Wild Ride: A Changing Gears Novel (9 page)

Good.

Fortunately, her neatnik inner librarian snatched at the very expensive bed cover she’d ordered from New York, flipping it back so that when he lowered them both to the bed, she sank onto her equally self-indulgent Egyptian cotton sheets. Thread count in the millions.

She only felt the cool, luxurious cotton against her calves and feet and she frowned, realizing she was still cocooned in her white terry robe. This wouldn’t do. But she was really much too lazy and heavy with repletion to put the effort into taking the thing off.

Her energies were needed to watch Duncan Forbes strip, which he did with economical and flattering speed. That haste had to mean he was as anxious to be inside her body as her body was to welcome him. Already, the post-orgasm pulsing was turning into pre-penetration pulsing.

His shirt was floating to the floor as white as a flag of surrender, and she took a moment to enjoy the musculature of his shoulders and chest. The man was buff. He didn’t get like that spending day after day at a library—or teaching. “How do you keep in shape?” she asked idly.

He grinned at her, his hands busy unzipping and shucking his khakis. “Rock climbing. It was one of the draws of this area.”

He was down to briefs, striped gray cotton, but she tried not to peek or to imagine what he would look like without them.

Rock climbing. They were talking about rock climbing. She lifted her brows. “I haven’t seen you do any rock climbing since you’ve been here.”

“Honey, I’ve been too busy storming the citadel.”

She gave him her best librarian frosty stare. “Is that some vulgar expression for—”

“Fucking your beautiful brains out? Oh, yeah.”

“Well, you haven’t done it yet,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the smile off her face. His briefs went the way of the rest of his clothing and the smile froze.

Oh, my God. The man was hung.

She knew she was staring, mesmerized by a jutting cock that made her gooey and soft just thinking about how far inside her it would reach, all the delightful spots it would stroke along the way.

“Better get right to it, then,” he said and took the step that separated them.

Naked, her body cried out. Have to be naked. Right, the damn robe. Not even caring if she looked desperate and ungainly, she rolled and twisted until she was free of the confining terry cloth.

Instead of helping her, Sir Galahad just stood and watched.

“Thanks for the helping hand,” she muttered as she tossed the robe aside.

“You are more gorgeous than I’d imagined in my wildest fantasies,” he said softly, making her forgive him immediately for standing there watching her struggle.

She knew she had a good figure, and didn’t waste a lot of time on false modesty, but she’d never felt quite so good about her body as she did at this moment with Duncan gazing at her, unblinking.

As turned on as she already was, the idolatry in his gaze had her nipples aching and her clit perking up again.

“Get in this bed,” she ordered.

He placed a knee on the mattress, then stopped with a groan. “Have to get a condom.”

“There are some in the bedside drawer,” she said, pointing.

He nodded, and retrieved one. When he would have rolled
it on, she stopped him by twitching it out of his hand. Nothing was shrouding this baby until she was ready. “Has anyone ever told you, you have a beautiful cock?” she asked him.

He chuckled, “Not recently,” he said, wheezing at the end when she wrapped her hand around the warm, hard flesh and squeezed. Oh, he was gorgeous.

She leaned over and kissed him, touching the tip with her tongue. He groaned and his hips jerked. She ran her tongue slowly all around the head.

In that instant, control shifted to her. With one orgasm out of the way, she wasn’t as helplessly needy as she had been.

She could take her time and torment him a little—not too long, because her own body still required some pretty urgent attention, but she certainly had time for some gentle teasing.

Duncan had yet to experience any relief. He’d been hard when he got to her door and he was harder still now.

His erection jutted from a thatch of rough auburn hair, his balls peeking dark and mysterious from below. She licked her lips and took him into her mouth.

Through her lips she felt the fine quivering in his flesh, like the initial tremors of an earthquake, and knew she teased him much longer at her peril, so she swiftly sheathed him.

Just as she lifted a knee to climb on top of him, he rolled over and pinned her with his weight, gazing down at her with eyes so fiery she ignited all at once. She parted her legs wide, hooked her calves around his hips and tilted her pelvis, knowing she’d need to be as open as possible to accommodate him.

He watched her face, taking hold of his erection to guide it slowly inside.
She gasped at the initial penetration. Oh, it felt so good to be stretched like this. Her body had craved this for too long.

He was as considerate as she could have wished, taking his time, easing into her slowly enough that her body naturally opened for him. Not since her first time had she felt so stretched, opened so wide.

She felt the effort it cost him to go slowly and not plunge wildly into her and she silently thanked him for his restraint. It felt as though he was inside her as deeply as it was possible to go, and still there was more of him. She experienced a moment of panic. This wasn’t going to work. There was simply too much of a good thing here.

It seemed as though he read her mind, or perhaps some signal from her body stopped him. He spent a while kissing her, holding himself utterly still. His lips moved down her throat and her head went back on a sigh. She didn’t notice his hand move between them until she felt him stroking her hot spot with tiny, circular movements.

She grunted with pleasure, and hardly knowing what she was doing, thrust upward. Somehow, there was room and he was all the way inside. So deep inside her their hipbones touched.

“You okay?” he whispered.

“Oh, yeah.” She smiled up at him and nudged at him with her pelvis, letting him know it was time to move.

Which he did. Slowly.

She grasped his shoulders and matched his rhythm.

“I love this beauty mark,” he said, kissing the small black mole just to the right of her left nipple.

A little faster.

She began panting as excitement built inside her.

“And the diamond in your navel.”

Faster still until her hands were slipping off his sweat-damp shoulders and her eyes were losing focus.

Somehow she felt he was still being polite and there was no room for politeness in this bed at this moment. Unable to articulate her message, she grabbed his butt and pulled him into her, harder, faster.

With a groan, he let go. He was pounding into her, and she was arching up to receive each thrust, loving the power, the friction, the sheer size of the man.

The wave was building again, lifting and carrying her to oblivion. Her head tilted back like a sprinter in the final stretch and she felt the moment her climax lifted her and tossed her into the air. She cried aloud, feeling his girth as her inner muscles squeezed and massaged him. A stroke more, two, and he lost the measured rhythm and tossed and bucked with wild abandon.

She rode the final frenzy with him while her body throbbed out the last of her own powerful climax.

“You should come with a warning,” she muttered, when she could finally speak. “You could whip cream with that thing.”

A low chuckle rumbled through his chest, which happened to be under her ear. “You seemed to keep up okay.”

“That’s because I’m a special woman.”

“You are that.”

Duncan woke on the tail end of an erotic dream that had him panting instead of snoring. As he came fully conscious he realized his fantasy was fueled by the woman sleeping beside him with her body curled in such a way that her butt thrust into his crotch.

Alex
. He kissed the nape of her neck and she shifted in sleep, her backside pressing against a morning boner so rampant you’d never know it had done stallion service for most of the night.

He grinned to himself. She hadn’t lied to him that day in her car. She really did love sex. Creatively and unabashedly. Who’d have known such an unremarkable town could hide such a woman?

A woman with such a nice butt that he took a lazy tour down her spine, licking and kissing until he arrived at the firm twin cheeks and planted a love bite on each. The first made her wriggle, the second had her waking sufficiently to swat him.

“What are you doing?” she asked in a sleepy voice that nevertheless sounded turned on.

“I’m kissing you good morning.”

“My mouth is up here.”

“I have a lousy sense of direction. I got disoriented.”

He placed his hand on her backside, the middle finger along the crease where her cheeks met. “I’ll follow this trail and see where it leads.”

He felt her body shake with a chuckle, but he also felt a certain warming along her already sleep-warm skin, and a tension was developing in her body that made him grin and ease her legs apart, then roll her lazily to her back.

His good morning kiss soon had her thrashing on the bed until he sucked the orgasm right out of her.

“Can you die from too much sex?” she asked weakly as he kissed his way up the front of her body.

“What a way to go,” he replied, entering her carefully in case he really had overdone it with her.

But she wrapped her legs around him and grasped his hips, pulling him into her and increasing the rhythm when he would have taken it slowly.

After they both came and their bodies were slick with sweat, he finally kissed her lips. “Good morning.”

She chuckled, then shrieked, which disconcerted him until he realized she was glancing at her clock.

“I have to get to work.” She shoved at him.

“You’re a civil servant. Nobody expects you to be at work on time.”

“I am never late,” she informed him primly. He decided it was one of her qualities that most intrigued him: the primness mixed with the sexiness.

She dashed out of bed and he rolled to his back, stacking both pillows beneath his head to enjoy the show.

And she did put on a show. He didn’t think an efficiency expert could outdo her for a morning routine that wasted not a nanosecond.

The minute her feet hit the floor, she was in fastmo. Kitchen, bathroom, where he heard the shower, and considered climbing in with her. How difficult would it be to make her late for work?

Before he’d made up his mind about joining her, the shower was over and the welcome smell of fresh coffee reached him.

She brought them both mugs of coffee, but instead of climbing back into bed, she plonked his mug on the bedside table and, while drinking hers, went to her double closet and opened the doors.

He couldn’t hide his snort of disbelief. “You color coordinate your clothes?”

She glanced back in surprise. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“No.”

“Well, it saves a lot of time. I also arrange according to the season and separate casual from work wear.” While she spoke she was pulling things off hangers and in seconds had a perfectly matched outfit at the ready. One of her short skirts, this one in blue, a silky white top, and a fitted jacket.

Her shoes were in boxes and—he blinked in disbelief. “Is that a numbering system on your shoe boxes?”

Even she must have realized it was a little over the top for as she selected one, she got a bit huffy. “I know, I should be more like you. Two boxes. Beat up boots, and even more beat-up boots.”

“Well, at least I don’t need a card catalog to find a pair of shoes.”
They were in perfect rows, too.

Just as he was thinking she really was too organized to live, she went to a drawer and pulled out underwear that made him almost swallow his tongue. She slipped into a black thong, deliberately keeping her back to him and wiggling her butt as she slipped the narrow ribbon of fabric between her cheeks.

“You’re torturing me, you know that.”

She chuckled, and turned so he could watch her put on her bra, an absurd see-through affair that was about displaying the goods, not supporting them. In less than a minute she was fully dressed.

Another ten minutes and she was pretty much done. To look at her, fastening a gold belt around her waist, you’d think she’d spent the morning in bed with a fashion magazine and a nail file, not that she’d prepared and eaten breakfast, showered, dressed, done some kind of makeup and hair thing, and cleaned the kitchen all in under half an hour. She’d impressed the hell out of him but he couldn’t admit that.

He rose once he felt he wasn’t in danger of getting run over by one super-efficient librarian, stretched, and, since she was clearly close to leaving for work, started shoving himself into yesterday’s clothes.

She regarded him for a moment and he felt her debating whether to leave him alone in her apartment. What was her level of trust? He was anxious to find out.

“Look, you can stay for a while if you like. Shower and eat something. Let yourself out when you’re ready. The door self-locks.”

He was glad he was looking down as he shrugged into his jeans so she wouldn’t spot the triumph in his face. She trusted him.

He had no intention of taking her up on her offer, however. He’d come back later for a quiet snoop if he felt the need.

What was the point of having a father who’d devoted his life to crime if you couldn’t manage a candy ass lock like the one on her front door?

“No, thanks. I’ve got fresh clothes at my place. I’ll shower there and grab something to eat.”

He found his jacket under the bed, shrugged into it, and pulled her to him for one last kiss. She followed him all the way until he opened the door.
“Hey,” he said, glancing back. “I had a good time.”

She looked like every sex goddess in history as she sent him back a close-lipped half-smile. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to.

“Cocaine addiction is one of the most difficult addictions to treat,” Gillian read aloud.

“Tell me about it,” she mumbled to herself, tossing the booklet aside and flopping her head into her hand. Some days her head felt too heavy for her to hold it up unsupported.

Addiction had ruined the best years of her life.

And her husband’s.

Pushing the well-meaning but depressing booklets off the bed, she pulled herself to her feet and staggered to the shower to start another day.

Alone.

Gillian wasn’t any good at being alone. She never had been. People had various handicaps and idiosyncrasies, and she’d learned to accept that this was hers.

She wasn’t strong. She wasn’t brave. She wasn’t independent. That was Alex’s department. Gillian needed to lean. A strong man was her first choice, but, as she’d discovered over the years, alcohol and chemicals could give the illusion of safety. At least for a while.

Now she had no one, and she was going to have to figure out how to make a life for herself.

While the shower pounded, she thought of her cousin, Alex, who’d always done everything right. Smart, educated, well-liked. When she’d been younger and clueless about guys, while Gillian had been born with the knowledge of a courtesan, there had been some balance at least. Each played to her strength.

Alex was the girl who spent her lunch hours chairing a debating club meeting, or editing the yearbook, while Gillian had painted her nails, snuck out to smoke pot and flirted—sometimes a lot more than flirted.

She tried to help her clueless cousin with hair and makeup and Alex tried to help her study, and, in the end, wrote a few term papers that were good enough to help Gill pass school, but not so good that anyone could become suspicious.

Then Alex blossomed into a sex goddess on top of everything else, and the power balance tipped like a teeter-totter when one person gets off. Thump. Gill was dumped on her ass with nothing but a drug and alcohol problem. Addictive personality, that’s what one therapist had told her, which didn’t help, when one cousin became the shining star of the family and she took the position of screw-up.

Maybe it was too late to heal the breach that had sprung up between them over the years, but she was short on people she could count on. Alex might be insufferably snooty and her success might snap at Gillian’s heels, but she was family, and right now Gill needed her.

She hadn’t missed the way Alex watched her like a hawk every second she was in the library. What did she think she was going to do? Snort coke off the baby books? Shoot up in the middle of toddler story time?

One day she hoped Alex would trust her enough to let her read the stories to the little kids. She’d love that, and she’d be good at it, too. She loved the kids, and when no one was looking she’d sometimes take a break from whatever shit job Alex or Myrna assigned her and sit on the floor to play with the little guys.

The moms were only too happy for a few minutes’ break, and she loved to spend time with the only human beings in Swiftcurrent who seemed to think she was okay. She loved their round, chubby faces, and their delight in bright colors and pictures. The way they’d squeal and their whole bodies wriggle with delight when they spotted a picture they recognized—dog, cat, cow. Mama.

Eric had phoned this morning and awakened her. For a moment her heart had spun out of control at the sound of his voice. He was coming by later. He wanted to talk.

She poured a dime-size dollop of herbal shampoo into her hand and lathered the hair she still wore long even though it was a drag to take care of. What had happened to the girl she’d been? The one so full of hope and promise?

While she rubbed shampoo into her scalp, she thought about all the roads she could have taken and hadn’t, and the one disastrous path she had chosen.

When she washed out the suds, tears of bitterness washed down the drain with them.

When her phone rang that evening, Alex was snapping clean linen sheets onto her bed. They felt crisp, cool and sensual and smelled vaguely of flowers. She’d sprayed the bottom sheet lightly with lavender-scented body spray, a tip she read in one of this month’s women’s magazines she’d flipped through before placing it in the Periodicals section.

The first ring had her insides going syrupy. Duncan must be looking for some action. After the way he’d felt her up in the stacks this afternoon, before she smacked his hand away, then tried to trace the path of her thong, well, his call wasn’t completely unexpected.

Normally she wasn’t a woman to drop everything for a man, but in this case, she was coincidentally looking for some action herself. They could help each other out.

“Hello?”

“Alex, I’m sorry to bother you like this.” The syrup immediately hardened to lead. It was Eric, and he sounded shaken.

“Eric, what is it?” All erotic thoughts fled as her heart trip hammered. Eric only called her regarding one subject. “Is it Gill?”

“I went to see her, to explain about selling the house. She went nuts on me. Attacked me. I tried to calm her down but she was out of her mind. She –” He dragged in a shaken breath and Alex got the feeling he was one gasp away from breaking down and crying. “She came after me when I tried to leave, and she tripped down the outside stairs. I tried to pick her up but she screamed obscenities at me and told me to leave her alone. I hate to dump this on you, but she won’t let me near her and I’m worried she might harm herself.”

For one cowardly moment Alex wished she hadn’t picked up the phone. She didn’t want to run to her cousin’s side, pick her up and dust her off as she had so many times before. Maybe it was hard hearted, but she felt like she’d used up her stock of sympathy where Gill was concerned. Pity mixed with frustration. “Is she badly hurt?”

“Bruised and shaken, I’d guess. She was so high she probably didn’t feel much.”

Something inside Alex went snap. Gillian had done so well in the library that she’d foolishly allowed herself to hope that her cousin might turn her life around. Once more that hope was smashed. “This has gone far enough. I’m going to see about getting her into rehab.” She sighed.

“No. Please don’t do that. I promised her. Let’s just give her some time. She’s got to get over splitting from me, and your grandfather’s passing.”

“Maybe it’s time for some tough love, Eric.” But she was having a difficult time with the concept herself.

“Please, Alex. I wouldn’t have called you if I thought you’d turn her in. She’s probably fine. She’ll fall asleep and wake up wondering why her head hurts. Really. It’s not the first time. Forget I called.”

Now she felt hard and mean. Gillian’s ex-husband was willing to try and help the woman who’d attacked him, and all she wanted to do was shunt the problem to some clinic. Except she was beginning to think it was the right thing to do. How long could Gill go on like this?

“No. I’m glad you called. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll go over and make sure she’s okay.”

She hung up and smoothed the bedspread over the freshly made bed, but the smile on her face was gone.

As she lifted her car keys, they felt like a fifty-pound pack she was hoisting to her shoulders.

The phone trilled again. “I’m on my way,” she snapped before the wailing could begin.

“Eager to jump my bones. I like that in a woman,” said the sexy, sleepy voice that turned her inside out.

She groaned into the phone. “Why didn’t you call ten minutes ago? I’ve got a family crisis to deal with.”

“For someone with no family to speak of, you get a lot of that.”

“Don’t remind me.” All day she’d been thinking about him, exchanging X-rated glances in the library. Thinking of all the things she was going to do with that hot man in her bed. All for nothing. “I’ll call you later if I can get away.”