by Amy Andrews
But she’d already put her life on hold for one man. She wasn’t going to do it for another, no matter how elastic his tongue was. This was good, and she was going to ride it while it lasted, but she wasn’t going to mistake it for anything more than what it was. Two friends enjoying each other’s company.
…
Mack’s breath caught a little. She looked so beautiful with the light spilling down over her sleek hair, capturing the gold highlights. His fingers itched to lean over and release it from its rigid confines so it blazed under the lights.
Here in the restaurant, Josie’s evolution shone like a beacon as she talked about the list in her sexy dress, and his breath caught again when he thought about how little time they had left together.
“You know… You don’t have to go to London, right? You’ve already done the hard part emancipating yourself from a life you didn’t want. You don’t have to go to the other side of the world to prove it, and there are those kinds of agencies in Australia.” He shrugged giving her hand a squeeze. “You could…stay.”
It wasn’t until Josie withdrew her hand that Mack fully comprehended what he’d said. Fuck. Where the hell had that come from?
Jesus—open mouth, insert foot.
Fool. Idiot. Dufus.
Sal’s words from this afternoon came back to haunt him. Can you honestly sit there and tell me you’re not going to want to keep her at the end of all this?
Dear God, was she right? Was Josie his latest bird with a broken wing?
“I have to do this, Mack.” She was frowning, and her voice was so quiet he had to strain to hear her. “It’s all right for you and Sal. You’ve both traveled overseas extensively. You took your gap year and backpacked around Europe. I’ve never done anything like that. I’ve never been out of the country. I went to uni, met Curtis my second year, and moved to the middle of nowhere with him the year after that. I want to have that part of my life I gave up when I settled for safe and sensible. I want to live a little. I need it.”
He knew that. Christ. She deserved it. It would be wrong to take that away from her because he couldn’t bear to let her go.
“Of course,” he said and forced a smile. What the hell had he been thinking when he engaged his mouth? “And”—he raised his glass—“you shall have it.”
She smiled at him, the frown ironing out, and he relaxed a little. Crisis averted. But his heart still skipped a beat at the near miss.
The waiter arrived and placed their desserts in front of them. He looked down at his, a mouth-watering, sticky date pudding, decorated with an elaborate spray of hard golden toffee.
Butterscotch assailed his senses, but suddenly, all he could think about was what the fuck was he doing here when he had so little time left with her?
Josie was going to go out into the big world, and he was going to have to watch her go.
The clock was ticking.
He looked up from his dessert. “Are you really not wearing any underwear?”
Her smiled widened and a sparkle crept into her feline eyes. “Not a scrap.”
Mack’s belly clenched. “Check please,” he called.
Chapter Sixteen
A couple of nights later, Mack checked the mysterious text again as he strode into the bar of an inner city motel famed for its reputation of hiring rooms by the hour. It was one of those faded old beauties that had once been something posh, but was now old and tired around the edges, while still managing to maintain a kitschy, retro charm.
Meet me at the Trafalgar Bar at 7. I’ll be in a long black coat. Call me Tatiana.
He guessed it was time for number nine: role play. He’d had a hard-on for the last two hours thinking about, which had been a welcome relief from the obsessive mental flagellation over his near screw up at the restaurant the other night.
He needed to make up for that temporary insanity. Big time.
Piano notes filled the room where heavy brocade drapes, dark leather tub chairs, and the clink of billiard balls all formed part of the purposefully tacky ambience. He looked around the U-shaped bar made from a heavy burnished wood.
Guys in suits populated the stools, drinking out of heavy glass tumblers, and in the far corner, perched elegantly in black, sat Josie.
Tatiana.
Her hair was piled high on her head in some kind of sexy up-do, tendrils escaping down her nape and disappearing behind a stiff black collar that was pulled up high against her neck. She lifted a martini glass to her glossy red lips, took a sip, then removed the olive and swirled it in the drink before sucking it into her mouth, her cheeks hollowing.
Mack was aware of every guy at the bar watching her, and he knew, without a doubt, every one of them had a hard on as big as his. He was torn between sympathy for them, triumph that she would be going home with him, and punching every single one of them in the nuts for their lecherous thoughts.
One of them, egged on by his fellow drinker, got up and secured the buttons of his jacket, his intent clear. He looked at least fifty. His hair was thinning, he could do with losing a few pounds, and he could definitely do with losing the wedding ring before he even considered hitting on anyone.
Mack sprang into action. No way was old, married, bald dude even getting within breathing distance of her.
He strode briskly past the letch and was at her side in seconds. “Jos—“ He stopped and corrected his slip. “Tatiana.”
He felt stupid saying it, but he was pretty damn sure she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing underneath that coat, and he’d do anything to take what she had to offer.
She looked up at him, smiled, and said, “Da,” with her glossy lips.
Russian? He smiled back. Her accent was sexy as hell and went straight to his dick. Suddenly, he didn’t feel so awkward about the situation. Every guy here tonight would kill to be in his shoes, and his woman wanted to have a little fun playing a harmless game.
So be it.
His woman. He glanced at Josie—at Tatiana—and liked the way it sounded. At least for tonight, maybe he could indulge the fantasy, too.
“May I sit?”
She drained the remainder of her drink and looked him up and down. “That depends. You buy me another martini?”
Hell, he’d buy her ten for a glimpse of what she didn’t have on under that coat. He turned to the bartender, noticing the bald guy resume his seat in the large mirror behind the bar. “Two martinis, please.”
She gestured to the stool. “Sit.”
The bartender prepared and poured the drinks in front of him, smiling at Josie as he handed them over, but he was smart enough not to linger.
“So, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a bar like this?” Mack asked.
He watched as her lips kissed the glass, and she took a swallow. “Waiting for good man to buy me drink.”
Her accent was perfect, the vowels guttural, the inflections sparse, and he wondered just how many more accents she could pull off. There was nothing sexier than a foreign woman.
Particularly, when she was wearing nothing but a long black coat.
And even better, Josie had unwittingly given him an opening she hadn’t before. They were playing bar pick up. There would be banter, give and take, conversation.
Getting to know you conversation. Maybe he could use that to his advantage.
“Do I fit the bill?” he asked.
She eyed him critically, her gaze roving over him dispassionately as if he were some kind of object she was buying.
It should have been insulting.
It wasn’t.
“You are strong,” she said and then ran a blood red fingernail, long and glossy, down his bicep, leaving a trail of goose bumps in her wake. “You are tall. Have broad shoulders.” She glanced at his face. “You have facial hair. I like man with whiskers. I like the way it scrape against my skin. What you do?”
He briefly wondered if he should make something up as well, but figured she would have told him if she’d wanted him to be s
omeone else, too. This was, after all, her fantasy, and she was fully in charge.
And hell if that wasn’t also a turn on.
“I’m a vet.”
“Ah. Man good with animals is”—she trailed her red nails down his bare forearm to his fingers—“good with his hands. Very gentle.”
“I’m very gentle with my hands. But, surely, you have known the love of a good man before?”
A cloud darkened her face, and this time Mack couldn’t tell if it was real or she was acting. “Da,” she said, her fingers slipping from his hand.
“But he couldn’t…satisfy you?”
Josie looked at him as if trying to decide how much control she should wrest over the situation. And then, suddenly, Tatiana came back.
“He was good man. I loved him in beginning. But he had problems…issues.” She shrugged. “It was…good. Fine.”
“But not great,” he persisted.
Her amber eyes glittered her disapproval at him. “No. Not great.”
“What happened?”
“He deserved better than me.”
He slid his hand on top of hers at the simple answer that was complicated as hell. “No. You deserved better.”
She smiled then, the kind of sad smile that he saw too often on Sal’s face, and in it, he could see a mix of Tatiana and Josie. “We both deserved better.”
He smiled back at her, and for long seconds, they sat there just looking at each other, lost in the moment. Then she pulled her hand away and placed it on the stem of her glass, giving it a twirl as she plucked the olive out and sucked it into her mouth. This time, he was up close when her cheeks hollowed, and he could actually hear the accompanying wet phfttt, which went straight to his groin.
“So…” she said as she chewed and swallowed the olive. “I have key to room. You look strong and sexy. Can you show girl a great time?”
Mack’s pulse ratcheted up a notch at the direct proposition, his hand itching to tear the coat off her. He drained his drink in three swallows. “I do believe I can.”
Josie/Tatiana grinned. “Good. Let’s go.”
She slid off the bar stool, her entire body pressed against the side of his, and it was all he could do to stop himself from grinding himself into her right here, right now.
“You pay check. Tip bar man.”
Mack smiled as he pulled out his wallet and threw fifty dollars on the bar. “Think that’ll do it,” he murmured.
She looked down at the yellow note. “Have you got more?”
Mack nodded, bemused. “Am I going to need it?”
“For fifty dollars, I give you blow job. For one hundred, I swallow.”
Then she stepped around him and headed for the lift, her hips swinging, her feet encased in those bright red fuck-me heels from the alley.
…
They stood opposite each other in the lift, Josie against one wall, Mack against the other. Their eyes locked. They didn’t talk, just stared. Her cat eyes were cool and a little mysterious with heavy kohl and a fringe of long, black, completely false, completely sexy, lashes.
A small smile played on her wet mouth, and he figured, without a shadow of a doubt, she knew exactly what he was thinking.
About those red lips closing over his dick, sucking him hard, taking him deep.
Her gaze dropped to the bulge in his underwear that rivaled King Kong. She glanced back at him, that perceptive little smile firmly in place, and lust pounded heavy through his veins, surging to his groin.
It took all his willpower not to hit the emergency stop button and do her up against the wall. Teach her not to tease a man so perilously on the edge.
Thankfully, the lift delivered them quickly to the twelfth floor. Tatiana led the way, and Mack was more than happy to follow the swing of her hips and fantasize about how, exactly, she was going to shrug out of her coat.
And whether she’d keep those heels on or not.
She stopped at 1219, pulled the key from her pocket, and swiped it through the strip on the door.
It whirred and clicked, and she pushed it open.
He followed her inside. She didn’t turn on the light. Neither did he. She strode past the very large bed over to the huge, plate-glass, floor to ceiling windows, and he followed her there, leaving about ten feet between them.
The curtains had been pulled back, and there was sufficient ambient light from the buildings surrounding them to see all he needed to see. She stood still, her back to him, staring out into the night.
“These windows,” she said, her voice still heavily accented, “they have the tint.”
Mack, who was paying more attention to her reflection in the glass rather than its construction, looked beyond the shimmering woman in black to the actual window itself.
“So, they do,” he said.
“That means we can see out, but the peoples”—she pointed at the other high rises around them all lit up like Christmas trees—“can’t see in.”
He watched her reflection as she undid the belt at her waist. The coat gaped open slightly at the front and lost its hourglass shape from the back. In one sexy move, she shrugged her shoulders and the coat slid, falling to the ground and pooling around her red stilettos. She kicked it quickly out of the way.
The sight before him punched him hard in the gut.
“Holy fuck,” he whispered.
She wasn’t naked. She was decked out in black lingerie. A corset, a thong, lace-topped stockings, and a black suspender belt.
Better than naked.
From the back, he could just make out the bones in the corset, but it was the white globes of her naked butt cheeks that captured his interest.
Until she shifted, anyway. Suddenly, she was placing her hands up high on the glass, leaning into it with bent elbows, spreading her feet a little as if she was about to undergo a strip search. Her back arched slightly, her hips flexed, and her butt tilted up.
“You like?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at him.
Mack gulped. Hard. “Yes.”
She rotated her arse like she’d been working a pole her whole life. “You want some?”
He expelled a shaky breath, his pulse echoing in his head, blood washing through his ears louder than Niagara Falls. She looked glorious gyrating in front of him while the entire city, blanketed in neon and night, spread out in front of her.
“Yes.”
She dropped her hands and turned to face him, and he liked how the heels put them eye to eye.
But not for long.
She turned sideways. His breath hitched as he caught the magnificent lift of her breasts in profile. Then she sunk to her knees, settled back onto her thighs, the spike of the heels grazing her butt. She turned her head and crooked her finger. “Come.”
Mack was powerless to resist. His dick was huge and hard and completely in control of all higher functions.
He took three paces until he was standing in front of her, looking down, his legs almost buckling when she reached over and slowly, tooth by tooth, pulled down the tab of his zipper.
“Josie.” It was half whisper, half groan, and all involuntary.
Her fingers halted their downward trajectory as she looked up at him with a determined glitter in her cat eyes.
“Tatiana,” she murmured.
The reprimand was soft but insistent and spread fire to his loins.
“Sorry,” he said huskily. “Tatiana.”
Satisfied, she resumed her ministrations, and within seconds, his zip was undone, and she’d reached inside his briefs and pulled his erection out from its confines.
She licked her red lips as she looked at him, her mouth mere inches from his straining flesh. Her heavily-kohled eyes returned to his. “Now, you pay me.”
Mack’s heart pounded at her blunt request, his balls tightened, every muscle in his abdomen contracted in excruciating anticipation. He swallowed against a parched throat. He shouldn’t be getting off so much on this scenario but man… He so freaking wa
s.
He didn’t take his eyes off her as he reached behind and pulled his wallet out. He took out a fifty and offered it to her. Josie sat very still, unmoving except for an imperious eyebrow quirk. Mack’s throat dried a little more, and his hand trembled as he grabbed another fifty and offered them both.
She didn’t smile triumphantly, didn’t give him that knowing little look she usually did when they were about to get down and dirty, didn’t acknowledge in any way the transaction they’d just made. There was no reaction.
She was Tatiana all the way.
After plucking the notes from his hand, she tucked them in her cleavage, leaned forward from her waist, and plunged her red lips over his head and sucked.
Mack bucked and groaned, his wallet falling from his fingers as he thrust them into her hair, gripping her head for purchase as the hot, wet glide of her mouth almost brought him to his knees.
He gasped as she used her tongue to devastating effect, glancing over at the window only to be confronted by their reflection. Her on her knees, pleasuring him. Him, looming over her, cradling her head, lapping it up.
And he was powerless to resist.
So, he shut his eyes, dropped his head back, and surrendered to her mastery.
Chapter Seventeen
Mack was still whistling the next afternoon on his way out to the Curraby farm, a twenty-acre spread on the outskirts of Brisbane. They had a problem with Mable, one of their goats. It was his last call for the day.
He smiled as he looked over at Josie, who he’d asked to come with him under the guise of introducing her to the world’s cutest goat, but really because he hadn’t wanted to wait another two hours to see her. He’d been secretly thrilled when she’d jumped at the offer.
Hopefully, this wouldn’t take too long, and they could get back to the bit where they were naked and horizontal. Not that horizontal was a position she seemed to favor…
In fact, he’d never found himself in such a variety of positions in his entire life.
Yep, Josie seemed pretty hell bent on getting through as much of the book as possible in the time they had left. And who was he to argue? The clock was running out on them, and even though they’d aced the part of the list they’d agreed to, he was more than happy to continue indulging her voracious appetite.
