It didn’t matter. After all, even if there was sex with Quentin in her future, it was just sex, not love. Other tough broads probably took a dip with a heartthrob every ten days or so. It was casual.
Flanked by Quentin and Wendy, her two dearest friends, Sarah was able to relax a little, enjoy the baby and the lazy afternoon, and watch her mother on TV win three hundred thousand dollars.
Quentin stared at the pack of condoms on the shelf. He was not going to have sex with Sarah. He hadn’t come to New York to break Rule Three. He’d come to protect her from Nine Lives and to visit the foundation. Now he would collect ingredients from this market, walk the block to her apartment, and cook her the best Indian she’d ever had. And get some shut-eye.
But what if an asteroid hit the earth? Surely that would override Rule Three. If he and Sarah were the last two people on the planet, he would have sex with her. And it would be better that she didn’t get pregnant until they were settled.
It was only a question of how many condoms he needed. Here was a pack of thirty-six. How many times a day would they do it? Maybe three times on average, between the hunting and gathering? So, this pack would last twelve days, and by then they would have found a reliable food source.
He laughed. Then he realized that the other customers were staring at him. If they’d known he was from Alabama, they would have assumed he was an idiot. If they’d known he was a recording artist, they would have assumed he was on coke. They knew neither, so he tossed the box in his basket and moved on.
As he picked through the potatoes, he reflected on how Sarah had looked when she was with Wendy. Open, unguarded, happy, with no trace of the poker face. He wanted to make her look like that with him. He’d already seen her like that a few times.
He moved into the spice aisle and thought about that beautiful, laughing look she had. The first time he’d seen it, he remembered foggily, was when he’d drunkenly kissed her against the refrigerator in his kitchen. He’d seen it again when he sang to her in the sound booth.
And she’d looked like that pretty much the whole day on her birthday. Not when she’d slapped him, but after that. And again the next morning, when he made her come in the shower. That’s what he wanted to see again, the way she looked at him when he made her come—
A bell rang as a customer pushed open the door of the market. Quentin realized with a start that he was having a professional-wrestling-style staredown with a jar of garam masala.
No. All thirty-six condoms were in case of an apocalypse, he vowed as he walked down the street with the groceries. He was not going to break Rule Three.
Her apartment building was within long walking distance of the hospital where the foundation was based. As Quentin unlocked the street door with the key she’d given him, he looked around and pictured what it would be like if he quit the Cheatin’ Hearts and went to work full-time for the foundation, even applied to medical school again, and moved in here with her.
That was his long walk, and this was his street. This was his classy lobby with enormous plants. This was his mirrored elevator, an interesting place to seduce her on their way back from a symphony concert some night.
This was a dangerous game he was playing, and he knew he was getting carried away, but he couldn’t help himself. This was his hallway. This was his door, with his key in the lock. This was his apartment—
Sarah leaned with her elbows on the kitchen bar and her chin in her hands, perfect ass thrust out casually, examining a sheaf of papers. Across from her stood what could only be her jackass ex-husband.
When Sarah heard Quentin come in, she straightened and beamed at him, but then her face fell.
Quentin dropped both sacks of groceries on the wood floor. “Get out,” he told the jackass.
“Quentin,” Sarah said, recovering a nervous smile, “this is my ex-husband, Harold—”
“I know who he is.”
“And we just need to work out some—”
“No,” Quentin said. “Get out.”
“Quentin—”
“I said no,” Quentin shouted. “Would you like him to go out the door or the window?”
Quentin had never seen Sarah point both toes in and fidget, pressing the side of her high-heeled shoe down to the floor and back up. She looked small and vulnerable without her poker face. And this hurt more, because seeing her unguarded was a big part of what he wanted.
“Just a second,” she murmured to the jackass. She clopped across the wood floor and touched Quentin’s elbow. “Can I talk with you privately for—”
“No, you can’t talk to me privately for a second and make it okay,” Quentin said. “It’s not okay. He has to go.” Quentin was about to add, I can’t believe you’d give this guy the time of day after he sent you flowers and divorce papers on your birthday, but that was just an excuse. It went way beyond that.
Sarah raised one eyebrow at Quentin. She whispered, “If you’re doing this to make him jealous, that’s nice, but you can stop now. I really need to talk to him about some retirement funds.” She watched Quentin carefully, and her eyebrow went back down. “You’re not bluffing.” She turned to the jackass and said, “You’d better go.”
The jackass took his papers, crossed the room, and paused at the door. Quentin was waiting for the jackass to touch Sarah, to lay one careless finger on her. But the jackass knew better. Avoiding Quentin’s eyes, he said to Sarah, “I’ll call you.”
“No you won’t,” said Quentin.
Sarah told the jackass, “Just call my lawyer, okay?”
She closed the door behind him and turned to Quentin, laughing. “Were you bluffing? Because that was really great.” Her smile faded when Quentin didn’t smile.
“I don’t want him back here,” Quentin said. “Do you understand me?”
She said, “Not really.”
He snatched the box of condoms out of the grocery sack and tossed Sarah over his shoulder.
14
Sarah had been a fool to tell Quentin she didn’t like to be picked up and carried around. Because she did. She felt her nipples hardening, straining against her bra, as she watched the hardwood floors pass under her, through the living room, down the hall, into the bedroom. He threw her roughly onto the bed and pulled off her sandal.
Only, he wasn’t full of fun as he’d been the other times he’d carried her. “Quentin,” she said, but he was gone, just a body sliding his hands over her body. He wasn’t looking at her face. Her other sandal was off. He tugged her shirt over her head, then pulled off his shirt with one motion of his thick muscled arm.
“Quentin, what’s the hurry?” She tried to keep her voice even. “Let me catch up with you.”
His black-green eyes finally flicked up to meet her eyes. Holding her gaze, he said in a voice so low that she could hardly hear him, “I can’t pretend this is casual anymore.” He brushed a strand of pink hair out of her eyes. His hand was shaking.
He kissed her, a deep, dark kiss that possessed her. Her body rushed to meet him.
He continued to kiss her as his hands moved over her. He pulled at her bra, her pants, her panties. He pressed two big, callused fingers inside her.
“Quentin,” she cried out.
His shorts were down, the condom was on, he was inside her. Then deeper inside her, then deeper inside than she was prepared for. She gasped as he slid as deep as possible and stopped, like a dead bolt sliding home in a lock.
Her sweat cooled on her skin. Shivering, she slicked her hands down the sweat on his back. She whispered, “Your eyes turn dark when you’re angry.”
He moved a little inside her, making her jump.
She began to be afraid. “Smile,” she said.
“Can’t.”
“Have you gone over to the Dark Side?”
“Maybe.”
Sarah thought she knew what was going on. He wasn’t jealous about Harold. He felt guilty again for cheating, so to speak, on Erin. “Well, you done done it now,” she said,
imitating the hick line from “Come to Find Out.” Anything to bring back his laugh. “You might as well enjoy it.”
He put his hand to her cheek. His callused fingers still trembled. He whispered, “When I saw that guy, I just . . . It was this animal thing. I had to have you. Mine.”
She decided to believe him, for now, because it was so good.
He moved again, long and hard inside her, and kissed her while he made slow love to her. The chill of cooled sweat on her skin turned hot once more. The late afternoon sun filtered through the curtains and bathed them both in its orange glow. She listened to cars passing and people laughing in the street as his tongue caressed her mouth. His cock rocked her gently, yet pushed her beyond where she’d thought her limits had been, deep into her. He held her hand with his big hand.
She thought it was her moan each time he pressed far into her that changed the tone. The languid afternoon honed a sharp edge as his mouth grew more insistent on her mouth and his cock massaged her harder and faster. She felt herself rising. She turned her head so his tongue played in her ear and she could talk. She wasn’t sure what she said, but it involved Quentin and it was dirty.
She came just at the moment he began to climb. Her orgasm went on and on and folded over on itself as he thrust into her. Finally he squeezed her hand, and she watched the hard muscles of his stomach tense as he came.
He collapsed onto her and kissed her gently, so slowly. Kissed eyelids. Cheek. Neck. Breast. A pause to suck her nipple. Kissed her shoulder. Inside of elbow. Wrist. Each finger of the hand he held. Then back to her mouth again, a sexy grind of his tongue inside her mouth. Still holding her hand, he propped his chin in his other hand and gazed at her.
“The dark look remains,” she said. “This happened after the hand job, too. Coming makes you vacant. The porch light’s on, but no one’s home.”
“No,” he said. “It makes me think, which is a real scary thing for me to be doing.” His hand played with her hand, tracing up and down her fingers and circling in her palm. “I want you to know something. That first night, and the next morning, I never forgot your name.”
She laughed. “So you’re full of shit. Which I knew.”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “Can’t a man be serious for once?”
Natsuko said, “No,” while Sarah whimpered.
He dropped her hand and smoothed his hand across the flat of her belly. Her sex began to ache for him again.
But instead of moving his hand lower and rubbing there, abruptly he rolled away and stood. “Back in a few.”
“Mm. ’Kay,” she managed. She had hoped he would take her again. Harder, if possible. Surely that wasn’t all? No, of course that wasn’t all. He’d said he would be back.
Staring at the ceiling, she breathed deeply and let out long sighs of satisfaction. She ought to be worried about what they’d done, what this meant for his relationship with Erin and her job with Stargazer. Her mind kept hitting this problem and skipping over it like a song on a scratched CD. The lyrics that played in her head, strong and loud, were that she’d had sex with Quentin Cox the country singer. It had been excellent. And on some level, she had known all along this would happen.
A noise in the hallway brought her attention back to the reality of her apartment. Bags rustled and cans clanked together as he picked up the groceries he’d dropped at the front door. The sounds came again as he set the groceries down on the kitchen counter. Then, in her bathroom, the shower and the fan turned on.
She rubbed her thighs lightly with her fingertips, thinking of her last shower with him. Maybe this was an invitation for an encore.
Or he just wanted to take a shower. And if she went in after him, she would be the groupie slut that she’d pretended to be at the lake.
As she moved her fingertips up to caress her nipples, she decided that she could not possibly be a groupie slut when he was in her apartment. So she slipped from the tangled sheets and padded into the bathroom after him.
Through the steam, she saw that a single condom packet sat waiting on the bathroom counter. That was her answer.
She’d passed through this bathroom plenty of times while Harold was taking a shower. She paused with her hand on the shower door, taking in the dark blur of Quentin’s body behind the wet glass, so much taller and more powerful than Harold’s body. She opened the door.
Quentin was watching her already, green eyes intent, as he worked a bar of soap in his hands. As soon as she clicked the door shut behind her, he reached for her, smoothing the suds across her chest. He circled her nipples with his thumbs. Every part of her body responded, wanting him close to her, on top of her, inside her. His hands traveled down her hips and kneaded her thighs, and she opened her legs for him. His fingers found her curls and rubbed them clean, then pulled her into the hot shower stream to rinse her. She pressed her face into his rock-hard biceps and tried her best to hold on as he massaged her.
Remembering that she owed him one, she moved her mouth to his nipple, circled it with her tongue, bit gently. He made a noise, something between a grunt and a laugh. She licked her way down his sternum. But with a quick glance up at his face, she saw that he followed her movements with his green eyes hard and his strong jaw locked. He was waiting patiently for one thing.
He held her by the elbows as she eased down to her knees on the tile. She reached for his erection.
She opened her mouth wide to slip the thick ridge of his head past her lips. There she paused, both hands gripping his solid thighs, and thought about what she was doing: giving the front man of the Cheatin’ Hearts a blow job. Then she rose up on her knees and took as much of him into her mouth as she could, feeling his head bump against the back of her throat.
Even over the sounds of the fan and streaming water, she heard him gasp and try to keep control with hard, short breaths through his nose. One of his hands fisted her hair and the other supported her chin, guiding her where he wanted her to go. She loved that he knew what he desired, and he took it from her. That made her want to pleasure him even more. She opened wider but pressed him with her lips. As she pictured what she must look like to him, she felt her nipples beading in the hot water, and her sex was slick and ready.
Stroking into her mouth and out, holding her head steady, he growled, “Remember what I told you would happen if you tried to get me off in the shower?”
She did remember, and her body flashed hot at the threat.
He released her and pulled away from her. Then he grabbed her up from the floor and kicked the shower door open so hard that it banged against the wall. He hauled her out of the hot spray into the cool bathroom. Throwing a towel down on the edge of the counter, he forced her down onto it and held her there with one heavy hand. She was able to see his blurry reflection in the mirror as he picked up the condom packet with the other hand and tore it open with his teeth. He watched himself unroll the sheath. And then he watched himself guide his dick inside her.
She let out a cry as his head stretched her. His green eyes flicked up to meet her gaze in the steamy mirror, then back down. With a long, quiet groan of pleasure, he eased the ridge of his head through her opening and buried himself inside her.
In this position, the feeling was so intense that she tried to wiggle away from him, down, forward, anywhere. He slapped his hands to her buttocks and held her still as he began to pump rhythmically into her. His dick pressed along the front wall of her vagina and found her G-spot, she knew, because now she felt her face flush hotter and the hair on her arms stand up. A few more strokes and she fell into a black abyss.
She spasmed around his solid member, aching for him to pull out, and still he pumped into her. Bending over her to whisper closer to her ear, he said, “You look so sweet when you come, Sarah. I’ll bet you can come again for me.”
She wasn’t so sure. Trying to work past her discomfort, she raised herself on her tiptoes to give him a slightly more open angle, and she squeezed herself around him.
H
e gasped sharply, slapped both hands to her ass, gripped her hips hard as he impaled her. Her discomfort vanished, replaced by a desire for him to get as far as he could inside her, empty himself into her. Every thought centered around one spot, the place where he joined with her.
“Quentin,” she cried as she felt herself rising again. This time they came together, his hardest thrusts timing perfectly with her loss of control.
And then, as her orgasm trailed away but he still pumped himself hard inside her, the tiniest sense of panic grew in her belly. She watched his reflection making love to her, taking up a huge part of her mirror. This was a famous singer, one of the spoiled stars she’d been sent to whip into shape, and he had fucked her.
He placed one hot hand on her lower back, where her tramp stamp would be if she really were a tramp—which she was beginning to have some second thoughts about. “My God, Sarah,” he said, “could you get any hotter?” He took a long, steadying breath that ended in a small laugh. “I need to lie down for a minute. How about you?”
“Uh.” She was speechless.
He helped her up from the counter, then rubbed her dry with the towel that had cushioned her. He dried himself while she dialed the shower off. Then he led her by the hand through the apartment, back to her bed. The afternoon light filtering through the window had tired and softened as they slid into the sheets, facing each other.
He put his hand on her hip and closed his eyes.
She put her hand on his chest and closed her eyes.
She rested. Blanked. It felt like a long time, but glancing at the beside clock, she saw only a quarter hour had passed when she woke and saw he was watching her.
His hand stroked her hip. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You won’t be able to wear that bikini for a few days. This is going to bruise.”
“It was worth it.” The panic rose inside her again, but she knew her words were true. Whatever the consequences of this day with him, she would cherish the memory.
“You don’t want me to get too close,” he whispered. “You still don’t want me to tell you.”
Playing Dirty Page 26
