“Do you want that?”
He shook his head. “Never have before.”
Which seemed to indicate now he did.
“I’m sorry for what I said yesterday. It’s none of my business…”
He didn’t say anything, so I let the sentence just fade into quiet.
“It’s nice,” he said.
“What is?”
“Someone giving a shit. About me.”
“Well, let’s not get carried away,” I joked, but my eyes caught his and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t feel my feet on the floor or the clothes on my body. That was the power of eye contact with Jesse.
“I don’t talk about my family,” he said. “I haven’t for a really long time.”
“I understand. I don’t talk about mine, either. It hurts.”
He faced me fully. “You haven’t told me anything about them,” he said. “Do you have a sister? Brother?”
“Can we…not?” I said. “I’m kind of… happy for the first time in a long time and I don’t want to talk about my family.”
He opened his mouth as if to argue with me, but then shut it and shook his head.
“Sure,” he finally said. “Hand me the curtains.”
I shook the denim curtains out of the plastic bag and handed him the edge with the hooks for the curtain rod. He ignored the hooks and tore a strip of duct tape off his industrial-sized roll and slapped it onto the wall.
As the curtains shook out, something seemed…wrong.
We got the other curtain up, the room getting dark as the denim did its job and kept out peeping eyes and most of the sunlight. As the curtains settled against the window I stepped back with a gasp.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed.
“What the fuck is that?” We were both staring at the thing on the curtain.
“It’s a…Minion. From the kids’ movie.”
A round-headed one-eyed Minion with a protective goggle.
Jesse tilted his head. “Kids like that thing?”
“I think so.”
It was quite possibly the worst curtain for an orgy room that I could have picked out.
“Your face,” he said with a laugh.
“This…oh, my god, let’s take them down.”
“Why? They make it nice and dark in here. I like it.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m pretty much only serious.” He glanced back at the curtains—they were the actual living definition of ludicrous. “They’re staying.”
He turned and I shrugged. “It’s your orgy room. You want a one-eyed cartoon character watching you, I guess that’s your freaky business.”
“I told you,” he said. “Not an orgy.”
“Potato tomato,” I said, a little joke from my mom. He reached up and touched a curl that was brushing my shoulder, a white-blonde corkscrew. His pinky brushed my shoulder and he dropped the curl to tug down the tee shirt I was wearing. He tugged until he could see the mark he left on me. And I let him.
“I like that on you,” he said.
“Me too,” I told him.
“Yeah?”
I nodded, pretty speechless.
“I want to put more of these on you. All over you.”
Sure, I thought. Let’s do that.
Sun split through the space between the dark curtains, slicing right through his mouth as he smiled. I wanted to kiss him so badly I hurt.
“I’ve been thinking about yesterday.”
“Me too,” I breathed. He was tracing the edges of the mark he put on me. Over and over again until it was practically hypnotic. I was completely under his spell.
“I’m gonna need to come on your tits.”
I sucked in air like I was drowning.
“You gonna let me do that?” he asked.
“I’m gonna let you do everything,” I whispered.
He groaned low in his throat like I was killing him, like I’d twisted the knife. Like I was simply too much.
“I just went for a run,” he said, his fingers dropping from my shoulder. “I need to shower.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Sure.”
He pulled the sweatshirt over his head, taking his shirt off with it, and his chest was damp and flush and right there. Close enough to touch. So I did. I touched the rounded edge of his pec, trailed my fingers over the ridges of his abs. Spread my hand as wide as it could go, my pinky in his belly button, the tip of my longest finger brushing his nipple.
I wanted to map him. Use my hands to discover the length and width of his bones and muscles. The curves of his spine, the arch of his foot. And my body, my skin, the far edges of myself ached to have him do the same to me.
I didn’t get touched a whole lot in my life, and I was hungry for it. Dying for it.
He grabbed the hem of my shirt and started to pull it off. I put my hand on my stomach, keeping it down.
“You’re taking a shower,” I reminded him.
“You’re coming with me.”
I shook my head. If his shower was anything like mine, it was tiny and the lighting was like a department store change room. It was, without a doubt, the least sexy place in the Bay Area. I would not be going.
“I’ll wait.” Right here in this nice dark room. Perhaps under the covers even.
“I don’t want you to wait. I want you to scrub my back.”
“It’s not…that…you can…”
He stepped back. Kicked off his shoes and in one motion pushed down his pants until he was standing naked in front of me, his cock twitching against his thigh. As I watched it grew erect, and I could have clapped like he’d performed a magic trick. But I knew if I lifted my hands from my shirt he’d be all over me.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Nothing. Shower. I’ll be here—”
“In the dark. Under the covers.”
“Exactly.” I smiled at him, pleased he got it.
“Bullshit. Is this some body nonsense about your belly or the way your thighs touch?”
I blinked, stunned that he knew. That’d he’d guessed, but then the demons in my head jumped up to say Well, of course he guessed, he’s looked at your body. He knows you’re fat.
“I just…it’s bright in there,” I said and blew out a long breath. “It’s nice and dark in here.”
He pulled me to him so hard and so fast I hit his chest and the air got knocked out of me. He held me so tight I was like one of those women in a 1940’s movie, bent over his arm, so off balance I had to hold onto his shoulders.
He was sweaty and warm and naked and it didn’t matter. Forget the shower, I thought. Let’s just get to the sex. I moaned into his mouth, opening myself up to his tongue and his teeth the punishing nature of his kiss. And all of it told me what was going to happen to my body in the next hour. The way I would be used and held and fucked and I wanted it. All of it.
He leaned back and suddenly my shirt was off.
“What—”
“Shhhh,” he said and kissed me again. My bra was gone, my skirt pushed down past my hips, my underwear with it. “I want to fuck this body,” he said against my lips. “I am fucking crazy about this body.”
He squeezed my ass as if to emphasize that point and I gasped again, and then—because really why was I arguing? Why did I care if he didn’t?—I moaned my capitulation.
“That’s right,” he said. His dick so hard against my now-bare stomach. And he didn’t so much lead me as half carry, half shove me toward his bathroom. And every second of his Neanderthal tactics wound me up, got me hotter. And like he knew, like he could taste it in my mouth or see it in my face—he only gave me more.
“Stand there.” He turned me so I faced the mirror. He even went so far as to put my hands against the cold white porcelain of the old sink. “Don’t move.”
In the mirror I watched him flip aside the shower curtain and crank on the faucet. He held his hand out into the water, checking the temperature and adjusting. An
d then he turned toward me, and his eyes met mine in the mirror before they dropped to scan my body. I closed my eyes, imagining what he saw and kind of hating it.
“I didn’t say you could do that,” he whispered just before his hands came around me, cupping my breasts in his big palms. I moaned at his touch. “Open your eyes.”
I was powerless to resist.
He stood behind me, his face buried in my hair, his hands so dark against the skin of my chest. “Look at how beautiful you are,” he whispered.
I flinched away from him. “Don’t.”
He glared at me in the mirror. “No talking. No closing your eyes. You’re not leaving. Watch.”
The mirror was small so I could only see our faces, shoulders and the tops of my breasts, gripped in his dark hands. I couldn’t see his hand slipping down over my belly. I moaned, my eyes slipping shut.
“Eyes open,” he whispered, but I didn’t do it right away and he stepped away from me, the searing heat of his body all along my back replaced by a cool breeze.
“No,” I gasped, my eyes opening.
“You gonna do what I say?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Watch. Keep your mouth shut.”
So I did as his stomach pressed up to my back, his thighs against my thighs. His hand palming my belly, touching all the places I hated, and I could feel myself retreating, back deeper inside my body.
“Stay with me,” he whispered, and that hand tormenting my belly slipped down between my legs. I gasped, arching back into him as his palm covered my pussy. I pressed my ass against his dick and ran wet when he groaned.
He fingered me, long and slow, circling my clit, slipping inside my body. My clit was buzzing, my body aching. I got up on my tiptoes, not sure if I wanted more or to get away. And the whole time I watched him.
And he watched me.
This dark specter over my shoulder.
Perhaps it was the mirror. That this all seemed to happen there, one-square removed from who we were. I don’t know, but I didn’t flinch and I didn’t look away. I was nailed by his fingers deep inside me and his eyes, hard on mine.
“I’m gonna make you come,” he whispered, licking the lobe of my ear, sucking it into his mouth. My knees buckled and his hands kept me upright. “And you come so pretty for me,” he said. “Watch.”
“I am.”
“Not me. You.”
A tiny shift. A small movement of focus and suddenly I was staring into my own blue eyes.
And the woman looking back at me was no one I had ever seen before.
Locked and torn and impaled and tortured.
Excited and sexy and confident and here. Right here. Not half in my head. Not in some fantasy workplace that was so safe and distant.
Here.
I smiled. Wide. Eyes dilated, blown out with lust.
I was here. And I wasn’t going anywhere.
Chapter Twelve
Charlotte
“Yeah,” he whispered in my ear, pressing kisses along my neck, down my shoulder.
He squeezed my clit and I shattered, all around him. All around myself. The tiled room echoed with my gasping, moaning cries, and before it was over, before my legs had any strength back he had me turned around and in the shower. The hot water falling over my head, into my face.
He kissed me through the water and I drank him in. I wrapped my arms around his neck and just drank in his kiss.
“We got about ten minutes of hot water,” he said and I smiled against his mouth.
“Work fast,” I whispered, my hands slipping down his sides, over his ribs and the thick ridge of muscle at his hips. And then to his cock.
His eyes were dark and shuttered and I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, and I didn’t care all that much. I was wild for him.
In this shocking moment of understanding—standing naked in a shower with a man who could tell me to do anything and I would do it—I completely got my sister. The hormone-fueled decisions. The things she would do for men who didn’t deserve them. If she felt like this… if she wanted some guy the way I wanted Jesse… well, then it just made sense.
I’d do anything, right now. Anything he asked to keep feeling this way.
To keep feeling this good. Powerful. Desired.
Connected.
I stroked him, slowly. The water making a slippery lubricant and he reached over my shoulder and grabbed a bar of soap, running it through his hands until he was completely soapy.
Me, I thought. Touch me with those slippery hands.
But he didn’t. He ran them over his face, his hair, down his body, over his hips and ass. His hands knocked mine away and he soaped up his cock and then shifted sideways and washed it all off.
“Suck my cock,” he said.
“What?”
“Do it.”
See? This was me going on my knees in a bathtub, water in my face, running into my mouth, and I did what he said. I fucking loved it.
“Yes,” he breathed as I gripped him in my hands, licked him with my tongue. “More.”
I took him inside my mouth and he groaned, his hand coming around my neck. He held me—not hard, but not… soft, either. My breath caught in my belly and I waited to see what he would do.
Make me, I thought. I remembered Amber and Matt, the way she took him all the way down into her throat. I thought of that surrender and that intimacy and I ached between my legs. I ached so hard and so fast, I whimpered around his cock.
And then, like he read my mind, he applied just the smallest bit of pressure against my neck, pushing me into him. And as long as I did it, as long as I took him deeper and deeper into my mouth, he let up on the pressure.
But the second I stopped, he did it again.
Not forcing me. No, God, no. Just…making me. The distinction was thin but it was real.
My hands dropped his cock and slid up his thighs to the hard edges of his ass, and I took him as deep as I could and I grabbed onto his ass the way that he grabbed mine.
Like I just couldn’t get enough.
And I couldn’t.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “Charlotte. You’re killing me.”
I leaned back, gasping for air, coughing. The water running over my shoulders was turning cold and I flinched.
“Come on,” he breathed. He turned off the water, helped me and grabbed me a maroon towel with a tear in the hem. It said Iowa Wrestling on it, in yellow embroidery.
He dried me. Every inch. Before getting his own towel.
“I want to have sex,” I said. Standing there with his towel over my shoulder. Watching him dry his back, water dripping like diamonds on the edges of his very short hair.
“Yeah?” he asked, smiling at me. He pulled the towel from around my shoulders and dropped his own on the floor. “Bedroom,” he said, slapping my ass for good measure.
He was right behind me. That now-familiar heat at my back, melting all of my inhibitions and protests. All my petty worries and cares.
Who gave a shit about anything when there was this… feeling to be had?
At the edge of the bed, I stopped, his hands running over my body again, and I turned to face him. Slightly afraid of what I wanted. Of what it might mean.
“I…ah…I like it when you…boss me around,” I said, trying to meet his eyes but failing.
“Yeah?”
I nodded and at his silence I finally managed the eye contact. He was grinning at me. “Are you laughing at me?” I asked, though I knew he wasn’t. Whatever this new thing was between us, despite the way I wanted this sex to go—it was nice.
It was friendly.
And one hundred percent mutual.
“Nope,” he said. “Sit down on the bed.”
I did, the springs creaking.
Right in front of me he cupped himself. Stroked himself. Slowly. Once. Twice. Finally I moaned. And he took his other hand and cupped it around my head, not gently this time. The fine hairs at the back of my neck were pulled and the stin
g was so sweet.
He pulled me to him, not giving me a choice. Not like I wanted one… And he held his dick out for me and I licked the tip, opened my mouth and sucked him back deep into my mouth. As far as I could.
“More,” he breathed.
I whimpered.
“Relax, baby,” he whispered. “Relax. You’re so fucking perfect right now. So fucking good.”
The order and the praise, it worked some kind of magic over me and I relaxed, taking him deeper than I thought I could.
“Fuck. I wish you could see this,” he whispered. Both hands cupping my head as he slowly eased out and then eased back in and all I could do was relax. Breathe. And listen to him. And something about all of this—something about the surrender of it… well, belief just came. “You’re so beautiful.”
He said it, so it must be true.
He told me over and over as he fucked into my face until finally I pulled back. My eyes watering, my throat hurting. He let me go, such was his surrender.
“Please,” I groaned and I lay back in his bed, the rumpled sheets a heap under my back that I barely noticed. “Please, Jesse. I need you. I need you so bad.”
Perhaps those were magic words for him. Or maybe it was the way my legs fell open. I had no way of knowing. But he opened his bedside table and pulled out a box of condoms. Awkwardly he tore one off the strip and let everything else fall to the ground.
I ran my hand over my pussy, so wet and so swollen I nearly came at my own touch, but he knocked my hands away. Pushed me by my ass up higher on the bed and then crawled over me, holding his cock right to the entrance of my body.
“Ready?”
“Please—”
He put his head against mine and I wrapped my fingers around his wrist where he was braced against the bed by my head.
“I’m gonna try and be careful, but fuck, Charlotte—”
Oh God, it was too much. Way too much. I grabbed his hand where he was holding himself and I lifted my lips until I felt him thick and hard, stretching the entrance of my body.
He was big. So big. But my body was ready and we were both nearly breaking apart, and at the first touch of my hot wet body against his cock he groaned and pushed hard into me.
Bad Neighbor Page 11
