“God, Gabe…”
Smug, she bent low and whispered, making sure to breathe on his bare erection as much as possible. “I am not adorable.”
And she took him into her mouth, as far as he would go.
He’d received blow jobs before, of course—damn good ones, pitifully amateurish ones and everything in between. However, nothing had ever felt like this. This was Gabe, and she tasted him like a lover would, like she’d never done before.
Her tongue zigzagged up the underside of his throbbing, aching arousal, tracing the vein there, and he very nearly came right then. She deep-throated him again, the move easier this time with a good layer of saliva to help her mouth slide, and he groaned and fell back on his elbows, his toes curling. She sucked hard all the way back up, the tip of her tongue stroking him from root to head. Pure sexual heat rolled up his spine, and his eyes squeezed shut. God, she could almost be a professional.
Pressing her thumbs against the strangely ticklish points of his hips, she bent to take him in again, her mouth hot and tight around him. His hips bucked against her of their own volition, and she swallowed hard, the accidental suction dragging another groan from his throat. He had to be careful not to thrust. He didn’t want to hurt her.
And then her mouth pulled up again, sucking all the way until he fell free, the cool air almost painful after the heat of her mouth, and her teeth closed gently on his head. His breath caught in his throat as the pressure increased just enough to send a shiver up his spine. Her hands clenched his hips, and she carefully dragged her teeth up to the tip and released him, chuckling as he trembled in her grasp.
“Gabe—”
He cut himself off, though. Nothing on earth would make him protest this treatment. He knew she wouldn’t hurt him. Drive him insane with lust, maybe, but never hurt him.
She lowered her face to his groin and sniffed, drawing the tip of her nose along the crease of his thigh. It tickled and felt absolutely wonderful at the same time. She nosed along his balls, pausing to flick her tongue at the ridiculously sensitive skin there. He flinched, his whole body tightening, and she chuckled, the low vibration doing amazing things to the erection already thrumming in her face.
“How do you always smell good, no matter what you’ve been doing?”
Her voice was lower than usual, almost husky, and he trembled. She sniffed up the line of his arousal and sighed on the tip, sending another tremor up his spine. Her lips brushed him almost as softly as her breath had, and he let out a gasp of air he hadn’t known he was holding. Absolute torture. He wanted more. Wordlessly, she complied.
The heat of her throat replaced the cool air, and he strained against the urge to thrust. She swallowed around him and sucked hard, her fingers digging into his hips as if she sensed his need to move. She pulled away to breathe, then took him to the base again.
Too much.
Rumbling deep in his chest, he sat up and caught her by the upper arms. She pulled away from his erection with a chuckle that throbbed deep in his spine, stripped off her panties and climbed obligingly into his lap. She knelt above him, straddling his thighs, and stared down at him, almost daring him. He should prepare her a little, stretch her before taking her, but he didn’t have that kind of time.
So he settled his hands on her hips, lifted her just so and thrust inside until she cried out and balled her fists in his hair.
“Jack!”
He buried his face in the cleavage pushed up by her bra and lifted her again, letting her drop herself onto him as hard as she wished. She took the hint and rode him fast, her breath sobbing out of her with every buck of her hips. His hands slid around to the smooth, flexing curve of her ass and squeezed, speeding her rhythm.
“Gabe, hurry—”
He wouldn’t last long at this rate, and he didn’t want to come alone. His head falling back from her warm vanilla scent, he shifted his feet wider apart, let go of her with one hand to brace behind him on the bed, and thrust up as hard as she came down on him, twisting with each pass until she cried out and clenched around him.
Orgasm crashed through him like gravity, and he roared up at the ceiling with the force of it. And still she bucked over him, her body jerking, her short fingernails digging into his shoulders, her head thrown back. He thrust until she finally slumped, her forehead dropping to the crook of his neck, her hands releasing him to flop to the bed. She shuddered, her body flexing and releasing, and he slid the hand still on her butt up her back to hold her close.
His bracing arm gave out, and they tumbled back onto the bed, the movement shifting him inside her and bringing groans from them both. Her burning cheek rested against his chest, her breath fanning the sweat there. Slowly, their breathing steadied. Their heartbeats returned to normal. Their bodies cooled.
She shifted her hips more comfortably against his without letting him pull out, and he abruptly realized he’d forgotten to use a condom. Wincing, he wondered if he should risk disturbing the mood by bringing it up. But the thought was cowardly and he shook it off, disgusted with himself for even thinking about keeping something like that from her.
“Gabe?”
“Mm-hm?”
He grinned. She sounded sleepy and satisfied, content to just lie on his chest and drift away. He hoped she wouldn’t freak out because he, too, was content to lie this way forever.
“I…sort of forgot a condom.”
He braced for her reaction, but she only shrugged.
“’S okay. I’m on the pill.” She yawned, then cuddled back against his chest. “And I trust you.”
He blinked, his eyebrows drawing together.
“You’d have told me if you had anything I needed to worry about.”
A grin curved his mouth, and he wrapped his arms around her. She trusted him. She had defended him to her friends, she’d given him the most notable blowjob of his life, and she trusted him.
Maybe he wasn’t wasting his time after all.
The phone rang, and she put aside her book with a slight frown. She couldn’t imagine that her boss would be calling, and the only other person who used her land line was—
Sighing, she climbed out of the porch swing, hurried inside, and picked up the handset.
“Phil, why don’t you ever call my cell?”
A snort. “I don’t want to be responsible for even one more repetition of that stupid song.”
“You simply have no taste.” But she knew he hadn’t called to discuss her choice of ringtone. “What’s on your mind?”
“I think you know.”
“What say you spell it out for me?”
Her long-time friend sighed. “Gabe, do you know what you’re doing?”
Glad her phone was cordless, she wandered over to the couch and perched on the arm. “I thought so until last night.”
“That’s not a good place to be. I mean, what’s really going on?”
“You talked to him, Phil. Surely he laid it out for you. There’s nothing going on.”
A long pause. “Is he still there?”
“He’s outside mowing the lawn.” Despite the serious nature of the call, she found herself grinning smugly. “The Old Biddy Patrol is out in full force. It’s a riot.”
“I can imagine.” A tinge of amusement colored his voice for a moment. “And yes, I did talk to him, but I want to hear your side of it.”
She crossed an arm under her breasts. “There are no sides. He shows up for a weekend every now and then, and we have sex. He doesn’t even call otherwise, except to ask if I’m free on a given weekend. How is there another side to that?”
“Put that way, I guess it’s easy not to see it like I do.”
Frowning, she shifted. “And how do you see it?”
He huffed a grunt. “I’m not sure now. I just…where are you planning to go with this? Is there any possible good outcome here?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Gabe, you can’t run around with him and introduce him to your friends w
ithout it becoming a ‘thing’. When does sex stop being sex and start becoming a relationship? What happens when—”
She cut him off. “There is no relationship here. He doesn’t call and leave me cutesy messages. I don’t call him for advice on my underwear. We haven’t met each others’ families. In fact, I’m not even sure he has one. I don’t know any of his friends, and he just now met you two. How could this be misconstrued as a relationship?”
“Damn it, I just said that how you put it, I can see where you’re coming from. I’m trying to get you to see where I’m coming from.”
“And where is that?”
His voice softened. “I’ve been your friend practically since you moved here, but I’m talking to you as a big brother now. Just think what happens if you start liking him. If you start loving him. And say you forget who he is and introduce him to, say, your boss, and your boss’s wife does what Karen did last night?”
She winced, her eyes squeezing shut.
“Would you pull out the big words like you did on Bitchzilla? Would you give up everything to be with him knowing that, at any time, you might bump into someone else who’s paid to have sex with him?”
She felt sick. The pleasant, quiet morning vanished like a fart in the wind, and she wanted to climb back into bed and pretend that none of this had happened.
“What do you suggest I do?” Even her voice sounded wrong—tight and croaking.
“Get out before it’s too late.”
Swallowing hard, she whispered, “What if it’s already too late?”
“Don’t tell me—”
“No. Not yet.” She shook her head, eyes still tightly shut. “But I like him. He makes me happy.”
“Are you happy right now?”
“I was before you called.”
He coughed a laugh, pitiful though it sounded. “Look, I can’t tell you how to live your life. I won’t stop talking to you because you’re dating a male prostitute—”
“I’m not dating him—”
“—but I will tell you this: this is not an isolated incident. Unless you keep him locked up in your house, you will run into evidence of who he wa—who he is, and you will have to sit across the table from someone he’s screwed and pretend not to hate it.”
Forcing a chuckle that felt about as natural as a mouse birthing a whale, she tossed her hair and looked out the window at Jack’s shirtless, passing figure. Dirty and sweat-streaked, he still looked like he’d stepped out of a magazine. She smiled softly.
“Speaking of Bitchzilla, did Doug really break up with her?”
“See, you’re changing the subject here, but I’m gonna let you do it because I think you hear what I’m saying.”
“Yeah, yeah. Get on with it.”
He snorted. “Well, I’d call it more of a trial separation. She must be damn good in bed, is all I can say, because he swears she just had a little too much to drink and didn’t know what she was saying.”
“Did she have anything to drink?”
“An amaretto sours. One.”
She gagged. “God, why is he dating her again?”
“He’s not, currently, but he’s already talked to her today to listen to her explanations and apologies, so I predict that it’s only a matter of time.”
“I guess I can’t really point fingers there. After all, I refuse to give up my gigolo.”
He choked, and she found her first real laugh of the conversation.
“Damn. There is something so wrong with you.”
“Get off the phone, already, O Sayer of Doom.”
“Will you at least think about it?”
Her laughter passed at his serious tone. “I will.”
“That’s all I can ask. Oh, and if it makes a difference…”
She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“He seems like a nice enough guy. You know, for a man-whore.”
Snorting, though she felt like the world had tilted the other direction, she hung up on him.
She didn’t jump on him at the door, which he half-expected. Nor did she seem to hear him come in.
“Gabe?”
“In here.”
Compared to the brilliant afternoon sunlight outside, the house’s gloom made it difficult to see more than her vague outline in the kitchen. Why were the lights off?
“What are you doing?’
“Baking.”
He waited for more, but she seemed disinclined to elaborate. The smile he’d worn through the door faded, and he rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. They didn’t want to adjust after two hours of squinting in the sun, and something told him that seeing her would probably help him determine her mood.
Or maybe not. He’d never heard her voice with such a profound lack of inflection.
“Do you want some company?”
“Okay.”
Using the T-shirt in his hand to wipe off some of the sweat on his face and down his back, he walked across the living and dining rooms, stopping on the dining side of the breakfast bar. She didn’t look up from her cookie dough or the stars and flowers she’d already cut. Sugar cookies, then.
“Is something wrong?”
A shrug.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
A noncommittal noise in her throat.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No.”
One less thing. He leaned on the bar and frowned at her hands, wondering what was so interesting about them that she refused to look up from them.
“Can I help?”
A noncommittal noise and a shrug. This was going nowhere.
“Gabe? Do you want me to leave you alone while you bake?”
She didn’t answer, so he reached out, tucked a finger under her chin and lifted. Her eyes had darkened almost to black and seemed huge in her pale face. He felt himself pale as well.
“Oh, God. Did you get bad news? Is Mike okay?”
“She’s fine.”
“But you did get bad news?”
She shook her head—not in the negative, but to dislodge her chin. “I’m fine.”
Worried, he stood fully. She didn’t look fine. She looked like a holocaust survivor. But she obviously had nothing to say and, short of interrogating her more fully, he had no way of finding out what had happened to bring his laughing, crookedly grinning Gabe down to this monosyllabic shadow of herself.
As far as he knew, she’d been fine when he went out to mow. He’d even seen her sitting in the porch swing reading, though he lost track of her when she came inside. Had someone called? That bitch Karen from last night, maybe? His eyes narrowed.
“Did someone give you a hard time about last night?”
Her jaw clenched as she stared down at her cookies. “You should grab a shower before supper. These won’t take more than an hour, and I can thaw out some steaks for the grill, if you like.”
He stared at her for a long moment before doing as she suggested. It was disturbing to see her so…leached. It just about broke his heart.
The shower left him feeling cleaner, but no less worried. She said he hadn’t done anything, but would she tell him if he had? Maybe she no longer wanted anything to do with him after his being outed last night. Maybe last night’s little oral present had been more of a goodbye present.
Nearly scowling, he dug through his duffle bag for a clean pair of underwear. Maybe he should just leave and save her the trouble of having to come up with a way to ask nicely. His scowl softened. He couldn’t do that. He didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone with so much on her mind.
But what…?
He descended the staircase into the homey smell of baking sugar. She stood behind her breakfast bar cutting and scooping sugar cookies, flour smudging one cheek, her hair pulled up into a clumsy, short ponytail, and he knew he couldn’t leave her. Maybe he should, like her friend Phil said, but he couldn’t.
“Need an extra hand?”
She shrugged, arranging raw cookies on the sh
eet.
“Maybe some music?” He’d noticed that lack earlier, but he hadn’t really thought about it until now. “I can hook up your iPod for you.” And maybe swing her into another impromptu kitchen dance to bring her out of her funk.
“No, thank you.”
There went that.
“Do you mind if I watch?”
She shook her head and turned to slide the full cookie sheet into the oven. Taking a deep breath, he walked around the breakfast bar and up behind her. When she stood, he touched her arm. She turned around, and he gathered her close in his arms, half afraid she’d pull away.
Neither stiff nor yielding, she leaned her cheek against his chest. Her hands settled on his lower back, not quite hugging back. He felt her eyelashes brush his bare chest each time she blinked.
Silence except for the hush of gas and the slow tick of the oven.
He leaned his cheek on her hair, smelling sugar and warmth and vanilla. “Gabe, is there anything I can do for you?”
She shook her head, her eyelashes and a loose curl tickling his chest.
“Okay.” Releasing her, he bent and placed a light kiss on her forehead. “If you need me, I’ll be watching zombie movies in the other room.”
She nodded, not looking up into his eyes but not really avoiding them, either. An idea struck him, and he didn’t hesitate to follow his instincts.
“Actually, I forgot my T-shirt outside. Will you be all right if I go out and look for it?”
“Sure.”
He turned and ran upstairs for his jeans and the sweaty T-shirt he’d tossed aside, then headed outside. He paused only once—to grab his cell phone off the end table.
For once, Mike had the house to herself. Darren had taken the girls to the movies, to the park and then out for ice cream, giving her several hours to relax and pamper herself. She’d taken a leisurely bubble bath, painted her finger- and toenails, and now lounged on the back deck in her bathing suit, soaking up the late afternoon rays.
Her cell phone rang. Of course.
“Hello?”
“Mike, I know you said you wouldn’t help me, but I think I might need an intervention.”
My Gigolo: The Care and Feeding of a Male Prostitute Page 15
