“It’s not that.” I really didn’t want him to change his mind. “What about your place?”
He winced. “Not really an option.”
“I’m not picky,” I assured him, while another part of me gaped that I’d ever say such a thing. How the mighty had fallen.
“Ah, it’s a crap flat and my mates will likely be home, drunk and obnoxious. No place for a lady, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t mind if—”
“Indulging in… home entertainment, see.” He waggled his brows meaningfully.
“No…oh.” He meant porn. “Oh!”
“I love the way you blush. It makes me want to say dirty things to you, just to see you blush more.”
“You’re impossible.”
He kissed my cheek where he’d caressed it, then licked it, a shockingly erotic sensation. “My naughty angel. You’re delicious. I want to lick all of you.” He must have worked a hand inside my coat, because he squeezed my breast, pinching the taut nipple through my blouse and bra. I whimpered and squirmed.
Another group walked by, girls this time, and one gave me the thumbs up, while two others high-fived each other and shouted, “you go, girl!”
“We need to get off this street,” I muttered.
“Amen to that. Shall I see about a room here after all?”
A hotel room. Even at an “old-style inn” sounded just…tawdry. And silly. I wasn’t necessarily going all the way, but I refused to be ashamed of this. Embracing my sexuality. Natural.
“No, let’s go to my place.”
“Hot damn. Where to?”
“I’ll point the way.”
He grinned. “Gonna make free with those hands on the way?”
I blushed. Fine. There would be a lot of blushing in my immediate future. But—that, I’d never done. I’d never actually touched a guy’s member. This other stuff—kissing, some touching, being groped a bit—I’d done that kind of thing. Not that it had been like this. Not sizzling, melt-my-brain-into-oblivion good.
Damien cocked that brow at me, waiting. Clearly not going to let me down from the bike until I answered.
“I, ah…” Have never done that. I don’t know how. Oh, hey, Damien—did I mention I’m a virgin and horribly inexperienced? Sexy! “I don’t know…”
Ugh! I couldn’t say it. I’d just sound stupid.
He took my hand from his shoulder, gently, so I could pull away if I wanted to, and slid it between us to his taut belly, then down, down, over the stiff denim of his jeans, until I cupped the upthrust line of him. He pressed my hand against him and rocked his hips, staring into my eyes. “I like it like this,” he murmured, and I nodded like one of the car head-bobblers.
“Folks, I’m gonna have to ask you to move on.”
I froze. Then yanked my hand away, staring at the cop behind Damien. For his part, Damien simply helped me down from the bike and turned around to face the cop. “Sure thing, officer. Was just having a little chat with my girlfriend.”
Instead of pressing my mittened hands to my cheeks, I tried a smile. Nonchalant and cool, that was me.
“A chat, yeah…” The cop gave Damien the stare down, then transferred his stern gaze to me. “You cool, miss?”
“Me?” Cool. I’d never been cool.
“With this guy,” he clarified, dipping his chin at Damien. “Are you okay with him and all?”
“Oh!” The realization hit me. I was such a dork. “Yes,” I said. Then threaded my arm through Damien’s crooked elbow. “Yes, my boyfriend. We were just leaving. Sorry, officer.”
“All right, then.” He actually smiled at us. “You move on, I’m not gonna hassle you. But take it off my street, okay? Decent folk live around here.” He gave us a jaunty wink and headed off down the street.
“That’s our cue.” Damien handed me my helmet, put his on, then fixed my strap, kissing me on the nose. “You’re always getting me in trouble with the cops, you know that?”
“Hey! It’s not me. This kind of thing never happens to me and—”
He got on the bike, kicked the stand away and started it. “Climb on, luv.”
I did, much more gracefully this time. “Seriously. Besides, Blart the mall cop doesn’t—”
His amused laugh penetrated my indignation, so I thumped him between the shoulder blades.
“Put those claws to better use, Tigger,” he suggested. “Ready?”
“Ready!” I called back. And as the bike surged forward, I realized that I was.
* * *
The “making free with the hands” proved to be interesting. At first I kept my hands firmly grasping Damien’s lean hips, unless I was pointing the way. But once he got on Ashland Avenue, there wasn’t much directing on the long stretch to be done. Plus, I kept thinking about what he’d said, about how he liked feeling me against his back. And having my spread thighs clasped against his hard ones, my hey-hey open and wanting more…well. Slipping my hands out of the mittens—excellent reason for the string, that I didn’t have to keep hold of the things—I let my hands wander.
At first, I slid them around to his t-shirt under the jacket, warm enough from him and the protection from the wind. I couldn’t go very high up his chest, but I could explore from the bottom of his ribs down. He had nice muscle definition. Not a big guy, but wiry. All lean build and heat.
Holding onto him with my left hand flat against that enticing abdomen, I traced down his hip with my right hand, down his flexing thigh and up again. He didn’t say anything—didn’t that whole ride—just let me explore at my leisure. But somehow through the thrumming of his muscles, I even wanted to say through a change in his scent, though that wasn’t possible, he communicated that he liked what I was doing.
When I found his upthrust member again, it felt nearly familiar. I leaned my cheek against Damien’s back and traced the outline of his erection, up and down. He straightened a bit, tilting his pelvis to give me better access, but still did nothing to stop or coach me. The stiff fly of the jeans obscured some detail, but I liked learning him this way. Bigger than my slim wand of a vibrator. It could work, though.
If I went through with this.
I was going through with this.
I’d decided.
The certainty freed something in me. A kind of letting go. No more holding out for some perfect ideal of the fantasy wedding night. If and when I ever found the One and got married, I’d be able to look back and remember this night with Damien.
Every girl needs to sow some wild oats here and there, right?
We stopped at a red light and I was so absorbed that I didn’t notice at first that there was a guy in the other lane on a bike, too. He had his visor down, head turned toward us. He gave Damien a slow nod and I realized he could see the pale shape of my hand on Damien’s crotch. I nearly yanked it away, but Damien was nodding back, the light changed, and we zoomed off.
It was kind of like being admitted to some secret society, this world of consenting adults where people shouted “you go, girl!” and congratulated each other on finding a good time. That guy had no idea who we were. I was just some sexy girl on the back of a bike. Wild and free. I liked being her.
As we got to the house, I held my breath, praying. Don’t let anyone be home. Don’t let anyone be home. Not that they wouldn’t be nice to Damien, and discreet even, within certain boundaries. But I had this feeling that if any of them were home that the magic spell would be broken and I’d suddenly revert from Cinderella in a fabulous sparkling ball gown of carefree sexiness back into a pudgy serious girl in virginal rags she’d long since outworn.
If I had a fairy godmother, this would be what I asked of her. Don’t let anyone be home.
She came through. The windows were all dark.
Damien pulled the bike up to the curb, putting it at his accustomed angle, so as not to take up too much room, though lots of spaces were open on the quiet residential street. He pulled off his helmet and took mine. “This it?” He nodded
at the house as he dug out my coat and bag from his panniers. “Pretty dark.”
“Yeah. None of my roomies are home yet.”
He took my hand, glove folded around the mitten I’d put back on, looking around as we went up the walk. “Nice.”
“It is. Five of us split the costs, so our share isn’t bad.” Weird to be having this conversation. So normal and everyday, as if I hadn’t had my hand on him like that. At the door, I tugged off the one mitten again and scrabbled around in my bag for my keys. They always ended up somewhere in the bottom. “I should get a smaller bag,” I muttered, dragging it up by the strap so I could peer inside.
He tugged at his muffler, still wrapped around my neck, so I looked at him, my hand deep in the key-eating depths of my bag. “Sure you want to do this?” he asked, striking a note of panic into my skipping heart.
“Why—don’t you?” Shit. Maybe there was some code I’d missed. Some handshake or gangland-type sign I’d been supposed to give.
He laughed and pulled me close, not seeming to care about my contorted position and kissed my temple. “Oh, yeah. I want. But you seem… nervous, maybe.”
“Nervous? No. Not me.” I laughed brightly to prove it and—thank God already—my fingers closed around the keys. “Just looking for these.” I held up the keys in demonstration. Because I’m an idiot. Jesus, chill already, Marcia.
Once I got the door open, I flipped on the overhead and the porch lights, then busied myself getting out of my coat and his muffler, concentrating on calming breaths, hanging it all neatly on my branch of the coat rack. Then I turned to face him. “Want me to take your—oomph.”
He had my wrists, dragging them over my head and pressing me back against the front door, pinning me there and kissing me with a savage hunger that obliterated every thought. “You were driving me fucking mad,” he ground out in dark bursts against my skin, “on that ride.” He pulled back and stared into my face. His cheeks were ruddy from the cold air, his glossy night dark hair wild and his aqua eyes all the brighter, that gray ring around them nearly black. “And you—you look like this composed angel. Does anything ever touch you?”
“You do,” I managed. Inside I was a jumbled turmoil. I couldn’t possibly look composed or angelic.
“I want to see it. To see you wild and coming apart.” A hint of that quirky smile. “Not sure I’ll believe it if I don’t.”
“Let’s go upstairs then.”
“That’s where your room is?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m there.” He ripped off his coat and I hung it up.
“Um.” I clasped my hands together. “Do you have, ah, protection?”
He gave me a solemn nod, only a faint spark of amused impatience in his eyes, and patted his jeans pocket. “I do.”
“Good. Okay.” I led the way to the narrow stairs up the back wall, suddenly conscious that he’d be eye-level with my bottom, which was so not my best side or angle.
“Um.” I paused on the step. Sure enough, he had to lift his eyes to meet mine. “Do you want a drink? I could make tea or we have—”
“Luv. You’re killing me.”
Okay. I hurried up the stairs, passed Julie’s closed door and remembered. I put my back against mine, holding onto to knob behind me. “One thing.”
Damien braced his hands on the doorframe on either side of me. “Don’t you dare offer to fix a nibble or something.”
That made me giggle. Which, okay, kind of went a little high and wobbly with nerves. “No, not that. I just need to warn you that, um…”
“You’re a total slob. No, you’ve been stalking me and have a shrine with my pics all over your walls. I don’t care.”
“No.” I rolled my eyes at him. “I mean, I’m not super neat or anything, but…”
“Marcia.” He said it patiently, gently. Bent his head to kiss me ever so carefully. “We can stop here. No pressure. I can go home. Or we can sit and watch telly.”
“No,” I said, yet again. Great time for words to fail me. I grabbed ahold of his shirt and kissed him, drawing him in as best I could. “I want this. It’s just—my room is kind of, ah, princessy, maybe. Some might say over the top.”
“Okay…” He quirked a brow at me, clearly not getting my point.
Ugh. If I couldn’t be honest about this, I shouldn’t be thinking about being physically intimate with him. I wished I could be the kind of you-go-girl type who could do a guy and relish the physical thrill, but I just wasn’t. Even if I wasn’t in love, by doing this I’d still be opening heart. “All right,” I said. “Just … don’t make fun of me about any of it.”
“Okay,” he said again, still waiting.
“I mean it.” I tugged at his shirt. “If you make fun of this, it would… kind of break my heart.” Nooo… I wanted to reel those words back. Talking about breaking hearts had to be the absolute worst breach of this kind of hookup.
“Marcia, luv.” He kissed me, sliding his hands around my waist and wrapping me up, then finishing with that kiss to my temple. “I would never make fun of you. I like you. You can trust me. And if I behave like a prat you can always kick me out.”
“I don’t want to kick you out.” The handle turned under my hand, and I let him in.
~ 8 ~
He took his time looking around, thumbs hooked in his front pockets and, even with his promise, I braced for the cutting remark. One of Ice’s one-night stands had caught a glimpse of my room and pronounced it “a vomitorium of princess pink and monument to all that was wrong with the female psyche” and as if “Disney had fucked Freud and produced an insane daughter.” Ice, of course, had thrown him out immediately and did penalty dishes for a week, saying she’d clearly screwed up with scoring that asshole.
But those kinds of things, they stay with you.
I could have redecorated—seriously considered it—but that incident made me dig in my heels. Besides, my friends were all used to it and it wasn’t like anyone new ever saw my room. Not until Damien. He looked so foreign, a masculine slash of lean black, like a blade cutting through all the lace. I sat on the edge of the bed and let him look even as he absently unlaced his big boots and toed them off, setting them by the door, black socks stuck inside. His bare feet were long and pale against my floral rug.
“That’s Neuschwanstein castle,” he said, pointing to my framed poster. “I’ve been there.”
“You have?” Little could have surprised me more.
He gave me a distracted, crooked smile over his shoulder, standing in front of it, hands on hips. “Yeah—my dad. Always with the educational holidays. This place, though…” He tapped the glass. “Gorgeous.”
I nearly blurted out about my girlish fantasy of living there someday, but fortunately he’d already moved on to examining my shelf of glass and porcelain fairies. “I collect them,” I offered, though that was obvious.
“They’re cool. Can I?” He nodded at one.
Since he seemed to be biding his time now, I stood up to join him, realizing as I stood that I’d been clutching Ulysses Unicorn in my lap. Sexy, Marcia. I deliberately set him aside. I would have stuffed him under the pillow, but no hiding him now. “Sure. Just pick them up from the bottom.” I showed him. “The wings break easy, you know.”
He held up the delicate fairy, an absent smile on his mouth as he turned her. “Reminds me of you. I see why you like them.”
“Of me?” Nothing about me was slim, delicate, or fairylike. “I don’t see how…”
He set the fairy back carefully in exactly the same position, then slid his hands around my waist. “No, you don’t see, do you? I’ll have to show you.” He kissed me on each cheekbone. “You’re blushing.”
I couldn’t meet his eyes, instead staring at his black-clad chest, holding onto his hips as if I was still clinging to the back of the bike, hoping not to fly off. He kept kissing me, feathery brushes on my cheeks, brows, eyelids, like a gentle rain of affection. I turned up my face, sighing dreamily, unfur
ling from that tight bud of nerves, offering my mouth, which he kissed also.
His fingers were at my blouse buttons, so I shrugged out of my suit jacket, letting it fall to the floor. Amy would scold me for treating my clothes badly but I didn’t care. She’d never see. Cool air hit my skin, the blouse falling open, and I opened my eyes to find Damien staring intently at my bosom, black hair falling over his brow on one side. He flicked a wry glance at me.
“You’re full of surprises, luv,” he said, sliding my blouse off my shoulders and then filling his hands with my breasts.
“I am?” I breathed.
“Look how gorgeous you are. Voluptuous. All this angelic white lace, and then all naughty sex goddess beneath.” He flicked his thumbs over my nipples, watching my face. The intensity of his expression gave his brows a wicked slant and I entertained a momentary fantasy of him as the villain invading my tower. Not the golden prince, but the wizard bent on despoiling me. My knees went literally weak and I swayed. Damien caught me with an arm around my waist, trailing a hand down my midline to the clasp of my pants. Paused there. “Yes? No?”
“Yes.” Oh yes.
“I have to tell you,” he said, very seriously as he undid the hook and slid down the zipper, “that I’m so hoping the knickers match.” He pushed the pants over my hips and let them fall down my legs. “Praise all the angels.”
As if praying, he dropped to his knees, holding onto my hips, and kissed my belly right over the little pink satin bow just over my mons. Off-balance and uncertain, I put my hands on his head, his hair long silk on one side, velvet nap on the other. Probably I should have better lighting. Filmy scarves over the lamps like Ice did. My belly looked awfully white and poofy. If I—Damien put his mouth lower and exhaled hot breath into my wetness and I nearly swooned.
“Oh, naughty, filthy girl,” he murmured, hands sliding around to cup my bottom. “You’re so fucking wet.”
I was blushing to hell and gone, but I didn’t care. Besides—it was all mixing up with the waves of heated desire muddling my head. He was tugging down my panties and I let him. His dark head bent close and I couldn’t see anything, so I just closed my eyes and felt, swaying in his grip. When his tongue flicked against my intimate flesh, I nearly fell over.
Missed Connections Box Set Page 18
