by Alice Gaines
He rolled away from her and opened the drawer in the bedside table. When he showed her the packet, she couldn’t hide a sheepish smile. The idea of having sex with him had so carried her away, she hadn’t thought through every detail. A man who did was worth keeping, if only for a few more days.
She took it from him, tore it open, and tossed the empty packet to the floor. “Allow me.”
He rolled onto his back. “Be my guest.”
She still had to marvel at the size and hardness of him as she placed the condom on the head of his cock and unfurled it down the sides. She could easily make his member her personal toy and joystick, and she no doubt would for the rest of their time together. After that, who knew? If he stuck around San Francisco, they could continue to hook up whenever one of them got the itch, and she could turn into an itchy woman where a lover like Peter was concerned.
This time when he rolled her onto her back, he didn’t play around with niceties, but took his place between her legs and drove his cock into her. As completely as his loving had prepared her, she took him easily, savoring the slide of each inch into her as they joined together for the first time. Once fully embedded, he paused, staring down into her eyes.
“Damn, but you feel good,” he said. “I wish I could do this all night.”
“We can try.”
He chuckled. “Sorry. I am human, after all.”
He didn’t feel like a mere human, especially when he pulled nearly out of her and thrust back in. He felt like a piston, specifically tuned to her frequency for maximum lust. The fire kindled again, and this time it would singe both of them. He was driving now, straining against her, the muscles of his arms knotted to keep him above her. Every inward surge caused him to jostle her clitoris, and soon the haze of arousal had formed around her brain. This time when she came, he’d join her. The expression on his face…excitement so intense it looked like pain…told the story, as did the silver light of pure hunger in his eyes. The constant pressure of his movements against her most sensitive spot would send her over the edge, and her spasms would bring on his climax.
Sex is supposed to be this way. The thought sprang on its own into her mind and wouldn’t go away. Your lover was supposed to make coupling addictive—something so mind-bending you’d do anything for it. Peter Breit, with his savage rhythm of in-out thrust-and-retreat had shown her something new. Pure carnality, untouched by shyness or eagerness to please. And holy shit, did it feel good.
The orgasm blinded her, throwing her into a world of sensation that began at the throbbing spot between her legs and radiated out to steal her breath, her voice, even her consciousness. When the spasms followed, her muscles grasped at his cock where it still plunged into her. Such fulfillment, such perfect possession.
Of course, he reacted. With a roar, he thrust a few more times and then stiffened as he came. They stayed that way for several seconds of bliss, her pussy contracting around him as he spilled his lust inside her. When it ended, he collapsed onto the bed and pulled her against him. As breath and sanity returned, she discovered that her cheek lay against his chest, and even now, her pussy fluttered with the aftermath of her orgasm.
As she lay there, listening to his heart slow to a normal rhythm, the knowledge struck her. Now that she’d had sex this good, she’d never be able to settle for anything less.
* * *
Peter had seen a lot of faces light up at their first in-person view of one of his cars, but he’d never expected quite the reaction the Dynamik created in Susan Christopher. The car arrived in a truck designed for transporting precious automobiles, and when the driver turned on the engine and backed his baby into the driveway, Susan gazed on it as if it were her lover. While the driver turned off the engine and produced some papers for Peter to sign to acknowledge delivery, Susan walked around the car, running her palm over the surface.
“I love this color,” she said.
“British racing green,” Peter said, as the driver climbed back into his truck and left.
“Nice,” she said. “It’s a convertible, right?”
“I’ll show you.” Peter climbed in, restarted the engine, and operated the controls that lowered the roof into the area behind the seats. Susan watched the whole time, her eyes growing wide. He always took pride in his cars, but pleasing her gave him an extra jolt of satisfaction. Although she might build houses, not automobiles, she had a good eye for design. The fact that she found his pride and joy beautiful validated his own sense of aesthetics. And he might as well admit the simple fact that he enjoyed making her happy. There was no crime in that.
“Get in. Let’s take a ride,” he said.
He didn’t have to ask her twice. She climbed into the seat beside his, caressing the tan leather of the upholstery. As they buckled their seat belts, he tried to see the car through her eyes—the polished wood of the dashboard, the state of the art computer display. He selected a disk and slipped it into the stereo. When the music began—a Mozart piano concerto—he put the car into gear and steered it down the driveway and onto the street.
Peter activated the GPS. “Tell it where you want to go.”
“Golden Gate Bridge,” she said.
“Just to the bridge?”
“I’ll tell you where to go from there,” she said.
He hadn’t planned to spend a lot of time driving around with no particular destination and nothing to accomplish, but they had been working hard the last few days. She’d stood up to all of his demands, or requirements, as she called them, both in their working hours and the time they spent in his bed. And in the sunken tub. And bent over the worktable in the kitchen.
The woman was insatiable, ready to make love at the smallest opportunity. And she treated him as if his body were made of something precious. A few times he’d managed to hold off his own orgasm long enough to watch her face as she came. Her cheeks would flush and her brown eyes would close as her pelvis jerked upward. More often, the convulsions of her sex pushed him past the edge, and his climax came right after hers.
With all of that, only a man made of stone could fail to become at least a bit smitten, and he was mere flesh and blood. So it shouldn’t surprise him that her joy in his creation—the car of his own engineering and design—gave him a warm feeling in the area of his heart. As they traveled the city, he followed the instructions from the GPS and caught glimpses of her whenever he could.
At the bridge, people on the walkways stopped and stared as they drove by. The fog remained offshore, and the sun beat down on them. Susan raised her hands over her head and stretched.
“Where to, your ladyship?” he asked.
“Keep driving until we hit a freeway,” she said. “I want to feel this car move.”
“It isn’t the autobahn, you know. There are speed limits.”
She quirked a brow. “Do you obey rules?”
“When I have to.”
“Chicken.”
A Dynamik got attention wherever it went, and this particular one still had the British plates. Still, getting stopped for speeding would win him some free promotion. All of Northern California and the United States would soon learn that Breit Motorcars was building a factory in the middle of San Francisco with an eye toward supplying wealthy driving enthusiasts with the sort of luxury automobile they’d only previously been able to order from Europe.
At the other side of the bridge, Susan directed him to connect with a freeway, and he opened the throttle to let the engine roar. Just to please her, he flew down the fast lane at a speed well over the limit. Her skin flushed, much the way it did in the middle of their lovemaking.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” she called over the noise of the engine. “Do you care?”
Normally he would. He’d have meetings scheduled, phone calls to return, Very Important Things to do. He’d committed to this drive on impulse and didn’t have his laptop. If he hadn’t brought his cell, he’d have been cut off from the gr
eater world completely. At least he had his wallet.
She sat up straight. “Take that exit.”
“Something special there?” he asked.
“You’ll see.”
The signs directed them to Mount Tamalpais, and soon they were climbing a winding road toward the summit of the mountain. Away from the bay, the air grew hotter, the sun fiercer. A warm breeze played among the dry grasses that turned California golden every summer, and a raptor hovered in the distance.
Susan pointed to a turnout, and they parked. The moment the engine went silent, a hush fell over them, only disturbed by the breeze. In the middle of the week, they had the area to themselves, and he took her hand in his and guided them to a spot where they could sit under a tree and stare out at San Francisco Bay below them.
He sat with his back against the trunk, and she made a place for herself between his legs, leaning against his chest. He didn’t do things like this. Women took his arm. He didn’t hold their hands. He never sat on the ground without at least a blanket under him, and he never assumed a position so intimate outside of his bedroom. Susan had an easy way about her that was rubbing off on him. If anyone else found out, his reputation as a cutthroat businessman might suffer.
“Tell me about the car,” she said.
“I hope you don’t prefer it to me.”
“Well…if it screws as well as it drives…”
“Minx.” He nipped her earlobe.
She giggled and squirmed. If she wasn’t careful, she’d get his motor revving. “Seriously. Who thought up a magnificent machine like that?”
“My father.”
“Really?” She glanced over her shoulder at him.
“He worked for one of the large German manufacturers.”
“An Englishman?”
“He was German. So am I,” he said. There, he’d told her. No big secret, but he normally didn’t discuss his past with people.
“No way.”
“Way.” He kissed the tip of her nose.
“But the accent,” she said. “The knighthood.”
“I cultivated the first. I earned the second by building cars for a few royals,” he said.
“But why?”
“It’s my persona.” He could follow that up with an explanation. Their incredible intimacy of the last few days gave her the right to know who he really was. Still, if she could accept him at face value, things could remain easy between them. When the week ended, they could walk away from each other. But did he want that, really?
She turned back to face the view. “What do you have to hide from people?”
“It’s a long story.”
“And you don’t have the time to share.” She stiffened. When he’d first met her, he never would have noticed the subtle change in her posture. Now he understood everything about her body.
“Is it really that important?”
She picked a blade of grass and twirled it between her thumb and forefinger. “I guess not.”
He’d disappointed her. That shouldn’t have bothered him, or at least not as much as it did. He’d come to care for her, maybe because of the incredible sex. Or maybe because of her goodness. Her youth and idealism. Whatever the cause, feeling her stiffen in his arms didn’t sit right.
“My father was an engineer,” he said after a moment. “He made high-performance cars for his employer. When he became ill with the cancer that killed him, they fired him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He had a wife and young child to support and no career.” The memories of that time had lost much of their detail over the years, but the feelings remained. His father in constant pain as his body wasted away. His mother trying to hide her tears. The hushed conversations between the two of them that they hadn’t realized their son had overheard. His fears that something had gone terribly wrong in his life and he had no power to make things better. And then the terrible knowledge that he’d been right to be afraid and the worst had happened.
“My mother hated the company,” he said. “She talked constantly about how they’d killed my father and ruined our lives.”
She leaned her head back so that her hair brushed the side of his face. “That had to be hard for a little kid to hear.”
“I vowed to get revenge, although at the time, I had no idea how.”
“Did you?”
“If you have to ask, you don’t know me.”
“Isn’t that the point of this exercise?” she said. “Getting to know you.”
“I thought you just wanted a ride in my Dynamik.”
“Then maybe we’d better get going.” She moved to get up, but he held her against him. If she really wanted to learn about him, she would. If she tried, she could find out about him on her own. If they were to continue to be intimate—and he wasn’t letting her out of his bed without a fight—she might as well hear the whole story from him.
“Ironically, I used my father’s work to do his previous employer in,” he said. “He’d left some sketches he’d made on his own, plus notes on fuel efficiency, steering, that sort of thing. He’d been a brilliant engineer. He only lacked the killer instinct for business.”
“So you built his car.”
“I built the exact car the company’s customers would die to have, and I put it out on the autobahn where they’d see it…with the help of a notorious baroness,” he said.
“Was she your lover?” Susan asked softly.
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “I’ve never claimed to be a saint.”
“So she drove the car around Germany, and you got free promotion.”
“It worked. I had more orders than I could fill,” he said. “That made customers want my cars even more.”
“What happened to the other company?” she said.
“I bought them out a few years ago and fired the management.” He sighed. “They weren’t the same men who’d ruined my father, but it still felt good.”
“Wow. Remind me not to piss you off.”
“You couldn’t.” He took her chin in his hand and turned her head to face him. “You’re young and idealistic. You’ll only do good in this world.”
“Still, I hope I never have to compete with you,” she said.
“The only competition I’m interested in right now is to see who can get back to the car first,” he said. “I’m hungry. Let’s find a restaurant.”
“You’re on.” In a flash, she’d jumped up and headed toward the car at a run. He didn’t follow immediately. Let her win the race. He’d settle for a few moments to take in the view and bask in an emotional closeness with another person. It had been so damned long.
Chapter Five
They never got back to the condominium that day. Susan ordered Peter to drive and drive, and he did so happily, glancing over at her from time to time. He’d never taken a day off quite like this one. Even his relaxation was carefully timed in the world he normally inhabited. Leaving for a short drive and not coming back took more freedom than he usually allowed himself. Susan acted as if she could do this every day.
They ended up in a tiny town on Bolinas Bay, a narrow inlet of the Pacific bordered by marshes filled with migratory birds. The tang of salt hung in the air, and ocean breezes testified that the fog would soon return. After a stop at the local store for necessities, they found a bed-and-breakfast and checked in rather than make the trip back to the city.
The smile on Susan’s face when she saw the room told him that, once again, he’d done a Good Thing. On the first floor at the rear of the old house, their space included a bath with a claw-footed tub, a four-poster bed covered by a handmade quilt, and a bouquet of daisies in the ewer and basin on the dresser. She dropped the paper bag with their toothbrushes and other things on the seat of a rocking chair and headed directly toward the small deck. After sliding the lanai door open, she stepped out onto the redwood planks, her arms raised out from her sides.
“The fog’s coming back,” she said. “Have you ever
watched it whoosh in from the ocean?”
“Mostly I just notice it as a bank of gray overhead.”
“You lack imagination.”
He stepped outside and stood next to her. Chimes sounded in the distance as the wind picked up. He shivered and wrapped his arms around his ribs. “It’s cold.”
“Of course, it’s cold. This is San Francisco.”
“It’s Marin,” he corrected.
“Same fog,” she said. “Look, there it is.”
She pointed, but she needn’t have bothered. A white blanket appeared on the horizon, streaming into the bay. Tree limbs bent in its currents, leaves turning up their silver undersides. Everything within sight turned fuzzy around the edges until the wading birds resembled stately ghosts.
“It doesn’t usually come down this low,” she said.
“I’m glad we didn’t try to drive back in it.” He’d already put the top back up on the car, and they would have had sufficient heat, but navigating winding roads in this cloak of fog would have given him white knuckles.
“I’m glad we stayed too.” She walked to him, and he folded her in his arms. Even with their combined body heat, the cold sank into his bones, but he wouldn’t have missed the magic of the fog nor Susan’s joy at sharing it with him.
“Shall we find a place to eat?” he asked. “How about that little seafood restaurant we passed?”
She tipped her head up to him, her brown eyes sparkling. “Later.”
“What would you like to do now?” He didn’t really need to ask that question. Her sly, little smile told him everything he needed to know.
“I think you ought to make love to me,” she said.
“Too cold. I’ll shrink.”
She pushed his shoulder. “Not out here.”
“That’s a relief,” he said. “My manhood might have been in question for a moment there.”
“I never doubt your manhood.”
He chuckled. “You’re much too flattering, but please don’t stop.”
