Hot and Bothered Read online

  The cab pulled up in front of her apartment.

  She swiped her credit card and they practically fell out of the backseat in their haste to get into the building.

  “Ms. Hoyt,” said her doorman, with his usual polite nod.

  Haven nodded back. “Gerome. On the off chance that anyone asks, you didn’t see me with anyone.”

  “Certainly not, ma’am.”

  The elevator door had not quite closed when Mark leaned against the wall and lifted Haven up. She wrapped her legs around him, his erection pressed perfectly where she wanted it, hard heat against the part of her that had not stopped aching in days. He kissed her, an open-mouthed, helplessly hungry kiss that made her groan into his mouth and clutch at him. She yanked on his hair, hard enough that he yelped, and then she bit his lip.

  A ping announced her floor, and he set her down and followed her out. “Do you do that all the time?” he asked.

  “Kiss in elevators? You know I don’t.”

  “Were we kissing? It felt like having sex with all our clothes on. But no, I meant, do you tell your doorman to be discreet?”

  “There’s never really been anything I needed him to be discreet about before,” she said. “But I have told clients’ doormen to be discreet.”

  “Does it work?”

  “I doubt it. But I’d be remiss in not asking.”

  She unlocked her door and he crowded her into the apartment.

  There were shoes scattered around the entry, and she needed to vacuum up dust bunnies here and there. And she couldn’t remember whether she’d left chaos in the kitchen and the bathroom—

  But he clearly didn’t care because as soon as the door closed behind him he scooped her up. Cradling her in his arms he said, “Which way to the bedroom?”

  “Straight, first left.”

  He deposited her on the unmade bed, and she tried not to notice the mess. The underwear she hadn’t thrown in the hamper, the clothes hanging off chairs and doorknobs. The sheets themselves, twisted because she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since the first time Mark had looked at her in the mirror. She’d dreamed of him, and masturbated to her memories and fantasies of him, and lain awake thinking of what she wanted him to do to her. She’d worried what a terrible, terrible idea it would be to let him.

  But now she was letting him, and it did not feel like a terrible idea. It felt like the best idea she’d ever had.

  “These sheets,” he said. “I love these sheets now that I know what you do in them. They are the dirtiest, filthiest, most awesome sheets in the entire universe and I want to rub them all over my body. You can’t ever wash them again. In fact, you can’t ever make the bed again.”

  She laughed even though she actually wanted to cry. He took something that was difficult for her and made it magical and sexy.

  She wanted to give him a gift in return. “Sometimes instead of using the vibrator I lie on my stomach and shove the sheets between my legs and rub off on them.”

  The stuff coming out of her mouth today—she would not have believed it if someone had told her yesterday that she’d be saying those things to him. She would not have believed herself capable of it—with not even a twinge of shame. The only twinge was the one she felt between her legs every time she said something dirty to him. And twinge was too mild a description for what it felt like. The sensation was fierce and hot. Open, and opening still, unfurling, making way for him, not just physically. She wanted more of him in her world, this confusing man who had burst into her life and unmade all her best intentions.

  “Show me,” he said. “Show me what you do. Show me everything you do.”

  She stared at him, uncertain.

  “Take your hair down.”

  She would never have picked herself as someone who wanted to be commanded. The loss of control was something she thought would terrify her, but the sensation of yielding to him was as welcome and explicitly sexual as his hand between her legs had been Wednesday. As his mouth had been earlier today. Far from adding restraint, it made her feel released.

  She pulled out pins and unwound an elastic, and her hair tumbled down. He ran his hands through it and buried his face in it, and she laughed.

  He wasn’t laughing as he pulled back. “Take your clothes off.”

  This was harder. This was nakedness. Real nakedness and more to come. She was certain that the longer she let this go on, the more thoroughly he’d peel away her defenses and get under her skin.

  She knelt on the bed, unbuttoned her blouse and let it fall open. His gaze fell to her breasts and stayed there, hot and admiring. She basked in his stare, then shrugged her blouse off. She grew suddenly self-conscious and sucked in her stomach.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t hide from me.”

  “I was just—”

  “I won’t let you. Now your bra.”

  She unhooked it with one hand and let it drop. His pupils dilated so fast she saw his eyes darken with it.

  He crawled across the bed toward her and did what he’d done earlier, placing a hand on her breast a hair’s breadth from her nipple. Her sex tightened and tingled, answering the tautness of her breast. She felt empty in a way only he could fix. But right now he wasn’t interested in fixing it, he was interested in teasing. In making the emptiness and the craving grow.

  He took her nipple between his thumb and forefinger so lightly she could barely feel him.

  “Mmph.”

  “What do you want?”

  “More.”

  “Like this?” He tightened his fingers infinitesimally, just enough to send a zing of sensation to her clit.

  “More.”

  Tighter.

  He lifted his other hand to the other breast. “Does it feel twice as good if I do it to both?”

  It felt more than twice as good, some kind of crazy logarithmic multiplier. She wriggled in his fingers, trying to get more touch, more sensation, but whenever she moved, he released her.

  “If you want more you have to hold still.”

  It was supreme torture, with one nipple in each set of clamping fingers, slowly tightening, but if she squirmed or arched or made noise, he stepped it back. She made herself hold completely still until the pressure was exactly, perfectly right, and then she said, “Please, just like that,” and he obeyed.

  “I’m going to come,” she cried, tipping her head back.

  “Not yet.” He let her go, and the orgasm, which had felt inevitable, retreated. “Skirt.”

  She unzipped her skirt and lifted herself off the bed to slide it down.

  “Lie back. Spread your legs.”

  She did and he hooked a finger in her panties to sweep them aside.

  “Didn’t get to really look before,” he explained. “You’re so wet, you’re glistening.” And he played with a finger in her wetness to show her.

  “Nngha.”

  “You’re supposed to be showing me, I know, but I can’t not touch. Do you mind?”

  She shook her head, officially speechless.

  He put the tip of one finger to her clit, and sensation spread like fire all through her groin, gathered itself faster than she thought possible and burst outward. He slid two fingers into her as she came and crooked them upward to tap her G-spot, and she came again, no space between to catch her breath. When her body stopped seizing and convulsing, she discovered both her calves were cramped. She had to take deep breaths to let go.

  Then he stood up and took off his sweatshirt and his T-shirt.

  This was for her. No mirrors, no Judy. No barber shop, no department store, no clothes.

  Just the two of them, and she got to stare at him for as long as she wanted. All the muscles in his torso seemed to narrow toward his waist. Her gaze played over the ridges of his abs, the
sculpted perfection of his pecs and the line of muscle that started at his hip and dived downward. The tufts of hair under his arms, the thickness of his shoulders and the leanness of his arms intoxicated her.

  Slowly, reverently, she rose to her knees and came to the edge of the bed. He stood there and let her touch, her hands drifting, squeezing, caressing. She followed lines to where they curved, curves to where they ran straight and strong. He was like a cover model in a magazine, but warm and supple to the touch, real. Even his hair was just right, dusted across his chest and arrowing down into his jeans.

  She reached for the button and he let her unfasten and unzip him. She ducked her head and—

  “Nope.” He stopped her from putting her mouth where it desperately wanted to go.

  She slanted him a look of disbelief.

  “I can give you about three minutes, max, Hav. All depends on where you want me.”

  She groaned. Everywhere. She wanted him everywhere.

  “How’s this for a deal? You let me inside you now, I’ll let you suck me as long as you want later.”

  There was nothing left to say. She pointed to the night table drawer and he opened it and took out a condom. Tearing the plastic wrapper and dropping it on the floor, he worked the latex down over his cock with one hand. The sight of that hand moving skillfully over his erection made her groan again. He was thicker around than any man she’d been with, cut and perfectly formed, with a wide swollen head she wanted against her soft palette almost more than she wanted him inside her. But not quite.

  He slid her panties off and tossed them over the side of the bed. Up toward her he crawled, but this time he insinuated his body between her thighs, letting her feel all of him—the rough chest hair, the ridges of his abs, the trail of hair tickling her clit where her legs had parted wide for him. Then the hard, hot length of him pressing into her, dipping just the very tip into her wetness and—Jesus, he was way too good at this—using that same tip to rub back and forth over her too-swollen, too-sensitive clit until she was begging him. Begging him. Legs spread, stubble under her arms, breath of unknown freshness, in all her unkempt, unpolished glory, not giving the slightest fuck, saying, “Mark, please, please, please, please, please, please.”

  * * *

  DESPITE WHAT LYN had done to him, he’d never seen sex as a power game. Sex, especially since Lyn, had been a convenience, a way of forgetting. A way of leaving the things he didn’t want to think about for a realm where thought was inconvenient and unnecessary.

  But between Haven’s legs he felt powerful. Hearing the slick, wet sound of her as he moved the head of his cock over her clit, feeling her tipped-up hips pleading with his body to deliver on its promise. And his name on her lips, that please like a chant, like a mantra. He felt invincible.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  She licked her lips, closed her eyes and lifted her hips higher, trying to engage.

  He resisted for a moment longer, wanting to prolong this perfect, on-the-edge feeling.

  “You’re killing me,” she whispered.

  He braced himself on his arms, fitted himself to her without needing a hand to guide him, and gave her the head of his cock. Her heat enveloped him, squeezing him, and his balls drew up tight.

  It was too much. He couldn’t hold back. He thrust into her abruptly, and she exhaled, a deep half-moan on her lips as she grabbed his ass and pulled him in close.

  “Oh,” she said. Just that. Oh.

  He wanted to stay where he was, pressed up against her where she needed him. He wanted to do this for her, let her keep wriggling against him, making little needy, whimpering noises, digging her fingernails into his back and her teeth into his shoulder. He wanted her to come for the fourth time, but he was too far gone. His abs contracted and his hips thrust forward, driving him into her, drawing him back so he could get more—more power, more length, more stroke, more Haven, more, more, more.

  And far from complaining, she was crying out her pleasure at the pinnacle of each plunge, his name, please, more, oh, I’m coming again, and he wasn’t sure he’d given her the three minutes he’d promised her, but there was no helping it now, tension gathering in every muscle in his body, in the curl of his toes and the kinks in his fingers and the strain in his neck, coalescing into something pinpoint small and infinitely big, exploding outward and collapsing inward at the same moment.

  He barely had enough of his wits about him to disengage and rescue the condom before he collapsed limply beside her.

  She rolled to her side and draped her arm and half her body over him, rested her cheek against his damp chest and sighed contentedly.

  Of all of it, of everything, it was that sigh that undid him. Her little exhalation was yielding, was release. He’d made Haven come spectacularly, over and over. He’d made her do things she’d never done before. She’d pushed him beyond his own controls.

  But it was the way she willingly put her clean cheek to his sweaty skin and gave herself over to him that choked him up.

  And terrified him.

  What happens now?

  He stroked her hair and listened as her breathing evened and slowed until he was pretty sure she was asleep.

  He tried to imagine it. Haven waking up and smiling at him. Telling him, That was amazing. Let’s do it again.

  They’d do it again, Haven just as wild and uninhibited.

  They’d order takeout and sit up in her bed—

  He was ninety-nine percent sure Haven didn’t eat takeout in bed.

  He was ninety-nine percent sure Haven wasn’t going to smile at him and say, That was amazing. Let’s do it again.

  He had a vivid mental picture of what she’d do when she woke up and found herself twisted in damp sheets, wrapped around his body, salty from sweat that had cooled and dried. She’d pull back and try to smile. She’d reach up and fix her hair into a perfect do, hard and tight, fasten it so it couldn’t escape. Then she’d button herself back into her clothes, as if she were putting armor on. And all the while, she wouldn’t quite look at him, as if by avoiding him she could also avoid having to admit what she was doing, that she was shutting him out and saying goodbye.

  He could see it so clearly, it already hurt.

  10

  IT WAS DARK when Haven woke up, only a little light filtering in from the street, and she didn’t know what time it was or why her body was sore all over, her neck stiff, her cheek sticky. And then everything came back.

  Her first impulse was to run.

  Right now, she felt as if she had something to give him, but that would change. The meeting—colliding, really, a kind of physical cataclysm—of their bodies was enough for him. For now.

  But eventually he would want to dig deeper. He would want the kind of meeting of souls that someone with his depth deserved. He was filled with emotion and passion, and he was able to find a matching passion in other people, with his music, with his teaching.

  And she—

  She wouldn’t be enough.

  But, of course, there was nowhere to run to. He was asleep in her bed.

  Her second impulse was to kick him out, but then she looked at him and found she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was sound asleep, his mouth open just a little, breathing slowly, his long lashes motionless on his beautiful face. Effort and the humidity of the room had curled his hair just a little. He looked so peaceful, almost angelic. She didn’t want to wake him. In fact, she didn’t want him to go. She wanted to hold onto him as long as she could, as long as he’d have her. But she knew what would come—eventually he’d see that when he cracked her open, he wouldn’t find the hidden depths he needed, but only more of what she’d already given him.

  So she lay back down, her face on his chest, wrapped her arms around him and went back to sleep.

  T
he next time she woke, it was morning, and he was not in bed with her. A moment of panic set in. He had run. He had kicked himself out.

  But no, she could hear him moving around the kitchen, and then she could smell coffee and breakfast cooking.

  She got up, wrapped herself in a satin robe and went into the kitchen where he was frying eggs wearing only his jeans, slung low on his hips, that fine angled line of hip muscle just visible. He smiled tentatively at her, and she smiled back.

  With a quizzical look, as if she hadn’t done what he expected her to do, he crossed the kitchen and embraced her. He was warm and solid and somehow fierce. She rested her cheek against his bare skin, his chest hair rough, the now familiar scent of his skin overwhelming her. Her lips almost twitched with how much they wanted to explore his firm contours.

  “I wish I were actually a songwriter,” he said against her hair. “Because I could write a really good song about that sex.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” She had to pull away from him a little, because she knew this wasn’t an easy question, and it felt like cheating to have her face buried in his chest.

  “Anything you want.”

  “Why’d you do it? Let that producer convince you to play with Sliding Up? Was it really just that you were broke and needed money?”

  He turned away, giving the eggs and bacon more attention than they probably required.

  “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want,” she said. “I just thought—it seems so far from who you are. Maybe so far from who you ever were. I mean, I didn’t know you then, and maybe you were really different, but I feel like—” She stopped.

  “Like you know me now?” he said.

  “I guess I feel like I do.”

  “I feel like you do, too.”

  He caught her gaze and held it, and she felt heat wash upward through her body and sweep down again. Behind the heat was something, too, some emotion that filled her and swelled her heart, making it hard for her to keep looking at him.