Dare (2 page)

S
he wasn’t hiding
. She wasn’t.

She was absolutely not hiding from Will.

Melanie shifted into park and relished the rush of cool air for a moment before opening her car door and stepping onto the face of the sun. She looked like Medusa, she was sure—if Medusa had almost completely sweated through her blue button-down and tan skirt, that is.

It was absolutely normal to not park in her assigned spot in the back and instead park street side.

She was being ridiculous. Will wasn’t a creeper, but what if he were on his balcony? She still hadn’t decided what to do about tonight, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be chatty with him anyway in the state she was in. It wasn’t a good night for cheese pizza and
Star Wars
. She didn’t want to be comforted.

Melanie wasn’t sure what she wanted.

No, she was sure she wanted a shower. Whatever happened after that…

It had been a terrible day at work. A rolling brownout that afternoon had left them without power for a few hours, and, by the time her bosses had decided to let them go for the afternoon, traffic had turned into a vicious, snarling beast. A bunch of cross, overheated cubicle workers trying to escape tall buildings that had turned into veritable ovens in the late afternoon sun.

For the most part, walking down fourteen flights of stairs hadn’t been an issue. She would’ve enjoyed it had it not been a claustrophobe’s nightmare—too many people, not enough fresh air.

Ugh, the fetid air!

One hundred and six degrees and it was just early June. Not for the first time did Melanie reconsider her career plan. What fool moved to Phoenix willingly?

The walk to the front gate seemed to take forever. She’d long ago abandoned her killer heels in favor of flip-flops, and there was a very real possibility they were partially melting with each step she took. Maybe she’d be the one struck dead and turned into a pillar of stone, a monument to indecision.

Once inside, she took some time to check on her balcony plants.
Stalling is more like it, Mel
. Yeah, if she were totally honest with herself, she was stalling, stroking and murmuring to the bright blooms. But her sweet bougainvillea plants needed some attention in this heat. Even though they loved full sun, the soul-sucking temperatures dried out the planters’ soil.

There was a cheer from Will’s apartment. Which was odd. He usually wasn’t overly enthusiastic about sports. But she didn’t dwell on it. A cold shower and an ice-cold beer beckoned.

Once she’d changed into a comfy, strappy tank top and running shorts, she picked up her phone. No new texts. Maybe she should just stay in tonight. Maybe she should—

Oh, grow a pair, Mel
.

She grabbed for a long, swingy cardigan—it was always arctic cold in Will’s place—and slipped across the hall.

Tapping the longneck against his door in a simulacrum of a knock, she waited. They’d never exchanged keys, and that had been A-okay with her. It made their encounters spontaneous, but planned. No surprises. No awkward intrusions.

Except she felt awkward tonight.

Just as she turned to walk back across the breezeway, cool air blasted over the exposed skin at the nape of her neck, the backs of her thighs and calves.

He’d opened the door.

She kept walking.

“Melanie?”

She stopped at the entreaty in his voice. There was something soft, but urgent, in it that slowed her feet.

“Mel?”

She shivered when Will’s voice washed over her nape, his lips light and as cool as the breeze that came from his open door. His hands burned through the thin cotton of her tank top as they came to rest on her stomach, the dip of her waist. He pulled her back against him, and she let him nuzzle at that magic spot on the side of her neck.

“I barely heard your knock. Wasn’t sure you were coming over.”

Any other day, she would have responded with something sassy. Some tacky innuendo about coming all over him. But today, she was content to let silence be her answer.

Just as she was content to let him kiss and nibble on her skin. God, it felt good when he held her like this.

Will brushed her cardigan down, baring her right shoulder. The heat and stress of the day disappeared when his mouth was on her. She tried to focus on the subtle sharpness of his scruff against her skin, the raw scrape of his teeth, but he tightened his hold on her, drawing her even closer to him. She lost all ability to concentrate when his hand slipped down to cup her through the slippery fabric of her running shorts.

His erection nudging her ass was almost as pointed as his groan. “Damn, Mel. No panties?”

But he showed his appreciation most cruelly, gliding over her in long, teasing sweeps, torturing her with the barely-there friction of his fingers over the thin fabric, daring her to widen her stance. Daring him to delve beneath.

Should they?

They were out on the breezeway. Anyone could walk by. Judd could be coming home from a trip to Tulsa for all they knew. And here she was grinding her ass into Will, begging him to finger her, like they were behind closed doors in his apartment.

“Stand a little wider.” Will punctuated his command with a bite to her earlobe. She obeyed without much thought, seeing as how she wanted nothing more than to have Will quit teasing her and start getting serious about her pleasure.

But he kept the barrier of her shorts between them, that bright orange nylon blunting, yet heightening, the pressure of his fingers on her.

“Will, please…”

The rich baritone of his laugh vibrated through her. “So greedy, Melanie.”

She was. So greedy. She wanted more than the edge of his fingernail running over the seam of her shorts, pressing it into the seam of her body. She wanted it all.

She wanted Judd to walk by. She wanted him to stop and watch as Will parted her folds and slicked his fingers with her arousal.

That thought had her clenching her thighs around Will’s hand. It was hot, so hot, and not just the hundred-degree desert summer kind of hot. The kind of dirty hot she and Will had fantasized about before. But this was the first time they’d actually been close to any kind of actual public exhibition.

“Will, please, anyone could walk by—”

It was a weak protest, and they both knew it.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, honey? For someone to walk by, to hear those sweet sounds you make when I play with you…” His hand made a short, jerky movement between her clenched thighs, the kind of move she’d perfected under the covers when she was alone and needed a quick release. Sharp bursts of pressure, hard and high.

But she wanted more. Needed more than just a hard and fast orgasm.

Melanie wanted to revel in the feel of Will’s fingers slipping through her wetness, plunging deep then circling high around her clit. Wanted him to make her work for her release, to feel it build and build before she grasped at the thunderbolts.

A single finger edged under her shorts and traced the seam of her lips, and Melanie had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.

“Mm-hmm, just like that. Dirty, sweet Melanie, you want someone to hear, to come investigate, don’t you?”

“No, Will. We shouldn’t…” But she softened her knees a little, encouraging him to continue his sweeping explorations.

“So I shouldn’t walk you over to the gate, tug down those tiny shorts you like to tease me with, and get down on my knees for you?”

She fumbled for a response to that image and almost fell to her knees when he took his finger away. “Noooo.”

His laughter bounced off the stucco, reverberating around and through her. “Okay. We should probably take this inside.”

“Oh, I want you inside, right this minute, Will Harris.”

“You want my fingers back?”

She did. Or his face, as promised. She wanted her bare ass pressed against the warm iron gate while he licked at her, while she threaded her fingers through his hair and held him to her. Would it be hot enough to leave a mark, she wondered?

“Hands on the wall.”

“Hands wha—?” Melanie was almost beyond comprehension, lost in the fantasy world that Will had painted for her. A naughty place that took her right up to the edge of her desires.

“You want my fingers back, you put your hands on the wall. Spread your legs and shut your mouth.”

She almost came right there at the tone in his voice. It was dark and it was wonderful.

When Will had a plan, he devoted all his energies to executing it flawlessly. And it looked like she was his plan for the evening.

A few shaky steps later, she started to turn her head—to seek reassurance or to just get a peek of his face, she wasn’t sure—but he stopped her with another sharp command.

“Eyes forward.”

He was killing her with this masterful energy. She wanted to look at him. Wanted to see his eyes get as hard as his body.

But she wanted whatever he had planned even more, so she placed her hands on the wall next to her front door.

It was rough against her palms, yet it didn’t hurt. The soft brown stucco held the warmth of the day and transferred it to her skin, but it had nothing on the heat of the man standing behind her.

How long had she been there, hands braced on the wall, back arched, tipping her ass out, while he just stood behind her? The air between them simmering with heat?

When Will ran a hand up the inside of her thigh, she almost yelped at the initial contact. The movement of his hand stopped, and she held her breath, desperately willing him to continue the path. After a moment, his hand moved closer and closer to where she needed him, but he stopped short.

The inarticulate cry escaped before the sting of pain registered.

“I said legs wide, mouth shut, Melanie.” He soothed the aching skin he’d pinched with soothing strokes of fingers, and she savored both the pleasure and the pain he gave her. “We don’t want any of the neighbors hearing you, do we?”

She moved her head from side to side, not wanting anything—not even the barest hint of a whimper—to escape her lips and prevent him from continuing. When he plunged his fingers inside her, she lost all power of speech anyway.

T
here
, in the shadowy space between their two apartments, he had Melanie up against a wall.

Up against a wall with his index finger buried inside her.

She gasped a little when he eased back, only to return with another finger. He loved the way her body fought to keep his fingers inside. The tight squeeze and the sucking heat of her opening.

He hadn’t planned to be knuckles deep in her pussy out here in the breezeway with Judd somewhere behind the partially closed door. But Judd could go fuck himself, for all Will cared. And maybe he had when he’d heard the muffled voices, the sexy gasps and moans Melanie made when he was finger-fucking her. And that suited Will just fine. It was no different to hearing sex noises between thin apartment walls.

But when he and Melanie—no,
if
he and Melanie—decided to act on their exhibitionist fantasy with Judd, it would be together. With Mel’s full and enthusiastic participation.

Right now, this toe-in-the-water exhibitionism was going a little too far. It was all he could do to not jerk down her silky little shorts and sheathe himself in her. And that really would be testing the limits.

Will pressed down, finding and massaging that textured spot on her front wall. She gasped at the pressure, as he knew she would, and he slowly withdrew his fingers. She moaned his name and the sound went straight to his aching dick. And when she went up on her tiptoes to set her ass higher in the air, begging him to return, he almost gave in.

“Don’t stop.”

He reached around and traced her pouty lips with his finger, and she opened up to lick his fingers clean. “Honey, believe me, we’re just getting started.”

Damn, his plan to move things inside was going to backfire if she kept sucking on his fingers like that. Each lazy lick sent a bolt of electricity straight to his dick. When she fluttered her tongue over the webbing between his fingers, he knew she was exacting revenge for leaving her high and dry.

Well, not exactly dry.

She released his fingers with a noisy pop. He felt her smile as she kissed the tips of his fingers and then moved to turn around.

Her blue eyes were electric, drawing him in. Captivating.

Capturing him.

“Just getting started, huh?” Her smile turned wicked, and Will should have anticipated one small hand darting between them and grabbing his cock. But when she squeezed him through the cotton of his cargo shorts, it was his turn to moan. “Uh, uh, uh. Wouldn’t want someone to come investigating, would we?”

Oh, she thought she was so cute, didn’t she, parroting his words from earlier? She was pretty cute. Or he assumed she was cute, because his eyes were crossing from the pleasure of her hand palming him through his shorts and he couldn’t see a damned thing.

“Melanie—”

She stole his words with a cruel twist of her hand. Just like that, she had his balls in her grasp. “Don’t make a sound, Will. Just think of the shock Mrs. Keller might experience if she doddered out of her front door and saw you with your shorts around your ankles and me on my knees, your balls in my mouth.”

“Shit. Melanie, let’s take this inside.” His voice was a bark he didn’t recognize as it echoed through the breezeway. He wanted his shorts off and her mouth all over him. He wanted it so badly he almost started unzipping right then and there, Mrs. Keller be damned. Never mind it was after six and she never ventured out past five o’clock. “I want…”

“Oh,
you
want?” She walked him back against the far wall, smiling all the while, with her hands gently cupping him. The cool air hitting the backs of his legs reminded him his front door was standing partially open.

With Judd inside.

“Look, Melanie—”

She cut off his words with a hungry kiss. It was all desire and no finesse. And it was the single greatest kiss they’d ever shared.

He lost himself in the feeling of her soft hips beneath his palms. The tug and pinch of her hands tunneling through his hair, tightening and releasing. Directing him as an object of her pleasure while she took and took from him.

She rubbed herself on his cock through the layers of their shorts, and, when she moved to wrap a thigh high around his, he took advantage and slipped his hands to the bare globes of her ass. Directing her rhythm, ratcheting up the friction.

“Hell yes, that’s the hit we’ve been waiting for! Yeah!”

They broke apart at the thundering shout and the slow clapping emanating from behind them. Mel’s eyes went wide, and he struggled to wrap his head around the sounds as he reached out to steady her.

“Oh my God, is that Judd?” She spoke barely above a whisper, her words nothing more than shapes on her lips. Lips that had just a few moments ago been feeding on his. And he had to concentrate to make sense of the universe.

He, who designed algorithms, could not force his brain to define the problem much less… do anything halfway intelligent about it. “Uh, yeah. We were watching the game. Thought I told you.”

Oh sure, that was an elegant expression.

She was taking small steps away from him, and he forced himself to stand still. Back against the wall.

Oh shit, that was where they were, weren’t they? With his back against the wall.

Do or die time.

And hopefully do. A lot. To their mutual pleasure. Until they were insensate beings.

But before they could fuck themselves into oblivion, he had to fix this. This, with a capital T, This.

“Can we talk?”