Iwasgreedy. I didn’t see a problem with it unless it moved the orgasms farther away instead of closer.
His hand was the perfect mixture of masculine strength and smooth skin. He didn’t have obvious calluses but everything about his touch felt strong and inherently male. I drifted for a moment, lost in the feeling of his hands on my leg, the way he stroked my skin before cuffing my ankle with his hand.
“I fucking love these.” He traced the hollow above my foot, barely visible in the nude pumps. “But I don’t want you to worry about catching them in the bedding. I don’t want you thinking at all.”
I started to protest. Thinking was almost as much a part of me as breathing, but before I opened my mouth to speak, he slid the shoe off my foot, reached over to set it on the floor, and ran his thumb up my arch. The shift from licking my clit through my panties to massaging my instep might have been jarring if it didn’t feel so damn good. I loved heels—wore them almost every day—but the kind that compensated for my height weren’t known for their comfort. He stroked with his thumb again, using more pressure this time, and my toes curled.
“God, that feels good.” I was perilously close to doing something crazy, like purring.
If he kept it up, I was afraid I’d promise him anything. And he still hadn’t gotten me naked. His hand on my foot felt fantastic, but it was the one gripping my ankle that kept things firmly in the foreplay category. How did he know to do that? Walk that perfect line between making me feel good and making me want more? If this were a rom-com, this was the place where I’d figure out he was a bartender who moonlighted as a high-price escort to pay for his sick sister’s cancer treatment. Or his mom’s private nursing home. That would explain his almost Yoda-like skill with my body, considering we didn’t know each other at all.
“You don’t have a second job, do you?” It couldn’t hurt to check.
“Why do you ask?” He pressed his lips to the indent below my ankle, and I sucked in a breath in anticipation, waiting to see what he’d do next.
“No reason. Just thinking out loud.”
“I thought we talked about thinking.” He set my foot on the bed, pausing to run his hand up my calf to the sensitive skin behind my knee. A touch that seemingly innocuous shouldn’t make me feel so much, but I fought the disappointment when he set my foot down. At least until he reached for the other one.
“We didn’t talk about anything,” I said, relaxing back against the pillows as if his touch wasn’t waking up every nerve in my body. Like a big fat liar. “You ordered me not to think. It’s not even close to the same thing.”
“That, cher, is a fair point. Let’s try this. Concentrate on my hands against your skin. On my mouth on you. If you still find yourself thinking, tell me, and I’ll step up my game.”
He looked so comfortable kneeling between my spread legs, cradling my foot in his hand. Like he was the ruler of the world, which, given my response to him, wasn’t as far from the truth as I’d like it to be. Giving him extra power was a bad idea, but in reality, his proposal gave some of it back to me.
“But,” he cautioned, tightening his grip on the hand manacling my ankle just enough to remind me of how fluid a power exchange could be. “I need you to promise me something.”
Why would I agree to that? This was a one-night stand, at most a friends with benefits thing, although even that was a crazy stretch given we barely qualified as acquaintances. Casual friends was still way out of our reach. Except every time I’d taken a chance with Ford, it had paid off. Admittedly a small data pool but still.
“Charlotte.” He put a little force behind my name, snapping me back to the present.“You can hear my proposal before you commit, we can negotiate terms, and then both of us can decide if the arrangement suits us before we proceed.”
There was something new in his expression. Something serious. I had the feeling that he meant every word and that if we didn’t come to agreeable terms, he’d kiss me good-bye and be on his way. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I knew he wanted me. I wanted him. Whatever he was proposing was about mutual desire. Part of me wanted to tell him to forget it. That all this sudden talking was too much trouble for an orgasm I could give myself with a vibrator. Even if his grip on my ankle and the way he’d touched me promised so much more than that.
The other part of me—the part that never backed down from a challenge—was ready to declare game on. I was a master negotiator. It was literally what I did for a living. The idea of verbally sparring with Ford—and having him hold his own—did almost as much for me as his hand on my ankle.
“What do you propose?”
I debated pulling my foot free from his grasp to even the field before we started and then I decided there was another better way to do that. Keeping my hands on the bedframe, I arched my back in a way that I knew would make the most of my breasts. Straightening my free leg, I rested my foot on his thigh and curled my toes so they just skimmed the edge of his erection. I waited for him to correct me or cry foul. Instead, he grinned at me like I’d shared my candy with him. There was something about this man. Something that kept me off-balance. It fed my curiosity and kept me engaged.
“I want you to concentrate on just your senses. Try to stay with me in the moment and not analyze everything. You can do that to your heart’s content afterward, over your morning coffee or with your friends.”
In my experience, men weren’t usually that comfortable with women sharing the details of their performance with other women. Either Ford was very confident in his skills or he was more evolved than the men I was used to dealing with. Or the most dangerous option of all—some combination of both.
“And?” He hadn’t really asked for anything yet. Beyond thein the moment,hippy Buddhist pleasure rule, but that wasn’t exactly a hardship. I’d taken the transcendental meditation course my firm’s health insurance plan insisted on. I’d slept through most of it and gotten a twenty percent cut on my rates. To this day, the sound of Tibetan singing bowls was my go-to sleeping aid. I might be rubbish at watching my breath, but feeling pleasure at Ford’s touch with the promise of orgasms? Nothing about that felt like ahardship. There had to be something he wasn’t telling me. I flexed my foot, stroking the ridge of his cock through the thin cotton of his boxer briefs and waited for the other shoe to drop.
“And I want you to be honest with me.”
There it was, thetell me everything, let me into your soulbullshit that was always going to be a step further than I was willing to go. I hadn’t had one of thoseyou complete mekind of relationships since I was a teenager. Not because I didn’t believe two people could love each other and share their lives. I’d watched my mom and dad do it for as long as I’d been alive. But I had goals, and in my experience that didn’t pair well with happily ever after. You didn’t get to have the kind of career I’d built and be half of a couple. Not as a woman, anyway.Two parts make a wholeonly worked in books and movies or for men lucky enough to find women less focused on their own goals than I’d ever been. Than I’d ever be.
“Charlotte,” he said in that tone that meant he’d noticed me zoning out for a moment.
The man noticed everything. It was infuriating and intoxicating at the same time.
“I’m not expecting you to share all your deep, dark secrets or the inner-most workings of your soul.”
“You’re not?” I asked the question before I thought better of it, but now that the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to know his answer.
“Like you’d tell me if I asked.” He snort laughed and I almost let go of my grip on the headboard to lean closer to him. “No, Charlotte, your secrets are safe with me or from me. Your choice.”
