by Stacy Gail
“Just keep it simple by talking about only two things—what you want him to give you, and how you feel once he gives it to you. After you become more familiar with how things go, you can branch out and tell him what you’d like to give him. But be patient. That’s expert level. You’re still at the beginning stages, so pace yourself.”
“You can say that again. I don’t even know what I don’t know,” Essie griped, aggravated. “Screw it. This is getting way too complicated. There has to be like, a basic template or script I can find online for this.”
“Trust me, girlie, this is one skill you should never leave to the online trolls who’ve never been beyond their mom’s basement. You’re just going to have to muddle through like the rest of us poor saps and do the best you can. Just don’t be weird and you’ll be good.”
And what, exactly, defined weird? Before she could ask, the sound of her text chime had her fishing out her cell phone. Then, when she saw the name on the screen, she tried not to hyperventilate like an idiot.
“It’s Steele.” She announced it in the same way she would have announced royalty, but she was too keyed up to notice.
“Oh, yeah?” As relaxed at Essie was not, Carla craned her neck around when she clearly failed at reading upside down. “What does Mr. Dirty Talk have to say today? Did he ask what you’re wearing? Is he picturing you wearing no underwear beneath your clothing? Does he want to know if you fantasize about him when you touch yourself? That’s always a good one.”
“Holy crap, Carla, he wants to know why I didn’t wait for him to take care of washing my car, because he thinks that’s a man’s job.” Her mind was so boggled by all the steamy suggestions her friend came up with—seriously, if she couldn’t talk Carla into writing a how-to book on dirty talk, the world would clearly be missing out—that it took Essie a second to realize the text’s implications. “Wait. How could Steele possibly know I’m washing my car?”
“Probably because he’s not blind.”
“What?”
“Mr. Dirty Talk’s parked his truck—otherwise known as your mobile outdoor sex palace—right over there.”
Blank-eyed, Essie followed Carla’s meaningful nod. At the edge of the car wash’s lot, Steele was climbing out of his truck, absently stuffing his phone in his back pocket as he headed toward them. “But how…?”
“Is it weird that I find the thought of him microchipping you when you weren’t looking incredibly sexy? Hey Steele,” she greeted without giving Essie a chance to answer. “So, no more drive-in movies for you two pervs, huh? That’s hot. I wonder if I can talk Patrick into getting permanently banned from Cascade.”
“It’s worth a shot—and when I say it’s worth it, I really mean it’s worth it.” Without a hint of discomfort or self-consciousness at having gotten caught in a public lewd act—or that this little tidbit of info had been shared—he curled an arm around Essie and bent to plant a thorough, tongue-twining, deep-tasting kiss on her that didn’t stop until her toes were curled into her flip flops and she was audibly gasping for air. “Hey, sweetness.”
Really? He expected coherent communication now? “Um. Wow. Hello.”
She heard Carla try—and fail miserably at—muffling a laugh. “That’s my cue to vanish. Remember my advice, Es. Talk it all out with him, and then avoid the weird.”
“What was that about?” He frowned after Carla as she drove out of the car wash before he turned his searching gaze to her. “Did she mean me?”
“Oh, uh, it’s nothing.” Suddenly and horrifically embarrassed to reveal what had to be an absurd hang-up, Essie could feel a blush crawling up her neck. “How did you know where I was?”
“I dropped by your place, and when I figured out you weren’t home, I tracked your phone and found you doing a job I was looking forward to doing for you.”
As touched as she was by his thoughtfulness, the bewildering part of that statement distracted her. “You tracked my phone? How is that even possible?”
“When you work for Private Security International, nothing’s impossible. Thanks to our tech geeks, Nix and Risk, we all have cool little apps that can track a phone ping off whatever cell tower your phone is closest to. The moment I got your general location in this neighborhood, I knew what you were up to, so I headed over to see if there was still time for me to get things all wet.”
Oh… geez.
It was starting again.
Just a simple statement from Steele and bam! Total, crazy-making heat bloomed at the cleft of her thighs. How could that possibly be normal? For all she knew, getting hopelessly turned on with just a handful of words from this over-the-top, sexy-as-hell man really did make her what she’d once been called—a filthy slut.
He leaned his hands on her car’s trunk on either side of her, pinning her in. “Nothing to say to that, Pet?”
The delicate tissues veiled by her panties suddenly felt swollen and throbbing, and she tried squeezing her upper thighs together to put the fire out. Grinding those tissues together only made it worse in such an unbelievably good way she almost moaned out loud. “Um…I honestly don’t know whether to be impressed or freaked out,” she breathed, trying to keep things rational. But that was hard to do when she could feel her legs beginning to shake, she was squeezing them together so hard. “I mean, tracking my phone?”
An amused sound escaped his throat as he crowded her up against her car so that he could rub against her, ratcheting up her excitement until she had to consciously stop herself from gasping out loud like some porn-star wannabe. “What about it?”
“If you’re not careful, you’re going to become one of those creepy stalkers you hear about in the news.”
“Baby, I’m already there.” And he seemed perfectly content with that as he bent and nuzzled his face against hers, his mouth a delicious threat he withheld from hers to torment them both. “Watching you slowly emerge from your cocoon and accept that this outstanding body of yours isn’t something that should be hidden away…it’s been such an honor to be a part of that, Essie, I shit you not. Watching you find the strength to reach for the beautiful, fulfilling life you should have always had takes my breath away.”
The molten heat inside her softened and filled her with another, equally destructive kind of warmth, and she raised a hand to cup his cheek. “By just being you, you gave me the strength to do that. Thank you, Steele.”
“Sweetness… God, you kill me so easily. Don’t thank me, all right?” His voice tightened, and he leaned his hips against her so that she could feel the granite-hard thrust of his erection against her belly. Without warning, the thin veils of his charcoal gray trousers and her gauzy-thin white tee frustrated her to the point of madness. “Ooh. Look at those pretty eyes of yours getting all big. You feel me, don’t you, Pet?”
An all-over body tremor shook her, and the molten heat surged back, worse—or better—than ever. “Yes, Professor.”
“Professor. Fuck me, I love that so much. You don’t even know.” For a moment his eyes squeezed shut before his pelvis pulsed into her. That tiny friction of rubbing himself against her had to feel pretty damn good, considering the flush that darkened his hungry, slyly smiling face. “Yeah, you know this hard-on’s for you, don’t you? All for you.”
Uh-oh. “Um…”
“Let you in on a little secret,” he went on, his Southern accent deepening while his hips continued their minute pumping action, and the heat created between them nearly blistered her all the way from her belly down to her slick-hot cleft. “I started getting hard on the way over here and I hadn’t even seen you yet. Used to be I’d have to see you, feel you, smell you, and that would be enough to stiffen me up. But now…damn, baby, for the first time in my life I came twice in one shot, when I thought that wasn’t possible. Now all I have to do is think of you, and suddenly I’m pitching a tent so fucking big I’m amazed I don’t have a goddamn circus following me around.”
“Steele, stop.” She bit her lip and closed her eyes, her
cheeks burning while confusion blew through her like a hurricane. “When you talk like that, I don’t… I’m sorry, but I’m not sure if you’re blaming me, or what I should do with it.”
He went statue-still. “You don’t like it when I’m talking honestly to you about what you do to me?”
“That right there—what I do to you. He…he did that.” She had to push the words out, so he would understand. “He said it was m-my fault, what I did to him—that I somehow made him so violent and crazy he literally smashed my face into pieces. He shamed me, called me a whore and…” Shit, this was embarrassing, sharing how stupid and crazy she was to think of that monster now when she was in his arms and he so obviously wanted her. “Look, my point is, if we could just enjoy each other without… you know… talking, that would be within my comfort level.”
He absorbed this for a few seconds before he lifted her chin with his hand and brought her gaze to meet his. “I get it. I swear I get what you’re saying. You think my telling you what you do to me is a condemnation of you. You think I’m trying to debase or slut-shame you.”
“No,” she corrected immediately, and she could only hope the fire in her voice erased all possible doubt. “You would never do that to me deliberately. I told you I trust you and I meant it.”
“Good, because you’re right—I’d never want to bring even a moment’s pain to you, even the emotional kind, you hear me? You had a problem with me talking dirty to you last night, didn’t you? I thought I saw tears in your eyes but I couldn’t be sure.”
Her mouth tightened. “I’m not a crier. I just felt… I don’t know. Cheapened, I guess. So, since I’m uncomfortable with it, if we could just not talk while we’re being intimate—”
“No.”
She blinked. “No?”
“This right here is another thing that fucker tried to take away from you by warping what’s actually a very fun part of having sex, Essie. Hell, it’s no wonder you’ve got it all tangled up in your head, but that’s okay. I’m your Professor, and I’ll make damned sure Teacher’s Pet learns all the right lessons when it comes to this sort of thing.”
The very thought made something inside her recoil. She was sure he somehow felt it because his arms were suddenly around her, holding her in place. “Look, I just don’t like it, Steele. He called me horrible, humiliating names… I don’t like how dirty talk makes me feel.”
“Did I call you horrible, humiliating names?” Again a hand came to her chin when she would have looked away. “Did I?”
“No. Of course not. You never would.”
The arm that was still around her squeezed her. “What do I like to call you?”
“Sweetness. Or Pet.”
The heated smile that crossed his face told her that he was definitely fond of his names for her. “You know why I call you Pet, and I’ll continue to do that when we’re having our lessons, just like you’ll keep calling me Professor—a name which gets me crazy-hot, by the way. But do you know why I’ve always called you sweetness?”
“Somehow I just sort of assumed you called everyone sweetness. Family, friends, coworkers, strangers you randomly pass on the street…”
“I call you sweetness because you’re the sweetest thing I’ve come across in four long years. In all that time, my life had been filled with a never-ending desert of bitterness, the kind I can hardly stand to think of even now, it tears me up so bad. When a man goes fucking years tasting nothing but bitter, coming across your sweet has been like stumbling across heaven. I didn’t know sweetness like you existed.”
Her heart clenched with a breathtaking joy, a sensation she knew had a name, but she was too caught up in the moment to label it. “Okay, I… I get it. I’ll try to keep that in mind when you talk dirty to me.”
“When we have our next lesson, it isn’t going to be about what I say. You’re the one who’s going to do all the dirty talking.”
Her heart thumped against her ribs and the hot dampness in her panties worsened—or got better, she couldn’t tell which. “I’m going to be doing the dirty talking?”
He nodded. “We’ll call that lesson, Oral 101. It’ll begin just as soon as we get this car cleaned up.”
Chapter Eighteen
The hiss of the power spray made Essie jump. Her senses were on high alert as Steele adjusted the nozzle for a gentle, wide spray before he turned his attention toward the car.
“Where’s the soap?”
Good grief, the man was actually serious about cleaning her car. “I brought a bucket, sponge and a big bottle of soap-wax stuff from home.” She rounded to the front where she’d left it and hefted the bucket full of sudsy water. “You need it?”
He shook his head and turned his attention to the car. “First let me spray off the dirt and grime, and then I’ll need it.”
She stayed out of his way as he got the car good and drenched. Then, to her surprise, he turned the spray on her.
“Hey!”
“It slipped.” Grinning like a naughty kid, he doused her again. “Oops. Slipped again.”
“You brat.” Considering the temperature was pushing ninety, the cool spray was a welcome relief, but that was beside the point. It was now a matter of principle for her to nail him with as much soapy water as she could. She took the sponge from the bucket she held and slopped soapy water at him, nailing him smack in the chest and face. “Yeah, bull’s eye! Oh, and it slipped, too.”
Spitting soap out of his mouth, he grinned and aimed the wand at her. “Pretty decent shot, Santiago. Maybe I’ll recommend you to my boss in case we ever need another sniper on our team. But in the meantime…”
“Oh, crap,” was all she had time to say before he turned the spray on her. The next couple of minutes were filled with her squeals as she tried to dodge the water while still trying to get close enough to fling soapy water his way. Of course she got the worst of it, but she did the math. She knew exactly when she put the quarters in to pay for the water sprayer, so all she had to do was bide her time…
The thunk and click she’d been waiting for sounded. As the pressurized spray suddenly vanished to a sad gurgle, she launched at him. With a victorious cry she stuffed the sopping wet, sudsy sponge down the front of his shirt even as he caught her to him. The sponged squished between them as he squeezed her so tightly her feet almost lifted off the ground.
“Woman, you couldn’t be wetter if you’d jumped into a pool.” Laughing under his breath, he gave her another squeeze, causing foamy suds to squish up between them. “Say uncle or I use your gorgeous, soaped-up body to clean the car.”
Her eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t.”
Slowly his grin faded as he looked down between them, where a reservoir of sudsy water welled up in her exposed cleavage. “You’re right, I wouldn’t. It’d be a sin to use this body of yours in any other way other than pleasure, so there goes that plan.” Reluctantly he let her go, his eyes still on her breasts before the grin came back, and he shook his head. “Sweetness, I think it’d be best if you got in your car and shut the door behind you. I don’t want anyone seeing you like that.”
“Like what?”
He flicked a meaningful hand at her before he dug the sponge out of his shirt. “Wet T-shirt, baby. You might as well be standing there wearing cellophane.”
Horrified, Essie looked down and saw exactly what he did—thin, utterly transparent white cotton clinging wetly to her torso to show her boring white bra, ribs and belly button.
Perfect.
“At least you can’t see through my bra,” she muttered, not crossing her arms in front of her through sheer force of will. “And it’s all your fault I’m like this. It’d serve you right if I hadn’t been wearing anything at all under my shirt.”
“God Almighty, talk about a fantasy come true—a hot woman with the prettiest, perkiest tits I’ve ever clapped eyes on… shit.” His groan was the genuine article before he picked up the bucket she’d abandoned, dropped the sponge in with a faint splas
h and discreetly adjusted the front of his jeans. Apparently his clothes had gotten too tight for comfort. “Just get in the damn car and out of my sight before we wind up getting kicked out of this place as well, okay? Have some frigging mercy on me.”
“I don’t know why I should, but if you insist.” Delighted that he obviously enjoyed the sight of her, she did as he asked, but just as she settled down in her seat behind the wheel, a naughty idea began to form. As he efficiently soaped up the car’s windows—and made the car’s interior increasingly dark—she reached under her soaked shirt and unhooked the bra’s fastenings at the back. She then maneuvered the straps through the armholes and pulled her bra out entirely from under her sodden T-shirt. She gasped as the wet material of her thin tee touched her sensitive nipples, instantly hardening them to poke against the clinging wet fabric.
For a second the thought that this was what a filthy slut would do crossed her mind, but she determinedly shoved it away before it could take root. That was an echo that came from the monster, and every time she listened to it she gave him power. She’d lost enough of her life to him already; it was time to start taking that life back. If that meant taking her bra off and sitting in the privacy of her car in a wet T-shirt, then so be it.
And if it meant rolling her window down, that was fine, too.
And if it meant hanging her bra like a proud white banner on her side view mirror, then… okay, that was a bit on the slutty side, but she refused to back down. This was how she wanted to live her life, damn it. Her monster wasn’t going to stop her anymore.
Even if she still wasn’t sold on the whole dirty talk business.
With so much soap on the windows, she could have easily thought that dusk had fallen, and she turned on the car to get the AC going just as Steele at last made his way to the driver’s side window. She knew the exact moment he caught sight of her bra, even though she couldn’t see his expression through the soaped-up window. She thought she detected a shadow of movement through the front windshield’s equally obscured surface before the passenger door suddenly opened and Steele folded himself into the passenger seat beside her. He slammed the door behind him, his attention riveted to her, and suddenly her idea of teasing him seemed like stupidest thing she’d ever pulled, considering the look in his eyes. They burned over her, like he was trying to scour the flesh off her bones with the power of his gaze alone.
