Pure Lust (Lust for Life) (8 page)

“I didn’t go for business,” he said, hoping he would leave
it at that.

“Why the hell would you go there for one night then?”

He should have known better. “I was on a date.”

Jamie whistled low. “Must have been someone with some pretty
amazing tricks up her…ah…sleeve for you to drive four hours just to spend the
night with her.”

Diego gave him a look over his shoulder when there was a
break in the buzzing. Jamie didn’t even look up from touching the needle to the
ink.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I took someone
there. And we flew.”

Jamie’s eyebrows went up. “You mean your wit and charm
weren’t enough, you had to
fly
someone to Chicago to impress her?” He
laughed when Diego turned away and gave him the finger over his shoulder.
“Could it be my big brother has met the woman with the miracle cure for his
chronic bachelorhood?”

“There is no cure for that,” he muttered.

Jamie made a skeptical sound. “We’ll see.” He paused to dip
the needle in the ink. “So who is she, this woman you were
not
trying to
impress?”

“Do you remember Claire Reagan? She and her mom lived in one
of those houses turned apartment buildings that were down the street from us
when we were kids.”

“Of course. She was Eva’s…” He stopped working. “No shit?
You flew the midwife to Chicago. Nice move, man.” The needle came back down on
Diego’s skin. “Leni and I went to the hospital with Mom, Dad and Tammy while
Eva was in labor. Claire would come out every so often to give us updates and
sit with us for a few minutes. She seems like a pretty amazing lady, Diego. You
sure you want to toy with her like that?”

He turned reflexively and his brother was just as fast at
picking up the needle.

“Toy with her? By what? Taking her out for a no-strings-attached
good time?”

“I know you tell them up front you’re not looking for
permanent, but you do break the occasional heart, man.”

Diego both loved and hated Jamie’s habit of calling it
exactly like he saw it, meaning he loved it as long as the focus wasn’t on him.

He turned back and gripped the back of the chair again.

“It was a Tuesday night. Where should I have taken her in
Toledo?”

There was a clearing of the throat that meant Jamie was
trying not to laugh. “Well, there are any number of nice restaurants open. I’ve
heard the new jazz bar across town is doing well. It might not be packed or
have the best band during the week, but I’ve had several clients tell me it’s a
nice place to sit and have a drink.”

Diego turned to look at his brother again.

Jamie showed him that big grin they’d both gotten from their
dad. “Just sayin’.”

“I got it,” he grumbled.

“So…you took her to Chicago. Did you have a good time?”

He told him about the short flight and the restaurant, the
piano bar and the blues club. He did not tell him about how they’d almost
educated someone’s teenage son with an up-close-and-personal public display of
affection when he was tempted to slide his hand up her skirt on the short
flight home. And he did not mention what had happened when he took her home,
either before or after they’d realized her house had been broken into.

“You going to see her again before you head back to
California?”

As if on cue, the display on Diego’s phone lit up. He could
see from where he was sitting it was a text from Claire, asking what he was up
to.

“Yeah,” he said, grinning at the prospect of another few
hours with her, hopefully getting to explore that amazing body of hers some
more. “It looks like I am.”

He had the name Rodriguez tattooed across the breadth of his
shoulders, and below that was a family tree that took up almost the entirety of
his back. The words Diego loves Brenda looked as if they’d been carved onto the
trunk of the tree with a big heart around them, and Diego and each of his siblings
had a branch with their names artfully woven into the details of the wood.

It was seriously the sexiest thing she’d seen in her life,
that proud display of the love he had for his family, but it still made her a
little sad his was the only branch that didn’t have the addition of a spouse or
children. And she didn’t know why.

“So…tell me about the one man you slept with before me.”

They were sitting in the living room of Diego’s downtown
bachelor pad loft, Claire in her t-shirt and panties, Diego in nothing but
jeans, eating pizza that had gone cold.

All she’d done was say “Pizza delivery.” when he answered
the door and he’d pulled her inside, tossed the pizza onto the nearby couch and
fucked her quickly but quite thoroughly up against the door. She’d come so hard
her teeth had ground together loud enough he’d heard and commented on it.

She washed the pizza down with a swallow of beer. “I’m not
telling you about my sex life with my dead husband, Diego.”

He pointed his own beer bottle at her. “I didn’t ask about
the sex.”

Bold, she thought. She liked it. Most people tip-toed around
the fact that she was a widow, thinking she didn’t want to talk about what was
a happy, albeit short marriage. Or worse, didn’t ask because they were afraid
she would burst into tears.

She realized she was down to the crust on her third slice,
tossed it into the box with the other two crusts she hadn’t eaten and wiped her
fingers on her napkin.

“All right,” she started, leaning with her back against the
front of the couch, legs stretched out in front of her, ankles crossed. “I was
already working on my nurse practitioner’s license by the time we met.”

“Which would put you in what? Your mid-twenties?”

“Yes, Diego. I was a virgin until I was twenty-six.”

He held up his hands. “I was just doing the math. You’re the
dirty bird who keeps making it about sex.”

She tossed her balled-up napkin at him. He caught it easily
and grinned at her.

She uncurled her toes and tried to focus on what she’d been
telling him.

“There’s not much to tell really. He was working on his PhD
in psychology, I was studying for my medical boards. We used to see each other
in a lot of the same coffee shops near campus. He bought me coffee once, we got
married a few months later.”

It always made her smile when she remembered how flushed and
nervous Louis had been when he’d realized she was standing in line behind him
that day. While he hadn’t been the most handsome man she’d ever met, she’d been
charmed by the way she would occasionally catch him looking at her, and the shy
way he would smile when she waved and said hello. The day she’d come up behind
him in line for coffee, he’d turned and just looked at her a moment before
asking if he could buy her coffee, then asked if she wanted to share a table.

“Did you have a big church wedding?” Diego asked, taking a
bite out of his fourth piece of pizza with the same lusty enthusiasm as the
first.

“No. We went down to the courthouse with our parents as
witnesses. Afterward we went to dinner, then back to the apartment we’d already
moved into together where I helped him work on his final dissertation.” She
shrugged at the carefully neutral look he’d plastered on his face. “Not the
most romantic story, I know.”

“But you loved him enough you saved yourself for him.”

She laughed. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t have any motive
for keeping my virginity until marriage. I just kind of still had it.”

He blinked at her once. Twice. “Kind of still had it,” he
repeated.

“High school boys were obnoxious, and I was too busy with
college prep classes and extracurricular activities. I loaded myself with
classes once I got to college, so I barely dated. Not to mention freshman and
sophomore college guys were really no better than the creeps I’d met in high
school. So yeah, I just kind of still had it.”

His eyes had gone wide. “Please tell me you at least made
out in a backseat at a drive-in movie once or twice, sent some poor guy home
with blue balls?”

She shook her head.

“In a hotel room bathtub at an unsupervised after-prom? Two
years in a row because you got a senior to ask you to the dance when you were a
junior?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t go to prom.”

He shook his head, his expression pitying. “You missed out,
Claire.”

She didn’t bother to mention the fact that the first time
she and Louis had done it, she’d had exactly the opposite reaction, a sort of
that
was it?
kind of thing. And while they’d learned a certain kind of intimacy
during their short marriage, their sex life had never been especially
passionate.

“Did you want children from that marriage?” he asked.

She liked the way he’d phrased it, asking instead of
assuming she’d been let down somehow because they hadn’t reproduced.

“You know, I don’t tell very many people, because they don’t
understand considering my chosen career, but I’ve never really felt the need to
be a mother.”

He nodded as if he got it. “I have family and friends who
think because I come from great parents, who are still really crazy about each
other after forty years of marriage, that I automatically want that too. Or
worse, they think something sinister happened behind closed doors that turned
me off marrying and having a family.”

“Not true?”

“Not at all.” He tossed his pizza crust into the box with
hers. “My parents have both done their share of time in the doghouse, but not
over anything out of the ordinary.”

“You never came close to getting married then?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “I was engaged once. Briefly.”

“And what happened to her?” He’d been bold enough to ask the
tough questions, she felt comfortable enough doing the same.

“I fucked it up by cheating on her.”

His admission was so unflinching that her heart went out to
him.

“And then I begged her to forgive me, but I turned around
and did it again.”

“How old were you?”

“Twenty-one, but that has nothing to do with anything,” he
said, dismissing the notion he’d been too young to know better with both his
words and a wave of his hand. “Once I forgave myself for hurting her, twice no
less, I decided I wasn’t the marrying kind of guy and decided to just be up
front with the women I dated instead.”

“It is appreciated,” she said, setting her beer aside and
going up on her hands and knees. “And rare to have a man just spell out his
agenda in such clear terms.”

Only she’d already decided two weeks with him were going to
be both too much and not nearly enough.

“I don’t have an agenda, Claire,” he said, his hands
slipping into her hair as she crawled toward him. “Except to get as much of you
as I can while I’m still here.”

“Oh good.” She smiled, coming nose to nose with him. “We’re
on the same page.”

Neither of them closed their eyes as their mouths came
together in that deep, hungry way that was no less thrilling because it was
starting to feel familiar. Claire kept crawling forward, forcing him to slowly
lie on the floor on his back. She kept herself on hands and knees, hovering
over him, letting herself drown in his mouth for a long few moments before she
reluctantly broke the kiss.

“I brought you something,” she said, and then crawled away
from him toward her jeans, still sitting in a rumpled heap by the front door.

His hand kept contact with her leg as she went.

“Fantastic view,” he said to her ass.

She got what she was looking for out of her pants pocket and
crawled back, waiting until she was straddling him, sitting on the tops of his
legs before she showed it to him.

“Oh, fuck me,” he breathed, eyes locked the bubble-gum Lip
Smacker in her fingers.

She flushed, both shy about putting on a performance—the
first of her life—and emboldened by the fact that it was clearly turning him on
more than he already was.

She popped open the cap and slicked her lips with it. When
she started to lean in to kiss him he was already reaching for her, stomach
flexing as he raised up and met her halfway. He sucked on her bottom lip,
groaning. She pulled it free and kissed him hard, pushing her tongue deep into
his mouth the way he kissed her when it seemed as if he was trying to possess
her.

She shifted upward, her hips circling instinctively, rubbing
her tingling clit against the solid line of his thick cock through their
clothes. She was so aroused again she was sure she could make herself come just
by grinding against him that way.

But that wasn’t the plan.

With a huge amount of reluctance, she broke free from his
mouth and sat up, glossed her lips with the sweet lip gloss again.

“Death by bubble gum,” he said, his voice rough with
arousal, and licked his lips as he watched her intently. “What a way to go.”

She lifted her hips off him as she leaned forward and kissed
his neck, then left a trail of barely visible lip prints down the center of his
amazingly toned chest. She gave one of his dark nipples an experimental kiss
and was pleasantly surprised when he sucked in a sharp breath and gripped the
back of her hair with one hand.

“God yes,” he groaned when she used the end of her tongue to
circle his nipple, then sucked on the very small nub when it tightened
deliciously. “Fuck,” he gasped when she grazed her teeth over it, then kissed
it again.

Heat surged through her entire body when he roughly steered
her head to his other nipple so she could give it the same treatment. It was
wildly thrilling, getting to explore his amazing chest exactly the way she
wanted and knowing it was making him crazy in the process. She worked her way down
the valley in the center of his washboard abs, toyed with his bellybutton for a
long lingering moment that made his hard muscles tremble and his breathing go
that much rougher.

And when she sat up, positioned herself between his thighs
and slicked her mouth generously one more time, he reached for the fly on his
jeans and opened it for her with shaking hands. The sight of him pushing them
down his hips, then reflexively stroking his thick, veined cock himself nearly
undid her. She was so turned-on all she wanted in the world was to pull off the
last of her clothes and ride him into oblivion.

She was also a little shy about actually putting him in her
mouth. Not only was he really damn big, but her past experiences with blowjobs
had been quick, embarrassing and rather disgusting. And she’d never been able
to tell whether her husband had been enjoying them or not because he’d been
silent the entire time, even the one time she let him come in her mouth.

Surely Diego had been around enough he’d gotten blowjobs
from women who were far more experienced, and who probably even enjoyed it. She
was just starting to panic when he raised himself up on one elbow and cradled
her jaw firmly in one hand.

“Suck me or fuck me, Claire,” he said. His tone was
commanding but there was a smile in his eyes. “I don’t care which one, but if
you keep staring at me that way I’m going to embarrass myself, and I’d rather
not.”

She kissed him lightly, eyes locked boldly on his, and took
his cock in hand, making him groan deeply. He released her chin and balanced
his weight on both elbows. She knew he was watching her as she lowered her head
and licked the almost clear bead of precum off the tip of his cock.

“Good girl,” he whispered, making her simultaneously bristle
and feel bolder.

But he’d made her come four times in the past twenty-four
hours, and he’d made it really damn good for her. She wanted to make this as
good for him as she could.

She fitted her glossed lips over the head and slid them back
and forth over his hard, silky flesh, surprised by how much she liked the
salty-sweet taste of him, how good he felt sliding in and out of her mouth. How
absolutely devastating it was to hear how ragged his breathing was getting when
she’d hardly done anything yet.

She turned her head to get a better angle and he grunted,
then moaned when she took him deeper, getting as close to the back of her
throat at she could. His hips started to thrust upward slightly, matching the
pace she was keeping with her mouth.

“Lick me,” she heard him grind out through his clenched
teeth. “Please.”

She raised her eyes to meet his as she slowly drew her mouth
up and off him. His eyelids were heavy and his gorgeous mouth fell open as he
watched. She made sure her tongue was good and slick before she touched the tip
of it to the base of his cock where it met his balls and licked him slowly from
bottom to top.

“Yes,” he hissed. “Just like that. Do it again, baby.
Please.”

Cradling his length in her hand, she did, pressing as much
of her tongue to his hot skin as she could, stroking him three more times
before she drew him into her mouth again, deeper than she had the first time.
The groan that rumbled through his chest and up his throat was positively
agonizing. She sped up the pace, encouraged.

“Christ that’s good,” he whispered as his eyes drifted shut.

His entire body seemed to have gone taut with restraint, his
hips making the smallest of upward thrusts to meet every downward stroke of her
mouth. His eyes came back open slightly to watch and a surge of wet heat flooded
her pussy.

The man was so beautiful, so full of barely leashed strength
and power. Just looking at him scrambled her brain and made her body go hot and
needy in places that hadn’t been needy in nearly forty years. Touching him,
taking him into her mouth that way, hearing the way his breathing was becoming
increasingly harsh despite the fact that she still felt as if she had no idea
what she was doing, was making her feel a little insane.