The Assignment

by Jade A. Waters

  He was kidding. He had to be kidding.

  “Dean—”

  “Uh-uh. That’s the assignment.” He released my hands. “Your reward will more than make up for any embarrassment. I promise.”

  I sat there for a moment, my mind reeling and my hands spread on the table. I waited for Dean to reveal the joke, but his gaze remained serious. When he pulled his shoulders back in a breath that filled his masculine chest and made the moisture in my cleft all too noticeable, I made a decision.

  I can do this.

  I scooted back my chair.

  Dean’s pensive face became lighter, his lips shaping that delectable, boyish grin.

  I crumpled my napkin on my plate. “Fine. I’ll be back.” I turned to make my way to the restroom to conquer the challenge.

  But Dean grabbed my wrist. “Wait. One more thing.”

  More?

  “Ask for the check on your way back—smelling as delicious as I know you’ll smell.”

  The look of amusement on his face charged me in a whole new way. I was aroused, yes, but this was such a tease.

  Dean brought the back of my hand to his lips and kissed it. “I can’t wait to reward you for this.”

  I paced off to the restroom. This was ludicrous. Asking me to be that brazen after I pleasured myself in the bathroom? What type of man gave such a ridiculous assignment?

  The type you crave.

  I swung open the ladies room door, intimidated by the two adjacent stalls occupying the small space. While I ran my hands all over myself, I’d be next to someone else, leaving anyone who needed the restroom to wait.

  This was silly. Me following his orders?

  I wasn’t that type of girl.

  Yet, as I stood there listening to the steady drip of water in one of the sinks, a rush took over my body. This was so dirty and wrong.

  And so what I set off to do once I locked myself in the stall beside the sink.

  I couldn’t believe how tense I felt when I lifted my dress and pinned it under my elbows. I’d known I was wet, but the slickness Dean had pulled out of me had soaked my thin panties, making it unbearable to imagine wearing them past this experience. I spread my feet out and balanced on my heels, careful not to touch anything. Then I slid one hand below my waistband and the other under the side of my panties.

  “What a tease,” I grumbled, but God, this enchanted me. Dean enchanted me. I snuck the tips of two fingers inside and used my top hand to rub the swollen bead of my clit, shocked by how excited I was having barely started.

  For a couple of minutes I stood there, fingers coasting in and out, paranoid someone else would come in to use the other stall. My breath grew ragged and my pussy lips swelled. I massaged faster, wobbling on my feet as I fought to keep my dress beneath my elbows, trying to ignore the embarrassment sneaking into the edges of my already blurring vision.

  The wave of pleasure gnawed at me, a deep churning in my core that threatened to spill over. I clamped my teeth together and tried to take myself closer. The force of it sent me wild until I remembered.

  He expected me to stop. I had to earn my reward.

  Shit, the reward.

  The idea nearly made me come.

  I gasped and threw up my hands, doubling over seconds before my orgasm hit. I played this game with myself sometimes, but never in a public restroom.

  Of a 5-star restaurant.

  In my haze, I heard the door swing open, followed by the loud voices of two clearly inebriated women.

  “Oh, shit. A wait?” one of them said.

  “You go ahead.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Go, go! Hurry!”

  A pair of heels clacked across the tile and into the stall beside me while I stared at my coated hands, trying to regain my composure and fight the blush in my cheeks at the same time. I needed to get out fast, but I was primed, tense. Somehow I had to open the door with fingers so sticky that toilet paper would cling. I shuddered, needing to come up with a strategy to lessen the embarrassment of my juices over my hands, all while my body ached to finish what I’d started.

  I had an idea, then—one Dean would love, but one that would feel like a small victory to me.

  Reward or not, he’d talked me into this.

  While the women bantered, I slipped out of my panties. They were totally unwearable, but the tiny swatch of fabric in the back was dry. I wiped my fingers on it as best as I could, pleased with the new twist on the assignment I’d created.

  “Oh my God, hurry!” the woman outside grumbled.

  “I’m going as fast as I can!” her friend snapped.

  I hated that I’d have to walk past either of them, but there was no getting around it. I straightened my dress, using a section of it to grasp the door handle. Bundling the thong in my hand, I stepped out of the stall—right when the second woman flushed and opened her door.

  Now I had two pairs of eyes on me—those of a leggy blonde dancing in place with her need to use the bathroom, and the glazed, drunken pair of the redhead emerging from the adjacent stall. I shuffled past both women without interacting, heading for the door and hoping I could escape without them smelling the scent of my fluids all over me.

  “Nasty. Aren’t you going to wash your hands?” one of them said.

  “No kidding. Gross.”

  I crumpled the fabric tighter in my hand. My cheeks burned. The women mumbled a few other things I couldn’t make out when I slipped out the door and stood in the walkway, quaking in complete humiliation.

  I knew there’d been a risk of getting caught in there, but the women’s looks had added something I hadn’t expected to the lusty excitement that filled me. What was it?

  Shame? Dammit, Dean.

  I eyed him from across the restaurant. Dashing and sophisticated, he was the kind of man I wouldn’t necessarily approach. He was too handsome, too clean-cut. I’d always thought what I sought was the younger, more reckless type, men who in their rowdiness might be more apt to bring out the wild in me.

  But they never did.

  Not like this.

  Dean lifted his hand, then gave the check signal to me with a playful smirk.

  Smart ass.

  Embarrassment ripped through me, but the promise of what might come lit a fire in my veins. I hurried to find our waitress and asked for the check. She narrowed her eyes and looked me over—maybe my hair had fallen out of place, or what I’d done was that obvious—but now I didn’t care. My body surged with a craving for Dean’s approval.

  I got back to the table and stood at his side. He didn’t say anything, curling his arm around my legs and resting his head on my hip with a big inhalation. He closed his eyes.

  I dropped my panties in his lap. “Present for you,” I said, my mouth taut. I fisted my hands in triumph, and yet I wanted more than anything for him to take me right there. I’d never needed to come so badly in my life.

  Dean glanced down at his lap, issuing a quiet chuckle and clutching the fabric in his hand. He raised his head and clasped me against him. “Mine,” he said. He slipped them into his pocket. “I hope you don’t want these back. By the way, you smell fucking delicious.”

  I shivered. I felt disheveled, hormonal and not classy at all when Dean stood and the waitress arrived with the check, shooting another pair of curious eyes my way.

  But Dean’s arm traveled up my hips and waist to circle me. I didn’t speak. I let him tuck me into his chest as he raised a finger to indicate to our server he’d like her to wait. He held me with one arm and withdrew his wallet from his back pocket, then fumbled around me to pay the bill. “Thank you for a wonderful dinner. My date and I need to dance now.”

  When she walked away, he eased his hand up the bare skin of my back and turned me to face
him. For a minute, we stood by the table like this. His cock lifted beneath his slacks, and he took long, slow breaths, the touch of his skin setting mine aflame.

  Dean slid his fingers beneath my hair and around my neck, tilting back my head. I stared into his face with my jaw clenched. “How do you feel?”

  “I...”

  “Are you embarrassed?”

  “Kind of?” I pinched my eyes shut, but when I opened them again, he looked so damn handsome.

  “Were there others in the bathroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re conflicted because you liked it, didn’t you? Them seeing you riled, distracted...”

  In my gut, I knew the answer—a blaring affirmative that for some reason, I didn’t have the courage to say out loud.

  “Are you excited?”

  I didn’t answer this either.

  He smiled. “Okay then. Let’s dance.”

  He tugged me onto the dance floor. A dozen other couples moved to the pianist’s romantic waltz, and Dean swept me in his arms. We were much too close to be appropriate in a formal, public space, and yet we didn’t dance in any way that might cause alarm. We were one more couple on the floor who happened to look sickeningly smitten with one another.

  Dean slipped his mouth past my cheek. He kissed the shell of my ear, raising the tempo of my heart. I wet my lips, wondering if I had a voice or an ounce of self-control when he stared at me like he did.

  “Put your hands on my chest,” he instructed.

  His arms were locked around my waist, but as we swayed back and forth I lifted my hands between us to rest my forearms on his chest. The scent of my juices was potent this close, and Dean’s glossy eyes and widening grin told me he smelled it, too.

  “You’ve done quite well on this assignment.”

  “Have I?”

  “Oh, yes. I didn’t know if you’d do it.”

  “Why not?”

  Hearing him speak entranced me further. “Because you’ve got a very strong will, Maya.”

  He spun us in graceful circles around the floor. Though I saw the people near us and heard the trill of the piano in a decadent, soothing song, my attention centered on nothing but Dean.

  He skimmed the small of my back. “Do you like being embarrassed?”

  “No.”

  “I think you do.” He kissed my cheek.

  An older couple passed behind him, the woman’s eyes twinkling as she winked at me.

  She’d be scandalized if she knew what was going on.

  “We’re experimenting, so I remind you this can stop. You can stop at any time.” He lifted one hand to my hair and tucked a strand behind my ear, waltzing me across the floor. “I’m excited to do more with you, though. To test us both.”

  “And what’s your test?”

  He noticed my flippant response and squeezed me tighter, his cock solid through our layers of clothes. “My test is restraint.”

  I bit down on my tongue.

  “I don’t know what it is about you. From the minute I saw you in that lawn chair, I’ve wanted to put my hands, my lips, on every single inch of you.”

  I hung on to the fabric of his suit. The raw nerves I’d had since I left the bathroom ached for attention, making it impossible to see clearly, to think about anything beyond this man and what he did to me. “Sounds pretty serious, Dean,” I whispered.

  “It is serious, beautiful,” he said.

  My heart skipped a beat.

  Dean stopped us on the dance floor and gave me the faintest, sweetest kiss. His lips lingered on mine for an eternity, and alongside the need tearing through me was a surge of emotion at how tender he was there with me, holding me so close I never wanted him to let me go.

  When Dean pulled away, he smiled. “I think it’s time to go back to your place. I promised you a reward.”

  * * *

  The ride back to my house was punctuated with the quiet of two people waiting to merge as one. Dean rested his palm on my thigh after he started the car, and though I was tempted to reach my hand into his lap to rile him while he drove, there was something magical about the simplicity of our breaths against the dull rumble of his BMW.

  After he pulled into a parking spot in front of my condo, Dean shut off the car and turned. The overhead lamp came on, lighting up his face and cuing us to open the doors. Not a speck of hair broke the stretch of his rich, tanned skin, and when I raised a hand to his cheek and traced my thumb along the stern edge of his jaw, Dean’s brow furrowed. “Too rough?”

  “No. I like this. But I like the shadow, too.”

  “It’s abrasive.”

  “A little.”

  He cupped my hand, drawing my thumb into his mouth to nibble the tip. “I like the way you think.” He bowed his head toward my condo. “Should we?”

  “Yeah. We should.”

  His eyes twinkled while we lingered for a second. Once we exited the car, Dean grabbed a duffel bag from the backseat and took my hand to follow me into the house. We’d left as soon as he’d arrived; now he peeked around, admiring the photos and decorations covering my walls. I eyed the bag he set on my living room floor.

  “Nice place,” he said. He took my hands in his.

  “Thanks. What’s in the bag?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Was it an overnight bag? I chewed my lip, dying to know what he’d packed, but he didn’t elaborate.

  “The piano’s lovely.” He tilted his head toward it. “I loved hearing about you playing.”

  I squeezed his hand.

  “Maybe you’ll play for me sometime?”

  It had been years since I’d played for anyone. An image of him behind me while I played flashed through my mind—his hands caressing my shoulders, my fingers dancing over the keys.

  Hell yes.

  “I’d be happy to.”

  We stood there in the glow of the hall light.

  “Would you like a drink?” I finally asked.

  “Water’s fine, thanks.”

  I fetched two glasses and the pitcher of water I kept in the fridge, and Dean followed. He remained quiet as I poured the water and replaced the pitcher on the shelf, but when the fridge door shut, he sidled behind me. It took less than a second, the heat of his chest jolting my core.

  Dean hooked his hands on my hips and rested his chin on my shoulder, then he pressed his lips to my cheek and inhaled. “You smell like pussy. Musky and sexy.”

  He wrapped his hands around me, bearing against my stomach and pulling me back into him. The thick bar of his crotch nudged high on my ass. Most of the near-orgasmic haze I’d felt in the restaurant bathroom had subsided in our ride, but Dean roamed his hands up my belly and over the silk covering my chest until my body filled with need. He cupped my breasts, and after pinching my nipples through the fabric, he wedged me against the fridge.

  “Your reward has two parts.” The words came out a rumble through the strands of my hair, and he yanked the skirt of my dress up around my ass. The stainless steel of my fridge fogged with my breath, and I shuddered when he guided his hand between my thighs. Having handed over my panties, I had no barrier to stop the greedy search of his fingers. Dean slid his fingertips along my crevice, and I gasped. “Christ, you’re wet.”

  I bowed my head, the thrum of excitement pounding through me. He took away his fingers and left me empty. “Dean—”

  He whipped me around and slammed me back against the fridge. I cried out in surprise, but he dropped to his knees. He hitched my dress up with both of his hands, his eyes glazing as he buried his face in my cleft.

  I moaned, my pleasure racing back with the hungry licks Dean made at my folds. I dropped my hands to his head and closed my eyes while he licked at me then sucked hard. My leg
s began to shake. It was impossible to stand in my heels and I sank down, desperate for his tongue all the way in.

  Dean responded. His fingers slipped deep to reach the bundle of nerves inside me. He stroked in and up, his tongue wild and skilled, bringing me ever closer.

  “I’m going to come,” I growled. Dean pummeled me with his fingers, lapping at my juices. “Oh, God!”

  I fisted his hair when release tore through me. He groaned as my spine bowed, his mouth latched on to me no matter how vigorously I bucked against his face. I shrieked, my legs threatening to give, but Dean didn’t cease. He swiped at my clit with his tongue, his fingers working through the contractions inside me.

  “Stop, please.” I peeled open my eyes, my body heaving. The denial at the restaurant, the tense hold on the dance floor—all of it had brought such intensity over me that I started to collapse.

  Dean shook his head, his tongue gliding back and forth. “That was part one,” he said.

  I tried to scoot away but he nibbled on my clit. I shoved back his head. “Stop!”

  “Feisty girl.” Dean leaned away, his face bright with amusement. “Too much sass for one girl.”

  My breathing wavered. I squinted to clear my vision, my body too overstimulated for him to continue. “I need a break, please. I can’t.”

  Dean planted one last kiss on my mound, then tongued the crease. The moment I thought he’d pull away, he sucked my clit back between his teeth and murmured, “Your break is as long as it takes me to set up part two.”

  Chapter Nine

  Before I could register what Dean meant, I was tugged off the fridge and farther into my house. He snatched up his bag and located my room, and I drooped in his arms, my body pliant and soft.

  “Oh, Maya. It’s like you’ve been ready for this, for us.”

  He’d settled his eyes on the wrought-iron frame of my bed. It had several vertical bars interspersed with filigrees that twined across both the base and the monstrous headboard I lined with pillows, but my skin was awash with heat and desire, and I didn’t understand what he meant.