by Ranae Rose
He nodded slowly. “I’ve never worked for myself, so I can’t say I know how that feels. But you’re not a failure. Take it from someone who knows: a few months ago, I had a warrant for a restaurant owner’s arrest. Arrested him in his own kitchen for check fraud, but if you ask me, the real crime was the roach colony living back there. Never seen ones so big. I guess they were eating his stock – literally – and keeping him from making the big bucks, so he turned to crime.”
Peyton felt her eyes widen. “Gross. And that was a restaurant on the island?”
“Island Diamond Pizzeria. You may have noticed that it’s no longer in business. Think a frozen yogurt place bought the building, actually. Hopefully they demolished the interior and started fresh.”
Peyton was silent for a moment, clutching her half-empty coffee cup.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m just trying to remember whether I ever ate there.”
He laughed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s just that that’s … well, pretty damn disgusting.”
“I didn’t eat pizza for two months straight after that. What I’m trying to say though is that if you’re making customers happy and you’re not baking roaches into your products, you’re not a failure. I know I’m not exactly your target demographic, but your shop is nice and the customers who come in there talk to you like you’re old friends. I think you’re on the road to the kind of success you want.”
She smiled, feeling ridiculously flattered. Having a sexy man compliment her business was a first. Her last boyfriend had called her shop ‘thong central’.
Well, he’d called it that once, shortly before they’d split up. Throughout their short relationship, he’d seemed to find her choice of profession amusing.
It was a relief to talk to a man who didn’t giggle at the thought of women’s underwear.
“You set the bar high,” she said. “I hope my customers don’t expect me to live up to such lofty expectations.”
Inwardly, she cringed at the thought of anything creepy or crawly making its way into any of her stock. Talk about nightmare fuel – a customer who found a roach in her new panties might very well sue for emotional trauma.
She snorted, and Elijah took a long sip of his coffee. It was impressive how his eyes caught the light –even the artificial café lighting. They were pools of brown swirling with flecks of green and gold, as intricately unique as snowflakes.
A warmth that had nothing to do with coffee – and definitely nothing to do with the conversation topic – spread beneath her breastbone. She could practically feel the heat shimmering over her skin, and there was no question that it was directly related to her proximity to Elijah. If she leaned closer – if they touched again – she might spontaneously combust.
It was a melodramatic thought, but a little melodrama was justified. He was sexy, generous and she hadn’t regretted a single moment of their evening so far. He even liked to read.
She watched as he took another sip of his coffee. It was easy to admire the little things, even the way his lips pressed against the cup. They were full and soft-looking, as attractive as the rest of him.
God, what she’d give to be that cup.
She bit her inner lip and tried to shake the senseless fear that other people could read her mind. The barista was watching her again, a ghost of a smirk still lingering on her lips.
They didn’t stay much longer. When they passed through the café door and stepped back out into the night, he pressed a hand against the arch of her lower back.
CHAPTER 9
Elijah’s touch was feather-light, but it ignited a deep and eager sense of pleasure.
It stayed with Peyton, even when he removed his hand so they could climb into separate sides of his car. When they reached her block, she was still buzzing from his touch.
It’d been a long time since someone had excited her so much with a simple touch. And it’d been even longer since she’d let herself slow down and breathe, enjoy herself and what life had to offer. She’d been so wrapped up in her workload and her problems that she’d almost forgotten what the breeze blowing off the Blue Mile Beach felt like, or how dazzling the moon was, far above the haze of island light.
Now that she’d relaxed enough to enjoy things, she realized she’d been selling herself short. It was almost overwhelming, and she didn’t want it to end.
Elijah parked by the curb, cattycorner to her house. Soft yellow light glowed behind the curtains, where Madison and Jace were probably watching a movie, maybe eating another pizza. For the first time in months, Peyton wasn’t panicked by the sight of the house. Madison’s recovery was finally picking up speed, and she or Jace would’ve called her if anything was wrong.
When Elijah leaned across the console and pressed his lips lightly against the corner of Peyton’s mouth, she turned toward him, brushing her lips against his.
An electric shiver zipped down her spine, almost painful in its intensity.
Almost, but not quite. His kiss shone a spotlight on parts of herself she’d neglected, pulling her wholly into the moment. Was this what it felt like to use a drug: detached from the rest of the world and rising higher by the second, far above your problems?
If so, it was clear why people became addicted. She was hooked on the soft rush of his breath, the heat of his lips. Even with her eyes closed, she could see him – she’d admired him enough that evening that every long line of bone and swell of muscle was silhouetted against the backdrop of memory.
And he was hot. Hot, and all hers for a few fleeting seconds.
“Peyton.” He pulled back, his eyes catching the streetlight.
“Yeah?” She blinked, as stunned as a deer caught in hazel headlights.
“Are you ready to go home?”
His voice was a shade lower than usual. She let her gaze linger on his lips for a moment after he asked his question, and then some irresistible urge dragged it lower and lower until she could see the hard, clear outline of his cock against his pants.
Her lips were still parted from their kiss. She exhaled audibly and sucked in a quick breath before she could even begin to think of what to say. He was so close and so hard; she couldn’t help staring.
Every millisecond that ticked by felt like a small eternity, during which the atmosphere in the car grew thicker and thicker, until it was almost suffocating. Her heart beat faster to compensate, and she felt her pulse in her fingertips.
He had to be feeling his too. Beneath the surface of that broad, muscled chest and – most of all – beneath the strained fly of his pants, in every inch of the thick shaft standing between his thighs.
It didn’t make sense that she was surprised by the sight of it. They were two adults who’d flirted all night, first touches paving the way to the kiss they’d just shared. Of course he had an erection.
She was in an equivalent boat; there was a definite ache below her belly, and her clit was throbbing so hard that she’d squeezed her thighs together in an attempt to ease her craving for a touch there.
Despite the normalcy of what they were both experiencing, it was an exhilarating surprise, almost a shock. She couldn’t seem to quite catch her breath, and so when she replied, she sounded like she’d just jogged around the block.
“I don’t want to go home.”
She’d lie awake all night if she did; there was absolutely no doubt about it. Her body was smoldering in a way she’d seldom experienced. Even when her lack of a sex life caught up with her and she began to long for a quick release, that yearning didn’t feel anything like this.
There was no way she could banish it by touching herself in the dark of her bedroom or steamy retreat of the shower. She needed human touch.
And she wanted Elijah’s touch. As she sat with her legs tightly crossed, her satin panties damp beneath the short skirt of her dress, she craved him like a drowning victim craved air.
The thought
of unzipping his pants and touching the long, stiff rod outlined there made her mouth water. She’d been so pleasantly surprised by him tonight, so charmed. And she was so damned turned-on.
“My place is a little over ten minutes from here.”
She glanced at her house, with the warm glow in the windows and the azalea bushes blooming in the flower beds just below their sills.
Ten minutes sounded like an eternity.
“Are you sure you don’t know any shortcuts?”
A slow smile spread across his full lips, too sweet to match the fire in his eyes. When he put the car into drive, her heart practically jumped into her throat.
As they left her block behind, weaving out of the neighborhood at a steady thirty miles per hour, her heart slowly sank back to where it belonged. As it fluttered against her ribs, she tried to focus on the houses slipping by: their flowerbeds, the streetlights – anything but how unbearable it was to sit still while the car’s engine hummed, its vibration far too subtle to grant her any relief.
Sinking an eye tooth into her lip, she closed her eyes and drew a slow, deep breath. After a few moments, she snuck a glance at Elijah’s lap.
He was still hard, still incredibly tempting. Her stomach tied itself in a thousand ecstatic knots as she tried to wrap her mind around the fact that she’d soon be touching him in the ways she suddenly couldn’t stop fantasizing about.
When he looked away from the road long enough to meet her eyes, her heart almost stopped.
Heat blazed its way across her cheekbones. She’d been caught staring, and it gave her a thrill of satisfaction mixed with sudden shyness.
Maybe the shyness was because he was so perfect. He put Michelangelo’s David to shame, especially in the endowment department.
The thought made her smile. He’d already looked back to the road, and so she let the expression linger as she admired his hands on the wheel and his forearms bathed in streetlight.
Eventually, she closed her eyes again.
She felt the car round a turn, and then a bolt of shock shot through her as he placed a hand on her leg.
With a sigh of anticipation, she uncrossed her legs.
Her thighs were warm from sticking together, but his touch made her skin tingle and grow even hotter. A sound started out in her throat as a gasp and turned into a moan as he brushed the edge of her panties.
She expected – wanted – him to tuck his fingers underneath, but instead he brushed the surface, stroking the fabric that lay tight against her pussy. When his fingertips pressed against her clit, she couldn’t help but arch her hips.
The seatbelt pressed painfully against her hip bones, but she couldn’t have cared less – all she could focus on was the sound of his breath as his fingers slipped against the damp satin just below her clit.
An arrhythmic bolt of sensation shot all the way through her core, making her pussy tighten. She gasped.
Long seconds ticked by as he rubbed a little higher, right over the swollen bud of her clit.
It was more pleasure than she’d experienced in what felt like an eternity. Breathing hard, she squeezed her eyes even more tightly shut and invested herself fully in the delicious, wet friction of his fingertips against her panties.
She was so lost to anticipation, to pleasure, that she didn’t care that she was going to come in the passenger seat of his car as they rolled down one of the island’s many dark, palm-lined streets.
In fact, she longed for it. Couldn’t wait.
But before she reached her peak, he withdrew his hand and she felt the car slow and round a turn.
Reluctantly, she opened her eyes, expecting to be greeted by a house or apartment building.
Instead, she got the neon glow of a 24 hour drug store’s sign. Blinking, she looked away and toward Elijah as he parked at the curb near its front door.
“I’m going in to buy protection,” he said, “I don’t have any at my place.”
“I don’t have any either.” She was still breathing harder than sitting on her ass warranted. She would’ve gone in with him but her burning cheeks, racing pulse and damp panties made her think better of it.
All she wanted was to get to his place and have him to herself.
He was in and out of the drugstore in two minutes, and then they were finally on their way to his place. He didn’t slip his hand between her thighs again, maybe because they were so close – in another minute, he was pulling into the parking lot of an apartment building.
After he parked the car, they stepped out just as a breeze rattled the leaves of the palmettos lining the lot. It gusted across her skin, making it pebble. Her nipples tightened, and her loose hair danced around her shoulders.
The sense of anticipation was so heavy that she could feel it in the air, just like the dense fog that sometimes rolled over the island before storms.
She breathed deeply, until her lungs burnt from expansion, and didn’t exhale until Elijah touched the small of her back and guided her to his apartment door.
* * * * *
The night was inky black, glowing with the haze of streetlights and alive with a warm breeze. Elijah shut it out, trading a perfect island night for the air conditioned interior of his apartment.
He didn’t even feel the chill in the air. Every inch of his skin was heated with lust, causing his shirt to stick between his shoulder blades.
He wanted to tear it off, along with the rest of his clothing. More than that, though, he wanted to tear away the dress clinging to Peyton’s curves. He was about to do it, too, when she turned to face him.
Her gaze froze him. Those blue eyes looked softer than he’d ever seen them, but there was a light deep within the blacks of her pupils that traveled over some shared wavelength and electrified him. Without meaning to, he squeezed his fists, causing the plastic bag he held in one hand to crackle.
She dropped her gaze to the drug store bag holding a package of condoms, and her lips cracked. Slowly, she touched the tip of her tongue to the lower one.
A bolt of urgency shot straight to his dick, making his balls draw up tight against his body. She was so damn gorgeous, and he was so damn lucky. Inviting her to Rogers’ engagement party was far from his idea of foreplay; this outcome was the last thing he’d expected.
He really had wanted her by his side for an innocent night out. Just being close enough to touch her beautiful body would’ve been good, even if he’d hadn’t gotten the chance.
But the night had brought a mutual attraction to the surface, and now it smoldered between them. Now he had a raging, aching hard-on he couldn’t wait to bury between her bare, lightly tanned thighs.
Unable to resist any longer, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his body, pressing a hand against her ass and squeezing as he buried the other in her hair and dipped in low.
CHAPTER 10
She tipped her head back, opening her mouth to him. The motion caused her spine to arch and her ass to pop out, pressing harder against his palm.
His dick throbbed against her belly, against that lavender dress he wanted to tear into a million pieces.
As he slid his tongue deep into her open mouth, his mind raced with visions of her naked. There were so many things he couldn’t wait to see for himself: the shape of her breasts and color of her nipples, the way her hair would fall just past her shoulder blades and whether or not she let any grow above her sweet pussy.
Most of all, he just wanted to see her naked in front of him, trusting him enough to leave her clothes in a pile on the floor. Slipping a hand beneath her dress, he hiked up her skirt and hooked a thumb in the side of her panties.
He’d never imagined her clinging to him like this when he’d first met her.
Fantasized about it, maybe, but it hadn’t seemed even faintly possible.
They broke apart when she sighed, leaning back in his arms.
Her underwear was smooth – silvery lavender satin, a shade lighter than her dress. He pulled them down, d
ragging the silky material against her rounded thighs.
She sighed again as the damp satin fell to the floor, the delicate material hooked around her ankles. It looked like it’d been made for her to wear with that dress. No surprise, given her area of professional expertise. He would’ve taken time to appreciate the sight of the shimmering panties at her feet, but her pussy was bared to him now and he was blind to anything else.
She looked as sweet as she probably tasted; her skin was soft and slick-looking beneath a dusting of hair just a shade darker than the sandy waves on her head. Her clit begged to be touched.
He placed a hand on her hip, although his mouth watered.
The first brush of contact sent heat tearing down his spine. The ache in his balls was a distraction, until his fingertips slipped against her skin.
She was so wet. Already, from just a touch in the car. His touch.
And he was so hard. The clothing that’d felt comfortable when he’d put it on before leaving his apartment was overly-binding now that he’d returned with Peyton. The pants felt several sizes too small, and he was too hot to be comfortable in any shirt.
He stroked her clit, reveling in the silky, damp feel of it, and she pressed a hand against the front of his pants.
Even the light pressure she exerted made him want to rip the zipper free, but her touch felt so damned good that he didn’t. Didn’t remove his clothes, didn’t move at all except for to rub her clit, listening closely for the way her breath quickened.
She’d been close to coming in the car. How quickly could he get her there again?
He wanted to see, hear and feel what it was like to push her to climax.
“You’re so hard.” She ran her thumb up the straight line of his shaft, and he groaned.
He’d been fighting that hardness all evening, ever since he’d first laid eyes on her. It hadn’t been the dress that’d gotten him so much as it’d been the knowledge that she’d put it on just to spend an evening with him.
