Chapter 11
ELEVEN
JANE
It’s Friday evening and I’m staring at the blinking cursor on my laptop, waiting for the right words to come to me so I can move that fucker across the page and make some progress. But my muse has been on an extended sabbatical and refuses to make an appearance. Again.
This thesis is going to be the death of me.
I’m so close to being done, but it’s missing an element, and I can’t figure out what it is.
My dual degree is in social work and women’s and gender studies, so I chose to do my thesis on the objectification of women in America—how we’re taught we should embrace submission to the desires of men, because the more we do, the more valuable we become.
Believe me, the irony of what I’m writing versus what I’m practicing with my no-strings thing with Chance is not lost on me.
I’m a feminist by day, and a woman who enjoys being manhandled and objectified at night.
But I’m choosing to be treated this way.
I wouldn’t find it the least bit tolerable if some random guy leered at me like a piece of meat he’d like to stick his dick in.
That’s the story I’m telling myself, but as I sit at my dining room table wearing the nicest piece of lingerie I own because a man I’ve only known for a week told me to, I can’t help but feel a little hypocritical.
I pick up my phone and pull up my text messages. There are several from Addie wanting the latest gossip on my newly acquired sex life, but I’m enjoying making her wait for tidbits, so I’ll answer those tomorrow. The suspense is still punishment for her little trick a week ago.
Obviously in hindsight, I’m thankful she sent over Chance the Handyman—if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be having the best sex of my life with a modern day Viking.
But that doesn’t mean I’m letting her off easy, and it’s driving her crazy.
She had her fun last week, now I’m having mine. She gets it; she just doesn’t like it.
But it’s not one of Addison’s texts that I’ve read over a dozen times since receiving it. It’s the one I got from Chance an hour ago.
Just got off. Taking shower I’m not about to ask him why or question his actions.
If he’s going to be judgment-impaired, that’s on him, and I plan on riding out this little miracle for as long as possible.
“Hi,” I say, hating the tiny tremor in my voice. I’m more nervous than usual.
Goddamn, he’s gorgeous. His hair is hanging loose and still wet from his shower.
Wait, no, he’s wet everywhere. Water drips down his face, from the tips of his spiked eyelashes and the end of his nose.
His white T-shirt clings to his shoulders and chest, showing every ridge of his muscles, the dusting of hair, his dusky nipples.
“You’re wet.”
He raises an eyebrow. “It’s raining, and I had to park a block away.”
As though he’s summoned it to underscore his claim, lightning flashes through my kitchen window, followed by a distant rumble of thunder. I’d been so lost in thought about his arrival I hadn’t even heard the storm.
“Well, come in. We can take your clothes to the laundry room down the hall and stick them in the dryer if you want.” I ogle his firm ass in the damp jeans as he passes me. I smirk. “You’ll have to lounge around in your underwear for a while, but I’m surprisingly okay with that.”
“You are, huh?” He sets a plastic bag I hadn’t noticed until now on the kitchen counter. “Nice to know you don’t hold issue with me in a state of undress around your delicate sensibilities.”
“I try not to be too prudish,” I quip. “What’s in the bag?”
“Chinese.” The answer makes me frown in confusion. “Told you I was grabbing food.”
“I know, but I thought you meant you were grabbing something to eat before coming over. I didn’t expect you to bring me—us—dinner.
” Because correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s kind of a date-ish thing to do.
And nothing about this arrangement is date-ish.
The whole point of it is to not be date-ish.
Chance grabs the hem of his shirt and peels the wet material up and over his head, depositing it into the sink. “You already eat?”
“No, actually, I—”
“Why are you wearing a robe?”
I glance down at my soft, pink robe as if to confirm it’s still there, then look back up when I hear the sound of his belt coming undone.
“Please tell me that’s not the sexiest lingerie you own.”
I swallow thickly. “It’s underneath.”
“I specifically remember telling you to wear nothing else. Where are your glasses?”
“I felt a little silly sitting around in lingerie while working, and they’re over by my laptop. I don’t need them to see close up.”
“Show me.” I go to where I’d been set up in the dining room and grab my glasses. When I turn around, he’s right there, crowding me against the table. “Put ’em on. There,” he says after I follow his instructions, “I like you with them on. The ‘sexy librarian’ looks good on you, Jane.”
“Social worker.”
“What?”
“I’m not a librarian, I’m a social worker. Or at least I will be if I ever finish this damn thesis. That’s what I was working on before you came over.”
“Interesting.” He seems to think about that.
I wish I had access to those thoughts. Does he really think it’s interesting, or is he simply patronizing me?
I don’t know him well enough. After several long moments, he peers over at my laptop and then grins back at me.
“Sure you weren’t watching porn, dirty girl?
I know how much you enjoy your kinky videos. ”
I chuckle. “Are you kidding? I haven’t watched porn since—”
Oops. Admitting something like this could be too much. Nothing about our lives is supposed to change due to this arrangement. It’s one of the unwritten rules of no-strings sex.
He narrows those clear, blue eyes at me. “Since when?” I bite the corner of my lower lip. Chance plunges a hand into the back of my hair, grabs a fistful, and yanks it back. “Since when, Jane?”
A shot of adrenaline turns my bloodstream into the Indy 500, and the sharp sting at my scalp triggers warmth to flood my sex.
“Since we started our thing,” I say in a breathy tone.
He dips his head and runs his nose up the length of my throat. “You mean since I started fucking you.”
“Yes.”
“Because I satisfy your needs. Because getting fucked by me is better than watching porn.”
They aren’t questions, they’re statements. True ones. And the arrogant bastard knows it. Still, I appease him and respond, because it’s part of the game. “God, yes.”
“Good girl. Now take off this fucking robe, and the next time I say ‘nothing else’ there damn well better be nothing else. Understand?”
I nod and quickly shed the robe, dropping it somewhere off to the side.
He releases his hold on my hair and takes a step back to let his gaze roam over me, slow as he pleases.
My hands grip the edge of the table behind me as I force myself not to fidget with insecurity.
A vixen in the bedroom (or anywhere else), I am not.
I might be open and modern-thinking when it comes to my sex life, but I don’t know how to harness my sexuality and use it to seduce.
That’s Addison’s department. If you want to psychoanalyze something, I’m definitely your girl.
But embracing the sex kitten within? Not so much.
Chance palms my breasts over the demi-cups.
He squeezes each mound and pinches my nipples through the lace.
My breath catches, and my clit throbs in anticipation in time with my heartbeat.
I moan softly and drop my head back as my eyes drift closed, letting my other senses take over as he maps out my body with his strong hands.
“This is a pleasant surprise. It’s the perfect balance of wicked and classy. Black lace becomes you, Jane.” It’s a sheer one-piece, cut high on the sides and low in the back with spaghetti straps. I’m glad he likes it because it’s the only thing like it that I own. “Why do you have it?”
My eyes snap open and I meet his gaze. “Excuse me?”
“Either a man bought it for you, or you bought it for a man. Which is it?”
I flash back to the night I came out of the bathroom and surprised Justin after purchasing it that afternoon.
It was my attempt to spice up our sex life.
He’d taken one look at me and frowned in disappointment, asking how much I spent on something so frivolous.
Then he proceeded to tell me that lingerie was pointless since it only served its purpose for a minute at most before it ended up on the floor. We never even had sex that night.
“I bought it for a man.”
Chance grunts, and I get the feeling that this answer is only slightly better than if I’d said a man had bought it for me. “And did he lose his mind when he saw you? Get hard so fast he had to undo his pants to relieve the pressure?”
The air in my lungs gets stuck as I watch him undo the fly of his jeans and adjust his hard cock so it’s not pinned down by the wet denim.
To know that I’ve affected him with my appearance gives me a small taste of power—something that, by design, I normally don’t feel in our sexual encounters—and boosts my confidence by a couple notches.
“No,” I say. “He said it was a waste of money and told me to return it.”
A storm passes over his face to match the one raging outside my apartment. “Then he was a fucking moron. I promise you it’s worth every penny you paid. You look sexy as hell, like a pinup without the heels.”
Shit, I didn’t think about heels. “You want me to grab a pair?”
He gives me a crooked grin that makes my knees weak as he lifts me by the hips and plants my ass on the table.
Stepping between my legs, he says, “Normally I’d say yes, but I like you better without.
I’ve never met anyone who straddles the fence between devil and angel as well as you, Jane.
Other women try to play at one or the other, but you don’t have to.
You’re equally both, and I’m finding it’s a combination I can’t get enough of. ”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh,” he says, then tears my bodice in half, right down the middle.