I’m at my desk, editing, when a flower arrangement almost larger than the guy carrying it stops by my chair. “For you,” the guy says from behind the forest of orchids.
Shock freezes me for a second. I glance around, narrow-eyed. Did somebody in the office decide to play a prank on me? They’re all typing, but some are glancing curiously my way.
Then I realize the poor guy is about to pass out from exhaustion. I scramble to clear a little space for the vase and let him set it down. Then I stare at the most wild arrangement of orchids you can imagine. I pluck the card nestled in between all those white and purple beauties, and my heart quivers so hard I need to sit down.
It didn’t seem right for you to spend another day without the luxury of a gift from a man who thinks of you.
M.S.
I shake my head and put the card down. Sandy, one of my work colleagues, stops by to see them. “Wow. A man after Rachel’s heart!”
Valentine peers into my cubicle. “Trust me, he’s aiming lower.”
Victoria and Helen want to know how it’s going. “I’ve got so many folders,” I tell them, hedging but trying not to appear that I am.
I tell myself that the time I spend with him tonight will be just mine. Just mine and his.
I’m stealing it, and this makes me a complete sinner, but I’m aching to Sin. Throbbing.
Thank you, I text him.
Thank me in person tonight
He knows; we both know what’s going to happen. I can’t wait for it to happen. I’m anxious for the day to end, can’t eat or think without him present in every thought in my head.
Everyone in the office seems to have Saint on their mind; they can’t stop discussing how fresh and exotic the explosive combination of flowers is, how perfectly they’re arranged, how much they must have cost.
Victoria comes to peer into my cubicle and tries to open the card. I snatch it away and quickly tuck it into my bag.
“Wow. Protective much?” Her eyebrows furrow, but then she laughs lightly and strokes the petals of a small fuchsia orchid with her fingertips and smiles. “Best quality.”
“I’m busy, Vicky,” I sigh.
“You didn’t look busy.” She crosses her arms and leans her hip on the edge of my desk. “You were staring off into space. Into the space of these flowers.” She happily points at them.
“Did you need anything?” I ask.
“Yes. Tell me. Does Saint usually send flowers to the women he seduces?” She taps the corner of her mouth and pretends to think. “Hmm. I’d never heard that before. What’s the secret?” She smiles in mischief. “You’re playing him well and good, aren’t you?”
I think of how seduced I feel. How much I ache. His kiss. His touch. How I can’t sleep. How I can’t breathe. How I can’t go on without feeling him inside me at least once. And I can’t help but feel like the one being played expertly could be me. . . .
I’m so in over my head, I’m drowning in air.
But I stand and lightly brush her away by pulling out the files under her bum, and say, “Trade secrets. Now scoot, you’re breathing my fresh, flowery air. Go get your own flowers.”
When she leaves, I look at mine. Majestic and unapologetic, they take up all of my oxygen in a way I love, and I swear to myself I’m going to look just as good and smell just as good for him tonight.
I doll up for him that night. Pink lace undies with a little bow at the top, the same bow in the middle of my front-clasped lace bra. I slip on an A-line skirt that twirls a little when I walk, and a slinky spaghetti-strap ivory-colored top that lets him see the pink strap of my bra peeking out from underneath. It screams I want you in the most blatant way I know how to say it.
He texts me that he’s outside my building.
Gina isn’t back from work, so I leave a note like the kind I leave when I’m camping out with Stop the Violence, saying: Sleeping out tonight. XOXO R
Both an eternity and a heartbeat later, I climb into the back of the Rolls and see him. Did he dress up for me too? He’s so handsome in a black button-down shirt and black dress slacks that my breath can’t seem to go past my throat. His hair looks wet from a recent shower, the top button of his shirt undone and the cuffs rolled to his elbows. The glimpse of his golden body under his clothes makes my heart beat more rapidly. The privacy glass is in place, and he whispers, as if for my benefit, “He can’t hear or see us.” I didn’t know I was so desperate, but when he reaches out and pulls my body closer to his and slides his hand under my top, to the bare skin of my back, I wedge a little closer.
Another corner kiss.
I shiver.
He grazes the second corner now, his lips warm but firm.
I slide my hand up his hard thigh, wanting to know he’s hard, not certain if I have the courage to let my hand wander higher. It feels so hot, his skin under his clothes. His eyes are so green and so dark.
“Where are we going?” I whisper.
“My place,” he murmurs. He brushes my lips with his and looks at them, then edges back so he can look at me completely.
I start to put a little distance between us, trying to get myself under control.
“Come here, I want you close to me.”
He slides his hand around my waist, and with a small press of his fingers on my ribs brings me closer. Heat bubbles in my veins as I press my lips to his thick throat. He lets me. I rub my fingers up his shirt and he slips his hand under my top.
We shift so that I’m straddling his thigh.
I lick between his lips.
He drags me over his lap so his erection is right between my legs. “I’m so hot for you,” he rasps.
Pleasure ripples through me when I feel the hard erection beneath me. I wanted to know? Now I know. He’s pulsing. Huge and perfect, hard as steel, his need a living thing biting between my thighs. In contrast, his lips are soft and brushing feather-like against the edges of mine, incredibly gentle. “I want to taste you here, right here. To take you all night. My god, you’re ravishing,” he whispers, drinking me in with his eyes and savoring me with his hands.
My responses are ungoverned. Unplanned. I nibble my lip, aching.
We share a stare—eyes, lips, eyes, lips, lips. Lips. He ducks his head, and the idea of not tasting him is suddenly intolerable. We kiss. Just lips first. A graze, a press, then easing back, breathing hard.
He trails his hand down my back. “How do you want it? Hard? Soft?” He looks down at me like I’m some goddess.
“Hard. No. Soft. Soft, then hard.”
I’m so excited and nervous.
He eats me with his eyes as he pours wine for us, and we drink and look at each other, and when I set my cup aside, he does the same and pulls me close to him so he can tease my lips apart with his mouth and taste the delicious red wine I just sipped. He smiles when we arrive at his apartment building. We head into the lobby, and I feel the knowing glances come at us from every corner.
Saint curls his hand around my arm and tugs me into the elevators.
“How many women do you bring here?” I ask. He gathers so much attention. I can’t imagine ever getting accustomed to that.
“I haven’t brought one in a while,” he admits as the doors close and we ride alone to the top. “Since I saw you.”
I laugh. “You don’t have to say that.”
“Why would I be lying right now?” He tugs me closer to his hard lines, my breasts aching as they press against his chest. “You’re here, aren’t you?” He runs a hand down my hair, and suddenly I feel so precious under those twinkling, knowing eyes. “You’ve got every intention of letting me do anything I want with you,” he whispers in my ear.
“You really haven’t brought anyone?”
I can’t seem to make my voice rise above a whisper. My body feels so tense with wanting, it’s an effort to stand here and not let my fingers and tongue have their expedition on his body. God, my attraction to him has nothing to do with reason. Nothing.
He shakes his head, his gaze intimate on my face as he basically admits to being celibate for what has to be a record time. I’m so undone by the thought, I drop my lashes and gaze with sudden shyness at his throat.
“What about the after-party I couldn’t go to? You got a show from . . . those girls?” I quietly ask him, stroking one of his shirt buttons with a fingertip. Why does he make me so shy? I’m afraid he’ll see that I’m jealous, but I have to ask.
It feels like this elevator is our own cocoon and nothing can come between us right now, nothing in the world outside this perfect space.
His throat: it’s so masculine. I watch the thick tendons and his Adam’s apple move as he answers now, his voice warm, his breath moving the hairs along my temple. “The Ice Box that night was a way of me distracting myself—I had every intention of fooling around. But you appeared, the very thing I wanted to distract myself from, and I couldn’t go through with having anyone else after the way you looked that night.”
The elevator stops at the penthouse, and I blush as he takes my hand and leads me in, my brain almost flooded with pleasure from what he just said.
He called his friends when he was riding in the car with me on our second interview. He was attracted to me then, while I’d been fascinated with the water he’d drunk, almost wanting to drink from the bottle he’d left behind—not even understanding what was happening to me.
Saint would’ve seen me for another interview—I would’ve made sure of that—but I’d have never known whether, while I lay wanting at night, he went and buried his desire for me between another woman’s legs.
I’m glad to know; he didn’t need to tell me this, and yet he did.
“Do you do that often?” I whisper. “Take just any woman in exchange for the one you want?”
He lets his head fall back and shouts with laughter, squeezing my hand. “Rachel, I never settle . . . not in business, not in pleasure. You were going to be the exception because you were a reporter. I never mix business and pleasure.”
“I ended up being that exception. To not mixing business with pleasure,” I say, almost to myself, flushing again when I think of the way I’ve totally mixed things too. I step away for a moment and stare out his massive windows at Chicago, admiring the thousand tiny, flickering lights that awaken in the city after sunset. “Your views are incredible. You have a completely different view of the world . . . both from your office and from here.”
“I like my view right now.” He speaks from behind me, and I inhale sharply and savor the butterflies in my stomach, the melty sensation in my knees. His voice is like tree bark now, raspy, firm and steady underneath, firmly rooted. When his tongue plays with my earlobe, I feel weightless, leaning back against him.
I part my lips just to breathe, noticing the large erection swelling prominently against the small of my back. Oh, how I want that. I want that so much. He turns my face to him. He slides a hand to cup my breast.
“I’m so ready, we can skip the foreplay,” I breathe.
I frown a little when he stills his hand. Um, not the reaction I was going for. I twist my neck a little.
His lips curl, a glint of mischief entering his gaze. “I’m taking my time, Rachel.”
Oh no. More foreplay? How wet does he want me to get? I’m so swollen I’m afraid nothing could go in right now. “Saint, don’t be a dick! I want you—”
“I want you too.” He kisses the corner of my mouth; then he heads to a huge black granite bar and brings us each a glass of wine.
He sits down on the couch and looks at me. It’s too easy for me to lose myself in the way he looks at me. Too easy to do anything else but want. Want, want, want.
“Come here.” He offers me a glass. “I want to know if you liked my gift.”
“I drank enough in the car. Didn’t you?”
He sips calmly.
I frown.
Suddenly I want to just toss his cat-and-mouse game right back at him and go home, but something in his expression stops me. It’s so male. So completely concentrated. Somehow it makes me wetter. Whatever it is I see there, the energy and power of a male establishing domination over a female, it pulls at me harder than my pride can. I’ve never had a relationship. I’ve never been attracted to a man as infuriating, impossible, and beyond hot as him.
I would physically fight a woman right now, naked and in mud, for the rights to him tonight.
So I tug my top down my arms and let it fall on the floor, barely suppressing the urge to cover myself when he has his first full look of me. Oh, fuck, did I just strip like a hooker? Before Saint? I did.
His voice is thick. “If you’re going to do that, do a little dance at least.”
“Fuck you,” I murmur.
“I’d rather you do it.”
I open my eyes, and he’s sipping his wine, devouring me with a small smile. He’s so virile, testosterone pulses around us. I want to rip his shirt off. God, I want to be reckless with him, wild with him. Somehow, within that recklessness, he gives me a measure of safety.
“In case you missed it, I’m willing to have sex with you,” I tell him, flat-out pushing my shyness aside.
He laughs softly, slowly setting the wine aside.
I start for him in anger. “Saint! I hate you! I am throwing myself at you here! At least fucking catch—”
He yanks me down on him and presses his mouth to mine. “Shh. I think I like you mad.” Then he sweeps his tongue into my mouth. He pulls me over him, adjusting me with his hands on my ass. He sucks on my tongue, and the low sound he makes along with his greedy sucks give me the most exhilarating, delicious sensations I’ve ever felt.
“You do want me,” I breathe.
He lifts me up in his arms as if I weigh nothing, and I hang on with my limbs around him as he carries me to his room. He lowers me down on the bed and I sink into all that softness. Then he edges back, his breathing as ragged as mine. His eyes are green lava. All the pent-up desire of the past weeks is about to explode inside me.
“Malcolm,” I beg as I pull open his shirt and pop his buttons free. He stands at the edge of the bed and lets me get on my knees and push it off his chest. Then he quickly shrugs it off his shoulders and lets it fall while I run my fingers up the grooves of his abs, his flat chest, pressing my lips wherever they fall. I manage to free his belt and throw it aside too. He pushes my hair behind my forehead, and I ease back on the bed, locking my hands on his nape so that he has no choice but to follow me down. He sweeps his head down and his lips are hot, tasting my mouth as he slides his hand up the side of my body. His mouth goes downward as his hands go upward.
He nips at my breasts and uses one hand to unhook my bra, his breath hot on my skin and his tongue wet and warm.
“God, you did that with one hand?” I gasp.
I feel his smile against my skin as he reaches between us and rubs one nipple with the pad of his thumb. And then his smile is gone and so is mine, our breathing starting to change as the air between us heats up.
My head rolls a little on the bed as he licks one nipple and then the other, waves and waves of pleasure rolling through me.
“Dibs,” he says as he runs his tongue down my navel. Its soft, wet strokes tickle me as it goes into my belly button. I laugh a little, then moan when he goes higher to lick my nipple again. Then he’s tugging my panties down my legs. His eyes go even darker when he pushes my thighs apart and visually drinks in my wet folds. I stay there, memorizing the raw need on his face as he takes me in, my breasts heaving, my pussy swollen, my hair spread behind me.
“Relax,” he says when I try to close my legs as he slides his hand up my thigh. “Relax,” he says again as he pushes his middle finger inside me. It feels so good I almost leap off the bed, but instead I arch and let a moan of ecstasy escape me.
“Don’t be shy with me, I want to look at you. I want to hear you let go,” he murmurs huskily in my ear as he rubs his finger inside me and then sucks one nipple into his mouth. Pleasure shivers through me.
He smiles, coos down at me, and caresses my pussy with his middle finger once more. Slick sounds mingle with my breaths as he eases his finger into me. “So beautiful, I can’t wait to be in here.”
He rubs little circles over my clitoris with the pad of his thumb, and my hips start rocking up to his touch.
Catching my lower lip with my top teeth, I look at the bulge under his slacks. I want it so bad, in my hands, inside me, he’s so beautiful. I want to go up on my knees and pull him out, see and touch him, lean and kiss the tip, then open my mouth, taking everything I can, the whole shaft. I want him to groan, I want him to never forget me.
But the arousal Saint stokes in me is so powerful, I’m nearly paralyzed in sensations, shivering.
His eyes are a green no living plant can compete with. He kisses my breasts, suckles me, sucks me. He pets and rubs my clit, the pleasure out of this world. I come quickly on his fingers. He holds me in his hand. “God, look at you go off for me,” he rasps. “You’re beautiful—do you know how beautiful you are?”
“I feel beautiful right now.”
When he reaches for his slacks, I whisper something encouraging like “please”—god, I’m so unoriginal. But I can’t think. I’m throbbing with need, desperate for him to fill me.
The frustration of all these nights and days, the knowledge that this is only a stolen moment, temporary, only makes me ache for it more.
He tugs the zipper of his slacks downward, and I’m in complete museum-quality silence. He looks like he works out every day of the week, his chest ripped, tanned, gloriously defined and perfectly shaped, muscles rippling with every yank. A sound of need leaves me as he pulls down his slacks and I get to see him. A storm of desire racks me as he comes closer. His cock is bigger than anything I imagined. I lick my lips, anxious, my eyes running up his length, up to the swollen head and the glistening drop of semen at the tip.
I can’t . . . I can’t wait. I want every inch of that inside me. Every inch of him.
He smiles when he notices my blush and leans over me, caressing my pussy. His fingers quicken, and then he replaces his finger with his thumb, the pad rolling my clit in little circles while he tastes my mouth. I’m galloping to the brink again.
“You’re so responsive, Rachel, you get wet with a look, soaked before I get to touch.” He slowly wedges himself between my thighs.
I claw at his arms. “Saint,” I moan breathlessly, rocking my hips as he opens a condom packet and sheathes himself.
He curls his fingers around my waist and pins my hips down, pushing the first few inches of his cock inside me. I yell, and he holds me pinned, watching me as he plows inside a few more inches. Ecstasy sweeps through me. I rock my hips in my greed to get more of him inside me, pulsing. He flexes his hips, moving his cock in deeper. I lock my ankles together at the small of his back, clasping him to me. Tightness. Fullness. He pulses inside me. I clench my fingers in his hair, wanting more, afraid of more, and he makes a sound that rumbles in his chest and that I can actually feel against my breasts. In my ear: “Can you breathe now?” he husks.
A sound tears out of both of us as he immediately withdraws, prolonging the moment, watching me with those burning green eyes—then he thrusts all the way in, our stomachs slapping, our bodies arching. A sound rumbles up his chest, low and deep. There’s this hunger. This need to feel him, connect to him. There’s nothing else. Only us moving. The sounds of the sheets rustling beneath us. Our breaths. Our mouths as we suck, taste—lips, nipples, skin.
“A little. Oh god, Saint.”
With every thrust I feel so full, my spine arches, my nails claw at the taut skin and muscle at his shoulders.
I’m between screams and pleas, laughter and tears. I don’t know what to think or say or do. It feels like a dream, or a nightmare. Powerful . . . his pull to me is undeniable. I’m scared out of my mind and at the same time I’m helpless to resist. I want more. I bite his neck. I claw at his back. Saint, Saint, Saint, I cry, thinking incoherently that nothing is enough, nothing until I get his every secret, every name of his lovers, his fears, his dreams, his heart, until he comes for me, in me.
My breasts bob between us, his body powerful and more precise as he prolongs every thrust. “And now?” Making me nod as he takes me higher and higher. His muscles bulge. His head ducks and he tastes the tips of my breasts again, tugging with his teeth, smoothing with his tongue.
The brief teasing we’ve enjoyed, the little playful flirting and foreplay, those were tentative questions, born of curiosity on both our parts. This is an avalanche of ravaging desire. He thrusts again, his mouth on mine, his body relentless, neither of us letting the other breathe, or think, or stop. I won’t last another minute. How can I have gone years without this?
“And now, Rachel?” he growls through his harsh breaths.
Arching upward, I sink my nails into the back of his neck. “Please, Saint,” I moan out.
He rubs my clitoris a little bit with the pad of his thumb, and my eyes shut in bliss as my orgasm thunders through me. My skin melts; I fly away, ecstasy ripping through me. I clutch myself to him and feel him groan in my hair as he comes, his body tensing and flexing powerfully against me.
After a few minutes of lying together, I’m obsessed. I’m addicted. I’m bewildered. I want to know how many girls he’s made out with. I want to rank as one of the best. I want to do it again. I want to touch his body. I want to let him do whatever he wants with mine. I want to stop breathing forever. “What do you like? Blow jobs? Making out . . . ? ” I whisper into his neck. “Teach me, Saint.”
“You know what I like?” he whispers huskily in my ear. “I’ll show you what I’d like to do right now.”
He’s a beautiful man, with a beautiful, muscled ass that makes my mouth water as he disappears into his spa-like bathroom. I sit up on the bed, studying his bedroom. I hadn’t really been paying attention before. It’s pretty minimalist—bare. Almost emotionless. Almost icy, like his eyes.
There are no photographs, not even of his mom or of his buddies. But there are pictures of race cars all over the room, old vintage Ferraris. I suppose to a guy who grows up with more toys than people, the toys become important somehow.
“You should get some sort of fancy fur-like coverlet for this bed,” I say, loud enough that he can hear me in the bathroom, I hope, shivering as I tug the sheet to my breasts. Things that make love to you.
Suddenly I look at him at the threshold and he just looks like a man who needs to be made love to often. Not because he’s sexy, because now that he’s made love to me, his energy is calmer, more subdued.
I like that lazy, half-lidded look he wears when he comes back out of the bathroom naked and grins when he sees me in bed with my hair falling down my shoulders and the rest of me pretty much naked under the covers.
“You felt good, Rachel,” he says, his eyes—god, my heart—his eyes look more thirsty than anything I’ve ever, ever seen.
I blush completely.
“I’d bet anything that you taste just as good too,” he says.
Oh, fuck, he doesn’t really mean . . .
He’s looking at my legs. I’m starting to melt under the sheets. His pupils are dark and liquid with a strange mix of tenderness and need, and his cock is . . . oh. “I . . . wouldn’t know, I’m not into being given . . . you know.”
He raises an eyebrow as he ventures forward, back to bed. Okay, I don’t want him to kick me out or anything, so I ease out from under the sheets, crawl down to the floor to get my panties, and slip them on as I nervously explain, “Not sure what it is about it, but I just couldn’t ever do it. I feel too exposed.”
He stops before me when I stand up, only to graze his thumb over my panties, up, down, around. “It’s not much different than me touching you like this. Except my tongue caresses you.”
“Why do you want it? Why do men like it?”
He chuckles and guides me back down on the bed. “You won’t need to ask me that when I’m through.” He tugs my panties down my legs, and I’m already so nervous about what I can tell he wants to do my lungs have already started to overwork.
“Promise to stop if I ask you to.”
“You won’t,” he assures, caressing a hand up the inside of my thigh.
“Promise.”
“Don’t make me promise.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve broken every promise I’ve ever made, and promising will only make me want to break yours.”
“Why do you break your promises?”
“Because I can. Part your legs.” He urges my knees apart. I’m squirming inside from nerves and anticipation. He leans between my legs and takes my thighs gently in his hands, parting them. He licks his lips when he looks at me, and I don’t think he realizes he’s savoring me like that.
“Oh no!” I laugh when he starts to lower his head. I clench my legs and stop him by grabbing a fistful of sooty black hair. “It’s too intimate! I can’t.”
He trails a hand down my curves, his eyes glimmering, but not with a smile, with challenge. “Let me taste you,” he says, husky and hot.
I go quiet and melt as his lips press to my stomach, my navel, lower.
“Malcolm.” I protest at first, holding my body tense on the bed.
His first lick I tense up, my hands in his hair ready to stop him. “What if I don’t taste good?” I breathe.
He runs the tip of his tongue over my clit and dips it inside, to the complete massacre of my senses. “Mmm. You do.” His hand smooths over my navel. He licks me slowly, savoring. I peer between my legs and see his eyes are closed, his lashes two half-moons. I start relaxing and let my fingers wander up the bulging muscles of his back, then I moan softly when he tongues there, harder, as if it were my mouth.
“You’re very good at this,” I choke. Suddenly I can barely formulate an audible word, much less several.
He caresses his fingers up the inside of my thigh and rubs my clit under the pad of his thumb as he shushes me and tells me to stop talking. The ceiling blurs and I lick my lips, panting as the pleasure escalates. I grab the comforter and hang on as I come and twist.
Wow.
I am deliciously numb.
I’m still panting while he’s still kissing me there. Instead of coming up fast, he then works his way up my sex, up to my belly button, between my breasts. By the time he puts on a condom and expertly thrusts inside me, his body made for this, to take me like this, make me quake like this, I’m a big ol’ quivering mess. A big ol’ quivering mess who’s delighted that, as he holds me to his body, he says the dirtiest, hottest things to me.
I’ve got to go.
Saint looks so delectable in bed as I gather my clothes that I almost can’t bear to look back when I’m finally dressed and at the door. Whatever just happened here, I don’t think either of us wants to face it. Especially not him. He once told me he didn’t do sleepovers . . . and though I slept with him before, this was so different, I couldn’t take it if he had regrets because . . . I don’t.
I sensed him put up a huge wall as soon as he was done coming. He roared out my name, hard and deep, like a war cry that made me explode on the spot. We were both mute afterward. When he came back to bed after getting rid of the condom, he didn’t touch me as he doodled on his phone.
I quietly start dressing, eager to go to my bed, where I can process this better. Or try to forget. He just crosses his arms behind his head and stares back at me, and I hear him call his driver to pick me up at the door.
“ ’Bye, Saint.”
I see him nod and hear him murmur, “Let me know when you get home, Rachel” as I head to the elevator.
“I will,” I murmur.
And once in my bedroom, I text.
I’m home
I can still taste you
I smile and slide into my bed, groaning into my pillow, thinking of that big, hard, beautiful part of him. “I want to taste you too.”
