“Can I use your toothbrush?”
He shuddered, pausing for a moment before backing her into an open door. “No. Absolutely not.”
Just inside the bedroom, Simone linked her fingers behind his neck. “You can put your mouth on me, but you can’t share a toothbrush?”
Elliott made that noise, the one that sent her spiraling into desire so fast it made her head spin. That growl. He did it against her throat, and his hands gripped her just above her hips, not quite hard enough to hurt, even though she wanted it to.
“You put your mouth,” Simone murmured, “on my pussy … but you can’t share a toothbrush.”
His hand went between her legs, stroking over her panties. “Is that what you want me to do?”
“Yes, Elliott.”
“You want me to share my toothbrush.”
Simone burst into laughter and shoved at him a little. “No! I don’t care about the toothbrush! I want you to put your mouth on my pussy.”
“Oh. I think I could manage that,” he said.
Oh, wow. There was that smile. That smile that killed her. Slayed her. Opened her right up, all the way down to her soul.
She fisted the front of his shirt and pulled him to her for a long and bruising kiss that ended with her nipping at his lips. She put her mouth to his ear. “Tell me your guidelines.”
“Later.” Now he backed her up to the bed, king-size and made up with a perfectly pressed spread and tons of extra pillows.
She was on her back in another few seconds. He was on top of her after that, between her legs, his hard cock pressing against her clit through the layers of their clothes like he’d been born and made to fit her. He did not kiss her. He held his mouth just above hers, teasing her with his breath.
When he pinned her hands above her head, grinding the bones of her wrists in his big hands, Simone cried out his name. He growled again at the sound of it. Her hips lifted. His hands slid behind her, finding the zipper of her dress with unerring ease.
She was bared to him in seconds, having gone without a bra for the strapless dress, her lace panties stripped away as easily as the dress had been. Elliott pushed her knees apart and moved between them. His fingers traced her labia, then spread her open there, too.
Simone arched, head tossing on his pillows. She gripped the sheets. She urged him on with her body and wordless, desperate moans. He didn’t put his mouth on her. He blew a puff of air over her swollen pussy, and it teased her clit until she gasped out a plea.
He laughed and pushed up on his knees to look down at her. He loosened his tie an inch at a time and tossed it aside. Then the buttons on his shirt, revealing his chest. He shrugged out of the shirt while she watched, but he didn’t throw it on the floor. He folded it neatly and set it carefully on the bed without ever once looking away from her eyes.
Simone groaned. “You’re killing me.”
“You’re impatient.”
“Is patience one of your guidelines?”
“Yes.” His hand went to his belt, opening the buckle. To the button beneath. The zipper.
She licked her lips, pushing up on her elbows to stare at him. “I want to see you.”
He didn’t push his pants down. He ran his hand up the inside of her thigh instead, nails lightly scratching. “Patience.”
With a groan that was of pleasure only because denial was a kind of torturous pleasure, Simone fell back on the bed. She put her hands on his headboard, gripping the spindles. She opened her legs.
Elliott covered her with his body, mouth feasting on hers while his hand slid between her legs. “Tell me about the pain.”
Simone paused, but only for a second before she was opening her mouth to him again. She tilted her hips to urge his fingers inside her, but he didn’t push inside her. “I like it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just know that I–” She cried out when he pinched her inner thigh, not hard enough to bruise but still with a deliberation that spiraled arousal all through her.
He did it again, finding the most tender part of her and twisting the flesh between his thumb and forefinger. It only lasted a second or two, barely long enough to hurt at all, but it felt so fucking good her hips bucked. She writhed.
“Tell me about it,” Elliott said into her ear before biting her earlobe.
“It’s all tied together. Pleasure. Pain. I like it when it hurts because … it just … feels … better…” She laughed. “I can’t talk when you’re doing that with your hand.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.” She turned a little to look at him. She put her hand on his face. This close she could count the individual hairs in his brows, the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. “I don’t want you to stop, Elliott.”
He closed his eyes for a second, then looked into hers again. “I love how you say my name.”
She kissed him gently. “Elliott.”
“Tell me what you like,” he whispered against her neck.
“I like it when you use your teeth.” She gasped when he did, then again when he did it harder. “When you pinch my nipples, that’s fantastic.”
“Like this.” He sat up and ran his hands up her sides to cup her breasts, then pinched her nipples lightly.
“Oh … fuck…” She arched.
He did it harder. First one, then the other. Simone cried out and writhed. He left off one to push his fingers inside her pussy.
When he moved his mouth down her body, biting and nibbling, she held her breath as long as she could, but when he at last settled his lips and teeth and tongue against her clit, all she could do was gasp. His tongue flickered against her, the pressure teasing and too light, but in the next minute he’d found that sensitive flesh on the insides of her thighs again. Licking, sucking, pinching.
“Oh, fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, Elliott, that feels so fucking good.” He scraped his teeth along her clit until she shook with the pleasure of it. “You make me … mindless.”
He paused at that, but only for a second or so before he was back at it. His mouth was magic, moving over her. His fingers, too. Inside her. On her thighs. Simone rocked against his kiss and touch, until up, up, and over she tumbled into an orgasm that left stars sparkling in the edges of her vision.
“Fuck me, Elliott,” she breathed into his ear.
It took him a minute or so to wriggle out of his pants and reach for the nightstand drawer to pull out a condom. She sat up to sheathe him, cupping his balls for a moment. Watching his face. His lips, wet from her climax. The furrow of his brows when she stroked him, head to base.
“I want you,” she told him.
He kissed her, pushing her back on the bed. He cradled her for a moment, and she wondered if he wasn’t going to fuck her, after all. But then he slid a hand between them to fit his cock inside her, inch by delicious inch.
“I want you, too,” he whispered against her.
“Let me make you crazy, baby,” Simone said.
Then he started to move inside her, and she had no more words.
* * *
Elliott was not used to a woman in his bed. He’d lain awake for a long time last night, but woke at his normal time even though he was exhausted. He’d stared for a while at the ceiling, waiting for the room to get light enough for him to see, but ultimately, the soft, relentless sigh of Simone’s breathing beside him had pushed him from the bed.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want her there. That wasn’t why he’d gone downstairs without waking her, or why he now sipped coffee as he stood outside on the back porch and watched the sun get higher in the sky. It was because although it had taken him awhile to fall asleep, waking beside Simone had felt so natural that he couldn’t imagine not doing it every day.
She had driven him crazy the night before.
He wanted her to drive him crazy again.
The creak of the stairs was as familiar to him as the sound of his own heartbeat. How many times had he forgotten to skip that fo
urth step from the bottom when he was sneaking out … or sneaking in? He knew the sound of the floorboards in this house, too. The squeak of the linoleum. Still, he didn’t turn, even when he heard the click of the screen door opening behind him.
“I got up and you were gone.” Simone yawned.
She had indeed helped herself to one of his T-shirts, a V-neck. It hung to her thighs but shifted to reveal a hint of her perfect breasts when she leaned on the porch railing to look out over the backyard. She nudged him with her hip.
“I get up early,” Elliott said.
“I know. You told me that. Remember?”
He held out his coffee mug without a word, and she sipped from it with a grimace before handing it back.
“Too sweet,” she told him.
“I can get you your own.”
She smiled. “I can get it.”
She didn’t wait for him to stop her, just went inside and helped herself to the cupboard for a mug. Filled it. Dug around in his fridge for cream, too, though she didn’t take sugar.
She looked at him watching her. “What?”
“It’s just…” He stopped himself.
Simone looked at him, the mug held in both her hands. A kind of understanding dawned in her eyes. She looked at the cupboard doors, several of them still hanging open. Then the mug in her hands.
“Oh. Guidelines,” she said.
Elliott walked past her to shut the cupboard drawers, the sound of each a lot louder than he’d intended. When he turned, she’d settled herself at the table. She turned the mug around, around and around. He didn’t sit across from her. He stayed standing at the counter.
“I’m very particular,” Elliott said.
Simone laughed. “Baby, I know that. You like things a certain way. You’re very precise.”
“I’ve lived alone for a long time, that’s all. It’s my house. I like it to be the way I like it.”
“Nothing wrong with that. I like my house the way I like it, too.” She paused, looking around, then back at him. “How long have you lived here? I asked you last night, but you never answered.”
He hadn’t on purpose, because answering it would require explaining other things he didn’t want to get into. “A long time.”
“Was it your parents’ house?”
He hesitated before replying; she was so freaking astute. “My stepmother’s house.”
“You lived here when you were a kid?”
“No. Not until I was seventeen.”
“That’s still a kid,” Simone said.
Elliott frowned, thinking about being seventeen. He hadn’t felt like a kid. “I didn’t grow up in this house, if that’s what you meant. I moved here when I was seventeen and lived here until after college. I bought it from my stepmother after my father went away.”
“Where did he go?” Elliott didn’t answer her. To give her credit, Simone got the hint. She shrugged. “Families are always messy business.”
That was an understatement. He looked around the kitchen, trying to see it through her eyes. It was outdated. Worn. The appliances in Harvest Gold, the wallpaper covered with wagon wheels and the silhouettes of covered wagons.
“I used to have a place on the river,” he said, uncertain why he was revealing that to her.
Simone looked impressed. “Nice. Swanky. How come you moved back home?”
“It’s not…” It wasn’t home, not exactly. “Well, I owned it, so why pay rent? And I didn’t want to leave it empty. Didn’t want to rent it. I figured I’d fix it up and sell it, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.”
He braced himself for the questions about why the house was empty, what had happened to his stepmother. Why it wasn’t “home.” But Simone didn’t ask him that. Instead, she gave him one of those slow, sexy smiles that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise and made him remember the sounds she made when she came on his tongue.
“So your guidelines are, don’t mess up stuff in your house. That’s just a matter of respect, Elliott. I can handle that. I’m kind of a slob, but I can be careful. I’m not,” she added, “a total dick either.”
He wasn’t about to tell her that she was the only woman he’d brought to this house since he’d been in college. She’d smile if he said it. Maybe she’d comment, maybe she wouldn’t. But then she’d know, and it would give her the wrong impression, that somehow this was something more than it was.
“I don’t like dating,” Elliott said bluntly.
It took a little longer for her to reply to that one, and for a moment he was sure he’d made her angry again. Then Simone sipped coffee and smiled, at first tentatively. Then brightly.
“At least not more than once or twice,” she said.
“I don’t want a relationship. Long-term. I haven’t ever been good at it, and I don’t do well with someone else asking things of me.”
Simone frowned. “Barry asks things of you.”
“Relationship things,” Elliott said. “The kinds of things you’re supposed to do with a girlfriend. I don’t do them. I don’t like to do them.”
“You don’t like to be kind or generous or loving?” Simone asked quietly.
“I don’t think I am kind or generous or loving.”
Her brows went up at that, but she didn’t say anything.
“I mean things that women want. Like flowers. Or spending time together. I like my space.”
“Well, if you must know, I hate cut flowers. They’re a ridiculous waste of money, and I’d rather have a box of expensive chocolates. And I like my space, too, Elliott. Listen … we’ve been together a few times. I’m not asking you to be my boyfriend.” She looked irritated, but focused again on the coffee before smoothing her expression. “You know, it is possible for a woman to be okay with just fucking someone every once in a while without all that other stuff. Especially when the sex is so great.”
He smiled at that. “It’s that great, huh?”
“Elliott,” Simone said, “I never pictured you as a guy who needed his ego stroked.”
“How did you picture me?”
She studied him for a moment, then smiled. “Powerful business man. Wears a suit and tie every day to work, and they always fit you like you’ve had them tailored just for you, but they’re the same ones. You have what, seven?”
“Six. You counted them?”
“No. I just paid attention. Made a guess.” She sipped her coffee.
“You paid attention to me.”
Something shifted in her gaze for a moment. “You’re a hard man not to notice. We rode the elevator a lot of times before you ever paid attention to me.”
That was the truth, and he felt bad about it now. “I’m not just a suit and tie.”
“I know that, too.”
They stared at each other for a few long, silent moments. “I should have noticed you before that night I took you to Barry’s party.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “Yes. You should’ve. But did you ever think that maybe I never wanted you to, before?”
“Is that true?”
“Maybe,” she said, like she was considering the truth of her own words. “Or maybe the universe had never conspired to bring us together until that point. Did you think of that?”
“The universe.” He laughed and poured his now-cold coffee down the sink. “You need a freshener?”
“Yes, please.”
He poured them both new cups, adding cream but no sugar to hers. She watched him and took the mug. She sipped.
“You paid attention,” Simone said in a low voice.
She sounded surprised, which in turn surprised him. “I’m not a total dick, you know.”
“No,” she said with a small smile. “Not totally.”
“Do you always say what you think?”
Simone shook her head and tucked a fringe of hair behind her ear. She pulled her knee toward her chest with her toes curling over the edge of the chair and exposing the graceful lines of her bare thigh. She stare
d into her coffee cup, so he didn’t have to worry she’d catch him staring at the shadow between her legs, hoping to catch a glimpse of that private place.
“Not always.” She shrugged. “But I try to be honest. There’s hardly ever any point in not saying what you think, unless what you think is deliberately hurtful. And if you hide what you think and don’t say it, how can you ever expect anyone to give you what you want or need? Unless you ask for it? C’mon, Elliott. You ask for things. I bet most of the time, you get them, don’t you?”
“Yes. In business. Yes, I almost always do.”
Her gaze held his over the rim of her mug as she sipped. “But not in your personal life?”
“I get what I ask for there, too.”
“Are we back to the guidelines?”
He knew whatever he said was going to piss her off or come out sounding mean, but she had just finished saying there was no point in not saying what you thought or felt. “I’m going to hurt you, Simone.”
“I hope so,” she said. “I told you, I like it.”
His cock stirred at the throaty tone of her voice. He tried not to smile, but dammit, everything about her made him break his control. “That’s not the kind of hurt I meant.”
She stood, scraping the chair back on the linoleum. On bare feet, one in front of the other like a dancer, she padded toward him. She slid her hands up his chest to link behind his neck. Her warmth pressed him. Her makeup had smudged, her hair was a mess, and all he could think about was how much he wanted to kiss her.
“I’m a big girl,” she told him. “I know what I’m doing.”
“I’m warning you. That’s all,” he managed to say without his voice breaking too much.
Simone pushed up on her toes to brush her lips against his. “Warning heeded. I get it. You don’t want a girlfriend and you’re a freak about people messing with your stuff. You’re not always a dick, but you will be sometimes and you won’t apologize for it because you’re just a cranky grouch, and that’s who you are.”
“Yes,” Elliott said against her mouth, his hands finding the sweetness of her ass and grinding her closer to him. “That’s about right.”