Ready for Love (7 page)

Jolts of pleasure seemed to lift her and make her sway at the same time. She let out a scream that she was sure must have been heard all clear across his mansion. It was a good thing he lived alone and his servants were discreet. Her body sagged against his when the last ripple of her orgasm passed through her and she wondered how she would find energy for anything more.

He lifted her up and carried her over to his California king-size platform bed. He laid her down and slid off her shoes and then her thigh-highs before slowly and seductively taking off her thong underwear. Before she could do or say anything, he lowered his head and gave her the most intimate of kisses.

With each stroke of his tongue, she struggled to keep her eyes from rolling to the back of her head.

It felt just that good.

She moaned and locked her thighs around his head, effectively holding him in place and making sure that her legs didn’t take on a life of their own and just start kicking and waving everywhere.

Terrill couldn’t believe that he was finally tasting Maritza’s sweet nectar. She tasted better than anything he had ever tasted. And to finally be able to see her gorgeous body in all its splendor, splayed out on his bed for him to pleasure and taste and worship, was almost enough to make him enter her and bring them both to completion, quick, fast and in a hurry.

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t rush this moment.

He had waited too long for it.

So he allowed his tongue to travel up and down her slick folds. He let it tunnel forth and mimicked the thrusts he would soon be doing with his penis. He touched her and tasted her, letting his fingers feel the soft wet caverns of desire that she offered.

He knew he was humming with a happiness that refused to be contained. But his sounds of pleasure had nothing on her moans. The grip of her thighs on his shoulders and her fingers in his hair told him without her having to say a word that she wanted this, too.

He let his hands caress her behind and slide down to her full hips and luscious thighs as his tongue continued to tunnel and lap up all of her sweet juices. He couldn’t even begin to remember how many times he had gone to bed thinking about having her thighs wrapped around him as he spent his seed inside her.

He was so addicted to the taste of her that he lost count of how many times she had come. All he knew was he wanted to be inside her the next time she did. So he reluctantly pulled away from her, got undressed and put on a condom.

Maritza didn’t know how Terrill managed to break free of the kung fu grip her thighs had on him. But he did. She gazed up to see him removing what was left of his clothing and placing the protection on his very well-endowed penis.

She let her eyes roam over his body and soaked in the one hundred percent pure masculinity that exuded off of him like water down the falls. It was so overwhelming she thought she could actually drown in it.

His honey-complexioned skin showed only the slightest hint of the work he had already put in in bringing her to orgasm after orgasm. The barest traces of perspiration glistened on his skin, making the honey underneath look good enough to lick. When he joined her on the bed she did just that. She let her tongue trace the ridges and contours of his muscled chest and imagined
this is what a pec tastes like.

She thought she was wet and ready enough to take anything he came with until she felt the beginning of his penis stretching her in ways she had never been stretched before. She groaned and relaxed herself even more so that she could have all of him in her. She was shocked by how much she wanted that. He felt so thick and good inside of her. And as he pulled back a little and pushed farther into her, she realized he had considerable length to go along with that width.

Once he reached the hilt, he stopped for a moment and she found herself lost in his gaze and glad he was giving her a moment to get used to his size.

He bent his head and kissed her deeply, completely. She had kissed a lot of men in her thirty-four years of living, but she had never been kissed like this. Terrill’s kisses felt as if he were marking her soul deep. She knew no matter what happened between them a part of her would always belong to him just by virtue of the way he kissed her.

“You ready for me, babe?” He stopped kissing her and had that intense expression in his eyes again.

“Yes.” She knew her voice was breathless because she was still holding her breath, partly in disbelief that she was actually making love with Terrill and partly in order to stop herself from saying just how much she had wanted this and for how long she had wanted it.

He pulled out and pushed back in, slowly at first and picking up speed with each thrust. The back-and-forth motion of his hips seemed to hook her like a yo-yo. Her hips followed his, lifting off the bed and bouncing back down. She wanted him bad. She wanted him deep.

“Feel good, babe?” His words flowed with the perfect mix of strain and sensual seduction.

She worked her hips, tilting her pelvis and clenching his penis in her inner walls, giving him the ultimate massage.

“Does that feel good?” She smiled and winked at him, all the while giving as good as she got.

He smiled a devilish grin and began to piston his hips harder and faster. “Tell me…why the hell did we wait so long to do this?”

His power thrusts were taking her closer and closer to the edge, so close she could almost feel the orgasm. It was going to be amazing. She could already tell. She wrapped her arms around his neck and locked her thighs firmly around him.

She looked him dead in the eye. “I don’t know what took us so long. But. Don’t. You. Dare. Stop.”

The orgasm blasted through her and she screamed out his name. His thrusts keep coming and extended her orgasm until she didn’t know if she was coming or going. She heard mumbling and moaning all around her and she realized that she was doing it. If she were in church, she would have thought she was speaking in tongues.

He kept his thrusts going and soon she was crying out again. But this time she wasn’t alone. His grunts accompanied hers as they both found their release together.

The next morning as Terrill waited for Maritza to get dressed at her house so that they could go out for breakfast, he wondered how he was going to get her to see that they were meant to be together and the only thing they were doing was wasting more time by not just coming out and admitting to the world that they were a couple now.

The upscale breakfast café near Maritza’s loft in downtown Los Angeles was already filled to capacity with Los Angeles’s beautiful people, movers and shakers. Even though he and Maritza definitely fit in, Terrill still couldn’t help but wish that her clothes were at his mansion and he could have served her breakfast in bed before they got dressed and went off to work.

Maybe one day…

For now he would just take his time and play things the way Maritza wanted to—as long as they ultimately ended up where he wanted them to be.

“So I’m coming over to meet with your A&R people about my plans for Da Stunnas today. Please tell me you have had some luck getting them to see that my plans are really the only viable way to salvage this group’s reputation.”

He shook his head. There went the wonderful afterglow he had been basking in after spending the night making love to her in just about every position and hearing her cry out his name in passion rather than anger.

“Please tell me you took my advice and came up with some alternate ideas that will coincide with the plans my A&R team have for this group. You had days to come up with something else. I spoke to you about this when I was still in Jersey.” He smiled at her and waited for the chill blast that he knew would be coming.

She laughed, but it wasn’t the sound of a woman in a fit of humor—more like a woman on the verge of a fit.

“How about I just let you work this out with Da Stunnas and my A&R people and I just stay out unless you guys can’t work something out. I’m sure you all will be able to come to a workable solution for all.” The last thing he wanted to do was get into a big argument with her about this foolishness.

“That’s fair.” She seemed to be mulling something over in her head. “Okay, so how are we going to play this?”

“Play what?” he asked.

“Play the two of us being together and not letting any of our friends and family know about it. I think we need to continue pretending not to get along. And I definitely can’t spend the night at your mansion anymore…I suppose you could come to my loft, but it might be best if we hooked up elsewhere—”

“I’m not going to have some seedy secret affair with you, Maritza. That—”

“Not a seedy secret affair! Just a secret affair, something that is just special between the two of us and not shared with the world.”

“Yet?” He meant it as a statement but it came out more as a question because he really wasn’t sure where he stood with her.

“Huh?” A perplexed expression crossed her face.

“Not shared with the world
yet?
Eventually we will tell people about us, right?”

“Yeah, I mean eventually… Ye—ah…once we know it’s going to last and we’re going to be together. Yeah.” She didn’t sound very certain to him, and he didn’t know if he should worry about that or not.

He mulled it over. It wasn’t what he wanted at all. The main question was, would playing it this way eventually get him what he wanted? “Fine.”

“This could actually be kind of fun, you know. No one will know but us. It’ll be our secret.” Her beautiful dimpled smile lit up her face and he realized he could never say no to her when looking at that smile.

Still, he had to get clarification on a few of the details. “For how long?”

“What do you mean for how long?”

“How long are we going to keep this a secret?” he probed.

“Until we know for sure,” she hedged.

“And how long will that take?”

“How long will what take?”

“How long will it take for you to know for sure?” he asked her point blank.

“I don’t know. Let’s just see how it goes. That’s the beauty of it. Now that we have decided to stop fighting it, we can take our time and explore every facet of our attraction and see where it takes us. I’m excited about the ride. Aren’t you?”

“I’m excited, too. I just don’t know why it has to be a secret from the people we love and who love us. But I am willing to do this for a little while, waiting for you to get on the same page as me.”

They finished up their breakfast in silence and Terrill tried to talk himself into believing that he was doing the right thing and it wasn’t about to blow up in his face.

Maritza took a deep breath and bit back the words that were threatening to come bubbling forth from her mouth. Words like, “maybe we don’t have to keep this a secret,” and “maybe we can tell all our friends and family about us” were on the tip of her tongue. But she knew better than to say them.

Even though Terrill was a cooler guy than she would ever willingly give him credit for being, she knew that high-level VIPs like him had reputations to think of. She had dated plenty of record label executives during her days as a video dancer.

Some might even say she effectively dated herself right out of the pool. As one guy she had really cared for told her many years ago, men don’t want to marry the girl that has dated too many of the other men in the room. She was a pretty girl, but she would never be more than the flavor of the month for any important man who allowed what others thought of him to inform his marriage decisions. Most men would have a problem if their future wife had dated more men in the room than he could count. Even if she hadn’t had sex with them all, he would still have a problem with it. And it would crush her heart to have Terrill give her that kind of speech or give her the sorry-you-can’t-turn-a-hooker-into-a-housewife speech.

She hadn’t been a hooker.

But she had dated freely and loved freely and had thought for the briefest moment that she was invincible and in control of everything in her life. Until something really horrible had happened, and life showed her that she couldn’t be in control of everything. That she couldn’t always trust those around her to respect her boundaries or even have her best interests in mind.

And now she had to live with the knowledge that she wasn’t untouchable or invincible after all. And even though she had long since turned her life around, she had to live with the repercussions forever. Repercussions that meant no matter what she’d just said to Terrill, ultimately their time together had an expiration date and she needed to enjoy it while she could.

“Terrill Carter, is that you?”

The masculine voice that spoke those words as she and Terrill were leaving the café sent a cold chill of dread down her spine.

It couldn’t be.

He couldn’t be back.

She turned around and looked dead into the face of her worst nightmare, a nightmare that she had by the grace of God lived through, but apparently was coming back to haunt her.

She watched the scene play out as if in slow motion.

Terrill stopped and spoke with Herbert Jackson, big-time record company executive and star of her recurring nightmares.

“Hey, Herbert. When did you get back into the area?” Terrill didn’t seem like he was really close friends with Herbert. She could tell by the sort of standoffish way that Terrill talked to Herbert that he probably didn’t like him.

“I got back a couple of weeks ago. New York couldn’t hold me forever. I had to come back to Los Angeles eventually.”

Please don’t let him be back for good,
she thought as she willed herself just to disappear. She started walking away, all the while wishing she could break into a run without causing a scene.

Terrill’s hand reached out and caught her before she could get far. “Pardon me for being so rude. This is Maritza—”

“Maritza Morales. I know her well.” Herbert cut Terrill off and held out his hand to Maritza as if daring her not to take it and make a scene.