Crystal Green - Mystery Date

Riley ambled into the room with a plate of steaks in hand. Dani took in the aroma, along with the smell of mushrooms that already permeated the kitchen.

He nodded toward the phone. “Hey, Leigh, are you still alive or did the boogeyman get you?”

“Hah-hah,” Leigh said. “You two must share thoughts as well as everything else.”

He set the steaks down and began to put them on two plates. “I’m just checking up on you. We’d kind of like to have you around, in one piece.”

“That’s sweet, Riley.” Leigh changed topic. “Oh—here’s Margot. Talk to you all soon, okay?”

Dani shook a finger at the phone. “You be careful when you go back there.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

They signed off, leaving Dani and Riley at the table, alone at last.

He glanced at the pink bag on the floor but didn’t say anything about it as he sat, opening a bottle of beer for her, then one for him.

“I’m not even going to ask what happened on that date,” he said.

Even though she and Riley shared everything—as Leigh had pointed out—Dani hesitated to tell him the details of the night. They were just too...

She was about to say “insane,” but then she got that flippy-floppy turn of the stomach, telling her that Leigh’s date had actually captured her imagination.

Phone sex. A dark stranger.

Dani bypassed her steak and beer, pulling her chair closer to Riley’s and grabbing her pink bag on the way.

“Do you think we could hold off on the steak and take a little break before dinner?” she asked.

This time, instead of that sadness in his gaze, she detected a spark. And when she brought out the pair of blue fuzzy handcuffs she’d purchased, he put down his beer.

She got out of her chair and went to an odds-and-ends drawer near the oven, taking out a length of blue fabric she occasionally used to decorate the center of the table. She showed it to him.

“I wonder,” she said, “how it felt when Leigh realized that her date wasn’t going to show her who he was tonight.”

Riley cocked a brow. “He did what?”

“Long story.” She went over to him, then trailed the material over his shoulder. “I want to know what it feels like to have some mystery going on with us, Riley.”

He grabbed the material, wrapping it around his hand, and she knew that they’d started some courting.

Not long ago, when she had told Riley that she wanted to push their boundaries in the bedroom, he had asked her if she was unhappy in their relationship. She wasn’t. Hadn’t ever been.

But there were so many things she hadn’t enjoyed in life yet. Would she regret never exploring those things before they got married and then realize years down the road that it was too late?

She sat on his lap, snuggling her butt toward his groin, which was already straining against his button fly.

“Blindfold me,” she said.

He looked at the steaks, as practical a man as ever, until she cupped his chin with a hand and made him focus on her.

“Those can wait,” she said, already sounding like the type of woman who would go into a dark house to meet a dark man.

He grinned, and it wasn’t a carefree Riley grin, either. It was a hungry one, and it shocked her deep in her groin.

As he slid a hand up her ribs, over her breast, on his way to grab the material, she gasped. Then, almost roughly, he turned her around on his lap.

He wrapped the material to cover her eyes, tying it securely. “This is what you want?” he asked in a gruff voice.

He didn’t sound like himself, either, and her blood pushed through her veins as she tried to match the voice with her image of him. But even blindfolded, she still saw Riley.

She pointed toward the cuffs on the table. “You’ll want to make sure I can’t take off this blindfold.”

“Why?”

“Because even though you don’t want me to know your identity, I’m dying to see who you are.” Or who he was going to play at being.

She’d meant it teasingly, but was he thinking that she should know who he was by now? It felt as if a piece of her heart had crumbled because she wasn’t sure just how invested he was in all these games she was introducing.

Was she seeing how far he would go before he left her? Would she be getting a divorce from him before they were married thirty-seven years just like her parents had been, saving them the time and heartache?

As she felt Riley reach for the handcuffs, she remembered the first time she had seen him, during a party. He’d been leaning against the outside wall of the fraternity house by the pool with some friends, smiling and drinking a soda, and she had thought what a nice guy he probably was. She’d been a freshman who didn’t know much about boys, and she and Riley had ended up friends. It’d only been after college that she had met up with him again and the fireworks had started.

It had been smooth sailing ever since...until now, when she felt the handcuffs close around her wrists.

She turned her face to him, forgetting for a moment that she couldn’t see him from under the blindfold.

“This is how you want it?” he asked again.

She nodded, and he stood, taking her by the waist at the same time, then putting her on the chair and raising her hands above her head. She rested her palms on her head, feeling vulnerable, her breasts pushing against her sweater.

As her pulse flailed, he pulled up her skirt, and her first instinct was to close her legs. But he guided them back open.

Heat sang through her, but so did a little bit of fear, as her clit throbbed in anticipation.

“Do you like not being able to see me, Dani?” he asked. “Is this dangerous for you?”

“It’s safe enough.” Always safe with Riley.

At least, that was what she thought until he slipped his hand between her legs, touching her at her most sensitive point.

She made a desperate sound, and he tugged her panties away from her body. Air tickled her.

“Who am I tonight?” he asked, and she detected a trace of that sadness in him again. “Who do you want me to be?”

“I...”

She wanted to say “Riley,” but that didn’t go along with the dark-man fantasy.

When he eased his fingers between her legs and strummed her, she breathed in and clamped her arms around her head. He put his mouth close to her ear, and when he spoke, she startled.

“You need to think about who you really want, Dani,” he said softly.

Was he saying that she needed to name an identity for him so that the fantasy would work? Or was there something more important he wanted her to think about?

She bit her lip as he worked her with his fingers, pushing her toward a place where, hopefully, she was going to see the light.

* * *

DURING THE CAR ride to the Sea Breeze Suites where Margot and Leigh were staying for a couple of nights, Leigh answered every question Margot had about the date. Even when they’d gotten back to their room, camped out on their beds while hardly able to even think about getting to sleep yet, Margot didn’t stop her inquisition.

“Really?” she asked for about the twentieth time. “You’re going on another date with him?”

The more Margot disbelieved her, the more determined Leigh was to have her next encounter with Callum.

Leigh Vaughn, with her skinny jeans and a whole new attitude. She hadn’t realized how boring her life was until tonight, when she’d experienced a little bit of adventure.

And craved more.

“You bet I’m going back,” she said. “And you know what? If he can play a game with me, I can play just as well. You should’ve seen me at dinner with the honey. You would’ve been proud.”

Seemingly persuaded, Margot leaned back against the pillows she’d propped against the headboard. Then she smiled like a well-fed cat. “Leigh has arrived.”