by Amelia James
A sudden gust lifted Claire’s skirt, and she clamped it down as a passing jogger whistled at her. She blushed and snarled at him, but her eyes danced.
“You’re an exhibitionist.”
She gasped. “I am not.”
“Not the flashy, nudist kind, but you crave attention.”
“I’m shy.”
“That’s just a clever disguise.” I laid out the facts for her. “Your job forces you to dress conservatively, but you wear heels at the office. When you go out, you wear bright colors and noisy jewelry.”
Her earrings jingled as she shook her head.
“You turned heads everywhere we went today, and you noticed. You told me you love when Alex thanks you for your effort. You live for recognition and praise.”
“That hardly makes me an exhibitionist.”
“Want me to prove it to you?”
“Yes.”
I led her to the center of a foot bridge arching over the stream. Another strolling couple approached from behind, and more joggers came around the bend ahead. “You’re beautiful.” I slipped my hand into her hair and kissed her, and as the couple walked around us, I pushed the strap off her shoulder and bunched up her skirt, revealing nothing but suggesting everything.
Claire giggled over my shoulder as the woman elbowed the man when he turned and gawked. Another male jogger winked and said hello. She nodded and smiled back.
“How did that make you feel?”
She inhaled and grabbed the railing as she tilted on her four-inch heels. “Let’s go sit in the shade.”
“Uh-huh. The suspect always denies the accusation.”
We stepped off the bridge and stretched out on the grass under a willow tree swaying over the stream.
Claire kicked off her shoes and eyed me as if she was trying to read my motives, anticipate my next move. “So if I’m an exhibitionist, what does that make you?”
“Your captive audience.”
The breeze stirred her hair and a couple of birds squawked at each other. “You’ve been watching me all day.”
“And you loved it.”
Triumph danced in her eyes. “My evil plan succeeded.”
“You’re not evil, darlin’.”
“I’m not?” She thrust her bottom lip out in a wicked pout.
“You’re pure sin wrapped in sweet temptation.” I ran my finger along the top of her dress, barely brushing her skin.
“And you can’t wait to unwrap me.”
“True. But I’d rather watch you do it.” Footsteps echoed on the bridge.
She gasped and glanced over my shoulder. “You want me to strip for you? Here?”
I slid closer to her, wrapped my arm around her waist, and pressed her into the grass, my body covering hers. “I want you to expose yourself… in whatever way turns you on the most.”
Her heart hammered against my chest; her lips lingered a breath from mine. She shoved my hair back from my face. “I’ll have to think about that… a lot.”
“Take your time. Soup tastes better when it simmers slow.”
“That’s why I like an appetizer before dinner.”
“Mmm… tempting and clever. Allow me to take a taste.”
“Please do.” She arched into me, exposing her throat as I nipped the tender flesh. She squirmed and clutched, grinding against my stiff crotch.
My cock nearly boiled over. “I could lift your skirt, unzip my pants, and fuck you right here in the grass.”
She moaned and reached for my belt.
I captured her hand. “And probably get us both arrested.”
“I wouldn’t care.”
I laughed on her shoulder. “I’m sure you wouldn’t. But I don’t want to finish our date in jail, so I’ll drive you crazy instead.”
“How are you going to—oh!”
I circled my thumb over that blasted rose, raising her nipple to a quivering peak, then shifted, blocking the view from both the bridge and the path before tugging her top down and exposing her breast. “Should’ve brought the chocolate with us.”
“Add that to my list of things to think… ohh….” She moaned as I leaned over and licked that sweet berry, sucking her breast into my mouth to hide it from another couple strolling by.
She pulled my hair and lifted my face. “Did they see?”
Probably not. The willow branches created a delicate curtain. “Yes.”
She giggled and rubbed my erection through my jeans. “Big turn on.”
“But not the biggest?”
“Hmm… try again.”
I bent her knee, pushing her skirt up her thigh. She moaned as I dragged my finger along the damp lace between her legs. She clamped her thighs together, but let them fall apart as I caressed her tender skin, exposing our play to the warm sun and cool breeze.
A dog barked and kids laughed. She bolted upright and yanked her skirt down. I sat up and adjusted my pants.
Claire smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I never have sex on the first date.”
A cough came up from nowhere and almost choked me. “I do.”
“No reason I can’t.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t.”
“Hm.” She folded her hands in her lap. “We have different ideas.”
I plucked a leaf from my hair. “Yeah, not sure if that’s a good thing.”
“Then maybe we should wait until we both feel the same.”
I’ve got something you can feel. But I pressed my lips together and nodded. “I’ve rushed into sex too many times. It always ends badly.” Always? I wasn’t convinced it had ended with Talia.
She leaned close and stroked my arm. “Let it simmer.”
I laughed and helped her up, and we headed back toward my house, slowly, hand-in-hand, leaning close and kissing whenever the mood struck us. Suddenly, she glanced around and dragged me off the trail. We scampered through the grass and ducked behind a big oak tree at the edge of the stream.
I grabbed her shoulders as she pinned my body to the wide trunk and kissed me. The setting sun cast a spotlight on us, but the tree hid us from the path, and bushy undergrowth blocked the view from the houses surrounding the park.
Claire unbuckled my belt and ripped my zipper open.
I gasped as she slipped her hand into my jeans. “Screw waiting?”
She laughed. “You need something to think about, too.” Her fingers circled the head of my cock.
I caught my breath and closed my eyes while she fondled me. I tried to pull up her skirt, but she shook me off. “Why not?”
“Just for you,” she breathed on my neck. Her lips touched mine, cutting off my arguments as her grip tightened and her thumb teased my tip.
I managed to get my fingers on her nipple through her dress.
She gasped, keeping her eyes on the trail. I heard voices approaching, but she still watched and stroked, tugging on my stiff cock while I groaned. “Shh.” She pressed her mouth over mine.
Fireworks shot up and down my dick as her soft, warm hand enveloped me, threatening to set off a chain reaction. I grabbed her hair and pulled her head back. “I’m gonna come.”
“Come hard.” Then she stuck her tongue in my mouth and cupped my balls.
Stars spun around my eyes as I leaned back and smacked my head against the tree. She let me slip my hand into her panties and grab her bare ass, but I was unable to do much else as her hand slid over my cock, stroking and pulling like she had something to prove. Faster, hotter, harder.
“Fuck me!”
“Not this time.” She kissed me hard, forcing my groans into her mouth. I came in her hand, hot and streaming. My knees gave out and I sagged against the tree as sweet release swept over me. She wiped her palm on my stomach, then zipped my jeans and fastened my belt—too tight.
I panted. “Okay, you win. You are evil.”
Claire laughed. “Did Talia ever do that to you?”
She’d given me a few secretive hand jobs, but never so bold, so urgent. “No
t in broad daylight.”
“Good. I score first.” She led me back to the trail.
Oh hell. Claire had just taken a commanding lead. That girl knew how to keep a man wanting.
But while she had control of my dick, Talia kept a firm grip on my heart. I was going to need a Jumbotron to keep track. And maybe a referee to make the final call.
Fuck! Why does coming in Claire’s hands make me want Talia?
I never promised I’d stay away from Talia. “Respect their relationship.” Those were the words I’d said. Alex told me I had two choices, but I wasn’t going to make either one of them yet.
Normal is Boring
“Turn left on Aspen Street,” said my damn GPS, just as I passed the turn. I had to circle around the block and approach Will’s house from the opposite direction. Alex kept the address in his employee files, and Claire had emailed it to me.
Why was I the last one to find out?
“Arriving at 9382 Aspen Street on left.”
Was that my left or its left?
I swung into the driveway and shifted into park before stopping completely. Oops. The car rocked back and forth, knocking the paper bag in the front seat onto the floor. When the vehicle settled, I turned the engine off and rescued the bag.
A light breeze stirred the tree-lined street, slapping Aspen leaves together like splattering rain, but the sun shone bright and warm. A couple of birds squawked at each other, and then one shot up from the trees behind Will’s house, streaking red toward the mountains. Lover’s spat?
Last night, I’d argued with Alex about doing this. I wanted him to come with me, but he claimed he didn’t have time. His new case kept him at the office all through lunch and late after hours. So he sent me on this welcome-to-your-new-home gift-giving mission by myself. I opened the bag and pulled out the biggest bottle of Jack I’d ever seen. Alex had laughed when I wrapped a pink bow around it, but I thought it was a nice touch.
I got out of the car and rang the front doorbell, which made a withering sound, so I knocked. No answer. We’d expected that. Lunch hour on a week day. Only the birds noticed my presence.
The bottle wouldn’t fit between the doors, so I looked around for a safe place to leave it. Too big for the mail box, too awkward for the window ledge. I was fighting to jam it behind an overgrown bush when I heard a vehicle pull into the driveway.
“Hey Talia.” Will climbed out of his truck and hopped up the front steps.
“Hi.” I yanked the bottle free, and the mean old bush scratched my arm.
He tucked a wind-blown strand of hair behind my ear. “You look beautiful. I guess this western sun agrees with you.”
“Thanks.” My skin tingled where he’d touched me, shorting out my brain. “Oh.” I presented the bottle. “Welcome to Denver.”
He took it and smiled. “Thank you. This is awesome.”
“Alex picked it out. It’s from both of us.”
“Nice bow.”
“Tell him that.” I twirled my hair around my finger. Stop that! “I should go.”
He touched my arm as I brushed past him to get down the stairs. “Have you eaten lunch yet?”
I’d stopped for a sandwich on the way over, so I wouldn’t have any excuse to stay. But the word no escaped my lips before I stop it.
He unlocked the front door and opened it. “Come in and let me make something for you.”
“I….” Have never been able to resist fucking you.
“I have mushrooms.”
“Using my weakness to tempt me? That’s just dirty.”
He laughed and propped the door open with his sculpted body as I walked inside. My heels clacked on the hardwood floor, echoing in the mostly empty living room. A new TV sat in front of his well-used coffee table and familiar comfy chair, and he’d hung the picture I’d taken of him and Alex kicking back with a couple of beers at a tailgate party at Soldier Field. “Looks like home.”
He grinned. “Wait till you see my kitchen.”
I followed him into a bright, open cooking and dining space with shiny appliances, and his prized knife collection displayed proudly beside the stovetop. “This is amazing.”
He set the bottle on the table like a centerpiece. “I live in here.”
“Nice.” Tile floor. I slipped my shoes off to see if it felt as cold as Alex’s kitchen. A little shiver shot through my toes as the ceramic slowly warmed under my bare foot, just like ours had heated under my bare ass. How hot would it get with all three of us…? Stop that!
“How ‘bout if I grill the mushrooms?” Will opened the fridge and pulled out mushrooms and chicken.
“You spoil me.”
“I know.” He strolled out to the patio and turned on the grill, then rooted around in the fridge to find some spinach and fruit to make a salad. I pulled up a stool between the island and the patio so I could talk to him in either place. He hummed as he tossed strawberries and crumbled feta cheese on top of the spinach leaves.
“You’re happy here.”
“Yeah, I am. Especially since you’re here with me. But I like my house, I’m enjoying investigating again, and I had a date with Claire last weekend… plans for another one. It’s all good.”
A date with Claire? I knew Alex planned to fix them up, but so soon? “That’s nice.”
The humming stopped and his big stupid grin froze. “You knew about Claire, right? I thought Alex would’ve told you.”
“He did, but I didn’t think you’d… like her.”
He dropped chicken breasts on a plate, then threw the mushrooms in a bowl and carried them out to the grill. “She’s… fun,” he called from the patio. “We toured a local brewery, and then I made dinner for her.”
“Did you sleep with her?” He’d asked me that same question when I’d hooked up with Alex again, but now I understood what it meant.
He turned his back to me as he placed the food on the grill, but his spine quaked. “Why do you care?”
I’d seen him shudder like that before… when he told me what he’d seen while watching me with Alex. “Because you… you’re….” Mine.
He closed the grill and stepped into the kitchen close to me. “I’ve slept with a lot of women since I saw you last.”
“Thank you for sharing that,” I snarled at him.
He stroked my cheek. “But none of them ever replaced you.”
“Oh.” I held his palm against my face.
“No one ever will.”
My skin heated as he returned to the grill. Damn it! I shouldn’t have come in. I hadn’t gotten laid since Alex dropped me on his kitchen floor last weekend. With him working late all week, I really needed to get some.
Will shoved the patio door aside and let his fingers caress my thigh as he walked to the cabinets to pull out plates and salad bowls. I should’ve offered to help him set the table, but I planted my ass in that chair.
“What are we going to do?” How’d my fingers get tangled in my hair?
“Well, I have to go back to work after lunch.”
Had he forgotten our moment so quickly? “No. I mean….” I stood and approached him, my hands shaking as I tried to find words, to somehow explain what I feared. “You’re with Claire. I’m with Alex. How are we—you and me—going to… not going to lose each other?” I bit my trembling lip.
A plate rattled as he laid it on the table. He turned his back to me and arranged the silverware. “I don’t know.”
I brushed my fingers on his rigid arm. “Is Claire just temporary?”
He looked into my eyes as if searching for something. “Until when? Are you planning to leave Alex?”
“No.”
“Then she’s long-term.” He pulled two glasses out of the cabinet and poured some iced tea. “And she’s none of your business.”
“I see. So you’re just shutting me out?”
“No. I don’t want to do that. But my relationship with her is private.”
His what? “But my relationship with Al
ex isn’t.”
“It was never intended to be.” Flames shot up from the grill, and he rushed out to the patio.
My knees buckled and I sat down at the table. “You know I still love you, right?”
He smiled as he walked in. “That doesn’t help.”
“And no one is ever going to replace you.”
He set the salad on the table and dug out some silverware. “I suspected as much.”
“So what are we going to do?”
He brought the chicken and mushrooms in and took his seat across from me. “Deal with it.”
“How?”
Will picked up a knife and fork, staring at his plate as if hoping an answer would appear. Then he attacked his food. “Beats the hell out of me.”
Does he still love me? I couldn’t remember him saying it since that tryst with Alex, and if he had, I didn’t take it seriously. Now I longed to hear those words from him, just a sliver of hope. But what good would it do? “We should probably move on.”
He snorted. “That never worked even before Alex got involved.”
“He was always…. Oh, you mean that time I tried to leave you.”
He nodded. “You got bored and went looking for excitement.”
I stabbed a mushroom and savored it. “I found it.”
“The guy wasn’t even good-looking. That black leather jacket was fake, and so were the tattoos.”
“I thought he was badass.”
A smile from deep inside his twisted soul curled his lips, and his dark eyes revealed his true nature. “Badass isn’t what you wear, darlin’. It’s who you are.”
But sometimes badass wore a suit… or a badge. “You watched me with him.”
He sat back, retreating from me. “I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t hurt you.”
I pursued. “You watched me flirt with him, kiss him.”
He squirmed in his chair.
I stalked. “I should’ve known then that watching was your kink.”
“I’m surprised you never caught on.”
I pounced. “Maybe our sex game with Alex would’ve turned out differently if you’d included me from the beginning.” I’d planted the idea in Alex’s head. Now I hoped it would take root in Will’s.
