Hot and Haunted (6 page)

The feel of my rough, hot tongue on the cool fleshy pads of his hand, licking and sucking, had made him visibly as hard as stone.

I caught his open-mouthed gaze and, with a last flick of my tongue, released his hand.

“Sorry.” My voice was again full of practiced huskiness. “It just looked so good.”

By this point the poor man looked more turned-on, and more confused, than he had probably ever been in his life. But I wanted him more so—
more
turned-on, more confused. Befuddled by my very presence. So I stole back the magazine, slammed it shut, and tossed it carelessly into the backseat.

“So.” I looked him square in the eye. “Do you have a girlfriend?” His fingers moved to fidget with the tight top button of his shirt as he squirmed. Once again, his thoughts played out over his face—his occupation told me that he was a smart one, one who the snarky part of me assumed thought himself above all things common. Yet here he was, with a half-naked woman in his car, all alone, in a nice, romantic setting. The woman was wet, she was sending out all the right signals, and every cell in his body was turned to alert.

He, who had a half dozen credentials listed after his name, was really, at the core, no different than any other man.

The difference between him and other men, I thought, was that like the stereotypical science nerd he was, he had no idea what to do about it. Plus, it was more than likely that his mother raised him better than to go around fucking strange women in cars just because he could.

At least I hoped that she had, simply for the good of womankind.

He cleared his throat and fumbled with the words wrapping around his tongue for a long moment before answering. “No, no I don’t.” His voice shook a little. “Not . . . uh . . . not at the moment.”

Aah. Perfect. I leaned in closer.

“What about a boyfriend? Do you have one of those?” He glared at me, but not a single word of derogatory homosexual bullshit crossed his lips. Good. Points for him.

“No.” His voice was exasperated—I was pushing his buttons. “No, I do not have a boyfriend.”

“So . . . you don’t have ties to anyone in particular?” I waited for his answer while holding my breath. As many bad things as I had dreamt up for this evening, I couldn’t, just couldn’t, subject some other poor soul to being cuckolded.

His voice cracked as he finally answered. “No.”

“Good.” I smiled, a smug, catlike smile—I
was
feeling quite smug by that point. I couldn’t have chosen a single better individual with whom to play my game that evening.

It aroused me. It made me wet. I felt, for the first time in a very long time, in complete control.

I leaned in, in and in, until my lips were a mere breath away from Brody’s. He must have been able to smell the rain on me, the clean, musky scent of it. He closed his eyes, and his lips moved a bit in what looked to be a prayer.

I didn’t allow my lips to land on his; they stayed hovering, a frustrating breath away from his own, and whispered, “May I have a drink?” My lips were so close to his that they almost, almost brushed. “It’s just that I’m awfully thirsty.”

I wondered what he was thinking, imagined it in my mind. He wasn’t sure, exactly, what kind of game I was playing, I bet, but he had to admit, as he handed over the wine bottle, that he felt more alive just then than he had in a long time.

Still, I was surprised by the words that fell from his mouth next.

“You know, I like this.” His voice was quiet, but still audible enough over the pounding of the rain. “This, being here with you.” The second the words left his mouth, my gut clenched with a sickeningly large knot of anxiety. This wasn’t how the game was supposed to go—he was supposed to be scared and aroused and nothing else. Consumed with those emotions. He was
not
supposed to feel any tenderness toward me, much less vocalize it, because it stunned me so much that I had no idea what to do.

I wasn’t supposed to see him as a real person.

So I turned away from that unexpected tendril of tenderness, chopped off its tender bud, sprouting low in my belly. I ignored the pleasant shakiness that it brought, making my knees turn to jelly. I focused on something else, finding a whole other meaning in those two simple sentences.

Licking a droplet of deep red wine from my lower lip, I forced myself to display a crooked, flirtatious grin. “What do you mean, being with?”

The second that he understood what I meant, he shook his head frantically in an attempt to prove that, really, he was not that perverted. I simply laughed, a low little sound that issued from the back of my throat.

“Are you thinking about . . . being with me?” I deliberately ran my index finger over his lips, his own still just a whisper away. “Did that dirty magazine make you think naughty thoughts?”

Mutely, he shook his head, just a fraction, and let loose with the smallest of whimpers. Instead of finding him weak, though, I felt a rush of power from what I seemed to be making him feel.

I felt in control. Finally, finally, in sweet control.

I pinched him sharply on his inner thigh, and he made a strangled noise. “I don’t believe you.” My voice was breathy and sweet, but I doubted that he even heard what I said because my lips were suddenly, finally on his, and my fingers were tracing a delicate figure eight over the hard length of his cock.

I had expected to feel nothing but a hollow sort of triumph. I was surprised by the heat that curled in my belly at the touch.

After a stock-still, frozen moment, he seemed to remember, as if from a dream in the distant past, that he was actually supposed to participate in the act. He angled his head and wrapped both of his surprisingly strong arms around my waist, diving in.

I was pleasantly surprised; I had never dreamt that this cute but almost distressingly geeky man could be so good at this. A purr of satisfaction slipped from my suddenly swollen lips as he nipped, then flicked a soft tongue out to taste.

It was too much, too deep. I growled in warning, low in my throat, which had Brody pulling back, looking at me inquisitively.

Though I had issued the warning, my teeth were instantly set on edge. No one was ever going to move away from me again. No, not ever.

“You know, this isn’t very smart of you.” He removed his glasses and scrubbed a hand over the bridge of his nose. I noticed suddenly that he had a habit of talking to me like I was a child, and I didn’t much care for it. So I narrowed my eyes at him and shot him the long-practiced look that women seem to be born knowing and men are born fearing.

“What, exactly, isn’t very smart of me?”

“This!” He was exasperated. “You’re in a car, alone, with a stranger. A
stranger,
Hannah, as in, someone you don’t know. You’re half-naked, you show excitement about nasty magazines, then you kiss me. You don’t know me at all; I could be anyone.”

“Hannah?” All sense of elation I had felt fell into a pile of scrap metal at my feet, the sharp edges biting at my ankles. This was supposed to be an all-consuming experience for him, burned into his mind forever.

And Dr. Optometrist couldn’t even remember my name. I felt rage building inside me, too big and swollen for my skin to contain. Why couldn’t I just be important to
somebody
?

I stared at him for a long moment, my mouth open a fraction in disbelief. He at least had the grace to blush, realizing his mistake as soon as it had left his lips.

“Sorry. Holly. Slip of the tongue.” Biting my own, I glared momentarily, trying to tamp my anger back down, at least for the time being. Hurt crawled out from beneath it, though. Yet another emotion that I didn’t want to feel. I focused as hard as I could on the last remaining feeling from his words—annoyance.

And on top of that, I
really
didn’t appreciate the lecture.

With my temper back under control, I raised an eyebrow, and said, “The same could be said about you.” I sniffed, a snooty little sound of disapproval, and turned to face the window, to look out at the dense fog that continued to steam up from the ground.

“What?” The man was stuck on the fact that he’d gotten my name wrong, not his previous comment, about how he could be anyone. Testily, I repeated it for him.

“Excuse me, but I am not in a stranger’s car, half-naked,” he said. I whirled to face him, green sparks shooting out of my eyes.

“No.” I used even, if somewhat intense, tones. “No, you’re definitely not that. But you are alone, with a stranger, aren’t you? And I could be anyone, too. You don’t know. You don’t know at all.”

A trickle of unease visibly slid down his face at my words before he laughably let it be swallowed by common sense. I was an annoyed female, that was all—I was sure that was what he thought. It changed the game, changed it dramatically.

“That’s different,” he continued, his tone grating on my nerves. “You’re a woman.”

“What the
hell
does my gender have to do with anything?” I took a fortifying swig of wine, then gestured with the bottle. Though it was part of the act, I was sick,
sick
of my life being played out the way it was because of the simple fact that I was female. “Guess what, pal? It’s the twenty-first century. Women are your equals. Deal with it.” I lifted the bottle for another sip, but it was taken firmly away before the cool, glossy glass reached my lips. I found myself dragged across the console, right into Brody’s lap, and my mouth was thoroughly sampled before I even knew what had happened.

Releasing me as I cursed, he asked, “Is that example enough? Anyone bigger than you, stronger than you, could do that and more.” I glared at him, my stare swallowing his whole as my temper continued to rise. I shoved at his chest, a petty movement made out of anger. In response, he caught my wrists in his hands and braceleted them with his fingers. Looking deep into my eyes, he whispered, harshly, “Don’t do that again.”

Chapter Two

M
Y HEART POUNDED
wildly even as I covered the slight frisson of fear and, yes, excitement, with my best poker face. Yanking my arms free, I crossed them over my chest, realizing that, really, he was right. He could be anyone; I could be in danger that very moment.

This was stupid, really. My good angel begged me to get out of the car, to go on back home, even as my little devil perched on the other shoulder, crowing a different tune. Why was I doing this? Why was I putting myself into a potentially dangerous situation? Just to prove a point? To prove a point to whom? Was it really going to make me feel any better,
really
, deep down where it counted?

I didn’t know, but the little demons that were poking my skin with their pitchforks wouldn’t let me be. I needed to do something to release the tension that had been building up for so long . . . even if what I did meant I was going straight to hell.

But I was there, and I’d put my little game into motion already. Besides, I didn’t really think that I was in danger—if he’d wanted to hurt me, he’d have done so already. So I growled lightly, almost under my breath, to show my displeasure before lapsing into a sulky silence. As I continued to watch Brody out of the corner of my eye, I felt a bead of sweat trickle down my back, following the sinuous curve all the way down to the crack of my buttocks. I shivered as it splashed there, and the wetness created a moment’s relief against the unbearable heat. I sighed, but every breath that I took was like swallowing a mouthful of warm syrup.

“Can’t we roll down the windows or something?” I was uncomfortable enough in the sticky heat to swallow my pride and speak. “Get some air flowing?”

“It’s raining.” As if I didn’t already know. I rolled my eyes at him.

“I’m aware of that.” My words dripped with a frost so cold that I was surprised icicles didn’t hang off my every word. “But I don’t see what harm opening them a tiny crack will do. I need some air, and I need it now. I feel like I’m suffocating.”

I was sure he thought about telling me that, if I needed some air, I could feel free to step outside, where there was plenty, instead of ruining his upholstery. But if he had learned anything in the past hour, it was that the difficult woman was always right.

The difficult woman. Me.

Turning his key so that the power windows could be used, a sliver of wind sliced through the inch that Brody allowed between the glass and the doorframe, and the relief on his face admitted that the wind and rain felt amazing. Tilting his head back against the seat, he let the air rush over his face—his temperament visibly improving.

Watching him, I remembered, vaguely, a study I had read in my first year of college, something about heat increasing aggression. Recalling his fit of temper when he dragged me into his lap, I decided that the researchers must have had it right.

I was further convinced when, in a much-lighter-seeming mood, he asked, “What do you do, Holly?”

I didn’t reply. I was still pissed off about his condescending comments from moments earlier. Even if he was, maybe, a little bit right.

“For a living?” he prodded, but I was still feeling too stubborn to reply even though I knew that it was ridiculous since this whole situation had been my idea. Rolling my eyes at myself, I wondered if the yin and yang of nonstop chatter and stony silence was typical of all women, or if I was just extra perverse.

“What about hobbies? What do you do for fun?”

I pretended not to pay attention, resting my head against the cool glass. It left smudges wherever it touched, as if reinforcing the fact that I was, indeed, there.

That I was affecting Brody, in some way. Leaving some kind of mark on his life.

The silence inside the car was so loud that my ears rang with it. Reaching forward, I tried to turn on the radio. It didn’t work, and the silence inside the vehicle combined with the never-ending noise made by the onslaught of the storm was starting to drive me slightly wild. When he answered his own question, just to hear a voice, it seemed, I wondered if he felt the same way.

“I like to read, myself. I mean, I know that I’m a doctor and all, but really, all day I deal with science. It’s all a bit dry, but I’m good at it.”

Did he do it because he was good at it, and only for that reason? Or did he like what he did as well? I shook my head, releasing the thought so that it would melt away into the heat. What did it matter to me, after all?

“I like to read fantasy, mostly. I’m actually kind of a geek about it.” I caught him sneaking a peek at me and made a show of still not listening. Subsiding into silence, he chugged more wine, probably wishing that he had a book to pass the time with rather than an emotional, confusing female.

Nausea rolled through my gut as I remembered why I was feeling so emotional. I was so angry, nearly blind with it, and layered on top of that anger was betrayal. I needed to release it all somehow, or I would explode. What kind of person was I, though, to take it out on somebody else rather than on Kyle, the bastard who had started it all? Would continuing on this path make me feel any better at all, or would I just feel worse for destroying another as I felt so destroyed?

That I had to weigh these emotions at all brought my anger to the surface again. Though my temper hadn’t factored into my earlier planning, the confusion that I was causing him had. And in a snap decision, I decided to throw another twist into the night—to begin to speak again, pretending nothing had happened.

“And dirty magazines, of course.” My voice startled Brody, and he started sharply; he hadn’t thought that I’d been listening. He chuckled at my wry tone of voice.

“Of course.” He rubbed a hand through his hair, a surprised smile lighting up his face.

The smile sent a sudden flash of heat straight to my cunt. Genuine lust, hot and tempting. It’s not what I wanted to feel, not what I expected to feel, so I shot him a sultry look from under my lashes as a cover for my baffled pleasure.

Flushing slightly at the look, he busied his fingers by picking at a corner of the label on the wine bottle.

“I’m a stripper.” I wasn’t, of course—I was a student— but he nearly dropped the bottle as his nerves jerked in response. He blinked at me, frozen to his seat.

“My job,” I reminded him, nibbling at my thumbnail. “You asked what I do. Now you know.”

He was silent. I didn’t blame him; there wasn’t a safe response for a man to make to that statement. But I pretended to misinterpret his zipped lips.

“What, you think I’m a slut?” He shook his head furiously, not wanting to start an argument, probably, but I was into it by then.

He was playing right into my hands. If all went according to plan, the do-or-die moment of this elaborate scenario I had concocted was only moments away.

“It’s honest work, I’ll have you know.” I bared my pearly teeth slightly, thinking of a wildcat, ready to pounce. “And you, you’re a man. You’ll never know the power, the sheer power, of standing naked in front of hundreds of men at time, knowing that they will do anything to have you. To touch you. To fuck you.” My words were deliberately slow and hung low in the air, pregnant with promise.

“Come here.” I ignored my own words as soon as I’d spoken them, choosing instead to swing myself into his seat. Before he could think twice about my order, I arranged myself over his hard, well-muscled lap. I leaned back, and whispered in his ear, “Let me show you.” Nipping at the lobe, I began to move. I couldn’t see him but hoped that he was held, spellbound, as time stopped inside the car. “Watch me.”

He could hardly do anything else—I was, after all, grinding on his lap. My eyes closed, my body began to sway to a song that neither of us could hear. But the rhythmic twitches of my hips emphasized the beat, and soon the notes of a sensuous melody filled my head, flowing along with my internal rhythm. I’d always felt too inhibited with Kyle to try something like this, but tonight I wasn’t myself. I was Holly the Stripper, Holly who was seductive, and I had nothing to lose.

My head tilted back, and I could smell a hint of my shampoo, teased out by the dampness that the rain had wrought. My hands fisted in the long titian red strands, and I had a sudden mental image of my hair, like pieces of silk, playing over his skin as I rode him.

Holding myself mere inches above him, my thighs quivering with the strain, I gyrated, making love to an invisible man, to a ghost, a spectre. Brody groaned as he watched my hand move lightly down my torso, as if guided by someone else.

The tips of my fingers, the delicate, shell pink nails, flicked over my nipples, dark red circles that I could see clearly through my sheer dress, under which I was quite obviously not wearing a bra. Lower, down over my belly, then lower still they moved, coming to rest just inches above my sex.

Playing the seductress was hot and made me feel like I was burning alive. I hoped Brody felt the same way.

“Holly,” he whispered, but a rocking of my hips silenced him as I continued the erotic game.

The top button of my dress was loosened, slowly, teasingly, as I continued to rock, back and forth, back and forth, until the garment slid down an inch, or maybe it was two. Breathily, I whispered, “Oops,” and pulled the dress back up—but not as far up as it was before. As Brody groaned again, I continued the game. Down a bit of fabric slipped, and over my shoulders he was offered a tantalizing glimpse, just a glimpse of pale, luminous skin, before the dress was teasingly tugged back up—but never as far up as it had just been. Down. Up. When the lacy white reached the edges of my nipples, and he could see just a hint of raspberry-toned flesh against the pale fabric, he clearly could no longer contain himself and reached around the warm, seemingly willing woman in his lap, filling his hands with the soft, creamy globes that were in front of him.

I hissed in warning and, twining fingers through his, removed his hands from their busy work as he vocally protested. He fought me, but I’d always been stronger than I looked, and I was on top of him, after all.

Half turning, my eyes glinted dangerously as Brody watched my profile, fascinated.

“You never touch.” My voice was harsh, low, and raspy, a sultry tone that had the long length of his cock twitching against his leg. I enjoyed the feel of power as it washed over me, falling heavily like the rain outside. “You look. Look all you like, but you never touch. Not until I say that you can. Do you understand?”

“I understand.” He swallowed past the great lump in his visibly desert-dry throat. When his fingers again twitched, wanting to feel their palms full of the soft mounds of my breasts, of my ass, he sat on them, verbally willing himself to behave.

Once I was certain that he was still, I began to move again, pulling my dress down, down, until the entirety of my breasts, atop a smooth torso, were revealed, glistening with moisture in the hot night.

I had said that he could look, and look he did as, under his gaze, the berry-colored buds lengthened and contracted until they were fully erect. The skin around them soft and puckered, and I imagined how sweet they would feel in his mouth. He wanted to touch them, I could tell, wanted to so badly that he thought he might die if his fingers couldn’t play over the long, hard pegs. Sensing his thoughts, I let my own hands rest on the tips that were his current fixation. As one hand strummed a rhythm on a swollen bud, the other pinched and pulled, and I could easily imagine, and hopefully so could he, that his own hands were there with mine, bringing those throaty little gasps out of my mouth and into the still air.

Still rocking my hips, I cupped the swells of my breasts, kneading them, as I again arched above him, sliding up and down his leg in a parody of sex. The rough denim of his jeans stretched tight against his straining cock.

“Cataracts. Blepharitis. Pterygium. Uveitis. Ptosis.” Frantically, he recited a long string of words that made no sense to me. I puzzled over it briefly until I realized that this must be his version of “thinking of baseball” to keep his staying power alive. Knowing that I had made him resort to it sent a flood of adrenaline surging into my veins.

“Corneal ulcer. Retinal detachment.” With these last two, his excitement was back under control. I imagine he thought that he did this silently, in the confines of his own head, but I could hear the words, breathed out softly, like steam, and genuine arousal made its presence known in the dark, hidden cleft that rested between my legs.

When I began to hike my skirt up the long thighs that looked creamy in the shadowed moonlight, he shuddered violently. “You’re killing me.”

I laughed wickedly. “You have no idea.” My bare ass made contact with his groin, and every coherent thought flew out of my head as I wiggled my behind over his inflamed sex.

Between gasps, I muttered, “Too bad there’s no pole in here. If there were, I could really blow your mind.” I smiled as I heard his strained gulp, and continued, “Well, perhaps we’ll have to make do.” Grasping the nearly empty bottle of wine above my body, I again arched off his thighs and began to work the bottle like the stripper’s pole at my supposed work, raising and lowering it as I needed.

When the cool glass hit the fevered skin of my inner thighs, I hissed but quickly adjusted, rolling the bottle around the sensitive skin. When it touched my clit, I sighed out loud and pretended that I was actually who I said I was, in the midst of one of my supposed routines. Raising and lowering my body around the cylinder of green glass, I knew that the sight of my glistening body in the moonlight would drive Brody mad.

Listening to the slight hitches in his breath, I maneuvered myself so that I was facing him, and my slender thighs were straddling his hips. Wedging the bottle in the crevice where our swollen sexes met, I eased open the fly of his jeans to provide him some relief against his uncomfortably-f-looking trousers.

“This is where we bargain.” I rotated my hips forward so that the glass added pressure to his fevered cock. “If you want my . . . time, after a show, I need to be paid.”