Just guide her.
I run my fingers over a few strands of her hair. “The fountains are beautiful. And you looked even prettier framed by them.” There’s some romance for her, safely couched as a compliment. We walk down the steps. “Now tell me about the place you’ve picked for tonight.”
“I think you’re going to love it. I asked Piper for advice—she’s an elite wedding planner, and she knows everything about the city. She said there’s a great underground lounge with hipster drinks and red curtains and purple couches that looks like something you’d find in a New Orleans speakeasy, and there’s an up-and-coming singer named Delilah who puts the torch in torch singer. She’ll be performing tonight.”
“What does she sing?”
“Billie. Linda. Norah. You’ll love her.”
I hum my enthusiasm. “Linda. Damn, woman. Now you’re taking me to O Town.”
She laughs. “I had a feeling you might like Linda Ronstadt.”
“And I’m man enough to admit it to anyone.” We reach the crosswalk and stop.
She shoots me a saucy look, her eyes narrowing. “Do it. Proclaim your love for Linda.”
I scoff. “Please. That’s easy.” I hold my hands out wide, turning 180 degrees and shouting loud and proud, “Linda Ronstadt is a goddess.”
A guy across the block with a hoodie and a knit cap gives a rocker salute. “Right back at you, man.”
An older woman laden with a canvas bag bursting with books pats my elbow. “Bless your heart. A young man with taste is a rare breed these days.”
“Thank you,” I say with a smile.
“He does have great taste,” Sloane adds. “He’s a Sinatra man too.”
The woman raises her salt-and-pepper eyebrows. “If he’s good in bed and treats you right, then you should keep him.”
The lady turns the corner, leaving her wisdom wafting in the evening breeze.
Sloane whips her gaze to me, a hint of a smile crossing her lips. I’m not entirely sure where to go after that last comment, so I sidestep it. “Looks like I just launched an impromptu Linda Ronstadt fan club.”
Sloane follows my lead. “And you have so many charter members already. By the way, count me in. ‘I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You’ is a favorite tune of mine.”
The reference isn’t lost on me. We kissed to that song seven years ago. Kissed to the whole damn number. I hum a few words as we walk.
She squeezes my arm. “If you do that . . .”
“If I do that, what?”
“I’m going to jump you.”
Laughing, I add a few more lines, a little louder, a little deeper this time. She runs her hand down my arm. “It’s your fault I’m aroused.”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “I fully take the blame.”
“Hey!” She stops walking and grabs my arms. “You should record an album.”
I laugh it off. “Please.”
“No, you should. Do it for fun. It’s an adventure. Put something together. And then everyone can swoon the way I do.”
“You want to share me?” I tease.
“That’s the only part of you I want to share. But look at it this way—you could help couples everywhere. Your voice is total sex.”
And as I hum a few more lines to her, she’s like a cat, rubbing against me.
When we reach the club, she tugs me close and whispers, “You were warned.”
We make our way down a wooden staircase, below ground level, and find a velvet couch. Sloane slides in next to me and is all hands on my legs and fingers in my hair for the next hour. It’s distracting and heady as she whispers sweet nothings in my ear. As she tells me she wants me. As she tells me how good I am to her.
I’m buzzed, I’m drunk, I’m wildly aroused.
With Sloane’s busy fingers and constant touches, I barely hear a word Delilah sings.
Nor do I care.
I’m nothing but an electrical line, charged and ready.
I’m not sure who’s seducing who. But from the way she kisses my neck and slides her hand along my pants, I think she’s leading me up the mountain tonight. I have the idea, too, that the more she leads, the harder I’ll fall.
The more I’ll be the one wanting the romance.
The more I’ll be the one singing the love songs about the one who got away.
Singing it and meaning it.
That’s the problem.
My jaw tightens as reality inches back in, undeniable.
I’m falling for her.
Yet again.
By the time the singer finishes “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry,” I desperately need to go. I need to reframe this night, put the focus back on sex and seduction.
If I stay in this club, with these songs and her sweetness, I’ll be a sad, pathetic jerk begging her to stay with me for another week, then another.
That’s not our deal.
I call a Lyft, and the whole ride downtown, I take control, whispering to Sloane all the things I want to do to her when we get inside. I tell her how I want to touch her, taste her, strip her down to nothing. By the time we make it to my apartment, she looks like she’s hovering on the edge.
I intend to send her all the way to the other side.
That’s what I need right now.
To recalibrate us back to pleasure and pleasure only.
36
She’s all fire and heat.
The second we’re inside my place, she pushes me to the door, slamming me against it.
I growl at her roughness, loving it.
She growls back, rubbing up against me, grinding her pelvis to mine.
The first night we were together, I slowed her down. But this time, I let her have her way. There’s no need to tap the brakes tonight, because I understand now what she’s driving toward.
This is how she blots out her overactive brain. She quiets the noise with intensity. She seeks a fevered kind of contact because it leaves room for only that in her head.
Pleasing her isn’t about possessing a magical penis or a special-powered tongue. It’s as simple as listening to the woman’s cues. Judging from the way her hands hurriedly roam up and down my arms, touching, seeking, squeezing, she might need to be in charge for a while. I’m man enough to let her lead when she needs to.
She tugs at my shirt, yanking it from my pants. “You. I want you,” she gasps. “It’s so good with you. Like it’s never been with anyone else.”
Best. Words. Ever.
“Same for me,” I mutter as the heat intensifies, sizzling over my skin.
But soon, with her mind-bending kisses, her greedy touches, my restraint unravels. I thread my hand into her hair and yank it back, tugging hard. Bringing my mouth down on her neck, I suck and I bite. She moans and writhes against me, grabbing at the buttons on my shirt, trying desperately to undo them.
“Just rip it off,” I tell her.
With wide eyes, she stares at me, dirty delight in them. “Really?”
I nod savagely. “You know you want to.”
“I do.” She pulls, tearing the buttons down.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
They clatter to the floor. Sensual glee spreads in her brown irises as she inhales sharply. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” she says.
That’s the operative word. Want.
I tug her hair, travel up her neck, and bite her earlobe. “I think the issue isn’t in your head, sweetheart.”
She breathes out hard. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe you haven’t wanted anyone enough to come. Maybe you haven’t felt enough of this kind of red-hot desire to let go the way you need to.”
She slides her palm between us, grappling at my erection. “I want you that much, Malone. I want to let go with you.”
“Tell me what you want tonight. Tell me what you’re desperate to do.”
She raises her hands, grabs my face, and holds me roughly. “I want to ride your face.”
A groan tea
rs through me, pure lust rushing to every single molecule. “Then get naked and get on me.”
In the bedroom, our clothes come off in a mad flurry, and we’re on the bed, crawling toward the headboard, tangled up in each other. I slide underneath her, grabbing her hips. “Fuck my face, Sloane. Do it however you want. Fast, slow, rough, hard.”
She lowers herself to me, and I bring her down to my mouth. I groan against her pussy, so wet, so ready, so damn eager.
She cries out at that first touch, at the very moment we make contact. I lick a line up her center, flick my tongue against her hard clit, and suck her like I’m kissing her fiercely. She shudders and lets out a sound so carnal, so feral that it gets me even harder, and it makes her even wetter. She falls forward, grabbing at the headboard.
For a moment, I break contact, whispering roughly, “Show me how much you want me, Sloane. Fuck my face that way.”
That’s all she needs. The freedom to be who she is, and she’s off, rocking and riding and finding the angle, the speed, the pace that she needs. The taste of her is intoxicating, the scent divine. Her sounds are a filthy symphony, making my dick ache.
The amount of lust in my body is more than one man can sustain. With one hand on her hip, I slide the other down to grip my cock, fisting it. The relief is temporary, but so damn necessary.
I stroke and jerk as she rocks and swivels, her noises intensifying, her groans growing, and her moves turning ever more frantic. She glances behind her and gasps.
Oh God.
That’s so . . .
You.
Hot.
Malone.
Do it.
Get yourself off.
I grip my cock as she goes crazy on my face. She’s off like a shot, as if discovering my lust has flipped the switch.
Her taste floods my tongue; her sounds echo through the room. I let go of my grip on my shaft, clutching her hips so she doesn’t fall as she shakes and shudders against me. But when she comes down from her high, she’s a cheetah, scrambling. She’s between my legs in a flash.
Everything is a blur.
Her mouth on me.
Sucking.
Licking.
Cupping me.
Her hair spilling all over my legs. Her noises. My own groans and moans. She’s gripping, licking, sucking, and then my orgasm obliterates my mind, racing down my body till I’m coming hard in her mouth, grabbing her hair, grunting and growling. “Yes. Fuck. Yes.”
Shudders wrack my body, and I come for days.
After, she curls up against me. “Do you know what did it for me?”
I know. But she wants to say it, so I ask, “What did it for you?”
“Seeing you touch yourself,” she answers, teasing her fingers along my belly.
“Yeah?”
She nods. “That’s one of the best things I’m learning from these lessons.”
It’s a warm glow, the knowledge that this experience has become more enlightening than either one of us expected. We’re both discovering things about each other. We’re experiencing more than the fast track to coming. “What are you learning exactly?”
Absently, she drags her fingers up and down my pecs. “I didn’t know this when we started. But now, I think what I was missing all along was to want somebody this much. To want someone the way I want you. That’s my biggest turn-on. That’s what keeps me in the zone.”
I’m back in the zone already. “That’s the hottest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
She grins. “And then to look down and see you getting yourself off, to know you were so turned on that you simply had to touch yourself—that sent me soaring. That’s what turns me on more than anything.”
I slide a hand through her hair, my skin buzzing. “Sloane, there is nothing sexier than you chasing your pleasure.” There’s something I want to say. Something I’m realizing. “You know, you’re not the only one learning here.”
“Is that so?”
“These last few nights—they don’t feel like lessons. Or not like I’m giving you lessons. It feels like we’re both listening to each other. Paying attention to each other.”
“It does feel that way. Like I’m figuring out how you like it too.”
I stage-cough. “I like it every way with you.”
“But I like knowing that. And I like how wild you get when you’re near the end. You’re loud and rough, and I love getting you there.”
“And I’ve learned that you have a tiger in you.”
She laughs, then affects a roar. “Maybe I do.”
I run my hand down her belly. “Maybe you just needed someone to let the tiger come out and play.”
She pretends to purr. “Do tigers purr?”
I shake my head. “No. The only big cat that can purr is the cheetah. Smaller cats purr, like bobcats, cougars, and house cats.”
“Now this does feel like a lesson,” she says, deadpan. “A science lesson.”
I laugh and tickle her sides. “You asked, woman.”
“Stop, stop,” she cries out.
I relent, and she sighs happily then lifts her eyebrows and makes a rumbling sound, imitating a very content pussycat.
“Fine,” I say. “The female of the genus Vixenus Sloane can also purr.” I flip her to her back and kiss her stomach. “But only when fucked properly by the one man who knows how to turn her into a complete pussycat.”
Her purr grows louder. “You do make me purr.”
“That’s the goal, woman. That’s always the goal.”
She straightens, raising herself higher, meeting my eyes intently. She swallows, as if she’s prepping to say something hard. “Maybe that’s the magic touch. Maybe you’re the magic.”
That warm glow? It winds through me, touching down in every corner, filling me with something bigger, something stronger, more intense.
Perhaps it’s the orgasm affecting my brain.
Maybe great sex can loosen lips.
Though there’s so much more going on between us than great sex. And part of me—a big part of me—doesn’t want to play the parallel universe game any longer.
Whether she wants romance or not, I need to say this. Let it out for the sake of my own heart, which has grown two sizes too big with her.
I kiss her gently and speak the full and terrifying truth. “No. We’re the magic. Together.”
Her eyes lock with mine, her brown gaze big and vulnerable. I wait, wondering, hoping she feels that way. “I believe that, Malone.”
That’s my greatest wish and my greatest worry. That we are too right for each other. Too good together. I feel too much. I want too much. I need her too much.
And what do I do with all these emotions?
How can we possibly find a way through?
Unless . . .
What if I’ve been wrong about not being able to have her? What if there’s a way to navigate around the roadblocks, to jump over the hurdles?
What if we can figure it all out?
I don’t know that route to a relationship like I do the one to her pleasure. But I want to find it. I have to find it.
She snuggles against me, yawning, and starts to drift off in my arms. First, though, she asks in a sleepy, sexy voice, “When are you going to make love to me?”
I close my eyes, squeezing them shut, knowing that’s what it will be. And I whisper against her neck, “The next time we’re together.”
The trouble is, I don’t know how I’ll ever come back from that.
Or if I want to. I want to move forward and I need to find a way to do that because I don’t want to give her up a second time.
37
It’s a pancakes kind of morning.
“When I ran into you the other week, you offered me pancakes, and now I’m taking you up on it,” Sloane declares when we get out of the shower.
“It’s about time.”
“But I’m going to need a sweatshirt or something, so I don’t look like I’m doing a total walk of shame.
”
My eyes take a quick tour of her body, enjoying the post-shower look. “Maybe next time, you should bring a change of clothes. More than just panties,” I tell her as she grabs a pair of white undies from her purse and tugs them on, then slips on her dress.
Her eyes light up as if she likes the idea. “Maybe next time I will.”
Next time, next time, next time.
All I want are more times with her.
She pulls on a gray sweatshirt from my alma mater, and we head to the diner around the corner, where I spot my buddy Herb and his fiancée, Olivia.
She waves to me from their booth and he holds up a hand to say hi.
“We just ordered. Want to join us”?” Olivia asks.
Sloane shrugs happily. “Sounds good.” She extends a hand, and I quickly make introductions.
“Herb’s a vet too. He’s the king of the Upper East Side.”
Herb squares his shoulders. “That is true. I had a new sign made up for my practice that says just that.”
Olivia turns to Sloane. “How is your rescue doing? I saw the video of Malone singing to the cat and followed it to your page. Looks like you’re doing great things.”
Sloane flashes a smile. “We are. At least I think so. We’ve adopted out fourteen animals in the last two weeks, and my foster network is expanding. Having a reliable office space to run it makes a big difference. I was using a spot in Brooklyn, but the rent went up, so I feel lucky to have a place at all, and being able to easily manage all the animal care is huge. Well, thanks to Malone.”
“And your dad,” I add.
She chuckles. “Yes, but let’s be honest. You’re doing most of the work.”
“True . . .” I admit. Doug’s around a bit more, but the bulk of the work still falls to me.
Olivia jumps in, gesturing to Sloane. “By the way, Malone’s sweatshirt looks nice on you.”
I roll my eyes, ready to defend her attire.
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