Page 17 of Miss Christmas

Their wordless escape from his building added to the spiral of excitement too stimulating to control. All her muscles were tense as if ready to spring at once, at one touch from him in the right spot, maybe a nipple, or her lips, or anywhere between her thighs. One small touch and she would explode like some crazy new pyrotechnical display.

Even if she sounded like the least cool, most awkward woman in all of New York, she had to break the silence before it broke her. He studied her as if she were a priceless porcelain statue, apparently not to be touched or even disturbed by the wrong word, so tenuous was their understanding, their truce, their agreement to escape below the radar for this midday tryst. So far below the radar that they themselves were pretending to not notice what they were doing.

“No way,” she said. A breath too big to even be called a sigh escaped her. “I can’t pretend we’re not doing something monumental.”

A flicker of fear was replaced by caution in his eyes.

“I’ll agree to monumental if you’ll agree to inevitable.” His voice, finally she heard his voice. It scraped against her every sensitive nerve ending, forcing a shiver to rise up her spine and send a shaft of pure pleasure to her center, a tease of what was to come. The creamy wetness already pooled between her thighs. She could never remember getting so hot and wet with anticipation before. Was she that desperate?

Or was Will that special?

It couldn’t be Will. She didn’t know him, couldn’t let him get under her skin, no matter how intimately they might get to know each other today. Her mind whisked back to their phone sex and his panting growl when he came. She clenched her thighs.

“I agree.” She could barely speak. She didn’t dare lean into him, didn’t dare reach out and touch him. But with every breath, she took him inside her, his scent escalating her awareness to an impossible pitch until all she needed to do was close her eyes and imagine him pulsing inside her, for it to be so real that she was there, in that orgasmic state. She didn’t dare close her eyes.

Scarlet spent the rest of the thankfully short cab ride staring at Will’s aroused glassy eyes—or so it felt.

When the cab pulled to the curb, she was surprised. But she looked out the window and realized they must be at his place and it made sense. The ride had been too short to get to Brooklyn. And she’d bet he had no roommates. He slid out and reached out to help her. A panicked bubble rose in her throat and she froze for that one moment. He bent down to peer into the cab at her.

“Scarlet?” That word was packed with so much and she felt every bit of it weigh on her heart and her sexed-up body. It was a soft plea for mercy, a passionate statement of desire and wanting, an invitation to the impossible dream and a warning—all wrapped into one. Maybe that wasn’t what he’d meant to communicate, but that was what she got.

If she had to say, she would admit that it was the invitation that got to her, that made her move, jump-started her. Because she was a sucker for an all-in bet, a risk-taker with an eye always trained toward the brass ring.

She smiled and returned to herself, letting go of all the drama that had churned inside her. She hung onto only the irresistible zing in her nerve endings here and now—and the anticipation of that nameless, bottomless, gaping-wide-open future of impossibilities.

They rode up the elevator to his apartment in that same giddy state with dangerous sparks flying about them as if they were live wires, too afraid to even touch each other for fear that they’d burst into flames.

He got to his door and opened it—the keyless entry impressing her. It was that one last detail added to her overstimulated body and brain that broke her, letting the floodgates open and everything inside her spill out. Barely inside the door, she plastered herself against him and murmured as she tasted his lips, tested their firm hotness, and roamed her hands inside his coat over the expanse of his muscled chest and back.

After a split second, he kissed her back and his hands joined the unquenchable need for connection, pulling her toward him as they caressed, sliding under her coat and down her back to her butt where they played and teased and pressed her close.

“Will, I want you. I don’t know when I’ve wanted a man this much. I have to have you. Every morsel of you. Now.” She gasped out the words, only knowing what she said after hearing them aloud.

“I’m right there with you, Scarlet. God, I love that name. You are so hot, so much more than hot. Damn.” He bit her lower lip and rolled it between his teeth, laving it with his tongue until she felt dizzy. Panting, she needed air, needed to feel his skin, needed all these clothes between them to be gone.

She pushed off him, popping her mouth from his and taking in a gulp of air—heady, Will-scented air, woodsy with a slight hint of the city mixed in and something fresh and clean, like unperfumed soap.

“I—we need to take off our clothes.” She held him at arm’s length and, after a few beats, he let her go, breathing heavily, his eyes a storm of raging need.

“You’re right. We should slow down. We’re moving at a heart-attack pace.” He swiped his hand through his hair and then took her hand to pull her farther inside his apartment. He dragged her past the state-of-the-art kitchen, past the arched opening to a massive living room with bright floor-to-ceiling paned windows, and down a hallway to a massive bedroom with more tall-paned windows framed in wood. All the details registered then disappeared before she could take them in, bouncing off her overstimulated brain.

When he finally stopped, still holding her hand, the hot connection between them re-energized.

“You need to let go so I can get my coat off.” Her breathless words sounded absurd. His eyes, dark and glassy, bordered on menacing with a predatory gleam, generating a shiver of excited fear to erupt in her.

Dropping her coat to the floor, she rolled the knit fabric of her dress up her thighs, past her hose-covered panties, and then up over her breasts barely contained in the lacy bra. It had never fit her right, but then none of them did. He watched her, his hand frozen on his tie where he’d stopped his own undressing. She supposed he didn’t want to miss the show she was putting on.

Her hands stopped shaking as she lifted the dress over her head and tossed it to the floor. Her skimpy bra was next, but now that she felt some control returning, felt like she was performing for an appreciative audience, she played the scene for all it was worth.

“Don’t stop now.” He took a step closer, moved his hand from his tie and reached out to touch her. She spun away.

“No you don’t. No touching yet. Not until I’m naked. And especially not until you’re naked, glistening and ready in nothing but skin.” She stroked her hands down her body, over her ribs to her waist and found the edge of her pantyhose. They had to go. Pulling them down over her hips and thighs, she controlled the pace and wiggled, rotating her hips, and got them down to her knees before Will decided to wrest control from her.

It wasn’t difficult. He was strong and hot and the way he slipped his arm under her knees and the other around her shoulders and hefted her off the ground, then spun and tossed her onto his bed took her breath away. Her heart skipped a beat as he knelt over her and grabbed hold of her poor doomed pantyhose and yanked, ripping them off.

Feeling the pooling of moisture between her legs, she squirmed, almost salivated. But she was nearly naked and he was still fully clothed. It wasn’t fair.

“Take off your clothes, Will.” She slipped her legs from his grasp and rolled away when he reached for her.