“Getting there.”
She crawled back onto the mattress, now only with the fitted sheet and one pillow, and positioned herself directly in the middle. She put him on speakerphone as she settled. “I’m done,” she said into the darkness.
“Are you still wearing the same thing I last saw you in?”
“Yes.”
“Lose it.”
The command in his voice shuddered through her. She wasn’t used to taking commands; she was used to dishing them out. But there was something so thrilling, so forbidden about it that she couldn’t resist. It was only the two of them here where the night would always keep their secrets, and it felt right.
He wasn’t a guy for a slow, seductive reveal. She liked that. She usually wasn’t much for foreplay, as a woman who got more from the action than the build-up. He’d always gotten lucky with her—or so she liked to tell herself—because he went in for the kill so fast.
“I’m pretty sure I lost my panties in your backseat,” she told him.
“Oh, shit, seriously?”
Her shirt, skirt and bra landed in some unseen location across the room, and she lay back down. “Think you could find them and get them back for me? They’re kind of a favorite pair.”
“Hmm, maybe. What am I gonna get in return?”
She grinned. “My gratitude for giving back my rightful property?”
“I might want to keep them as a souvenir of the sexiest Valentine’s night of my life. And they’re so hot and red and lacy too. Were you hoping to show those off to someone tonight, babe?”
He was so bad. “Not necessarily. But I’m glad I did.”
“Me too. Yeah. I can’t even begin to tell you how glad I am.”
“You do deserve something, though. I didn’t get to return the favor.”
“You’ll get your chance.”
She mewled with frustration. He wasn’t here to see her, and she wanted so badly to be naked for him like she’d never really been before due to the cramped confines of his backseat. She wanted to open her legs like a wanton and imagine him standing at the foot of her bed, his dark eyes drinking her in. She wanted that chance now and cursed herself again for her stupidity. “Okay,” she whispered. “I’m undressed.”
He groaned, as if just the thought of her naked was agony to his arousal. “You’re so fucking hot, Macy. But you know, I wanted to imagine you lying there in nothing but those red panties. I was going to tell you to leave them on.”
“I have others like them. Different colors, though.”
“Which colors?”
“White. Black. Beige. And teal.”
“Hmm. The black. Put them on for me.”
“Are you serious?”
“Hell yes, I am. I need the mental image. Put them on.”
“Twisted,” she muttered as she climbed from the bed and was rewarded with his dastardly chuckle.
“You know it.”
Once her task was completed, she settled back on the bed in her black panties. “Now what?”
“Now talk to me, I know you can do it. I’m there with you. What do you want me to do?”
Macy had begun to forget her headache, her questionable stomach and all the other afflictions she’d woken up with. “I wish you were here. If you want, you could still—”
“Shh. What do you want me to do?”
“Kiss me.”
“Where?”
God, she was going to suck at this. But suddenly it didn’t matter. “My mouth, at first.”
“Just like I did in the car? Slow and teasing? Or rougher?”
She licked her lips just thinking about it. “Just like in the car. Slow and teasing to start off. Then rougher, like you can’t get enough of how I taste.”
“I couldn’t. And I’m there with you now, and you’re naked except for your panties, so you know I can’t resist kissing your nipples. Run your fingers over them for me.”
They were already torturously tight from his words, his voice. Now her fingertips drew them even tighter. Her head sank into her pillow as she arched into her own hands, taking the full, aroused heaviness of her breasts into her palms. She would offer them to him like this, cupping them underneath so he could kiss and lick his fill.
“You teased me in the car,” she said softly. “You didn’t put your mouth on my nipples. I wanted you to.”
“I would do it now. I’d lick them and suck them until you couldn’t take it anymore. I wouldn’t take my mouth off them until you came, if you didn’t want me to.”
“I think I’d eventually have other uses for your mouth.” This really wasn’t that hard.
“Oh yeah? Tell me about them. I’m home, by the way. I’m getting into bed.”
She smiled into the darkness, glad he’d made it safely given the content of their discussion. “What are you wearing?” she asked.
“What do you want me to wear?”
“My needs are simple. Get naked.”
That evil-villain chuckle she was growing to love sounded in the darkness. She heard the tinkle of a belt buckle, the slide of denim being stripped off. “As you wish, my lady.”
Oh God. This wasn’t fair. She didn’t know what he looked like naked. Before, she’d come back to earth to discover the indignity of having her shirt pushed up, bra cups pushed down, skirt bunched around her hips and panties dangling from her left ankle. He’d only had to zip up. No, not fair at all.
She could imagine, because he usually wore his shirts a little snug, that he had a fantastic body. And she’d held his cock in her hand, felt its thickness both with her fingers and in the devastating stretch of its intrusion into her body. The memory alone was enough to arch her body off the bed.
“Are you hard?” she asked, surprised at her husky tone.
“What the fuck do you think?”
She chuckled. “All the way?”
“Fully erect, baby. So hard it hurts.”
“How big is it?”
“Uh, don’t you know?”
“I’m talking precise measurements.”
This laugh was less evil-villain and more jovial. “Why, Macy. A nice young lady like yourself, asking such a thing. I’m appalled.”
“Oh, come on. Guys always know how big they are.”
“Big enough that I should tie a bow around it and attach a little card that says ‘To: Macy. You’re welcome. Love, Seth.’”
She barked with laughter, amazed for a moment that they could go from red-hot murmurings to easy humor in a matter of seconds. “Keep this up and I’ll text you a picture,” he warned, further fueling her laughter.
“No freaking way!”
“Oh, but you want me over here busting out a ruler for your edification.”
“You keep this up and I’m going to demand that you come over and show me in person.”
“Feeling better now?”
“Mm-hmm.” She writhed against her mattress restlessly. “Well…actually I think it’s more that I just don’t care how I feel.”
“Ah. As much as I want that—and you have no idea—let’s enjoy the ride until we get there. This will give us something to think about all day.”
“As if we don’t have enough?”
“Point taken.”
Maybe he was a tease after all. Or he was worried she was still inebriated enough she didn’t know what she was doing. “We got derailed,” she said.
“You were about to tell me what else to do with my mouth.”
She grinned as wickedly as he ever had. “But…it might be hard for you to do it. I’m wearing panties, remember.”
His groan raised the hair at her nape. “You think I can’t work around that? Slide your hand over the top of them. Tell me how they feel.”
“Silky. Wet.”
“I know your pussy is silkier and wetter than they are.”
Her breath momentarily froze in her lungs, and she choked out his name. Her flash of chagrin only added to the aching heat under her gently rubbing fingers. “D
o you want me to make sure?” she breathed in a gusty whisper.
“Slide your fingers in the side, not down the front. Don’t touch your clit yet.”
Exasperation shot through her. “Please?”
“No.”
What the hell was she waiting on him for, anyway? He wasn’t here watching her.
Except it was almost as if he were. Like if she touched herself without his permission, he would know.
“See, this is what I want to do to you. Leave those sexy little panties on; just pull them to the side while I go down on you. I might even leave them on while I fuck you.”
She was pretty sure she was going to expire before any of this actually occurred. She whimpered as her fingers trailed through her wetness, careful not to brush the throbbing bud of her clit though it begged for attention. “What do you want me to do now?” she asked.
“Spread your legs wide. Rub your fingers through it. Get it wetter. God, I remember how you feel, how you smell. I can’t wait to touch you again.” His breathing had deepened, gone ragged, to match hers. She pictured him lying there, his hand wrapped around himself and stroking, as she pushed her fingers as deep inside her own molten heat as she could. Her hips arched up.
“I can’t wait either,” she whispered. “This is good, but it isn’t enough.”
“I know, baby. Tomorrow night. I’m going to take care of you.”
If she hadn’t been such an idiot, it could’ve been tonight. Now. He would be sliding inside the slick, needy passage her own fingers couldn’t adequately fill.
The mental image alone was enough to make her moan. “I need you here,” she burst out. Quickly, she amended, “I need to come, Seth.”
“You will. Tell me how it feels. Is it hot?”
“Hot. Burning up.”
“Is it wet enough for me?”
“Oh yes.”
“I want you so wet that I can slide in deep and fast and not hurt you.”
Jesus. The only answer she could conjure up for him was an agonized sound halfway between a whimper and a sob. He’d done it like that before. He hadn’t shown her any mercy. She hadn’t wanted him to.
A strangled sound tore from his throat. “I’m close, baby. Are you?”
“If I touch my clit, I think I’ll explode.”
“Do it. And I need to hear you.”
She pulled her fingers from her clenching depths and slid them over her swollen bud, biting down on her lip so hard she winced. Or maybe it was from the pleasure that zapped the last of her remaining senses. She didn’t have to be embarrassed about letting him hear her cry out as she came—there was no other option. The release, so sweet, so needed despite everything that had already happened tonight, left her drained and panting in its aftermath. From his gasp and shuddering breath over the connection, she knew he’d gone with her.
She only wished he could have been here inside her, pressed against her, keeping her anchored to the earth.
Because she was floating somewhere around Jupiter. A whole other world sprawled wide before her, so far removed from her own.
She was looking forward to the visit. She just didn’t know if she could live there.
Chapter Six
The morning dawned clear and beautiful…and planted a dagger between Macy’s eyes. Despite the alcohol and the orgasms, she’d tossed and turned all night.
She couldn’t even remember what she and Seth had talked about after the earth had moved; she only knew that the sleepy cadence of his voice was enormously sexy. Though she’d hardly been able to hold her eyes open by the time she hung up, she hadn’t wanted to say good night to him.
There was no way she was going to make it in to work today, but she doubted any of the employees would miss her. She didn’t amble into the kitchen for coffee until almost noon, and then she lounged in her pajamas—which she’d slipped into only upon waking almost completely naked this morning—until after two. Her phone was troublingly silent, but then if what he’d once told her was true, he slept late himself.
And she wanted to hear from him. Imagine that. Even in the back of her intoxicated mind last night, she’d taken some comfort in knowing she might wake up this morning having come to her senses. That her totally out-of-character behavior around him was simply the result of minor glitches in her normally mundane life. A person could take only so much monotony before they had to let off a little steam, right? Seth had been her pressure release. Unfortunately, the pressure had built back up overnight.
If he was still on board, she couldn’t wait for tonight.
There was damage control to do in the meantime. By now, Candace would probably be at Brian’s side at Dermamania, and Macy owed her an apology. Not just for the few tense minutes they’d spent discussing Candace’s lifestyle choices last night, but for the past year they’d spent discussing them. Seth had been right with the whole live-and-let-live thing. As he’d said, if there was distance between Macy and her friends, it was because she’d put it there. The world wouldn’t be crammed into her neat little unchanging box no matter how much she wanted it to be.
Candace’s life was hers to live. God knows she’d fought hard enough to break free from people telling her what to do. Macy didn’t need to be the one stark reminder of Candace’s dark times before Brian had come along. The girl didn’t deserve that, and Macy was going to start working on changing it. Today.
Still, walking into the tattoo parlor where her best friend spent most of her time away from home and class always gave Macy the shudders.
Dark sunglasses shielding her eyes, she drove to the parlor and deflated when she didn’t recognize Seth’s car in the parking lot. Not that he was the reason she needed to come here to do this, but seeing him would’ve been a perk.
Inside, the usual heavy metal was playing at thankfully tolerable levels and the banter was flying fast and furious. Candace was nowhere in sight.
“…all directly out of your friggin’ minds,” Brian was saying without looking up from the tattoo he was working on.
“Dude, that woman ranks off the top of the fuckability scale,” the client under his needle said. Macy wasn’t sure if arguing with your tattooist in the middle of the process was the smartest thing one could do.
“Agreed,” one of the other artists—she thought they called him Tay—announced from across the room, where he was perched on a stool in front of the computer screen. “I’m staring at the evidence right now. I’d hit it like a big rig with no brakes.”
“She’s hot, okay, but she’s got nothing on Maria Brink or Cristina Scabbia.”
“Dude, you just have an Italian boner for Scabbia.”
“Hey, fuck—” Brian took that moment to lift his head and address Tay, but his gaze landed right on Macy still standing near the door. “Oh, hey, Mace.”
She grinned. “Would you be having this discussion in front of your girlfriend?”
One corner of his mouth tugged upward, and a dimple dug deep into his cheek. “She’s privy to the never-ending hottest-chick-in-metal debate, don’t worry. She knows she outshines them all.”
“Awww,” the guys said in unison, breaking into laughter. Tay muttered something that sounded awfully like “pussy whipped”.
“Says the choad who has none,” Brian fired back.
Macy pitched her voice higher to be heard over the bubbling testosterone. “Is she around?”
Brian nodded toward the back of the parlor. “She’s in my office. Go on back.”
“Thanks.”
He watched as she skirted gingerly around the counter to the hallway. “And how was your night?”
If only he knew—and she hoped like hell he didn’t. She realized she hadn’t even thought to take her sunglasses off. Number-one hallmark of a hangover. Her grunted reply caused the guys to snicker.
She passed Starla, one of the two female artists, in the hall, and exchanged brief pleasantries. Then she peeked around Brian’s office door to find Candace at the desk with her phone cra
mmed between her ear and shoulder, typing furiously at the keyboard. With her hair pulled up in a stylishly sloppy bun, she looked a little tired, but her pretty face brightened when she noticed Macy, and she smiled and waved her inside. Good sign.
Macy pushed her glasses to the top of her head and shut the door before dropping into a chair across from the desk. Candace hung up her phone.
“She lives!” she said.
Macy rubbed her eyes, which were being assaulted by the too-bright bulbs overhead. “Well…sort of. I think.”
Candace tucked a stray wisp of pink-and-blonde hair behind her ear. “So, spill. I’ve been waiting to hear this all day.”
“Spill what?”
Her friend crossed her arms and sat back. “Oh, come on. Don’t be like that. I’m not one to ask for details, because I know how you are. But I’m dying over here.”
“Oh, it was nothing—”
“You did something. You were on his lap. Even if you only kissed him, it’s still something. At last.”
“Okay, so it was something. That’s all I’m willing to divulge at the moment.”
“You are nothing if not stubborn, woman.”
“Listen, I’m not here to talk about him. I’m here because I need to talk to you.”
“Do you want to go across the street to the coffee shop or—”
“No. Let me get this out.” Sighing, Macy rubbed her temples. Why should it be so hard to say you’re sorry to someone you knew as well as yourself? “I just…I owe you an apology. A really big one. And not just about how I acted like a complete bitch last night, although that’s a big part of it.”
Candace’s eyebrows rose. She didn’t comment.
“I’m sorry about the attitude I’ve had, how I try to talk you out of everything, and some of the things I’ve said about you and Brian being together. A million times, I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear that crap. You’re happy, and you deserve to be happy after everything you guys went through.”
Relief washed over her friend’s face, though somehow it made Macy feel worse rather than better. Candace must have been waiting a long time to hear her say this. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”
“You were always like a little sister to me, and I always felt like you sort of looked to me for guidance in a way, so seeing you stand on your own two feet and do your own thing was…well, it was awesome. But it was hard on me too. I thought I was going to lose you, and I’m still afraid you’ll get fed up with me someday.”