by Noelle Mack
“And how are you?” Kev grinned and sat on the edge of the bed, the towel coming apart to show his cock and balls, nice and clean and damp, and smelling like her soap. She cupped it all, liking the resting softness of male flesh, and looked up at him, still a little sleepy.
“Just fine, thank you. That was fun. Sure beat reviewing 1099s and quarterly tax forms. I have to let you interrupt me more often.”
He rose for a second to pull off the towel, and sat back down next to her. Pam looked him over, feeling awfully lucky. Bare-assed and gorgeous, Kev Donnell was just all around amazing. He scruffed the towel over his wet hair. “I had a good excuse, remember?” He pointed to the dress hanging on the back of the door. “Or maybe I should call it a bribe.”
Pam sat up too, feeling very comfortable being naked with him. “Kev, you didn’t buy that dress, did you? Stacks is a really expensive store.”
“Um, no. I tried to explain that, but your mind was on other things. I sorta borrowed it. On a trial basis. To see if you would like it.”
She patted his cheek, feeling a slight scratch of stubble and liking that too. No way would any man in his right mind use a razor a woman had used on her legs. “I did like it. But I’d guess it cost, what, five thousand?”
He shrugged and let the damp towel fall into his lap. “In that neighborhood, yeah.”
Pam planted a big smooch on his cheek. “You’re totally sweet. But you have to return it.” She looked at the red dress again, feeling a flash of guilt that she hadn’t asked that question before she’d let him make love to her wearing it.
She bounded up from the bed and went to the bedroom door, carefully inspecting the dress for any signs of wild sex.
“What are you doing?”
Pam raised the skirt, looking inside for stains and finding none. “A Monica Lewinsky check.”
“I already did. The dress is like new. I was careful. I mean, we could have it drycleaned but then I’d have to take the tag off.”
She looked for the discreet little tag that she’d tucked down the side before she’d strutted her stuff. There it was. The price wasn’t on it but they couldn’t return it without that.
“You could keep it,” he offered. “I’ll find a way to pay for it.”
“Nothing doing,” she said. “That’s, what, two month’s salary for you? We could get something like it at a discount store or Sym’s, and do whatever we wanted in it.”
“I liked the idea of giving you the real thing,” he said, a stubborn set to his chin.
She shook her head and let the dress fall from her hands into voluptuous folds. “If you can’t deduct it, why bother?” She stroked the material almost lovingly, though, noticing that the June humidity had taken care of every possible wrinkle. It did indeed look like new.
“You’re way too practical.”
Pam took the few steps between her and the bed and pushed her great, big, naked, gorgeous pal flat on his back. “Not all the time.” She straddled him, then caught a whiff of her unwashed body, waving it away with one hand. “Whew! I have to shower. You’re too clean to mess up.”
Kev grabbed her ass. “I like that smell. You and me. Male and female. Hot and juicy.”
She laughed. “A little too juicy at the moment.” She got off him awkwardly and swabbed his belly with the damp towel. “You don’t want to go around smelling like a happy pussy the rest of the day, do you? Don’t you have to finish your route?” Another thought occurred to her. “Oh, Jesus—your van. They tow around here. What about the meter?”
“Took care of it. I didn’t sleep very long. You were out cold, though.”
She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Were you watching me sleep? Did I drool on the pillow?”
Kev grinned in a lopsided way. “Yes and no.”
“I know I drooled.”
“Not on me.”
She picked up a pillow and looked at it. Nothing on that either. “Hmm. Guess you’re telling the truth. I won’t have to hit you with this.” She did anyway, connecting with a soft whomp. Kev grabbed the pillow, pulling it out of her hand as he rose to enfold her in a hug.
“Not going to say uncle. And I do have to finish my route. Wanna ride along?”
Pam pondered that. Whatever she had been doing before he showed up with the dress in a box, she couldn’t remember. So it could wait. But her practical, accountanty side reasserted itself. “Isn’t that against company rules or something? I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
He hugged her again. “I won’t tell if you won’t. Not like I’m going to let you bounce around in the back of a van. Sit up front and wear your seatbelt, that’s good enough for me.” With his hands on her shoulders, he set her back from him. “Hey, you know what? I have a uniform change in the back somewhere. Wanna dress up again? That way, if another driver sees me, he’ll think you’re a trainee or something.”
“Pam Kendricks, delivery girl?” She thought it over for a few seconds, then nodded. “Sure. Why not.”
He squeezed her bare butt. “Into the shower. Let’s get going.”
Two hours later, the day was winding down. The sticky weather made her sweat but the uniform shirt and shorts were loose on her and that helped. Pam leaned forward a little in the seat to turn up the airconditioning, for what it was worth. Kev had to get in and out of the van so often it almost didn’t matter.
She got to be in charge of the clipboard, making neat notations on routine deliveries all over town, doing a fair job of faking his handwriting. He made a left turn into a service road, letting the wheel spin back between his big hands, then wrestling a monster of a clutch to get up to speed again.
Pam didn’t have much to do but look at him, and think about…well, wow. He’d gone from friendly delivery guy to lover man in the space of a few short hours. She wasn’t quite sure how the hell that had happened, but she was more than happy to stay on the ride, however long it lasted.
Just looking at him turned her on—and made her heart beat faster too. As in r-o-m-a-n-c-e fast. Kev Donnell seemed to be pretty much everything she’d ever wanted in a man, she thought uneasily.
So either he would screw up or she would, sooner or later, she told herself. Pam didn’t trust the word romance, something she felt compelled to spell just to take the emotional charge out of it, let alone the experience of romance.
Love didn’t add up. Numbers added up. She decided to run some in her head to distract herself from dangerous thought processes that led to overindulgence in premium ice cream and fantasies of happily-ever-afters. Just watching his muscular thighs as he shifted in and out, pressing one big boot on the clutch pedal, was enough to make her want to watch forever.
An unsecured box shot forward into the well between the front seats, and a few more toppled down. “I’ll get ‘em when you stop,” she said. Kev went through a green light and pulled over, patting her butt as she bent over to go into the back. A nice old grandpa shuffling by saw him do it and gave Kev a bespectacled wink and a thumbs-up. Kev grinned back, looking a little sheepish.
“Straighten up, Pammy,” he said out of the side of his mouth. “Don’t get the senior citizens too excited.”
“Then get your hand off my ass.”
Pam stacked the boxes, noting that the fallen-down ones were unwrapped toys in store boxes and not delivery cartons. “What are these? I mean, I can see that they’re toys, but where are they going?”
“Here and there. I collect them from different stores, meaning I ask for donations, and I add a few I buy. A friend who works for a charity handles the distribution. Just something I like to do.”
“Why? If you don’t mind my asking.”
Kev rested his hands on the wheel and looked out at the street. “Long story short, I was dropping off overstock at a thrift store and I walked in on this argument between the register clerk and a customer. They were screaming at each other in Spanish and I figured that the clerk thought she was stealing.”
Pam just
nodded, letting him get the details straight in his mind before he continued. “Anyway, the customer had a kid with her, a little boy, and he’d picked out a toy, a wind-up thing that bounced. Only the packaging was torn and someone’d stuck a little sign on it. Doesn’t Bounce. That pissed me off—not the sign, that some people give broken toys to charity. So I went into the drugstore next door and bought the kid something new. He was thrilled, it stopped the argument, and I decided to keep on doing it.”
“You’re one of the last of the good guys.”
Kev only shrugged. “I try.”
Pam stacked the toy boxes with extra care and fastened a webbed strap around them. “How am I doing?”
“You’re doing great. Want a new job?”
“Nah. I actually like working at home. But I’m having fun today. Thanks for bringing me along.”
Kev was preoccupied, having declared his intention to get the last of the boxes stashed in the van delivered before the end of his run. He hummed along to a heavy metal CD—Pam didn’t know it was possible to hum to heavy metal but he seemed to be doing it—and he looked at her now and then with a smile that got to her emotions in a big, big way.
She smiled back—her best businesslike one—and tucked a fresh sheet of paper under the metal clip, about to mentally list the good things about him and assign each a percent value to write down. Kev didn’t have to know what she was doing.
First and foremost he was a nice guy, she thought. A really, really nice guy. She wrote down 50% at the top of the page. Hot in bed. Another 50%. Pam sighed. He was already up to 100% on her improvised man-o-meter ranking and she had barely begun.
Okay. She would bend the math.
He liked animals, was kind to The Lump. 25%. Collected new toys for kids who didn’t have any. 50%. Looked good wet. 30%. Pam couldn’t say why that was important to her but it was. She tapped the point of her pencil on the paper, absorbed in what she was doing.
She thought some more. Able to unzip a sleepy woman and get an expensive dress off her without ripping it. 25%. Then it occurred to her that he might have practiced that smooth move on someone else, maybe more than one someone else, and she downgraded that rank to 5%.
Funny. Smart. Sweet. 35%. 35%. 35%. Healthy. Athletic. 25%. 25%. Took stairs two at a time. 15%. Tall. Pam hesitated. That was genetic and not something he’d done. But even so. 10%. Majorly hung. She smiled inwardly and gave him a solid 25% on that.
Sexy. Outrageously sexy. 50%.
“What are you doing?”
“Um, crunching numbers.”
He patted her thigh and slid his hand higher, giving her an affectionate crotch squeeze. “Crunch on. We’re almost there.”
Pam looked around. The tall buildings radiated the heat of the long summer day and shafts of sunlight thrust between them. She could see the converted loft with the Stacks sign and get a look at the new window displays. Stacks set trends and their bizarre windows usually got reviewed on the arts page.
Blue mannequins, unclothed except for fetish underwear, were doing unspeakable things to each other. A group of fanny-packed, chino-pantsed suburbanites, refugees from a double-decker bus tour of the city, were giggling and taking pictures of each other in front of the windows.
Kev laughed at the sight and turned into the alley behind the loft. Pam looked into the back of the van for the long white box. She’d rewrapped the dress in the tissue before they’d left her apartment, checking it carefully for stains one last time. None. More magic? She couldn’t say, but the dress was pristine, as if she had never worn it.
When he parked, she reached for the box, waiting until he got down to hand it to him. “What are you going to say?”
He grinned wolfishly. “That I fucked you silly in it.”
“No, really.”
“That it didn’t fit. No biggie. I think it was a sample, actually. They’re not going to sell it if it was.”
“Oh. Well, then, I don’t feel guilty.”
He slid the driver’s side door open and got out, turning to put his foot up on the running board and take the box from her. He balanced it on his knee. “Nothing to feel guilty about. You in this dress, being as wicked as you wanted to be—I’ll never forget it. Although you look just as good in my shirt and shorts.”
“Aw, shucks. Thanks.”
He gave her a serious look. “I mean it. The dress made you look like a goddess, but that’s because you are a goddess.”
“Not in sweat pants, I’m not. You’re totally sweet but get real.” She pointed a pencil at the box. “Bring it back.”
He picked the box up again in one swing, and disappeared into the loading dock area, leaving her alone in the van. Pam leaned back and looked down at the column of meaningless numbers. So far, Kev Donnell had captured about—um—465% of something. The popular vote. As in the instant attention of every woman he who walked by him and appreciated the easy way he hoisted heavy boxes and his long strides and—lots of things. She’d seen him getting not-so-subtle onceovers all day long. What else had he captured? Your heart, a little voice said.
Uh-oh. She started a separate column for his bad qualities but couldn’t think of any. Of course, their relationship until now had been casually friendly, everybody on their best behavior and so forth. Delivery guys had to be friendly, it was part of their job. And she bet Kev got hit on all the time. Pam chewed absently on the eraser end of the pencil, not caring that it tasted terrible.
He came back, hopped into his seat, and slammed the sliding door shut. “Nice girl. All she said was no problem, happy to help, blah blah. It’s back on the sample rack and no one even knows it was gone.”
Pam felt a small pang of regret. Not like she could ever wear the red velvet dress anywhere but it would be a great souvenir of the sex that had rocked her world. For all she knew, she might never have sex that good without it.
Do not obsess, she told herself sternly. Do not assign magical powers to an inanimate object. If Kev Donnell wants you, he wants you. Didn’t he just say you look great in a delivery-guy uniform?
He reached toward her. Feeling the first waves of Post-Coital Nervous Second-Guessing Syndrome hit her and hit hard, she looked down at her bare thighs and pressed her knees together before he could slide his hand between her legs.
But Kev only wanted to turn her face to him, and he did, touching his lips to hers in a tender kiss that was nonetheless passionate. Purely, physically passionate.
Do not interpret this to mean more than it means, she told herself, parting her lips and yielding to the sensual mouth on hers. Tongue tango is a lot of fun. But tonight you’ll be sleeping with The Lump. Kev will be heading home to—she wondered where he lived and what his place looked like and whether he had a cat or a roommate or what. She kept right on kissing him. Pam was expert at multitasking.
Kev pulled back. “Hm. Why do I have the feeling you just weren’t into that?”
She scrubbed at her mouth with the back of her hand. “It was nice. I’m tired, I guess.”
“Want to go home? I’m done for the day.” He looked at her expectantly.
Was he waiting for an invitation? Pam hesitated before answering.
“Yeah. Gotta feed the cat, do some laundry.” She realized how dreary that sounded and put a smile on her face. “Early bedtime for me. I’ll make a cup of cocoa and catch a couple of cartoons on Adult Swim.” Not exactly sophisticated, but then she didn’t have to impress a really, really nice guy like Kev. Which was all part of his incredible charm, goddamn it.
Pam wondered what had gotten into her. Just wearing a movie star dress and being a raunchy sex goddess, demanding and receiving the ultimate in pleasure, this hadn’t ruined her for ordinary life, had it? Nah.
She looked into Kev’s soulful brown eyes, trying to read his mind. Despite his Average Joe job, he was anything but ordinary. Something about him made her weak inside. Made her crave more. Her ever-present common sense warned her to take it slow.
“Home,” she
repeated. Where she could think.
Five months later…
I am a woman in love, Pam thought miserably. Which totally sucks. She tossed and turned in bed, annoying Lump into jumping down and stalking off.
“Tough luck,” she said to the tip of his tail before it vanished around the doorjamb with the rest of the cat. She sprawled out on the bed and punched a pillow into the right shape to hide her face and indulge in teenager-style sobs of self-pity. Feeling suffocated, she gave up on that and rolled over on her back, sprawled out even wider.
Being alone sucked even more than being in love. Kev had been assigned to a night shift at the package-sorting depot and he couldn’t swing by. He was working extra hours as it was, saving up for Christmas, or so he said.
His mother wanted this, his father needed that. The nieces and nephews in his big Irish-American family adored their Uncle Kev, and he was already thinking about a small but good gift for each and every Donnell brat, as he called them. He had to be about the most generous guy she’d ever known. And he didn’t have all that much to be generous with either. Her clients contributed to charities, but only because they needed the deductions.
And as far as Pam was concerned, he gave her everything she wanted. She craved his company, his easygoing sense of humor, his anything-goes attitude in the bedroom—all of him.
Her pussy throbbed with longing. Pam pressed her thighs closed. Didn’t help. She thought about the new IRS regulations on bankruptcy filing and its potential impact on her business. Didn’t work. She still wanted Kev, right here, in her bed, in her arms.
The phone rang and she rolled on her belly to answer it, crabbily. “Hello?”
“Hello yourself.” A thrill shot through her at the sound of Kev’s amused low voice.
