Лорен Блэйкли - Big Rock

Someone shouts back, “All nude, all off?”

We pass a theater, then a T-shirt shop, and sidestep a couple in khaki shorts, white sneakers, and FDNY T-shirts. I have no idea where we’re going. Honestly, I’m not even sure why we were walking on Broadway in the first place. I think we just went in a U. What is wrong with me? I can’t even navigate my own city anymore.

We reach the corner of Forty-third and stop on the concrete. A bus crawls up Eighth Avenue. Tourists circle us as we stand awkwardly, facing each other. My whole life I’ve known what to do, how to move forward, how to meet life at every curve and bend. Tonight, I’m thrown, and I barely understand how to put one foot in front of the other.

I scratch my head.

“Um, where are we going, Spencer?”

I shrug. “Hadn’t thought about it.”

“What do you want to do?” she asks, clasping her hands together as if she’s looking for something to do with them.

“Whatever works for you,” I say, jamming my thumbs into the pockets of my jeans.

“Do you want to go somewhere?”

“If you do.”

She sighs. “Should I just get a cab home?”

“Do you want to get a cab?” I ask, and I’d like to kick myself. I can’t stand me right now, this indecisive, uncertain dude in a funk who is trying to take over my body. I don’t know him. I don’t care for him. And I didn’t give him squatter’s rights in my body. I’m going to have to muscle him out of the way. I hold up a hand. “Scratch that,” I say with drummed-up confidence. This fake affair might be ending in a few more days, but I’m not going to mope my way through the best sex of my life. I’m going to rise to the occasion.

“Scratch what? Getting a cab?”

I shake my head and park my hands on her shoulders. “This is what I want to do right now. I want to take you back to my place. Strip you naked. Run my tongue across every inch of your skin, and then do that thing I told you I would do to you when we were in Katharine’s.”

Her eyes sparkle, then shine with desire. She nods eagerly. “Yes.”

There. Beautiful. I grab my phone from my back pocket to order up an Uber, since catching a cab here is impossible. As I tap my details into the app, she places her hand on my arm.

“But, um, there’s something I wanted to tell you first.”

Oh shit. My heart pounds. She’s going to end this. She’s had enough. She’s gotten her fill. She’s saddling up for one last ride tonight, and then she’s putting me to pasture.

“What is it?” I ask, and my heart feels like it’s in my throat.

“Remember when we said no lying?”

“Yes.” I swallow, bracing myself. The tension ties itself into knots in my chest, and I don’t like this feeling. I don’t want to ever feel this way. It feels like need and dependency. Like something I barely know. “Are you going to?” I spit out.

“Going to what?”

“End this?” I ask, because I can’t take it anymore.

She laughs.

“It’s not funny,” I insist.

“It is funny.”

“Why?”

She shakes her head. “You idiot.” She grabs my shirt and brings me closer to her. My heart throws itself against my ribs. “This is what I wanted to tell you. When you asked me what was wrong before the show started, and I said nothing? That was a lie. I was jealous. Terribly jealous.”

I rewind to Charlotte crossing her arms, to her making jokes about the reporter, to her being proud of pulling off the act. “You were jealous?”

“I was trying desperately not to be. That’s why I let it go and made the joke about the voodoo doll.”

“Why were you jealous?”

She rolls her eyes. “All those women the reporter was naming. Hearing about them made me jealous.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you get it?”

“No. But we’ve already established you need to use the ABCs with me. So go ahead. Spell it out,” I say, tapping my temple and mouthing dense.

She blushes, then speaks softly. Her voice is barely audible above the noise of the street, the sound of the crowds, the roar of traffic. But every word is music. “Because they were with you.”

My lips quirk up. “Like how I felt about Bradley when you were with him,” I admit, and it feels freeing to say that. More so, to give voice to something I’d felt but barely understood at the time.

“You felt that way when I was with him?”

“Sometimes I did,” I say, flashing back to those days when she was with the supreme douche. There were nights when she left The Lucky Spot early and went home with him, and my mind wandered to her. Sure, I had women to keep me busy, but now and then the green-eyed monster paid me a visit. I’d be a sap, though, to tell her all of that. I’ve got to protect some of my secrets. I hold up my hands. “Go figure.”

“Spencer?” she whispers.

“Yes?”

“I think we broke another rule tonight.”

I arch an eyebrow. “Which one? Lying?”

“Yes, but also—”

We speak at the same time. “Weirdness.”

Then we laugh. Together.

“From the way you asked me to the show, to me being jealous, to the reporter being a wiener. It was all weird,” she says. She gives me a knowing look. “There’s only one cure for weirdness.”

“Anal?”

She swats me on the shoulder. “We’re not breaking that rule. Ever,” she says, her eyes drifting to my crotch. “I was thinking more like doggie style.”

“That’s what I meant to say.” I kiss her until the car arrives.

Then the rest of the way downtown.

All the way up in my elevator.

As I open the door.

And then as I strip her naked and lay her on her stomach on my bed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Starting at her neck, I kiss my way down her body. I travel along her spine, licking a path across her sexy, beautiful back. She sighs and wriggles on the bed. She turns her head to watch me, and I near her ass. I drop a kiss on one cheek. “Don’t worry. No rules being broken. And just so you know, I’m fine with having every other part of you. I only tease you when I say that.”

She smiles back at me, her way of saying thanks.

“I do like the soft flesh of your ass though, and I’m going to need to spend some time here,” I say, drawing a line at the bottom of her right cheek.

She raises her rear higher, inviting me to kiss her. I lick a line around the curve of her cheek, first one, then the other, and she wiggles against me, a soft little moan falling from her lips. I press my teeth against the flesh and bite gently. Her moan rises in volume.

Lust beats a path through my veins. I’m hard, ready and eager, but I won’t rush things, because I’m loving every second of this. Pressing my thumbs against her cheeks, I lift up her ass and surprise her with a slow, lingering lick along her wet pussy.

She gasps. “Didn’t expect that.”

“I can tell. But I can tell you like it.”

“I do,” she says breathily.

That’s all I give her of my mouth right now. Instead, I return to her legs, wanting to work her up, to get her hot and wet from all-over kisses. I run my tongue down the back of her thigh. “Every inch of you,” I say softly against her skin. “I want to have marked and kissed and touched every single inch of your skin.”

“I want that, too,” she says on a whimper, her voice breathy, the way she gets when she’s heating up. I already know her cues, her signs, the way she responds to me, and it’s only been a few days. I love knowing her body, knowing her tastes.

Like this—the back of her knee is an erogenous zone. I brush my lips there, and she makes a tiny, sexy noise.

I move down her calf, and kiss her other leg all the way to her ass again. Then, I grip her cheeks, tilt her hips, and bury my face between her legs. She tastes silky and sweet as her liquid arousal floods my tongue, and her scent fills my nostrils. She rocks back into me, and my desire for her ratchets into this deep, clawing need in my chest, in my bones. All I want is all of her. I kiss her sweet pussy until she comes on my lips.