by Amy Brent
By the time my running shoes hit the pavement, it was almost noon and hot as hell in the valley. I did my five miles through the park and was walking it off toward my apartment when I felt someone watching me. There was a black SUV parked in front of my building. There was a man standing beside it, looking my way. I put a hand over my eyes to block the sun and squinted in his direction.
Was I dreaming?
Was he really there?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Isaac was leaning against the same kind of black SUV that had dropped me off hours before. He had his arms folded over his chest, squinting back at me in the bright sunshine.
I momentarily thought about running in the opposite direction—I can run really fucking fast—but no, that would have only delayed the inevitable. I owed Isaac an explanation for my behavior. He had done nothing wrong. It was all me. I was the neurotic one with the issues I thought a night with him might fix. Well, I was wrong and he deserved to know it. Nothing was fixed. It only proved to me how truly broken I was. Even if he called me a slut and threatened to expose me to the world, I still owed him an explanation.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, glaring at him as I wiped the sweat from my face with the collar of my t-shirt. I must have been a sight in my Spandex running shorts and running shoes and raggedy t-shirt, with my hair in a ponytail and every inch of my skin covered in sweat. “And how did you find me?”
Without saying a word, he reached into his back pocket and brought out the mask I’d worn while we made love. He held it out, letting it dangle from one finger by the rubber band.
“I thought you might need this someday,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe the next time Amanda Ross wants to come out and play.”
I gave him a confused look and shook my head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s almost like you’re Cinderella,” he said with a thoughtful frown. “And I’m Prince Charming.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and took a step back. “Look, Mr. Hanson, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if you don’t—“
He gave me a look that let me know he could see right through my bullshit. It stunned me, froze me in my tracks. He took a step closer, the mask still looming between us.
“I’m talking about the best night of my life spent with the most amazing woman who disappeared before I woke up. It’s almost like Cinderella running from the ball at the stroke of midnight, though I don’t think you were in any danger of turning into a pumpkin.”
“That’s now how the story goes,” I said without thinking. “Cinderella never turned into a pumpkin.”
He seemed to be loving the fact that he had unnerved me. He kept smiling and said, “She did run away without giving the Prince an explanation.”
I held up my hands and patted the air between us, which was growing hotter and thicker by the moment. It wasn’t the sun beating down on us or the heat of the day that was making me sweat. It was the heat between us that was igniting the air. He felt it, too. I could tell.
I mustered up my best frown and tried to be forceful. Ordinarily, I had no problem repelling men with just a glance. But Isaac Hanson was not just any man. Regardless of what my brain was telling me to do, my heart —and the rest of me—was clearly telling me to do something else.
“Look, Mr. Hanson…”
“Call me Isaac,” he said, reaching out to brush a bead of sweat from my cheek. I pulled back from his touch, but his arm was as long as the rest of him. My cheek flushed when his fingertips brushed against it. “And I’ll call you… Amy.”
“Look, Isaac…”
“Why did you leave?” he asked, his voice going soft, suddenly sounding hurt. “Did I do something wrong?”
“You? Oh god, no.” I was muttering, trying to build an argument in my head while he kept dangling the mask in front of my eyes. “It wasn’t you. Honestly. It was me. I don’t… I mean… I never…well…”
He touched my cheek again. His smile returned. “So it was you, Cinderella.”
His touch made my knees wobble. I huffed and swatted his hand away. I stepped back, put my hands on my hips, and mustered every ounce of courage left in my body to push him away.
*“Look, Mister Hanson, if you don’t leave me alone I’m going to scream and a very large doorman is going to come out of that building and kick the shit out of you.”
He pulled his hand back and let the smile fade. “Okay, fine. Just tell me one thing and, if afterward, you still want me to go, I will. I’ll climb back in this SUV and drive away and never mention our night together again. And if we see each other in public I’ll pretend that I don’t even know you. It’ll be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but if that’s what you want… well… that’s how it will be. Fair enough?”
I glared at him for a moment, then blew out the breath I was holding and waved my hands in the air. “Fine. Fair enough.”
He glanced toward the building, then wiped the sweat from his forehead. There was no shade on the sidewalk. The sun was beating down from directly overhead. It was probably eighty-five degrees with no breeze to speak of. We were both sweating like pigs.
He held out his sweaty palms and asked, “Can we at least go inside? I’m melting out here.”
“No,” I said, head shaking, teeth clenched. “Just say what you have to say and go. The air conditioning in the SUV will cool you off on the way back to your little club.”
He wiped his hands on his jeans and narrowed his eyes. “My little club… I see... Okay, fine. Just tell me why you came to my little club. And why did you approach me at the bar?”
I blinked at the question. I was expecting him to ask why I ran away, not why I came to Club D in the first place. It was a question I was still asking myself. I said, “I don’t know…”
“You don’t know why you came or why you approached me?”
I sighed as I licked sweat from my upper lip. “I don’t know.”
“You know, for someone with a genius IQ, you don’t use your words very well.” He grinned. I didn’t. He spread out his hands as if they held the keys to the secrets I would not reveal. “Can I tell you what I think?”
I made the mistake of looking into his eyes. My mouth should have said no, but my head nodded yes.
“I think you came to Club D looking for me.”
I snorted at him. “What? That’s ridiculous. Why would I do that? I don’t even know you.”
“Because of the spark.”
“The spark?”
“When we first met,” he said, his eyebrows arching at the memory. “On the stage, behind the curtain. I stood next you and even though we didn’t know each other and didn’t even touch, there was a spark there. Like the air full of static electricity before a thunder storm. I felt it and you did, too. I could tell.”
“That’s utterly insane,” I said defensively. I looked at him like he was an idiot. “I think you’re still drunk.”
“You’re going to stand there and tell me that you didn’t feel a spark? Okay, fine. Maybe I was the only one who felt it, but I know you were watching me while you were speaking on stage.”
“How could you know that?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “You were too busy talking up that blonde reporter to have a clue what I was doing.”
“I heard every word you said,” he said, the smile returning softly to his face. “And I know you were watching me because I was watching you. Our eyes kept meeting. Because there was a spark. You can deny it all you like, but it was there.”
“That’s insane.” I looked away to avoid his eyes.
“Insane or not, it’s the truth.” He stared down as he rubbed at a spot on the sidewalk with the toe of his boot. “I thought of you all that day. I even asked my partner about you.”
I put my hands on my hips and cocked my head to one side. “And what did your partner tell you?”
“That you were a bona fide genius,” he said with a
shrug. “And an ice queen, and that I’d be wasting my time chasing after you.”
“Well, at least one of you has a brain,” I said.
“Maybe, but that didn’t stop me from Googling you,” he said, wiggling his fingers in the air like he was typing. “Or standing at that bar Friday night drinking alone, thinking about you.”
“Please,” I huffed. “That’s bullshit.”
He held up his right hand. “Swear to God.”
I wrinkled my nose to let him know that I could smell bullshit when it was tossed my way. “You were standing at the bar thinking about me? Give me a break. You were standing at the bar trying to decide which girl to take upstairs. I know because I was watching you.”
His eyebrows arched over a hopeful look in his eyes. “You were watching me?”
“Don’t let it go to your head. I was watching a lot of things.”
“Well, no matter, it’s the truth,” he said. His eyes told me he wasn’t lying. “Didn’t you find it odd that I was hanging out at the bar by myself?”
“Well… maybe…”
“I wasn’t in much of a partying mood, until you approached me.”
“I didn’t approach you,” I said, eyes rolling again. “I just came to the bar to get my glass refilled. I’m pretty sure you hit on me.”
“I think there was mutual hitting on,” he said. “But when you moved in close to me, when our bodies touched, I felt that spark again.” His hand came up again with the mask dangling from one finger. “I had no idea it was you, but I knew there was something more than casual there. Call it intuition or coincidence or sheer dumb luck. I knew that we would not just be a one night stand.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And I knew that I was never going to be lonely again.”
We stared at each other in silence for a moment. The mask dangled, as if Isaac had removed it to reveal his true self. He wasn’t the billionaire playboy of legend who fucked his way through oceans of gorgeous women anymore. Oh, he had done his share of that, but at the end of the day, he was simply a lonely person looking for something more—and someone to share it with.
Just like me.
Now it was my turn to be honest.
I took a deep, deep breath, and told him the truth.
“I came to Club D looking for you,” I said quietly, staring into his eyes as I spoke. “I’ve been lonely, too. I’ve focused on my career for so long I don’t even have a personal life. Other than Mandy I have no friends, no one I’m really close to other than my family. I ordinarily don’t let people—men—get close to me, but when we met… the spark… I felt it, too.”
“You did?” he asked, the corners of his lips twitching.
“Yes, and I Googled you, too.” I giggled. He giggled. Apparently, Googling had become a sort of digital foreplay. “It was pure coincidence that my assistant Mandy worked at Club D as a waitress. She invited me to go and said you’d probably be there.” I let my shoulders go up and down. “I guess I was just curious. I wanted to see what went on at Club D. And I wanted to see if the spark was real or just my imagination.”
“Was it as real for you as it was for me?”
I smiled and gave him a little nod.
“And did you have a good time… with me?” he asked quietly, tilting his head to one side like a little kid asking if I liked the Valentine he’d made for me. A line of sweat was streaming down his left temple. I clenched my hands at my side, forcing myself not to reach out and brush it away.
Or lap it up with my tongue.
Fuck!!!
Sigh.
Okay.
Fine.
“Yes. I had a wonderful time,” I said softly, almost in a whisper. I seemed to have lost the ability to lie, at least to him. I bit my lip as he took a step closer. The air between us began to boil. We were sweating like lovers in a steam bath.
“Good,” he said.
I should not have asked, but I did, “Did you have a good time… with me?”
He smiled again…
That beautiful smile…
Dammit, stop smiling!
He said, “As the old song says, I had the time of my life.”
I was blushing like a schoolgirl.
I could feel the heat in my cheeks…
My breasts…
My… my… my…
I swallowed the big lump in my throat and said, “Well… that’s… good… I mean…”
“And then I woke up alone.” He took a step back and sucked in a quick breath, our tender moment put on hold. “Can I be honest with you now, Amy?”
My head bobbed heavily on my neck in his direction. I wanted him to touch my cheek again. My lips ached for his. “Yes, please.”
“I haven’t been very happy lately, either,” he said, glancing down at the cement between his feet. “I mean, I know, I shouldn’t whine given how blessed I am, the money and all that, but lately, well, I’ve just been…”
“Lonely?” I said the word because it was how I felt most of the time.
He glanced up at me with a sad smile on his lips. “Yeah. Lonely. I’ve been looking for something more… someone more…”
“Someone more what?”
He stepped closer.
I held my ground.
He put his fingertips on my cheek, then cupped my chin in his hand.
“Someone more… like you.”
Without another word, he leaned in and softly pressed his lips to mine. The heat coming from his mouth started melting the ice that had formed around my heart for so many years. My body flushed with his aura. I was warm all over, from head to toe. I felt my nipples plump in the sports bra. Juices started to mix with the sweat between my legs. When he pulled back from the kiss, I could see a happy woman in his eyes.
He held up the mask again and smiled. This time I took it and clutched it between my breasts. Regardless of what the future held for us, that mask would always symbolize the happiest night of my life.
At least so far.
“Well?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm. “Can we go inside now? Before we melt out here in the heat?”
“Yes, let’s go inside,” I said, taking his face between my hands for another kiss. “And maybe take a nice cold shower.”
“Any shower with you would not be cold,” he said.
I smiled and took his hand.
“Come on, let’s find out.”
Chapter 17: Isaac
I barely noticed the large doorman giving us the evil eye as Amy dragged me across the lobby to the elevator that would carry us to her apartment. I barely noticed the inside of elevator, as well, because we were making out like a couple of horny teenagers the moment the doors slid closed.
We weren’t shit-faced now, so Amy was keenly aware of the video camera located in one corner near the ceiling. She knew the doorman had the video monitor at the front desk and was probably watching us like a Peeping Tom. We did some pretty passionate kissing, but kept our hands to ourselves. At least until we were out of the elevator and inside her apartment.
Amy strutted in front of me toward the bathroom, stripping off her sweaty running clothes as she went, playfully tossing them over her shoulder at me. I ignored her Spandex pants, t-shirt, and sweaty sports bra, but when her wet panties hit me in the face, I clutched them to my nose like a bunch of wildflowers and inhaled deeply. The mix of salty sweat and sweet pussy juices made me smile.
“Get those clothes off and get your big cock in here,” she ordered as she opened the glass shower door and stepped inside. The shower was big enough for four people, expensively tiled with jets along the walls and a large rain shower head above. Amy turned on the water and leaned back to let the cool shower wash the sweat from her hair.
I paused to take in every inch of her body, committing it to memory so I could imagine it clearly in my dreams—or when I was doing other things. I licked my lips as I watched her soaping up her big titties and bush, sliding the soap between her pussy
lips and around to her sweet ass. Beautiful. Seductive. Fucking amazing. In my mind she was moving in slow motion. I took my time getting undressed, but didn’t take my eyes off her body. Her nipples were like big raspberry candies on round melons of white. Her clit was swollen beneath the veil of neatly trimmed curls.
My cock was so hard it ached, screaming to be set free. I tugged off my shirt and kicked off my boots and socks, then shimmied out of my jeans and underwear. My cock bounced free like a divining rod on the hunt for fresh water. Or clean pussy.
I stepped into the shower and closed the door, then moved in close to Amy with my hands waxing circles around her soapy tits. My mouth found hers, then our tongues began to duel. She sucked on my tongue like it was a cock, pulling it into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it until I could feel it in my balls.
She took my cock in her soapy hands and started sliding them back and forth along the nine-inch shaft, squeezing the head, making my toes curl with every stroke. Her left hand found my balls, then slid underneath to tease my taint.
