Sexy and Funny, Hilarious Erotic Romance Bundle (51 page)

He kept grinding into me from behind, sending stars all through my body. I propped one leg up for access, and he reached over the side of my hip to find my sweet wetness with his fingers. With a gentle touch, he played me like the world’s tiniest bongo drum, and then worked me like his fingers were a tiny bulldozer trying to flatten a stubborn anthill.

I came with a wail, alarmed at the force. I broke like a dam, and, ladies and gentlemen, it was a gusher.

He grunted and pulsed, coming right after me, and I enjoyed the sensation of his firehose blasting into its sheath, deep within me, but with all the gushing, I was just a little alarmed that I’d somehow broken my vagina.

After he withdrew from my backdoor, I cupped my hand down there against my pussy to catch the strange flood of mystery fluid. I wriggled my way off the bed and darted straight out the door and into the bathroom next door.

What. The. Fuck.

I’d half-expected to find a gusher of blood in my hand, from my period starting early, but it was just colorless, odorless fluid. Not urine, but something else.

I sat on the edge of the tub and pondered this new discovery.

I was a squirter?

I’d heard of girls shooting out fluid during deep g-spot stimulation, but hadn’t exactly believed.

Dalton tapped on the door. “You okay?”

“Fine! Gimme a sec and come join me in the shower?”

Uh… sure, I was fine. Never mind that I felt like a teenage boy who just had his first wet dream and was scared, confused, and possibly aroused again. I had a squirting orgasm?

“Sure, I’ll join you,” he said. “Should I bring anything? Are you hungry or thirsty?”

I stared at the interior side of the old, wooden door. It had been orange and blue when we moved in, and we’d repainted everything inside, but skimped on a final coat. You could see the blue through the cream color. It really needed another coat.

I put my face in my hands. What the hell was I doing? Distracting myself from this scary situation by thinking about paint. That wasn’t good.
Eyes wide open.

“Peaches?”

“Just give me five minutes. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen.” I looked at my blotchy face in the mirror, my eyes looking wide and frightened. “And bring me up a beer.”

“Will do.”

After he walked away, I splashed some cold water on my face and tried to pull myself together. I used the toilet and checked. Yes, my pee was still yellow, and not at all like the other fluid. My butt was tingling and happy, but not juicy, thanks to the condom. So, that squirting thing had really happened.

Huh.

I got the shower running, and a few minutes later, Dalton joined me, two unopened cans of cold beer in his hands. He pressed them against my buttocks to make me shriek, of course.

“You’re so bad,” I said.

“You make me want to be bad. Now kiss me like I’m dangerous.”

I complied, enjoying his lips on mine, in the shower, our intimacy so casual and right.

He cracked open one of the cans and passed it to me. We took turns standing under the hot water, doing the two-person shower dance.

Some of the shower water was splashing into my beer, so I drank deeply before it got watered down.

“Gotta replenish your fluids,” he said, grinning.

What was that supposed to mean? Guardedly, I stared up at him.

“Do you have to work in the morning?” he asked.

The morning. Work. My morning mocha at Java Jones.

“I ran into that girl, Alexis, this morning,” I said.

He looked annoyed. “That’s too bad. I would have thought she’d take her money and get lost.”

“How do you know her, exactly?”

His head nodded under weight I couldn’t see. “For a while, she was like my sister. Remember I told you I ran away from my parents with a woman?”

“She was someone in the porn business, right? I mean
adult film
business.”

“Don’t be politically correct on my account, but, yes. Her name was Katherine. Everyone called her Kiki. She had more charisma than common sense, and like an idiot, I went straight from trying to date two high school girls at once to losing my virginity to a porn star.”

I ran my free hand over his wet chest as he took his turn under the shower. “I hate that she took advantage of you when you were young.”

“We all take advantage. It’s what people do.”

A lump caught in my throat. I never liked it when someone said bad things about human nature. It was as if they were paving a future bad road with excuses.

He continued, “Kiki was Alexis’s mother.”

“Was?”

“Kiki hung herself.”

I put my empty beer can on the edge of the tub, then turned back to hug him. I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

He looked genuinely sad. “Kiki hung herself the week after I moved out and broke up with her for good. I said I was done with the adult film industry, and I honestly wished her the best. I thought she was going to be okay, but she wasn’t right in the head.”

I gazed up at him. Now we both had our arms wrapped around each other, and I couldn’t tell you who was supporting whom. I worried that if I let go, we’d both fall away.

“I thought of Alexis as a sister,” he said. “We were practically the same age, so I couldn’t see myself as a father figure.”

“She seemed so angry at you.”

“People misplace their anger. Her mother’s dead, so all that pain had nowhere to go. Grief is like a heat-seeking missile, and it burrows into the nearest heart.”

“It’s been a few years, though. She needs to move on and leave you alone.”

“When you’re famous, people refuse to disappear. Even when you give them money and they promise to be quiet, they keep coming back.”

I thought of the NDA I’d signed that day and pulled back.

Was I just a future problem for Dalton Deangelo?

Was that how he saw me?

Dalton had been staring down at our feet in the tub, and now he looked up at me. Water from the shower streamed down his face, and his eyes were red, but I couldn’t tell if he was crying.

Despite my fears, I felt my eyes water with sympathy tears at his pain.

“What about your parents?” I asked.

“My mother died of a drug overdose two years ago,” he said.

I mouthed the words “I’m sorry,” though my voice was cut off by emotion.

“Not as sorry as I am,” he said. “It was my hush money that fueled her utter collapse.”

The water cooled down, the hot water tank in the basement reaching its limits.

“And your father?” I asked, hating myself for my insensitive curiosity.

“The checks keep clearing, but we’ve not spoken directly since the fight we had the day I left with Kiki.”

I stood shivering as the water turned from cool to cold. I reached around Dalton to turn off the tap, since he hadn’t seemed to notice.

He chuckled, his voice hollow in the echoing bathroom now that the running water was stopped. “I told him I was going to be a big star one day, and I’d buy a big mansion and they’d beg me to live in the guest house.”

I pulled two towels from the cupboard and handed one to him. He seemed confused, then after a few blinks, started to slowly pat himself dry.

“I’m sorry about everything with your family,” I said.

“Your parents seem so perfect. I was watching them at the wedding, and during the speeches, they kept looking at each other with so much tenderness.”

I laughed, thinking of their current argument over my father’s ratty old recliner, and now the buckets being tossed down on the bushes.

“There’s more than meets the eyes,” I said. “I know I’m lucky, though. They’ve been more than understanding. They saved my life.”

“How?”

My throat closed up, and then I was crying, barely able to catch my breath.

Sometimes, it just hit me like that.

I moved my jaw, thinking about telling him, but then I remembered the paperwork I’d signed that day. I’d signed
his
NDA, but he hadn’t signed mine. So he didn’t need to know. Nobody did.

“It’s been a long day,” he said gently, pulling me into a damp hug and wrapping his big towel around both of us.

“A very long day.” I smiled, the waterworks finished.

“Sleep with me,” he said. “Join me in the darkness, walk through my dreams, and hold my hand in the morning light.”

I nodded, because what can you say after something as beautiful as that?

We spent a few minutes brushing our teeth and getting ready for bed, just like a regular couple, then I climbed into my bed next to a very sleepy-faced, droopy-eyelid-having Dalton Deangelo.

Join me in the darkness, walk through my dreams, and hold my hand in the morning light.

I was groggy in the morning when Dalton woke me.

“Five more minutes,” I moaned, snaking my arm around him. He was fully clothed, which I did not like, but at least he was in my bed.

He kissed my cheek.

“Just a few more days, and we’ll wrap this movie. Then I’ll be able to sleep in, too.”

I opened my eyes, suddenly awake.

“A few more days?” We hadn’t talked about how much longer the movie shoot would be, but I’d hoped for more time than that before I lost him to LA.

“Yeah. Do you want me to send Vern back here to give you a ride to work this morning?”

I rolled over and squinted at my clock. I didn’t have to be at Peachtree Books for another two hours.

“No, thanks. I always walk.”

“Every day?”

“I have a couple of umbrellas for the winter.”

He nodded. “I should have known you walk to work. But I didn’t. And I don’t know your middle name, either.”

“Luanne.”

“Favorite color?”

“My favorite color is your gorgeous eyes, Dalton Deangelo.”

He cracked up. “Have fun at work. I don’t know when I can see you again, but I’ll call you.”

“Sure,” I said, and then I watched him roll off the bed and leave.

I listened to him walk down the steps and close the front door. A thought struck me: our goodbye had felt like a final goodbye, despite the casual words spoken.

Was this the end?

Part of me was sure I’d never seen him again, and that same part of me was relieved. He’d not just kept me up late. He’d disrupted my life, inserted himself into my every thought.

He and his whole life and personality were so damn big, where did that leave me?

And if we were done now, or in a few days, how long before the internet forgot all about me and left me in peace?

And one more thing: who was that moaning?

I lay still in my bed, listening.

It sounded like someone was…

I pulled my pillow around my head, because someone was moaning, and that someone was Shayla. I could still hear her, through the pillow. And now a guy’s voice, as well.

Wow. Go, Shayla!

I didn’t get to meet the guy who was getting Shayla to make such musical sounds, because I threw on some clothes and left the house early. If she was nailing her boss again, that was the last thing I wanted to be a witness off. If it was someone else, I’d meet him if he made it to a second audition. (A
callback
, as Shayla sometimes joked. She did have a string of one-night hookups in her past, because guys rarely got a callback from her, unless they were unavailable.)

I wandered around downtown with my thoughts, and by the time I opened the bookstore, mocha in hand, I wasn’t even early.

The yellow phone on the wall was ringing when I walked in the door, and after I turned off the alarm, I answered it with a breathless, “Hello?”

“Peaches Monroe?” came a woman’s voice.

“Speaking.”

She started talking, and I know she was speaking English, but it was difficult to comprehend her words, because they were so ridiculous.

I had to keep asking her to repeat herself, and I pulled out an envelope from the drawer and scribbled on the back of it:

New underwear line

Full figured girls with personality

Team Peaches

Wednesday

Photo shoot

$$$

Fly? LA

WTF???

I jotted down the woman’s phone number, told her I’d have to talk it over with my family, and hung up the phone.

“WHAT?” I said to the empty bookstore.

The houseplants on top of the shelves peered down at me in silence.

“Me, an underwear model,” I said. “Me.”

My father walked in the door just then, a welcome sight in his plaid, short-sleeved shirt and khaki trousers. His curly red hair had been freshly trimmed, which I noticed because he had that cute summer feature of a pale margin of skin on the back of his neck, where his now-gone hair had prevented a pink sunburn the previous day.

“Dad!” I ran out from behind the counter and nearly bowled him over with a hug.

“It’s chilly in here. You don’t have the air conditioner running already, do you? Open the front door and get some airflow.”

I pulled away and gave him a good look. He was the perfect person to ask for advice, because he was always so sensible (about everything but his recliner.)

“Did you come by to check on our power consumption?” I asked.

“I’ve got some epoxy curing back at the shop. Figured I’d save some brain cells by not sniffing it.”