“I’m okay…well, actually, no,” Julia sighed. “This guy, he seemed really nice in the shop. He said he’s from New Orleans and wanted me to accompany him to Put-in-Bay, just for company, because he knows we’re engaged. But now that I’m here, Nick, I don’t think it was such a good idea. He’s kind of giving me the creeps. And please don’t think it was anything more than just a curiosity to pick his brain about New Orleans.”
“Okay, hail a taxi and head for the ferry. Stay on the line with me until you get home.”
“I will, I--” she was interrupted by a loud beep. “Nick? Hello?” Julia looked at her phone, which had gone dark, the battery dead. “Shit!”
“Is there a problem?” Alberic glided up behind her, resting his heavy palms on her shoulders, his body brushing against her back.
Julia spun around and stepped back, sloshing some of the liquid from her glass. “No! Well, uh, yes. There’s a family emergency. I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
Alberic frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. Why don’t you finish your drink, and then we’ll return to the mainland together?”
“No, that’s not necessary. I don’t want to ruin your evening. I can get back on my own. Thanks for the drink, though.” She saluted him with the glass and then took a sip.
Alberic quickly stepped forward and placed two fingers on the bottom of the glass, as if to urge her on. “Finish it,” he demanded.
“Hey!” Julia stumbled back, coughing. The majority of her drink splashed down her blouse. “What are you doing? Did you drug my drink or something?” She knew immediately from his expression that she’d hit the bull’s eye. She backed up several paces and looked around. A police car crawled down the street in their direction. She waved her arms frantically as Alberic slipped into the crowd.
Marblehead, Several Days Later:
FED Ex package in hand, Nick entered the stuffy garage where Julia was rummaging through the workbench drawers. She looked good enough to eat in a thin white blouse with the sleeves rolled up and the tails knotted at her belly button. She wore a pleated, knee length skirt and flip flops, her hair twisted and pinned up, stray wisps escaping to cling to her sweaty neck. He couldn’t imagine what she was looking for in the garage, since she wasn’t particularly handy, so he asked her.
She jumped. “Oh Nick! You startled me!” She started toward him, but then stopped when she noticed the Fed Ex package. “What’s that?”
Nick sighed heavily. Since returning from New Orleans he’d been debating how to present her with the dress when it arrived. Should he lie and pass it off as the original? Or should he admit he had a copy made? He was so disturbed over her near disastrous brush with—according to INTERPOL—international date rapist Alberic Bontecou of Montreal, Canada that he really didn’t want to deceive her. Added to that, the fortuneteller’s spot on proclamation had him rather nervous now about any sort of hocus-pocus, especially curses.
“Well, Nick? What is it? Is it for you or me? Is it something from your mom?” Julia pulled it from his hands and turned it over to read the label. “Oh! It’s from the seamstress in New Orleans. It’s my dress!” She ripped into it excitedly.
Nick was flabbergasted. “What? How did you know?”
“She called the other day and started asking questions about my measurements. She didn’t know you were surprising me with the dress and was extremely apologetic when she realized her blunder.” She opened the garment bag and ran her hand over the bodice. “Ooh, it’s beautiful! Just like the picture!”
Nick was perplexed. “You, uh, aren’t angry?”
“I was, initially. You said you were in St. Louis, Nick, when really you were in New Orleans. That’s not nice. But, you did go to all that trouble to try to find my dress, and when you couldn’t, you had a copy made. That’s pretty sweet, actually.” She continued to inspect and pet the gown. Nick gnawed his lip, debating whether to admit he originally planned to deceive her. But she looked so pleased with the new gown that he decided to keep the information to himself. “So, you’re over believing in the curse? We’re going to get married?”
Julia shifted her weight back and forth for a moment. “I think so. There was something I read in the diary that bugged me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. Finally it occurred to me. The diary said any bride who didn’t wear the cursed gown would soon be widowed. ‘Soon’ being the operative word. Dad didn’t die until twenty years after mom married him wearing a different gown.” She shrugged. “I think I’m ready to roll the dice and see where they land if you are. If there actually is a curse, then I think the ‘curse gods’, or whoever, sure would be impressed with your efforts to replace the dress. This here is a dead ringer.” She tapped the bodice with her finger then regretted her choice of words. “What about you, Nick? Do you want to go through with it? I know that fortuneteller seriously spooked you.”
“Yeah, she kind of did. But I’m glad. If I hadn’t called you, you wouldn’t have left the bar when you did, and you may have been Mr. Bontecou’s latest victim. Oh, I had a call from the detective a little bit ago. Bontecou was apprehended while trying to cross back into Canada. He’s got quite a record.”
With her new dress in hand, Julia didn’t feel like discussing the dubious Alberic Bontecou. She still couldn’t believe she nearly walked so blindly into a trap. “Well, do you want to go through with it? Do you still want to get married?”
“Yes, I do.”
Julia grinned saucily. “Good. Now, if I could just find what I was out here looking for…” she reached back into the workbench drawer.
Nick frowned, “What are you up to?”
“Here it is!” She held up a roll of black electrical tape and grinned triumphantly.
“What are you up to, Julia?” Nick repeated.
“Um, sit down there,” She pointed to floor in front of a ladder.
Nick sat with his back against it, only slightly regretting that his best pair of jeans was getting messy and that the sweltering garage was causing sweat to form on his upper lip and brow. “Now what should I do? Hey, are those your panties?” he reached for them and she swooped in, capturing his wrists and pinning them to a rung over his head.
Using her body to hold his hands in place, Julia tore off a length of tape and started binding his wrists to the ladder. She moaned when Nick swiped a patch of her bare belly with his tongue, sending goose bumps across her overly warm skin. “Damn it,” she said breathily, trying to keep focused on her task. “This isn’t working out how I’d envisioned. The tape keeps getting stuck on itself.”
Nick winced when a patch of hair was pulled from his arm as she continued struggling with the tape.
“Wait…let me try these.” She grabbed her panties from the floor, having only removed them just before he entered the garage. Nick repositioned his wrists so she could manipulate the elastic and lace into a pair of makeshift cuffs. She worked so intently she hardly noticed she was pressing her core to his face, until Nick took full advantage and thrust his tongue deep. Julia, finished with securing his wrists to the ladder, grabbed hold of a rung as he teased and tantalized her. Her eyes slid shut and her head fell back as she grasped the ladder tighter, standing with legs splayed. Nick circled and plunged with his tongue, stretching his hands against their flimsy binding so he could spread them over her bare rib cage, needing to feel her with his hands as well as his mouth.
This was supposed to be a treat for him, yet she couldn’t help giving herself over to the pleasure of the moment. Finally, just as Julia was ready to crawl out of her skin, to crawl the ladder she was hanging onto, anything to escape the terrible pressure building, she came hard, bucking so violently that Nick had to hold her in place for fear of his nose.
“You’re overdressed,” she said with a sigh, collapsing onto his lap.
“Are you going to remedy that, or are you going to take a nap?” Nick teased when she started fiddling with his buttons but then stopped to rest her forehead against his ch
est in sleepy repose. He kissed the top of her head as she straightened and resumed unbuttoning his sweat dampened shirt.
“Oh,” Julia pouted, finding that her unbuttoning revealed an undershirt rather than Nick’s bare chest. “It’s way too hot for this.” She grabbed the neckline in both fists. Nick’s breath hitched as she pulled at it, gritting her teeth, but he dissolved into laughter when the fabric held steady under her attack. At Julia’s sharp glance, he wiped the grin from his face.
“There’s got to be something in this garage that will handle this problem,” she muttered, wiping sweat from her face with the back of her hand as she stood and looked around.
“Hey now,” Nick said with honest apprehension when she plucked a saw from the bench.
“No, probably not a good idea,” she agreed, replacing the saw.
“Scissors are in the top right drawer.”
Julia wrinkled her nose. “Boring.” She continued perusing the garage, looking for just the right tool for the task. “Ooh! I could burn your shirt off you. That could be hot!”
“Very,” Nick agreed dryly, relieved when she set the blowtorch back on the bench.
“Ok, how about this?” She turned, brandishing a screwdriver.
“Um, not sure that’s--” But she was already straddling his lap, pulling the undershirt away from his body to jam the edge of the screw driver through his shirt, leaving a gaping hole.
Setting the screwdriver aside, Julia again tore at his shirt with her hands, until she managed to lay it open to the hem, though the neck remained intact.
“Mmh,” hands splayed over his pecs, Julia laved his sweaty chest with her tongue, nipping at his small, hard nipples.
Nick gulped for air that scorched his lungs in the stuffy garage. Dropping his head back between his raised arms, he stared at the sky through the open garage door.
“Julia, close the door.” His order wouldn’t help with the stuffiness, but he didn’t want the paperboy wandering up the driveway while they copulated in the garage. When she returned she straddled his thighs again and hitched her skirt up. Nick’s eyes zeroed in on her core-plump, pink and glistening. He licked his lips.
“Still hungry?” Julia dipped between her folds with two fingers then licked them clean.
“Let me taste,” Nick demanded, becoming frustrated with his hands bound over his head, but not wanting to ruin her fun by shrugging his wrists free.
Julia smiled coyly, considering his request for an agonizingly long time before finally gathering moisture from between her legs and painting her mouth with it like gloss. Leaning close, she teased Nick until finally he managed to capture her mouth with his.
“Better than that banana lip stuff you’re always wearing.”
“You think so? Well, speaking of bananas…” She set to work opening his jeans.
Nick laughed and dropped his head back against the rung, unable to stop smiling. God, he loved this woman!
“Ooh,” Julia breathed as she lifted him free of his underwear. “I’ve missed this, like you wouldn’t believe.” She leaned back and gazed at what she uncovered.
“I was only gone a couple of days and I’ve made love to you three times since I’ve been back.”
“True, but while you were gone you called me on the phone and sexually tormented me. I’m still trying to satisfy the insatiable hunger you aroused in me.”
Nick shrugged, unrepentant. “So are you going to just stare at it all day or are you going to show me how much you missed it?”
“That’s a good question, a very good question. Hhm…” She considered it while she dipped her hand between her legs again, skirt slipping down to hide everything from Nick’s view. “I think I could just do this for a while. I like looking at you.”
Nick groaned. “Damn, Julia, please. I like looking at you, too, baby, but I can’t see anything of you with all those clothes on. Take off the shirt and skirt. Please?”
She immediately removed her blouse and tossed it aside, running her wet hand over her bare breasts for a moment before returning it between her thighs.
“Julia, the skirt.”
“I-uh, no. I’ll leave it on for now.”
Nick frowned and then realization dawned on him. Julia had never before taken the reigns quite like this and was struggling with her courage. If leaving the skirt on left her feeling a little braver, so be it. But still, she was a minute away from giving herself a second orgasm and he was beginning to suffer. “Julia, please touch me.”
Smiling sweetly, she greased his cock with her glistening fingers. “Ah, yeah,” Nick moaned, his body lifting to her touch. She stroked him slowly then wet him again with her juice before scooting back so she could slip her mouth over him, sucking him clean. Nick released a long, low groan as her head bobbed up and down in his lap. “Julia, please, you have to stop or this will be over. Come up here with me.”
Obediently she crawled back onto his lap and lowered herself onto his straining erection. They both sighed in pleasure as she wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him deeply. “I love you so much,” she whispered against his mouth.
“I love you, too. Now get that ass moving or I’m going to break free from this ladder, and I won’t be responsible for whatever happens.”
“Tough talk from the guy who’s tied up,” taunted Julia.
Nick began to struggle like he was going to make good on his threat.
Julia laughed and finally relented, working herself hard on him until both were panting, straining, unable to make any more jokes. Nick flexed his wrists against their biding, the flimsy elastic and lace stretched loose as he held onto the rung, using the leverage to grind upwards as Julia ground down. Her orgasm triggered his, the muscles in his neck and arms flexing in his ecstasy. Minutes ticked by as they sat there, limp. Nick’s arms felt heavy so he shook off the ruined panties and wrapped his arms around Julia while she lay spent against his chest. It was a long time before she lifted her head.
“You know, now that I no longer really believe you’ll die if we get married, there is another problem with us getting hitched.”
“What problem is that?”
“Married people don’t have much sex. It’s, like, a scientifically proven fact.”
Nick laughed, “Well, we’ll just have to be careful to avoid that trap, won’t we? And if we get into a rut, then ‘Bad Nick’ can come in and show ‘Good Nick’ how to properly please his wife. What do you say?” He held her hand up between them.
Julia looked at the engagement ring sparking on her finger, knowing he needed her to reaffirm her surety that she’d marry him. Looking from the diamond to Nick, Julia had never felt so sure of anything in her life. “I say ‘I do’.”
And later that summer she did and they lived happily ever after for a very, very long time.
The End
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Thank you for purchasing and reading my ebook! Your support means a lot to me. Please leave me a comment and a star rating and be sure to check out my novel, Shadowed Hearts Surrender. Also please be sure to follow me on Twitter @LauraRosemont
Better Unwed Than Dead Page 4
