by Jewel, Bella
The bat had woken my cat and it wasn’t a good thing. It was bad. Real bad, and I was helpless to stop what he was about to do, because—OhmyfuckingGod.
Elliot’s lips found my neck the exact moment his hand gently gripped my jaw and tilted my head to the side. I gasped and closed my eyes, my body victim to his luscious assault.
My nipples tingled.
My hands clenched.
But it wasn’t until the wet warmth of his tongue trailed down my neck and settled on the dip of my collarbone that my pelvis bucked and I let out a shallow moan.
“Okay,” I rasped, finding my breath. “Okay. Dare completed.”
His grip on my jaw loosened and his hand slid along my cheek, disappearing into my hair before disappearing from me entirely.
Opening my eyes, I righted my slouched posture and regained my bearings, finding Elliot back in his seat, bourbon in hand, and a satisfied grin on his face. “Your turn.”
“Truth,” I breathed out, before swigging my drink.
“Did you enjoy that?”
“Yes. Couldn’t you tell?”
He nodded and smiled and then nodded to my chest. “Uh huh.”
I glanced down and noticed that not even a Spanx slip could hide my body’s desire. “Oh! Well, yeah. You get that.”
“I’m not complaining at all.”
“I bet you’re not.” I took another drink. A big one. “This isn’t how we used to play this game, Lots.”
“Sure it is. Truth.”
I fired him an unsure look; we were heading into dangerous territory, and I wasn’t sure how we’d get out.
“Danielle, relax, and ask me a bloody question.”
“Okay. Have you ever been married or engaged?”
“No.”
“Serious girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago?”
“Five years.”
“What happened?”
“That’s too many questions.”
“Fine. If I do a dare, I get to ask you three truth questions.”
“You can’t just change the rules like that.”
“Yes, I can.”
He pressed his glass to his lips and held it there for a couple of seconds before taking a swig. “Fine. I dare you to take off the Spanx.”
Shiiiiiiiiit!
Did I really want to go there? Did I really want to tease both the bat and the cat, knowing they wanted to play? Fuck it. You can remove the Spanx, Just. Don’t. Remove. The. Knickers. Remember?
“Deal.”
Sitting up, I lifted the band of the boob tube part of the slip, and carefully rolled it down and over my black strapless bra, continuing past my belly and reaching my hips.
I paused and glanced at Elliot, whose eyes were heavy-lidded and fixed to my breasts, his glass still resting against his lips. He looked so fucking amorous, so sexy. I wanted to reach out, grab him and pull him to my mouth. I wanted to guide that mouth over my nipples and down my belly until it was devouring the very part of me screaming to be satisfied.
But I couldn’t let that happen no matter how much I craved it. You should never fuck your friends. Keep you knickers on.
Repeating those sentences in my head, I kept rolling down my Spanx until my arms couldn’t reach any further.
“Care to finish the job?” I asked, a mix of seduction and playfulness in my tone, as I lifted my legs and propositioned him to remove the slip for me
He cleared his throat and gently slid my Spanks over my feet, keeping it secured in his closed hand.
I swallowed and shivered, all of a sudden feeling exposed and vulnerable, but most of all grateful I’d waxed a day earlier.
“Are you cold?” He leaned forward and swapped my Spanx for a remote control he picked up from the coffee table. “I can put on the fire if you’d like?”
Elliot aimed the remote at the fireplace adjacent to where we were sitting, flames shooting up from between the rocks at the base.
“Wow! I need one of those. We have a woodfire at home, but never any wood.”
“That pretty much defeats the purpose of having a woodfire, Danielle.”
“You don’t need to tell me that,” I sighed, reclining into the couch.
Elliot jerked when I placed my injured foot back on his lap, or more accurately, on top of his erection.
“Oh my God! Are you hard?”
“Are you asking me a truth question?”
“Yes?”
“Do I need to answer, or is the proof underneath your foot?”
I gently rubbed my heel against him. He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, his chiselled chest rising and slowly falling again. Shit!
I stopped. “Sorry, Lots. I shouldn’t tease you like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t give you what you might want.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
“I know what your body wants.”
“And what’s that?”
“What my body wants.”
He looked down between my slightly parted legs, and I had no shadow of a doubt that he could see a shadow wetness that he’s created. It didn’t matter that I was wearing black. When you were as wet as I was, black couldn’t save you.
He licked his lips, and I snapped my legs shut.
“Why can’t you give me what our bodies want?”
“Because friends shouldn’t fuck. Period. It ruins everything.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do.” I leaned forward and grabbed his hand. “Lots, I don’t want to ruin us.”
He trailed his finger down my shoulder. “I know. I don’t’ want to ruin us either.”
“So we don’t fuck. Agreed?”
He laughed. “I never said that.”
“This isn’t up for negotiation.”
“Truth or dare?”
“Don’t change the topic.”
“I’m not. Truth or dare?”
“Dare.”
“Sleep with me tonight.”
“No! I mean it. We can’t fuck.”
“I said ‘sleep’, Danielle. Sleep with me tonight.”
Weighing up his challenge, I stared into his imploring eyes and decided that, if I kept my knickers on as planned, there was no harm in sleeping
… together
… in the same bed.
Because we were just friends, pretending to be so much more.
Chapter Fourteen
What I was asking for was risky. I knew that. But if all I could ever say was that I’d held her while she slept, I’d be happy.
“Okay, Elliot. We sleep, and talk. That’s it.”
I smiled, relief flooding my body. I honestly didn’t think she’d agree. In fact, I was preparing to fill her glass again in readiness for her mandatory skoll.
“No fucking,” she repeated.
“No fucking,” I reaffirmed. Well, maybe.
“And I get to sleep on the side of the bed closest to the window.”
That was my favourite side, but I didn’t argue because I planned on sleeping on that side, too. With her. On her. Underneath her.
“Then it’s settled,” she said, covering her chest with her arms.
I nodded. “It is. So would you like to go to bed now?”
“I still have more questions for you.”
“You can ask them under the covers.”
Her eyelids fluttered with derision. “Can I bring my drink? I think I’m gonna need it.”
She was so bloody cute, even when she mocked me. “Yes, you can bring your drink.”
“You better have something I can sleep in, like an old t-shirt?”
“I have a batman t-shirt,” I admitted, unable to hide my grin.
Her jaw dropped and she pointed at me. “You lied! You said you didn’t have one.”
I shrugged. “Guilty as charged.”
“Speaking of guilty people, what’s it like … defending them? You defend them,
right?”
“Am I a criminal defence lawyer? Yes, predominantly.”
“Do you enjoy it?” She took a sip of her drink and eyed me curiously over the rim of her glass.
“For the most part, yes.”
“For the most part?”
I drank some of my bourbon then put my glass down. “I started off wanting to defend the underdog and wrongly accused, those who perhaps were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or who were a convenient target. Too often in life the wrong people fall victim because they don’t know their rights or how to fight for them. I hate that. I hate that they’re made scapegoats.”
“But what about the guilty ones? How do you defend them knowing they’re guilty.”
“They’ve got to be proven guilty first.”
“You know what I mean,” she sighed. “The ones who’ve admitted doing the crime, or where there’s no reasonable doubt because they’ve been caught red-handed.”
I ran my hand through my hair and used it to rest my head upon. This question, this notion, was never easy to explain. “A lot of the time, I can’t let myself think too much about it. I can’t make it personal or get involved beyond what my job, as their legal counsel, requires. But the ones who show remorse for their wrongdoings, genuine remorse … do they deserve punishment to the fullest extent of the law? No. I personally don’t think they do. And unless I help them, that’s what they’ll get.”
Her eyes widened. “So you believe a murderer deserves to be free if he/she is truly sorry?”
I chuckled, but the fact she was asking me these questions twisted my gut. The last thing I wanted was for my career to disappoint Danielle through lack of comprehension.
“No, of course not. If you’re guilty of a crime, you deserve to be punished and rehabilitated. The thing is, more often than not, not everything is black and white. There are almost always mitigating circumstances.”
“But some crimes are back and white.”
“Well, yes, and no.”
“So how do you defend a cold blooded murderer?”
“Facts,” I stated, my answer short and simple because I wanted this conversation to end.
“Facts?”
I sighed. “Yes, it all comes back to facts.”
She narrowed her eyes at me then downed the last of her drink, stretching toward the coffee table to dispense her glass. The light from the fire flames lit her skin golden, her body smooth and flawless. And the black lace underwear covering what I desperately wanted to see, touch, and taste the most, was only fuelling my need even more.
“I don’t understand,” she said, wiggling back into the seat and hugging her knees to her chest.
I swallowed, and tried to ignore my thickening cock. “I stick to the facts while also questioning them, creating reasonable doubt while hoping, deep down, that the facts will prevail.”
“So you do your job but hope you fail at it?”
“Where the cold blooded murderers are concerned, yeah, you could say that.”
“It must be hard defending them.”
I shrugged and stood up, offering my hands to help her stand with me. “Somebody has to do it.”
She stared at me, sympathy curving her pouting mouth.
“Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody. There’s no such thing as a perfect person in a perfect world because neither exists. People are flawed. Life is flawed. And it’s through flaws and mistakes that we learn to accept, forgive, and grow.”
She placed her hands in mine and let me guide her to stand. “But imperfection doesn’t justify the actions of a cold-blooded killer or a brutal rapist.”
“No, I’m not saying that.” I held our hands by our sides. “Because nothing justifies that, which is why I represent them. I make sure they receive their duty of care and nothing more.”
She let go of my hands, draped hers over my shoulders, and stretched up on one foot, suspending her sore ankle. “You remind me of a vigilante superhero.”
I laughed. “Batman?”
“Maybe. Speaking of Batman, where’s that t-shirt?”
Picking her up in my arms, I carried her to my bedroom, gently set her down on the bed. I walked into my walk-in robe, opened my set of drawers, and quickly rifled through them until I found it. “Here you go?” I said, walking back out, the t-shirt in my hands.
“Thank you.” She took it from me, quickly threaded it over her head, and then reached behind her and unhooked her bra, pulling it out through one of the armholes.
“I’ve never understood how you women do that.”
“It’s easy,” she said, twirling the bra around her finger. “Here, I’ll show you. Hold out your hands.” Danielle hopped up to me and proceeded to guide the bra’s straps over my hands.
“What are you doin—”
“Oh shh. This is the best way to learn.”
“You’re not gonna do that thing up are you?”
“Think of it as your next dare.”
She continued to hop behind me and hooked the bra into place before the sharp sting of her hand slapped my arse.
“Hey!”
Leaning back, she raked me with her eyes. “Oh, you look good in black, Lots.”
All I could do was stand there, in my boxer shorts, while a small piece of black lace material emasculated me. “Danielle Cunningham, you have exactly two seconds to get this thing off of me.”
“The point was for you to do it.”
“Danielle!” I warned.
“Wait!” She hurriedly limped to my drawer, pulled out anther t-shirt, then limped back and roughly plonked it over my head. “There. Knock yourself out.”
Her giggle was a candied tickle to my ears — sugary sweet and highly addictive. I wanted to gorge myself in it while humming appreciatively, knowing all the while it might not be good for my health … or my sanity.
“Fuck, this thing is uncomfortable.” I reached behind me to where the bra was digging into my back in an attempt to wrestle it free.
My wrestling didn’t work.
All it did was incite Danielle to burst into laughter and plonk herself down onto my bed. “Don’t tie yourself in knots, Lots.” She laughed some more.
“Oh, you’re real funny, aren’t you?”
She nodded and snorted, then snorted again.
I couldn’t help myself and laughed along with her, managing to free the clasp and undo the bra.
“Now what the fuck do I do?” I mumbled, trying to pull it through the armhole but nearly severing my neck in the process. “Jesus fucking Christ! It’s attacking me.”
Frustrated, I yanked everything off in one aggressive sweep, the bra and t-shirt hooking on my nose and almost bringing me to tears.
“Oh … my … God! Can’t … breathe,” she said, clutching her stomach and rolling back onto the bed. “It … hurts. It … hurts.”
I gently grabbed her sore ankle, making her squeal and try to kick herself free of my grip with her good foot, but I was too strong for her tiny frame to stand a chance.
“I’m sorry, Lots. I swear,” she said, laughing.
“Lies.”
“No. Truth,” she giggled. “Truth!”
Before I could react, her good foot swung at me again, this time connecting with my side. I let go and clutched the tender area. “That was a cheap shot!”
“Shit! Did I hurt you?” She sat up and scooted forward along the bed, concern plastering her face, which was when I seized my opportunity, pushed her back on the bed and climbed on top of her, straddling her lap.
“I’m curious,” I said, pinning her arms above her head. “Are you still ridiculously ticklish?”
Her head and neck craned forward. “No. Grew out of that a long time ago.”
“Really?”
“Uh huh.”
“Are you lying to me again?”
“No. Next question.”
Fuck, she was cute. “Yeah, see I’m gonna need proof. I’m all about facts, remember?”
Transferring
her hands into one of mine, I kept them secured above her head while I slowly crept my fingers down her arm toward her armpit.
She squirmed.
“Do you know rats laugh when they’re tickled?”
“What? No. Why? Have you tickled one?”
“No.” I tickled her underarm for being a smartarse.
She squealed and wriggled. “Stop!”
“See? You lied. But I think I need more proof.”
“No, you don’t. Yes, I lied. I’m sorry.”
Continuing to creep my fingers down, I trailed them along her side, stopping at the hem of my batman t-shirt when I noticed her erect nipples through the material. Fuck!
I wanted to tickle those … with my tongue.
Flicking my eyes to hers, she bit her lip, her chest rising and falling in short, desperate, pants. She wanted what I wanted; I could tell. Unlike her mouth, the rest of her body couldn’t lie.
“Do you also know,” I asked, continuing to creep my fingers along her tummy, “that it’s impossible to tickle yourself?”
She bucked her hips ever so slightly. “No. But I’m guessing that’s a good thing.”
I trailed higher, lifting the t-shirt and placing a soft kiss just below her bellybutton. “Do you know you can stop a person tickling you?”
She hummed and swirled her hips. “Elliot.”
“You can, but I’m not going to tell you how.” I lifted the t-shirt over her breasts and glanced up, seeing perfectly rounded mounds. They were gorgeous, firm, and soft.
She arched her back and moaned when I circled her nipple with my fingertip. Once. Twice. Faster.
“Do you wanna know how to make it stop?”
Her eyes were closed, her mouth open, but no words escaped those parted lips.
“You don’t want me to tell you, do you?”
She moaned again, so I slid my tongue across her skin until her nipple was in my mouth.
“Oh God,” she breathed out and ground her hips into mine.
I couldn’t help myself and did the same thing, wanting nothing more than to slide my thick, hard cock, inside her and feel her slick, wet heat on my skin. I’d dreamed about it, jerked off to thoughts of it … I’d even pictured her in a past one-night-stand’s place.
Releasing her hands, I swapped to her other nipple and massaged the breast I’d just licked. She was so soft, so smooth, and she tasted like pure fucking heaven.
