“You have to respect that woman.”
“I do, although she drives me crazy with her pride.”
“Let me ask you these three questions, Ian Asher. First, would you want to date a woman without any pride or self-respect? Second, would you want to date a woman who expected you to foot every bill? And third, would you want to be with a woman who was attracted to you because of your father’s money or attracted to you in spite of your family’s money?”
He gave her a rueful smile. “Yeah, you may have a point there.”
He started to ask Mrs. Scheinberg a question but he heard the familiar sound of a pickup truck door opening and slamming shut.
“That’s her,” Mrs. Scheinberg said.
“I should go. Thank you for the tea.”
“You’re welcome, dear. Thank you for taking good care of Veronica. She’s been a dear friend to me and I have very few dear friends left.”
“I’ll be your dear friend, too, if you like,” Ian said.
“That would make me very happy.” She patted his cheek. “Such a handsome boy. But you need to cut your hair.”
“Tomorrow morning,” he said again. “I promise.”
“Good boy. Now go on. She’ll be happy to see you.”
Ian took his coat out of the hall closet and noticed the Givenchy dress hanging in a clear plastic dry cleaner bag. He looked at it and he looked at Mrs. Scheinberg.
“Can I ask you something strange?” Ian asked.
“Strange questions are my favorite questions. Go on.”
“Are you really, really attached to this dress?” he asked.
“My husband gave it to me, but I haven’t worn it in forty years. Middle-aged spread is a menace to the waistline, young man.”
“Are you planning on giving it to anyone?”
“I haven’t thought about it. Everything I own goes to my two sons in my will. I don’t think either Moshe or Michael will wear it. Not their color. Why do you ask?”
“Because I need to get Flash a Christmas present, something special.”
“Red is her color,” Mrs. Scheinberg said.
Ian smiled.
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
* * *
FIVE MINUTES LATER Ian knocked on Flash’s door.
“Who is it?” she called through the door.
“Joe Biden.”
The door flew wide open and Flash stood there in the doorway.
“You’re not Joe Biden.” She started to shut the door but he put his foot in to stop it.
“I’m a Catholic dude in a suit. Close enough, right?” he asked.
She looked him up and down.
“Close enough.”
“You got my flowers?”
“I did.”
“Did they please you?”
“I was pleased,” she said.
“Did they please you enough that you’ll allow me to have my manly way with you?” he asked.
“I’ll consider it. Come in.” She stepped back and let him in. Before she could even lock the door he pulled her to him and kissed her.
“Ian, stop,” she said, pushing him away. “I’m disgusting.”
“You’re a little foul-mouthed, but hardly disgusting.”
“Let me take a shower before you manhandle me,” she said. “I smell like a blacksmith fucked a coal miner in an oil refinery.”
“Mmm...the sweet, sweet scent of fossil fuels...” He pressed his nose against her neck and inhaled.
“I’m covered in grease and brass polish and you’re going to get it all over your suit.”
“Don’t care. Got lots of suits.”
He pushed her up against the wall and kissed her. She laughed and surrendered to him as he knew she would.
“You look incredibly sexy right now,” he said into her ear as he pulled up the bottom of her T-shirt and touched the bare skin of her stomach. She was wearing ripped jeans, her steel-toed work boots, a tight white T-shirt covered in grease stains. Her arms were dirty, too, and she had a streak of something black across her cheek. Her hair was sweaty and disheveled, and she smelled of sweat and metal polish. “I think I have to fuck you. What do you think?”
“I think I’ve heard worse ideas. But I’ve heard better ideas.”
“What’s a better idea?”
“Fucking me after I take a shower.”
“Terrible idea. This is exactly how I want you,” he said, sliding his hands up her back to find the clasp of her bra. “This is how you looked after work every day.”
“Disgusting? Dirty? Sweaty? Gross?”
“Hot. Hot. Hot. So...” He unhooked her bra. “Fucking.” He lifted her shirt off over her head. “Hot.” He slid her bra down her arms and tossed it onto the floor. His mouth found her mouth and kissed the life out of it as he took her breasts in his hands and massaged them.
He was rock hard already and there was nothing for it but to bury himself inside his unbearably sexy girlfriend as soon as humanly possible. Nothing would stop him from dragging her jeans and panties down her legs, tearing them off, unzipping his pants and fucking her right here against the front door. Nothing. Not an earthquake, not a volcano eruption, not the end of the fucking world.
“Mreow.”
“What was that?” Ian asked.
“My pussy,” Flash said.
Ian looked down at her crotch.
“What’s it trying to tell me?”
“I need to feed my pussy.”
“Is that what we’re calling it now?” he asked. “Because I’m into that.”
“Oh, my God, I have to feed my cat. Excuse me.” She patted his erection. “You excuse me, too.”
She grabbed her T-shirt off the floor and pulled it on. A small striped gray cat sat in the doorway to the little kitchenette.
“Ian, this is Bob Ross. Bob Ross, this is Ian. You two make friends,” Flash said as she went into the kitchen and picked up a bowl from the floor.
“Why is your cat named Bob Ross?”
“He’s my favorite artist obviously.”
“Your favorite artist is the happy little tree guy?”
“And happy clouds,” Flash said. “You can call him Bob if you want. Or Ross. Or Bob Ross. He’s a cat so he answers to none of them.”
“Hello, Bob Ross,” Ian said. “You are cock-blocking me. Do you know that?”
Bob Ross only looked up at him and blinked. It was a disdainful blink.
“Can I pet you or will you bite me?” Ian asked Bob Ross.
“Only one way to find out,” Flash said as she opened a cabinet.
“Is he a biter?”
“No more so than I am.”
“Not comforting,” he said, remembering the dozens of love bites Flash had left all over his body two weeks ago.
Ian held out his hand and Bob Ross sniffed it before sauntering in the kitchen without giving him another look.
“I think he likes me,” Ian said.
Flash only smiled as she put the cat food on the floor in front of Bob Ross.
“That should keep him busy a couple minutes,” she said. “How fast can you fuck me?”
“Pretty fast,” he said. “Is there a need for speed here?”
“He’ll get on the bed with us and make us pet him. Very hard to fuck and pet a cat at the same time. I’ve tried.”
“Can’t we just not...pet him?”
Flash looked at him as if he’d asked if they could skin Bob Ross and eat him for dinner.
“Okay, can’t we shut the door?” he asked.
“He’ll whine and caterwaul until we let him in.”
“Can we fuck in the shower?”
“I hate shower sex. The stall’s too small.”
“All right. A quickie, it is, then,” Ian said, ripping his tie off. “Let’s do this.”
“Goddamn that was sexy.”.
“What was?” he asked. “Tell me so I can do it again.”
“Ripping your tie off like that. That was insanely sexy.” Flas
h put her hands on his chest and made as if she wanted to tear his shirt off him. “I’ve seen you in ties and out of ties but that was the first time I’ve ever seen you tear yours off. Please do it more often.”
“You want me to put it back on and do it again?”
“After,” she said. She glanced back over her shoulder at Bob Ross still eating. “We have to hurry. Bob Ross eats fast.”
“I’m hurrying. I’m hurrying.” Ian grabbed Flash around the waist and hoisted her squirming and screaming self over his shoulder.
“Ian!”
“What? You said we had to hurry.”
“Mrs. Scheinberg is going to think I’m getting murdered up here.”
“She knows I’m here. We’ve met.” Ian strode down the narrow hallway to Flash’s bedroom and threw her down onto her back on the bed. “Even if she calls the cops, I’ll be done by the time they get here.”
“I might not be,” she said. He looked down at her and raised his eyebrow. Two nights ago she’d come before he was even inside her. This woman could orgasm easier than he could most nights.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll probably be done.”
“Thought so.”
She unzipped her jeans and he yanked them down her legs. He opened his suit trousers and pulled his cock out. They were on a deadline here. No time to disrobe entirely. He climbed on top of her and pushed her legs wide with his knees. Underneath him, she arched her back, grinding her pussy up and down his cock.
“Are you going to tie me to the bed?” she asked as he lifted her shirt to kiss her breasts. He pulled back and looked down at her.
“Look—you can have bondage or you can have a quickie. But you can’t have both at the same time. Also, you don’t have a headboard so I’d have to install brackets to tie you to the bed.”
“I wouldn’t do brackets. You could damage the drywall.” She tapped the wall. “Maybe a tension rod, floor to ceiling like a stripper pole?”
“With a tile ceiling?” He shook his head. “Wouldn’t hold. Plus you wouldn’t screw the brackets directly into the wall. You screw two-by-fours into the studs and then install the brackets into the two-by-fours. Minimal drywall damage.”
She nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It’s how I mounted the flat screen on the wall at my place.”
“Good idea. Until then we can use the rope that’s under my bed,” she said.
“You have rope under your...never mind. Not asking. Stay.”
She stayed. He pulled an eight-foot length of black rope out from under the bed.
“Suggestions?” he asked.
“Loop it around the bed leg.”
“Genius.” He looped it around the leg and pulled it up to the mattress, grabbed Flash by her wrists and tied them together with a neat camping knot he hadn’t used since his Boy Scout days. “How’s that?”
“Pretty good,” she said, testing the ropes, and they held her arms fast to the bed above her head. “But now I want to try mounting bondage brackets into my wall.”
“You can later. I’m mounting you first.”
“If you—”
He entered her with one hard deep thrust.
“Insist,” she gasped as her eyes closed with pleasure and opened again with desire.
Ian laughed softly and kissed her throat with warm wet nibbling kisses, her favorite kind.
“I insist,” he said into her ear, and she shivered all around him. They were panting already, so eager for sex that foreplay went flying right out the window. Flash put her heels into the mattress and lifted her hips, riding his cock from below him. He watched her face as he fucked her, watched her pupils dilate, watched her pale cheeks flush and her eyelids grow heavy. He loved watching her while he was inside her. There was no better show on earth. When he thrust in, her head tilted back, baring her throat to him. When he pulled back to the tip, she lifted her head as if seeking him out. In again and her eyelashes fluttered, her lips parted and she moaned.
He set a steady pace—not too fast, not too slow—and pumped into her warm wet hole. Moments like this he imagined he could spend the rest of his life inside this woman. A lock of sweat-streaked red hair fell over her eyes and he pushed it out of the way for her since her hands were tied. She turned her head into his hand and kissed his palm. His pushed his thumb into her mouth and she sucked on it while he increased the pressure, pounding into her until the bed moaned as loudly as she did.
He pushed her T-shirt up to her neck again, baring her breasts. He latched on to her right nipple and sucked deeply and possessively. Her body was his, all his... It was so easy to play at being her boss in bed and out of bed, but there was no denying it—he was entirely in her power, under her spell and her command. But she wanted him to be in charge, so he took charge as a gift to her and because her submission was a gift to him that it gave her pleasure to give. He would have told her all of that if he could have, but his heart pounded wildly in his chest, his lungs burned, his thighs burned and everything burned all because of her.
“Ian...” She said his name for no reason and he didn’t ask what she wanted, because he knew what she wanted—him. So that’s what he gave her.
He wrapped his arms around her body, clutching her to his chest as he rode her with his final thrusts. He wasn’t going to last much longer and neither was she. He could already feel her vagina clenching around his cock, squeezing and releasing, pulling and contracting.
“Come when I come,” he ordered. “Not until then.”
She nodded, too breathless to speak. He loved trying to control her orgasms. It was like trying to tame a tiger in that it was nearly impossible and would probably get him killed one of these days.
But what a way to go...
Ian dug his hand into her hair, cradling the back of her head, forcing her to meet his eyes. With their gazes locked on to each other, he lengthened his thrusts as she tilted her hips to meet every last one of them. It was all heat where they joined and unbearably delicious tension. He gave and he gave and she took and she took. She let out a little sound, a cry almost like pain, and he knew she couldn’t hold back anymore. Neither could he.
“Now, Veronica,” he said as he finally let go of his self-control. His come shot out of him in hard spurts deep inside her while she came all around him, shuddering and shivering with a loud cry that died on her lips and turned into the faintest weary gasp.
He sunk down on top of her, relaxing completely as she wrapped her naked legs around his back, holding him to her and in her.
“I am crazy about you,” he panted. “If you hadn’t noticed.”
“I noticed,” she said breathlessly.
“Good. Very good.” With a groan he rolled off her and onto his back. It was then that two things happened at once. A ball of gray fur landed on his face and someone knocked loudly at the door.
“Veronica, dear? Are you all right?” came Mrs. Scheinberg’s voice through the door. Another series of nervous knocks followed. “Veronica—I heard screaming.”
“Told you so,” Flash said with a sigh.