Stranger (22 page)

Then he put his hands on my hips and turned me, facing away from him, then guided his cock inside me with an expert hand.

I teetered momentarily until I braced my hands on his knees and shifted my feet flat on the floor. Jack didn’t move while we settled. This angle, with me sitting on his lap but facing away from him, was different even than if he’d entered me from behind, and I took a second or two to breathe with it.

“Look in the mirror,” he told me.

I looked up. I could see myself clearly, my hair tumbled over my shoulders and my face flushed. I looked fully clothed, my skirt pushed up on my thighs but still mostly covering me, and my shirt completely buttoned. Of Jack I saw nothing but his hands anchoring my hips, and when I tried to shift so I could see his face, his fingers bit down against my skirt.

“No.”

I stopped.

“Unbutton your shirt. All the way.”

With clumsy fingers I started to do as he said, as he began a slow, subtle upward thrust.

His thighs flexed beneath my ass. His fingers inched my skirt higher and higher until the first glimpse of my pubic curls peeped from beneath the hem.

Under my shirt I wore a simple cotton bra without lace or frills. My nipples stood out clearly through the thin fabric. Jack’s hand slid up and over my stomach to cup one breast, and he pinched my nipple.

“Take off your bra.” His voice had gone lower. Deeper. His mouth pressed against my back, and the heat of his breath seeped through my blouse. “Look at your tits.”

A crass word, tits. Crude. I licked my lips when he said it, and did what he’d told me. My bra hooked in the front and it took no more than a flick of my thumb to loosen it. The fabric cupping my breasts fell away and my bared skin humped into gooseflesh, then heat when Jack’s hand slid across them.

His other hand pulled my skirt even higher.

“Can you see your pussy?”

That word is soft and hard at the same time, crude and innocent all at once. I never think of my breasts as tits, my vagina as a pussy. I use
cunt
if I think of it as anything,
cunt
a word with power.

“Yes.” I had to lick my mouth again as I said it. As I watched Jack’s hand slide between my thighs and find my clit with his middle finger. As he began to rub me in slow, even circles in time with his slow, shallow thrusts.

He stopped a moment and withdrew his hand. When he returned it, his finger was slick and wet. The thought of him licking it to better slide against me forced a groan from deep in my throat, and my body jerked.

“Do you like that?”

“Yes…” The word became a hiss of pleasure as his circling finger sent warmth throughout my body.

Just as I could have pulled my hair from his grasp, I could have moved on his erection, but there was sweet anticipation in the torture of his slight movements and the slow, slow motion of his finger on my clit.

“Can you see me touching you?”

“Yes.”

“Watch.”

“I’m watching.”

I moaned when he withdrew his finger from my flesh again, and louder when he returned with it even wetter than the first time. He would have tasted me that time, and I groaned and closed my eyes.

“Watch,” Jack ordered, and I wondered how he knew I wasn’t.

I couldn’t see his face in the mirror. Only his hands, one still on my hip and the other working between my legs. I couldn’t see his face, but maybe he could see mine, and that thought tore forth another ragged groan. My face, my shining eyes, my mouth slack with pleasure. My tits, nipples tight and red with arousal. The curve of my belly and fluff of dark curls parted by his fingertip.

Jack hadn’t been moving inside me very fast or hard, but now he stopped entirely. His finger rested without mercy on my clit, and instead of the slow circles he began a rhythmic pressure, firm and steady, the motion of his hand so slow I couldn’t see it.

I could feel it, though. Push. Release. Push. Release. Far slower than my heart, which beat fast in my wrists and throat and also inside my cunt and beneath the kernel of my clitoris.

The salt of my sweat burned my lips until I licked them, and then it burned my tongue. I watched the pink ribbon of my tongue slide across my mouth and the glimpse of teeth as I bit my lower lip against the low cry easing out of me.

“I can feel you getting hotter.” Jack pushed his face against my shoulder blade. “Your clit’s getting bigger under my fingers. Watch yourself. Are you watching?”

“Fuck, yes,” I managed to say. I wanted to ask Jack if he was watching, but I could only stare at my reflection.

I’d never seen myself come before, not even the reflection of my lover’s gaze. I always closed my eyes at the end, as if my ecstasy could be made greater by the colored light-show orgasm created behind my eyelids. But now, myself the only one watching, it seemed important to see.

My body ached for Jack to move and thrust, but he denied me that unvoiced desire. His finger pressed me in its slow pattern, then stopped. Circled me once, twice, until I was on the edge, my thighs quaking with the effort of release, only to stop again. I moved my hips then, desperate for the pressure on my clitoris to send me over. I pushed up with my hands, lifting my body, but Jack’s hand tightened on my hip and I stopped. I could have moved, could have taken what I wanted, but I didn’t.

His face pressed my back, and his finger started moving again. It went on like that forever, his flesh sliding on mine and teasing me to the edge of climax before easing off. His cock throbbed inside me, my cunt so sensitive, my clit so engorged, that every shift of his breath, the subtle thickening of his penis inside me, was as obvious and arousing as if he’d started to slam in and out of me.

“Are you still watching?” His voice, low and slow, tugged my ear.

“Yes.”

I couldn’t look away. My cheeks had paled, but the red flush now crept up my chest and along the column of my throat. I couldn’t see the motion of Jack’s hand, but I could feel it, just as I could feel him throb inside me.

Pleasure engulfed me as my muscles tensed. I had to force my hands to loosen their grip on Jack’s knees. My thighs ached with the strain of not moving. Under my butt, Jack’s thighs pushed upward, just slightly, and his cock thrust the teensiest bit harder into me. It was enough.

I put my hand over his as I gasped, the small motion of his fingertip on me now too much as my clit beat and my cunt bore down on him. Still, he didn’t move or thrust, and still I did not close my eyes.

It was hard, looking at my own face contort with ecstasy, and in the end though I managed to keep my eyes open, I did have to shift the focus of my gaze to a spot on the wall behind me rather than look into my own eyes. I bit down on my lower lip hard enough to break the skin, but miraculously didn’t.

I came with a shudder but in silence. My orgasm was too vast for shouts or gasps. It sucked the breath from me and left me panting as the waves of ecstasy washed over me, one after the other. Even when those first few seconds of blinding pleasure had passed, my body didn’t subside into satedness. The second I let go of the hand still pressed against my clit, Jack began to fuck me. The motion of his thrusts pushed my still-sensitive clit onto the pad of his palm. I was coming again within moments, not in silence now but with a long, low cry that would have been louder if I’d had the breath to scream.

From behind me, Jack grunted and leaned against the back of the chair, tilting his body and pelvis upward with each thrust. I leaned forward, no longer watching, but opening the passage of my body to take in as much of him as I could. There was no friction, just smooth, smooth strokes as he fucked into me harder and harder. We moved together. I wanted to come again, but a third climax eluded me, the pressure too much or too little and never quite enough.

Jack put both hands on my hips and used his grip to move me as he thrust. It hurt, that slamming, his penis battering inside me, but I didn’t care. He shouted, his last thrust lifting my entire body.

Jack’s grip loosened. I caught my breath. He softened inside me, and I got up on trembling legs to wobble to the bathroom to splash my face with cold water. Jack followed me after a minute, and I stepped aside to give him room at the sink. He cupped one large hand beneath the water and scooped a drink, then looked up at me with lips glistening.

And the smile.

“Hey,” Jack said.

“Hey.” I smiled, too.

We had a reflection here also, in the harsh white fluorescent bathroom light, but it didn’t have quite the same effect on me. I pulled the cups of my bra around and hooked them, then started on my blouse buttons. The flush was already fading from my throat.

Jack pulled up his briefs and jeans, the condom already gone. He left the belt open, though, his jeans low enough to expose the hint of hair on his belly below the hem of his T-shirt.

“Jesus,” I said without thinking too hard about it. “You’re so pretty.”

Jack, who’d bent to take another drink from the faucet, swallowed and turned off the water. He stood, facing the mirror one way, then the other, checking himself out. He looked at me.

“Pretty?” he said at last, as if he meant to take it as a compliment but wasn’t quite sure how.

“Oh, yes.” I washed my hands and dried them on the white hand towel folded so neatly on the rack. “Very.”

He looked again at his reflection and ran a damp hand through his hair to push it off his forehead. “Huh.”

“Nobody’s ever told you that before?” I nudged him with my elbow and left the bathroom.

He followed me. “Nope.”

I stretched, testing my muscles for soreness. My thighs hurt the most. “Well…you are.

Absolutely lovely.”

He laughed at this. “Okay. Thanks. You’re pretty, too.”

It was my turn to laugh then. I found my discarded panties and slid them on. “Thanks.”

“No,” Jack said. “I mean it.”

I looked up then, to look at him. “Thanks, Jack.”

“You’re welcome.”

This time, the cell phone that rang was Jack’s, but I checked mine anyway while he looked at his. I had no messages, but I knew he had one. He didn’t answer it, though, just glanced at the number and flipped his phone closed.

“I have to get going,” I told him. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”

He shrugged and shoved his phone down deep into his pocket.

I leaned up to kiss his cheek soundly and grabbed his ass at the same time, then stepped back. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you.”

Jack nodded. “All right.”

At home, the dark house greeted me with the powerful odor of the detergent the cleaning crew had used to get rid of the mess in the basement. Jared would be back to work tomorrow, and I had an early appointment.

My cell phone rang as I was halfway up the stairs, and I answered without checking the caller ID. I expected the answering service, but the caller greeted me with my first name only and not “Ms. Frawley.”

“Grace.” Not a question.

My answer was also not a question. “Sam.”

“I
bet you’re wondering how I got this number.”

“I am, actually.” I pushed open the door to my apartment and flicked on the light switch. I toed off my shoes and left them scattered on the floor as I padded to the kitchen for a drink and a snack.

“Your office manager took pity on me. I called so many times I convinced her to give me your number.”

“How’d you manage to convince her you didn’t plan to strangle me and stuff my body in a Dumpster?” I asked without a trace of humor in my voice, even though I was smiling despite myself.

“I don’t think I did. Maybe you should pay her better.”

I bit down on the laugh, but a giggle escaped me anyway. “I’ll have a talk with her.”

“Don’t be too hard on her. She was just worn down. I can be a real pain in the ass.”

I opened the fridge and found a jug of orange juice and a bowl of washed grapes. “You don’t say.”

“I don’t say, actually,” Sam replied. “But I’ve heard it said about me, so I guess it might be true.”

I poured juice and tucked a grape between my lips. “It’s very late, Sam. I have to go to bed.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. Alone.”

“That’s sad.”

I heard shuffling and imagined him stretched out in a bed of his own. “Where are you?”

“In bed. Alone. It’s very sad, Grace. The bed has cowboy sheets on it.”

This stopped me. “What?”

“Cowboy sheets.”

“Why are you in a bed with cowboy sheets?” I nibbled another grape and sipped juice as I headed for the bedroom, where my own bed awaited me with soft flannel sheets.

“I’m at my mom’s.” More shuffling. “The sheets are actually my brother’s. Mine had dinosaurs on them, but I couldn’t find them in the linen closet. So I’m stuck with cowboys.”

“That is sad.” I laughed.

“Not as sad as being alone.”

Adept at undressing with one hand holding the phone to my ear, I unzipped my skirt, then unbuttoned my blouse and tossed them in the laundry. “If you go to sleep, you won’t notice you’re alone.”

“I’ll dream about being alone, though, and when I wake up, I’ll be sad.” Sam shuffled again and let out a small groan.

A certain, sudden suspicion struck me. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” A pause, and I heard a smile in his voice. “What did you think I was doing?”

I wasn’t about to tell him I’d imagined him, prick in fist, pumping away while we sallied back and forth with our wits. “You sounded funny.”

“Thank you, I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.”

“You sounded odd,” I amended. I needed a shower before bed, but it was a toss-up as to whether or not I’d take one. I looked into the bathroom, then at the bed, then the phone in my hand. It was late, I was tired, and I had to be up early. “I’ve got to go.”

Sam groaned again. “Odd? I liked funny, better.”

I should’ve disconnected, but…I didn’t. I took my empty bowl and glass out to the sink, and once back in my bedroom pulled on pj bottoms and a T-shirt and climbed into bed. “It’s late, and I really need to go to sleep.”

“Are you in bed now?”

“Yes.”