But I promised myself I’d hold back. I’d stay controlled and sweet. I needed to go slow with Kara. She deserved it. And once we got started down that path, getting nasty and wild, I didn’t know if I could stop. I doubted I could.
So instead, with a light tongue, I lapped and licked my way to her nipples. Then I brought my mouth down lightly to lick. She gasped, arching up into my hand. “Yes, oh, Declan!”
“Do you like that?” I asked, hot and thick, as I did it again.
“Oh my God, yes!” she cried out. I knew I should put a hand over her mouth to keep things quiet, but I couldn’t, not now, not when I loved every sound that escaped her lips.
I played with her that night until the sun threatened once again to rise. In the ghostly pale of early dawn, she shivered and quaked in my arms, gasping and panting and grinding against my thigh. I could tell she was wet, though I forced myself not to touch. It almost made me lose my mind, the sounds she made, the abandon with which she bucked against me. At first, she’d been shy, but as I kissed and sucked her breasts she grew more wanton. She snuck a leg up and around my thigh. Our hips up against each other, she ground her pussy into my hard, driving length, all through our clothes. Lots of barriers, but I could still feel her heat. I could tell how slippery wet she grew, the sensual smell of her, her molten core, begging me to draw near.
Instead, I kept my hands above the waist. There, I touched and stroked, palmed and licked. The feel of her, crazy and wild with desire beneath my hands. The sounds she made, moaning, panting out my name. I’d live on it, playing it back, remembering her exactly as she was at that moment. I knew Kara would stay with me long after she was nothing more than a memory. After it all ended, her ghost would haunt me even after my arms and hands were empty.
Now
I heard a strange noise when I walked into my penthouse. It was a noise I didn’t think I’d ever heard in there before, a noise that rarely made its way into my day-to-day life: humming. Cheerful, feminine humming.
It was coming from my office, definitely a first for that room. For a second I wondered if a new cleaning crew was at work that day, but they always came on weekday mornings when they knew I’d be out. Sunday afternoon, not a chance.
Then I noticed the flowers. They burst out on several surfaces throughout my apartment, in the kitchen, the living room, on top of the bar for God’s sake. And these weren’t elegant white calla lilies in a sleek black vase. These were a riot of color, a wildflower explosion with every hue in the rainbow represented and then some. I walked over to the nearest one on my kitchen island. The base looked old with unfinished wood and the thing had a handle and six compartments. In those compartments stood six vintage glass milk bottles. And out of those bottles sprung daises, dozens of daises, poking up and around in every direction.
Then the doorbell rang.
Kara came rushing out with a giddy laugh. “Oh, I didn’t even know you were here!” She brushed right past me to open the door and welcome in a delivery guy holding a large shopping bag. She thanked him profusely, taking the bag from him and sent him off with a tip.
I watched as she took her bag back to the bedroom. My bedroom. The flowers on the table next to the couch could not be pinker. Light pink, dark pink, bright pink, pale pink. What was happening here?
I hadn’t even put my briefcase down yet, or the black shopping bag I held. I’d stopped in a store myself that afternoon, taking an uncharacteristic break from work to make a few personal selections. It was a crime to have a body like Kara’s and not lace, strap and showcase it in scorchingly sexy lingerie. I was doing nothing more than being a law-abiding citizen when I picked up a few things for her, lacy bits I couldn’t wait to have her model for me, ideally in some stacked heels.
“Do you like it?” she asked, rushing at me with exuberance. She threw her arms around me and kissed me swiftly on the cheek. Then seeming to remember that wasn’t our routine, we really had no routine at all, she quickly pulled back. I instantly missed her warmth, her soft curves, her smell like vanilla and honey.
“What exactly have you been up to?” I asked, undoing the top button of my shirt and finally putting down my things.
“It was such a fun day, thank you so much. You’re going to love the baby gift.” She ran off to the bedroom, ostensibly to retrieve something to show me. I felt the tug of a smile pull at my mouth. I’d been in meetings most of the afternoon, phone calls and in-persons, getting information, calculating risks, making decisions. Typically, I’d come back to my place and do more of the same—an empire didn’t build itself, after all. But apparently today was going to be a little different.
“Feel how soft this is.” Kara pulled something out of a bag and held it to my cheek.
“What is this?” I looked at the blue thing she’d touched me with.
“A baby blanket. And wait ‘til you see this.” She held up some other sort of blue thing. Her eyes flashed with joy and I could instantly picture her at 18 again, filled with such energy and exuberance, like a colt galloping fast as it could just for the hell of it. She still had that light in her now, at 24, but this was the first time I’d seen it shine full on.
“Look!” She laughed with delight, holding up what seemed to be something else for a baby. “Can you imagine?” The smile at the edge of my mouth broke free. I honestly didn’t know what she was talking about, but her happiness was infectious.
“Thanks. Brett’s a good guy. I’m glad you got something nice for him and his wife.”
“I want to get them some champagne, too.”
“Spare no expense?” I couldn’t resist teasing.
Her face fell. “Declan, I’m really sorry if I spent too much money. I’ve never spent so much money in all my life. I don’t know what got into me.”
“Good.” I stepped closer, tipping a finger under her chin to tilt her head up. “I’m glad you did. I wanted you to.”
She looked up at me, hesitant. I traced her cheekbone with my finger and she shivered, her eyelids fluttering closed for a moment. I loved how she responded to me, as if every touch stroked her to the core. I continued to caress her face, bringing my finger down to her lips. Lightly, I drew the pad of my thumb across the lower edge of her mouth. Her lips parted slightly, opening for me.
I’d never met a more naturally sensual woman. I’d met plenty who tried, using every trick in the book to wax, tweeze and dye themselves into a mold: The Femme Fatale. Like pizza, it usually did the trick. Until you had the real thing, actually traveled to Rome and waite
d outside a restaurant in a cobblestone courtyard drinking chianti until they brought you out something so perfect, with such an unexpected blend of chewy and crispy and salty with a bit of sweet that supposedly came from their ovens but clearly had dropped straight down from paradise. It made everything you’d had before then taste like chalk.
I brought a hand to the small of Kara’s back and she leaned in to me, reaching a hand up to my shoulder and resting it there lightly as if she were still shy about touching me, still getting used to it but unable to stop herself nonetheless. Her hair felt like silk between my fingers, long, cascading, shimmering waves of it.
The doorbell rang. We stepped apart like kids whose parents had come home early.
“I’ll get that,” she mumbled, biting her lip.
I watched her move, the unstudied sway of her hips. Her rear, so perfectly round and lush and tight. I wanted a bite.
She opened the door to two more delivery boys bearing bags upon bags of what looked like…stuffed animals?
“Oh, perfect!” she exclaimed, telling them they could put them down near the couch. I acted more quickly this time, handing them a crisp couple of bills before she had the chance to tip them herself. I closed the door and turned to watch Kara.
Giggling, she started pulling out colorful things from the bags and putting them on my living room furniture. Pillows, I realized. Throw pillows, lots of them.
Seven went onto my couch, the long, black leather couch made in Italy that had set me back about $8,000. My designer had called it “minimal contemporary modern” or some such nonsense. Whatever the label, I liked it. Sleek, clean, uncomplicated.
Now it bursted with fruit flavor. One needlepoint throw pillow had an American flag on it. Another, a big red star. A few more with stars, another with stripes. I sensed a pattern.
“Feeling patriotic?” I managed, eyebrow arched as I watched her fuss over it all. Humming again, she put a big decorative pillow there, a small one here, then switched everything back up where they’d started.