Forbidden Fruit (14 page)

“Yes,” she said, her throat inexplicably dry. “Yes, I am. Whatever you want.”

She was shaking now, her insides trembling, but it wasn’t about sex anymore. Where was he going with this line of conversation?

“The perfect woman. A woman any man would want.

Why do I want more from you?”

“I’ll give you more,” she answered, her throat dryer than ever. Her pulse was racing.

Yes, this was exactly what she wanted. But more what? She couldn’t figure it out.

He shook his head, moved away from her, pacing her living room again, his back to her. She sat up and pulled her dress together, moved down to sit on the edge of the sofa cushions.

“Gideon? Tell me what’s going on. What exactly are we talking about?”

He paused, standing in front of a small antique bureau, laid his fingers on the old wood surface. He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“It’s not ‘nothing.’ I can see that. Please talk to me.”

“We’ve never been very good at talking, have we?”

“What? Of course we have. We’ve talked about our pasts…all sorts of things.”

“Have we really?”

She had to stop and think about it a moment, struggling to get her thoughts organized. She’d talked about her own childhood, but he’d been rather vague about the details of his past, his life. He’d merely skimmed the surface. There were enormous chunks missing from what she knew about him, what he’d shown her about who he was. He remained, for the most part, inscrutable.

She asked quietly, “Why have you never taken me to your house, Gideon?”

She knew even before she saw his shoulders tense that she’d said the wrong thing. She didn’t understand why the answer to her question felt so important.

There was a long pause. Long enough to make her squirm on the edge of the sofa. Then he said quietly, “I’m going to go now.”

“What?”

But he didn’t say any more. He picked up his discarded jacket. His face looked as though it were carved from stone.

“Gideon, you can’t just…leave like this. What did I do? What did I say? Tell me. This isn’t making any sense.”

“I don’t want to have this discussion, Karalee.”

“So, you’re just going to leave? To walk out of here leaving me wondering what the hell is going on?

That’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair, Karalee.”

“Jesus, just stop it.” She was angry now, the heat of it lending her strength. “Just stop, Gideon, with all the secrecy, and talk to me. Or am I just your fuck buddy, so you don’t think we need to have conversations of any substance? Is that it?”

There was anger in his tone now. “If that were it, I wouldn’t be here. There would be no conversation at all. I would have fucked you in the janitors’ closet and that would have been the end. I wouldn’t have come back over and over again.”

“But you did.”

He paused, rubbed at the back of his neck. “Yes, I did. Christ, Karalee.”

He sat on the arm of the sofa, where only moments before he’d been going down on her. She couldn’t get over how strange the whole thing was. How had the evening turned into such a mess?

“Tell me what’s going on,” she said quietly, demanding for once.

He shook his head again. “I don’t take anyone there.

To my house. I can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because that was her house. My wife’s. She lived in that house. And she died there.”

She was too stunned to answer for severallmoments.

“Jesus, Gideon. I…I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged, but his whole posture was as ramrod stiff as steel. When she put a hand on his arm, he didn’t move. But there was the slightest loosening, the smallest signallof acceptance of her touch.

He kept his eyes on the floor. “I married Alicia right out of college. We had a good life. A great life. We wanted all of the same things, the same lifestyle. It was a ridiculously ideallmarriage, if you want to know the truth. We traveled every summer, spent a lot of time with her family.” He paused, rubbed a hand over his jaw. “We were in Italy with her parents when she got sick, had to come home. It was pancreatic cancer, so it happened fast. One minute we were trekking through Europe, and the next she was…gone. That’s when I moved to Santa Barbara. I couldn’t stay.”

Karalee’s chest was so tight she could barely breathe. Tight and warm with sympathy, and with something else…She couldn’t take it all in. And she could see the struggle in the tight lines around his mouth.

“You don’t have to say anything more, Gideon. I’m sorry I forced you into telling me this way.”

“You would have had to know eventually, if I were going to continue seeing you.”

“And were you? Going to continue seeing me, I mean?”

He turned to her then. She couldn’t read his expression. “Yes.”

Her entire body went warm and loose, as though she’d been holding her breath for a very long time.

Maybe she had.

She ran a hand over his forearm, over the soft, dark hair, the smooth, corded muscle. “Come to bed with me, Gideon.”

He ran both his hands over his hair, blew out a breath. “Alright.”

Standing, he dropped his coat on the sofa and helped her to her feet. He led her down the hall to her bedroom, silently undressed her, then himself. Her body was responding to him as it always did: her nipples hard, her sex damp and needy. But she wasn’t sure where his head was right now.

They got into her big bed, and he pulled her body in close to his. She breathed him in, that scent of elegance, of sex, of her own juices still on his skin.

She wanted him. No doubt about it. Enough that it nearly hurt. But she was also so full of emotion she couldn’t really think about anything. All she could do was feel.

His body was warm, his skin soft and hard at the same time in the way only a man’s skin could be. He felt good, every plane and angle, every strong rise of muscle. They’d never had this sort of quiet moment together for her to simply focus on the feellof his body against hers. No, it had always been fucking like mad, then collapsing in exhaustion. This was lovely. Confusing. She didn’t know how the hell to feel, what to think. She focused on his breathing, on matching the rhythm of her breath to his.

After a while he turned her to face him, pulled her up so that her mouth was only inches from his, and he began to kiss her. Slowly, gently, in a way he never had before. His lips, his tongue, were soft, searching. Her arms wound around his neck, and he moved her, laid her body over his, her breasts crushed against his chest.

His cock was soft beneath her. She felt disappointed. Selfish. But in only moments it came to life, hardening at the apex of her thighs. She rubbed her body against his, her mound back and forth over his hardening cock, her breasts against his chest, excitement building, coursing through her.

He was still kissing her, his tongue thrusting gently into her mouth, his lips lush against hers. And she was melting all over, in a soft, warm rush. Everything was so different suddenly. But she didn’t want to think about it.

She broke away long enough to lean over him and pull a condom from her nightstand drawer.

Straddling his body, she tore the packet open, reached down between them, and rolled the condom over his rigid shaft. He moaned, held her hips in his hands, and guided her onto his cock, slipped the tip inside her.

She held perfectly still, poised, with just the head of his cock inside her body. Sensation washed through her, small ripples that became more intense somehow, even while they held perfectly still, the only movement her breath and his. In the half-dark she could make out the outline of his face, his fine jaw, the way his dark hair fell away from his forehead.

And for some reason, she smiled.

He lifted her then, just the slightest inch, and settled her again onto his cock, driving a little deeper this time, driving pleasure into her body. She rocked against him, aware of every warm shiver of desire, of the heat of their bodies pressed together, of the coollnight air on her skin. And the strange sense of familiarity, mixed with the utter strangeness of the tenderness running like a cord between them.

Even as the heat rose in her body, pleasure swarming her in soft, rippling waves, tears stung the back of her eyes. Dazed, she rocked against him harder, her mound pressing down on his pubic bone with every thrust, taking her higher and higher.

As her climax shuddered through her system, she grabbed his shoulders, held on tight, and his hands went around her wrists, holding her to him. His eyes met hers, and she watched the exquisite agony on his face as he came, felt him tense and shiver. He groaned, and she groaned with him. Together they shook, their eyes locked. And for the first time, she understood the meaning of intimacy.

JAGGER HAD WAITED THREE DAYS TO TALK

TO HER. HE’D skipped schoollWednesday night. It was too hard to see her. He hadn’t been ready to sit in class, to watch her lecture, without touching her, talking to her. It was torture to even think about it.

He’d needed distance. Perspective.

It hadn’t helped.

Tonight had been hard, even sitting in the back of the room where he could avoid her eyes. Those green eyes, like dark moss. Beautiful. He’d sat in his seat, forcing himself to hold still, pretending to take notes, to be focused on his pad of legallpaper when all he’d wanted to do was watch her every move, her mouth as she talked.

The lecture had covered some of the darker fetish practices: amputee fetish, scat play, bloodletting, bestiality, things he found repulsive. It didn’t matter.

He’d been hard as iron the whole damn time just hearing her voice.

He’d taken off the moment class was over, while everyone else was still gathering their books.

Pushing through the heavy double doors of the building, he’d stepped out into the cold evening air.

He’d needed it, needed that coollrush against his skin. He’d pulled in breath after breath, just so he could wait a few minutes to call her, to give her time to wrap things up, pack up her notes, talk to other students.

He walked the campus for fifteen minutes in long strides, circling the big building where Mia’s class took place twice, three times. He knew she needed some time; the students always had questions for the professors on Fridays, before doing homework and writing papers over the weekend. Finally he pulled his cell from his pocket, dialed, waited for her to pick up.

“Hey there, Mia Rose.”

“Hi.” She sounded breathless. Sexy.

He was still half hard.

“What are you doing? Are you still in your classroom?”

“I’m just leaving the building. Where are you?”

“Do you need to go to your office, to do anything else before you leave?” Why was his heart hammering, waiting for her to answer?

“No, I was going straight to my car. I was just going home.”

“Come with me, Mia Rose.”

He rounded the corner of the building, saw her standing there by the doorway, the fluorescent lights from inside making her hair burn with blue highlights.

She looked so professional, in her narrow black skirt, her cream-colored sweater. But her heels were just a little too high, making her legs look long and lean.

She looked up as he approached, smiled, lowering her cell phone into her purse. That smile was so open, so purely happy to see him. Surprising.

Beautiful.

“Mia Rose. Hi.”

“Hi.” She glanced down for a moment, looked back up, her eyes searching his face.

“I should have called you,” he started.

“No, I haven’t called, either. I was…I don’t know. I had to think.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Thanks for giving me some space.” She stopped, shifted her briefcase from one hand to the other, laughed a little. “God, that sounds so stupid.”

“No it doesn’t. I know what you mean. I can’t think when I’m around you at all.” It was true. He didn’t mind saying it to her. “Come with me,” he said again.

“Where?”

“Anywhere. To a café. We can have a glass of wine, talk.”

She nodded her head. “Okay.”

Almost too easy. But he needed that, needed not to have to think too hard about it. He just needed to see her, talk to her.
Be
with her. He didn’t want to know what it was all about. There would be time for that later. Right now she was only inches away. He could smell that vanilla scent on her skin, in her hair. He would be able to touch her soon. Anything else could wait.

The little café was warm, the windows fogged so that, from the inside, Mia could barely see the people moving down the sidewalk outside. The streetlights, the pink neon glow from a sign across the street, were blurred streaks of translucence coming through the glass.

They sat at a table in a corner of the front window, on velvet-covered wingback chairs, a small, round marble-topped table between them. Around them the walls were covered in shelves full of books. If she looked past Jagger’s head, she saw Goethe, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, volumes of poetry.

“This really is one of those places for the locallintelligentsia, isn’t it? Where the literary crowd hangs out,” she said, tracing her fingers over the rim of her wineglass. The dark Cabernet looked like liquid rubies. She was trying hard not to remember Jagger pouring wine over her skin, her breasts, licking it off…

“I suppose. Or at least, they like to look literary. I don’t know if anyone actually reads here.”

He was watching her, his eyes a dark, smoky gray.

Why did it make her feellas though he were touching her, running his hands over her skin? She shivered.

Looking away, she sipped her wine, glanced back at him, caught his gaze. Then he reached out, laid a hand over hers, and there it was, that now-familiar electric current running like molten heat through her system whenever he touched her, looked at her a certain way.

“Jagger…” But suddenly her throat was too dry to speak.

He nodded, licked his lips. “Yeah. I thought we’d sit here and talk. Have some wine. Just talk.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to come off like I’m not interested in talking with you. In what you have to say.”

“No, no, of course not.”

They stared at each other for a moment, her pulse hammering, hot.

“Let’s get out of here, Mia Rose.” His voice was low, urgent. “Let’s just go.”

She nodded. They stood, and he helped her shrug into her coat, lifted her purse from the back of the chair and handed it to her, and they went out into the night. Her car was parked close by; he held the door for her while she got in, went around and settled into the passenger seat. They were quiet on the drive to his place, some classic rock playing on the radio the only backdrop to the sounds of the city at night: other cars moving by, the occasionallrumbling of one of the big buses. She glanced at him once; he smiled, and she felt everything in that smile. All the heat between them, the exquisite tension. Her breasts filled, tightened. She had to force her attention back to the road.

She found parking on Sixth Street, only a few doors down from his building. Jagger helped her out from the car with the same care with which he’d handed her in. And even that small touch, his hand on her elbow, made her shiver with need.

They went inside, waited for the big freight elevator.

Jagger slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her closer into his side, untillshe could feellthe heat of his body through her clothes. He bent and brushed a kiss across her hair, murmured, “I can’t wait to get you alone.”

Her sex gave one hard pulse at his words. It couldn’t be soon enough.

She turned to look up at him. His eyes were gleaming, dark, full of smoke. She couldn’t look away. He held her tighter, untillshe could feellthe imprint of his hand on her waist.

The elevator came and he pulled her in. Yanked her in, really, right into his body, one hand going into her hair. Then he was kissing her, hard, bruising kisses.

He opened her lips, dove in with his tongue, hot and wet and making her crazy with need right away.

She could smell him, that lovely, unique scent, mixed with the old wood and metallof the elevator.

She was panting into his mouth, couldn’t catch her breath, as his hands roamed her body beneath her coat. And then her coat was coming off, and his, and his hands were under her sweater, cupping her breasts, thumbing her nipples beneath her bra.

She slid her hands around his waist, down over his tight buttocks, and he tilted his hips, the surge of the elevator rocking them, making the ridge of his erection press into her belly. But she wanted to feellhim inside her,
needed
to.

“Jagger…”

“Yeah, baby…”

He reached out and punched a button, and the elevator came to a grinding stop. His mouth was back on hers in seconds, his tongue driving between her lips. She didn’t stop to question him, just went for his belt, struggled with it untillhe helped her. Then he slid her sweater up, unsnapped the front clasp on her bra, filled his palms with her bare breasts, making her flesh sting with desire.

“Ah, Jagger.”

She reached down and ran her fingertips over the bulge beneath his jeans. A small groan from him, then she unzipped him and pulled his cock out. It was heavy in her hands, warm, solid. She squeezed and he moaned once more.

There was an edge of desperation to everything: to the way he kissed her, the way he touched her. And she was no less frenzied herself, needing to touch him, taste him. Needing him inside her body. She could hardly stand it.

Jagger pulled her skirt up around her waist, slipped her panties down, and she stepped out of them. His mouth never left hers as he backed her into one wallof the old elevator. He pressed her up hard against it, her sweater bunching behind her back. She wrapped one leg around his hip, held on to his shoulders as he snaked a hand under her naked bottom. With the other hand he reached down and swept his fingers across her soaking-wet sex. She groaned into his mouth as he used his fingers to part those swollen lips, and slid his cock inside her.

Sensation drove deep into her body, then deeper still with every rough stroke. It was all so wet: his cock sliding in and out, his lovely mouth on hers. She was shaking with it. And then he pulled his lips away, whispered, “Mia Rose, here, open your mouth.”

“What? Jagger…”

His fingers slid between her lips, and he pushed a small object into her mouth. It was only a moment before she realized it was chocolate, melting like pure sin on her tongue. Pleasure surged, hot and strong, and he drove his cock harder into her body.

Her head was spinning. And when he reached down between them and rubbed her clit with his fingers she came, exploding, her mind blank, while he rammed into her, and the chocolate disappeared like a mirage in her mouth.

A few more thrusts and he groaned, tensed, shuddered, one hand pulling her face in to kiss her over and over, his goatee rough against her skin.

And she loved it: him coming inside her, the taste of chocolate and
him
on her tongue.

Finally they both stopped shaking and he pulled out of her. Quietly, he helped her back into her clothes.

He was smiling at her, tender. Such a lovely contrast after the rough sex. He hit a button and the elevator started again with a loud sigh. They didn’t speak as they surged upward, but he kept his arm looped around her waist untillthey were in his apartment.

He took her coat from her hands and threw it with his own brown leather jacket over the back of one of the bar stools at the kitchen counter. He took her hand, led her around the counter into the kitchen. Then he pulled his sweater off, swept hers over her head, removed her bra. He slipped her skirt off next, his hands gentle, reverent.

“Mia Rose, stay here.”

Her eyes followed him as he opened his refrigerator, pulled a few items out and set them on the counter.

“What are you doing, Jagger?”

“You’ll see.”

But she could see already. He had a squeeze bottle of chocolate syrup in his hand, something else in a glass jar. She was beginning to shake again already, guessing what he might do with these things.

Quickly, he put the items one by one into the microwave, the bell going off a few moments later like a small shock of desire lighting up her system.

She was acutely aware of standing nearly naked in his kitchen, the scent of melted chocolate in the air.

She couldn’t have moved if she wanted to.

He turned back to her, too beautifullin his faded jeans, his heavy black boots. His tattoos stood out against his biceps, marking the curve of muscle there. Her sex gave a squeeze. She needed him to touch her. Why was he waiting? Excruciating.

He paused, smiled at her. “One last thing. Don’t move.”

He turned to the counter behind him and she couldn’t see what he was doing, but she could smell it: the sharp tang of fresh citrus. He came back to her then, laid out a small row of items. He leaned in, brushed his lips across hers, whispered, “I think you’re going to like this. I think I’m going to like this.”

He knelt then, at her feet, and slipped her damp panties down over her legs, slowly. Almost painful, how many moments it took for her to be completely naked before him. He stayed on his knees, his breath hot on the narrow strip of curls between her thighs. She shifted her weight, her sex swelling beneath his gaze.

“Can you stand here, Mia Rose?”

“Yes.”

He ran a hand over her body: her belly, her thighs, and a traillof pure pleasure followed his touch.

“Please, Jagger.”

“Right here, baby,” he said quietly. “I’m right here.”

He reached behind her and in his hand was a lemon, cut in half. He squeezed it and the strong scent of citrus filled the air once more.

“What…what are you going to do with that?”

“Shh. Here, part your legs for me. Yeah, that’s it.”

She did as he asked, trembling all over. And then he rubbed the juicy lemon over her lower belly. A shock went through her, a shock of pure lust.

“God, Jagger.” Her fingers gripped the edge of the counter.

He was quiet, moving the lemon lower, using his fingers to hold the lips of her sex open and running the lemon over her cleft, her hardening clitoris. She’d never felt anything like it. Slippery, stinging just a little, and the scent of it in her nostrils made it better, somehow. Simply knowing that he was touching her with it. And the fact that it was him.

Jagger.

She looked down at his broad, brown shoulders and a new shiver ran through her. He was so goddamned beautiful. And he was giving her exactly what she wanted. Needed. Had needed for years.

Her head was reeling.

He ran the fruit over her sex, and she went wet in a rush of heat and need. She cried out, her entire body pulsing, ready to come already.

He stopped.

“No, Jagger, please. God, please…”