Piper turned and leveled a baleful glare his way. “Oh, man,” she groaned. “Me and my big mouth. And this day was going so well, too.”
“Come on, you knew I’d ask. Besides, the day’s still good—we’re just talking, that’s all.”
“Honestly, the less I have to think about Kyle Dwyer, the better.”
“Except, if I don’t ask, I won’t be able to stop thinking about him,” Red reasoned.
Piper wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Why do you want to know about him, anyway? I can assure you that I’m not pining for him. The relationship is totally dead and over and has zero chance of ever being resuscitated.” She waved her hand beside her in dramatic pantomime of a brush-off.
“Humor me,” Red smirked.
“Really?” Piper demanded back.
“Yes. Maybe I want to see what I’m up against. Scope out the competition, as it were.”
“Trust me, you are not in competition with jerky Kyle. You are not only not in the same contest, but you are in totally different weight classes. Different leagues. Different sports, even.”
“I’m no expert,” he mused, “But you may have just violated a rule about too many analogies in one sentence.”
She tipped her glass of prosecco in his direction in challenge. “Who’s the writer here? You or me?”
“Nice try, but you aren’t going to change this particular subject, little dove.”
“Not feeling very peace-like at the moment, if you must know.”
“How’d you meet him?” Red tried, steamrolling ahead.
“Through friends.”
“Length of relationship?”
“Too long.”
Red chuckled. So stubborn. “How recently did the split occur? How about that?”
Piper sighed, long and beleaguered. “About three years ago. I’m over it, I promise you. And…I guess if you really want to know more, I can tell you someday. But can we please not dredge it up tonight?”
“Sure. Just let me know if I need to kill him.”
“Please stop.”
“Fair enough,” Red capitulated, a little bemused by her reticence. “I’ll back off. But could you at least advise me on how not to make the same mistake he did?”
Piper toyed with the small blown-glass hurricane near her plate, her amber eyes reflecting the flame of the candle as she stared back at him. “In very simple terms,” she said haltingly, “Kyle…betrayed my trust. And Red, once that’s gone, there’s…no going back for me.” Piper sniffed in derision. “Not like he wanted to, anyway.”
“I totally understand,” Red told her. And he thought to himself, No sweat.
He knew all about trust, didn’t he? At this point, it might as well have been his middle name. And Piper, of all people, had no reason not to trust him because Red only wanted the best for her. He truly intended to take care of her as long as she’d let him.
Hell—he was already looking out for Piper in ways she wasn’t even aware of yet. And if keeping her trust was the worst Red had to worry about, this relationship couldn’t possibly go wrong. They were too compatible. Too perfect for each other.
Red had no idea what he’d done to deserve her, and he didn’t really care. He had Piper now, and no way was he going down like that asshole Kyle.
THE SUN HAD been down for a while by the time they were finally ready to leave. The moon hung big and bright over the water, and Red and Piper stood near the sand, gazing at the stars and the lights of the boats mirrored on the bay. It felt like every one of his nerve-endings was on high-alert, vibrating for any hint of her touch or scent.
As if she could sense his need for her, Piper leaned her head against him and slipped her arm around Red’s waist. As she did so, the wind gusted and blew up the edge of his button-down, and her hand landed on the bare skin of his back instead of on pressed cotton.
The unexpected sensation jolted him. Piper stroked his skin gently, calming him like she might a spooked animal. Her hand was a warm and tantalizing contrast to the evening air. Red looked into her upturned face and for the hundredth time that day lost himself in her molten, decadent mouth.
The drive back home was marked by small vivid slices in the dark. Piper’s hand on his thigh. Her light, barely-there scent teasing the air. The occasional streetlamp casting polygons of light across her face and throat.
Red grabbed Piper’s hand in the driveway, pulled her straight down the brick path that skirted the side of the house, and out onto the lawn in back.
“Follow me, princess,” he told her, leading her across the grass and up the stairs of the big gazebo that looked out onto the beach. Red sat in one of the wicker armchairs and pulled Piper into his lap, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close.
They stayed like that for a long time, talking softly. He asked her what she liked best about the area where she lived, and it was a lot to compete with. Red weighed comparable places close to him in New York while he traced patterns on her thigh and toyed with her hair.
Piper’s mind wasn’t on comparisons between New York and Maryland, however. Before long, she’d shifted sideways on his lap, and rested her head on his arm so he could kiss her. One taste of her tongue, one tug of her hands in his hair, and Red was slipping his already-tenuous leash.
Piper’s husky moans carried out across the sand and echoed back on the tide, while Red sucked on that sexy space joining her neck to her shoulder. He used his hands to get her off and thanked his lucky stars that he’d inherited those long, deft MacLellan fingers.
Too soon, she sagged across his lap, boneless and sated. Red whispered, “God, you’re so beautiful.”
“I just hope no one walked by in the middle of that,” she smiled.
“No one will come by. Once the tide came in, it cut off the beach down there.” Red pointed at the curve of coastline. “Someone would have to cut across private property and scale a very steep and slippery seawall in the dark if they wanted to get this far up the beach now.”
“That is very interesting information,” Piper told him. She moved off his lap and knelt between his legs.
Red’s body cast a looming shadow over her in the moonlight. He clutched the armrests with his hands and ignored the way the back of his shirt kept snagging on the wicker chair. He couldn’t quite make out Piper’s face in the darkness, but when she ran her palms up his thighs, his heart hammered at her decisive touch.
“Scoot forward,” she instructed.
Red was used to being the one in the driver’s seat. Normally, his resistance to being ordered around was both immediate and incontrovertible. And he did hesitate at Piper’s commanding tone, a small vestige of defiance rearing up in opposition.
But the woman he wanted was on her knees in front of him. If Red expected to receive the gift she was offering, he needed to override that command center miscue, and fast. He made the conscious decision to relax, then scooted the fuck forward like she’d asked.
Piper pushed up the hem of his button-down shirt, already a soft and rumpled phantom of its former perfectly-starched state. Then she reached for the button of his pants, and his internal conflict threw up another last-gasp effort. He clamped his hand over hers.
“What are you—” Red cleared his throat. He knew damn well what Piper was doing, and so did she. “Wait,” he tried.
Under his restraining hand, Piper had managed to work his button free. She was clearly heading for zipper territory but at the discomfort in his voice, she stopped cold.
“You don’t want me to?”
“Yes, of course I do.” He did. God, he really did. “But…” What? What, exactly? Did Red have to be able to tell her what to do, or did he have to take a strong and immediate chill pill?
Piper pulled her hands away and sank back on her heels, giving him space. “I’m making you uncomfortable,” she said. “Why?”
“It’s not that,” Red tried. He attempted to force his scrambled thoughts into some kind of logical order. Hadn’t he alrea
dy determined that all the control bullshit didn’t apply with this woman? That he was completely cool without it? “I just don’t want you to feel like you have to,” he said. His voice came out weird and guttural, and Red was sure Piper would call him on it.
But she took his words at face value. “I do feel like I have to. But not because of anything you’re doing. It’s because I want this. I want you, like this.” She took a deep breath. “But only if you’re okay with it.”
Red’s reservations melted in the face of her calm, reasonable assurance. He gave her a jerky nod and relaxed back into the seat.
Piper moved slowly, carefully lowering his zipper the rest of the way, then brushing aside the edges of his khaki pants. She shuffled closer to inspect his boxers, then smiled suddenly when she realized they had red anchors all over them.
“Ahoy,” Piper murmured appreciatively.
Red huffed out a short laugh, trying to retain the semblance of a casual sprawl despite the fact that every muscle in his body felt tense. When he’d leaned back, his shadow had moved off her face, and Piper’s lovely, willing lips were quite easy to discern.
“Do you want me to stop?” She studied him, trying to gauge his mood. She probably thought he was acting bizarrely. Red would bet his mother’s entire collection of jewelry that Piper had never encountered resistance to a blow job in her entire adult life.
“God,” he laughed again, feeling unhinged. “No, I don’t want you to stop. I want you to do this like I want my next breath.”
When Piper dragged one fingernail up his boxers, tracing the outline of his cock, Red’s swallow sounded too loud in the soft autumn night. His erection was all-in on the plan, clearly not having gotten the message that there was a previously-determined protocol to be followed.
“I see that,” she grinned, the little imp.
The combination of her sass and her touch made it difficult to put two words—two thoughts—together. Red forced out something of a non-sequitur: “I’m don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable,” he murmured, then had to stop when she kissed the small button on the placket of his boxers. Eventually, he was able to press on, “Because…because of what happened last time. When you didn’t like the spanking.”
“You won’t. I want to do this,” Piper assured him. She eased down his boxers and pants, then looked very proud of herself when Red lifted his hips to aid her efforts. “Last chance to back out,” she added.
Red shook his head quickly, his eyes boring into her in the starlit night. He could do this with his hands tied behind his back. He merely had to keep his eyes on the prize as it were.
“Then let’s proceed, Captain.”
Red hissed out another tortured laugh when Piper put her lips on the head of his cock, and wished he hadn’t given himself quite the pep talk he had. Now all he could think about was her hands tied behind her back. And no one would have to close their eyes if he blindfolded her, too.
Any amusement Red might have felt was cut off quickly, though, when Piper cupped his balls in one hand and tightly gripped the base of his shaft with the other. She slid her mouth down his length as far as she could manage, and when Red groaned softly—she sucked. She sucked him so fucking hard it made him see stars. More stars.
Piper took her time, using her lips and her tongue to wind him up and up, before backing off again. She was so incredibly gorgeous kneeling there, not trying to be gentle, not letting up. Red held off his climax as long as he could because he never wanted this to end.
It came barreling down his spine without warning, though, sizzling through his nervous system like an electrical current.
“Coming now, baby,” he warned.
Red sank his fingers into Piper’s silky hair to hold her still and took in a huge gulp of air. It stuck in his lungs for an interminable moment while the world stopped turning and he hovered on the edge, but seconds later, Red was growling and shuddering in release.
He cupped Piper’s head in trembling hands. She pressed a shaky kiss to the inside of his thigh.
“So unbelievably beautiful,” he told her again.
Piper laid her head on his leg and smiled up at him, ignoring the rough wood and grains of sand that had to be digging into her knees and shins. Red could barely believe he’d been the one to put that expression on her face.
When he could stand up without embarrassing himself, Red helped Piper to her feet, too, and led her back across the boardwalk. He brought her over to the outdoor shower outside the pool house and crouched to wash off her legs and feet.
He left the lights off inside the main house, and walked quietly beside her, straight up to his bedroom. Piper crawled into bed beside him and sounded happy when he mentioned visiting her sometime in the coming week. She reminded Red what time her train left from Penn Station the next day, and then she fell sound asleep.
They didn’t talk about ex-fiancés or penchants for bondage or financial headaches at the office. In the morning, they would fly back to the city, and Red would deliver Piper to her train in plenty of time.
And all that was okay, because Red deserved this happiness, just like Piper deserved him. He could trust this astonishing thing that had dropped smack into the middle of his life, and so could Piper.
He didn’t need to worry. He wouldn’t worry. Red was in charge, and he was capable. Everything would happen exactly the way it was supposed to.
NINETEEN
PIPER HADN’T REALIZED before now that she was quite so terrible at going down on a man. Though to be fair, she hadn’t had a ton of practice—and the last time she’d tried had been three effing years ago. Come to think of it, though, Kyle wasn’t exactly bowled over by her efforts, was he?
Still, Piper thought that her enthusiasm on her most recent attempt would have smoothed over any deficiencies in technique. Red had certainly seemed happy with how things went, but that was before he’d flown the coop.
Maybe that was overstating things. But he had said he would visit Piper that week and it was already Thursday with no sign of him. Red had texted and called her every day as he always did, but he’d made no reference whatsoever to his potential travel plans.
She’d been normal enough at first, talking herself through the most obvious explanation—that Red was simply a very busy man, working through whatever he’d missed by whisking her off to the Hamptons on Monday.
But then she’d begun to dissect whether he might be avoiding a visit because of her sudden U-turn on the spanking issue. She had enjoyed it the first time they tried. It was just that Red’s mood had been so different the second time around. It had felt—still felt—like he’d been taking out his annoyance at Jim Denton on her tender derriere.
Which meant that over the last three days, Piper’s brain had hashed out every possible thing she might have done to dissuade him. Clearly, she had to add social anxiety to the list of things she hadn’t known about herself.
She hadn’t considered that she might suck at sucking, as it were, until she’d hit the dairy aisle at the grocery store this morning. Once she did, however, it seemed to make an odd kind of sense. There’d been Red’s initial reluctance to the idea, and his pensive mood after the fact.
She wished he would call her, anyhow. Then maybe Piper could ask for some tips, so she wouldn’t blow it again. And, great, now every thought she had was apparently going to sound like a fellatio euphemism. She had to get a grip. She had to…oh. God.
Piper felt her face get hot and looked quickly around. Somehow, she’d ended up in the freezer section on the other side of the store, which was probably as close to a cold shower as the market was likely to provide her. She snatched a container of mango sorbet, tossed it in with the rest of her food, and powered over to the checkout lanes.
Her humiliation at being the world’s only erotic romance author who could botch real-life oral sex flamed disconcertingly bright for nearly the entire drive home. She was two blocks from her driveway before her brain changed channels again, and she
thought of yet another possibility for Red’s evident disinterest.
Might it be because Piper hadn’t wanted to tell him more about Kyle? At the time, she’d only been thinking that she didn’t want her ex to intrude on such a wonderful day. Well, that and not wanting to look dumb in front of Red. Now, it occurred to her that not explaining probably made it seem like she had something to hide.
She didn’t, of course. The only thing Piper had done wrong was to entrust a horse’s ass with her heart. But how was Red supposed to know, if she didn’t have the guts to tell him?
He’d said he’d come to see her. He hadn’t. But oh, how she still wanted him to. Piper wanted to see Red’s face and touch his skin, and banter back and forth with him over desserts that started life in boxes.
She sighed and slowed to make her turn. It was impossible to maintain a sense of anticipation for long—the high-alert pounding of her heart when she knew she was going to see him again had faded within forty-eight hours. Little by little, Piper had dropped her guard and let her normal life—and abnormal fears—distract her.
That was probably why it took several moments for it to dawn on her that there was another car parked in her driveway when she pulled in. A very shiny, very black…something. Piper was terrible with car names, but even she could tell it was fancy, and exactly the sort of thing that Red MacLellan might drive.
Her heart stuttered in her chest, and Piper gave herself a mental shake. Just because he made her feel giddy as a child sometimes, did not mean she had to act like one, too. Anxious thoughts notwithstanding, she ought to play this cool. Lord knew nothing seemed to fluster Red.
If it even was him. Which it might not be. If it wasn’t, she’d be totally cool with that, too.
Piper snorted. If she felt the need to pretend like this when she was sitting alone in the silence and solitude of her own damn car, then maybe she really was off her rocker.
She meted out one small, undignified squeak of excitement. She gathered her bags, locked her car, and marched staunchly onto her porch. Once there, she stopped and eyed her front door suspiciously. Piper hitched her purse higher onto her shoulder and switched the grocery bags to her other hand.
The Titan Was Tall (Triple Threat Book 1) Page 21
