The Plan (26 page)

“You feel it, don’t you, Emma? What’s happening? You feel it.”

I nod. Yes. So much I can’t feel anything else.

Streetlights and shadows color the room. We’re near the bedroom. Near the door.

He’s waiting. For me. On me.

I loosen his tie. Feel him swallow below my fingers, breathe beneath my arms.

He’s not moving. Waiting. Baiting.

I look at him and then to my shoulders, tilt my head, silently suggest. Strongly suggest.

His hands slowly roam me. Tentative. I step forward, and his arms go round to meet at the small of my back.

“You wanted me to wear this,” I say as his fingers play at a dress seam. “So…take it off.”

He holds his breath. I can tell because I’m holding mine.

The slow rustle of fabric fills the room. He pulls the zipper, looking down, watching me while each tooth pulls free. His hands slide under and graze my torso, along my sides. He slides it over my shoulders.

I wouldn’t think this would be such a surprise. It was darn cold in that theater. And he was all but wearing my dress right along with me during our fun out in the limo.

But his breath hitches. Silk splashes on the floor.

I’m down to sheer, black thigh-highs and heels.

Okay, the man might pass out.

A panty-less warning might have been prudent. Noted.

His arms wrap around my shoulders. Thumb at the joint, palm around, fingers reach and press my back.

His hands travel down my arms, unhurried, drag. My wrists. Shoulders. Pale flesh inside my arms, almost tickling. Slower at the curve and swell.

I can feel him looking at me. Hard. Hands continue their trek. Soft.

Deliberate, measured, I bring my arms to him, to his shirt. His button’s a puzzle. Hesitant and unfocused, I curse my nerves.

He doesn’t seem to notice.

I don’t remember the buttons being this difficult before. Probably because I tore them free.

Which seems like a genius idea, and I contemplate that method again while I push a fingertip under the rounded edge and thread it through. It’s slow going. Maybe that’s okay.

It is going to take forever at this rate.

I’m still in my heels, closer to his level. He barely bends to watch me, continues to feel me. Warm at my ribs. Heated fingers on my back.

Another button finally gives. Yeah, taking forever.

He breathes, shuddering, watches my progress. Roams me. Waits.

Waiting.

I take on another.

He follows my waist, my hip. The top of my stockings. Fingers dance. At the rim. Palms my ass, traces where thigh meets cheek. Dip and explore. Ready.

And I’m not holding my breath anymore. Not at all. I’m panting. Pants.

Pants. Oh, yeah…his pants. I start pulling at his pants and yanking, and I guess I will be going to the store to buy clothes for him after all because there is a rip that should be sickening, but instead I hear my laugh, a laugh like the sound you make when you see a car wreck and it is the exact opposite of how you feel. I’m frantic, desperate to not let on how very real, really real I’m finding all this.

Because I’m going to make love to him in a moment.

I just sorta realized that.

I start to step out of my shoes, but the change in height from the first movement makes me feel even smaller. I leave them on. He watches as I kick away the dress with my shoes still on.

I step into him. Run my hands down around his open shirt and start it over his shoulders and down.

He watches my chest rise and fall.

“You like?”

Corner of his mouth turns up. He might laugh now.

That will never do.

“Show me.”

And I guess “show me” equates to “prove it” in his book because before I know what’s happening he’s pulled me by my butt and lifted me against him, bent himself to bury his face in my neck, arms encircling and cock—some hard proof right there—running near roughly between my legs. Somehow we get to the bed, and he is backed up against it and still moving and holding and oh-wow-that-is-pretty-fucking-amazing between my legs.

I finish pulling his sleeves down his arms and discover they won’t come off as they’re bunched up at his wrists where I have failed to unbutton the damned cuffs. Ah, screw it. Or him.

I give a shove, and he falls back onto the mattress, shirt under his ass, hands trapped at his sides. Eyes wide, not scared, something else. Something…I don’t know.

I put my thumbs under the edge of my stockings and look down at him to ask if he would like them to stay. His head is raised off the mattress, watching me, gauging me, because this may seem more of a tease than a question—maybe he thinks I will take them off or not as I choose. He’s wrong…I’m watching him for a reaction, to see what he wants. I trace the lace hem. He eyes the shoes, and I’m pretty sure he likes them.

Guess that’s a yes.

Forcing myself to go slowly, counting to ten as I go, I bend at the waist and crawl up the bed. Slow and straight, trying for calm, trying for unruffled.

His eyes on me. Fidgets within his sleeves.

Fidgets until I start to hover over him. Then he stills. Then watches. Then breathes.

Kiss his thighs. Lips to hips. Tongue on shaft, base to tip. His turn to writhe. His fingers dig into the bed at his sides.

His chest raises in short gasps, and I want to touch it, to feel his heat on me. Knees astride and hands at his face, in his hair, I bend and slide the whole of myself against him.

Warm and welcome and…home.

So good it is bad.

Shift and bring my chest to his mouth. He watches me, and I’m not sure what I’m showing him when his lips press and his tongue slips along my breast, seeks and teases. Licks and nips and pulls me in, nearly biting.

He starts to object when I slide away, but my sliding stops. Abruptly. Because I’m there.

There, there.

Oddly enough, right about now I’m wondering about the mechanics of having sex with shoes on. How does that work in practical application? How do you keep from gouging someone with pointy heels, keep from scraping them? I’m already straddled over the expanse of his hips plus the hands that I have managed to trap there, and now there is the distinct possibility that I’m going to hurt him. Taking them off is going to be clumsy and awkward and not at all in-charge-looking, but it turns out all my concern is unwarranted as I feel his hands wrap around my ankles, fingers anchoring me, almost like I have anchored him.

And I feel secure.

I wrap my fingers behind his neck, thumbs circling below his ears. I slide down onto him. Just the head. Up again. Off again. And back. Angle, catch the ridge. And he’s watching me. And I’m watching him.

Another pass and I’m going for broke, all the way as it were, this time, and he must sense it so he leans up and presses his lips to mine. Kisses me in a way I have never been kissed before. Kissed to my soul.

I sit up and slide him in to the hilt, until there is no more, until I have run out of me and he’s run out of him.

Eyes locked and faces facing. It’s intense and burrowing and connected, and I want to look away and but not as much as I want to feel this ribbon unspool between him, me, us, and see. Really see.

Forearms on his shoulders, hands behind his head, and feet held down at his sides. I move. He moves.

Tandem. Tense. Together.

Noise flows from him, the cadence alters when I do. Shift, he hums. Rock, he moans.

Full and hot and perfect and show me what you want, what you like.

Slick skin. Breath rasps.

Seems another shirt is ruined. His hand clamps down on me, splays across my back, pulling me down to him, and I keep moving, and he tastes my shoulders, my neck, holds me there, saying something. Low. I can’t hear.

God, I want to hear.

I want to taste his secrets and feel his sounds and listen to his mouth on me.

Lick his jawline. Sweat and sweet.

Break away and sit up straight and he arches back as he thrusts up into my down. I bend back, my hands flat along his chest. I can feel his thighs tense under me, he is straining and feeling and hitting inside me and rubbing against me in the best oh-please-don’t-let-this-end-too-soon-but-maybe-it-should-because-I’m-exhausted way. Because I’m nearly there.

Hell, I would be there and back again if I weren’t over-thinking this whole thing, if I weren’t determined to see him undone, to do the undoing.

His free hand is at my hip, helping and holding. I have grown so accustomed to the light that every change in his face shows. The blinks. The lip bites. How he watches me, more than looks, like he is studying.

Alarm flickers in me. Then, an idea. I move off him, and his hand holds fast. God, he is breathing so hard; his chest crashes, nostrils flare.

“No…please.” He swallows. He snaps his hand away and looks at it likes it’s done something offensive.

I take his hand and press my lips to it, reassure him.

Nothing is wrong. So much is right.

I spin over him—pausing mentally for a moment to congratulate myself on clearing my three-inch heel over his torso while I’m a hair’s breadth from orgasm and teetering on a panic attack from the enormity of all the things I have not been letting myself think about, the thoughts scratching at the peripherals—keeping his hand in mine, to steady, to tether, together.

Backward, facing away, hiding somewhat, I can admit it, I reach between my legs with one hand and align him with me. It is wet, wetter than I anticipated, and I almost think I should be apologizing to him for some crazy reason—for what, him turning me on?—and I turn my head over my shoulder and watch him as he watches me sink back onto him. It’s sneaky. I don’t think he even knows I have observed. Pretty sure actually, because he didn’t look cool about it at all. Mouth open, eyes rolling back, might’ve bitten his tongue.

I’m still holding his hand, and I bring it to my waist as I roll back onto him. His fingers entwine with mine, and he moves to meet me again and again, and I run my nails up his thigh while he moans and rocks, and then my hand smooths down to below where we join and cups him, plays at his base…and he is frozen.

“Oh…goddamn…” he breathes.
My dear, has no one done this for you before?

Well, not that I have done this for anyone before…but I’m me and you are you and, well, I would think people would tend to roll out the red carpet and pull out all the stops…

I keep moving, his breathing changes and suddenly he’s pressed against me, breathing into my hair, my ear, warm on my back I hadn’t even realized was cold. His hand leaves mine and snakes down to touch me so near where I touch him, and then I hear myself, hoarse and breathy and burning, and I’m over the edge, complete. Our rhythm finally falters.

He swells. Curses. Drives into me at least as hard as I have pressed onto him and then throbs and pulses and pushes. Murmurs against my back. Whispers into my spine one of those secrets I want to know.

Time passes. I don’t know how much. Our breathing slows. Finally, eventually, matches.

And I need to move. For many reasons.

I’m boneless, and my knees are numb. If I shift wrongly, I will tear into his skin with my heels. Wiggling, test my strength. It is lacking.

Then I feel him pull away a shoe and run a thumb up my arch. He leans and shifts and uses what was his trapped hand to remove the other. He rubs that foot too.

He pulls me up the bed. I’m spent, and it seems perfectly okay when he’s wrapped around me. I’m tucked into him, and his arm is my pillow, and the shirt still hanging from his wrist is our blanket.

Day of Employment:
384

10:00 a.m.

*
Rudolph
: Changing the old nose bulb. Christmas Eve.

*
Little White Box
: Haunting me.

*
Business
: Not mine.

T
HIS
B
OX
I
S
M
Y
Plight Before Christmas. I want to throw back the sash and chuck it out the window. Right after I accidentally back over it with a forklift three times.

It’s not the box that has offended me really. It was just sitting there on her desk.

No, no. It’s the tag on the little white box.

The little box that I have seen once before. The one that came yesterday with my dress, but left with the delivery person.

I lift the flap again, ever so carefully, as if I might trigger a remote spy cam installed to catch nosy assistants.

And, yes, again. I have already looked. I just want it to be different. To say something different.