“That’s really cool, actually.” Yet again, my mouth betrays my better sense. “I’d like to see your workshop sometime.”
His eyes narrow, and an eyebrow quirks up. “I thought you were mad at me.”
I have to summon the irritation this time. “I am.”
He mostly hides a smirk. “I thought we were here so you could yell at me.”
“We are,” I say, and now the irritation isn’t forced.
The entrees come, then, and the conversation is put on hold as we dig in.
He gestures with his steak knife. “Well? Here I am.”
I sigh. “Honestly, I said everything I had to say at the Waverley site. But I’d like to at least know why you left the way you did.”
He takes a while to answer. “You’re trying to tell me you weren’t planning the same thing?”
I narrow my eyes. “Not the point.”
“So you’re not denying it?”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is, I’m guessing you understand just fine why I left like I did, you’re just acting pissy about it because I did it to you before you could do it to me.”
Damn the man.
“It’s rude,” I say. “And I wouldn’t have just left.”
He calls my bullshit with that damned eyebrow of his. “Oh no?”
“No! I’d have at least made an excuse.”
“You’d have seen through any excuse I offered.”
“True. But in recognizing it, I would have respected it for what it was—part of the game.”
He leans forward, his blue eyes virulently intense. “And what exactly is the game, for you, Audra?” His voice is low, thrumming with veiled, salacious heat.
“You know the game as well as I do, Franco.”
“Yeah, maybe, but I want to know what it is for you. I know what it is for me, but I don’t think it’s the same for everyone.”
“The game for me is keeping hooking up simple.” I shrug, swirling the wine in my glass. “No strings, no expectations, no weirdness. Just…fun. A little bit of connection with someone, and then an easy, awkwardness-free escape.”
Somehow, despite our constant conversation, Franco’s plate is empty, and mine is almost cleaned, too, though I barely remember even eating. All I’m aware of is him—his eyes, those pale intense icy blue orbs, and his scent from across the table, and the tightly restrained energy of his presence.
When we’re finished eating and the server has removed our plates, Franco pours the last of the wine into our glasses. “Dessert?” he asks.
I frown at him. “Do I look like someone who would eat dessert?”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “You look like you are dessert.”
Dammit, I shouldn’t respond to that. I should not—
“You’ve already sampled all the dessert I have to offer, haven’t you?” I hear myself say.
“Hell no,” he murmurs. “I think you have a lot more dessert I have yet to taste.”
“Dammit, Franco.” I huff an irritated, aroused sigh. “I need to use the bathroom.”
He just kicks back in his chair, tossing back the rest of his wine as he digs his wallet out of his left hip pocket. “I’ll be waiting.”
I use the bathroom and then, after washing my hands, I stand in front of the mirror, giving myself a mental pep talk.
Don’t do anything stupid. You’re a player, he’s a player; you both understand damn well how this works. You have all the explanation you need.
Yeah, but I knew all that before agreeing to meet him.
Exactly.
Wait—this pep talk is turning into an argument.
If I’d known beforehand why he left the way he did, then why did I agree to meet him in the first place, much less let him pick me up? And if the whole premise of this meeting is to talk about why he left, then why has that been only a small part of our conversation? And why are we flirting like this?
I know that answer all too well.
Deep down, under my consciousness, I knew how this would go, and it’s going exactly that way. But it can’t go there. I can’t let anything else happen. I should call a Lyft and go home.
ALONE.
Don’t let him take me home.
Bad idea.
Stupid idea.
Dangerous idea.
I fix my hair, adjusting this strand and that one, tug my top down and plump my tits up, hike my jeans a little higher, wiggle my feet in my heels, and then, with a sigh of irritation at myself, I exit the bathroom.
I find Franco by the hostess stand, discreetly picking his teeth with a toothpick, blatantly ignoring the hostess—who is leaning way over the hostess stand in an obvious ploy to attract his attention with her exposed cleavage.
Sorry, honey—he’s got all the cleavage he can handle right here, and mine are real, unlike yours.
Gah, that was catty, even in my own head. Why am I being such a bitch? I mean, it’s not like I’ve actually said any of the catty shit I’ve thought, but still. And it’s not like I even care whether he does anything with the hostess. Or whether her tits are real.
I don’t care about any of it. It was just a date.
No, wait—it wasn’t a date. It was just two people…who have fucked…having dinner together.
And talking about surprisingly personal things.
UGH.
It was a date.
He smiles at me, and his smile is warm and kind and friendly—making me feel even shittier about my catty, jealous thoughts and ridiculous, manufactured irritation. I’m really not even mad that he left like he did, only that he got the drop on me. But I am irritated that he knew as much.
“Ready?” Franco asks, holding the door open for me.
“Yep.” I sound short and brusque even to myself, and try again, more kindly. “Thank you.”
He opens the truck door for me, handing me up, closing it, and then climbing in behind the wheel. He starts the engine, but doesn’t pull out of the parking spot. “Something wrong?”
I laugh, shaking my head. “I was calling myself on my own bullshit.” I sigh. “And also, the hostess annoys the hell out of me.”
Franco digs a slip of paper out of his hip pocket and shows it to me. It’s a scrap of receipt paper ripped from a printer, covered with looping, feminine handwriting: Michelle 630-434-1234 Call me ANYTIME for ANYTHING! The two words were triple underlined and highlighted in pink, with several hearts doodled around the “anything”, just in case her intent wasn’t clear.
I blink as I read it. “Wow. Not subtle.” I hand it back to him. “You going to call her?”
Franco snorts as he pulls out of the parking lot. “Not a chance in hell.” He stuffs the paper into the bin on the side of his door. His eyes flick to me. “I have other plans, and they don’t involve a desperate twenty-year-old.”
I gulp; hating the effect his words have on me even if I did love it. “Plans, huh? What plans would those be?”
“Well…I never had dessert,” he murmurs, his eyes openly roaming my cleavage. “And I have a hell of a sweet tooth.”
A long, long silence.
“Franco…” I whisper.
He turns into my condo complex. “Yes, Audra?”
“This isn’t how this is supposed to go.”
“No? What were you expecting?” He turns into the lot behind my building and parks in one of the guest spaces. “Like you said, we both know what this game is.”
“This wasn’t supposed to be a continuation of the game.” I unbuckle and open the door, but don’t exit yet.
He huffs a laugh, grinning at me. “Oh no? Then I’m not sure what you were thinking, agreeing to go out with me…and letting me pick you up. And pay for dinner. And take you home. And flirting with me.”
“I obviously wasn’t thinking.”
He shuts off his truck and unbuckles. “No, obviously not.”
I watch him, panicking a little. “What—what are you doing? Where are you going?”
/>
“Walking you up.” He smirks. “It’s the gentlemanly thing to do… on a date.”
“Oh.” I don’t question this until we’re at the elevator and he’s riding up to my floor with me. “Wait. I wasn’t planning on telling you which unit I live in.”
He just laughs. “I’m really throwing you off your game, aren’t I?”
“Yes, damn you. This whole thing is fucking weird.”
I precede him off the elevator and pause outside my door. “Just so you know, I’m normally very, very protective of my home. I almost never bring anyone up here.”
“Actually, I totally get that. I’m the same way about my house.” He laughs, somewhat ruefully. “I guess I don’t like mixing pleasure with too many details about my personal life.”
I’m standing with my back to my door, and I’m staring up at him, and I understand what he’s saying all too well. “Me either. When you mix personal with pleasure, things get messy.”
“And I’m a neat freak and a perfectionist, so having a messy personal life gives me an anxiety attack.” He braces a palm against the door over my shoulder, his hard body overwhelming all of my senses, his eyes piercing mine. “I like to keep things neat, simple, and compartmentalized.”
“One and done, huh?” I breathe, and watch, annoyed, as my fingers dance across his chest and wander the breadth of his shoulders.
He shakes his head. “No, as a matter of fact. I have a system, and a theory to go with it.”
“And what is your system?” I ask.
He gazes down at me, one fingertip trailing up the outside of my bicep, sending shivers down my spine and through my core. “I have a four-fuck-maximum rule.”
I laugh, a little too breathily for my own comfort. “I’m pretty sure we broke that last night, Franco.”
He shakes his head. “No, you’re misunderstanding. Not four individual acts of coitus, but four separate sexual encounters. Meaning, last night was one.” He runs his finger up my arm, across my shoulder, over my clavicle and breastbone, and down the valley of my cleavage. “Tonight will be two.” He tugs the edge of my top aside to bare the crimson of my bra. “I’ll take you to my place tomorrow and fuck you up against my workbench, and that will be three. I’ll drive us out to my favorite fishing spot and fuck you in the bed of my truck under the stars, and that will be four. And then…that’s it. We go our separate ways.”
I keep my breathing steady as he pushes the other side of my top away, baring more of my bra. “I see. And what’s the theory that goes with this four-fuck-maximum rule of yours?”
A door down the hall opens, and we both look up, startled; I think we’d both forgotten we weren’t alone in this hallway, that it’s a public space. I twist away from him, dig my keys out of my purse, and unlock my door. I didn’t necessarily mean for him to come in with me, but he did, and I didn’t stop him, and then, somehow, my door is closed and my purse is on the floor at my feet and my back is to the door again, and he’s everywhere, that cologne and sawdust scent permeating all of my senses.
“Why do you still smell like sawdust?” I ask. “You clearly took a shower.”
He chuckles, a smooth, amused rumble. “I was nervous and got ready way too early, so I ended up in my workshop, planing a piece of oak I’m making into a side table.”
“Oh.” I can’t help sniffing him. “I like it.”
“I think I also just smell like sawdust, as a person. The scent is ingrained in my pores, I’m pretty sure.”
My nose buries against his chest, and I inhale deeply—I’m dizzied by the intensity of my reaction to his scent, the way my heart slams in my chest, the way my core clenches and my thighs shake and my hands clutch at him involuntarily. “It’s kind of intoxicating, the way you smell.”
He dips, nuzzling his face in my cleavage, inhaling as deeply as I did. “I know the feeling.” He lowers himself to his knees, and his hands push my shirt up, baring my midriff and the lower curve of my bra cups; his nose skates across my skin, and his hands cup my waist. “You smell incredible.”
“What’s your theory, Franco?” I ask, trying hard to sound in control and to cover the shakiness of my voice. Hard to do while his fingers dance around my waist, teasing and tickling my skin above the denim, and then toy with the button and zipper. “About only ever fucking the same person four times, that is.”
He touches his lips to my skin, a damp hot kiss just south and west of my navel—I gasp. He transfers this slow touch of his lips eastward, following the horizon of the waistline of my jeans. One kiss, two, three. And then his fingers busy themselves, nudging the brass button through the buttonhole and tugging my zipper down, and then hooking into the lacy crimson elastic of my panties where they’re now visible. Tugging them down an inch and then two, he kisses me again, lower, and lower.
Finally, pulling his lips from my skin, he stares up at me while he hooks two fingers of each hand in the belt loops on either side of my waist, slowly and inexorably peeling my jeans downward, leaving my panties in place. “I came to the theory through a lot of experimentation,” he says, his eyes on mine while his hands continue peeling my jeans down my thighs. “Once isn’t enough to really enjoy all a person has to offer. It’s too impersonal. Enough for a quick release, but that’s about it. Once has its place but, in general, it’s not enough for me. Two and three times are pretty much the same—still not enough. You get to know the other person, what they like and what you like, but you’re still just strangers meeting in the dark. Five and beyond is too much. You risk letting it get personal. After five encounters, you start to sort of instinctively share things, personal things. You start to…connect. You ignore your better sense of things. Four, in my experience, is just right. Enough that you’ve gotten a sense about the other person, but you can still keep your emotional and personal distance. You can break it off easily with no hard feelings or awkwardness. You’ve had enough to pretty much know you’ve enjoyed what the other person has to offer, but you’re not tempted to think it could be anything else. You can go your way satisfied, yet not invested.”
“Oh,” I whisper. “I guess that makes sense.”
My jeans are in a pile on the floor off to one side, and I’m in my black sleeveless top, bra, and panties. He fits my feet back into my heels, levering me a few inches higher once again. Now, his eyes rake down, taking in my cleavage and the red triangle of my thong, and then my thighs. Standing like this, the insides of my thighs just barely kiss, leaving a tiny keyhole between them. In the heels, my butt pops out even more, but facing him like this, he can’t really see that.
I start talking, just to cover the unsteadiness I feel at his gaze, at his touch—a nervousness I have no reason to feel, seeing as we’ve already been naked together.
“Personally, I’ve always gone with the three strikes rule,” I say. “Similar reasoning, though.”
“So you’re not a one-and-done kind of person either?”
I shake my head. “No, not typically. Sometimes, you meet someone and you just know they’re a once and that’s it person, you know? But mostly, I like two or three times. Like you said, enough to learn about each other, but not enough to start feeling like it’s a thing.”
“Exactly.” His eyes, as pale and icy as they are, blister and spark with heat. “Don’t want to risk it becoming a thing.”
His fingers dance up the backs of my legs, tickling behind my knees and skating up my hamstrings. Then, slowly, deliberately, his eyes on mine, he drags all ten fingers down over my buttocks, a teasing, ticklish touch. I catch my breath, a hitch in my lungs. His eyes narrow, jaw tensing.
“Time for dessert,” he murmurs.
Chapter 4
“Dessert?” I question, my voice low, confused; all thoughts have been scattered by the raw hunger in his eyes.
He hooks his index fingers in the straps of my thong at either hip and he slowly drags the undergarment down, down, and off. I don’t even have to take off my shoes—he cups my calf and lifts,
one foot and then the other, and the red thong flies across the room to land somewhere near my couch. Naked from waist down, still wearing my heels, top, and bra. My core is drenched, weeping, slick and hot and clenching hard at the look in his eyes.
He presses against the insides of my ankles, and I instinctually widen my stance; my hands have a mind of their own, trailing over his head to the ponytail, tugging his hair free to spill loose over his shoulders. I bury my hands in his hair, keeping my eyes on his.
“Dessert,” he answers, and drags his tongue over my seam.
“Oh god.”
“We were in too much of a rush last time and I didn’t get to taste you.” He laps again, slowly, his tongue not penetrating yet, just tasting, teasing.
I have no verbal response for that beyond a gasp as his lips close over my seam and he suckles my clitoris between his teeth, a sudden and wilding assault. Then, instead of pursuing the high he’d started me on, he traces my seam once more but with a fingertip. I watch, mesmerized, as his index finger makes a slow journey over my entrance, back and forth, teasing. His eyes watch me watching him, and I know he sees when I feel the slight pressure he applies to my clit. He sees my reaction when his finger slips between my nether lips, and he sees the way I grit my teeth and suck in an inhalation at the slow, inexorable penetration of his finger inside me. Oh—oh god. He’s in no rush, and he knows exactly what he’s doing. I expected no less from Franco, but it’s still an overwhelming rush of sensation that leaves me dizzy and gasping and trembling, to be played like a violin with such expert mastery. As his finger explores inside me, he brings his lips to me once more, and now his tongue slathers against my clit, working it to hypersensitive hardness. I have a knotted, tangled grip on his hair, bunching the silky mass in my hands. I feel his other hand cup around my buttock, holding me against his mouth.
“God—Franco…holy shit.”
He smirks up at me, and I see the slick evidence of my desire smeared on his mouth. “I remember you screaming a hell of a lot louder than that last night,” he remarks.
I close my eyes briefly as he trades his words for licks, a series of slow circles against me. “You—you’ll have to earn the screams, Franco.”