Looking Inside

by BETH KERY

  “How do I say it?” she whispered.

  “Kind of shaky. A little surprised . . . like you really mean it. That’s what I like to think, anyway.”

  Her breath stuck in her lungs. Did he worry she wasn’t sincere about her desire? He lifted his head and she saw the pinpricks of light in his night-darkened eyes.

  “You do surprise me,” she said with quite force.

  “That’s good. Because just about everything you do surprises me in the best kind of way.”

  For a few seconds, they just regarded each other in their private little world as the city slid by them. And then, still holding her breath in her lungs, Eleanor pushed herself back off his lap and slid down his shins until her knees hit the floor.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  She reached under his coat and planted her hand between his thighs. “Surprising you,” she whispered fervently. His face was shadowed, but she saw his smile slowly fade from his face as she moved her hand along the shaft of his cock where it pressed against his jeans. She wanted to crow when she felt him swell against her palm.

  Greedier now, she rapidly unbuttoned the lower buttons on his wool coat and then started to attack the fly of his jeans. He suddenly caught one frantic hand and curled his fingers around the base of her skull, halting her. She looked up at him wide-eyed.

  “Not now, Eleanor.”

  “Why not?” she wondered, because the idea of bringing him to climax with her mouth in this romantic setting had enflamed her. She wanted to hold him captive again, have him at her mercy. She saw his jaw clench tight.

  “Because I don’t want to feel pressured. I want to take my time and savor it the first time I watch my cock slide between those beautiful lips of yours.”

  “You don’t want to do it in a public place, do you?” she asked breathlessly after she’d recovered from his illicit description.

  “It’s not that. We’re all alone up here. I just don’t want you to do me the first time in a rush or in bad lighting,” he said matter-of-factly, reaching for her. He urged her to come back up on the bench. She sat next to him, their sides pressed tight. “I mean, I do want to. Trust me, I do,” he amended gruffly. “It’s just not the moment.” She glanced at him hopefully, his addition going a long way to soothing the sting of hurt at being rejected for her impulsivity.

  He shook his head. “You’re something else, do you know that?”

  He slipped his hand beneath her coat and cupped her rib cage. Her sweater was still bunched up above her breasts. His warm hand felt divine rubbing against prickly skin. Her nipples pulled tight. He dipped his head and spoke next to her lips.

  “You love to be the one in control, don’t you?”

  “No, it’s not that,” she whispered. “You must know how much I liked it when you . . . did what you did last night.”

  His curving mouth caused something to tighten at her core. “I was hoping you liked it as much as you seemed like you did.”

  “Oh, I liked it, all right,” she admitted dryly. “I’m not interested in being in control of this. I just . . . like to make you happy.”

  “And that means torturing me?” his hand slid over a breast. Her nipples were still exposed over the top of her bra. He squeezed the flesh, his fingertips rubbing the aching crests.

  “No. It means exciting you,” she whimpered.

  “You do excite me. You like seeing the evidence of that. Don’t lie, I know that turns you on, Eleanor.”

  She pressed her lips together in a stubborn gesture, but mostly she was focused on his hand massaging her breast. His mouth went hard when she refused to reply.

  “If you really want to send me over the edge, then do what I say,” he said. “I want to tell you to suck me. I want to watch while I spread those lips I’ve been fantasizing about nonstop. I want to control the pace. I want to come when I’m ready, not in a rush because we’re pulling up to the dock. Okay?”

  A quiver of anxious arousal went through her. “Okay.”

  She saw the flash of his white teeth. He circled his palm over her breast, applying a delicious, firm friction against her turgid nipple. “I can’t believe you don’t have any experience with sexually dominant men or being a submissive.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he murmured, plucking at her parted lips. “You’re a natural submissive . . . unique, because you like to work me into a frenzy . . . but still a sexual submissive. In the end, you are.”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered doubtfully, distracted by his firm, warm lips.

  “I do. Hold up both your breasts for me. Push them together.”

  She did it without pause. She cupped them, plumping them together. Her forefinger hooked the edge of her bra and pulled it down an inch, fully exposing her thrusting, sensitive nipples.

  “Very nice,” Trey murmured appreciatively. He pushed his hand between her clamped thighs and dipped his head.

  FOURTEEN

  His warm, suctioning mouth, lashing tongue and rubbing hand made every nerve in her body go on high alert. Her fingers delved into his hair.

  He lifted his head, the hand between her legs pausing on her aching flesh.

  “I said to hold up your breasts for me.”

  She made a frustrated sound, but cupped her breasts for him again in an offering. He resumed his feasting, his hand moving again between her thighs. He stroked her extra firm there, as if he knew he needed to amplify his usual force due to the extra covering of her jeans and panties. His occasional rough groan and her soft gasps of pleasure twined with the lulling sound of the boat’s chugging engine. He clearly was as expert stimulating a woman above the pants as he was under them. It was hard to argue with the results. She stared out the far windows at the sparkling black river and the cars zipping down Lower Wacker in the distance, feeling her body rising to a low boil.

  He lifted his head, his mouth making an erotic, wet suctioning sound as her nipple popped out of his mouth. “Push them closer together,” he demanded starkly, just inches from her aching breasts. Eleanor complied. Then his mouth was everywhere, licking and sucking at both nipples at once. She cried out shakily, her hands automatically doing what her body craved, pushing the crests even tighter together in order to feel as much of his ravenous, pleasure-giving mouth as possible. He rubbed her pussy harder and she found herself slipping beneath the surface of everyday, mundane reality.

  She writhed in a hot, boiling sea of abandonment.

  Trey lifted his head again. It took her sex-muddled brain a moment to recognize the unpleasant lack of his mouth. He was making her nipples a little sore with his greediness, but that slight ache mixed with her intense pleasure, spicing it.

  Amplifying it.

  She opened her eyes dazedly. She realized the boat was approaching the Washington Street Bridge.

  “Unbutton your jeans and peel them down your ass a couple inches,” he said.

  “Huh?” she asked stupidly, her acute arousal making her as thick as an old tree stump.

  “Unbutton your jeans and slip them down your hips a bit,” he grated out. His lust-bitten tone cleared her brain a little. She hastened to follow his instructions, ripping open her button fly and wiggling her hips to lower her jeans some.

  “That’s fine,” he said tensely. “Hold up your breasts again.”

  She presented her breasts to him, her breath sticking in her lungs at the sensation of his long fingers burrowing beneath the waistband of her panties. At the same moment that he slid the ridge of his finger against her slippery clit, he fastened on a nipple.

  Her eyes sprung wide.

  “Oh no. Oh God.” Her entire body coiled tight and quaked. She slipped down in the seat, instinctively raising her pelvis to the heaven of his stroking fingers. His hand moved firmly between her legs. Insistently. She pushed her breasts tight together and felt his
hot mouth drawing on both her nipples at once, then the cool air, and then his whipping tongue.

  Oh, it hurt.

  It felt divine.

  She bucked her hips against his hand. She stared past his lowered head. Later, she recalled seeing the lit-up opera house as if in a fever dream. Then his shadow rose to block it out. With his free hand, he cupped her hip and firmed her against the seat.

  “Stop squirming around, baby.”

  She moaned in anguish, her mouth hanging open. His entire arm powered his movements, rubbing subtly but forcefully between her legs. He kept her immobile while he stirred her into a frenzy. She made a choked, helpless sound.

  “Are you going to come?”

  She just bobbed her head once, unable to speak as she came face-to-face with a towering wave of orgasm.

  “Let me feel it, then.”

  She heard him through a dull roar. He shifted his hand, plunging a finger into her slit, replacing his forefinger on her clit with his thumb. Just as orgasm blasted through her, he covered her mouth with his, eating her desperate cries as pleasure pulsed through her body.

  She came back to herself at the sensation of him kissing her mouth hungrily. She inhaled shakily, trying to gain her bearings, but finding it extremely difficult with her nerves still zinging in the aftermath. Around Trey’s head, she made out the lights from the skyscrapers on the far bank of the river.

  The water taxi was at a standstill.

  “All off at Monroe. This is the last stop!”

  She started in shock at the sound of the man’s voice bellowing from below. It’d been the boat captain.

  She instinctively jerked the lapels of her coat over her tingling breasts.

  “Slow down,” Trey said, his finger still inserted in her.

  She blinked at the sound of his voice. He sounded quiet, but she heard the edge of his arousal.

  “He’s not coming up two flights to get rid of us. Not in a hurry, he’s not. Did you get a good look at him when we boarded?”

  Eleanor briefly recalled the older, stout man who had taken their fare. “But we should—”

  “Shhh,” he hissed, and she saw a gleam of determination in his eyes. He withdrew from her. The next thing she knew, he was pressing his fingertips against her lips. She instinctively parted for him. He slid across her tongue, holding her stare. She whimpered and closed around him.

  His fingers were thickly lubricated with her juices.

  “Suck, Eleanor.”

  She did what he demanded without thought, tasting her essence for the first time. He made a low, rough sound of aroused satisfaction in his throat. Before she could divine his intent, he withdrew his fingers. She watched in wonder while he dipped the same two fingers into his mouth. Then he kissed her, hard and thorough, sharing the residue of her pleasure.

  The pilot shouted again, this time sounding closer. And more annoyed.

  He stood abruptly, startling her from her sex-drugged state. He grabbed her hands and helped her stand, immediately jerking up her jeans. In the distance, she heard a slow, heavy tread on the stairs. She hurried to assist him. He just continued to help her adjust her clothing, his actions methodical, but not frantic like hers were. The hard slant to his mouth gave her the impression that any harsh words the boat pilot might hurl at them for their truancy would bounce straight off him. He’d gotten what he wanted.

  And he was far from sorry.

  —

  She seemed distracted during dinner. If he’d ever thought that about other women he’d been out with before, that would have been a negative. What guy wanted to be out with a preoccupied woman? But somehow, Eleanor even made distraction fascinating.

  Perhaps distracted wasn’t the right word. She seemed dazed, but happy. He liked to think that small smile she wore and the shine in her limpid eyes had something to do with him. He was sure the rosy color of her cheeks and lips related to him, or at least what he’d done to her on the water taxi. Heat expanded in him at the memory. He watched through a narrow-eyed stare as she lifted a glass of wine to pink, slightly puffy lips and tipped the red liquid between them, her stare trained on him over the glass. He’d kissed the hell out of those lips on the taxi.

  Before the night was over, he planned to ravage them even more. Maybe that prospect was what was distracting him the most.

  It took him a moment to realize that he’d been thinking of them being on a date, even though he’d established from the first he wasn’t interested in getting involved in a relationship. When had that shift occurred?

  And what would Eleanor think of it? He found himself wanting both to know the answer to that, and dreading it at once.

  “What are you frowning about?” she asked him amusedly.

  He blinked. “Nothing. You’re not eating very much,” he said, never breaking their stare across the candlelit table. She’d ordered a salad and a side dish of fettuccine. She’d plucked at the salad ineffectively while her gaze skittered around the restaurant, and then frequently landed on him and stuck. The fettuccine hadn’t been touched. If he’d had to guess, he’d say she felt nervous about them staring at each other like moony human versions of Lady and the Tramp, and forced herself to look away from him. He, also, typically disliked displays of lovesick infatuation.

  So he couldn’t figure out why he kept getting annoyed every time she ripped her stare off him, like she did now.

  “You haven’t eaten much either,” she observed, nodding at his half-eaten plate of chicken Parmesan. He liked the sound of her voice: low and a little husky. Sexy as hell. “I guess we weren’t as hungry as we thought we were.”

  “Not for food, maybe.”

  She rolled her eyes at his lame joke, but it was her curving, lush mouth he focused on. He pushed his plate back and put his elbows at the edge of the table, leaning forward slightly.

  “Why are you so preoccupied?” he asked.

  She set down her fork and took a drink of water. “I guess I was thinking about . . .”

  She trailed off, biting her lower lip.

  “The water taxi?”

  She laughed and the color in her cheeks deepened. “Well yeah, obviously.” They shared a laugh. He had a strong urge to go over to her side of the table, push her down on the booth cushions and ravage her like an animal. Her bee-stung lips alone were turning him into a wolf, but add in the sparkle of her big eyes, and her delicate, pretty face, and the fullness of her breasts behind her sweater and the memory of how sweet her mouth was, or the incredible responsiveness of her nipples beneath his tongue and . . .

  Well, it was a wonder he could even go through the motions of being a civilized man in a restaurant.

  “Go on. You were thinking about something else, right?” he prompted her.

  “I was thinking about your bad luck with women and how you were taking a break from them.” Her gaze jumped up to his and then returned to her picked-over salad. “I mean . . . before all this.”

  “Before you walked into that coffee shop, you mean?”

  “I guess. It’s just—”

  She cut herself off and swallowed thickly.

  “What, Eleanor?” he persisted, her obvious trepidation on the topic making him even more curious.

  “Well . . . it’s . . . the windows. I mean, I’ve only seen you through them seven, maybe eight, times over the past year or so. It’s not like I was spying on you every night or something. Recently, you’ve been alone, of course. And usually, your curtains were closed . . .”

  “Yeah, okay,” he prompted when she faded off yet again. He wasn’t exactly comfortable with the topic of her having watched him having sex with other women, but it was part of Eleanor’s story. He accepted that she had a proclivity for voyeurism, even if he was far fonder of her bent for exhibitionism. When she exhibited for him, at least.

  “Well, it’s just .
. . the most I saw you take a woman to bed was twice.”

  “And you’re wondering if I’m even capable of monogamy, is that it?” he asked her dryly, sitting back in the booth.

  “No. I’m wondering, given your track record, if a long-term exclusive relationship is even something you’re really interested in, or you just think you are because you keep running into women who try to manipulate you. And when they show their true colors, you have a ready excuse to . . .”

  “Dump them?” he asked when she faded off.

  She nodded.

  “So you do think all my problems with women are down to me.”

  “No, I wasn’t trying to make it black-and-white. Things like this are usually a lot more complicated than that.”

  He shrugged and tossed his napkin on the table. “Maybe you’re right. That’s one of the things I’m trying to figure out. But the fact of the matter is, honesty is important to me. Do you know why I broke up with my last girlfriend?”

  “Alessandra, you mean?”

  “No. There was someone after Alessandra. Jamie. She was the last straw.”

  “Oh,” she mouthed before she cleared her throat. “I’m a little scared to ask. What did Jamie do?”

  “I caught her poking holes in my condom supply with a pin.”

  She blanched and leaned back in her seat. She looked genuinely appalled . . . maybe even a little sick, and Trey didn’t think it was an act.

  “That’s despicable.”

  He shrugged his agreement and took a sip of his water.

  “I’m not surprised you swore off women,” she said. He glanced up and met her stare. “I’m shocked you’re willing to be with me, to be honest.”

  “So am I, a little. But the whole thing with you, the entire setup . . . it felt different than any time before,” he admitted slowly.

  “Because I was so bald-faced about it all?”

  “Maybe.”

  He saw her throat convulse as she swallowed.

  “Usually, when I find out that a woman is a liar, it turns me off. I can’t see her in the same light. But maybe that is an excuse for me to bail.”