Hot and Bothered Read online

  She realized where he was leading her. The dressing rooms. “No. You’re not serious.”

  “Oh, hell, yeah, I’m serious.”

  “Mark, we can’t do this again. Not here.”

  “Walk.”

  It wasn’t really even a decision. She hadn’t stopped to weigh the consequences of obeying versus disobeying, or the potential disaster that would follow what they were contemplating against the possibility of never knowing what would happen next. She simply walked because that was what her body told her to do. It listened to Mark with absolute attention.

  She didn’t even look around to see if anyone was watching. She stepped into the dressing rooms ahead of him and felt him draw closer. Then he pushed her through the door, pulled it shut behind them, and pressed her against the wall inside. The wall was cool at her back, his erection hard against her belly.

  “I’m going to kiss you.” His breath moved past her ear, his words like a touch causing her nipples to tighten.

  “Then do it.”

  “No. I want you to stand here for a minute.” His voice was low, dark, husky. “I want you to just stand here and feel what it’s like to not be in control of everything, not how you look or how I look or when I’m going to kiss you.”

  It was hell. It was heaven. She was shaking all over, her panties soaked. Her nipples were over-sensitized, too keenly aware of the rough lace of her bra, yearning for his touch. Each breath felt like effort. The surface of her skin prickled, as if she were packed too tightly with all the sensations, all the emotion, inside her. She ached for more everywhere his body touched hers, and everywhere it didn’t. “Please.”

  “When I’m ready.”

  He had to want it, too. She couldn’t be on fire all over without his being affected, at least a little. The power he had over her would be unbearable otherwise.

  He started messing with her in other ways, working his palm between her legs gently and slowly to create the perfect friction until she mewled with frustrated desire and tried to press closer. But as soon as she did, he drew back.

  Then he lifted a hand and cupped her breast. Just cupped it and didn’t touch the sensitive drawn-up tip that yearned for him. This was the worst possible torture. She tried to move to position her nipple against his palm, but again he withdrew the contact as soon as she reached for him. She whimpered.

  “I love the noises you make.”

  She clamped her mouth shut.

  “Don’t you dare stop.”

  “I don’t think I could,” she confessed.

  As a reward, he stroked his thumb across her nipple through her blouse, sliding it back and forth, sending streaks of heat and light straight between her legs. The ache she felt became a fierce craving for him. She needed more. She strained for his thigh, and he gave it to her for just a moment, long enough that she could rub frantically against him, withdrawing before she reached fever pitch.

  Then he kissed her, as if he couldn’t help himself, as if he wanted to consume her, and for a second the heat and twisting and rising sensations in her spiraled so fast she thought she was going to lose control. He stepped back and gave her a devilish, knowing smile.

  “More?”

  “More.”

  “You got it.”

  He knelt.

  Oh, God, he couldn’t be serious. It was one thing to kiss and grope in a dressing room, and quite another to do what he was so apparently about to do. She’d have to stop wearing skirts. She was making this far too easy for both of them to break her rules. She shouldn’t be doing this. She shouldn’t be here. She’d told Elisa exactly why this could lead nowhere good.

  He put one hand on each thigh and pushed her skirt up.

  She clamped her thighs together, and said, “We shouldn’t.” But the truth was, that only sharpened the sensation, and she had to release the tension or risk coming right then and there.

  He pressed his nose against her purple lace panties and breathed deeply. “You smell amazing.”

  “I can’t. You can’t.”

  But he was licking her through the lace, and she could feel the heat of his breath, the dampness of his tongue and the perfect pressure against her clit.

  “You don’t want to do that,” she insisted.

  “Do what?”

  “What you’re doing.”

  “Oh, believe me, I want to do what I’m doing. And way more.” He hooked his fingers into her panties and began sliding them down.

  “I didn’t... I’m not... I should have...”

  But as his thumbs stroked her lips gently apart and his tongue settled against her clit, it didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest that she hadn’t waxed this week, that she hadn’t shaved her thighs this morning, that the smell of her was rising all around them, rich and terrifying, because she had no idea she could be this wet, this messy, this exposed.

  She’d had no idea that it could feel this good.

  There was the flat of his tongue, hot and everywhere. The grit of his stubble against her skin. The tip of his tongue finding the most sensitive part of her clit and working it over and over again. His tongue swirling, moving around and in until she lost her sense of direction and her knees buckled. His hands gripped her thighs and her ass, holding her up, making sure she didn’t fall, while sensation pulled itself together into the tightest knot and burst outward, bright and violent and mind-blowing.

  He sat on the chair in the dressing room and drew her down into his lap, until everything made sense again and cold shame found its grip. She wanted to get up and put herself back together, but he wouldn’t let her. He held her too tight, his face pressed into her neck, and she couldn’t move because her brain wasn’t in charge. Her body was content never to be let go.

  * * *

  WHEN SHE CAME, a new surge of wetness on his tongue, he almost lost it too, kneeling there. There’d been no contact on his cock beyond the tight constraint of jeans. Even with no hands, no mouth, no pussy, the overwhelming pleasure and—yes—joy of making her fly apart was almost enough. It was as if he’d somehow lost track of whose body was whose and everything was interchangeable. When her body tensed with sensation and pleasure, his did too.

  He just barely managed not to come, and he was glad, because he’d wanted that to be all for her. And now that she was settled limp in his lap, he wanted to give it to her again, right now.

  But first, he had an important question for her.

  “What was it you were saying before, Hav? You should have...what?”

  She lifted her head as if it took a great deal of effort to do so. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me. You were going to say something. I want to know what.”

  She shifted as if she meant to get up, and he pulled her tight against him to keep her from escaping. He knew she wanted to flee. Hell, he even understood her reasons. What they’d just done was idiocy. But he’d given up resisting and he would make her give up, too, if it killed him.

  “I just— I wasn’t ready.”

  He looked at her in astonishment.

  “No, not like that,” she said, flushing. “I mean, I usually...”

  She clamped her mouth shut, her face flaming red.

  “You’re just going to have to say it,” he said, “because I have no prayer of getting this one.”

  “I usually wax. Down there.” She said it quickly, without looking at him, obviously dying of embarrassment. “I don’t actually usually do that at all. I mean, let anyone do that. But if I do, it’s only if I’m—smooth.”

  He was a little stunned. He’d guessed it was hard for her to let go, but he hadn’t quite imagined this. “So you’ve never let anyone go down on you before when you’ve had...hair?”

  “Nope.”

  “But other stuff is oka
y. Sex.”

  She shook her head, the blush deepening.

  “Wait a second.”

  “I like to be neat,” she said.

  “I get neat, but—how do you even accomplish that?”

  “If I have a date, and it’s like the third or fourth, you know, a crucial date, I just make sure beforehand...”

  “And if for some reason you find yourself in a situation where you haven’t had a chance to plan ahead?”

  “That never happens,” she said.

  “That never happens,” he repeated.

  “I wouldn’t ever let it happen. I’d make some excuse, or—I don’t know.”

  He was genuinely staggered, and then the implication of her words fully dawned. “But you did. Twice. With me.”

  “I know,” she said, ducking her head again. “I know.”

  He was flattered. Or honored. More than that. Moved. Moved that not once, but twice, she’d been so—what?—carried away or in the moment or just with him that she would break her own hard-and-fast rule. His chest ached, and he wrapped her tighter in his arms and kissed her hair, her ear and her cheek.

  Something occurred to him. “What else?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What are the other rules? What else do you have to do before it’s okay for you to have sex?”

  When she shifted, he loosened his arms and she got up. She slipped her panties on, tugged her skirt down and examined herself in the mirror. As she tucked hair back into place, and rubbed at smeared eye makeup, he couldn’t help but think she was putting herself back together so he could take her apart again when they were ready.

  His cock responded predictably and he decided he probably was always going to be ready for Haven. As many times as she polished and primped and restored her pristine condition, he’d be there to dismantle her. As long as she’d let him, that was. He was surprised she hadn’t started laying down the law yet. Hadn’t told him this was the last, last, last time and he’d better not say a word to anyone, et cetera.

  He was ready to fight her on it.

  After a few moment’s silence, she said, “Apartment has to be clean.” That same quick, almost ashamed way she’d admitted to not ever having unwaxed oral.

  He was the one watching her from behind in the mirror, this time. He could tell she didn’t want to make eye contact with him when she confessed to this part of herself. He saw her make the decision to do it anyway, the moment when her gaze came up, and her eyes met his. He felt a click of recognition between them, a sense of something in him settling in deeper and making itself comfortable.

  “Sheets have to be fresh.”

  She was relaxing a little, now, not so stiff and short with her words. He hadn’t mocked her, and he guessed that was helping her get used to the idea of telling him this stuff.

  “Does it always have to be in bed?”

  “It always is.”

  So that was something else she had given him, her office, this dressing room. Only he had experienced these things with her. His chest clenched again. “I assume hair, makeup, teeth, nails—all done?”

  She nodded. There was something on her face. Not pride. Shame. Some pain he didn’t, couldn’t yet, understand. “It’s weird, right?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Not any weirder than anything else.” He said it to reassure her, but he meant it. “Not any weirder than how much of a charge I get out of knowing people might hear us, or walk in on us. Right? Sex is weird. You need what you need, for the reasons you need it. And sometimes your body and that deep-down back part of your brain know what that is before your smarter self knows.”

  Her gaze hadn’t left his the whole time he’d been talking, and now her eyes were bright. She opened her mouth, struggled to say something, failed. She put her fingertips to her mouth as though something pained her.

  “Look,” he said. “I don’t care. Body hair, no body hair, clean apartment, ants crawling on yesterday’s cereal bowls, I don’t give a crap. I like you. I want to be with you. I want you to be comfortable. That’s what matters to me.”

  Her breath caught with a sound suspiciously like a sob. But of course, Haven Hoyt didn’t cry. The idea of Haven crying was far more absurd than the idea of her having semipublic sex.

  “That’s the thing,” she said. “I am comfortable with you. I’ve always cared before, about all the stuff I said—the grooming and the cleaning—but I don’t care now. I don’t even understand why I stopped caring. All this, all this stuff—” Her voice broke, but she steadied it and went on, “What’s happened between us, this isn’t like anything I’ve ever done. I’ve never been willing to be like this.”

  She made a gesture that encompassed both of them, the dressing room and something more, something bigger than his going down on her in a department store. And he wanted to know what that was, what it meant to her, but mostly he just wanted to keep feeling the way he felt right now—glad he and Haven were locked in this dressing room together doing probably career-killing things to each other. Thrilled she’d let him see her messy, let him make her messy—twice. He was grateful she’d told him why it was hard for her, and that for whatever strange reason, it wasn’t as hard for her with him.

  “Haven,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is your apartment clean?”

  “No.”

  “Are your sheets clean?”

  “No.”

  “Can we go there? And have sex in your bed? Or maybe even not in your bed?”

  She hesitated, but only for a second. Then she turned around and met his gaze. Her eyes were dark and full of feeling. And she nodded.

  9

  WHAT HAD SHE DONE? What was she doing?

  She knew now that she’d been wrong, and hurtful, to reduce what had happened between them in her office to “that.” She knew it wasn’t just about bodies colliding. There was something at work here that she couldn’t—or didn’t want to—give a name to.

  But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t ruin her.

  It didn’t mean it wouldn’t rob Mark and his father of money they needed.

  It didn’t mean they wouldn’t break each other’s hearts when it turned out he didn’t want to live the life she’d chosen.

  What they were doing now would have consequences. She couldn’t see all the ripples yet, but she could feel them. Something as seismic as Mark couldn’t happen to her without there being aftershocks.

  And yet, here they were in a cab, side by side, on their way to her apartment. She had told him the most naked truth about herself, and she was going to make herself even more naked—maybe completely naked—in just a few minutes.

  The craziest part was, there was still time to call it off, but she had no intention of doing so.

  “There are dishes on my counter.”

  “I don’t care,” he said.

  “There’s toothpaste in my bathroom sink.”

  “I find that endearing.”

  “There’s a book of erotic stories and a vibrator on my nightstand.”

  “Okay, now that’s just unfair. I need to know more. What exactly were you doing with this book of erotic stories and vibrator?”

  The taxicab driver’s eyes found hers in the rearview mirror. “I think that story is going to have to wait,” she said, gesturing at the front seat.

  “You could whisper.”

  So she did. “I like to lie on my stomach on the bed and read. And the rule is, I can’t touch myself. Not even through my clothes.”

  “Oh, God,” Mark groaned. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  She was glad he’d asked. Telling him, watching his jaw tighten and his color rise, was a total turn-on. She’d never talked like this to anyone, let alone in the back of a cab.
She kept such a tight rein on how she presented herself to the world, even with people who didn’t have the power to make anything of what they knew.

  “Then when I totally can’t stand it anymore, when I’m ready to explode, I tease myself with the vibrator. It’s not super strong, just a buzz, and I bring it just close enough so I can feel the vibrations, but only that close.”

  His hand went—involuntarily, she thought—to the bulge in his jeans, and he pressed his palm there, which didn’t cool her ardor any. She glanced at the driver, but if he knew what was going on in the backseat of his cab, he was discreetly pretending not to. “God, that’s hot,” Mark growled.

  “I make it last as long as I can. I draw it out, and I make myself watch the clock to see how long I can hold out before I come.”

  He choked out an incoherent sound, and she reached for the rise of his cock under his jeans. Brushing his hand aside, she found him with the ball of her hand and ground down. She knew the driver might see, and that if the cab stopped, someone could look in. She knew that it would make a mess and that at least one of them would be out of control.

  “Hav.”

  She wasn’t sure whether he was imploring her to be sensible or begging her for more. She didn’t care. Touching him like this filled her with a sense of power and joy. She wanted to make him feel the way he’d made her feel in the dressing room.

  He lifted his hips to her palm and she pressed back, using her thumb to find more topography, the swell of his head, the ridge of vein. He made a nearly inaudible strangled sound. Not “stop.”

  She checked the mirror, but the cab driver seemed to be keeping his eyes on the road. Her free hand wandered the tightness of the muscles in Mark’s thighs and abs. She loved the way his whole body strained in toward the spot she was pleasuring, the way everything got thicker and harder. His face was tight, too, his jaw locked, his eyes now closed. He looked as if he was on the edge, and she felt an answering sensation, like she was poised, like she could follow him right over without a touch, right here in the cab. How had she gotten so plugged in to him that just watching his rising arousal could wind her up like this? It felt amazing and terrible—dangerous and unstoppable.