She stared up at him. “You shouldn’t like me. I’m not girlfriend material.”
“I didn’t ask you to be my girlfriend. I know where you stand, Sasha.”
“Once the snow-pocalypse is over so is this.” She gestured between them.
The muscle in his jaw twitched almost imperceptibly. “I know. Doesn’t mean I don’t like you. I think I’m allowed.” He smiled at her, and she was lost herself. All it took was a flash of his straight, white teeth to make her soften.
Damn it.
He cupped her cheek gently. “Come on. I want to show you my favorite room in the house. It’s a secret room.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, and you’re going to love it.”
“Why?” she asked.
“It’s the only room Val doesn’t decorate for Christmas.”
She closed her eyes. Oh man, someone was getting his dick sucked later.
“Lead the way.”
Chapter Four
Sasha slipped into the Blue Spruce Room to discreetly grab a handful of … uh … implements before following Perry up to the third floor. Luckily, the baggy sweats and sweatshirt she was wearing had large pockets.
Once they reached the third floor, Perry stopped in front of the door at the end of the hallway. It was locked, but he had a key. He opened the door, which led to narrow, steep stairs.
“We’re not going to find your wife locked away up there, are we?”
He glanced over his shoulder with a confused smile. “Huh? No. I’m not married.”
“Nor Mr. Rochester’s wife?”
Perry’s laugh echoed through the stairway. “No, but I’m sure there is a copy of Jane Eyre.”
“Ooo, exciting!”
The room came slowly into view, and it took her breath away.
It was a huge attic room with a pitched cedar roof and white shiplap walls. Someone had built bookshelves into the large triangle-shaped wall at the end of the room, and there was an old-fashioned record player next to retro blue velvet furniture. The floor was a dark wood, but their footsteps were muffled by a soft white rug.
A door off to the right caught Sasha’s eye. She pushed it open to find a small shower and bathroom. God, this was all the space she’d ever need. It was perfect.
“I love it.”
Perry’s warm smile was worth the price of admission for this whole stupid snowed-in adventure.
“This is where my grandparents lived until it was too hard for them to make it up the stairs. Once Valerie took over the daily operations of the inn, she turned it into a personal library.”
“What about your parents? Where are they?”
“My dad passed when we were young. My mom and Valerie eventually took over until Valerie was experienced enough to run it on her own. I own quite a large share of it, but it’s Valerie’s baby. We grew up in the carriage house with Grandma and Grandpa up here. Now our mom is living it up in Hawaii with her much younger boyfriend.” Perry laughed, like he couldn’t be happier for his mother, and sat down on the blue sofa.
Sasha moved toward the bookshelves. The books were arranged by genre, and unsurprisingly, a large portion were romances. She trailed a finger over a row of cracked spines.
“And you live in Topeka and do what, exactly? I want to hear about your complicated living situation,” she said. These were probably topics they should have covered before their little bathroom foray last night, but she’d been able to tell Perry’s job was a sensitive subject for him, so she’d let the opportunity to learn more pass her by. To be honest, she normally knew someone better before she fooled around with them. Most of her partners in the last year, as well as the years before her failed engagement, had been friends, with only a handful of one-night stands mixed in.
The corners of his mouth tipped down, and a wrinkle formed between his eyebrows.
“I was a CPA, but I got laid off at the beginning of December.” He stared up at the ceiling, seeming to select his words carefully. “I didn’t see it coming. They cut the accounting department by a third and eliminated all the middle managers like me. They’d lost a big client and decided it’d be cheaper to outsource the work.”
“That’s a horrible thing to happen right before Christmas.”
He nodded, his lips tight. “I was overcome by this horrendous relief afterward.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” He smiled sadly. “I didn’t like my job, and I don’t think that’s an issue that’ll be fixed by getting a new job as an accountant for some other company. So when I was pulled into that office and my life was turned upside down, I thought there must be something wrong with me because I was elated. I could breathe again. I felt as if a door had been opened.”
“Maybe it has.”
“I haven’t told Valerie yet. She’ll worry over me, and I wasn’t ready for that. I needed to make a plan first, you know? Of course, my plan involves moving in with her. I should have asked her before I sold my furniture, packed the rest of my life into my SUV, and showed up in a snowstorm, huh?”
Sasha laughed. “I’ve always heard Christmas is a great time to make huge, life-changing decisions.”
He chuckled and scrubbed his hands down his face. “My girlfriend broke up with me after I lost my job. She didn’t understand why I’d put everything on the line, waste all my severance package, to chase a misshapen dream. It made me feel like I couldn’t trust my instincts about people. I’d thought we were solid together.”
Her thoughts rebelled at the relationship talk, so she steered the conversation away from it. “What’s your dream?”
She sat down next to him. He reached up and thumbed her bottom lip. The tug of his skin against hers resonated deep inside, like he’d plucked the harp string of her heart.
“Flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“And trees. Horticulture, basically. I enrolled in a horticulture and landscape architecture program at the college in the city. I want to own my own landscaping company one day.”
“Wow. That wasn’t what I expected.”
He smiled, his thumb still on her mouth. “You wouldn’t be surprised if you’d seen me naked.”
That shocked a laugh out of her. “Oh, is that so, mister? Are you made of tree bark?”
“No. Ink.”
He stood suddenly, right as her greedy hands were reaching to rip his clothes off. Nothing got her hotter than tattoos.
She watched him as he fiddled with the record player. His back flexed as he lifted a record onto the stand. His shoulders were wide and strong, his waist narrow, his butt mouth-watering.
When he turned back toward her, she snapped her gaze up from his derrière.
He grinned. “Dance with me.”
“What? No.” That skirted way too close to romance for her.
Slow, sultry music filled the room. Eartha Kitt. At least it wasn’t her Christmas stuff.
“Come on. It’s foreplay.” He pulled her up off the couch and into his arms. For one terrifying second, everything in the world felt right. Felt good. She melted against him. Maybe she could give in a little. Just until the end of the song.
Sasha pressed their bodies together, slid her hands under the hem of his flannel shirt until she could touch his hot skin, and brushed her mouth against his bearded jaw. His hands threaded into her hair.
The song was in French, and she had no idea what the words meant, but it was full of tenderness and yearning. She kissed him, trying to stem the rising tide of longing rushing in her blood. They swayed to the beat.
“What’s in the pocket of your sweatshirt?” he murmured against her lips. “Feels like a dick.”
“It is.”
He kissed her harder, the slick, suggestive thrust of his tongue into her mouth weakening her knees. His hand snuck into the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie, then tossed the dildo onto the couch.
“What’s in your sweatpants pockets?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said tartly
, as she unbuttoned the top buttons of his flannel shirt, then lifted it over his head.
His skin glowed golden in the dim light of the attic, and she sluiced her hands over the muscles of his shoulders and back. He lifted one large palm up to grip her jaw and hold her steady as he kissed her. She caught a one-second glimpse of a tatted arm sleeve in muted, earthy colors. His other hand crept under her sweatshirt and trembled down the line of her spine.
They rocked through one whole song, then another, their mouths fused together. Sasha was dizzy with want by the time Perry slid her sweatshirt over her head. As she pulled back to catch a breath, his arms still tangled around her, she got a better glimpse of his tattoos. His arm sleeve was all wildflowers, and he had a large magenta peony on his ribs.
She pressed a hand to the peony, and he gasped.
He was beautiful. His chest and stomach were rough with dark hair, his lips wet from their kisses, his cheeks flushed.
They kissed and touched for the space of another song, their skin pressed together, until Sasha couldn’t handle it anymore.
She pulled away. “I need … God, Perry.”
Perry slipped a hand into her sweatpants pocket and found the nipple clamps, which Sasha had branded the Chained Melody Clamps due to the alternating black and white metal chain length that mirrored piano keys. His eyes got wide and wild, his face even more flushed.
She shucked his pajama bottoms and boxers off, and he stepped out of them. He had tattooed vines twisting up his calves and painting his thighs.
His body was a garden and one of the nicest she’d ever seen.
“Sit down,” she said roughly. He sat on the sofa as if someone had cut his legs out from underneath him. “And buckle up.”
He grinned, almost helplessly, like he couldn’t control his reactions to her.
That grin echoed through her mind minutes later as she was kneeling between Perry’s legs and sucking on the blunt tip of his dick, edging him to oblivion.
She took him a bit deeper and cupped his heavy, meaty balls. He spread his legs wider and let go of a desperate whine. She popped off his dick.
Time to up the ante.
Without warning, she leaned forward and sucked on one of his nipples. She’d noticed that needy glint in his eye when he’d found the clamps, and she suspected he was desperate for them.
He cried out when her lips touched the sensitive nub, first one and then the other. She suckled and bit them until they were dusky rose and hard. Then she lifted the clamps off the couch. The Chained Melody Clamps were tweezer-style with silicone pinchers and a weighted connector chain. Great for beginners, not too rough, and easy to pull off.
She rubbed a fingertip around his nipple. “Do you want this?”
“Yes.”
She watched his face closely as she clipped the first one on. His breath hissed out of him like a teakettle.
“Still good?”
“Uh-huh. Very.”
She snapped the other one on, and his back bowed, his hips rising off the couch.
“What do you want, Perry?” she asked as she kissed his chin.
“Your mouth. On me, on my …” He shivered against her.
“On your what?” Humor laced her voice, especially as he groaned brokenly, unable to answer.
She kissed down his chest and rubbed her cheek in his hair. The mix of a thick pelt on his chest and beautiful botanicals on his skin made her lose her head. She loved hairy masc people. Every once in a while, she craved smooth skin, and curves, and softness. But sometimes she was in the mood to press her face into some unruly body hair, and holy hell, did Perry have that in spades.
She returned to his cock and licked a stripe up the vein before tonguing his slit. He placed his hands in her hair but didn’t fist it or pull her onto his cock. She liked a lover with restraint. She glanced up and made eye contact.
His breathing was erratic, his eyes wide and unwavering from her face. She’d been torturing him for so long now that his body was strung tight and damp with sweat. He’d not once complained or given any indication that he wasn’t thoroughly enjoying it, though.
The vine of his tattoo snaked around the top of his thigh to his hipbone, and she followed it with her fingernail. He groaned when she reached the smooth skin over bone.
“Didn’t know … that was an erogenous zone until you.” He trailed his hand down the back of her neck, and she sucked his crown, sighing at the burst of salt on her tongue. “Close. Getting close, Sasha.”
She pulled off with an obscene pop, and he finally, finally, moaned out his frustration.
“How’s it feel?” she asked. “The clamps.”
“Sexy. Feels like I’m close to you, using toys with you. Ones you picked.”
She froze, shocked by his honesty and the vulnerability rushing through her at his words. That hadn’t been her intention with this, but maybe she should’ve anticipated bonus emotions with Perry. She’d expected this to be a sexy little game but now was sure she’d misjudged.
She looked him in the eye as she wrapped the weighted chain connecting the clamps around her index finger. He groaned when she tugged on the chain lightly.
“I’m going to yank these off when you come. Are you ready for that?”
He nodded very seriously. “Yes, beautiful.”
Oh, he was such a gem.
She laughed and sucked him back down, getting sloppy with it. He cried out and tensed.
“Right there. I’m right there,” he chanted.
As that first splash of jizz hit her tongue, she ruthlessly jerked the chain until she heard the snap as the clamps popped off his nipples.
The noise he made was unreal as he flooded her mouth. Harsh and shocked and broken. After several shivering seconds, his hips twisted and he cupped her cheeks, gently pulling her off.
“Was that okay?” she asked after swallowing, holding the nipple clamps up.
“Yes.” He was out of breath but managed halting sentences. “It hurt so badly … and felt so incredible … like my pleasure and pain receptors were going haywire. I loved it.”
They gazed at each other for a long moment. Then Perry snuck his hands under her arms and lifted her into his lap. He was all sweaty and flushed.
“You’re beautiful,” he said again, but this time she had trouble laughing it off. She felt oddly defenseless with his taste on her lips.
“Sweet-talker.”
“You bet. Now it’s your turn.” He kissed her fiercely for long reality-shaking minutes but caught her hand as she tried to dip it to her pussy. Need was throbbing through her, harsh and alarming.
He tumbled her down onto her back with her head on the arm of the sofa, then pulled her sweatpants off.
“Commando today?” he murmured, gobbling up her body with his gaze.
She’d landed on the dildo, so she tugged it out from underneath her and tossed it to him. “The only pair of panties I had ended up on your wrist last night. Do your worst.” Maybe if he made her come, if he focused all his formidable energy on her pleasure, she’d be able to recover some of those emotional walls she depended on, because they were dropping fast.
Maybe if she made this all about sex, he wouldn’t see how his sweetness cracked through her, found her soft center, and ripped her apart.
Perry sat up on his knees between her legs. “So wet for me already.” His voice was deep and rough, as if his control had shattered.
He stared down at her until she squirmed. “I love giving head,” he said. “Want to feel you come on my face.”
“Fuck,” she whispered.
“What do you want?”
“That, Perry. I want that!”
“I plan to take my time. Make you my afternoon snack.”
“Who are you?” she asked with a laugh, and he smiled.
He kissed down her midline, over her pubic bone, and before his mouth connected with her clit, he hummed happily. Then he buried his face between her legs.
She’d expected
him to be shyer. To fiddle around and get his bearings.
He didn’t need to get his bearings, it seemed. His mouth found her like a target. He sucked on her clit, trying different pressures, testing her to see what made her breathless, what made her writhe. In a matter of minutes, her head was spinning. The ache in her clit was sharp-edged and perfect. His tongue was heavenly. He pulled back, causing her to whine.
“You taste so fucking good.” His free hand skimmed up her calf.
She groaned and buried her fingers in his dark curls. “Keep going.”
He fell back onto her, his mouth focused. The caress of his thumb between the wet, swollen lips of her pussy surprised her. He teased her, his thumb right at her opening but not pressing inside, lighting up all those oft-ignored nerve endings.
He kept up the soft stroke of his thumb and licked her clit. Blood rushed from her head, and her vision went fuzzy.
Then the dildo was there. It was a short but fat metal dildo called the Rude Beast. One of her favorites from Lady Robin’s when she wanted something weighty. He drove it inside her, helped along by her slickness, and she gasped at the sudden fullness.
He licked around the toy, grinding it against her G-spot gently, before returning his focus to her clit.
“Like that,” she breathed. “Exactly like that.” And thank the Ghost of Orgasms Present, because he didn’t take that command as an instruction to go harder or faster, which was her biggest sex pet peeve ever. Bliss buzzed down her spine. Her clit and pussy throbbed. “Close. Oh God. Perry. Don’t stop.”
The last stroke of tongue, the one that did her in, was accompanied by an impossibly sweet growl from Perry. Smarting, aching pleasure contracted into a pinprick on the verge of explosion. She screamed hoarsely, once, releasing all that abandon and desire into the dimly lit attic as her orgasm shook her.
When she could see again, when she could hear more than the echoes of her cry, she realized she was fisting his hair so tightly it had to hurt, but he appeared unconcerned. He lapped at her as he pulled the Rude Beast out. His tongue dipped to her cunt and delved inside, like he couldn’t help but taste her pleasure, couldn’t help but feel the last ripples of her climax on his tongue.
Stocking Stuffers Page 6
