by Jami Alden
The place was fairly dark and equally smoky. Still, there was no mistaking her identity. Liz. Shit.
What was she doing here?
Outside of that night several weeks ago, she never came to his bar. Not only was Dusty’s Backroom located in a small town nearly a half hour from her Atlanta home, it was a country bar. Liz was as rock and roll as a person could get.
Stranger than her presence, was her attire. She was a jeans and T-shirt kind of gal, a woman who didn’t bother with makeup and didn’t need to. Only, tonight she had bothered with makeup, and the jeans and T-shirt were nowhere to be found. A dress the same electric blue shade as her eyes molded to her curves, managing to cover her from throat to elbow to knee and somehow still look sinful as hell, maybe because he remembered exactly how she looked out of that dress. Tall, toned, and slippery when wet.
His cock hardened further, pressing against the fly of his jeans. She hadn’t climaxed for him, but that she’d been dripping wet right up until she’d ended things was no exaggeration.
“Dusty?” a husky feminine voice questioned.
He turned back, realizing it was the blonde who’d spoken. Had they slept together, or how did she know his name?
Movement from the corner of his eye had him looking back at Liz. His gut tightened. She had company. Dusty knew those who frequented his bar. Between his gauzy pink shirt and painted nails, which lent serious question to his sexuality, and spiked black with blond-streaked hair, the guy didn’t look like a local, or someone Liz’s brother would approve of. For Colin’s sake, he would get rid of the jerk.
“Give me a few minutes,” he told the blonde. “I need to take care of something.” For an instant she looked agitated, but then her smile returned. Leaning in so that her plentiful tits couldn’t help but press against him, she rubbed her knuckles along his whiskered cheek. “As I recall, you’re well worth the wait.”
Obviously they had slept together, Dusty thought as he started toward the bar. That the blonde was not only back for more, but willing to wait for him without asking why proved how inaccurate Liz was in calling him a bad lover. If there was a bad lover between them, it was she…and so it seemed her frilly new friend was trying to find out firsthand.
In a move as old as dirt, the guy slid his arm around her shoulders, then coasted his hand down her side to caress the outer swell of a breast. The hand continued to rub, inching slowly inward. Disgust swept through Dusty, mirroring the look in Liz’s eyes. He expected her temper to take flight and for her to punch the unsuspecting schmuck. She didn’t move a muscle, but plastered on a smile an idiot could tell was fake.
She might be okay with getting felt up by a creep in front of dozens of prying eyes, but Colin sure as hell wouldn’t approve. For her brother, Dusty would save her ass.
Reaching her, he took her free hand and tugged her from the barstool, dislodging the other man’s arm. She was a tall woman, inches beneath his six-foot-one frame. In three-inch spiked heels, her mouth was nearly even with his. She must have done some thickening trick with her ruby red lipstick because, as he pulled her into his side, he noticed her lips were plumper than ever. Plump and glistening, they brought to mind the way her mouth had looked wrapped around his dick.
The woman might be a nutcase, to kick him out the way she had, but he remembered now that she wasn’t bad at sex. At least the oral variety. Those full, gifted lips gave head like no other before her.
He rubbed his thump in the valley of her palm. “Elizabeth.” Dressed the way she was, her full, more feminine name sounded appropriate. “I was wondering when you’d get here.”
The feigned smile left her lips and icy blue eyes bored into his. She yanked at her hand. “What the fuck do you want, Marr?”
Dusty smirked. Now there was the Liz he knew. He let free her hand to give her ass a gentle swat. “Such a bitchy tease. You know what that does to me, babe.”
“No, babe,” she retorted, drawing out the bogus endearment. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
“That’s my Elizabeth, always fishing for a reminder.”
Kissing her was bound to lose him a night of carnal bliss with the blonde. Dusty glanced back to the pool table where the woman waited in all her leggy glory. She looked like the type who could get her legs behind her ears without any trouble at all. Liz would owe him for the loss, big time.
He looked back at Liz. His attention returned to her lush mouth, and his cock jerked. Though he hadn’t planned on getting naked with her again, several excellent ways she might repay him—each of which had to do with leaving a ruby red ring around his shaft—popped into his head.
“Open up,” he ordered, giving her ass another swat.
Her mouth opened, likely to tell him off. Before she could speak, he pulled her snug to him and sank his tongue past her lips. Her gasp pushed into his mouth as a blast of hot air, a sultry puff at odds with the biting pinch of her short nails into his arms.
Call him a sadist, but he loved that bite and the way she brought her knee up, attempting to leave a permanent mark on the family jewels. Loved even more the way she couldn’t stop her hot little sigh as he sucked at the softness of her inner cheeks. He brought his tongue over her teeth, across her gums and twined it with her own stubbornly still one, consuming her taste—a mixture of dark imported beer and white hot, fiery female.
The nip of Liz’s nails gentled as he tilted his hips into hers and rubbed his erection against her mound. A second, far breathier sigh slid between their joined mouths and she shifted her pelvis in a restless way that applied pressure to his constrained dick so forcefully it bordered on pain. Her tongue shot to life, no longer denying her passionate nature, but stroking against his with wild urgency. Meeting that urgency head on, by stripping her naked and banging her on the hardwood dance floor, held real appeal. Any other place and time he might have done it. Here, in his bar, he didn’t dare.
He might talk sex here, might even regularly meet a lover at the bar, but he would never risk his authority with his employees by doing a woman while on the job. Hell, he’d already risked too much with his current behavior.
Dusty lifted his mouth from Liz’s to find her looking at him, nostrils flaring and breath coming in warm, sexy, shallow pants. The points of her aroused nipples stabbed at her dress, taunting his mouth to pull them inside and suck.
“Bastard.” She hissed the word, bringing his attention from her tits to the narrowed set of her eyes and making him question his decision not to screw her here and now.
Had ticked-off women always had this rampant effect on his libido, or did the mad urge to plow into her despite their surroundings have to do with her ordering him out when she’d been on the verge of orgasm? Was her behavior that night the real reason he’d gone so long without sex?
He’d told himself the recent dry spell had to do with a hectic work schedule and not lack of desire. Maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe her accusation of him as a bad lover had messed with his ego and, in turn, his head.
“Looks like you’re busy, so I guess I’ll see you around,” Frilly-guy said from somewhere to Dusty’s left.
Liz glanced over and mumbled a good-bye. Leveling her gaze on Dusty, she swiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “Do you want to die?”
Only if they were talking about the little death, and then, yeah, for better or worse, he was rock hard and more than ready. “Man like that only has one thing on his mind.”
She went wide-eyed. “Ohmigawd! You think he was trying to get in my pants? And here I thought he wanted to hook up some afternoon for tea and cookies.” Dismissing the innocent act, she grabbed her beer bottle from the bar and pushed past him. “I came here to find a guy to fuck, so if you don’t mind…”
Grabbing hold of her arm, he spun her back. “Does Colin know why you’re here?”
She looked incredulous. “Maybe you’ve suddenly decided to care if my brother approves of my behavior around men, but I could give a crap less.”
It
wasn’t her behavior around men in general, Dusty told himself, but that around strangers who could be after her for God only knew what reasons. Right. As if his own intentions hadn’t taken a far from noble turn. “He worries about you.”
“Yeah, well, he shouldn’t. I’m a big girl.”
She sure as hell was.
He should let her remark slide and her arm go, before he made himself look like a complete hypocrite. Blame it on the celibacy streak, but temptation was too great to resist. He sent his gaze the length of her, lingering on her small but firm breasts and then lower to her crotch.
Was she wet for him after the kiss?
Dusty inhaled, half expecting the musky scent of her arousal to cut through the mixed aroma of cigarettes, perfume, and greasy food. Returning to her eyes, he let the lust reflect in his voice. “As if I could forget.”
For a fleeting moment, desire kindled in Liz’s eyes, deepening the already intense shade of blue. Then she pulled her arm free of his hold and planted a hand at her hip. “Let me clear something up for you, Marr. When I said I came here to find a guy to fuck, I didn’t mean you. I’m looking for someone who doesn’t need a 10-step program to find a woman’s G-spot.”
The barb pricked deeper than he cared to acknowledge. He pushed out a laugh. “Babe, I had your G-spot pegged in seconds. Or did you forget you were about to come before you pulled the Jekyll and Hyde routine and tossed me out on my ass?”
“I’m not your babe, and you’re damned lucky you got as far as you did. Now, unless you came over here for some reason other than to piss me off, I suggest you get back to your flavor-of-the-night. As good as you think you are, I seriously doubt Blondie’s going to wait forever.”
Dusty glanced at the pool tables and found the blonde standing where he’d left her. He should be thrilled the woman had stuck around after witnessing him doing the tongue-mambo with Liz. Another night he would have been. Tonight he could only see the desperation in the move. The blonde would be no challenge for his sexual confidence. Whether his recent dry spell had to do with Liz’s cutting accusation, he suddenly found he needed that challenge.
Smirking at Liz, he teased, “Watching, were you? Getting jealous?”
She snorted and turned on her heel, flashing a tight ass he knew she owed to daily jogs. An ass, he also knew, that felt more than a little fine filling his hands. “Good-bye, Marr. Be careful not to trip over your ego on the way back to the pool table. An obstacle that big’s liable to cause serious damage.”
APHRODISIA BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2006 by Jami Alden
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 0-7582-2154-1
