by Ally Blake
His eyes slid to hers, dark, devilish, dangerous. “I’d be very happy to sweep everything off that desk of yours right about now.”
“No!” The computers were leased, and she’d never get her notes back into order! “My room!” she said, pointing the way.
Nate hitched her as if she weighed next to nothing. “No, wait, it’s being painted.” She tugged at the near-dry curl curving against her cheek.
“Sasssskia...” he growled.
“What?”
The glint in his eye said everything.
“Screw it,” she said, and wriggled out of his strong arms.
She pressed him right to the wall in the hall, tugged at his sweater, her mouth going dry at the flash of sinew and muscle, the smattering of golden hair on his chest, the darker trail curling about his navel before disappearing down the front of his jeans, and the eye-popping bulge a few inches lower.
She practically tore his T over his head, her hands at his chest, running eagerly down the bumps and planes. Her mouth followed, revelling in his taste, his insane heat, the thunder of his heart.
When she reached Nate’s belt line he had other ideas.
He spun her about, pressing her against the wall, making a newly hung picture down the hall bounce precariously. Nate braced his hand against the wall by her head, wrapped the other around her back. The press of his hard body left her in no doubt as to how much he wanted this. Wanted her.
Desire rose inside her, scraping at her insides.
She slid a hand behind his neck, lifted onto her toes and kissed him for all she was worth.
“Why do you always taste so amazing?” he groaned against her neck.
“Goats’ milk soap,” she breathed. “It’s my one descent into unadulterated decadence. Have to drive to the Dandenongs to buy it. Costs a mint.”
This was met with silence.
“It’s lush. You should try it.”
“Don’t worry. I am.” With that his tongue lapped the rise of her collarbone, sending shivers so hard and fast through her body her knees gave way.
Luckily Nate was there to slide his knee between hers, pinning her to the wall.
“I got you,” he said, and proceeded to show her just how by lifting both arms above her head and dragging her sweater off in one swift move, leaving her in a pink bikini top and a wave of goosebumps which Nate proceeded to kiss until each and every one melted away.
“Your grand renovation include a pool?” he said, his thumbs running along the underside of her bikini top.
“Laundry day,” she said, her voice croaky as a whole new wave of goosebumps followed his touch. This time he let them be, till she squirmed at the pleasure and the pain.
His hands learnt her curves, what little there was of them, but the hitch in his breath, the reverence of his touch made her feel like a pin-up. The pulse of desire between her legs now so insistent it was a wonder he couldn’t hear it.
And then his head dipped to kiss the swell of her breasts. When his teeth grazed her nipple through her bikini top, and then he sucked it into his mouth, leaving the fabric moist in the fiery air, her hands moved to his head, desperate to stop the ache, desperate for more.
Then he was down on his knees, kissing each of her ribs, dipping his tongue into her navel, rolling her tights down her legs, scraping his teeth over a hipbone, hitting every sweet spot and a few more she hadn’t even known she had.
As he came back up his hands slid over the backs of her legs, behind her trembling knees, caressing her weakening thighs, grabbing her ass and pressing her against him—which was when she came to from the drenching red haze of desire enough to realise he was naked too. And ready. So ready.
She ran a hand over his perfect backside, glorying in the heat of him, the hardness, the pure and utter masculinity. She wondered how she’d ever thought him cool, untouchable. This was as real as it got.
He lifted her knee to wrap it about his hip. The heft of him was nudging at her core. She bucked at the sensation, her body pressing back, moving with him of its own accord, desperate to bring all this swirling need to completion.
She jumped into his arms, trusting him not to let her fall.
His eyes found hers—so hot, so dark, so intense—as if awaiting her final yes. She kissed him—open-mouthed acquiescence.
With his hands on her backside and a groan at her mouth, he pressed into her achingly gently, with more restraint than she could have managed. When she sighed, and pressed back, he finally drove into her, deep, full, a millimetre from too much. Then deeper again, till she had to pull away from his kiss to catch even the tiniest breath.
She closed her eyes, blind to all but the thick, rich, heady sensation pummelling her every which-way. It was too much. It was impossible. It was everything. And all too soon every skerrick of feeling contracted to a single point where her whole world stilled, throbbed, pressed in on her like the most beautiful pressure she never wanted to end.
But end it did—in a splintering of sensation that rent a shout of pleasure from her so loud her own ears rang.
Nate took her scream in his mouth, muffling the sound with a kiss so lush, so tender, she felt lost. As if she’d fallen anyway. Was falling still—even as he held her tight and pinned her to the wall with his final thrusts before his release came.
Trembling, spent, her muscles quivering in afterglow—or aftershock—she held on tight, her hands gripping his slick shoulders, her legs clamped to his hard hips.
He let her down slowly, easing out of her with infinite care—not as if they’d just had blinding hot sex against the wall, but as if she was something soft and precious. Even as her feet found purchase she was shaking so hard there was no way she’d be able to stand upright.
“I got you,” he said again, hands on her hips, forehead resting against hers, keeping her steady.
She could feel the deep staccato beating of his heart, and was overwhelmed to find it as erratic as her own.
Real, she thought. He felt so real. And for a silly little moment she wished it was all real. Him, this, her feelings. Everything.
Which snapped her smartly back to real life. To the fact that she wanted it all and he wanted nothing. To the fact that he was so fanatically independent he’d never budge enough to let someone take care of him. And that that was all she knew how to do.
“That was some renegotiation,” she said, trying to snap the moment before it snapped her.
A beat bled by in which she wondered if she’d gone too far, made light of something too significant. Then his laughter rumbled through them both, deep and satisfying. “Wasn’t it just?”
Nate trailed his hand from hip to arm and back again, and Saskia found it hard to hang on to reality at all.
“Why the hell did we not do this earlier?” he asked.
“From memory, we were being smart.”
“Yeah? You’re probably right.” He bent down, gathered his gear. “Bathroom?”
She angled her head down the hall. “Second on the left.”
He laid a kiss on her neck, followed by a quick swipe of his tongue, then walked that way, giving Saskia a superb view of beauty incarnate. A sexual dynamo. A frustrating, hard-headed, stubborn example of a man. A danger to the heart of any woman who crossed his charismatic path.
She was in so much trouble.
At the door he looked back. A grin spread across his face—a happy grin—leaving in its aftermath a clench in her belly that pierced the pleasure-induced numbness that held sway all through the rest of her. Then he shook his head once and disappeared.
Slapping a hand across her eyes, Saskia thanked her lucky stars the fire was still roaring as the night air cooled her damp skin. She was also thankful that she’d shaved her legs.
Crushing on Nate from afar was one thing.
Sharing a few kisses was flirting with danger. But what had just happened—that inferno of desire, that wanton drive to take and be taken... It was still too soon. Her body was still humming from the effects, all of her too damn raw, to decipher what that was.
The old cuckoo clock in her lounge room cuckooed—seven o’clock.
Lissy!
She reached for her phone to turn Lissy around before she arrived with Indian, then realised she was butt-naked and her phone was nowhere to be found. In a flash of inspiration, she grabbed her bikini top from the floor, quickly opened the front door and hung it from the handle outside and slammed the door shut.
It was no tie on the door, but it would have to do!
When Saskia turned back, Ernest—tail wagging, eyes bright—met her nose to nose.
“Hey buddy,” she said. “Did you catch any of that?”
Ernest gave her nose a gentle lick of support.
“I know, the guy brought Oreos. This too shall pass, but we can have some fun till then, right?”
Ernest thumped his tail on the floor before sliding across the floorboards to his possie in the lounge. One thump was for yes, right?
She heard the shower being turned on. Her head kicked in that direction. That shower was touchy. Only right she should show her visitor how it worked.
SEVEN
First thing Monday morning Saskia sat in the foyer at Dating By Numbers, humming to herself. Her eyes roved happily over the golden-framed artwork, the fresh flowers on every surface, the discreetly frosted glass walls, the thick white carpet that must be a bitch to keep clean.
With many online businesses run from a home offices these days, instead the dating site took up the top floor of a beautiful old building in elegant Kew. It seemed there was a lot of money to be made in facilitating the search for true love. And in random hook-ups, one night stands, invites to friends of friends’ weddings...
“Saskia? Marlee Kent,” said a tall, elegant woman with a slick dark bob. She could have been aged anywhere from early forties to late fifties.
Saskia pulled herself from the overly soft couch and shook the woman’s hand, before following her through padded velvet doors into a discreetly elegant office beyond, where on a tidy desk sparkled two big glass bowls—one filled with Baci chocolate kisses, the other with condoms.
“So you joined the site?” Marlee asked as they sat, her long red nails wrapped around the handle of an old-fashioned china coffeepot as she poured without asking how Saskia liked it.
Saskia reached into her bag for her yellow legal pad. “I did. A few weeks back.”
“And what did you think?”
“It’s very thorough. As a researcher, I like thorough.”
Marlee’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “And you’ve found someone?”
“Excuse me?” Saskia said, wondering if it was written all over her face that she’d been on the receiving end of some very hot and thorough loving only a couple of hours before, when Nate had turned up at her door before work for a breakfast special.
“You mentioned a case study in your email?”
“Oh. Yes. Well, studying him, getting the man’s perspective, has been most helpful.”
“I see.” Marlee clearly saw plenty, as that time the smile did reach her eyes. “Then my job here is done.”
“No,” Saskia said, her cheeks threatening to ripen like a tomato. “It’s not like that. We’re not...romantically involved.” Financially, sexually, mutually helpingly, at times frustratingly, but not romantically.
After he’d left that first night she’d found the dossier. Her heart had fluttered as she’d opened it, her stomach tumbling as she’d giddily imagined what he’d revealed to her only to find a few random titbits such as his favourite footy players, how he liked his coffee, the phone number of the best dry cleaner in East Melbourne. She’d thought he’d turned a corner. Instead he’d given a lollipop to quieten a noisy toddler.
And while Nate might be charming, hot as the sun and could make her melt with a whisper of breath, the touch of his lips, the slide of a hand, even after he’d given her the most exquisite sex of her life, she didn’t feel any closer to breaking down that door.
“So, honey,” said Marlee, gently breaking into her reverie, “what do you need from me?”
“Well, okay,” Saskia said, pulling herself together. “I have the preliminaries down. Stats nearly done. The who, how old, how many—the dry substance. But it always helps to have a hook. A cheeky bite to get people talking over the water cooler. I had a crazy idea for a formula—”
She shook her head. It wasn’t going to happen. Not right now anyway. Maybe one day. Maybe she’d have to rely on her own experience to nail that one.
“Now I’m thinking about the lies people tell in the search for The One.”
“Such as?”
“Age, weight, interests, experiences. From what I saw, people lie about everything. But how will they ever be able to find someone who loves them just the way they are if they’re not being honest about who they are?”
“You’re a romantic.”
“Aren’t you?”
Marlee’s laughter twinkled with just the right quality. Saskia shot her eyes to the glass bowls, afraid they might shatter.
“We discourage it, of course, in our welcome pack—lying about oneself, not romance—but you can’t stop people from morphing the truth. It’s human nature. I blow-dry my hair, put on make-up, wear high heels. I’ve laughed at jokes told by men who simply weren’t that funny. We create an outer identity to hide our innate vulnerability. But even deeper, it springs from the most primal desire we harbour—to land the alpha male.”
Saskia looked down at her notes, her pen hovering, but she wasn’t sure where to start. Marlee’s claim made scientific sense, and yet she’d never tried to land an alpha male. The men she dated were barely even betas.
Funny, she’d picked on Nate for fighting against the human condition, the biological imperative, and it seemed she was doing the same. Huh! At least now she’d gone alpha, she could see the appeal.
Putting Nate out of her mind as best she could, she said, “So you think it’s natural to lie? Even when looking for love?”
Marlee steepled her fingers beneath her chin as she looked Saskia dead in the eye, her heavily made up eyes hypnotic. “Are you looking for love, Saskia?”
Saskia swallowed. “Oh, sure. Of course. Well, not right now. There have been...men. And it hasn’t worked. For myriad reasons.” Like grand theft. “But I’m sure I’d welcome it if it came calling. Wouldn’t we all?”
Marlee shrugged—a spiky lift of her sharp shoulders. “Everyone’s different. Some people want it so badly you can see the desperation pouring off them in waves. Others want it less than root canal. You, on the other hand, confuse me, Ms Bloom. You have a neat little figure, just-rolled-out-of-bed hair, with a little more make-up your eyes could be stunning, and yet with all that potential you dress like you’ve walked off the set of Oliver. I’m a scholar of human body language, and you don’t give off the usual signs at all.”
While Saskia reeled under this blatant and not altogether flattering character assessment, Marlee brought her coffee to her red lips, her dark bob swinging precisely against her cheek as she took a sip. “What does love look like to you, Saskia Bloom?”
Saskia’s mouth popped open before slamming closed. Because the truth was she had no idea.
“Perhaps the thing isn’t lying about who you are, but misrepresenting your true desires—whatever they are.”
Saskia’s brain sifted through all this new information as if it was creating a fresh Rolodex.
“So, does your young man know how you feel about him?”
“My young who?” Saskia said, shoving her legal pad back in her bag and practically sh
oving her head in with it to hide the rush of blood to her cheeks.
“Darling, this is my field, and I make a fine living at it. Lie to me, lie to him—I don’t care. Just don’t be silly enough to lie to yourself.”
Saskia closed her eyes shut tight, stopped fiddling and with a sharp outshot of breath that flicked a curl skyward she looked at Marlee and asked, “How?”
“Take a breath. Still your mind. Forget yourself. Follow your heart.”
“Now you sound like the romantic.”
“Do I?”
Saskia left not long after, her head spinning with everything Marlee Kent had given her. There were nuggets of gold for the infographic, quotes galore she and Lissy could weave into the piece. But as for the rest?
She knew she wanted to love and be loved. Growing up near invisible to the only family she’d ever had, she’d known that since before she even knew what the want deep in her belly meant.
As for what love looked like? On that score she’d done what she’d always done and used her head. She’d played the numbers, and shortened the odds by choosing men according to how her skill set would complement theirs. She was energetic, organised, liked being in charge and was quietly terrified that she was unlovable. And therefore had gravitated to a string of losers who’d...proven her theory over and over again.
Forget yourself, Marlee had said. Follow your heart.
Once at her car, Saskia stuck her key in the driver’s-side door—the remote locking hadn’t worked since Stu had hit the thing with the moving truck—then bumped the crumpled panel with her hip to pop the door open.
Take a breath. Still your mind.
She’d tried that after Stu had left, she honestly had. Even going so far as to attend a couple of Lissy’s power-yoga classes, which had sounded like a contradiction in terms and turned out to be exactly that.
But she’d been burned so badly she’d not have found love if it had jumped up in front of her with a flashing sign telling her what it was.
At least she was back on her feet financially and would soon be able to cut back on her overwhelming workload. She’d have time to breathe, time to date again. And maybe this time she’d give herself half a chance; with a little less fear, a little more forethought, a little more faith.
