First-Time Caller

Chapter 27

L ucie watches me carefully, her fingers tracing light patterns at the base of my skull. It’s distracting, but not as distracting as the words that just came out of her mouth.

“If I don’t mind,” I repeat.

“Yes.” Her other hand cups the side of my face, fingers spread wide against my jaw. “That’s what I would like.”

“Yeah, I don’t mind.” I clear my throat and then clear it again. “Okay.”

Her eyebrows quirk up. “Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay. Good.” Maybe I’ll be able to string together a proper sentence in a few minutes, but I certainly can’t right now. “Let’s—I can do that.”

“Yeah?”

I nod and shift the hand I have on her back until my palm is pressed tight to the middle of her spine. “Yeah. Come here.”

She laughs as I shift her until she’s balanced in my lap, her thighs at my hips and her arms draped over my shoulders. It’s almost exactly the same way we were in the closet, except there’s no one to interrupt us this time and I can see the way her mouth drops open when she feels how I’m already half-hard beneath her.

I lean up and suck roughly at her bottom lip. She makes a groaning sound that settles somewhere in the pit of my stomach, and I tilt my head so I can kiss her properly.

She melts over my lap, her body loose and relaxed as our mouths work together, her knees tipping wider until we’re tucked together from hip to chest. I still can’t believe I get to touch her like this. That she wants it. I slip one hand in the back pocket of her jeans to palm her ass and use the other to cup her face, pressing my thumb to her chin so I can drag her mouth open against mine.

I can feel myself getting lost. In the wet heat of her mouth and the smooth roll of her hips against mine. I flex my fingers against her ass and guide her against me, doing my best to work a series of marks along her neck. I hope the next time she slips into her coveralls at the shop, my bruise is right above her collar. I hope she sees it every time she looks in the mirror. I hope other people see it. I’m possessive of this woman that I don’t get to keep.

Two hands fist in my hair. “Aiden,” she breathes. “What do you want?”

I laugh against her skin.

“When it comes to you, Lucie”—I suck at the dip between her collarbones—”there’s not much I don’t want.”

She tugs at my hair some more and I finally relent, dropping my head against my cushionless couch to watch her face. She traces her thumbs over my cheekbones, across my jaw, and down my neck. Her fingers dance up and down my skin and her eyes follow.

For the first time, I entertain the possibility that Lucie might want me as much as I want her.

Ridiculous as it sounds.

“I don’t want it to be just about me.” She rocks her hips over me and her eyelashes flutter. I reach up with one hand and untangle the tie she has in her hair, dark brown waves cascading around her shoulders. She smiles at me and rocks her hips again. “I want you to take what you need too.”

Take.

That word has every muscle in my body tightening. I certainly want to take where Lucie is concerned. I soften my hands from where they’re clenched in her hair and curl my hands around her ribs instead, telling myself to calm down. But breathing consistently in and out feels like a problem and my whole body feels like it’s vibrating. Like I’m still in the cab of the tow truck, engine rumbling beneath me until I can feel it in my teeth. Take, take, take.

“Kiss me again,” I demand, rougher than I’d like. Maybe if she’s the one in control, I can loop my hands around some of the urgency making me tremble beneath her. I hold myself still as she drops her mouth to mine, her hair a dark curtain around our faces. I try to cut the fierce ache burning through my chest in fractions, but then she licks her way into my mouth and another strand of my control snaps under the pressure.

“Please,” she whispers, somewhere against my throat. I have to suck in a lungful of air through my teeth. “I want—”

“I want it too,” I tell her, finally giving in to the relentless pull in the middle of my chest and grabbing a fistful of her hair. I angle her head back, lick a hot stripe up her throat, and suck at her earlobe. She wiggles in my lap and I push up with my hips.

“The other night, when we were in the closet, you were . . .” She shifts her hips again and I groan out a sound that would be embarrassing if I still possessed the capacity to feel that particular emotion. “It’s never been like that for me.”

“Like what?” I grip her hips and tip her backward until she’s splayed out across the cushions on my floor, both of her arms above her head. She stretches her body like a cat and my mouth goes dry.

“Desperate,” she says, a hiccup of a gasp. “Needy. You touched me like you didn’t care what I thought and I—I liked it.”

I groan. In that closet, I was barely holding myself together. I was rougher with her than I should have been. “Don’t tell me that.”

“What?”

“Don’t tell me you liked it when I bossed you around.”

“You did say you were bossy.” Her laugh is breathless and I trace the waistband of her jeans until my thumb finds the small metal button. I flick it open and get a glimpse of gray cotton. If she wants me to be bossy, I can do that. I can be anything she wants me to be.

“Take off your pants,” I tell her, slipping my hand down the front of her pants and tracing the tiny triangle of material. I can feel how hot she is through the thin material. How wet. I fist my other hand in the waistband and tug, impatience roaring through me. “Lift your hips, Lucie.”

She obeys without another word, helping me shimmy the material down her long legs. She’s all smooth, pale skin, a bruise on her knee that I drop a quick kiss to before crawling between her thighs.

“Wider,” I rasp, tapping at her bare hip. I can’t stop looking at the cut of material across her bare skin. The tiny damp spot at the front. “Make room for me.”

She tips her knees wider and I drop a kiss to her belly button in reward. She sucks in a sharp breath and I slip my thumbs beneath the thin straps at her hips.

“I want you to watch me, yeah?” I tug her underwear down until it’s dangling off one knee, just out of the way enough for me to get where I want. I’m too impatient to arrange her any other way. “Watch me make you come.”

Her teeth clamp down on her bottom lip and she gives me a nod, fingers twisting through her hair. I want those hands in mine instead, tugging me the way she likes, guiding me, but there’s time for that. With this, I can be patient.

I like it better when I am.

She makes a soft sound when I press a kiss to the inside of her thigh. Another when I drop my mouth to her cunt and lick a hot stripe against her. I tangle my fingers in the material of her underwear and yank her thigh wider, a groan in the back of my throat when her taste explodes across my tongue. She tastes so fucking good. I might stay here all night. See how many times I can make her come with my mouth and fingers. Figure out every way she likes it. Burn myself into her the way she’s burned into me. I might not be good at the other stuff, but I can be good at this.

My head dips as I kiss her again, kissing her clit like I would her mouth, long, slow licks that have her legs shaking on either side of my ears. She makes another bitten-off sound and when I glance up her body, her shirt is gone, tossed off to the other side of the room with the sheets and her pants. She’s wearing a sturdy, utilitarian-type bra, but I can see the hard points of her nipples through the material. The swell of her tits over the top.

“Fuck,” I mumble, reaching down and adjusting myself in my jeans, imagining what we must look like in the middle of my living room floor. Lucie spread out across my couch cushions in just her bra. Me, fully clothed with my mouth working between her legs.

“Touch yourself,” I tell her. “Let me watch while I lick you.”

Her groan is wild and loud this time, her hands immediately rushing to obey. I expect her to touch herself over the material, but she slips her hands beneath the band instead, her fingers pinching at her nipples beneath the cotton. Her breath explodes out of her in a rush.

“Aiden,” she whines.

“That’s right.” I press my mouth against her again, messier this time. Rougher. Her hips roll into me and I let her set the pace while I work at her with my tongue. I let her take what she needs from me, grinding my hips down into the cushions in a rhythm to match, aching to find relief. Next time, I want her above me. Knees on either side of my head. Pressing me down into the cushions while she rides my face. Or maybe bent over the side of the couch. My hands holding her wide, eating her from behind.

She comes with a groan and I chase her through it, not letting her close her legs, urging them open again, pressing her down in the cushions while I wring every ounce of pleasure from her. A broken sob falls out of her mouth as her orgasm twists into something sharper, heavier, the back of her hand pressed over her eyes, agonized delight etched in the lines of her face.

I press one last gentle kiss to her clit when her tremors ease, then press up on my knees, staring down at her.

Her bra is pushed up above her bare tits, her hair is wild, and her eyes are shining. She’s flushed, chest heaving.

I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted anyone this much.

I open my belt buckle, slipping the leather through the loops. “I had to touch myself after you left the closet. Did you know that?”

She shakes her head, watching me through heavy eyes. “I didn’t—I didn’t know that,” she breathes. “Did you—”

“I fucked my fist and thought about doing exactly what I’m doing right now.” I press my palm to her belly and spread my fingers wide, my thumb dipping to the hollow between her thighs. She’s so wet, I have to clench my teeth. Fuck , this woman. “I stood in that closet with my hand around my cock and thought about what would have happened if I slipped my hand in your pants like I wanted to. How much you would have let me get away with. I destroyed a fundraising T-shirt. Had to bury it in the bathroom trash can beneath sixteen thousand sheets of paper towels. And it still didn’t help.”

She wiggles her hips, trying to get me where she wants me. I keep my strokes slow and measured, my other hand working at the fly of my jeans. “What didn’t help?”

“I still went back into that booth wanting you. I can’t stop.” It comes out of me like a confession, like an apology. I’m not sure I’d stop wanting her if I could. I like this feeling too much. Like I’m basking in the sunlight she throws off.

“I can’t either.” She moans and her fingers circle my wrist. “Aiden. Please. I need more.”

“You did say you wanted more than one, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” I pick up the pace of my thumb against her clit, letting myself be sloppy and rough. I twist my hand and slip one finger, then two inside her. Goose bumps erupt along her skin. “Ask me nicely.”

A smile splinters across her face. She drags her arms above her head, stretching herself out for me, giving in to the slow, methodical way I’m working her back up. Her head tilts to the side and she watches me down the length of her body.

“Please, Aiden. Please make me come.”

“Fuck,” I mumble, my elbow collapsing beneath me and my mouth on hers. I wanted her begging, but I don’t think I realized what it would do to me to hear those words slip out of her lush and swollen mouth. I press another finger into her and curl them forward. Her body jolts and then relaxes.

“Good,” I tell her, petting her side. “Look at you. You can take it, can’t you?”

Lucie wraps her arms around my shoulders and nods. I kiss her until I feel her start to tremble, her head thrown back over my couch cushions, her thighs hugging my hand. She smiles when she comes this time, her back arched, a whine caught at the base of her throat.

“You’re fucking incredible,” I mumble into the blush that’s spread down her neck, over her heaving chest. I brush a kiss against the strap of her bra. “You want more?”

She nods, hands inching up under the back of my shirt. She tugs at it until I reach with one hand over my shoulder, grabbing at the middle of it. We’re a mess of fighting hands and twisting material before she wrenches it over my head and throws it in the same direction as her shirt. She licks her lips as she looks at me, her palms smoothing over my chest. She traces the line of the necklace I never take off and affection wars with the lust roaring through my bloodstream. I told her I wear it for good luck and right now it feels like I’m having the best luck. Like every wish I’ve never been brave enough to ask for has come true.

“Do you have any condoms?” she asks quietly.

I nod. An unopened box on the bottom shelf of my medicine cabinet that I bought with a carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream at the corner bodega on a whim two days ago.

I slip my hand from between her legs and trail mindless patterns over her belly. My fingers are still wet with her. I can’t look away. Lucie shifts her legs and taps my side with her knee. “Do you . . . want to go get them?”

I lean down and suck her nipple into my mouth. Her skin is already starting to bruise from my attention and I want to take a picture. Print it out and frame it. “Hmm?”

Lucie fists one hand in the back of my hair again and yanks until we’re nose to nose. Fuck. Maybe she’s not the only one who likes it bossy.

“Get the condoms.” She pecks a kiss against my mouth. “Please.”

I roll my way off her and stumble up the steps, Lucie’s husky laugh trailing after me. I almost tear the medicine cabinet off the wall in the bathroom, one of the shelves collapsing in my enthusiasm to grab the condom box. Toothpaste and deodorant and an expired bottle of ibuprofen spill out across the floor like a pharmaceutical pinata, but I don’t care. I don’t care about anything except getting back to Lucie.

Lucie, who is waiting for me in the middle of the couch fort, her bra discarded behind her, all bare skin and messy hair. I stand on the bottom step, struck dumb at the sight of her.

“Fuck,” I whisper.

She tucks her hair behind her ears and toys with one of the metal hoops around her cartilage. “The bra wasn’t especially sexy.” She winces. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t expecting you.”

Same , I want to say. You came out of nowhere and knocked me flat on my ass. I know she means tonight , but I mean all those weeks ago. When she came roaring on the phone line breathing fire, accusing me of god knows what. I swallow hard and lower the zipper on my jeans, my eyes not moving from her curves. My cock feels like it’s one stiff breeze away from exploding. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted someone so much.

“You look—” I don’t have the words. I push my jeans over my hips until I’m in just my briefs. Her eyes trail down my body like she’s plotting a course and taking notes. “The bra was plenty sexy.”

It was sexy because it was Lucie . No frills. Wonderfully authentic.

Plus, it goes nicely with the mechanic / tow truck fantasy I’m slowly piecing together in my mind for the next time I need to defile a fundraiser T-shirt.

“Oh yeah?” A smirk curls at her mouth. “You want me to put it back on?”

I shake my head and drop one knee on the edge of a cushion, prowling over her. I toss the condom box to the side, then grab her hand with mine, tangling our fingers together. “No. Leave it off. I wanna see you.”

She bites at her bottom lip and lets me guide her down against the cushions, blooming like a flower beneath me as she lies back. I trace my knuckles over her cheek, down her neck, across the rise of her full breasts. Her skin almost looks like it’s glowing in the low light of my living room, brushstrokes of pale pink and coral. I’ve imagined this a handful of times—in the shower, alone in my bedroom—but the reality is better. The reality is true.

She exhales a low, shuddering sigh when I brush her nipples, and I’m tempted to linger, but I don’t. I keep going to the swell of her hips and the faint scars on her stomach. Her cute little belly button and the heat between her legs. I caress her thigh and hook my hand beneath her knee, making room for myself between her long legs.

Fuck , these legs. I’ve had about ten thousand indecent thoughts about these legs alone.

“Say something?” she asks, when I spend too much time looking. My eyes snap back to hers. “You’re quiet,” she explains, fingers toying with her earrings again.

I’m speechless is what I am. Trying to figure out if I’m in the middle of a very elaborate dream. I’ve never had anyone look at me the way Lucie does, like the want is tangled up with the comfort and the affection. Hushed conversations in the middle of the night. Knees tucked together beneath a desktop. Tiny mint wrappers folded into even tinier paper airplanes, aimed right at my heart.

Our ticking clock feels like it exists in another dimension. With Lucie bare beneath me, it’s easy enough to bury the fact that she’s meant for someone who isn’t me. And that I’m supposed to be helping her find that person.

Not fucking her through my living room floor.

“I’m trying to regain motor function,” I tell her honestly. I’m trying to memorize you.

She laughs and I smile back. I drop my chest to hers and my necklace pools between her breasts. She hooks her fingers in the key ring looped at the bottom and uses it to tug me closer.

“You need mouth to mouth?” she rasps.

I grin into the little divot beside her lips. “Wouldn’t hurt.” She grabs my jaw when she kisses me, holding me close, licking into my mouth like she never wants to do anything else. She tips her legs wider beneath me until her ankle is hooked around the back of my thigh and her body is wrapped around me like ivy. I can feel her through my underwear, hot and wet and overwhelming. I drag my hips against hers and groan.

“Let me see you ,” she breathes.

I press another lingering kiss to her mouth and then shift to my knees in front of her.

“Go ahead,” I tell her, watching with satisfaction as she blinks blearily at me. “Take me out,” I manage through a grunt.

The rest of my demands stick like glue to the roof of my mouth. Touch me , I want to tell her. Hold on. Tell me you feel it too.

She sits up and slips her hands beneath the band at my hips, urging my boxer briefs down. She licks her lips when she sees me and something hot and possessive curls in the middle of my chest. I want to be the only one she looks at like that.

“Well,” she says. She lightly touches my hip and brushes her fingers across my stomach, down to where I’m hot and hard. “Well,” she says again.

She curls her hand around my cock and squeezes, then gives me one long stroke. It’s so good with her. She meets every challenge I toss in her direction, surprises me at every turn. I drop my head back while her hand works at me, my body a tense, trembling mess while I stare at my ceiling. I allow it for three teasing strokes, then catch her wrist with my hand.

She’s staring at me with her tongue caught between her teeth, eyes dark.

“You want me?” I ask.

She nods. “Yes.”

“Lean back, then.”

“Like this?” she asks, tipping back to the cushions, spreading her legs wide, and my mouth goes dry. There’s a bruise on the inside of her thigh in the shape of my mouth.

“Yeah,” I grunt. “Like that.”

I loop my fingers around her ankle. Slip my palm up until I can grip her ass and bring her toward me. I drag my cock against her once and her eyelashes flutter. I do it again and we make twin sounds of appreciation.

“Condom,” I grind out from between clenched teeth. “Get a condom. Please.”

“So polite,” she says, fumbling with the box.

My hands squeeze. “I’m about to be really rude, to be honest.”

She tears the wrapper with her teeth and rolls the condom over me.

“I can take it,” she whispers, and I have to think through the starting roster of the Orioles spring training team to keep myself from mindlessly rutting against her. My arms are shaking on either side of her head. I can feel my pulse at the small of my back. “Lucie,” I whisper, wanting the taste of her name on my tongue when I push into her. She hums and rubs her hands against my sides, opening her legs wider.

“Please,” she says, her voice sweeter than honey, and I let go of the last of my control. The final fragmented pieces of my resistance. I’ve been sitting next to her for weeks, hoping, wishing, wanting, and now she’s here, under me and all around me, saying please. I grip her thigh and watch her face as I slot myself against her, my hips pressing forward and rolling back, a little deeper each time. I have to work myself into her and she watches me while I do it.

“Look how well you take me,” I mumble, my voice low. She angles her head down to watch and makes a soft sound when I press all the way inside her, our hips flush together. “Look how good we fit.”

“I’m—” She exhales a sharp breath. “You’re—”

I nod, squeezing my eyes shut. It’s good. It’s so damn good. My scruff rasps against her neck. My fingers press bruises into her thigh. I’m not confident in my ability to move. “I know.”

I try rolling my hips and abruptly stop. Lucie shifts beneath me and I drag my teeth against the delicate skin above her collarbone to try to still her.

“This doesn’t feel rude at all,” she whispers into my ear. Her hand traces a meandering path down my spine, over my ass. She urges me forward. “This feels very nice, actually.”

“Nice.” I grunt it like it’s a curse, pulling back only to thrust back in hard. She makes a choked sound. A laugh caught halfway. “There’s that fucking word again.”

“Then show me something else,” she murmurs, head digging back into the cushions. The long line of her neck arches back and she looks like something from a painting. Like something in the stars. She rolls her hips against mine, working herself against my cock, and she looks like something from a filthy dream. “Stop holding back. Give me everything.”

“Yeah?”

She nods, hair caught beneath her. “Yeah.”

I rise to my knees and lift her hips, pressing my fingertips into her soft curves and holding her steady. “Come here,” I order, urging her legs to wrap around the small of my back. I thrust into her with a rough, dirty grind. “Make sure you tell me if it’s nice.”

Except I don’t give her a chance to say anything. Because my body has taken over the conversation, Lucie’s whimpers and moans and the high-pitched, breathy sigh she makes when she’s close filling the air between us until it feels like I’m underwater. Sand in my bones. Lightning under my skin. I work myself against her until my legs shake, one hand cupped around her ass to hold her tight to me and the other pressing low on her belly until she’s trembling as much as I am. I reach down with my thumb and curl it against that tender spot between her thighs and she arches against me, her shoulders digging into the cushions and her hips riding mine harder.

“Still nice?” I grind out. My knees are shaking where they dig into the couch cushions.

“So nice,” she moans. “The nicest.”

I laugh, breathless, and duck my head to suck a bruise between her breasts. “I should make you wait for it,” I mumble into her skin. I slow my hips and she whines. “That wouldn’t be nice, would it?”

She digs her nails into my arms. “I take it back. You’re not nice at all.”

I brush a kiss against her neck. Curl my hand around her jaw and catch her mouth with mine. I hold her there with a firm grip, making her watch me as I move against her. “No?”

“No.” She shakes her head and her eyes go heavy. “You’re really, very, terribly mean.” She slips her hand over mine between her legs and encourages me to press harder. My vision goes black at the edges.

I start to jerk my hips into her, losing any semblance of finesse. She watches me through half-lidded eyes as I fuck her down into the floor, my thumb strumming at the place above where we’re joined. Mindless nonsense begins spilling from my mouth. All the places I’ve thought about having her. How much I hate and love the thin white T-shirts she wears beneath her sweaters at the station. Something completely unhinged about her coveralls and wanting to undo the zipper with my teeth. How much I like her smile. Her laugh. The way she rasps my name. I’m out of control, unfiltered, driven higher with every broken sound she hiccups.

I know it the second before she starts to come. She goes still beneath me, a wordless exhale of my name through cherry-stained lips as her body squeezes around mine. I let myself fall into it—into her—several furious, frantic thrusts and a rough groan tucked against her throat.

I murmur her name when I come, sparks behind my eyes and in the palms of my hands where they’re pressed against her skin.

We lie there in the middle of the floor, panting. The couch cushions have separated and we’re wedged somewhere in the middle. Lucie drags her nails across my shoulders and I shiver. My legs are completely numb. My mouth is dry.

“You were right,” I say, slurring half the sentence.

Lucie drops a kiss to the top of my head. “About what?”

“That was nice.”

She snickers and pinches my side.

Pineapple pizza, as it turns out, is delicious.

Especially when consumed at room temperature with a naked Lucie pressed against my side.

Lucie steals a piece of pineapple and shimmies down farther in the blanket nest she’s made from discarded sheets. She smells like sex and tomato sauce.

“I knew you liked the pizza,” she accuses with her chin propped on her fist. There are several hickeys forming on her neck and I am inordinately pleased about it.

I swallow the gargantuan bite I just took. “The pizza is fine.”

“You’ve had, like, four slices.”

Five, but I don’t intend to point that out. This is the closest I’ve ever come to a perfect moment in my life. Lucie with her leg draped over mine, pale skin wrapped in white sheets, confiscating the toppings of my pizza.

“I’ve worked up an appetite,” I tell her. She blushes and I lean forward to brush my lips against it. Because I can. Because I’ve spent the past however many weeks telling myself not to. Because I’ve spent the last decade telling myself not to want anything at all, and Lucie is the first thing I’ve let myself reach for.

She slips her hand around my neck and squeezes. “I should— I should get going.” My stomach twists and I growl in the hollow behind her ear. The only place I want her to get going to is my bedroom at the top of the stairs. I can worry about the consequences later.

“No.”

She laughs. “No?”

“I think you should stay,” I tell her, two fingers slipping into the front of her sheet toga and tugging.

Her face is shy. Her smile pleased. “You want me to?”

I nod. “Mm-hmm.” I tug the sheet down some more until it’s crumpled across her lap. I cup my hand around her breast and fill my palm with her. “Do you need me to convince you?”

She slips onto my lap and wraps both arms around my shoulders.

“Only if you’re nice about it,” she whispers into my ear.

CALLER: How much longer will you be on the show?

LUCIE STONE: Oh. Uh, I’m not sure, actually. It’s—I guess it’s up to Aiden.

AIDEN VALENTINE: It’s not up to me. I’ve told you. You’re the boss.

LUCIE STONE: Aren’t you tired of sharing this tiny booth?

AIDEN VALENTINE: No.

AIDEN VALENTINE: Are you tired of sharing this tiny booth?

LUCIE STONE: No.

CALLER: So you’re staying?

LUCIE STONE: No, no. I’m not staying. I just don’t know when I’m leaving yet.

AIDEN VALENTINE: Well, there’s your answer.

CALLER: That was . . . not an answer.