“Yessss.”
“I think about you.”
“Spanking me?” she volunteered, so quickly he knew it had become one of her favorite scenarios.
“Sometimes. That’s more of an opening act than a finale for me. Nice as it is, usually I want more than your pretty backside turned up for me. Once I’m done giving that ass much-needed attention, I imagine flipping you around and setting you in front of me, just like this.”
“L-like this?”
“Uh-huh. Leave the towel alone,” he admonished when she fingered the fabric. “Do as I say and I’ll tell you what happens next.”
“I’m all ears…”
“Good.”
“…and no eyes,” she added under her breath.
When had he become such a masochist? Through his shorts, he wrapped his hand around his jutting shaft. Just for a second. Just to relieve the crippling pressure. “You know that show you did? Where you bounced around in a cheerleading outfit?”
“Pep Rally?”
“Yeah. There’s a scene where you make out with what’s-his-face behind the bleachers. They shot it in shadows, but at one point, the camera picks up a flash of your tits.”
She pressed her hand to her torso, and then slid it up to cup her breast. “They didn’t show much. It’s TV.”
What’s-his-face had gotten an eyeful, though. Was what’s-his-face the guy at the other end of the phone? “They showed the swell of your right breast, from the side. They showed the whole profile in shadow, while that lucky son of a bitch put his hands all over you.”
“Luke McLean, have you jacked off to my TV-14 topless scene?”
“A thousand times,” he freely admitted, and gave himself a hard pull. Hard enough to lift his balls. Hard enough to feel a tingle in the soles of his feet. “But lately when I jack off, I fantasize about other things.”
“What things?”
Your mouth. About pulling you close and staking a claim to that smart, reckless, distraction of a mouth.
His heart kicked up at the prospect, but kissing Quinn took this from proving a point to something else. Something neither of them could allow. Pushing her to the breaking point meant one of them needed to stay in control. She’d defaulted to seduction—a choice that no doubt usually got her whatever she wanted—and he had to remember what she really wanted right now wasn’t him, but the upper hand. And a little relief. He’d give her relief, but he’d keep the upper hand.
“I think about having you here in front of me, pushing your top down so I can get a real look at you. Do that now.”
If she hesitated at all, he didn’t perceive it. True, she’d wanted him to cater to her needs, but she’d recognize he’d found another way of helping her. He didn’t have to deny his attraction, only her demand that he act on it. She could act on it, secure in the knowledge that by abiding by his rules, she was actually seducing them both. Twisted, but effective. Apparently she agreed, because she flicked the skinny straps of her top off her shoulders, and then pushed the fabric down until her breast spilled over. Her low, shuddering sigh topped the moment like a cherry.
“I imagine you filling your hands with them. Lifting and kneading and showing me just how you like to be touched.”
She was so suggestible, his words alone tightened her nipples, bringing the rosy crests to small, hard peaks. The air conditioner kicked on and cool air fell on them from a vent overhead. A little shiver and a throaty moan told him how hyperaware she was to every sensation. “Show me, Trouble. Show me what you like.”
The room filled with the slide of soft skin against even softer skin. She stroked and squeezed silky smooth flesh, giving both breasts attention.
“You’re rough with yourself,” he growled, and gave himself another ruthless pull. She wasn’t the only one who liked it rough.
“I have an imagination, too. You have big hands. I know how strong they are.” The words puffed out as she captured one stiff nipple and dragged it through the tight clamp of her fingers. “I don’t think you’d hold back on my account.”
He watched, hypnotized, as her nipple turned deep red, just before springing free of the trap. “You might be surprised what kind of gentleness I’m capable of.”
She frowned. Her hands stilled. “Not for me.”
“Especially for you. Lower your hands.”
She did as he asked, leaving herself as she was, with the wreckage of her workout top tangled below her breasts and the marks from her overeager obedience on her pale skin. He shifted positions, putting his weight on his other knee, leaning in close enough to let his T-shirt graze her nipples.
“Oh,” she gasped and jerked back so quickly, her breasts bounced against the awkward shelf of crumpled fabric.
“Yeah, I’d be gentle. Patient and gentle.” He brought his face close to her breasts as he spoke, and watched his breath raise goose bumps on her skin.
She whimpered. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second to maintain control. “You’d be so attuned to my touch, even my stare would feel like too much.”
“Oh God.” She arched, blindly lifting toward his mouth. “Luke—”
“Is it too much?” For her, maybe. For him, definitely. He strangled his cock with his fist and cradled his throbbing balls in his other hand.
“It’s too much”—she whipped her face left, then right, in a helpless search for relief—“but not enough.”
“Then let me give you more. Put your hand in your shorts. Show me where it hurts.”
The lack of artifice as she rushed to follow his command affected him more profoundly than a contrived, purposefully seductive move could. This wasn’t Quinn the ice-cool actress. This was Quinn in need—shaky, desperate, unconcerned with winning their battle of wills.
“Here. It hurts here.”
He lowered his head a fraction to watch her hand disappear under the cover of her little pink shorts. The move changed the angle of his breath over her skin, and she whimpered again. Her hand made a restless circuit between her thighs.
“Describe the pain.” His was pounding, and constant. If he pushed his hips forward half an inch, the tip of his dick would touch her leg. Right about then it seemed like a half inch from heaven.
“There are two pains.”
“Start with the worst.”
“They’re both unbearable.”
“Quinn—”
“Okay. Okay.” She lowered her chin to her chest and sucked in a breath through her nose. “Here…” Her knuckles stretched her shorts as she circled her fingertips around the top of her pussy. “I have a sharp, urgent pain right here.”
“Rub it.” His fingertips itched to do the job for her. He reaffirmed his grip on his shaft instead.
She shook her head. “No, no. I don’t think I can stand to do that. It’s too…sensitive. You do it.”
“That’s not the lesson.” With all the willpower he could muster, he led his wayward pupil back to the task. “Help you help yourself, remember? Tell me about the other pain.”
The tiny ridgeline of her knuckles subsided and she flattened her hand and shoved it lower. “It’s deeper. More of an empty ache.”
“Like hunger?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’ll feel better if you fill it. Go ahead.”
She rocked forward a little, angling her upper body and sending her unrestrained tits swinging perilously close to his face, and then let out an edgy moan as she achieved penetration.
For a moment he became so lightheaded, he worried he might pass out, but he blinked away the hazy fog because he refused to miss an instant of her pleasuring herself. “Better?”
“Oh yes.”
“What helps most? Filling yourself, or massaging your clit with your palm?”
“They’re both good. But I don’t think it’s enough.” She shook her head. “Sometimes it’s not.”
He wasn’t going to allow her to fail. “Are you using one finger or two?”
“Just one. I’m so swollen
—”
Christ. “Use two.”
“I can’t. Too tight.”
“Two,” he insisted, and pumped his cock, which suddenly struck him as monstrously huge. “At least two. Sink them in deep, and stir them around. Let me hear it.”
Her breath hitched as she did what he asked. Her cheeks were as flushed and damp as they’d been when she’d strained against the machine, except now she strained for him. A few more seconds and he heard it—the slick sound of her body accommodating the slow, sliding play of her fingers.
“That’s it. Keep going.” Without really meaning to, he pumped his cock to the rhythm she set. Moments later, he was about to explode, but she was still stroking herself and grinding her hips with increasingly frustrated energy.
Finally, she slumped back against the seat, somehow managing to look both imperious and exhausted, with her chest heaving and her hand down her pants. “I can’t. I told you I couldn’t. I need help.”
Damn, she was stubborn. “I told you not to say those words to me. Get your ass back up here and keep going.”
“Not everything is meant to be a workout, you know.” Despite the grumbling, she resumed her forward position, teasing him with the swing of her breasts. Breasts he’d confessed had the power to make him ruin his sheets while imaging his cock nestled between them. Molten heat rolled down his spine and pooled in his balls, a warning from his system about how well all this was working for him. The point of no return was fast approaching.
“If you do it right, it is.”
“This is right?”
“Do you want my help, or not?”
“You sadist. Yes. I want your help.”
He leaned in, too, and deliberately turned his face away at the last second so the side of his head brushed her breasts. He felt her nipple spear into his hair. His cock jumped in his fist.
Fast approaching.
“Oh God.” She lunged forward, chasing the sensation, but the incline of the seat kept her from pitching herself into him.
“Who’s in charge, Quinn?” His vocal cords felt thick and unwieldy. His whole body did, too, for that matter.
“You,” she whispered.
He rewarded her by leaning in and turning the other way. She bolted upright this time, and her head fell back, exposing the graceful column of her throat. Her arm came up to cover her breasts in a gesture at once so protective and revealing, it nearly undid him. Point of no return.
No return.
“Who’s in charge? Use my name.”
“You’re in charge, Luke. Luke—”
Her sudden inhale cut off the sound of his name, and then orgasm tore through her.
That did it. He groaned into his bicep and shuddered as three long weeks of unrelenting lust shot out of him in a white-hot fury.
Chapter Nine
“Damn, girl, you look like you just got it good. I don’t even bat for your team, and I might have a long-distance orgasm from staring at all your afterglow.”
Eddie’s teasing smile and laughing eyes filled Quinn’s phone. She automatically glanced up to the right corner of the screen, where her reflection stared back at her from a small square. Tousled hair. Flushed face. Shoulders bare to where the frame cut off, giving the impression she wore nothing but the dewy sheen of sex.
Yay, FaceTime. But oh, how she wished. Sadly, Luke hadn’t given her anything to get sweaty over except workouts since last week when he’d “taught” her to help herself.
“Well, that would be one of us enjoying an orgasm, then. I just finished two grueling hours of circuits.”
“Yeah, right. Why are you naked?”
“I’m not naked.” She took a seat on the wooden bench just outside the glass-walled, open-roofed shower installed between the gym and the pool house, and adjusted the tilt of her phone so Eddie could see the fluffy white towel wrapped around her. “I’ve been set free for the day. I’m about to try the open-air shower.” She lifted a brow. “Do you want to watch, or is there some other point to your call?”
“I’ll skip the shower, thanks. I called to see how you’re doing.”
“Okay, I guess.” A little pang of worry rippled through her.
“Uh-oh. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” Fidgety, she kicked her flip-flops off and squinted at her pedicure. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him if he’d heard from Callum. She hadn’t. Not a peep in the two weeks since she’d refused to bring him to Paradise Bay. But even if her brother had reached out to his former agent, Eddie wouldn’t have taken the call. He stuck to a tough-love stance where Callum was concerned. No contact unless and until Callum demonstrated he’d cleaned up his act. If Eddie ever found out her brother had been so staggeringly out of his head he’d tumbled her to the ground and sprained her knee, she doubted he’d ever speak to Callum again. She moved on to a safer topic. “I’m working my ass off, Eddie, but for some reason, my ass isn’t actually working off. I think I screwed up my metabolism or something.”
“You look great. Seriously. I see the progress from here.”
“Not enough. Luke did my midpoint measurements last week, and I haven’t actually whittled many centimeters off the…um…problem areas.”
“It doesn’t work that way. A body doesn’t shed fat in orderly increments.”
“My weight actually went up a few pounds.” She nearly whispered it, like a confession.
“Muscle weighs more. In the long run, though, your body spends more energy maintaining muscle. You’ll hit a tipping point where you’re not taking in enough daily calories to sustain it, and your metabolism will use any extra reserves you’re packing for fuel. I bet at this week’s assessment you’re right where you need to be. Maybe even ahead of the goal.”
She bobbed her head back in forth in a yada-yada-yada move, even though inside, she wasn’t so calm. “Luke says the same thing, but what if I’m not?” What if she fell short? What if she lost the role, instead of the curves? Would Luke ever be able to see her as anything except a waste of his valuable time?
“If you’re worried, talk to him. He’s the best, as a trainer as well as a friend. You can trust him with anything—even things you choose not to tell me, for whatever reason.” His inflection told her he knew there was something she’d held back.
She manufactured a sassy smile. “I’m not worried. I’m just wondering…is it too late for lipo?”
A clank of weights through the wall alerted her to the fact that somebody was working out in the gym. She eased a finger into the slat of the door, opened the shutters enough to peek through, and swallowed. Luke had stuck around after dismissing her, for once. He stood shirtless, with an array of muscles rippling as he brought two pulleys together in front of his chest, and then extended his arms and took them back out to his sides. Earbuds connected to the phone clipped to his hip ensured he couldn’t hear her, but even so, she lowered the volume on her phone.
Eddie laughed. “It’s about two decades too early for lipo. Trust the man’s skills, Quinn. I can tell you he’s pleased with everything you’ve accomplished so far.”
“Really?” A pathetic part of her starving for his regard perked up. “You talked with him? When? What did he say?”
Eddie rolled his eyes. “You’ve been playing a high school student too long. You’re starting to sound like one. He didn’t pass me a note in biology, okay? He just said you were knuckling down and impressing the hell out of him, and…”
He hesitated, as if he thought better of sharing the next detail.
“And what?” She pulled her gaze away from Luke doing an effortless flurry of pull-ups. “What did he say?”
“Nothing. Forget it. I’ve got to go.”
“Eddieeeee.”
“All right. Fine. Lord, save me from straight, white people.” He held up two fingers to someone off screen—presumable his assistant—and then refocused on her. “I asked him if he forgave me for coercing him into taking you on. You know, fuck the I-owe-you crap, and wha
tnot.”
Something painful expanded in her chest. Her breath. She was holding it, because the next words out of Eddie’s mouth mattered more to her than oxygen. “What did he say?”
“He said yes.”
A scramble of emotions made her eyes sting. Relief, euphoria, and something she didn’t have a name for. Maybe Luke didn’t resent her? Even as she pondered the question, her attention strayed to the gap between the slats. Beyond, the man capable of crushing her with a look, lifting her with a word, or driving her right out of her dirty little mind with his strict rules strapped on a pair of Everlast gloves and stepped up to the heavy bag suspended on a chain from the ceiling in one corner of the gym. His biceps bulged as he raised his fists to chin level and tucked his arms close to his body. Then he let loose with a lightning-fast, lethally powerful volley of straights and jabs. The smack of leather against leather sent a thrill down her spine.
“Earth to Quinn…”
She tore her attention away from her voyeur’s view of Luke owning the shit out of the hundred-pound bag, and focused on Eddie. “What?”
Eddie’s sharp green eyes narrowed. “I was going to say Lisa’s about to email you an updated shooting schedule, but I sense I don’t have your full attention. What do you keep looking at?”
Knowing a picture was worth a thousand words, she put her phone up to the slat to give Eddie a view of Luke in the gym, in all his shirtless, gleaming glory.
“Well, hell,” he said when she turned the screen back to her. “Now I need a shower.”
“Welcome to my world. Anything in particular I need to know about the updated schedule? I don’t suppose I picked up a little more wiggle room?”
Eddie shook his head. “This schedule is a lot like your wardrobe. There is absolutely no wiggle room at all.”
…
Jeeeezus!
The scream pierced through layers of guitar, drums, and a phantom-voiced thug singing about his heathen friends.
Quinn.
Luke shucked the boxing gloves on the fly, lost his phone while hurdling free weights he still needed to rack, and slammed through the flimsy door separating the gym from the alcove to the shower. His momentum sent the door crashing against the wall and ricocheting back toward him. He blocked with his shoulder as his eyes scoured the small space for Quinn.
Dirty Games (Tropical Temptation) Page 9
