Scented Lust
Copyright © July 2009, Jacqueline Turner Banks
Cover art by Valerie Tibbs © July 2009
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious or used fictitiously. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
ISBN: 978-1-936110-29-2
Sugar and Spice Press
North Carolina, USA
www.sugarandspicepress.net
Chapter One
Jordan couldn’t tell how long she’d slept, but she woke feeling rested, physically and mentally satisfied, for the first time in she didn’t know how long. She looked around the cave of a room. A cave not just because of its cavernous size, but because the room’s corners and every spot where wall met ceiling was curved, beveled, like glass. The ceiling was high too—maybe fourteen feet—and it was textured in an old pattern that reminded her of plastered-over flower stems and vines.
The walls and ceiling were painted in an odd shade of grayish-green that she thought would have made a smart pants suit, but which she’d never seen on a wall. It was as much that strange color as anything that made Jordan think of a cave.
She hadn’t said or heard any noise, but she expected sounds to echo. Borderline creepy. Funny, she thought, I didn’t notice any of this last night.
The furniture was sparse for such a big room; the large bed she was in, night stands on either side, an old fashioned double-door wardrobe and an antique desk that she thought was rather feminine looking. Each piece of furniture was dark mahogany. All of it was shining like somebody had used a whole can of lemon Pledge and more than a little effort.
There was the faint scent of lavender in the room. It was like somebody’s grandmother had slipped some lavender sachets all around. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact locations emitting the odor, but she thought its presence seemed entirely appropriate for such an old-fashioned look.
Jordan sat up and rested on her elbow. The beautiful nude stranger next to her stirred. She lifted the sheet and took a long, hard look. Mercy, he could model and most people would think they were looking at airbrushed perfection. She felt like a shameless hussy when she realized she was licking her lips.
He has to be younger than me. Nobody, not even a buffed man, should be allowed to look so good lying flat on his back after the age of thirty.
He was white but tanned to a shade just short of her sienna brown color—at least that’s what she thought. His eyelashes were so thick that, at a glance, it seemed as if he was squinting through partially opened dark eyes. She had the strong desire to lean over and bite, to take just a little nip, of whatever part of his luscious body her mouth found first.
Her eyes traveled down his lean, albeit muscular body. Although his manhood was flaccid, she could see he’d been blessed in more ways than one. She fully expected to be sore when life required her to get up and walk again.
That nagging voice inside her that always had too much to say tried to guilt trip her back to the previous evening, but her joy wouldn’t allow it. She’d already decided to wait until she got home to relive everything, including the inevitable guilt, and her mind was holding her to it. Plus, she knew she would have to tell Leeana, her best friend/confessor, everything when she called to let her know she was back home and all right.
Jordan continued her study of the tanned eye candy. At the club he’d introduced himself as Artest, and he’d corrected Leeana when she’d called him Art. The hair on Artest’s body was as dark as the thick mop of longish loose curls on his head. The curls were arranged so perfectly that at first she’d questioned the randomness of them, until she saw him running his fingers through them as he pondered one of Leeana’s many questions. They fell back into the same perfect order.
He was just a percentage point or two from being too hairy for her taste, but she noticed that most of it was concentrated on his chiseled chest. His legs and arms were well within her acceptable hair range. The color of the hair on his head was the darkest brown with just a hint of deep red. It took her a moment to remember the name of the color, and when it came to her, she almost said it aloud. Umber—he was a deep umber-haired hottie.
He stirred again, and she knew it was time to get out of there. It was the first time in her life, all thirty-two years, that she’d had a one-night stand, and she wasn’t about to get caught in the embarrassing morning-after getaway.
She knew she would regret her actions later. Jordan had received good home training from an old-fashioned older woman—all of which she’d ignored the previous night.
He’d proven to be so much fun and so smart, but she doubted that she could build a relationship around such a casual pick-up. Like the commercial says, you never get a second chance to create a first impression. Just another example of Jordan Greene’s lost opportunities, she said to herself, and she fought the numbing effect the thought usually hatched.
Sighing, she sat all the way up and learned that it wasn’t going to take actually walking to spark that between-the-legs soreness. Her mind flashed to the previous night’s vigor, and she felt a hot wave of shame overtake her body. Her body burned with prickly heat. She wondered how legitimate sluts managed the humiliation.
Please let me get out of here before he wakes up, and I promise I’ll never do anything like this again. Especially now that I have last night to remember. She grinned in spite of herself.
Jordan found her clothes on the floor next to the bed—exactly where she’d tossed them. She stuffed her bra in her purse and pulled her look-at-me sweater over her head. My good old hussy red sweater—it’s never failed to get me attention yet.
He mumbled something as she was putting on her new midnight blue panties. The bra and panties were a set she’d bought after work on Friday. It was the last day of school before Spring break, and the underwear was her congratulations gift to herself. She’d made it through her first term as a college instructor.
Maybe somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she was going to force herself to go out and meet somebody too.
“Don’t move!”
After she got over the initial shock of his voice—and yes, it did echo—she turned around and found him dressed and standing near his wardrobe. It was so confusing she actually looked back at the bed to see if he was still there. Surely he’s a twin.
“Excuse me?” Jordan said. Regardless of his apparent catlike abilities to hyper-move around his bedroom, who was he to tell her she couldn’t leave?
“Don’t talk either.”
“Who the hell. . .”
Before she could finish, he was standing next to her with his hand over her mouth. “There’s somebody in my house,” he whispered in her ear.
She nodded to let him know she understood, and he removed his hand.
He inched closer to his closed bedroom door. With his eyes closed, he patted the door in several spots, high and low, with the flat of his palm. “There’s two of them, both inside. I can’t fight them and protect you too. We’d better leave. Where do you live?”
She was beginning to suspect a scam. She still hadn’t heard a damn thing. “Look, I had a great time last night, but. . .”
He touched her neck with the flat of his palm, much like he had the door. “Thank about the place where you live,” he said in a soulful, gentle voice that sounded far away.
“What?”
Jordan tried to turn and look at him, but she couldn’t move. From the corner of her eye she could see he wasn’t there, but somehow it seemed as if she still felt the pressure of his palm on her neck.
I only had two drinks last night. Something is very. . .
Before she could finish her thought, everything
went dark. Before she could scream from her sudden blindness, the light was back.
Except that they were standing in the living room of her little one-bedroom apartment.
“Who, or better yet, what the hell are you?”
“That, little girl, is the kind of thing you should ask before you go home with a stranger.”
Chapter Two
“How many exits do you have?”
Jordan heard his question, but she couldn’t answer. She couldn’t do anything but stand there in the middle of her living floor staring at him. She looked around the room. It was still cute, well-coordinated in muted mauve and blue colors, with limited art and no frilliness.
“If they followed, we don’t have much time. Tell me!”
He grabbed her shoulders. The expression in his eyes made her think he wanted to shake her. She didn’t know what stopped him, but she’d been told she could throw some mean looks. He stopped not because he saw a fighter, but because he saw a woman on the verge of tears.
“Do you have more than one door?” He said it softly, like he was talking to a child or a limited adult.
She nodded and pointed to the kitchen.
“You’ve got a back door?”
Again she nodded.
“Do you have a Bible?”
That snapped her out of it. “Of course I have a Bible!” I’m a good Christian girl, last night notwithstanding.
“More than one?”
She had to think about that. “I’ve got a full-sized Bible and a pocket-size copy of the New Testament.”
“I said Bible, the whole thing!” He was hollering again, but this time he caught himself. He cupped both of her cheeks in his big hands. She looked into his eyes and knew he wanted her to feel safe. “I’m sorry, Jordan. I’m not a bully. I just don’t want anything to happen to you. Do you understand?” He cracked his full mouth but only made a slight smile. That smile was enough to make him gorgeous again.
She nodded, but inside she was screaming, hell no, I don’t understand!
“What about a crucifix?”
“I’m not Catholic. What’s going on? How did we get here?”
“Not now, Jordan. Do you have a cross of any kind?”
“Yes, it’s in my jewelry box.” She nodded in the direction of her bedroom.
“Go get it and the Bible. Hurry,” he said, and then he added, “please.”
Jordan left him spying out into the hallway from the peephole. The thought of sneaking out the back door crossed her mind and then crossed it again before she returned to the living room. The only thing that stopped her was fear. She figured anybody who could instantaneously make her appear in a place at least five miles from where she started could certainly catch her before she got down her creaky back stairs.
He took the Bible from her hands first and put it on the floor against the middle of the closed door. He stepped back and looked at it and then moved it a little to the left. “Does that look like the middle to you?” he asked.
“Yes, but I don’t like the idea of my Bible being on the floor.”
He glared at her like he’d never before heard anything so stupid. “Where’s the cross?” he asked, apparently deciding to ignore her Bible concerns.
She opened her hand and showed him the tiny gold cross and its gold chain. She noted that he took it like it was something unclean.
“No, Jordan. I’m sorry. I do respect your Bible and your cross.”
“What?”
He shook his head like he was trying to shake out the cobwebs. “Nothing. It’s awfully small, that’s all, but I guess it will have to do for now.” He pulled the chain from the cross and handed it back to her. “I’m going to need some tape. The strongest tape you have.”
“I don’t think I have. . .”
“I need something that will stick it to the door!”
The only thing that came to mind was some two-sided sticky linen-like material that she used to rip the hair off her top lip every other month or so. She decided to just go get it rather than trying to explain it. He wasn’t exactly the patient man he’d been the night before.
When she returned with the box and handed it to him, he did exactly what she’d hoped he wouldn’t. He read the box, took out a strip and then looked at her top lip. Jordan was glad she had used a strip the night before while getting ready for her big night out. Actually she was somewhat impressed. Most of the men she knew would have just assumed they were for her legs or bikini area, even after seeing the lip-sized strips she’d pre-cut.
He stood back and looked at the back door. “I would say this is the middle, what do you think?”
She nodded.
Artest pulled the waxy paper from one side and stuck the cross to the door. “Okay,” he said. “They definitely can’t come through the front, and this might keep them from coming this way. Where does this door lead?”
“To the laundry room’s back hallway, but you can’t get into that room without a key.” She spoke with firm sincerity in her eyes, as if they were talking about people who played by the rules.
Adorable, he thought.
He smiled. “The people we’re running from aren’t stopped by locks.” He licked his lips, and she got the feeling that he wanted to kiss her. As soon as she thought it, he smiled again and asked, “what do you have cold to drink?”
She opened the refrigerator and stepped back to let him look. All she had were drinks and wilted salad food. She was trying to lose ten pounds before summer. She chose to ignore the judgment in his eyes. Not all women are Suzy Homemakers. Deal with it.
He took a light beer.
“It’s not even nine o’clock yet,” she said and immediately regretted it. What do I care if he’s an alcoholic?
“The alcohol doesn’t affect me.”
“I’ve heard that one before.”
“No, really; I can’t metabolize it. It goes out just like it goes in. If I drink too much of it, it will irritate essential body parts, but that’s about it.”
“Then why drink it?” she asked.
“It gets colder than sugary drinks, and I crave cold. I run a little hotter than most people.”
That actually made sense. If the night before was any indication, he certainly ran hot. What didn’t compute was the fact that he walked back to the living room with his opened can of beer and sat down on her sofa like he expected to be there for a while.
“We’ll know soon.”
She sat down next to him. “What will we know?”
He took a sip of his drink. “Last night was special, Jordan, it was wonderful. It’s been a long time. A very long time.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that. She wanted to tell him she’d never done that before, but wouldn’t a woman who picked up strangers every weekend say that too?
“It was my first time out on a Friday night in almost two years.” It wasn’t quite the same, but she hoped he would take the leap of logic. Jordan really cared what he thought of her.
“I know.”
“You do?”
“I do. When you went to the restroom, your friend, Leeana, read me the riot act. She told me I needed to leave while you were gone if I was out to hurt you.”
Jordan laughed. For such a little thing, Leeana was fearless. “That sounds just like her. What did you tell her?”
“I told her the truth. That I wasn’t looking for anything permanent, but that I would treat you and any other women I meet with respect.”
Jordan tried not to show her disappointment, but then she remembered that in spite of his good looks and wonderful lovemaking, he was strange, and not in a way like any other strange guy she’d ever met. “How did we get here, Artest?”
He stretched out his right leg and looked at his shoe. She wondered why he did that, and the thought occurred to her that, with legs that long, he probably wanted to put his feet up on the table. “It’s not going to make any sense, but we came the back way.”
“You were right. Th
at doesn’t make any sense.”
He stretched out the left one as much as the cocktail table would allow. “Have you ever been in a play?” His eyes were playful, teasing, and for a moment she remembered why she agreed to go home with him in the first place. That and the fact that vital parts on her body were growing cobwebs.
“Not since high school.”
“Good enough. If you think about your world as being a play, where we are now is on stage. We got here as if we were moving around backstage. The ones chasing me can’t come in the theater, but they can go anywhere around the outside of the playhouse until they’re within about fifty feet of me, and then they can come backstage and on stage unless they are stopped by religious icons.”
Scented Lust Page 1
