Her bright eyes had turned sharp as she looked first at his three friends and then at Jericho.
He turned back to the three guys. “My clubs are waiting for us at the first tee. I’m eager to hear your advice about directions for Newcastle Golf Club.” Maybe that would reassure her.
The guys inserted their clubs into their bags and hoisted them for the trek over to the first tee.
Just as they were walking away from the driving range, Kingston trumpeted, “This place has some potential, Jericho, but if you want to maximize profit and net value, you’re going to have to knock it all down and start over.”
Jericho kept himself from visibly cringing, but when he looked behind them at Tiffany, she was still standing in her tee box and watching them walk away with an icy glare.
They were due to have supper the next day, so he could explain who these guys were then.
On the first tee box, Jericho let the guys tee off first and then knocked a golf ball nearly three hundred yards down the fairway and into the right-side rough.
Kingston chuckled as they walked down the short grass in the middle of the fairway. “Long and wrong, Jericho. Long and wrong.”
Under Parr Page 10
