“Do you want me?” she asked in a hoarse whisper, her liquid blue gaze assessing his face.
He laughed softly. “Need you?”
He took her small wrist and settled her unresisting hand over his erection. Her fingers brushed lightly against his rigid shaft through the silk of his trousers. Every nerve ending in his body fired up, shooting darts of passion through him and into his penis.
She smiled that even-toothed, cheerful smile that dazzled him and comforted him.
“Words could never let you know how beautiful and tempting you are,” he murmured on a groan.
Her laugh was as musical as her voice, stroking him, arousing him, taking him higher sexually than he’d ever been before. His balls were tight and painful now. He swallowed hard, attempting to ease the fierce ache. Slowly, he pushed the satin from her shoulders just enough to reveal the swell of her breasts. His intake of air from a dry throat rasped as Roxie’s warm breath fanned his cheeks.
She arched one eyebrow and said with a crooked smile, “You’re not so bad yourself.” Leaning against his thighs, she trembled like the most delicate of butterflies.
Which made him chuckle ever so softly. He wasn’t used to a woman complimenting him. He accepted with good grace.
“You’re an angel,” he remarked, his ears ringing loudly—his angel of mercy who would soon put him out of his misery, but more torment would come before that.
The black satin against the pale alabaster of her throat and shoulders aroused him to fever pitch. Around them in a wide circle, the dancers performed a slow, sensual waltz. The women sparkled in their multi-colored finery and glimmering jewels, and the men held them as carefully as crystal wine glasses. Roxie and he stood in the midst of grandeur, yet, were somehow apart from it. He ordered a canopied bed with netting to be brought forth.
Oblivious to the dancers surrounding them, Roxie’s blue eyes gleamed with heat and passion. She moved a few steps back, and with her gaze intently fixed on his, she slid the gown’s bodice from her breasts. As he bent forward, the gown rustled the rest of the way down her body and pooled around her feet on the polished floor, hiding her high heels and her crimson red toenails. Her breasts jutted forward, and her lovely lips gave a wide, playful smile. She wrapped herself into the diaphanous material hanging from a bed’s canopy. Silk rasped against netting.
Charlie sucked in a deep breath. Lord, have mercy, but she was more beautiful than he’d imagined. If only he could reach out and touch her flawless skin, and those globes that tempted him to lean forward and kiss them one by one, ending with his hungry lips on her extended areolas, greedily sucking on them to savor their sweet taste.
“It’s all yours,” she said, running her tapered fingers down the inside of her breasts, to her navel and into the thatch of curly hair covering her mons. Clearly, she was all blonde, and she left Charlie panting heavily.
“Whoa!” was all he could say at the naked feast laid out in front of him. His cock was so hard, he would have to release the pressure soon by rather mechanical means.
Stop!
His heart hammered in his chest, and he shifted against the cement wall in an attempt to find a modicum of relief. Cold, hard reality returned and a sudden emptiness filled him. If he was at the top, what was there left to achieve? He was going onto thirty-six and there was nowhere to go. He had fifty years left to do what? Unaccustomed panic set in. He’d never envied other men their wives and children, but now, for a fraction of second, he wanted the kind of love that went beyond words, a woman who he could share his—
Share
his
what
with? He’d set out and conquered his hopes and dreams. The vast future was dishearteningly bleak. There would be plenty of court cases to win, but what did he go home to at night? A big house with an indoor swimming pool and lots of space to feel he’d missed out on something. The whole world was abruptly a different place. Barren and futile.
With a drawn out gasp, Charlie realized that no matter how many awards and accolades he’d received for being the best in his profession, he’d always feel like an outsider looking in on his own world. How did he go about fixing that? He didn’t have a clue.
He rose, dusted off his trouser thighs and stomped off toward the building in which Kyle’s law firm was housed.
* * * *
Charlie settled down at his borrowed desk but couldn’t work. Roxie might well be in danger, and he was sitting on his ass and doing nothing about it. His stomach rumbled with hunger pangs. He didn’t see the legal pad and his laptop on the desk. All he saw was the candy pink uniform hugging Roxie’s curves with each move she made.
Kyle rapped lightly and strolled in. “How was the burger?”
Charlie frowned and stabbed the eraser end of his pencil at the desk. How had his life changed in only an hour? He couldn’t think of anyone but Roxie, and when Plaid Shirt came to mind, anger boiled in his chest. Why did the big hulk think he could push women like the waitress around?
“Indigestion?” Kyle asked kindly, seating himself facing the desk.
Charlie observed the other man who watched him drum the pencil repetitively.
“No,” he answered sullenly. He’d never felt worse. Or better. Worse since he believed Roxie might need his help, even though she hadn’t asked for it, and better since he’d met such a beautiful and competent woman.
“It’s not the burger then,” Kyle continued conversationally.
Charlie had known Kyle long enough to realize he was fishing for information, which Charlie wasn’t about to give. Charlie grunted.
“It’s hot here in L.A. You might want to run off and buy yourself some cool clothes. Or my secretary can do it, if you like.”
Now, there was an idea. Less restrictive clothes might mean a cooler head with which to think. Charlie scrambled to his feet, the pencil lying on the desk forlornly.
“You’ve got good ideas,” was all he said before he took off as if he’d been bitten. He suspected Kyle was looking after him with suspicion. Maybe, if the situation warranted it, he’d explain later. Women and trouble usually didn’t mix.
* * * *
The fantasy dream returned several hours later as Charlie sat back in the rented limo, which Kyle had urged on him, instead of driving around himself. The seats smelled of new leather. Sleep eluded him, so why not indulge in some harmless erotic play? Where had he left off when his gloomy thoughts had interrupted his dream next to the running fountain? Oh yes, with Roxie who had been standing naked in the middle of the ballroom floor. His every nerve sizzled, and his heart began pounding erratically again. It hadn’t taken long, he mused, to slip back into the mega sensuality she invoked in him.
The phantom dancers on the floor kept twirling and swaying to the waltz, and he saw a few of the men eye Roxie and her luscious nude body surrounded by tulle netting that left little, yet much, to his mind’s eye. She was like Venus arising from the clamshell, a pearl of priceless value.
He’d itched to pull the pins from her hair in the diner and now he leaned forward, and one by one, dragged them out. Her hair cascaded in wavy tendrils over her shoulder, and amazed at the silky softness, he twined his fingers in the lazy curls.
Roxie smiled at him, her blue eyes twinkling with the zest for life.
Once again, he ordered an elegant canopy bed with white tulle to be brought in, and the ghostly dancers who didn’t hesitate in their steps, continued on, almost as if they were oblivious to the naked woman. Did they envy her, he wondered. Her fresh-faced appeal, her rounded, firm breasts, her long and smooth thighs?
The lights were dimmed low in the center of the floor where the footmen had placed the bed. Roxie enveloped herself in the tulle, winding the gauzy fabric around her naked body. One thigh was completely bare, and pressed against his trembling leg.
She murmured, “Do me with your clothes on. I’ve always wanted to be fucked by a man in a suit.”
The notion appealed to Charlie. Mutely, he nodded. He’d do anything to satisfy Roxie, to see her gaze, lazily shuttered by her eyelids, to watch the long lashes flutter against her cheek.
She seized his tie and pulled him to her, creating their own dance of desire. His neck muscles clenched. He knew he was at her mercy, his wicked angel of lust.
Tearing a piece of the tulle, Roxie delicately wrapped her breasts and her torso in it. “My skin is so sensitized, that the gauzy fabric enhances the sensation,” she explained at his inquiring glance. “All I need to complete the feeling is your cock thrusting into my pussy.” She tipped her chin upward. “Kiss me. Take me. Make me yours.”
Charlie sighed and edged the back of her knees against the mattress then tumbled downward with her into luxurious warmth. Her nipples puckered tightly, and he ministered to them, laving, sucking, as she arched her back and gave him more. He caressed the slopes of her breasts, and his hand trailed toward her burning, hot core. She was, he reminded himself, completely his.
She unfastened his belt, and the buckle clinked.
“Oh God,” he murmured, pressing his lips harder around her areola. Then his shaft was suddenly and, thankfully, free of its constriction, and it burst from his trousers.
“You naughty boy,” Roxie teased him. “You’re not wearing anything underneath.”
He chuckled softly and helped liberate himself fully, pulling the zipper down quickly. He remembered she was innocent, and although she prompted him, he’d have to be careful and not too hasty when he entered her. His penis bobbed toward her.
She swept a delicate finger across the tip of his glans, along several beads of cum, then she licked it from her skin with a look of wonder. She closed her eyes, and swallowed. “You taste—”
“Masculine?” he supplied, wanting to savor her, yet knowing that like the ghost dancers near them, she might easily disappear. The gossamer tulle around her breasts and torso and his fear of losing her were each strong indicators. If he took one misstep, she’d vanish, and he’d have to satisfy himself. He’d done that too many times to relish the thought, let alone the action.
She giggled. “That’s it.” Her gaze bored into his, as she edged her legs apart inviting him to take her and meld his body with hers.
His chest heaved with male pride and protectiveness. He could easily fall in love with a quiet, smart and capable woman like Roxie.
As dream fantasies went, he found his cock lodged in her pussy. It was where he belonged, as if he were home.
The present, more urgent moment, set in. Roxie needed his help, not his lust bent mind. Mr. Plaid Shirt very likely posed a danger to her, and yet Charlie was dreaming about her naked, pliant and willing.
* * * *
Charlie settled onto the bench and pretended to wait for the transit bus across from the diner. Although he was much cooler in his new shirt and shorts, the shelter at the bus stop did little to block the glare and intense heat of the late afternoon’s sunlight.
This is utter foolishness, waiting for trouble when it will never come. Why don’t I go back into the comfortable, air-conditioned condo and look at different ways to help Kyle out with this case? There has to be some way to convince the jurors that the defendant is guilty. The perp’s admitted to all the gruesome facts to Kyle and myself, and yet he’s left out the details that would put him away for life—and a half.
He’d work on the case here while the sun cooked his brain and his shaded eyes feasted on the gorgeous woman he’d somehow sworn to protect from danger that might not exist. If he left, could he live with himself if something happened to Roxie? Was that her real name? Many people in southern California had run from intolerable lives and completely changed their persona when they arrived. Had Roxie done the same?
Through the huge, unprotected diner windows, he observed her graceful walk as she served one table after another. He could totally imagine tugging her uniform down the length of her body while she moaned in delight as she threw her head back. Naked and beautiful, she’d part her silky thighs and he’d love her slowly, as she never had been before.