As she crossed their line of sight, the old lady turned and winked, so quickly Lily could have easily missed it. Aidan did miss it, and he gave Lily a puzzled look when she laughed.
“Nothing,” Lily said. The moment was past, and the humor would be gone by the time she explained. “I like this town.”
“Positive reinforcement. It works fast. Even I almost like Paris right now.” Aidan rested his forehead against hers and let the weight of his body clamp her to the wall for a moment. His hardening length pressed against the ridge of her pelvis, almost painful.
“Hotel,” he said at last, as if reminding himself of the goal, before stepping away and tugging her back down the street.
Chapter Three
“I can’t believe we haven’t been spotted,” Lily murmured while Aidan grappled with his hotel room key. None of the company members had been hanging out in the lobby or sharing their elevator. Nobody was in evidence in the hallway outside Aidan’s room.
He was opening the door when Lily was struck with doubt. “Crap. What if one of the dancers comes to my room in the middle of the night, needing something?”
Aidan glanced up and down the hallway. “Get in while the coast is clear,” he suggested, shooing her into the room and following quickly so they could close the door. “We can stay here for a while then go to your room. If anybody knocks, I can hide in the bathroom or something.”
It was a measure of Lily’s arousal that this sounded like a responsible, reasonable plan to her. Aidan was already kissing her again, and she didn’t stop him. She’d made her choice, and abandoning herself to it was blissful mindlessness.
The nondescript room could have been in any hotel in any country, she thought when they finally surfaced for air and she had a chance to notice her surroundings. In the United States, it would be over-air-conditioned and smell faintly damp. Here in Paris, it wasn’t air-conditioned at all but it still seemed damp. The fittings and furnishings were recent but the building was old.
Aidan had turned a lamp on and was now rummaging in his suitcase, which sat open on the webbed stand next to the bed. “I’m looking for, um…damn, how long do condoms last, anyway?”
“Oh. Good idea. I’m on the Pill though. Have you really not done this in—how long ago was your divorce?”
“A year. The last time was a few months before that. I haven’t wanted to, I haven’t met anybody that—shit! I thought there were still some in here.”
Lily almost laughed but managed to keep it in. Aidan was so tense he was trembling, and she tried to put herself in his place. Waiting so long, unexpectedly getting the chance to get laid, thwarted at the last minute because he couldn’t find the condoms he vaguely remembered putting in his suitcase over a year ago. He seemed on the verge of epic disappointment but it was sort of adorable.
“Aidan, it’s okay,” she reassured him. “After that long in your luggage they’d probably be shot anyway.”
“It’s okay?” He turned to her with almost manic hope in his eyes. “You’re sure?”
Lily nodded. “As long as you don’t have any nasty infections you need to mention.”
“No.”
“Okay then.”
The lull that followed would have been awkward if it had lasted any longer. Aidan saved it by closing the few feet of distance between them and taking Lily’s face in his hands, looking down at her in wonder for a moment before bending to kiss her again.
It was different this time. They wouldn’t have to stop this time. Lily blushed when Aidan slid his hand under her shirt, skimming it over her lacy bra and letting his thumb catch on her nipple. The bra had a front clasp, easily undone, and Adrian flicked it open with decided expertise before backtracking to unbutton Lily’s gauzy blouse.
She helped him impatiently, then yanked the shirt and bra off together before realizing he might have preferred to do that himself.
Breathe, she told herself. Even her mental voice was trembling.
Aidan looked drunk on need, his eyes heavy as he studied her.
“Can we turn the light off?” Lily asked shyly, but Aidan shook his head.
“No. No way. I have to see you.”
He made short work of her skirt, leaving Lily in scanty lace underwear and a pair of black jazz shoes. She had barely toed them off when he pulled her close again, his mouth lingering on hers while his hands explored the angles and curves of her body. He seemed to approve heartily of everything he found. Soon Lily noticed the solid evidence of that approval, poking her lower belly as Aidan petted her. She reached for him boldly, cupping her hand around the rigid bulge in his slacks and exploring its dimensions.
Aidan hissed and let his head drop back, struggling to control his breath for a moment before he could speak. “Ten seconds of that will do me in right now, I have to warn you.”
“I’ll stop at five,” she assured him. She made it seven, grinning as he swallowed hard and opened his eyes again to glare at her ravenously.
“Get in the bed,” he ordered in a low, edgy voice. He took a step forward and she backed up automatically, then squeaked as her knees hit the edge of the bed and buckled, tipping her onto her back before she could recover. Aidan smirked down at her and took a second to divest himself of his shirt before kneeling next to the bed.
Lily pointed her toes, searching for the floor to steady herself, but Aidan had already shifted between her thighs and raised her legs to his shoulders, depriving her of even that small amount of grounding.
She squeaked again when he pressed his lips firmly against the soft skin at the top of her inner thigh and sucked hard. The little bite of pain was a sharp contrast to the flood of needy heat that rushed to her sex as Aidan traced the line between her hip and pelvis with the tip of his tongue.
Lily had planned to be cool, worldly about the whole encounter, as she had failed to be the last time. Instead she found herself whimpering, grinding her hips against nothing in the hope of more contact. Shameless. Possibly pathetic.
She didn’t care. She just wanted more, more of Aidan’s mouth and fingers. She wanted the hard cock she had groped so brazenly through his trousers. Lily no longer cared that it was a bad, bad idea to get involved with him. When Aidan hooked a finger around the sodden lace of her underwear and pulled it aside to expose her pussy, Lily cared only about how close his mouth was to where she craved it.
And once he began tasting her, licking slow lines along her slit while his fingers pulled her folds wider, she only cared about coming. He had reduced her world to that one issue, and that single need consumed her.
“You taste incredible,” he whispered into the trimmed curls that covered her mound. His tongue flicked out to find her clitoris, and Lily thought she would explode if he teased her any more. She had imagined him talented at this, but her imagination hadn’t come anywhere close to the reality.
She didn’t explode. He continued to tease. His tongue played her clit like an instrument, his fingers dipping farther into her pussy. Lily keened, pleading in a stream of almost incoherent words for him to make her come, and Aidan chuckled heartlessly.
“Where’s the fun in that? No, I want to make you wait. I want to be inside you when you come.”
Lily opened her eyes and looked daggers at him. “That’s cruel.”
“I like to think of it as goal-oriented,” he said with maddening calm, and pressed a fingertip lightly against her clit as he stroked two fingers of the other hand in and out of her drenched cunt.
“You’re a tease.” Her heart wasn’t in the insult and she knew he could tell that. He could see right through her at the moment. Seldom had Lily felt so deliciously defenseless. “Oh, right there. Harder? Please?”
“If you really wanted it harder, you’d be doing it yourself already instead of lying here with those amazing legs spread out so I can eat your pussy.”
“This whole thing is crazy,” she whispered.
“Admit it. That’s a huge part of the appeal.” He dipped his head
down and licked her again, wresting a moan from Lily’s lips before she could stop herself. “I want to fuck you. I’ve wanted to fuck you since before I recognized you. I want to feel you come all over my cock. I want to make you scream, Lily.”
He was close to doing that already, she thought. But he seemed to know exactly how far he could push it and still keep her from tipping over the edge. His fingers pumped smoothly into her, too well lubricated by her own arousal to give her the friction she craved. He had eased up on her clit, giving her a flicker of pressure every so often, only enough to keep her arousal painfully high.
“You couldn’t scream that night we did it, remember?” A lick, a thrust. Lily whimpered and Aidan chuckled in an all too knowing way before he continued. “We had to be so quiet, so we wouldn’t get caught. But listening to you try to hold back was so hot, it didn’t matter. Now I want to hear it, though. Will you do that, Lily?”
“Please.” She couldn’t believe she was actually begging. She knew she must sound pitiful.
“Oh, that’s nice. Beg some more. I love it.”
“God, you’re mean!”
His evil snicker resonated against her pelvis, prompting a whimper from Lily. “But you like it. Interesting.”
She covered her eyes with her hands. “I’m going to regret this, I can already tell.”
“Did you the last time?”
She didn’t answer. He moved away and Lily could hear the rustle of his clothes, the soft whirr of his zipper. She thought if she refused to look, things might seem less real. Consequences might fail to apply.
Lily wanted him in the worst way. It was the first time she’d ever connected with the idea of specifically wanting cock, but she had to acknowledge that was part of it. Aidan’s was long, she remembered, and she had thought of it as thick back when her experience was more limited.
She felt the teasing brush of fingers against her cunt and uncovered her eyes. Aidan was leaning over her with his weight on one hand, watching her, touching her. She wondered if she looked as sick with lust as he did. As if they would both die if sex didn’t happen very, very soon.
“Lily?”
It was the first time he had seemed uncertain in all of this. She almost wished she hadn’t looked. He was at the starting gate, but he was poised to stop if he needed to. Reaching for him, she whispered, “Now.”
He just ran his fingers over her slit again, dipping in and out at the center of each circuit. “Did you regret it the last time?”
“No.”
“Me either.”
He looked ready to say something else, but then he shook it off and bent down to kiss her. Tender but urgent. Lily felt his silky, unsheathed cock brush her pussy and lifted her hips in silent agreement as he pushed his way inside. Still thick, even by her more informed standards, and—oh—still long. In this position, with his weight behind each thrust, he struck deeper than she remembered. It hurt a bit at first, until she lifted her legs to his waist.
They both groaned as the angle shifted, and a deep shudder passed through Aidan’s body the next time he ground against her. So deep now, and his belly slapped gently against hers as their hips worked. Sweat, heat and the gentle sound of bodies colliding.
“Fuck,” he whispered, “so good. Too good.”
Lily murmured an agreement. She had been turned-on to start with, so ready to come that even those first few thrusts had been nearly enough to tip her over the edge. Nearly. Now the pressure was different, and it always took her time to adjust and get the moment back. But not long, at this rate. Already the hot thrill had started creeping through her veins again.
Now that they had started, she didn’t want it to end so soon. Aidan was so close to her, the sharp angles of his face slicing through her field of vision. His smoothly muscled stomach felt delicious against hers each time they moved together, and Lily ran her fingers over his skin in delight. His body was so firm, so real, so hot where it slid into her with increasing speed and determination. Her own body was on fire with longing, the need to come warring with the need to feel exactly what she felt at this very instant.
When they were finished, that would be another thing. But what they were doing now, this precise sensation, was something Lily had been missing for seven years. She hadn’t realized it until she felt it again.
Aidan smoothed a hand over her hair, caressing the side of her face, and looked into her eyes. “Lily…”
That did it. Her control flew off in wisps, blown away by the shock wave. The climax started hot and burned hotter, until Lily lost her sense of place and only knew Aidan, his body over hers, his throbbing cock deep inside her as he came, his strained voice saying her name again as they struggled through the aftershocks together.
She came back to Earth slowly, because she wanted to stay in heaven. Aidan was kissing her, his lips grazing hers as their breaths mingled. He was still semi-hard inside her and when she clenched around him, he let out a chuckling groan.
“I think I grayed out for a second there.”
Lily grinned, still punch-drunk. “Me too.”
Aidan sighed and rolled to one side, pulling her with him and arranging her leg over his hip so he could stay inside her. “Paris is really growing on me.”
Laughing, she nestled her head into the crook of Aidan’s shoulder. “I’m glad I could help.”
“What’s with our timing though?”
She shrugged, too sated and happy to ruin things by overanalyzing them. Idly she trailed her fingers through the crisp black hairs at the center of Aidan’s chest, trying to remember if they’d even been there seven years ago.
* * * * *
When Lily returned to her room, Aidan insisted on coming with her. He pulled on sweats and running shoes, the better to make a discreet morning escape. They took another lucky, unobserved trip through the halls and arrived at Lily’s room unseen. Once there, she was immediately nervous all over again, unsure of the etiquette. Should she put pajamas on, wash her face? Was it a given that they’d have sex again before going back to sleep? Was it too domestic to ask him which side he wanted to sleep on?
Stalling for time, she picked up her hairbrush from the low dresser. When she looked into the mirror, she saw a flushed, rumpled girl staring back. A girl with kiss-reddened lips and eyes that were a little too sleepy. Almost sultry, which wasn’t a word Lily would have ever applied to herself.
Then she saw Aidan’s face peering over her shoulder, every bit as mussed and twice as sensual. He was looking at her, not into the mirror.
He leaned in, almost whispering in her ear, “No regrets.”
Something tickled at the back of Lily’s mind, and she reached for it until it surfaced. “What were you going to say earlier tonight, when I asked you if you had regrets the last time?”
“No regrets, that’s all I said,” he reminded her. “I don’t have any about this time either.”
“No, you were going to say something else and stopped yourself. Don’t lie.”
“Okay, okay. I was going to say my only regret was leaving it like we did. I really liked you. I know—”
“We were about to go live in different states. There was no way we could’ve—”
“It would have only led to a stupid attempt at a long-distance relationship, and then a breakup. I know. As I’ve since discovered, I suck at long-distance relationships and that’s why I’m divorced. So I didn’t say that was a regret because it wasn’t, not exactly.” Aidan sighed and pulled her back against his chest, securing his arms around her waist. “I’m sorry we didn’t keep in touch, but I’m glad we didn’t try it, only to fail. I’m glad that when I learned that lesson, it wasn’t at your expense.”
Lily thought about that for a moment, putting the brush back down on the dresser and folding her hands over Aidan’s arms. “I’m glad too, but I guess that makes me a little sorry for your ex-wife since you did learn it at her expense.”
“My own expense too. I didn’t want to tell you this,”
he pointed out, “because I knew it would come out all wrong.”
“I really liked you too.”
“I didn’t just mean the sex,” he added.
“Neither did I. But nothing’s changed, Aidan. We still live on opposite coasts. We can’t even date. Which puts us right back where we were seven years ago, when we agreed it could only be a one-time deal.”
Aidan stepped away and Lily’s heart started to break, but he was only pulling her toward the bed. “We were both wrong about that, weren’t we?” he mused. “It wasn’t a one-time deal, because here we are. Who knows what else we were wrong about? We’re both too tired to think rationally about any of this right now though. Let’s sleep on it.”
She let him undress her for the second time that night, then they crawled into bed and fell asleep holding each other, finding comfort where they could in the face of an uncertain future.
Chapter Four
Aidan took Lily’s advice, much to her surprise. He started the next day’s rehearsal with a sincere apology to the orchestra, his honest assessment of the problem, and an admission that he probably felt too much entitlement about the source material.
This speech disarmed the musicians and charmed the dancers, setting most of them to angling for his attention. Lily had to dash the hopes of several girls and at least one boy, all the while restraining her impulse to hiss at them all and cry, “No! Mine!”
Not mine, she insisted to herself, averting her eyes from the high, tight butt she’d wrapped her hands around so enthusiastically the night before. Aidan was a very athletic conductor, a joy to watch, especially in jeans that showed off some of his finest assets to perfection.
Not mine, Lily’s conscience sang, when she saw Aidan grin at the first violinist and she wanted to tear the poor woman’s hair out.
Intermezzo Page 3
