Lust Page 3

I twitch a little under his gaze, eager for him to start feasting on me. My eyes are drawn to his sharp hip bones, tapered waist, jutting cock. I’m thinking that when he’s done with me I’ll dribble nectar all over his dick and suck it off.

  Finally he moves. He sinks onto the bed next to me and leans down to delicately pick up a chunk of melon from my breastbone with his teeth. He chews and swallows then licks the puddle of juice from my chest. My heart pounds under his tongue and my chest heaves. The smell of ripe fruit is as thick in the air as if we were lying in a garden.

  He moves down to my breasts where he has smeared handfuls of berry pulp. He laps the purple and red mounds until there is only a slight lavender stain left behind. My breathing grows shallower as he sucks and nibbles my tits. My nipples ache with desire and so does my crotch.

  Tom moves down between my breasts, eating bites of peach and melon from my quivering stomach. The touch of his mouth on my flesh is sending waves of lust throughout my body. The effort of holding still, maintaining a flat surface, is getting more difficult. I want to squirm and writhe under that softly moving mouth.

  By the time he reaches my crotch, I’m ready to scream. The sticky, slippery sensation of juice coating my body makes me feel like some pagan offering. My eyes drift closed as his nibbling, licking mouth finally delves between my thighs. I part my legs farther to encourage him and he laps over my pussy, devouring the berries he has mashed there.

  When he parts the folds to explore inside, I’m so excited that I almost come the moment his tongue finally reaches and bathes my clit. My hips arch off the bed and I moan. He moans too, loving my body’s eager response to his touch.

  The gentle, insistent stroking of his tongue stirs me deep inside. There is a mounting pressure, a hard knot that swells and swells like ripening fruit until it bursts into rich, juicy plumpness. I am wet and slippery inside and out and gasping for air like a swimmer surfacing.

  “More,” I beg. “Just a little more. I’m almost there.”

  He gives it to me, swirling his tongue around my clit like he’s sucking up the last drops of berry syrup from his morning pancakes.

  Sunlight explodes behind my closed eyelids. The cosmos flashes past and the rich abundance of earth fills my senses. I hear myself crying out and it sounds far away. I am someplace…other.

  When I come down from my high, breathing hard, sweat cooling in the chill air, Tom is already crawling up my body. He pauses here and there on the way to eat a missed piece of peach or morsel of melon. Finally he faces me, supported above me on those phenomenal biceps. “You taste so good,” he murmurs.

  I melt. “Your tongue is amazing,” I reply.

  Wrapping my arms around his back, I pull him against my sticky body. I feel his rigid cock pressing against my cunt. Despite all he’s eaten, Tom’s eyes still have a hungry look. I suggest a condom and he quickly takes care of that detail, then he’s right back between my legs begging admittance. I tilt my hips up and welcome him inside.

  He groans as he thrusts deep. I love a noisy lover and Tom is full of words. “You’re so hot. Your pussy’s so wet.” He gives a commentary of his experience as he fills me again and again. His words spill over me and spur me to a new level of lust. It’s satisfying to be told you’re sexy and beautiful and that he’s “never felt anything like this before,” even if you have your doubts about the last one. The novelty of the picnic on my body coupled with the extreme hotness of the man plunging into me has me fully aroused. I feel the swirling forces of orgasm gathering once again.

  As our skin slaps together, belly to belly, groin to groin, we stick a little. I’m a sugar-coated treat. I scratch my nails down his back and wrap my legs around his hips, pulling him in even deeper.

  He pants and blows into my neck as he thrusts faster. His words are gone now, replaced by animal grunting that is just as sexy.

  I clench my inner muscles tight around his stabbing shaft, intent on feeling him inside my body. I am so wet that he slides slickly in and out. It reminds me of the sensation of the peach juice trickling down my skin.

  My excitement mounts when his speed and guttural groans increase. Finally he cries out and bites my shoulder as he comes.

  I scream at the pain and come, hard.

  Our bodies keep thrusting toward each other from momentum, slowly decelerating into a gentle pulsing. We’re both breathing hard and sweating like the room is ninety degrees instead of a cool seventy-two.

  He collapses on top of me, letting me bear his weight. It is welcome and warm.

  I turn my head to kiss the soft, dark hair that brushes my cheek. Part of me is in shock, watching all of this like an impartial observer. The gorgeous man, the crazy sex; this was certainly not how I expected my day to turn out.

  After a bit we get up and shower together, taking our time soaping away the stickiness on every inch of each other’s bodies. By the time we emerge from the bathroom, steam has clouded the motel room as well. We lie on the bed wrapped in towels. Tom orders pizza and we eat it while we watch “Green Acres” on TV Land.

  Then I get us both sticky again when I cut open another peach and suck the juice off Tom’s cock. The room smells like a summer orchard.

  Much later he drops me off at the stand and thanks me for the amazing day. He’s a gentleman and waits while I cash out the register, put the money in the bank pouch, then get my car started.

  I wave.

  He waves.

  We drive off in opposite directions.

  The rest of the summer I find myself watching “Wild Hearts” despite the fact that it’s a crappy show. I’m sucked in. I have to find out if Bobby ends up with adorable Mara or that hateful, backstabbing, two-faced Angelique. When Tom Stander takes his shirt off for a lovemaking scene, I remember how his skin felt under my hands.

  Fall begins and so do my classes. But one crisp, cool fall Saturday I’m working at the farm market, sorting Jonathan apples by size into peck bags. This is the time of year I enjoy working here. The scent of apples is sharp and tangy and mixes with the warm, yeasty aroma of fresh-made doughnuts. Squash, gourds and pumpkins lie in colorful piles and jugs of apple cider are available for sale in the cooler.

  A car pulls up in front of the stand. I’m adding red and green apples to the top of a bag and don’t really pay attention. The car door slams and a moment later someone clears his throat behind me.

  “Are those ripe yet?”

  I grin and turn slowly around, balancing an apple on my palm. “Apples aren’t like summer fruit. You don’t pick them until they’re completely ripe or they’ll be sour. Have a taste.”

  Tom accepts the fruit from my hand and crunches into it. “Mm, tart.”

  “Apples also don’t make the juice you get with peaches and melons,” I warn him. “But we sell apple cider, which is very sticky, and we have hot, soft, squishy, sweet doughnuts.” I emphasize every adjective.

  He laughs and almost chokes on his apple. “Sounds delicious.”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “Reshoots.” He glances around. “Of course all the leaves are a different color now so I don’t know how that’s supposed to work.” He shakes his head then adds, “I hoped you’d still be here.”

  “Appearing every weekend through fall.”

  “Are you almost done working today?”

  I glance at my watch. “I’ve got another four hours.”

  “Hm.” He expresses disappointment, blowing out an annoyed breath. “Well…how much will it cost me to buy everything in the stand?”

  I laugh as I turn the sign in front of the stand from OPEN to CLOSED.

  SIXTH SENSE

  Teresa Noelle Roberts

  A psychic advisor?” I shook my head. “Why doesn’t he just call himself a con man and have done with it?”

  “You must think my mother’s an idiot.” My client smiled the utter minimum necessary to get the point across, as if to diminish the risk of wrinkles. “And she is pretty naïve. She�
�s always been sheltered, first by her parents, then by Dad. She lives in a prettier world than the one the rest of us see, and the lawyers and the accountant keep her from doing anything too dumb.” She gave a graceful shrug. Even in distress, Melissa Demos was graceful. She seemed the kind of woman who had spent so much time honing her beautiful gestures that she could keep them up now without thinking about it. “Spending thousands of dollars on the rose garden or making grants to starving artists who between you and me deserve to be starving—that’s eccentric, but harmless. Charming, even. But I’m not going to let her marry a so-called psychic advisor half her age who’s obviously in it for the money.”

  Takes one to know one. Melissa Demos stood to inherit a considerable fortune when her mother died, but what she had now was good looks and a modest trust fund—modest compared to the luxury in which she’d been raised, at least. I’d done a bit of research when she called to make the appointment, since I usually don’t get clients from her elegant neighborhood. The number of pictures of her at society parties on the arms of various wealthy executives led me to conclude that her career goal was “trophy wife.” I was surprised she was still on the market. She was knock-your-clothes-off gorgeous: wavy dark hair, huge green eyes and the best body youth, good genes and money could combine to produce. Maybe blondes were more fashionable? Or maybe I wasn’t the only one who found something a little off-putting about her? I couldn’t put a finger on what bothered me. It was possible I was just being catty about someone who had the effrontery to be ten years my junior, beautiful and an heiress.

  She interrupted my musings. “So, can you do this?”

  “Find out if, as we suspect, Max Shaw is a fraud who makes a habit of getting between lonely older ladies and their money? If it’s true, I can get the evidence.”

  After the contractual details were complete and I pocketed my retainer check, I offered my hand. She shook it perhaps a little too fervently. “Thank you, Carla,” she said, equally fervently. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  Maybe that was why she made me uncomfortable, I thought. She was just this side of too much, from her perfect makeup to the handshake. The surface was charming, but seemed a bit contrived to me.

  Surface charm was also not lacking in Melissa’s potential step-father. I studied the picture she’d left me. For some reason I’d expected the psychic advisor to be exotic-looking and effete. Instead, he was fair-haired and handsome in a rugged, outdoorsy way that appealed to me, with broad shoulders, tight hips and a killer smile that, in this picture at least, appeared sincere. Then again, he was standing in the middle of the Taj Mahal of rose gardens and probably smiling at the thought of how much money he could get from the Demos vaults before Mama Demos realized she was being duped.

  He looked tall, although it was hard to tell, since he was alone in the picture and I wasn’t sure how tall five-hundred-dollar rose bushes are. And young enough that I could see why Melissa Demos was concerned—older than she was, but certainly younger than her mom. Around my age, in fact.

  I was going to be keeping tabs on this man. Poking into various facets of his life. Trying to prove he was malicious and sleazy at best and criminal at worst.

  Give me an ugly suspect anytime. I don’t like investigating someone I’d rather be dating. You find out the bad things about a guy soon enough—I’d rather have some fun with him before getting disillusioned.

  I tracked down a few things following paper and online trails. Max Shaw seemed to be his real name and he actually was a psychic advisor. By that, I mean he had been calling himself one for several years before he met Mrs. Demos, and had a website and a business that advertised in some of the New Age rags. He’d even been on a couple of local talk shows, doing the whole “I can read your deepest wishes” routine. It seemed as legitimate as something so flaky could be. There are outright con artists, and then there are those who really believe what they’re doing, and on the surface he seemed the latter.

  A little more research led me to some of his clients. So far, nothing backed up Melissa’s fears. I didn’t come across anyone who’d had her life savings sucked away—or who even had enough life savings to be worth the effort. None of them even hinted that he’d taken money from them, except relatively modest fees for readings, but some of them got flustered at the sound of his name. Curiously, or maybe not, they were always the good-looking ones, not the little old ladies, who just said what a charming young man he was, and how good his readings were.

  It was Rose Perez who provided the missing link. “Client? That was how I met him: going to the psychic reader on a girls’ night out. But what I really am to him is an ex-lover. Or maybe I should say ex-slave.”

  She stared at me with hard dark eyes, challenging me to judge her.

  Rose was the business brains behind a successful Caribbean-fusion restaurant. On the wall behind her, I could see her framed Wharton MBA. Even at this brief meeting, the words that came to mind to describe her were smart and tough. “You don’t seem the type,” I said cautiously. I’d learned what little I knew of the whole S&M thing from reading trashy novels. I’d bet most of it was as wrong as what you learn about private detectives from mysteries.

  “I never knew I was until I met Max,” Rose said. “He saw a side of me that I never even knew was there.” Her expression softened. “We didn’t last—it was all about the sex—but I’ll always be grateful to him. If it hadn’t been for him, I never would have… Well, let’s just say my life would be a lot duller.” For the first time I wondered about the delicate choker she was wearing. A collar? I’d always envisioned something made of leather and steel, but I guess you couldn’t wear that with a smart business suit.

  Rose didn’t add any other bombshells to the Max Shaw story. She hadn’t spent any money on him, other than the cost of the initial reading and a few special dinners out, and he’d never asked for it. He seemed sincere about the psychic business, and good at it, but it didn’t seem like they’d talked much about it.

  I left the office shaking my head. Who knew that someone like Rose would like being on the receiving end of the whips and chains and serve-me-you-slut thing? Well, whatever makes you happy, I told myself.

  It certainly made me more curious to meet Max Shaw. If he could seduce someone as smart as Rose Perez, I could see how he’d be able to charm the pants—literally—off a lonely, naïve older woman with more money than sense.

  When I found myself checking out S&M websites that night, I told myself it was research. At first it was, but I have to admit my curiosity grew to be more than professional. There were plenty of lurid images, but from some of the more factual sites I could see it wasn’t about abuse, except in edgy fantasies; it was more about strong sensation and control.

  Strong sensation I could appreciate. I’d always enjoyed the kind of rough-and-tumble sex where scratches, bite marks and accidental bruises were part of the game, and it wasn’t a stretch to see that spanking and slapping might be fun. Maybe even whipping, although that conjured up some scary Mutiny on the Bounty images. I wasn’t about to give up control to any man, though.

  But the more I read, the more I thought about it, the more taking control sounded hot.

  And the more I thought about it—the more my musings turned into full-blown fantasies—the more I found myself picturing a man falling prey to my not-so-tender mercies. A man who looked a lot like Max Shaw, to be specific. I’ve always had a thing for the tall, fair, outdoorsy type, and it added a fillip to the fantasy to think about inflicting my will on a man who could turn a bright woman like Rose Perez into his slave.

  Max made it ridiculously easy to talk with him. Leaching off Mrs. Demos or not, he still had a psychic reading business in one of the artsy neighborhoods near the university, so I set up an appointment with him.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect from a psychic’s office—would it be like a gypsy fortune-teller’s den in a movie or more like a doctor’s office? As it turned out, it looked like a home office decorated
by someone with New Age leanings: a desk covered with paper, some worn but comfortable-looking chairs, a lot of funky decorations with a vaguely ethnic flavor, a poster of Glastonbury Tor. There wasn’t a receptionist or anything; apparently he just trusted that people would show up at the right time for their appointments.

  I didn’t even manage to take a seat before I blew it. I’d not spoken more than a few sentences before Max shook his head at me in disgust. “You’re not even doing a good job of pretending to be interested in my services, Carla. You’re asking the wrong questions. And you can’t hide your skepticism.” His voice was rich and seductive even with the hint of anger in it. He had stood up and moved around the desk while we were talking and now he was uncomfortably close to me, close enough that I could smell his cologne—something that hinted of leather and green herbs, light but noticeable.

  “Okay, you caught me. I’m pretty skeptical about the whole thing, but I’m curious too.” I tried to look nonchalant. Usually I was good at the looking-nonchalant bit, but I didn’t think he was buying it. “One of my friends told me you’d given her some amazing insights. Maybe you remember her—Rose Perez.”

  “I remember her,” he said calmly. “I’m glad she found our sessions valuable.” I looked for any one of the telltale signs I’d expect from someone who’d just had an ex-slave’s name dropped during what was supposed to be a business discussion. He didn’t show any of them. The guy was good.

  “So I was wondering if…”

  Max moved even closer. This time I backed up. He was a lot bigger than I was, but that wasn’t the point. He was exuding a different flavor of menace, all pheromones and contained power. “You were wondering,” he drawled. “I’m sure you were. Isn’t that what private detectives are paid to do, to wonder and ponder and ask questions?” I wanted to ask him how he knew, but I didn’t have a chance. “But I think more than your job led you here, if you’ve talked to Rose.”