Her masturbation fantasies had definitely not done the guy justice.
Jarit Colson was ripped, not in the steroid sense but in that zero-percent body fat, no-nonsense, my-body-is-my-temple kind of way. He struck her as a guy who used his body for his work, but how? A bouncer, maybe or…oh, a spy?
“The height of fashion, right?” He was referring to her big plum-purple bath towel wrapped around his waist. It looked almost puny on him. The way it was knotted at the side made him look even more predatory.
At the same time it begged fingers, eager female ones like hers, to work the material loose.
“It’s…all right,” she managed without sounding perverted, trying to be polite.
“You’re a good liar, Macy, and a nice person. Is this for me?” He gestured to one of the glasses.
“Yes, of course.” But how do you know I’m nice? she wanted to ask. Surely her elevator manners were less than effusive.
“Cheers.” He was grinning, glass in the air. She took up her own, trembling.
What toast did you offer a near-naked guy in your kitchen, one you’ve had a crush on since he had moved in across the hall two months ago but was too principled—some would say narrow minded—to actually engage in real life.
Luckily, he had all the words.
“To my gorgeous neighbor and to my good luck for finding her home in my time of need,” he announced.
Her fingers trembled a little. She wanted to fight him on the gorgeous part but frankly the whole thing was a little overwhelming and breath stealing.
He thought she was hot? Well, maybe not hot, but certainly attractive.
“Macy, I have a confession.”
“Oh?” Her heart clenched, ready to stop, good or bad, on his next words. “Don’t tell me you’re a serial killer, because I really don’t want blood on that towel, especially my own.”
He chuckled. “Good one, Macy. Actually I need to tell you it wasn’t exactly an accident, my being here.”
She sucked in her lower lip, all sorts of things racing through her mind.
“It’s a little complex, but you just need to know I have really wanted a chance to know you better.”
“I’m certainly getting to know you.”
She knew he caught the quick sweep of her eyes up and down his body. The wine was already making her bolder and him too, probably, not that he needed encouragement.
“Well, you can’t say I’m not laying myself bare, right?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Macy, I just have to know.” He took a step closer, dangerously erasing the distance between them. “Are you involved with someone?”
“No,” she said, wishing she were the sort of person who could lie about such things.
“But you’re not available.”
The way he said it made her sound sad, pathetic.
“How do you know? You never asked me out,” she retorted, instantly regretting it. What the hell was she playing at, and with a man like him, no less?
“Would you have accepted?” Another step forward, maybe a foot left between them now, maybe less.
“No.” She retreated, recovering her “safe” ground.
“Exactly, and that’s why I didn’t ask.”
“Afraid of rejection?” she speculated.
“Not particularly, I just don’t like to waste time.”
“Right, so you manage to show up in a woman’s kitchen dressed only in her towel, having wine, talking about your feelings?”
“Is that all it is, my feelings?” His eyes narrowed. She could feel them boring in, making her toes curl. “Or do you have any confessions of your own?”
“I stole gum out of my teacher’s desk in third grade,” she quipped.
He laughed gently. His hand found the side of her head, the errant chestnut curls long since escaped from her poorly placed banana clip.
He tucked them behind her ear. “You’re so damn beautiful, Macy. Can you blame a guy for bending the rules a little to get with you?”
“Wh-what rules?” Had he been reading her play book or just her mind?
“The whole formal thing—asking you over and over, following like a puppy, knowing you’re just too shy or insular or something. Look, I will walk out that door now, minus the towel, just say the word.”
She managed a little laugh. “Nah, I’d hate to see you get arrested for indecent exposure on my account.”
His expression turned passionate, fierce and possessive in that way only a lusting man can manage. “In that case…”
Jarit’s words dissolved into a kiss.
His lips were like fire, instantly branding, marking, as if continuing the conversation with a whole different language.
For about a nanosecond she might have broken it off, but then she fell in with him and she was all plunging and dissolving, at once helpless and reckless as she tasted him, so strong and confident. Oh god, how she needed this, a man to love her with his lips, to run his tongue across her teeth, to penetrate her mouth with it, promising all the other things a man could do.
The full gamut of things no dildo or vibrator could ever hope to imitate no matter how amazingly advanced the latest technology.
Jarit kept control, holding them at the edge.
Macy panted, wanting more. She wanted their skin hot and naked, their bodies intertwined, him holding, twisting, restraining, liberating her all at once.
“If we don’t stop now—” he warned, nibbling her ear. “You tell me, it’s all…or nothing.”
She groaned, as if this was a time to step up to the plate morally.
All…or nothing.
She fell back on the rules.
“We should stop. I don’t even know you.”
“That’s true, then again, I live across the hall, we ride the elevator and as often as I can, I time it so we can be together.”
“Oh god, you do that too?” She’d said it aloud, too late to hold back.
“Uh-huh, and that’s not all, Macy.” His hands slid to her waist, up under her T-shirt, just resting on the bare flesh of her rib cage. “I’ve had dreams about you.”
“Are they nightmares?” she quipped.
“Only when I wake up and you’re not there.” Jarit’s cock was pressing hard against her inner thigh. She imagined its size, its contours, in her, filling her, white hot, possessing her.
“I have dreams too. I imagine you coming into my bedroom,” she whispered. “You…you take me.”
“Be specific. Tell me everything.” He lifted her arms and helped her take off the T-shirt. Dimly she was aware of still having a bra, her breasts straining against the cups, begging release.
“You crawl on top of me in bed, so I can’t move and you kiss my body, my stomach, my—”
“Yes?” he urged, drawing her mouth in for a fresh ravishing.
This time she let herself go, belly pressed to belly, her hands rubbing his shoulders, sliding down to trace the lines of his massive biceps. “My nipples, oh god, Jarit, you make them ache so bad.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He nibbled at her lower lip. “Tell me you’re ready for bed, Macy.”
“But your clothes, they aren’t in the dryer yet—”
“To hell with my clothes,” he said as he unbuttoned her jeans shorts. “Besides, there’s another wet thing around here to tend to, isn’t there?”
She shivered, at once fearing and craving his touch, the peeling back of her layers. This was crazy. Every rule was being broken, even number 2.
Thou shalt not think with thy pussy.
“You are wet for me,” he persisted, taking the devil’s own time with her zipper. “I could tell that the minute you saw me in this towel.”
Did he want to drive her insane?
Of course he does, he’s a man! “You’re arrogant, you know that.”
“Sure,” he freely admitted, “it’s a vast head trip, knowing I can make you come without even being in the same bed, so now that I have the re
al chance, why not?”
“Jarit, don’t,” she pleaded, spinning on the dime of desire as he finally finished the zipper and started sliding the material down over her hips.
He whistled at the little pink panties, complete with white bow.
“Damn, woman, you know how to get a guy wound up.”
“They’re just underwear,” she insisted, squirming. “And I most certainly didn’t put them on for your benefit.”
“Good,” he growled, slipping his hands under the waistband to cup her bare ass cheeks. “Then you won’t mind when I rip them off you.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
He was already grasping the waistband.
“Wait, I’ll do it,” she exclaimed.
“You have five seconds.”
The panties slid down to her ankles. She stepped out of them, telling herself as she did so that it meant nothing, no commitment to the sexual act and certainly no surrender to him.
Her bra was slipping off. Blast it, he’d already managed to undo the strap. Just how many hands did he have anyway?
His towel was gone. His naked cock throbbed against her, she could feel the surging blood inside the rigid rod. She wanted it, needed it in her so bad.
Somehow the bra cups fell forward and his mouth touched her bosom. He used his teeth and his tongue.
She moaned, arching her back.
“We’ll never make it to the bedroom,” she said, or was it him?
Next thing she knew he was lifting her up onto the counter. She could feel the imitation granite on her bare butt cheeks. That and the cool air on her skin from the fan was a keen reminder.
She was naked.
And Jarit was holding her hips, positioning her in front of him, readying her for penetration.
No time for preliminaries.
She received him, wet and ready, just as he’d predicted. Jarit’s huge, thick shaft slid into her, filling her, exploding her world with craving and desire.
“Yes…”
“So good, baby,” he affirmed and he began to work her, thrusting evenly and efficiently, withdrawing almost to the tip then plunging back in to fill her completely. The process tormented her, teasing but also inflaming.
She wrapped her ankles around his ass, drawing him tighter. He bent his head and sank his teeth into her neck, just hard enough to awaken every nerve ending.
“Going to…come,” he groaned. “Can’t hold back.”
“Don’t, don’t hold back, Jarit, fucking come inside me,” she pleaded fiercely, scarcely recognizing her own voice.
Jarit shuddered as he made his mark, shooting into her, branding her with his seed. She could feel its warmth filling her. With his head back, more a roaring lion than an orgasming man, he kept thrusting, as if determined to go deeper, more powerfully than any man ever had before.
His territory.
He subsided finally and she fell against him, so close to the edge of climax and yet deliciously in limbo.
Jarit took just a moment to recover. “Your turn,” he said as though they’d been planning the whole thing months in advance and not on the spur of the moment.
“Oh no, it’s all right,” she said, partially from the rote way she dealt with men, but also out of a sudden fear of having this man here, not just a stranger anymore, a neighbor in need, but as a lover. With all that entailed—the complexities, the entanglements.
She wanted it to be all right, for him to just leave with what he had come for.
But it wasn’t enough, not for Jarit Colson.
With as much defiance as gallantry, he scooped her into his arms.
“That was a statement, baby, not a question.”
Chapter Two
Jarit carried Macy, nude and trembling, down the hall. The gambit had worked, he was taking her to bed—her bed—and soon he would be pleasuring her, driving her out of her mind with the kind of pleasure she so obviously needed.
Not that he minded playing the role for her.
For one thing, she was the most voluptuous and passionate woman he’d ever run across. Even the way she tried to ignore him in the elevator all those days had screamed sex. No wonder he had done everything in his power to spend that time with her, confined in the tiny metal enclosure, stealing little peeks at her lush curves, the way her dark hair fell about her shoulders, making him want to run his fingers through it. And those lips, ever demure and pouting, craving attention and hidden ministrations.
Of course he was bound to find a way into her apartment. He’d made it fair, playing that little game of chance he’d invented when he was a kid. Whenever he wanted something, he would make it a situation of odds—in this case he had put his keys in the pocket of one of his two favorite pairs of jeans.
Finding his keys in his pocket meant returning to his apartment. Not finding them meant going to hers. Today after three previous failed attempts, he’d hit pay dirt. The keys were in the other jeans, which meant, by his own rules, that he would have to leave home without them, setting in motion the chain of events. All the more interesting since it was about to rain on a Saturday when he intended to wash the car.
The stage had been set. Just stay outside awhile, wait for the cloud burst and then come in, straight to Apartment 307.
It was a pure gamble. She might have been out. She might have had company, male company even.
He doubted it because she seemed like such a loner and in the two months he’d been there it seemed that she had left only to go to work or shopping.
She had certainly shown herself to be interested in him though. There was the time she found the letter, for example.
He’d actually been the one to smuggle it into her box to see what she’d do.
So adorable, sweating over the decision, brow furrowed as she stood in front of the outgoing mailbox, to let it go or not?
Macy never did bring it to his door. She’d chickened out and put it in his box, which is why he’d stepped up the game.
The ball had still been in her court. She didn’t have to offer to help with those wet clothes, or get them wine.
But she had and they’d made love.
Carrying her across the threshold, Jarit took a look around.
Macy’s bedroom was sweet and sassy, like her.
A little bit paradoxical too. Ultramodern black Lucite dressers matched with Japanese paper lamps, long-stemmed lilies on either side of a surprisingly large canopy bed, the top portion made of a shimmering star-patterned material.
“I didn’t get to clean,” she teased and he kissed her all over her face.
She was so damn delightful, cute and perky and siren-like all at once. He could spend a lifetime exploring her, plumbing her depths.
Easy, cowboy. They had a big hurdle to cross before they could really be lovers, and nine chances out of ten, she wouldn’t be up for it.
Oh well, at least he’d try.
“Forget the cleaning,” he murmured. “Forget everything…but this.”
This involved setting her down on the mattress and climbing astride her, his lips against hers, his hip pressing her thigh.
Gently she moaned as he parted her legs.
“That’s it,” he encouraged, rewarding her with deep kisses to her nipples, using his lips and tongue to excite and draw out the taut flesh.
She arched her back in reply, another positive move, but when she tried to rake her nails over his shoulders, he whispered in her ear.
“No, sweetheart, lie still for me, will you do that?”
It was her first lesson in obedience and she passed with flying colors, her arms moving to either side of her head, palms up. It was a natural surrender position and it had the desired effect on Jarit’s Dominant blood.
He praised her again, trailing kisses down her flat, quivering belly, the perfect mix of muscle and smooth woman flesh.
“Open for me, baby.” Calling her that felt natural, as did the way she parted her thighs, inviting his cock, his tongue, whatever he might
wish to do to her.
What he had in mind was her pleasure, enough of it to drive her crazy and he knew how to do it too.
“Oh god, Jarit.” She called his name, encouraging him as he moved his tongue along her crevice, that pink line of flesh, covering but not quite sealing her sex.
Damn, he wished it was his cock ramming home, pushing into her moist, warm depths. Slowly this time, working them both to agonizing frenzy before exploding in molten heat, her climax and his conjoined.
Hopefully he would have the chance.
Macy writhed. He had her clit gently between his lips, sucking, playing with it. She was ready, more than ready.
But Jarit was still playing, still testing. He lifted his head, leaned back on one elbow.
“D-don’t stop,” she groaned.
“I like to hear a woman ask for it.” Beg, actually, but one had to work slowly into these things.
“You know I want it!”
“Do I?”
“Yes, god yes, please, make me come.”
Jarit smiled, opting to put her out of her misery—first-timer’s misery to be sure, nothing like what an accomplished player of his type of games could achieve.
“Play with your nipples,” he instructed. “Tease them while you are coming.”
Macy gritted her teeth, grasping the hot nubs between thumbs and forefingers.
“Twist them,” he said.
She cried out from the sensation even as he dabbed his tongue once more into place and felt the hot, pulsing flesh, the semisweet flow of her sex juices down the side of his mouth.
Jarit showed no mercy, delivering a mind-numbing climax. She nearly levitated, thrusting her pelvis against his mouth as she screamed out his name, laced with a string of harmless profanities. He continued to lick and suck as she came down from her explosion, her body a hot, throbbing wreck.
At last he came up for air. They kissed, this time mouth to mouth. She seemed to relish the taste of herself on his lips.
“That was…fucking incredible,” she murmured.
Starstruck and sated as she was, he felt her reaching for his cock. It was hard, as hard as the first time, if not more so.
“What have we here?” she teased.
Jarit’s jaw tensed. It was clear she wanted to take the reins, maybe have him lie on his back so she could ride him for a while. While certainly a sexy idea, it would never happen like that.
Managing Macy Page 2
