If You Dare

by Jessica Lemmon

  But since they were on borrowed minutes before Clive or Joanie or, God help him, both of them, came looking, he guessed he wouldn’t get that far.

  Damn shame, too. Not that he wasn’t enjoying her mouth on him. A little too much, actually.

  “McIntire,” he grunted, fisting her hair in his hand as she hummed, taking him deeper. The sound reverberated in his balls and tingled low in his spine.

  “Lily, I—oh, fuck.” Whatever words he’d been planning to say shot out of his brain like a cannonball. He dropped his head against the shelf, bonking his head again and not caring even a little. He loosened his grip on her hair, enjoying the feel of her soft lips, lapping tongue, and the added bonus of her hand wrapped around the base of his shaft.

  Then she picked up the pace. Yep. He was going to lose it.

  Close. So, so close. Her fingers wrapped him tighter and he thrust his hips, sending him deeper into her mouth. She didn’t mind, either, opening wide to accommodate him. On the edge of coming, he was snapped back by an incredibly unwelcome interruption.

  “Tawny port. We picked it up when we were in California last year,” came Joanie’s muffled voice growing ever closer to the pantry.

  He lost Lily’s mouth in an instant. She rose to her feet and he jerked his pants over his hips and his cock while Joanie’s voice grew nearer, talking about notes of vanilla and how “one glass will do ya!”

  Meanwhile, Marcus tucked his shirt in, bumping the head of his erection and wincing at the pain. He was right. He was going to die, but not in the fun way like he’d imagined earlier.

  “Decent?” Lily whispered.

  “Hardly,” he grunted.

  The handle on the door turned and Marcus tugged Lily out of the way and hit the switch on the wall, bathing them in light. Her hair was disheveled, her lips plump, and his dick gave another mournful bob.

  “Oh!” Joanie pressed a hand to her chest and Felicia stood next to her, looking equally shocked.

  “Found it!” Lily shouted, reaching for a can behind Marcus’s head. She held up a can of cherry pie filling and Marcus wanted to howl. Good luck explaining that one. “Sorry. Can I borrow this?” She stepped in front of him, helpfully shielding his pants from view. “Oh, wait. Never mind.” She shook her head and replaced the can. “I thought that was peach.”

  Joanie’s eyebrows rose significantly higher. “What…are you doing?”

  “Marcus was showing me the newly redesigned pantry—looks great, by the way—and then he thought he’d be cute and shut the door on me,” Lily said. “He knows how afraid of the dark I am.”

  Oh, boy. She was terrible at making things up on the fly.

  “And then after letting me freak out for a minute, I got ahold of the switch. Thank goodness, because after the night at Willow—”

  “Never gonna let her live that down,” he interrupted with what he hoped was an easy smile.

  “That’s a story…” Joanie started.

  “For another day,” Lily said. “I’m so, so sorry, but I have to get going. I’m just…exhausted.”

  “I was just going to open a bottle of port. Care for a glass?” Joanie asked.

  “No,” they answered at the same time.

  “We’ll, uh… We’ll get out of your way.” Marcus steered Lily in front of him and out of the pantry.

  “Yeah.” Oh, hell. Joanie knew something was up. And unless Felicia was stone deaf and blind to boot, so did she. Joanie covered smoothly, showing off the pantry and the wine shelves as Felicia commented on the vintages. But as Marcus navigated Lily through the kitchen, they encountered Clive and Reginald close behind him.

  “Hey, guys,” Clive said, the words strung out into a series of long vowels. “What’s up?”

  “Clive was telling me what a great poker player you are, Mr. Black,” Reginald said, evidently clueless as to why Lily’s hair was crushed and Marcus looked like a deer in headlights. “Cigars and poker.”

  “Can’t.” Marcus kept Lily in front of him so as not to expose what was really between them. All eight-and-a-half inches of it. “Just got a text from my brother. He needs a lift. Car broke down.”

  “Well, we—er, I should go, too,” Lily said. “My fish needs food and…” She didn’t even finish her sentence. Clive looked bemused.

  Marcus clasped onto Lily’s hips like they were doing the conga and chased her out of the room. “See you Monday, Clive. Enjoy the poker game, Reginald. Another time, I’ll go all in.” Another time when he wasn’t so close to going all in with Lily.

  “Drive safe, you two,” Clive called after him.

  Out in the dining room, Lily beelined for the closet and tore her coat off a hanger, then slung her purse over one shoulder. “See you at my place,” she said as he opened the door.

  “Your place?” Marcus felt his eyebrows lift.

  She grinned as she slipped past him. “Mine’s closer.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  So, this wasn’t like her. Usually.

  She’d tried to be practical, tried to resist him. As she’d watched Marcus from across the room, Lily decided, To hell with it.

  She wasn’t drunk, but the champagne she’d sipped had made her feel loose and carefree, and the idea of stealing a kiss from Marcus to tide her over—if they ever got to leave the Camerons’ house—had cemented in her mind.

  Then in the dark of the pantry, things had gotten a little out of hand. It was the dark. The perceived danger, the adrenaline spike…

  It was Willow Mansion. Only without the cockroaches and smashing sounds.

  She flicked a glance at her rearview mirror. It wasn’t just the mansion, but the man following behind her. Something about Marcus sent her brain packing. Clearly, since she’d taken him into her mouth in the pantry of her best friend’s house.

  “God. I’m a hussy,” she said to herself.

  Unfortunately, or fortunately—too soon to tell—she didn’t have any more time to think, since she only lived seven minutes from Joanie and Clive’s house. Marcus pulled his sparkling white car to the curb behind hers.

  Lily. Finally. Out of my dreams.

  She watched him get out, took in his easy swagger as he approached her car. Something told her she’d gotten in way too deep way too fast.

  “If you think I followed you here,” he said as she swung her car door open, “to get you to finish what you started…”

  “Marcus,” she hissed. Her neighbors were too elderly to hear much, but still.

  “You’re right.” He grinned and her eyes went to the dimple denting his face.

  He was so hot.

  “Eventually. I have plans for you first,” he said, taking her hand and lacing their fingers. Such an intimate move without being intimate. It was something she’d done with her boyfriends since junior high. So why, when Marcus took her hand, did she melt into his side?

  Because he’s warm and big and strong… And because she liked him way too much.

  “Why do I think you’re turning something over in your head you aren’t sharing?”

  Because I am.

  “Joanie and Clive…”

  “We’ll smooth it over,” he said.

  She let him end the conversation. She didn’t want to talk or think about it. She wedged the key into her door. Her townhouse was a double, two-story brick and old like the house they’d just come from, with a red-orange brick porch and square concrete pillars holding the overhang. Her right-next-door neighbor, Phyllis, had been in bed since eight o’clock, no doubt, but her large, scrappy yellow tomcat, Harvey, leaped to the dividing wall between their porches and let out a sickly Meower!

  “Good Lord,” Marcus said, hitching an eyebrow.

  “Harvey, meet Marcus. Marcus, my neighbor’s cat, Harvey.”

  “Meower!”

  “Is he…sick?” He scratched the cat’s head and Harvey leaned into his palm and made the sickly noise again, followed by a sputtering purr.

  “He’s not. He just has a speech impediment.
”

  She pushed her front door open, aware of Marcus following her inside, very closely, then shutting the door behind him. “Well, this is my place.”

  But any nickel tour or offer of a nightcap was cut off when he turned her with his hands and laid his lips on hers. And oh, he tasted good. He’d tasted good down there, too, all manly and clean, and his tongue tasted…wow. Incredible.

  He explored her mouth as he slipped her purse off her shoulder and dropped it on the floor. She reached out and tossed her keys onto the entertainment stand, which held a modest television, a fish bowl—where she saw Bubbles flicking around animatedly—and her stereo system.

  “One second.” She tore her mouth from Marcus’s, tapped a few flakes into the bowl, and then came back to her date, looping her arms around his neck.

  “You really have a fish,” he said, running those wide palms down over her shoulders and ribs, and then back up, where he swept them over her breasts. “I thought you were just saying that.”

  “Nope. I am with fish.”

  He lit her up with another kiss, squeezing her breasts gently and then lowering his palms to her backside and squeezing there, too. His eyes were closed, those long, dark lashes brushing the tops of his cheeks. Stubble scraped her sensitive skin as he slanted his mouth and deepened their kiss. She allowed her eyes to sink closed, too, gradually losing sense of time and space, and the ability to stand. When her knees went gooey, and she moaned against his lips, she felt him smile.

  “Bedroom,” he said, low and growly.

  “Upstairs.” Her voice was not growly. It was breathy and quiet and sounded more like a wheeze. What had this man done to her?

  He took her hand again and dragged—yes, dragged—her up the stairs, his long legs taking two at a time while she raced to keep up. The closer they drew to her room, the heavier her feet became. He pointed at one of the two bedroom doors, both closed. “This one?”

  “That one,” she said, pointing to the end of the hall.

  His eyebrows lowered. “You okay?”

  She nodded. “I guess. Just…a little nervous.”

  “Don’t be.” He hugged her close, kissing her as he subtly moved closer to her bedroom. “We’ve done this before.”

  She smiled. They had. “We were pretty good at it…I think. Unless it was just the mansion.”

  “Told you we could go back, and I’d prove to you it wasn’t just the mansion.” He popped open her door. “Though I think we can prove it just as well in here.”

  He lowered his lips to hers, his fingers gripping the tab of the plastic zipper at the back of her skirt, sliding it down and reaching beneath the material. “Lace,” he commented, squeezing her butt. “Tell me they’re red.”

  She smiled against his mouth, fear receding into something much more welcome: lust. “They’re black.”

  “Acceptable,” he murmured against her mouth, before kissing her deeply again.

  His hands went to her blouse next, those big fingers clumsily working the delicate pearl buttons. He fumbled through a few before he said, “I’ll buy you a new one,” then tore the shirt open.

  Since she had carpet, there was no rolling of buttons to be heard. Pity. Marcus had just fulfilled a fantasy of hers. She’d always wanted someone to rip her shirt off.

  He cupped her breasts and smashed them together, burying his face in her cleavage. Then he licked between them before darting along the edge of her bra. He grazed a nipple and her hands moved to his head, her fingers crushing his hair. He didn’t seem to mind, repeating the move on the other breast while she squirmed. Her hips wiggled urgently.

  “Impatient.” But he didn’t torture her further, fisting the sides of her skirt and yanking it down. A guttural sound of appreciation echoed in his throat before he pressed his face against her lace panties and tugged with his teeth. Then those were gone, too, snatched away and sliding south. Her bedroom lamp was on—she always left it on as a safety precaution when she was out after dark—so she could see everything he was doing.

  And what he was doing was…staring. Watching the apex of her thighs while untangling the scrap of material from her ankles. He slipped her shoes away as well, getting her good and naked, save for the bra still hiding her breasts.

  From his knees he looked up at her, dark brown eyes filled with a hazy brand of passion that made her shiver all over. “You’re bare.”

  She was.

  The first time he’d undressed her she’d made an excuse for not being prepared for “company” and while he’d had no problem with the triangle of smooth, reddish curls he’d found, Lily wanted to surprise him in case there was a next time. “Do you like it?”

  “More than like, sweetheart.” Roughened palms slid up her thighs and over her hips. He parted her, lowered his face, and slicked his tongue along her center.

  Oh. Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

  “Way more than like,” he mumbled against her.

  Her head dropped back on her neck. How long had it been since she’d had a man’s face between her thighs? Too long. Too, too long. And really, it was because she didn’t let just anyone down there. This took a lot of trust and—

  “Marcus.” Her hands were in his hair, guiding his head back and forth as his tongue assaulted her. She lost his mouth, and a petulant grunt came from her next. Finally, she let a guy down there, and he had no desire to stay. Bummer.

  But she’d misread him, clearly, because then he said, “On the bed. What I have planned for you will render you unable to stand.”

  Her eyebrows lifted as he rose to his full height over her. “What…what do you have planned?”

  “About an hour of that. I’m good at it.” He ducked his head and kissed her lips, and she tasted herself on his mouth.

  She’d just bet.

  “I’ll have you writhing,” he said, tugging her nipples. “Soaked.” He tugged again and licked his tongue over her lips. “Begging me to stop.”

  “Wanna bet?” she breathed, trying to joke to find her footing in this moment.

  “You’ll lose.”

  She grinned. “And win.”

  “We’ll all win.” He slapped her ass, just a quick sting of a touch, and pointed to her bed.

  Her nipples hardened when she thought of what was coming soon to a bedspread near her, and Lily crawled onto the bed and lay flat on her back.

  …

  Marcus wasn’t lying when he said he was good at this.

  He knew what women liked, and even though he and Lily had been together one time—if he didn’t count the pantry—he was pretty sure he knew what she liked.

  He unbuttoned his shirt, flattered when she watched hungrily as he bared his chest to her. He felt the small smile inching across his mouth but buried it, not wanting to take her out of the moment. Still. Her attention made him puff with male pride.

  He shed his pants, shoes, and socks, leaving his boxer briefs, slightly damp from her exploration earlier.

  “I didn’t get to finish what I started in the pantry,” she said quietly.

  His dick jerked to attention. Down, boy.

  “Would you like to?” he asked.

  “Yes, please.” She nodded eagerly.

  Damn. He liked that.

  “We’ll arrange for that. But first…” He put his knee on the bed and dipped his chin. “Spread your legs.”

  She smiled, the fire in her eyes matching the strawberry in her hair. Obediently, she spread her legs.

  “Beautiful.” His voice was a comical mixture of rumbling and reverent. Eyes glued to the recently bared part of her, he made room between her thighs with his shoulders. Parting her folds, he held her open and slicked his tongue along her slowly.

  She bucked against his face.

  Sensitive, too. Oh, this was going to be fun.

  He glanced up at her, licking her again. She had thrown her hands out and fisted the sheets. So he continued. And was rewarded for his efforts by a thrusting, moaning woman whose cheeks and chest flushed
when she came.

  And came again.

  “Please, Marcus,” she panted, clamping her thighs over his ears. He pulled her legs apart and increased the pressure against her clit. “I can’t.” Her protest was a shout as she tried unsuccessfully to squirm away. “Please! No more, no… oh! Oh! Marcus!”

  He didn’t let up, holding her legs and feeling her pulse against his tongue. Her screaming faded into mewls which faded into what sounded like a soft sob. And this time she’d said his name without any prompting at all. It was a great gift.

  He let her go, her legs falling open as he leaned over her at the top of the bed. He lifted the very limp arm she’d thrown over her face and dropped it to the side. He smoothed her hair—gone curly, since her temples were damp with sweat—away from her forehead.

  “Told you you’d beg,” he reminded her.

  “Hmm,” she hummed, satisfied. He could see the satisfied. Her eyes opened lazily, blinking even more lazily. “Wow.”

  His grin was genuine. And yes, cocky. He couldn’t help it. Seeing her this pleased, he felt like he’d won some sort of kinky lottery.

  One of her hands slipped over his boxer briefs and squeezed. He was hard, getting harder now that she was touching him. “I’m doing you next.”

  “No. You’re not.” He dipped his head in reference to the part of her he was just enjoying. “I want in there.”

  A laugh sounded in her throat, also making him feel proud. “You have a way with words, Black.”

  “I have a way with you, McIntire.” He lowered over her, kissing her, running his tongue along the tip of hers. “You are powerless beneath me.”

  Her eyes flared with heat, this time directed at him, and not what he was doing to her. He wanted that—wanted her seeing him as he was, not who she’d mistakenly assumed him to be. He may have been playing the field for a while, but if Lily was game, she was the only field he had any interest in. The realization scared the hell out of him, but there it was.