“Christ, you’re a dream,” he says, kissing the insides of my still-trembling thighs. “So responsive. I want to go down on you all day, make you come until you can’t see straight.”
As if to underscore his words, he gives my clit a dreamy French kiss. I’m still so sensitive from my climax that I gasp at even the gentlest contact.
“Maybe you’re just really good at giving head,” I breathe. “How are you still single, exactly?”
His gaze remains locked on mine for a long moment. “Maybe I’ve been waiting for you.”
I lick my suddenly dry lips. My heart refuses to slow down, even though my orgasm has passed. That’s the kind of sentiment that sends this barreling away from the discreet, one-time, no-strings thing it has to be, and neither of us can have that.
In an effort to shift the atmosphere, I pull him up for an open-mouthed kiss, tasting myself on his tongue. I snake a hand down and grasp his cock, giving it a long stroke, and he shudders against me.
“I’m pretty competitive,” I say, pushing him onto his back and inching down his body. “Can’t let you show me up.”
“Ana,” he says, voice hoarse as he twigs my intention, “it’s not a compet—”
I give his head a gentle lick, and his breath leaves him in a short burst, his hands fisting in the tousled sheets. When I close my lips around the smooth dome, his hips move in a slow roll that rivals a Magic Mike dancer, and it’s such a turn-on that I feel my own want building yet again.
After the number of orgasms he’s given me in the last nine hours, I’m amazed at how quickly I rev. He’s a drug, addicting me, stringing me out.
The thought should cause warning bells to go off, but at the moment my brain seems only willing to process sensations, which are numerous and varied and overwhelming. The taste of him, the feeling of power and pride as he takes his pleasure from my mouth, his voice rasping a litany of filth and praise as his eyes consume me with such rapture I have to look away. His body tightens and hewarns me that he’s close, tells me to stop, presumably so he doesn’t finish in my mouth, but I only milk him harder. The muscles of his abdomen clench as he growls glorious nonsense about my eyes, my mouth, my legs, and my ass, his climax ripping through him so fiercely that I know this image will replay in my mind all day—or much longer, if I’m honest.
He’s still rippling with tremors when he drags me to him for a kiss so deep, so searching, that I forget myself, twining my arms around his neck and giving myself over to the uproar behind my sternum. A sensation both delightful and torturous, suggesting that, despite my best intentions, this may not be as easy to give up as I thought.
Decked out in citrus colors,San Fran Live’s brightly lit studio teems with crew members rushing this way and that. A producer named Brit greets us as we arrive and leads us to a green room offering various craft service options. Shanthi beelines for the pastries as Brit takes me through the run of show, explaining when I’ll be called out to the sound stage for my segment. She praises me for knowing the basics of on-camera interviews, calling me an “old hand”—a term I might have preferred she edit—and offers to answer any questions I may have. Being anold hand,I don’t.
There’s a screen mounted to the wall on which we can watch the show before my segment is scheduled to film. I try to focus on the content of the interviews with a famous tennis player, a dog trainer to the stars, and a nutritionist launching her own line of premade smoothies-in-a-jar, knowing that viewers get a slight dopamine hit when guests mention something from an earlier segment in their interview. And I want to make as strong an impression as possible. I’ve done lots of TV spots before, but given our meeting with Craig Waters is in just a couple of days, this might be a clipthat his people would weigh more heavily in their considerations of whether or not I’m fit to host my own show.
But focusing is not exactly my forte this morning. You’d think I’d be loose as a goose after last night. And this morning. My muscles are thrumming with the memory of Ryan’s body, though, the prowess with which he wields it, and my mind is wrestling with the fact that I ever could have considered him straitlaced. Having him in such close proximity and tamping down the post-carnal vibe between us in the presence of Maral and Shanthi is only winding me tighter.
Ryan had returned to his room by the time Mar showed up at my door a couple of hours ago. It was a mercy. I was going to tell her about what happened between us, of course, but I’d preferred to avoid bashful greetings and awkward goodbyes if she happened upon us. There had been nothing awkward about the way Ryan said goodbye, as if he wasn’t going to see me an hour later when theSan Fran Livecar came to pick us up. Nothing awkward about the deep, slow, winding kiss that shot sparks down my spine, causing me to arch against him and draw a rumbling groan from his chest.
We couldn’t have donethatin front of Maral.
For her part, she wasn’t so much surprised when I told her as she was smug: “The way you two have been devouring each other with your eyes, it was bound to happen sooner or later.” But she followed it with an appraising look and asked, “How do you feel?”
I beamed, post-orgasm glow probably emanating from my pores. “Like a million fucks.”
She rolled her eyes. “But I mean, you know. The whole working-together thing.”
“Fine,” I said. “It was just one time.”
“Are you sure?” Her tone seemed to be hedging something else—a different question.
“Well, it was multiple times, but one night. And morning.”
Okay, maybe I wasn’t fully done with Ryan. How could I be, given what he was capable of? What was the harm in continuing this one-night thing for the duration of this trip? Make it a one-trip thing. It made logical sense that until we got back to New York, we were “off campus,” so to speak. Who cared if we did it once or a few times? What happens on book tour stays on book tour. Until we were back home and back to real life, we could enjoy this discreet physical diversion as we pleased.
I broached this with Maral. We were side by side in my bathroom, applying our makeup, and her reflection stared at me thoughtfully.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing,” she said, putting her liquid eyeliner back in her toiletry case.
“Do you think it’s a bad idea?” I asked. I genuinely wanted to know what she thought. It may be my modus operandi to steamroll ahead with whatever I want to do, but Maral is an insightful genius and I always want to know what she thinks.
“On the contrary,” she said. “He’s nice and seems to care about you. I think a relationship with him would be good for you.”
Whoa.“That’s not—Relationshipis a stretch. You know I’m not interested in anything more than a limited-time sexathon.”
