11. Marlowe
CHAPTER 11
Marlowe
A s I turn, instinct has me pressing a hand to my chest to hold the dress up.
Brendan takes a step towards me, shaking his head.
‘Back against the glass. Let it fall. I want to see what I’ve bought.
’
Every minute in here with this guy brings a fresh fear, a fresh confrontation, a fresh precipice off which to leap, but this is the highest precipice so far.
His gaze is so intense.
So all-consuming. It’s like nothing exists for him in this moment except for what lies beneath my dress.
He told me during the interview that he had ADHD.
I suppose this is what hyper-focus looks like.
‘Go on.’ He nods. ‘Eyes on me as you do.’
There’s a lump in my throat the size of a golf ball.
I give myself a mental kick and remove my hand.
Surely I’m the first woman he’s been with who’s ever hesitated to undress for him.
Most of them probably chuck their thongs at him the second they get him alone—or even before.
The slinky fabric drops instantly, the tiny, ineffectual straps slack around my forearms, the dress caught around my hips and my top half completely exposed to him.
Standing here topless in front of a man I don’t know while he openly appraises me feels wrong on every level…
except for the level where his eyes drop from my face to my naked breasts, and I finally understand what all the romance books mean when they say a man’s eyes burn , because his are blazing.
His mouth opens and shuts again, this moment of silence between us stretching into eternity.
Until he grins.
It’s a dirty grin, carnal and dominating and thrilled.
‘Unfuckingbelievable. Take it off.’
I choose to take it to mean just the dress, so I leave my thong intact and push the dress over my hips, stepping carefully out of the fabric pooled around my heels.
I’m barely done casting it aside when he’s on me, gathering me up in his arms and smushing my breasts to his chest, my pelvis to what is now an obscene-looking erection, so fully fledged that it’s a walking red flag all on its own.
But I’m ignoring that, because the sensation of being almost naked in the arms of a huge beast who smells divine and seems intent on ravaging me is so overwhelmingly unfamiliar and shocking and excellent that my cognitive brain withers in defeat.
I’m not prepared for his mouth to find mine, but it does, as soon as he has me in his claws, and he kisses me, hard and hungry and filthy, his lips soft and his tongue insistent as it forces my mouth open while his hands fist my hair and grope my bottom, hard , and roam as though they’re trying to map every available inch of skin.
It’s either self-preservation or good old-fashioned desire that has me hooking my arms around his shoulders as he performs this sensory onslaught.
He’s not kissing me so much as fucking my mouth with deep, demanding strokes that feel like a menacing foreshadowing of what he’ll do to me shortly with other body parts.
He’s consuming me, milking me, and an actual thought escapes from my cognitive cesspit:
This isn’t him giving me a sales pitch.
This is him unleashed .
As if he can read my mind, he releases me from his mouth and his grasp with an anguished pant and walks me backwards until I hit the glass.
‘Stay still,’ he orders, his mouth all swollen and wet and lovely.
He shoots my breasts a filthy look before bracketing my hips in a tight grip.
By tugging them forward and leaving my shoulders slumped against the glass, he has me reclining slightly, and that’s when he bends and takes one nipple in his mouth, holding it oh-so lightly between his teeth as he rolls his tongue over it.
I moan in spite of myself, and my palms make a small squeak as they slap the glass for purchase.
‘Mmm,’ he groans around my nipple.
‘Delicious.’ His fingers dig more firmly into my hips as his licks become deep pulls on my nipple, and holy, holy shit, this feeling is ridiculously, crazily good.
My hips start to jolt, rutting forwards and finding nothing but his grip.
That erection of his is too far away from me at this point.
‘Stay still ,’ he barks before turning his attention to my other breast. Jesus, this is so, so good.
If only the man had two mouths.
I want him to never come up for air.
I stop rutting, keeping my body still and instead lifting my hands so I can run them through his short dark hair.
Its softness is touching, for some reason.
With a firm grip, I hold his head to my breast, and he chuckles, jerking his neck backwards and looking up at me, all wet lips and burning eyes.
‘Put your hands back where they are, madam, if you want the full sales pitch.’
We smirk at each other, then I sigh and release his head.
I have no idea where this pitch is going, but I don’t intend to derail it.
‘That’s my good girl.
Now,’—he gets to his knees surprisingly nimbly for a guy his size—‘let me show you the killer part of my pitch.’
I press my lips together as he gets level with my crotch.
With a thumb hooked in each side of my thong’s lace waistband, he slides it down my legs and watches as I step out of it.
I’m now naked, and he’s planning on doing something down there, and I look down at him as I mentally step up to the highest precipice yet.
And as I stare over the edge into the void, Athena’s voice rings in my ears.
Assuming he’s not a lazy bastard in bed, he should be very good at this shit.
So for fuck’s sake, sit back and enjoy it.
She has a point, although enjoying something very intimate and very unfamiliar with a total stranger is easier said than done.
‘Put your leg over my shoulder, gorgeous,’ he says, hooking his hand around the back of my knee and shooting me a very sexy grin.
He looks like he does this every bloody day.
Like having naked women drape their legs over his hulking great shoulders is second nature to him.
It probably is.
I balance with difficulty on one stiletto heel, fingers scrabbling against the glass, and allow Brendan to position my leg over his shoulder.
His eyes are fixed squarely on where my legs are parted, his expression more that of a kid with a new toy than that of a grown man with a woman he’s paying through the nose for.
‘That’s more like it.
’ He glances up through eyelashes that are far too thick and pretty for a bloke.
‘You are exceedingly beautiful when you’re nervous, you know.
All quivery and… mmm.
’ He leans in and uses his finger and thumb to spread me open for him, and oh my—Jesus, that’s?—
I stare down, my breath coming more quickly now, transfixed by how quickly his expression has gone from cheeky to rapt and astounded by how different having a man’s fingers on my flesh feels from having them on my skin.
He tuts. ‘Oh, Marlowe, Marlowe. All this pretending to be such a good, nervy, innocent little thing, when you’re fucking soaked already.
’
I’m not. I can’t be.
Except that I can feel how slick it is when he slides his fingers through me, burrowing deeper back until he finds my entrance, and then, God, the ease with which he pushes two fingers in is almost embarrassing.
There’s a stretch, a burn, of course, but there is definite, undeniable lubrication going on, and I don’t know if it’s that my brain is in denial about how fun it is having a Very Bad Man do Very Bad Things to me or my body is a traitorous little slut.
It’s probably both.
‘Oh God,’ I say, as mortified that he’s called me out as I am happy about this latest development, because that sensation of fullness is really something else, and I have a horrible feeling that if he?—
Jesus .
His thumb finds my clit, stroking over it far too lightly, and I let out a low, shuddering sound that’s downright pitiful.
Brendan tears his gaze from his handiwork and stares up at me.
‘Looks like we’re unravelling the mysteries of what you like pretty fucking quickly.
I feel like Miss Marple.
’
I snort at that, but it turns into a groan, because he’s sliding his fingers out and then back in in a fashion that’s as entitled as it is leisurely, his thumb swirling over my clit with not nearly enough pressure.
‘Just found my new favourite fidget toy,’ he tells me.
‘Zoom meetings will never be the same again.’ With that proclamation, he tilts his head to one side, licks his lips so salaciously it’s positively illegal, and leans in to taste me, pulling his fingers out enough to hold me open for him.
I mouth a silent holy fuck and screw my eyes shut, because the feeling of him using his mouth on me is sinful and shameful and depraved and so perfectly, disgustingly good that I will actually die if I have to watch it.
I’ve never done this—never had this done to me.
I didn’t let Pete, my first boyfriend, go there, and Joe never offered.
Honestly, I didn’t have a problem with that.
If it was frustrating enough failing to come when he played with me, it would have been mortifying beyond belief to let him go to work with his mouth and not produce an orgasm.
But from the low grunts Brendan makes in the back of his throat as his tongue circles in on my clit with the precision of The Jackal wielding a sniper rifle, he doesn’t seem to be finding it hard work.
Except— oof —closing my eyes and giving in to the fire igniting between my legs while balancing on one four-inch heel is not advisable because I promptly wobble and almost fall over.
‘Fuck,’ he says, emerging from eating me to grab me around the waist. ‘Change of plan.’ He unhooks my leg and, rising, throws me over his shoulder.
I squeal in surprise as he gets to his feet and carries me, fireman’s-lift style, across the room before laying me on my back on the sofa quickly enough that dizziness reels through me.
When my head has righted itself, I find him standing beside me—although towering over me would be more accurate—and looking awfully pleased with himself as he unbuttons his shirt.
I’m sprawled on the cool pleather of the sofa, self-consciousness and apprehension warring with arousal and curiosity, and I can say with confidence that the sight of Brendan Sullivan undressing himself for me has the see-saw swinging in favour of the latter far more rapidly than is decent.
He undresses like I suspect he does a lot of things—hurriedly.
He’s not putting on a show here, but his smug grin tells me he’s not finding my facial expression as ambivalent as I’d hoped.
It’s been a long, long time since I saw a man naked, and I’ve never seen a man like this naked.
Of my two previous partners, Pete was a still-skinny eighteen-year-old, and Joe had the untoned, if lean, build of an academic.
Brendan does not look like an academic.
He looks, as he makes quick work of the buttons down the front of his shirt and battles impatiently with his cufflinks, like a man with far too much energy to burn in the gym.
With his crisp white shirt hanging open, the playboy tan is in evidence.
He rips the shirt off his shoulders and tosses it impatiently to the floor, giving me my first proper view of a masterpiece of male physicality.
His PT should feel very proud of this masterpiece.
There’s a smattering of soft-looking dark hair on his chest that continues down over his flat stomach.
His forearms are exactly the kind I tend to ogle on Instagram: not scarily corded but taut and tanned and hairy.
His shoulders, as I already knew, are fucking huge, his pecs defined.
He’s perfectly in proportion, built without being too beefy, and I suspect I’m staring like he’s an exotic creature in a zoo.
‘Why on earth does a guy like you have to pay for sex?’ I wonder aloud, raising myself up onto my elbows for a better look.
His ensuing laugh is tinged with self-consciousness.
‘Convenience. Dependability.’ He wrestles his belt from its buckle and yanks his trousers open.
Holy fuck . ‘Kink, I suppose. It’s hot to think of you being my little office fuck toy, baby.
But mainly convenience.
I don’t want to have to go out on the pull or take women out for dinner or have to deal with them falling in love with me and fucking stalking me.
’
He kicks his shoes off, pushing his trousers down and stepping out of them.
As he tugs off his socks, he looks up at me and finds me shamelessly perving over the sight of tanned, muscular thighs and what looks like a four-seater car parked in his stretchy black boxer briefs.
The waistband says Chanel.
Of course it does.
‘You’re not going to fall in love with me and stalk me, are you?
’
I manage, by the skin of my teeth, to avoid an eye roll.
The last thing I need in my life as a single mother to a child with a chronic health condition is to fall for a vapid, charming playboy like this guy.
Seriously. ‘I am not. You’re perfectly safe.
’
‘Glad to hear it.’ He shoves his boxer briefs down and Jesus fucking Christ, I have bitten off more than I can chew, because that’s not a dick.
It’s a monster.
Even Athena would struggle to accommodate that thing.
It’s insane. Physiologically indecent.
Red and angry and leaking precum.
He palms it lasciviously and inhales sharply through his teeth.
‘How’s my sales pitch working?
’ he asks me with a grin that tells me he caught me ogling.
His dick may be intimidating as hell, but he’s so ridiculous that I’m relaxing despite myself.
‘It’s… effective,’ I tell him.
‘Well-practised, clearly.’
His smile turns self-deprecating.
‘It’s nowhere near over yet.
Now, where were we?’
He crawls onto the sofa, which is wide enough that the designers must have intended it to accommodate lots of shagging, and I lower myself fully onto my back so he can range over me.
He’s a big, dark, hairy bear, and despite his grin, a thrill of something courses through me.
This guy could eat me for dinner.
And he probably will.
I don’t answer what seems like a rhetorical question, but I do open my legs wider as he slides down my body, kissing my nipples and my stomach as he goes.
He was right earlier.
It’s far easier to think of this as a random hookup, a “slutty first date”, than a transactional precursor to an even more transactional working relationship.
Right now, I need to remember that I’m not a mother driven by terrified determination but a woman in her twenties, sprawled out naked in a fancy nightclub and in the—very competent—hands of one of London’s most gorgeous and eligible bachelors.
Lean into that, I urge myself.
Look at him! He’s heaven!
And he wants to eat you!
Just let him!
At this point, Brendan crouches between my legs and finds my most sensitive parts with his lips and tongue and fingers, and my inner Mel Robbins shuts the hell up, because the fires of sensation are licking at my flesh and everything else is impossible.
His moves are filthy and decadent and carnal, and they have my nervous system ricocheting between running for the hills and setting off the fireworks.
‘I’ve wanted to do this since the second I met you,’ he mutters against my clit, sliding two fingers back inside me and twisting them in a way that’s as gratifying as it is painful.
‘Been imagining it so much. So fucking delicious. God. ’ He illustrates his point with a lavish lick.
I raise my head so I can stare down at this incarnation of the vision that’s been terrifying and titillating me since Athena suggested I interview with Brendan: his broad shoulders between my open legs, dark hair dipped so I can only see the crown of his head, face hidden as he feasts on the most private parts of me, and his huge hand splayed bossily across my stomach, holding me down.
His confession is the most real, raw thing he’s said to me, and it sends a tide of heat racing over my skin.
I couldn’t be more vulnerable right now, and I know this guy probably goes down on a different woman every day of the week, but he makes it sound like he’s vulnerable too, somehow.
That he has skin in the game, even if I’m not much more than a conquest. A trophy sought and won.
Having this gorgeous, sexy man’s tongue on my clit is one thing, but having him admit that he’s enjoying it, that he’s been fantasising about it, is the flick of the switch my body needs to go from enduring this to lapping it up.
For whatever reason, it seems to get him off, and the idea of him using my body how he wants, burrowing his nose into my flesh and sucking on my clit and fucking me deeper and deeper with his fingers, is every bit as shameful as I imagined it would be and a million times hotter than I ever, ever dreamed.
There’s so much oral in my romance books.
My favourite mafia men eat their women for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it seems. And I admit, I’ve tried to simulate it by myself a few times without knowing what I’m aiming for.
This is what I was aiming for.
This—the wetness, the silky softness, the—oh my God, the roughness when he laps at me with the flat of his tongue, the precision when he uses the tip.
It’s like Mother Nature created an all-natural orgasm provider and gave it the ten best settings it needed for totally ruining a woman.
I cannot believe fucking Joe never did this to me!
And I can believe even less that I’m having this strong a reaction to a man I barely know, let alone a man I don’t have any feelings for.
I have never understood how women can jump into bed with random men and survive it, let alone get off on it.
I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve judged them for it.
But it seems the joke may be on me.
The strangest, best sensations are happening to my body.
Heat is pricking me all over.
Everywhere south of my belly button aches with a visceral, pulsing need.
My nipples are so taut with arousal they feel like they’re going to snap off.
The noises I’m making are zero per cent gleaned from Meg Ryan and a hundred per cent involuntary and possibly a good seventy per cent farmyard.
I am not a woman who has ever asked for what she wants in bed.
I have no language, I have no confidence, I have no tricks to seduce a guy or manipulate an outcome.
But I do recall one thing Brendan promised me earlier.
That if I scream don’t stop , he’ll keep on going.
So I channel all this blind, crazy need, and I cast aside the tattered remnants of my inhibitions, and I claw at his hair with one hand, and I throw my head back as he hits the spot over and over and over like the fucking genius that he is.
And I shudder out my plea.
‘Please. Don’t stop. Please.’