Pure Lust (Lust for Life) (7 page)

Face still well hidden, she nodded and heard his long,
desperate groan in response.

He straddled her legs on the bed, pushed so her thighs were
pressed together, ass still in the air, and stretched his body over hers.
Bracing himself on the bed with one hand, he used the other to peel one arm off
her head and put her hand on his thigh. She automatically did the same with the
other when he lowered his head to kiss her neck.

“We’ll save that for another time,” he murmured against her
skin.

Claire felt the head of his cock against her pussy as he
lowered his body over hers. The way his legs were holding hers closed made her
fit that much more snugly around him as he pushed into her.

The movement of his hips was smooth and quick. His cock was
hitting someplace inside her she was vaguely aware existed but had never before
felt pleasure like he was giving her. She wouldn’t have believed three orgasms
in such quick succession were even possible for her, except another was coming
on her so fast she had no time to brace herself before she was biting the
comforter and crying out at the same time.

Through the blood rushing through her ears she heard him
grunt out a harsh “
Fuck
,” a split second before his pelvis slammed into
her ass with a loud slap of skin on skin and he started to come with a deep,
shuddering moan.

She could feel the throbbing of his cock, thrust to the hilt
inside of her, and his harsh breath against the heated, damp skin of her back.
She realized her fingernails were digging into the skin of his thighs and
slowly released him. She brought one hand up and buried it in his hair when he
kissed her shoulder, her neck.

After a long few moments, he very carefully slipped out of
her and fell onto the mattress at her side. When she could, she turned her head
so she could look at him, his skin flushed and sweaty, his usually tidy hair
mussed in a way that still looked like he’d done it on purpose. And when he
turned and gave her one of his heart-stopping smiles, something inside of her
went both deliciously warm and chilled at the same time.

Because something inside her heart that had gone cold and
lonely was overreacting to that smile, even though her head knew all too well
that it wasn’t going to last. They were on a ticking clock, and he wasn’t the
kind of man who was going to ever settle down with one woman—not that she would
ever want to tame him.

“Please don’t be offended, but I think I’m going to pass out
now,” he said.

They’d been up a day and a half, had flown to Chicago where
Claire had truly had the night of her life, followed by the sex of her life.

She pulled the pillow out from under her hips and gave it to
him to put under his head. He did, then opened his arm, prompting her to tuck herself
against his side.

“Go right ahead. I think you’ve earned it,” she said as
lightheartedly as she could manage, then fell asleep right along with him.

Later the next day, Claire found herself squeezed into her
small bathroom with Lin, both of them looking at the new sink and toilet she’d
installed. It had taken her from midmorning to early evening to do the work,
but she’d done it.

“All right, are you ready?” she asked, her belly full of
nervous anticipation.

Lin stepped into the bathtub and pulled the shower curtain
protectively over everything but her head.

Claire snicked her tongue and rolled her eyes, then lifted
the faucet handle on the sink. Water flowed smoothly into the bowl and down the
drain, where it did not leak out of the new pipe underneath.

“
Yay
,” Lin shouted, pushing aside the curtain and
throwing her hands in the air. She hopped gracefully out of the tub and reached
for the handle on the toilet. “May I?”

“Be my guest,” Claire said with a whatever-floats-your-boat
kind of laugh.

The water went down exactly the way it was supposed to.

“I’m never calling a plumber again,” Lin declared.

“Well, if you need a new sink or toilet installed, I’m your
girl.” Claire turned off the sink and leaned against the new vanity on her hip.
“I’m afraid you’re on your own with clogged drains and anything that might
require a plunger.”

She’d gone onto YouTube for instructions on how to turn off
the water, remove her old sink and toilet and put the new ones in herself, and
she had to admit she felt just as surprised and impressed with herself as Lin
looked at the moment.

Before she’d been married, Claire had lived in apartments
where maintenance people came in and fixed things if they broke. She and her
husband had bought a large, three-bed, two-bath house when they first got
married, but they’d hired a decorator and contractors to do any work needed
because they’d both been too wrapped up in their careers to take much interest
in where they lived.

After his death, when Claire found herself kicking around
that huge, sterilely decorated house all by herself, she’d decided she wasn’t
going to live in any more space than she absolutely needed. On top of that,
she’d made a vow to learn how to be as self-sufficient as possible. She had to
admit, as she stood there with the sink and toilet both flowing smoothly, that
it felt pretty good.

“So what’s left?” Lin asked, looking around the room, which
had been stripped of its old wallpaper and had parts of the floor pulled up.

“Oh, lord.” Claire put a hand to her forehead and looked
around. “I still have to pull out the shelves in the linen closet, strip the
million layers of paint off and stain them. Ditto for the door and frame. I
have a new medicine cabinet that needs to go up. The floor is getting new tile,
and I found the most amazing clawfoot bathtub at that place downtown that sells
reclaimed house items.”

Lin’s eyes had gone big. “Sounds like you’ve got your work
cut out for you.”

“That’s why I took three weeks off,” Claire said with a nod.
“Let’s hope I get it all done in that time.”

“Well if you need help…” They both started laughing before
she could finish. “Oh who am I kidding? I’d kill myself trying to use a
screwdriver, but if you need someone to keep your wineglass full and cheer you
on while you work, I’m your girl.”

“Speaking of wine,” Claire checked her watch. “Would you
like a glass?”

“Is that even a question?”

Lin had come over after work to check out the new security
cameras and get the whole story of what Claire had found when she and Diego had
gotten home from Chicago. Claire knew full well Lin wanted all the juicy
details of the night with Diego, but Claire wasn’t sure she was ready to
divulge any of that just yet. It still hardly seemed real, but then, the entire
last few days had a surreal kind of feeling.

It had still been light outside when she and Diego had
fallen asleep, so when she woke up with sunlight streaming through her
windows—covered by a blanket, a pillow under her head—it had taken her a long
time to realize she’d slept through the night.

Diego had left while she’d apparently been dead to the
world, but not without leaving her a note on her kitchen table saying:
Feel
free to use this again. Soon. XX—D
with an arrow pointing to the business
card offering her the night of her life.

“
Claire
,” Lin gasped as the stepped into the kitchen.
“Please tell me these are from him,” she said as she gently touched one of the
deep-purple irises in the large bouquet sitting next to the pink roses on her
kitchen table.

“They came this afternoon while I was hauling the old vanity
out to the driveway for the reclaimed furniture guy to pick up.” She couldn’t
help the grin on her face.

She’d been completely floored when the florist’s truck had
stopped at the end of her driveway. The card simply read
XX— D
.

Lin turned to her, looking mildly astonished. “So how does
it feel to finally have a man wooing you?”

Claire turned away so she wouldn’t see her blush and
shrugged, because she still didn’t really know what to think. Mostly it
felt…pretty great.

“Well, I’m taking it as a good sign that his car was still
here at six yesterday evening, long after my husband and his guy had installed
the cameras and left,” Lin said as she got two wineglasses out of the cupboard.

Facing the refrigerator as she got out a bottle of white
wine, Claire laughed. “It just about killed you to keep it in this long, didn’t
it.”

“I had to let it out. I was about to burst.” She leaned into
the corner of the sink and counter and crossed her arms. “So you let him show
you the night of your life?”

Claire nodded. “Chicago was a lot of fun. I mean, what kind
of guy does that, whisks a girl off to another city because the one they live
in is boring?”

“A really freakin’ cool one. And one that’s apparently
loaded, or did he ask you to start helping pay at any point in the night?” she
asked with a derisive snicker.

During Claire’s brief stint with an online dating service,
two of the three men she’d gone out with had either expected her to split the
bill or pay altogether. The one who’d wanted her to pay had actually commented
that because she was a medical professional she could afford it more than he
could.

Call her old-fashioned, but Claire considered the rule that
whoever asked was the one who should whip out the card at the end of the night
was more than fair.

“He did not,” she raised her glass to Lin’s as a toast to
that happy bit of news. “In fact, he seemed slightly offended when I offered to
help pay for dinner.”

“Gorgeous, sexy and a gentleman.” Lin whistled low and shook
her head. “I think you should figure out how to keep him
ay-sap
.”

“He’s moving to San Francisco permanently in two weeks,”
Claire said, not expecting or liking the sinking feeling in her stomach at the
thought of him leaving. She put the bottle back in the refrigerator and led
them both to the back patio.

“Whatever. They have midwives’ offices there.”

Claire gave her a bland look as she sat. “This is only
supposed to be me getting back on the horse, having a little fun, remember?
Plus, he told me flat out that he sees a lot of women.”

Lin sat across from her. “What’s a lot?”

“I didn’t ask for a specific number,” she said, turning her
chair slightly so she could put her feet on the seat next to her.

“Well, when he realizes you’re worth keeping, he’ll make
them all go away.” Lin kicked off her sandals and folded her legs on the seat.
“Now tell me about his bod. Is it as amazing naked as I think it is?”

Claire crossed her legs at the ankle and forced herself to
not look at her crotch, which suddenly felt as if it was glowing as red hot as
an electric stove burner on high.

“I think he has a tattoo on his back. A big one.”

“You only think?”

“I was kind of in front of him the whole time he
was…shirtless.”

“And you didn’t think to ask to see it?”

She grinned. “I kind of didn’t care about the tattoo at the
time.”

Lin curled her lip. “Yeah, but what if it’s something awful,
like he was an Insane Clown Posse fan at some point in his misguided youth or
something? Would you really want to be seen with him at the beach?”

“I doubt we’re going to make it to a beach in the next week
and a half.”

“You never know, the man did set the dating bar pretty high
when he took you to Chicago. I think anything less than the Caribbean next time
would be a letdown.”

“Well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen so I don’t have to
follow him around covering his misguided choices with a towel to save face.”

“I’m sure whatever it is, it’s hot as hell. Now answer my
question.”

Claire sipped her wine to wet her suddenly dry mouth,
remembering.

“Amazing is an understatement,” she answered after a minute.

“I knew it.” Lin sighed dreamily and looked off into the
distance. “When are you going to call him again?”

“Is the moment you leave too desperate?”

Lin looked back at her. “Not when you’re on such a short time
limit. And not when he made you look all loose and relaxed and glow-y.”

She nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever slept so soundly.”

“Well.” Lin raised her eyebrows and her glass. “Then you
should definitely call him immediately, if not sooner.”

* * * * *

“Does that thing ever stop going off?” Jamie asked, pulling
on a pair of disposable gloves and rolling his work stool close to Diego, who
was straddling a chair with his back to his brother. “It’s lit up ten times in
the last fifteen minutes.”

Diego pushed the ignore call button and tossed it onto his
folded t-shirt, sitting on a chair across the small room in Lust for Life, the
tattoo and body piercing shop Jamie owned with their friends Oscar and Leo.

“What can I say? I’m a popular guy.” He winced when there
was cold spray on his back. “Fuck, that’s cold. A heads-up would have been
great,
little
brother.”

Jamie chuckled as he wiped off the soapy water he was using
to prep Diego’s skin so he could add onto the family tree tattoo that took up
most of the space on his back. Six months ago Diego had sat in his chair to add
Oscar’s name to Eva’s branch of the tree after Oscar and Eva got married. Now
he was adding little Olive’s name as well.

It didn’t matter how many times Diego sat in Jamie’s chair,
he got him with that damn cold water every time. Some would argue Jamie owed
him several times over for the pranks Diego had pulled on the second oldest of
his siblings over the years. Maybe they would even be right, but Diego
considered it his duty as the oldest to torture his brothers and sisters on a
semi-regular basis.

“Jesus, do you put that in the freezer before you work on
me, or what?” he asked, flinching when Jamie sprayed him again.

“You might be back here to add more names sooner than you
think.” Jamie said, ignoring the question. “Leni and I started the adoption
process.”

“I thought the two of you were going to wait a couple of
years for kids.”

Jamie’s wife Leni wasn’t able to have children. They’d been
weighing their options about what path they wanted to take to start their
family since they got back from their honeymoon. They’d been considering using
a surrogate so their children would at least be Jamie’s biologically, but Diego
had had a feeling they would choose adoption in the end.

“What changed your mind?”

“Leni.” He hit Diego with another swipe of cold water, then
put the bottle down and picked up a Sharpie to draw out the branch. “A few
weeks ago a group of third graders came through the library on a class trip.
She said she found one little boy hiding in an aisle away from the rest of his
class, crying. The foster system had separated him from his younger brother,
who it turns out has some developmental disabilities. The boy was scared the
people his brother had gone to live with weren’t going to take good enough care
of him.”

Diego heard the pen hit the table and Jamie picked up his
tattoo machine.

“Leni came home heartbroken and crying. We talked a lot
about it, got in touch with his teacher to find out what she knew about the
boys’ situation, called the adoption offices and got the ball rolling as soon
as we could.”

“So there are going to be two more nephews,” he said,
smiling at the thought.

“As long as things go our way,” Jamie said. “A lot could
happen between now and us getting through all the red tape.” He could hear the
smile in his brother’s voice. “The good news is we’ve been able to spend some
time with them, which seems like a positive sign to me. They’re really sweet
boys, Diego.”

“I have a hard time believing there’s a chance you might not
get them.”

Tough-looking Jamie—who was tattooed up both arms and wore
large-gauge silver hoops in his ears—had never gotten so much as a parking
ticket his whole life, and his big-hearted librarian wife was just a
squeaky-clean. They also had a big house that was more than ready to be filled
to the brim with the big family they both wanted.

“Yeah, they kind of looked at me sideways when we first
walked into the offices, but they got over it pretty quickly. Especially when I
told them how much I make in a year. I don’t think they were expecting so many
digits,” he said with another chuckle. “And they love the fact that Leni is a
librarian, and that she took a year of early childhood education before she
changed her major to library sciences.”

“Whatever helps you bring them home, James.”

“From your lips to God’s ears, man.”

The buzz of the tattoo machine started up so Diego folded
his arms over the back of the chair and took a deep breath.

“Mom said you went to Chicago?” Jamie asked as he started to
work. “I thought you were finished traveling for your job.”