Her eyes lit and her smile brightened as she slid sideways on the seat to do his bidding.
God help him, he was never going to survive a month of this. She was too needy in all the right ways. He was curious how this obsession had manifested itself in a woman so lovely. There was no one in his memory, real or imagined, that could compete with the sight being showcased for him right now on this vintage Camaro bucket seat. The sight before him was one most men were never privileged to see, at least not when the woman was as beautiful as Callie.
Truly beautiful women didn’t need to go to these extremes, they could afford to be aloof and hold themselves to a higher standard. Someone had to have cultivated this level of submissiveness—coerced it, if he wasn’t mistaken, and he wanted to know why. Because a woman this beautiful did not have to do this to earn love and acceptance—not that he wasn’t totally enthralled with the view.
Chapter VII
Keeping his eyes on the road he reached over and inserted his middle finger into her. With a quick glance, he was surprised by her adoring look. It occurred to him that the longer she was displayed like this, as she flamed with shame, the wetter she got. Soon he’d have a flood on his hands.
He marveled as he watched and she morphed into a different woman altogether. One so oddly apart from the other—brash instead of shy, forward to the point of whoring herself, going from as angelic as Shirley Temple to as flagrant as Jenna Jameson in mere moments.
He decided he would see if he could pleasure her while she was in this mindset; try to take her back to the world she had somehow slipped into. He wanted to know how she entered the place where what a man thought of her body counted more than what she thought of herself.
Moving his fingers in and out of her as he drove, he listened for changes in her breathing while still watching the road. After a few moments he added his thumb, circling and pressing down on either side of her clit. Her breathing escalated. He ran with a hunch. “Lovely, absolutely stunning. Your pussy is a true delight; I can see why you enjoy showing yourself off, I can’t get enough of you, show me more. All of you. Show me all of you.”
She arched, spread her thighs impossibly wide and keened loudly. Even though the sound of it was drowned out by the rushing wind, it hit a visceral chord in him. He was as hard as a pikestaff.
He held his hand steady as her orgasm milked his fingers, drenching them and practically forcing them out of her sheath in the process. He pinched her clit and she convulsed all over again, hissing and gritting her teeth. Then he watched as her face fell into a relaxed pose, her eyes closing, her lips going lax, and finally, her legs drawing up and closing. Within moments she was in a fetal position, crying.
He pulled over and attempted to pull her into his arms but she drew away, whimpering as if scared. He gave her the space she seemed to need as he stared down at her, then he pulled back onto the road. He kept an eye on both her and the road, not exactly sure what to expect next. She had been so open, so free, mere moments ago.
He said nothing as he drove with both hands on the wheel until the essence of her on his right hand overpowered him and he had to bring his hand close to his face to draw deeply of her fragrant musk and to lick along his middle finger.
A few minutes later he looked over to see she was sitting upright, her clothes straightened and her skirt pulled back down. He glanced to the floor and saw that her underwear was not on the floor anymore. It was either back in place, or it had blown out of the car. Her head was relaxed against her arm on the windowsill, facing him with her eyes closed. He couldn’t imagine it, but she appeared to be asleep, blissfully, and contentedly asleep. And so beautiful it hurt his heart.
Dear God, please don’t tell me I’m falling in love with her, he thought. For God sakes, I only met her yesterday! A voice in his head whispered, Yes, but you’ve been looking for her all your life.
Half an hour later, as he pulled into the parking lot of the motel they had selected, she woke with an eager smile. Who was this woman who appeared to be the proper lady and loyal wife, and at other times, became like Jezebel, who saw it as her duty to whore herself and submit fully to her master’s desires?
Chapter Seven
Garrett walked back to his shower with the only oil he’d found, a decorative bottle of olive oil with tarragon leaves and a thyme branch tucked inside. He supposed he should be grateful it wasn’t one with hot peppers floating in the oil considering what he intended to do with it.
Ten minutes later as he was toweling off he wondered what he’d have to do to keep his shower from smelling like an Italian trattoria. Realizing he had to take a mental and physical break from the most erotic story he’d ever read, he dressed for a run on the beach. He had a few things he had to figure out and running on the beach always seemed to break things down to the most basic components.
Ratty college t-shirt over jersey shorts, he bent to lace and tie his three-hundred-dollar sneakers. He thought of himself as frugal in most things, but he’d learned long ago that if you took care of your feet they took care of you. If you didn’t, it affected almost every arena of your life.
He grabbed a water bottle and the single house key, which he tucked into his inside pocket. He made it all the way down the stairs before running back up for his Maseru sunglasses, then sprinted over the access decking to the beach.
It was another glorious day, sunny and hot with a gentle breeze that lifted his hair and his spirits as he set the pace that felt familiar and comfortable. He usually ran five miles a day, but he had a late start today. A quick look at his watch told him that the Japanese markets were down and reporting on the close of business over ten hours ago, so he figured there should’ve been plenty of time for the reports he needed to be ready. He acknowledged that when he got back he had some work to do before the TSE opened tonight. He could not spend the day reading about Callie and Rand. He could not.
He smiled at a group of women who waved at him, dodged a couple pushing a stroller and outran the little poodle nipping at his heels. But he was intrigued. He thought about the woman who owned the flash drive. He fancied he could read her thoughts; feel her anxiety over having lost it along with some very personal thoughts.
Her writing was good, professional caliber if he wasn’t mistaken. He reminded himself to Google local authors when he got back, maybe he’d get lucky. He wondered about this writer of passions. She seemed to have a pretty good handle on the pleasures both men and women experienced. She seemed to really know what turned men on . . . what turned him on.
A woman on a bike passed him, heading toward Bird Island, peddling with a purpose. His eyes were drawn to her firm butt wiggling back and forth on the seat with each pump of her legs and the cute soft-looking blonde curls that bobbed in the sun. From the back she looked to be in her twenties, but great legs and a nice backside had fooled him many times. Often the face belonged to a much older woman, at least here at the beach where the women were fanatics about their bodies. He watched her ride away, watched as she waved a jaunty hand to a group of women walkers all in the same turtle watch t-shirts.
He admired her bike as much as he admired her form, a Drifter in pastel green and tan. It was a stunner, too. Her effortless way of peddling while snaking around the tidal pools made riding a bike on the beach look fun. He vowed to get his own bike out of storage and bring it down next time he drove the truck down from Maryland.
Chapter Eight
Laurel waved to the women on the beach, two were neighbors and two she knew from her turtle watch walks, one she’d thought she’d met in church. Gosh there were so many people moving down to the southern end of the county now that it was hard to keep up. But a wave was always polite, so she gave it all she had until she needed that hand to steer the bike.
What a glorious day! She was so glad she had decided to ride her bike on the beach even if s
he hadn’t been able to find her usual parking place at 40th Street. The extra miles biking from the pier wouldn’t be a hardship at all today.
The hottie she had just passed, loping effortlessly down the beach, made jogging in the hot sun look not quite as hateful as she knew it to be. It was tempting to turn back to get a peak at his face, because those legs and that ass were damn near perfect. Had to have a nose á la Cyrano de Bergerac, just had to. So why ruin the fantasy?
Ah this was nice, she mused. She was so glad she finally pulled herself away from the house where she was endlessly looking for that damned flash drive. This morning she’d been sitting on the floor of her closet, rummaging through a pile of purses she hadn’t used since she’d moved them here three years ago. It couldn’t possibly be there. But she wasn’t ready to give up, wasn’t ready to admit it was gone forever. Her stories scattered to the winds like the seagulls frantically taking flight in front of her.
When she got to the mailbox she took pen in hand and cried out her frustration to the Kindred Spirit while alternately marveling at the beauty before her and trying to cheer herself. Hey, she did have backups; she hadn’t lost the work. Everything was still on her computer. So what was the problem really, she asked herself. The problem was that she felt lost, out of control somehow. The not knowing where years of her time had ended up. Whether whoever found it would try to publish any of it, and how would she feel if they did? Would she fight them, claim the work as hers? It wasn’t that she was ashamed of it exactly, but she was definitely not ready for the world to see her in that light. She didn’t want anyone to know her inner thoughts so well, to know her so well . . . so intimately.
There was really nothing to do at this point but find a way to move on. She had to stop obsessing about it. She’d had worse things to deal with in her life: first, her parents dying in a car wreck during the holidays, on their way to visit her—then the winning lottery ticket found in her father’s wallet the following week—for two.
His dream, his whole life, had been to win the lottery, just one time—five, ten, twenty thousand . . . not overly greedy, just enough to make a difference. “Easy Street.” he used to say to her every time he bought one. He’d wave it in front of her face and smile his crooked smile as he came back to the car after running into the 7-11 or wherever it was he bought gas. “Easy Street, this is the ticket, baby. Pack up the moving van, we’re going to Easy Street.”
Well he hadn’t made it to Easy Street. He’d never even known he’d won. As his heir, his sole heir, she’d finally cashed the ticket in, six days before it was to expire. Thirty-six million, nineteen thousand and change after taxes and legal fees. She was set. She was on Easy Street. Broken hearted, alone, and aimlessly drifting, but she was on Easy Street. She remembered going home after meeting with her banker, her lawyer, and an investment counselor. She’d plopped down in her computer chair in her two-bedroom apartment and Googled “Easy Street,” searched MapQuest for streets so named. Even flipped through the listings for the county map books she had for Northern Virginia. She’d found a lot of companies, restaurants, songs, and sayings, but no street she could move to . . . there would be no Easy Street for her. Six months later, she’d finally found the courage to walk into her parent’s house in Ocean Ridge Plantation at Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina.
Neighbors had looked after it for her, and she’d hired a maid service to go in and clean it once a month and a handyman to maintain it, but she hadn’t been able to gather her thoughts enough to actually drive down, put the key in the lock and see all her parent’s things. She couldn’t stand to think about revisiting the good times they’d had there.
It had taken weeks of mind-numbing drudgery to go through each room and sort things out. Storing what she couldn’t bear to deal with yet, like her mother’s clothes, and the kitchenware and cookbooks that were such a huge part of their family celebrations, donating her father’s clothes, his golf clubs, the pool table, and the furniture from his den, selling his gun and record collections—then repainting, papering, and decorating to make the house uniquely hers. This was not Easy Street; her first months here had been anything but easy. And while Ocean Ridge Plantation had drives, circles, places, notches, lanes, ways, and courts, it had no streets, at least none she could find. So Castlebury Way would just have to do. She was young, not even thirty yet, so she would never have picked a retirement community like this to live in if she had not inherited it, but she felt safe here with the lingering touches of her parents all around her. So she dug deep, pushed aside her reservations and ensconced herself in her new home and began to write. She made friends, joined groups and wrote several hours every day. It had helped with the grieving process. And now everything she’d poured her heart into was out there—and most likely in the hands of a stranger.
She ended her anguished missive to the Kindred Spirit with:
So you see, Kindred Spirit, I am lost and floundering. Whether I will ever see that #$*&@ flash drive again is anybody’s guess. But for now I guess I have to let it go. Try to put it out of my head until one of my stories stares back at me from the pages of a book. Then I’ll deal with it. Then I’ll decide whether to “own” my secret thoughts and hidden fantasies or assign them to another. I guess it wouldn’t hurt my feelings any if something I wrote became a bestseller. But that in itself is another can of worms. I don’t need the money, but I sure would hate someone calling my brainchild theirs when they hadn’t given birth or thought to it. Until next time, thanks for listening, sorry I’m so self-absorbed in sorrow today. I’m going to go find five shells, spit my vituperate soul into them and fling them far into the ocean, never to be seen or heard from ever again! Oh to wash away this feeling of despair.
She stood and replaced the notebook and pen. Out there, she thought as she scanned the horizon, seeing the great ocean and envisioning the world on the other side. For all she knew, the name Anonymous could be appearing under one of her stories this very minute. What with the emergence of self-publishing, and e-books like the Kindle and Nook, she could be published right now and not even know it.
She got on her bike, threw her shoulders back and faced the wind. It would be harder riding back but she’d had it tough before, she’d manage. She always did.
Chapter Nine
Garrett sat on his deck in a wooden Adirondack chair, slumped with one leg crossed over the other, sipping a beer and staring out at the ocean. He was fighting it. Oh, he wanted to go back in and read more, but first he had some work to do. Then he promised himself he’d make an attempt to establish who the owner of the disk was. He’d at least check out the other files to see if he could glean anything from them. The Quicken file could easily yield something useful. Then, and only then, would he’d treat himself to another chapter.
After his run, he’d checked his portfolios, made a few trades and grabbed a sandwich, then headed to the shower with the intention of cleaning himself, that was all, nothing else. That bottle of olive oil was getting down to the dregs and his right hand smelled like pizza.
He pulled himself up, grabbed his cell and called a few traders to talk things over. Then he set up a few meetings with investors for when he got back to Washington, ordered some computer equipment online, and finally pressed the number for Christopher’s Pizza. He ordered a large pepperoni and sausage pizza—the smell of his hand so near his face had finally won him over.
Chapter VIII
Holding her open to what she thought was a wide bay window, he murmured to her, telling her how naughty she was showing so many strange men her naked pussy. Indeed, he wished the windows with the drapes drawn over them was a mirror so he could see what he was holding open to the imaginary men reflect back to him. “There’s a young boy, maybe sixteen with his nose to the window, stroking his cock. I’m going to hold your cute lips open so he can see into your vagina. Would you like me to remove your blindf
old so you can see the lust in his eyes?”
“No! Please don’t!”
He knew she’d say that. He knew she couldn’t handle that final degradation of actually seeing a stranger’s eyes feasting on her. And thank God for that, as all she would see was the intricate pattern of the drapery that was shielding her from the late-night carousers walking just outside their window.
Recalling what had happened last night on the bed in front of the window, he tried to convince himself it had just been a dream. In the light of day, he knew that it hadn’t been.
He’d carried her over the threshold early yesterday afternoon and started making love to her before they could get their luggage inside the door and lock it. Then he’d taken them both to heights he’d never fathomed. They’d slept, tangled limbs entwined, her heart beating against his. His world was bliss.
He’d woken to her restless thrashing, watched her as she shifted on the sheets and positioned herself feet forward facing the window. Dropping her knees wide, she thrashed her head back and forth while she begged invisible captors, not to display her in such a wicked way. Clearly, she was setting this scene herself, for no one was forcing her to do anything.
Rand had looked down into her anguished face and saw that she was still asleep, deep in the throes of some captive slave fantasy. Her tight dark nipples, her glistening slash, and her heaving chest, told him she was enjoying being the center of attention in a sexual fantasy far removed from what she would allow in real life. He’d jumped in to play the role of her captor and tormentor. And after bringing her to a keening orgasm that he was pretty sure she slept through, he deposited copious amounts of sperm onto her belly before collapsing back to the bed.
Flash Drive Page 7
