A security guard.
Jillian froze, instinctively pulling away to cover herself, but Michael wouldn’t release her. He raised his head and his smile flashed white in the darkness. Trapping her against him, he wouldn’t allow her to move, only peered boldly down into her face as he pressed his finger inside her.
Her body rebelled instinctively, a wave of gathering muscles and hot embarrassment that made her struggle. But he only pitted his strength against hers, no match at all, and pursed his lips in a silent gesture to quiet her.
Her panic ebbed in degrees, the sight of his arousal soothing away her hesitation. Jillian gulped a breath and, to her amazement, the simple act of relaxing opened the floodgates on a world of sensation she’d never imagined. Glorious heat flowed through her, touching every nerve ending along the way. Her body became pure feeling. Her senses heightened to the caress of cool air on her moist breasts, the shock of his rough hand between her thighs.
She sagged against him, biting back a moan that would have alerted the guard to their presence. And Michael knew he had her then, oh, he knew, and replied by pressing that finger inside even more, intensifying the sensation, daring her to resist, to get them caught. Pleasure made reason surrender to instinct. Suddenly, she was moving, rocking her hips softly to ride this growing ache as a flashlight beam sliced through the gloom only feet from where they stood…
Then disappeared.
The guard’s footsteps faded to silence as he moved away toward the next aisle of cars….
In one surge of motion, bad-boy Michael twisted her around, flipped her over his bike’s saddle and hiked up her sundress. He shoved her panties down until they hung at her knees and exposed her bare bottom to his pleasure.
The shock of the air hit her hard. She tried to twist around to see what he was doing, but he placed his hand on her back to hold her still. He didn’t speak, not a word of arousal or of reassurance. He couldn’t. Not with the security guard moving away, still not far enough to miss any sound.
He knelt behind her. Digging his fingers into her bottom, he spread her cheeks wide. Then suddenly his face was there, and he dragged his tongue along all her tender places. Jillian swallowed back a moan, dissolving into a shudder that began in the pit of her stomach and radiated outward in slow spasms.
His tongue was suddenly everywhere, licking, probing, exciting…His stubbled cheeks abraded her aroused skin. His chin caught that tiny knot of nerve endings, pitting tender against rough. She jerked at the contact, but he didn’t stop, only held her still.
He pressed his tongue into places that made her rock back against his face to ride him in willing abandon. But he wouldn’t allow her release though he must have known she was oh, so close.
So close.
He finally stood. Covering her with his body, he ground his trapped erection against her bottom, revealing his hunger with each powerful thrust. He wrapped his arms around her and caught her breasts in his hands, kneading her greedily, pinching her nipples until she bit her lip to keep from making any noise.
All she could do was arch against him, blindly riding this ache inside, an ache that desperately sought satisfaction, completion. She’d never been so high, and she wanted to feel him inside her…wanted to satisfy this need…
But still he teased her, his leather jacket and rough jeans a sharp contrast to her exposed skin.
Pressing his mouth to her ear, he whispered, “Are you ready?”
His warm breath burst out hotly and made her shiver.
“Yes.” Such a simple, heartfelt word.
He unzipped his jeans to free his erection, and Jillian held her breath, amazed at her daring, stunned by her yearning. And then he dragged that steely heat through her folds, a move so tantalizing that she didn’t know anything but pleasure and the promise of the oncoming orgasm.
His breath shuddered in her ear, a ragged broken sound that assured her they were testing his restraint. The knowledge empowered her. She’d had no idea that her surrender could command such a tantalizing strength, but she knew in that moment it did. Abandoning herself had pushed her beyond her limits, and now Jillian would push Michael beyond his.
Arching her hips, she flexed her thighs to trap his erection. She mimed the motion of lovemaking, slid him along her wet desire, slow strokes that fed her hunger and made his legs shake. His hands grew still on her breasts as he got caught up in his own need. She arched her back to press her breasts into his palms, a reminder that he couldn’t forget he still had a job—to push her and pleasure her.
In reality, she was a competent woman with a lot of control. In fantasy, she was still that woman, willing only to surrender because he proved worthy of taking the reins.
Chuckling against her ear, he speared his tongue inside, sent fire through her. He bit her lobe, rode her thrusts, giving as much as he took, the exchange suddenly equal, as if they were united in the goal of wringing every pleasure from the moment.
Then footsteps again.
This time they slowed to a stop so close that Jillian was wrenched from her languor.
Had the security guard heard them?
Her heart skidded to a sickening thud in her chest. The image of what she must look like bent over this motorcycle exploded in her mind. Her bra had tangled beneath her armpits. Her sundress had bunched around her waist. Her bare bottom lifted high in the air, so exposed, vulnerable.
They stood in stunned tableau as the flashlight beam sliced across the wall directly above their heads. Michael tensed, every muscle in his body gathering as he lowered himself against her, pressing her almost painfully into his bike saddle so the light didn’t catch him.
She held her breath, feeling the heaviness of his body everywhere, the blaze of his erection between her legs. Then he eased his hand along her hip. She waited for his direction, to see if he wanted her to shift to a position that would minimize the possibility of their capture.
Michael took aim, pressed the head of his erection at her moist entrance, and pressed inside.
Jillian froze, disbelieving of his audacity. The security guard stood so close they could hear his breaths echo in the quiet. But there was nowhere for her to go, no way to resist as Michael slid in, dared so much with such a small action.
He stretched her wide and filled her, moved steadily deeper, creating an ache that renewed the arousal she’d momentarily forgotten.
It flooded back in full force now, sweeping through her on a rush of adrenaline so fierce that she shuddered violently. He paused in his efforts as the light beam sliced across the front tire of his bike, then pressed tantalizing kisses to her ear, her cheek, her temple.
He pinched her nipples but didn’t let go, held her so long she thought she might cry out at the pleasure-pain jolting through her. His tenacity almost felt like a threat in the darkness, but she couldn’t deny the danger of the moment, the excitement. Arching against him, she pressed close until he was in so far she could feel the delicate skin of his scrotum.
That’s exactly what Michael wanted, she realized. He wanted her pleasure to override her fear of capture.
And it did. She could feel him everywhere as he anchored himself with his hands on her breasts, always kneading, teasing, tweaking. Her body heated until she knew she was on fire, the tension inside mounting until she thought she would faint without release.
But he didn’t alter his pace to bring her to completion. He only dragged his hips back, pulling himself nearly all the way out before he plunged back inside her with such power that he forced the breath from her lungs.
Then his control began to fray.
Jillian knew he was fighting his own battle for restraint because each thrust made his chest heave. His thighs began to vibrate so hard she wasn’t sure how he kept standing. He pushed inside her so forcefully that each stroke made skin slap against skin until the sound echoed in the night-drenched quiet and she feared the security guard would hear them and come running. There was no possible way he could mistake t
he noise of two bodies joining in such hot action.
Still, Michael didn’t relent. He buried his face in her hair. He kneaded her breasts. He reared back then drove home with thrusts that forced the air from her lungs, lifted her beyond any place she’d ever imagined she could go. And she arched wildly to meet him, to ride this mounting sensation and finally end the torture, the bliss of the moment.
Then it happened. Time seemed to still for a heartbeat, and their bodies froze against each other, paralyzed for an instant as their climax gathered, then they came apart in an explosion. Together.
MICHAEL HELD Jillian, his own heart racing from the strength of his climax. She wrapped herself around him, nearly boneless as night descended into darkness beyond the French doors in their bedroom. He hadn’t decided whether he felt pleased that her fantasies about him could arouse her to such fevered excitement, or intimidated that he hadn’t done the job properly in reality.
He hadn’t decided what the hell was going on with eavesdropping inside her head, either. But one thing was damn clear—he could hear what she was thinking.
As a kid, he’d avidly read comic books. Nothing had sounded better than possessing powers that could change an average guy into a superhero who could see through solid walls and leap over buildings in a single bound. Michael and his buds had spent more hours than he could count coming up with their own clever superhuman abilities.
They hadn’t been interested in mundane stuff like the ability to fly. What good was flying when the first guy to stroll by with Kryptonite could send you to the ground?
No, Michael and his buds wanted useful stuff like super-improved brain power that would give them the ability to outthink everyone on the planet.
That they could have done something with. The possibilities for school alone were endless. They would have known all the correct answers on a test just by reading the questions. Much better than X-ray vision. If they knew the correct answers, then they wouldn’t have actually needed to attend school.
Unfortunately, by age thirty-two, Michael had long since given up the hope of ever possessing superanything, which left him no damn clue to what was happening here…No, wait. He knew a couple of things.
After being treated to that lovemaking scene, Michael knew he’d developed the ability to hear inside Jillian’s head, impossible though it seemed. A place he definitely didn’t want to be when he was treated to brutal commentary about the size of his gut. Or how tight his ass wasn’t.
He also knew his marriage was in a lot more trouble than he’d realized.
Just the memory of himself in leather, behaving more high-handed than he’d ever dreamed of behaving, was enough to make his body temperature spike.
And what the hell was a public parking garage all about? There was no possible way his wife would ever endure that sort of treatment from him or anybody else on this planet. He’d known Jillian nearly all her life and knew that without question.
But Michael wasn’t stupid. He also knew enough about women’s fantasies to know that a fantasy frequently had nothing to do with reality. What he didn’t know was why. He tried to recall what Jillian had told him when they’d been discussing the topic after a recent Main Street Rehabilitation fund-raiser. He couldn’t remember anything except that he’d wanted to try one…and had.
His body temperature spiked again. Only this time into the red zone.
His handcuffs so little resembled Jillian’s encounter on a motorcycle that Michael might have laughed—if he hadn’t been the star of both shows.
That thought made the blood throb in his ears. He was seized by such a violent restlessness he nearly jolted from the bed. On the up side, exhaustion seemed to be another side effect of fantasies because Jillian had passed out. She was so gone she didn’t budge when he disentangled himself from her arms and slid from the bed.
Here was something else he knew—he wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. Or ever again if he didn’t figure out what the hell was going on.
Once, when his office staff had been on some health kick or another, Charlotte had told him that women looked in the mirror and saw themselves as ten pounds heavier than they were. Men, on the other hand, looked in the mirror and saw themselves as ten pounds lighter. He remembered cracking some joke about men having magic eyeballs, but he’d relegated her claim under the column of typical feminine exaggeration.
He headed into the bathroom and flipped on the light anyway.
Squinting at his reflection, he tried to add ten pounds for a glimpse at what Jillian might see when she looked at him. He did a three-sixty in front of the bi-fold mirror, suddenly realizing why men didn’t spend nearly the amount of time women did in front of them.
Damn, not good.
He hadn’t known Jillian’s high-school girlfriends had been so fixated on his ass during games, but she was right about one thing—they wouldn’t stop for a second look now.
Is that why she needed an elaborate fantasy to get aroused when they made love? Had she been fantasizing when he’d gone down on her, too?
Running a hand through his hair, Michael raised his gaze from the sorry sight in the mirror to find his face staring back. He looked tired and shell-shocked.
Or was that haggard and old?
He was only thirty-two for Christ’s sake. Since when was thirty-two old?
Inspecting his hairline, he didn’t find any gray, or bristly nose hairs, either. But he had put on weight.
Was he too out of shape to make love to his wife?
“Great, man, just great,” he whispered to his reflection.
In addition to looking at this in the mirror, he got to experience performance anxiety, too.
That thought sent him fleeing into the shower in an attempt to calm down.
The pounding hot water didn’t do much. His head raced with impossible thoughts—including the idea that he was really asleep right now. He’d wake up in the morning and realize that neither his superpower nor Jillian’s fantasy had been anything but a dream.
He wouldn’t mind waking up ten pounds lighter, either.
Michael remembered Jillian’s earlier comments about her appearance, and wondered if she’d actually voiced that criticism aloud or if he’d heard her thoughts then, too. He hadn’t bothered looking at her mouth so he couldn’t say.
Exactly when he’d developed this impossible ability was difficult to pinpoint. Definitely since they’d arrived home from the clinic. Did this ability have something to do with sex? He couldn’t say since they really hadn’t done anything except have sex since arriving home. And the all-important question…did this superpower only work on his wife?
5
The morning after
JILLIAN GLANCED UP at Charlotte from the reception desk. “He’s going where for lunch?”
“Swimming. At the public pool. There’s an adult lap swim.”
Jillian saved the spreadsheet she’d been working on and slid the keyboard tray back into its position beneath the desk. “Let me get this straight. Michael turned down your fried chicken, and instead of taking a nap while the office is closed, he’s going swimming?”
“He brought all his gear in a swim bag.”
And here she’d thought they were on the mend. Apparently, they’d moved into a new phase of marriage—Michael keeping secrets. “Oh.”
Charlotte nodded. “That’s exactly what I thought, too. Anyway, I wanted to mention it before you left for the doctor. You didn’t say anything, so I wasn’t sure you knew.”
“I didn’t. But now that I think about it, I did see him stick a bag in the trunk this morning. Never thought to ask.”
And she shouldn’t have had to. If the man was taking up swimming again—something he hadn’t done since college—shouldn’t he have thought to mention it?
Certainly seemed reasonable to her. “Well, I suppose this deserves a trip into the inner sanctum.”
“I thought it might.”
Bless Charlotte. Jillian honestly didn’t know
what she’d do without her. “I’ll let you know.”
She stood, circled the desk then headed down the long hallway that led into the back that led to Michael’s office. She knocked but didn’t wait for a reply before pushing the door open. She found him heading toward her, apparently on his way out, and he did indeed have a bag over his shoulder.
“You’re leaving?” she asked.
“Going swimming.”
“You’re not going to eat?”
“Already did.” He pointed to a disposable plastic container in the trash. “I brought a salad from home.”
“That’s a lot healthier than Charlotte’s fried chicken.”
“That’s what I thought.” He patted his stomach. “About time I exercised some self-control.”
He sounded so serious the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Jillian frowned, not sure what was unsettling her.
“Is there anything wrong, Michael?”
“No, why? You didn’t have anything planned for lunch today, did you?”
“No, no. I’m going to the doctor, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right. You told me this morning.”
She nodded. “Swimming, Michael? I can barely remember the last time you went swimming.”
“Yeah, and I’m noticing the effects on my boyish figure. Thought it was time to do something about it. If I get in better shape, maybe I won’t be so tired all the time.”
Well, there was certainly no disputing the reasoning. She’d said as much to him not so long ago when he’d been complaining about all the time he wasted on his midday naps. “That’s it? You’re not keeping anything from me?”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. But you turned down Charlotte’s fried chicken. You’re sure you haven’t been diagnosed with some sort of terminal illness?”
With a chuckle, he caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tipped her face to his. “I’m fine, Jilly. No terminal illness.”
He planted a kiss on her lips and headed toward the door, leaving Jillian staring after him, wondering what was really going on with her husband.
If You Could Read My Mind Page 7
