I was wearing a T-shirt, but I found myself pulling at my collar, as though the loose material was too tight. I’d thought about her a lot since she’d left, but my memories hadn’t done justice to the way she made my blood pressure rise with just a glance.
It was out of hand, to say the least.
She joined me, sitting close beside me instead of across, her left hand going to my knee to rub as she arranged the first small spoonful of the sin she was weaving for me.
“Let me take the first bite, make sure it turned out right,” said Iris.
I swallowed hard and watched.
“Do you think of me every time you taste cinnamon now, baby?” she asked, the most irresistible twinkle in her eye.
I didn’t even have words for that bit of torment.
She absolutely knew what she did to me.
And she loved every second of it.
I could only nod.
“Me too. It’ll never be the same.” She leaned in very close, giving me a stellar view of her cleavage.
Her voice lowered to just above a whisper. “Just the smell of it, Dair, and I’m wet.”
I swear I forgot my own name, where I was, and how I’d gotten there as she took that first luscious bite.
I watched raptly as the cold spoon pushed past her lips into her mouth, her tongue swirling over the bit of cinnamon flecked ice cream.
Fucking hell.
As though it wasn’t overkill, she kept that spoon in her mouth for a long while, licking it, sucking it until it went past clean and clearly into dirty.
Finally she pulled it free, smiled, and reiterated her earlier mind-boggling statement. “Wet.”
I shut my eyes, done for and aware of it.
She was soothing chaos.
Like that first taste of anesthesia, before you lost your senses.
Or the venom that numbed you before it killed you.
I really couldn’t decide which.
The verdict was definitely still out on that.
“Ready for a taste?”
Fuck me and her loaded questions.
But I opened my eyes, nodded, and took everything she offered with no hesitation.
And there it was. That flavor that had been assigned to a memory I could never forget. The sweet spice of the cinnamon, the powdery texture of the sugar, and that sweet creamy flavor that tied it all together.
Yep, I was ruined for cinnamon.
She’d known it and I knew it now.
“So good, right?” she asked.
I had to agree. So good, indeed.
The ice cream was nearly finished before I glanced around at our surroundings. I didn’t think I’d looked at anything but Iris since we’d walked in.
The place wasn’t packed, but it wasn’t empty either.
It wasn’t my imagination that we caught avid stares wherever we went. It made me extremely self-conscious, though the stares weren’t necessarily condemning. Mostly they were curious.
And who wouldn’t stare at Iris?
But it wasn’t only men that stared, it was women, and even children seemed taken with her. She was a sight—tan and healthy, buxom and happy.
And beautiful.
Above all, that.
It made it easier to tell myself that she was what drew most of the attention, but I knew that some of those fascinated eyes were also caught by the sight of a much older man, following her around, seeing through her clothes, and even, shamefully, looking down her shirt at every opportunity.
I couldn’t help it. It had been so long, and if I couldn’t touch, if I only got to look, I was going to look my fill.
“Did you think about me much?” Her voice shook me out of my reverie.
I flushed, pulling harder at the neck of my shirt. “God, I thought about you. You don’t even want to know how much or what I thought about. I fucking abused my cock, thinking about you.”
Why did I feel the need to tell her that?I mentally chastised myself.
But she cocked her head and smiled, and I knew why I’d told her.
I’d been positive it wouldn’t trouble her. On the contrary.
“You think that bothers me? I was counting on it, baby. Thinking about you thinking about me got me through some rough times these past few months.”
“What rough times? Is everything okay?”
She’d never made a comment like that before, about having it rough, but she’d thrown it out like it was common knowledge.
I found myself instantly troubled by it.
She didn’t answer, just leaned forward until all of her soft heat seemed to envelope me, the sweet flowery scent of her inundating my senses.
We were sitting side by side, only an inch apart, her lips hovering at my jaw.
“I’m glad you still have this scruff. You know how I love it,” she breathed against my skin, then rubbed her lips slowly back and forth across the edge of my jaw. Her lips were so soft, and I knew from experience they bruised easily. They were already red and swollen from the little bit of kissing we’d done earlier.
She didn’t kiss her way down so much as run her lips lightly to my throat. There, she kissed, finally letting her tongue play against my skin.
I gripped two hands into her hair and pulled her back enough to angle her for my mouth.
I started kissing her, rough, hungry kisses, where I tasted cinnamon and cream mixed with the sweetest, wildest flavor in the world.
Iris.
She moaned and pulled back.
I didn’t let her go easy, but when she said, a breath away from my lips, “Not in here. Let’s walk,” I let her pull back completely.
I followed her outside, watching her move, my cock throbbing in time to her every swaying step. To say I was disappointed when she actually started walking again was like saying I was hard.
An understatement.
I was fucking solid rock.
“I’ve reread all of your books over the last few months.”
That drew me a bit out of my lust haze.
Her wording . . . It was off.
Reread implied she’d read them before, though I knew she hadn’t read them all before she’d left me.
“Are you saying you’d read my books before that? As in, before you met me?”
She glanced at me, her eyes amused but steady. “Would that bother you, Dair? Do you think I’m some crazy fan that’s been stalking you? Your tone tells me that you’d take that as something sinister. You think you and I are, what, the erotic version of Misery?”
She was too young to be so well referenced, but that was beside the point.
“You said before that you hadn’t read my books. I recall you were working on the first one. For the first time.”
“I never said that. You may have taken it that way, but I never said it. I said I was a hundred pages in, but I never specified that it was my first time reading it.”
“It was implied.”
“Perhaps. Does it matter? Back to my rereads. Something stood out to me. Well, something has always stood out to me, something about the way you write women.”
I tugged her hand to make her stop walking.
She really thought I was going to drop this at a subject change?
I needed some honest answers from her—for once.
“You still haven’t answered. Had you read my books before we met?”
She smirked, moving close. “Dair, I swear you always want to know the least interesting things about me. But I’ll give you the truth on this one. I started reading your books when I was thirteen, and I’ve read them all. Many times. There’s your answer. Now back to what I was saying. This has always, always fascinated me. In your books, the way you write your male/female dynamic, the women always hold all of the power. They always call the shots in the relationships. Why is that?”
My mind was a whirlwind of confused chaos at her revelation, but she’d managed to fascinate me with her question, which was just so Iris.
“Men ar
e ruled by passion,” I told her. It was an easy answer, one I’d thought about before. “Women are more romantic, sure, but men are controlled by our desires, we’re slaves to it. I write women that hold all of the power, because you do. And if you don’t, you either don’t want to, or you’re doing it wrong.”
She seemed pleased by that answer, though I’d be damned if I knew why.
She must have known that already.
If there was any woman alive that could turn a man’s brain to putty with just one look, it was Iris.
CHAPTER THREE
I backed her into the nearest wall, pressing hard against her. She’d grown so quiet, and my need to feel her had been growing with every silent second.
Literally.
I took her mouth, took command, control of the moment, the way I’d needed to since I’d set eyes on her again.
There’d be no pulling back, no stopping now.
All of my questions could be put off, certainly her non-answers could.
My tongue invaded her mouth, and hers melted against it, as she submitted, every part of her softening against me, into me.
I tasted her and she sucked at my driving tongue.
I nestled my hardness against her, forcing her long legs to shift open, until I was rubbing myself unabashedly against her mound.
I fondled her soft tits, first over her clothes, then inside, one unruly hand plunging down her shirt, palming that perfect flesh.
I groaned and ran a hand down to the hem of her skirt, sliding it up the outside of her silky thigh to grip her ass.
I held her in place and rocked against her, mouth still unrelenting on hers, invading her mouth.
She took it, her soft body accepting mine without question or hesitation.
I was on the brink of embarrassing myself when I tore my mouth away.
“Let’s go back to my place,” I finally said. I’d been patient enough, and it seemed appropriate, since I was full on groping her in public, and about a second from coming.
“Please,” I added, playing as nice as I could stand.
I thought briefly about how I wished I’d brought a bigger car, because I wasn’t likely to last the drive home, and I didn’t particularly want to find out how cramped it was to fuck in the backseat of a Tesla.
Her jaw slack, eyes closed, she shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I shook my head, my mind too slow, too focused on other things to comprehend her answer. My hand was still in her shirt, stretching her bra to cup one ripe breast while my thumb rubbed back and forth over her hardened nipple. The other was still up her dress, her firm, bare ass cupped in my hand.
I moved my mouth along her jaw, down her neck, and all sense of public decency lost, I nuzzled into her cleavage, her warm, quivering breasts welcoming me as she arched with a moan.
Why wasn’t there a fucking alley nearby? I wondered.
Fucking Vegas, with its strip malls, all the buildings connected, no alleys in sight.
It was fucking inconvenient in the extreme.
I nosed her shirt aside, sucking at her crested nipple through the filmy material of her useless bra, nudging my erection insistently against her giving flesh with every draw.
I’d lost it. Lost all sense of place or public decency.
Lost it with all rational thought.
Because I was fucking out of my mind with lust.
I took my mouth away from her skin again, panting hard, still keeping my hands full of her, hard-on still raging against her, a second away from exploding.
“We need to go somewhere private,” I told her firmly, my tone gone beyond polite and brooking no refusal. “Now.”
“I can’t. I want to go with you, and even though I’m not sure I should want that, that’s not what’s keeping me away.”
I blinked at her, trying to make my slowed mind process what she was saying.
As it began to sink in, I felt my teeth grinding together, my hands kneading hard at her flesh, which was clearly giving me a different story than her mouth.
I didn’t know what to address first.
Both of her statements bothered me.
“Why aren’t you sure?”
“Things didn’t exactly end well between us, Dair. You hurt me. I gave you my best, and you thought the worst of me. I’m not sure we should do this again.”
My nostrils flared, eyes going wide. It was odd, but lust channeled very naturally into anger.
Or perhaps the anger had been there all along, just below the surface, bowing down to the stronger urge.
“You didn’t give me the truth,” I told her pointedly. I’d given this a lot of thought. “You gave me the you that’s too good to be real. I need the real.”
“This is real. I gave you real. Listen, my life’s a mess you don’t need to get mixed up in, but I’ve been real to you from the get-go. I wanted you. I still do. More than anything.”
The anger went under the surface again, superseded by her admission of wanting me.
Her hands had been gripping my shoulders from the moment I’d pressed her to the wall.
I needed more.
I put my mouth to her ear. “Touch me,” I breathed. My hands were full of her, and I had no intention of letting go.
She gasped. “Things will get out of hand if I start touching you, I guarantee it.”
My laugh was a choked bark of a noise. “You think they aren’t already?”
One soft hand touched my cheek, while the other stroked down to my chest, my stomach, then lower, to feel between our bodies.
“Touch my skin,” I breathed into her ear, moving my mouth down to suck at her neck.
She moaned and plunged her hand down my pants, gripping my straining length, her arm noticeably trembling.
She’d barely begun to stroke the thick curve of me when a loud cleared throat had me pulling back enough to glance behind me.
I started cursing as I extricated myself and straightened away from her.
A police officer stood not four feet away, arms crossed over his chest, looking stern.
I dragged an agitated hand through my hair as I took a pointed step away from Iris.
My mind started going over all of the things we’d been doing openly, in public, in broad daylight.
I cataloged every debauched thing we’d done against that building.
It wasn’t good.
Shit.
Were we about to be arrested for lewd acts in public?
It seemed more than feasible.
I cursed again, glancing around, as though just seeing our surroundings for the first time.
There weren’t too many people around. And at least there weren’t any children within sight.
It was something.
“Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Masters,” the police officer said, making me stare at him more closely. He knew my name, and he sounded more sheepish than authoritative.
I studied him and was thrilled to see the signs. He was a fan.
Best case scenario, all things considered. A stroke of luck.
“I’m just going to need you to go ahead and take this someplace private,” he said gruffly, glancing at Iris, and then back at me.
I was nodding before he even finished talking.
“Yes, officer,” I said, unable to look him in the eye anymore, because even his interruption hadn’t been enough to distract me from my need.
I was still hard and throbbing.
Out of control.
I glanced at Iris, which was a mistake.
She was essentially covered. It wasn’t like she was naked, though the amount of cleavage she was exposing was hard to ignore.
It was the way she was leaning against the wall, eyes glazed, back arched, that was completely indecent.
I pulled her front into my chest by the shoulders, to hide her luscious state.
I couldn’t stand anyone else seeing her like that.
“Sorry about that, officer,” I said, stil
l not looking at him. “We were just about to leave.”
He cleared his throat again, shifted on his feet a bit, and finally, walked away.
My hands on Iris’ shoulders moved to rub her back as I hugged her against me. We just stood like that for a long time, until the cop had left our sight, and we’d somewhat caught our breaths.
“Come on, honey. Let’s go back to my place.” I thought this was the most reasonable request. We had two choices here, as far as I could see. Either go to my car, or get arrested for finishing right here.
“I wish I could, but I have to go soon.”
I pulled back to look at her face, hands back to her shoulders.
“Excuse me? Go where?”
“It’s not important. What’s important is that I have to go. It can’t be helped.”
“So why did you come here? Just to tease me?”
“To see you. I thought that a little time was better than none. Was I wrong? Would you rather not see me at all?”
I took a few deep breaths. The answer was sad but easy to find. I’d missed her. I’d take her any way I could get her, whether it was for minutes or hours, for torture or satisfaction.
“I’d always rather see you. But, you need to tell me what’s going on. Why do you have to leave?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Her attention was caught by something behind me.
I turned to look.
A silver Jaguar pulled up to the curb, and stopped, idling there.
I glanced at Iris, and didn’t like one bit the way she looked at that car.
“I need to go,” she said woodenly, just looking at the Jaguar. “That’s my ride.”
There was a man behind the wheel.
I couldn’t make out a lot beyond his profile, since he didn’t so much as turn his head to glance in my direction, and he was wearing dark shades, but I saw enough.
He was young, big, muscular, blond, and certainly, by my estimation, better looking than me. And going by his car, he wasn’t lacking funds either.
I’d been replaced, if I’d ever been placed.
I felt ill.
Ill and furious, and completely wretched.
“Who is that?” I asked through my clenched jaw.
I heard her take an unsteady breath. “It’s a long story, and I can’t talk about it right now. I have to go.”