Tempted Page 13

  “I thought Singapore didn’t have sex shops. I thought they were illegal.” How did my husband know about Singaporean sex laws?

  “In Singapore, yeah…but not in other places. There are always places to find it, if you want it.”

  “And you wanted.” James’s voice had grown hoarse.

  The night had grown downright cold, though beneath our blanket James and I were hot enough to start a fire. Alex didn’t seem to mind the chill. He’d buttoned his shirt up to the throat but seemed otherwise unaffected.

  “Who wouldn’t, man?” came Alex’s shadow-voiced answer. “Find a girl, find a boy. One of each. You’d find your houseboy there, Anne.”

  My inner thighs were trembling, my breath coming short and shallow as the sneaky seduction orchestrated by my husband’s hands did its work. It wasn’t exactly what he was doing, as the stimulation would likely have left me wanting under other circumstances. It was the sheer length of time he’d been at it.

  “Anne wants a houseboy? That’s news to me.” James didn’t sound like he was about to dissolve into orgasm at any moment. Then again, my occasional pressure on his cock was probably only enough to tease.

  “Yeah, she wants a houseboy in a thong to cook and clean for her.” Alex’s chuckle was low and naughty. “But, hell. Who wouldn’t?”

  “I never said…he had to wear a thong.” I shifted and put a hand over the one between my legs. James didn’t get the hint, didn’t stop what he was doing. A slow, inexorable press-press, release against my clit that had me biting my lip and wanting to moan.

  “She doesn’t need a houseboy. She’s got me.” James nuzzled the side of my neck. He nipped. I felt tongue. I closed my eyes.

  “You, my friend, don’t cook.”

  “You’re right.” James’s laughter buzzed in my ear. Press-press. Release. “But you do. And now she has you.”

  I was only paying half attention to their half-drunk conversation, focused too much on the building pleasure between my legs. My fingers gripped down on the arm of the lounger. I was timing each breath to coincide with the infinitesimal motion of James’s hand. In. Out. Press-press, release.

  I was going to come, hard. Inevitably. I couldn’t stop it, not without forcing away James’s hand and leaping to my feet to get away from him, and even then I’d reached the point where something as simple as the pull of my panties against my clit would finish me off.

  “She’s not listening.”

  I heard Alex’s chair scrape the deck and felt our chair shake a little as he pulled his feet off it. My eyes opened, wide. Startled. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, and the motion brought his face completely into the golden light shining from the kitchen.

  “She’s listening,” James said.

  And I came. Not fast, like lightning, but in slow, easy waves. Climax rolled over me in a tightening and trembling of muscles, in a stifled, hitching breath, in the flutter of my eyes as I fought not to give any outward sign of my orgasm. My eyes went wide, though, as my fingers dug into the arm of the chair and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out.

  We were looking into each other’s eyes, when I did it, Alex and I, and no sooner had the last spasm coursed through me than he leaned back in his chair, one bare foot resting on his denim-clad knee.

  “I know she was,” he said. “But I look like shit in a thong.”

  Warmth flooded and abandoned me, leaving behind a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. My illicit orgasm should’ve left me relaxed but had instead created greater tension. Silence hung between the three of us for what seemed too long for comfort.

  Then Alex stood. “Well, ladies, I’m off to bed. I need my beauty sleep.”

  I began to disentangle myself from the blanket and James’s arms, meaning to get up and bid our guest goodnight in the polite way. I hadn’t managed to get very far when Alex leaned over us both, one hand on each arm of the chair. I smelled him again, something like the bite of cedar with a hint of exotic flowers. Smoke and alcohol, too. His scent was a layering as complicated as the man himself seemed to be.

  Light from the window cut across his face, highlighting his eyes, which were large and round. I’d thought they were brown, but now I saw they were dark gray. He smiled, lopsided, weaving a little.

  “Good night,” Alex said. He brushed his lips against my cheek, then did the same to James without a pause, adding a pat to both our heads as he withdrew. “See you in the morning.”

  “Night,” I replied, my voice somewhat faint.

  I watched him as, holding the doorjamb for momentary balance, he went into the house. A minute later the lights in the kitchen went out, leaving us in darkness. James pulled me closer at once, his mouth seeking mine.

  “Baby, I’ve been waiting all night to do this.” He nibbled my lips and urged my mouth to open, sweeping his tongue inside.

  “James…” My protest was feeble, no more than a hand on his chest and a turn of my head to fend him off.

  His hand slid between my legs again. “I couldn’t stop touching you.”

  I looked at him. “You’re drunk.”

  That smile, that copy of his friend’s. James had worked hard on it, I could tell, but it was still something that didn’t belong to him. It was too hard for him. Rapacious.

  Yet I couldn’t deny what that smile did to me, how it made me feel. How seeing it, I’d know exactly what he was thinking about doing, and how much I always enjoyed what he did.

  James moved his hand a little. “You liked it, didn’t you?”

  I had. “That was impolite, at the very least.”

  He laughed, pulling me closer and kissing me again. I tasted beer. I turned my face again, slightly, when he attempted to capture my mouth once more. He satisfied himself with mouthing my jaw and neck.

  “But you liked it, Anne.”

  “I don’t know what to think about that,” I whispered with a glance at the house. The light in Alex’s room, which I would’ve been able to see from the deck, hadn’t gone on. “He’s your friend! It was…”

  “It was fucking hot,” he murmured against me. “Touching you like that, getting you off. Sort of like the time in the movie theater. Sort of like when I came over that weekend at school and your roommate wouldn’t leave.”

  “Yes, but that was…those were…” I couldn’t exactly think what I meant to say.

  “This was better,” James whispered with a little growl. He bit at my neck, gently, but still with a press of teeth that made me hiss. “My cock’s so hard I could lift bricks.”

  That was certainly true. He groaned a little when I touched him. When I slipped a hand inside his jeans, he muttered “fuck,” and leaned back against the lounger with an arch of hip that pushed his cock harder into my hand.

  “Suck it,” he whispered. “I’ve been thinking about you sucking my cock all night, Anne. Put it in your mouth.”

  I undid the button, then the zipper, slowly. I folded open the denim and freed his erection. It pulsed hot in my hand. James lifted his hips so I could pull down the jeans a little. When I pumped my curled fingers up and down his shaft, he moaned.

  “You want me to suck you?” I asked, quiet, mindful of the neighbors and our presumably sleeping houseguest. “You want me to put you in my mouth?”

  He liked to hear me say it. I liked to say it. During sex was the one time I never had to pretend, never had to be polite. Never had to bite my tongue against saying what I really thought and felt.

  “Yeah,” he moaned, carding his fingers through my hair. “Suck my cock the way you do. So good.”

  Normally the way he was slurring his words would have turned me off. I’d have put distance between us, real physical distance as well as mental, the way I always did around someone who’d overindulged in alcohol. Tonight, all the rules seemed to have changed. James wasn’t melancholy or belligerent. He wasn’t going to be driving and therefore taking his life and the lives of the world around him into his hands. Alex and J
ames were drinking. They were drunk. And though it normally would have settled my stomach firmly into my throat, tonight, somehow, it was different.

  Maybe because Alex was so charming with his stories. Or the way he got drunk but not sloppy, not spilling or stumbling. He drank like it was a skill, like bowling. Or golf. And James, who didn’t drink much and tended to get sloppy and silly when he did, seemed to take Alex’s lead. He wasn’t sloppy or silly, but apparently, he was horny.

  I made myself comfortable, the blanket around my shoulders and my body stretched out along the lounger. His prick might not have been able to lift bricks, but it was admirably erect. I traced the rim of the head with the tip of my tongue. I took him into my mouth inch by inch instead of all at once, accustoming myself to his girth.

  I’ve never found monstrous penises attractive. Bigger is not always better. Huge, vein-encircled members the size of a baby’s forearm, like the ones they show in porn films, always left me feeling half-horrified and wanting to clamp my legs closed. I’ve never found the idea of fucking a tree trunk appealing.

  James has a thick penis, shorter than some I’ve seen but beautifully proportioned. I can take him all the way to the back of my mouth without choking. Sucking James is a treat, a pleasure for both of us. I love the sounds he makes when I cover him with my mouth that first time.

  He made that noise then, a low half gasp mingled with a groan. The hand in my hair tangled tighter, not quite pushing me down but almost ready to.

  I’d spent hours with my mouth between his legs, sucking and licking. This was not the time for that. No teasing, no lingering. He’d been hard for hours as he rubbed me surreptitiously, getting me off in the presence of his friend. He was already pushing upward as I sucked him. Already close.

  I pulled the blanket over my head, shielding myself against the night. I made love to him with lips and tongue, with a hand stroking his shaft while I sucked the head of his cock. Even in the darkness I knew him. The shape and taste of him. The way he moved as his orgasm approached. Even in the dark I couldn’t really pretend I was sucking someone else’s cock.

  Could I?

  There’s no shame in fantasy. If imagining you’re in bed with your favorite movie star or rock singer helps make you come, who’s getting hurt? It only becomes a problem when the fantasy becomes the only way to find pleasure, not just one way to enhance it.

  I’d had my share of celebrity-inspired daydreams, but this time the face that filled my mind had large gray eyes and deep brown hair feathering over his ears. He had a lazy smile and smelled like sin. I wasn’t thinking about some unreachable fantasy. I was thinking about Alex.

  “So good,” James said.

  I thought of his smile, the one he’d stolen. My hand crept between my thighs, inside my panties, found hot slick flesh already satisfied once but far from sated. My fingertip settled without faltering on my clit. The hard nodule rolled easily, already wet.

  I thought of his smile. His scent. I thought of low-slung jeans. Bare feet. Bare chest.

  My body hummed with pleasure. My hand moved in time with my mouth. James moaned and thrust. My belly tightened, thighs trembled. Clit pulsed. My cunt was alive with humming, buzzing pleasure.

  I sucked and licked and stroked. I was close. He was close. The world faded away, nothing but blackness under the blanket, nothing but the smell of sex, the sound of sex, the taste of it.

  His smile. His laugh, low and somehow sly. The burning wink of a cigarette in the dark.

  James let out a hoarse cry and thrust inside my mouth. I swallowed him, his taste flooding me. I came for the second time that night, sharp and hard, something inside me snapping. The chair squeaked as we shuddered together.

  Eyes closed, I rested my cheek against James’s thigh. He pulled away the blanket and fresh air bathed my face. His hand stroked softly down my hair.

  “Holy shit,” he murmured, slurring a little. “I wanted that so much. You don’t know how much.”

  I waited a moment or two more before we got up and folded the blanket and took ourselves inside to bed. I paused outside the closed door to the guest bedroom, James already having stumbled down the hall and into ours.

  I’d been thinking of Alex when I came, a thought I might have felt guilty about, but for one thing—I thought James might have been thinking about him, too.

  Morning came way too early, and I hadn’t even been drinking. Despite that, James was up and out of bed at his usual time. I woke to the sound of the shower running and a voice singing.

  James was…singing? I propped myself on one elbow to listen. He was rocking out to something by…Duran Duran? And not early-90s-comeback-tour double Duran, but classics from the 80s. He was singing something about blue silver when I pulled the covers back over my head in protest and tried to go back to sleep.

  It was useless. In the light of morning, albeit the barely glimmering light of dawn, the night before seemed more like something I’d dreamed than a real event. I waited to feel embarrassed. Or guilty. What was keeping me on edge wasn’t my flirtation with Alex, because after all, who could’ve blamed me for reacting to his practiced seduction? No, what had my eyes popped open wide despite my intense desire to return to slumber was, in the end, James.

  James singing Duran Duran. James drinking. James insisting on a frantic blow job.

  “Morning.” Still damp from his shower, he slid into bed next to me for a kiss. “How’d you sleep?”

  “Fine.” I wriggled to turn on the pillow and look at him. “You?”

  “Like a rock.” He grinned and kissed me again, then hopped out of bed to dress.

  I watched him. “You feel all right today?”

  He glanced over his shoulder as he slid into jeans and a T-shirt. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Because you had a lot to drink last night. You both did.”

  Grabbing up his socks, James sat on the edge of the bed to put them on. “Alex can hold his booze, babe. And I can, too. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not worried about it.” I got on my knees behind him to put my arms around his neck and kiss his cheek.

  He patted my arm and turned his face to kiss me properly. “I haven’t seen him in a long time, Anne. We’re just having fun. It’s fun having him here.”

  I didn’t agree or disagree. James got up and swiped back his wet hair with one hand as he put on a baseball cap with the other. He grabbed up his leather belt and slid it through the belt loops, buckling it with swift fingers. He put his cell phone into the belt clip and his wallet in his back pocket. His boots, probably caked with dirt from the construction site, would be by the side door.

  “Gotta run,” he said. “Love you. Have a good time today.”

  I must’ve looked perplexed because he grinned. “With Alex. On second thought, Anne, don’t have too good of a time. Don’t get into trouble.”

  I rolled my eyes. “As if.”

  He laughed. “If I come home and he’s wearing a thong—”

  I threw a pillow at him. “Shut up!”

  James caught the pillow and tossed it back. “See ya.”

  “Have a good day.” I remembered something. “Oh… James, tomorrow I’m having dinner with my sisters, remember? To go over plans for the party.”

  He shrugged as he slid his arms into a windbreaker. “Okay. We’ll go out, maybe. Hit the sports bar for wings or something. Don’t worry, honey, we’re big boys. We’ll keep ourselves occupied.”

  Why did that thought give me another twinge of uncertainty? “I know you will. Just…”

  He paused and turned in the doorway. “Hmm?”

  “Be careful,” I said, the admonition failing to convey what I really meant.

  “Always.” With a wink, he was gone.

  I waited until the rumbling sound of his truck faded away before I got out of bed to face the day. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with Alex this morning, but I was one hundred percent certain it did not involve a thong.

  As i
t turned out, I didn’t have to do anything with him. I spent the morning on the computer, researching local caterers and pit roast beef suppliers. I love the Internet. Once I’d seen a bumper sticker that said The Internet: it’s not just for porn, anymore. I totally agreed.

  I also loved being in a house so quiet I forgot I wasn’t alone. I made coffee, browsed the Net, read my e-mail, chatted for a few minutes with a school friend who lived so far away I never saw her but with whom I talked almost daily. I updated my résumé and thought about adding it to a job search site, but I’d only managed to begin setting up my login account with one of them when the doorbell rang.

  The morning had become afternoon to my astonishment as I looked at the clock. I wasn’t expecting anyone and was doubly surprised to find my sister Claire on the doorstep. Today she wore black capri-length pants with a matching black top dotted with a pattern of tiny skulls, and funky black-and-red striped shoes. She’d tucked her hair under a brimless red cap. She looked paler than usual, but I figured she’d overdone it on the pale foundation.

  “Hiya,” she said, pushing past me and heading for the kitchen without waiting for me to say a word. “I’m starving.”

  I followed her. “You know how to open the fridge. Help yourself.”

  She did, grabbing a container of cubed melon and then a fork. She ate a few bites, quickly, and I swore I saw a faint blush of color return to her face.

  “Sit.” I pointed at the table. “Coffee?”

  “I’ll have water.”

  I’d already been pouring her a cup and now looked up. “No coffee?”

  Claire made a face. “You need a hearing aid or what?”

  “Fine, water.” I shrugged. “Help yourself.”

  She did that, too, then sat across from me with a sigh. She’d also found a box of crackers that had to be stale, but she ate them anyway.

  “I thought we were all meeting tomorrow at six,” I said.

  “We are.” She licked crumbs from her lip and drank some water with a sigh.

  “So…?” I raised a brow.

  “So nothing.” Claire shrugged. “I needed to get out of the house. Dad’s got some sort of use-it-or-lose-it vacation time, so he’s been hanging around.”