“You’re special, Nell,” he said. “You should ask for more.”
Warmth softened her chest. She touched his face with the palm of her hand, and stroked his cheek gently. “So should you, Duncan,” she whispered. “So should you.”
This was the moment. It could make or break them, if he said the right thing. He looked like he was poised to say it. He covered her hand with his own. She was poised to hear it. She couldn’t move, or breathe.
Seconds ticked by, stretched to a minute. More. He didn’t say it.
She turned her gaze away, blushing madly, feeling like an idiot. Here she went again, projecting her silly romantic fantasies onto the unsuspecting man. And him, just bumbling along. No freaking clue.
She tried to cover her embarrassment. “So? I answered your question. It’s your turn to bare your soul. Let’s hear it.”
He looked alarmed. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“You just saw me do it,” she said. “Watch and learn, Duncan.”
“That’s different.” His voice was defensive. “You’re…you’re you.”
“Right, and you’re Duncan, and that’s what I’m interested in. Why don’t you start with parents? They’re usually at the bottom of things.”
He let out an impatient sigh, as if humoring a child. “My mom’s great. She taught elementary school for thirty-five years before she retired. She raised us on her own. She’s a general. Tries to run our lives, and mostly fails, but she’s a pretty good sport about it. Usually.”
“How did she feel about you being a spy?”
He grunted. “Hated it. She nagged and schemed.”
“Is that why you quit?”
His grin flashed. “No. I know how to block and fake. I suit myself.”
“I’ve noticed,” she murmured. “And your father?”
His face changed, like a door slamming shut in her face. “I have nothing to say about him.”
She flinched, took a deep breath, and tried again. “So tell me what there isn’t, instead of what there is,” she suggested.
He looked baffled. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Silence is as revealing as words,” she said softly. “But you already know that. I can see it in your photos.”
“Don’t go all poetic on me, Nell,” he warned. “Or I’ll devolve on you. Start to grunt and snort, and scratch my tufts.”
“Stop being ridiculous, and just tell me about him,” she snapped. “It can’t be worse than my father story. At least you know his name.”
He looked hunted, scowling down at the steering column. Finally started to speak, but his voice was very flat.
“He fell in love with a woman who worked for him,” he said. “His accounts manager. Sylvia. She was younger than him and my mother. I was thirteen. Bruce was nine, and Ellie was a newborn. Ellie was Mom’s last-ditch effort to tie Dad to her. Bad idea. Didn’t work.” He shook the memory away with a sharp wave of his hand.
“I’m sorry, Duncan,” she whispered.
“He tried to explain it to me before he left. How love was this great force he couldn’t resist. It was just his dick that he couldn’t resist. But his family paid the price.” Duncan shook his head. “He divorced Sylvia seven years later. Traded her in for a younger model. There you go. There’s the power of love for you.”
The bitter contempt in his voice chilled her. “That’s not love,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not love.”
He made a low, harsh sound of negation. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It depresses me. Let’s go upstairs.”
He got out of the car. She flung the door open before he could come around and do it for her. She followed him into his building, miserably aware of having maneuvered him out of that wonderful, close place that they’d been before. She’d made him tense and defensive. Clumsy of her.
Well, hell. There were ways and ways to sweeten his mood. And she was not without her resources.
Duncan stood aside to let her in first, and flipped on a small row of track lights near the entry space, leaving the rest of the apartment in shadow but for the glittering cityscape outside. The delicious imminence of sex trapped her air in her lungs. She drifted over to the couches. They were big, oversized. Gray, velvety, plush. An odd choice, for him. She would have expected gleaming black leather, stainless steel, and glass. She sank into one with a sigh and stared at his perfectly proportioned black silhouette standing there. A hot sexual energy pulsed out of him, all the more potent for his silence, for how fiercely it was controlled.
It made her hot, shaky. Unstable inside. She could hardly wait.
“All evening, I’ve been thinking about your bare ass under that skirt,” he said.
She grabbed handfuls of the knit fabric, and screwed up her courage. “Do you, um, want to see it?”
“Yes,” he said. “Show me.”
She took her time pulling her skirt up. She drew it out, gathering up folds of fabric inch by inch, until she had an armful of knitted jersey pressed against her belly, and the tops of her stockings showed. And a strip of pale thigh above them. A tuft of her dark, curly pubic hair.
But her legs were still clamped together.
Duncan sank to his knees in front of her. His hot hands settled on her knees, pushing them wide. She closed her eyes, her face hot.
He sighed. “Ah, God. I love the stockings,” he muttered. “You are so fucking beautiful, Nell.”
She felt more naked like this than she had when she hadn’t worn a stitch with him. He grabbed her hand and pulled it down, arranging her fingers so that her clit was gently clasped in the V between her index and middle finger. “Touch yourself,” he said. “I want to see how you do it. You know. Watch and learn.”
She laughed silently, parting herself for him. Aroused by his intense attention. The feeling of exposure was transforming into something pleasurable. She slowly relaxed into it, like a cat sprawled in a patch of sunlight. “That’s one area where you don’t need any lessons.”
“I’m gratified to know that I’ve got at least one piece of the puzzle in the bag,” he muttered.
She ignored his sarcasm, and stroked the jut of his cheekbone with her finger. His skin was so hot and supple. “I fantasized about you, ever since you started eating lunch at the Grill,” she confessed.
He pressed a hot, lingering kiss to the top of her thigh. “Is that a fact? What did I do to you in those fantasies?”
“Lovely things,” she admitted.
He grinned, caressed the crease of her groin. “Such as?”
He waited, but she couldn’t speak. Her lips were trembling too much. “My mouth is watering,” he said, parting her labia tenderly, and slowly penetrating her. “Did I lick you in those fantasies?”
“Oh…yes,” she said, jerkily.
“Was it good? Did I treat you right?”
“It was amazing. It was…it was superdeluxe.”
He bent lower, and lapped the length of her labia voluptuously with his tongue. “And how do I measure up to myself?”
“You surpass yourself,” she admitted. “There’s more of you in real life. More of everything. More feelings, more orgasms. More problems.”
He chuckled, silently, his lips tenderly holding her clit, his tongue fluttering expertly, swirl, flutter, swirl. “Never mind the problems,” he suggested. “Let’s just stop at the orgasms. And linger there.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
“Forever,” he whispered.
It was the word that set her off. Forever. It made her pleasure rise to a crest and break in great, pulsing ripples of milky foam through the endless ocean of sensation. That sweet, hot swell of…hope.
After that, they went wild. A frenzied, feverish blur. No control, no need for it. His clothes came off, her blouse was ripped open, her bra unhooked. He produced a condom out of thin air, and he was inside her, pressing her down onto the couch. Folding her legs high. Hard, driving. Demanding and wonderful. They struggled, twining and writhing and pumping toward a violent, explosive shared orgasm.