Eye of the Tiger Read online

She tasted of peppermint. It tickled him, to think she'd popped a mint before knocking on his door. It turned him on, too, or maybe that was just the feel of her curves under his palms, her hips pressing into his. Her ass.

  "Evan," she broke away.

  "Natalie." He kissed her again.

  She pressed back this time, so he stopped. Kissed her jaw, her throat, then stopped.

  "Evan, wait."

  "Not in the mood to wait." He bumped his pelvis into hers, to emphasize the point. She gasped. He bent to suck on her throat, but she pressed him back again.

  "Listen. Sit down. Listen."

  So he let her push him onto the sofa, though he kept her thigh locked under his palm. "I'm listening."

  She rolled her eyes. Her hair had already half-escaped confinement, which gave Evan plenty of things to think about while she talked. If there were pins or elastic bands confining it. If it would tickle his thighs while she sucked his cock. If her pubic curls could possibly be curlier, or did she tame them. If those curls were getting wet for him. How he would get her wetter, licking, thrusting a finger into her.

  "Evan!"

  "What?"

  "Listen."

  "I'm listening," he lied.

  She ran her hands over her hair in frustration, and Evan's cock jumped again.

  "Okay, I'll listen now. I promise." He even took his hands off her, to prove it.

  "You have to agree about there not being a relationship."

  "Agreed."

  "We can't tell our parents we're hanging out."

  Hadn't they covered all this? "Okay."

  "They would ask a million questions if they suspected we ever saw each other."

  He shrugged. "Fine, we'll hide from them."

  "Not to get all sitcom, but sometimes my mom shows up unannounced at my place. If you're there, you're scaling the trellis from my balcony to get away, or skulking in the closet for an hour until she leaves."

  Shit. He looked up from her thighs--not touching them was no fun--and met Natalie's eye. It had hit him, though he'd deflected the blow: this whole thing was a little too good to be true. No-strings screwing Natalie was the kind of high-life carrot he'd beaten himself with, during his years working hundred hour weeks as an analyst. He'd kept his nose to the grindstone precisely so he could get to this point. And here he was, executive level, making the money, commanding the advisors who commanded the analysts, pretty view from his elevated office, closet full of fancy suits. Adding a sexy woman who would come over to fuck him and not demand brunch the next day would complete the dream.

  So obviously there were strings. It never would work out like in his dreams.

  "How much does she visit?"

  Natalie's knee was bobbing as she jiggled her foot. Evan crossed his arms so he wouldn't reach for her thigh again. "I guess...probably this isn't worth the hassle. Can we forget about it?"

  "I'm good on a rock wall."

  "Sorry?" Her crinkled brow amused him.

  "Part of my workout. There's a climbing wall at my gym. I can handle your trellis, as long as it's anchored okay."

  When he mentioned working out, Natalie's eyes went to his bare arms. They were still crossed in front of him, and Evan flexed to ensure she didn't miss the definition in his muscles. The way her eyes stayed trained on them assured him she was on board.

  She swallowed. "Okay. I mean, I think it's solid. We can check it to be sure. Before we fuck over there. If you don't mind."

  His hips pulsed, close enough to involuntary, from the way she almost bit her plummy bottom lip on that lovely ‘F’ word. "Natalie, right now the only thing I mind is that I'm not currently inside you."

  Well, that was blunt.

  She didn't disagree, though. The kiss had been insane. Natalie'd had hot kisses before. Even hot first kisses. But Evan. Well. Hot didn't begin to describe it. Molten. She'd been tempted to check herself for smoke when it was over, because damn if she wasn't aflame with passion.

  Natalie had never been aflame with passion from a kiss before. It was weird. Good weird, but weird. The kind of weird worth repeating, exploring, seeing where else he could make her catch fire.

  Maybe it was the weather. If it was in the eighties, maybe she and Evan could kiss without her exploding. But it was summer in Houston, so Natalie could only assume that things were going to get hotter between them. After all, they were going to be fuck buddies.

  "What's the grin for?" he asked with a kind of intent playfulness.

  "Right now?" She ran her eyes past his well-muscled arms, down his trim waist, and got hung up on the evidence of how turned on he was. "Huh."

  His legs slid apart on the sofa, inviting. "There's a problem with right now? Thought that was why you came over?"

  If Natalie was forced to keep rolling her eyes like this, her ophthalmologist would scold her at her next exam. "I came over to see if you wanted to become friends with benefits."

  "Fuck buddies."

  "Friends. With. Benefits." Okay, it was fuck buddies. But if Natalie let Evan start defining things without her input, no telling what kind of situations she'd get herself into. She just wanted someone else invested in her orgasms. "So we're agreed. About the sex."

  "Wait."

  So he did have questions. She knew if he stopped thinking with that very insistent cock he would hesitate. "What is it? We have to be really honest with each other or this will fall apart."

  "We're having sex now?"

  "Okay."

  His eyes raked her body. Natalie squirmed with the heat; apparently it wasn't just when he was kissing her that he could do that instant-flame thing. "And when else?"

  "Sorry?" She was thinking about his hands on her butt, which she guessed he'd enjoyed, since they'd stayed there a long while.

  "Is there a time limit on this arrangement? How often can it happen?"

  She smiled. "Oh. Well."

  "Don't get coy on me, East. How much of a benefit are we talking here?"

  "What did you have in mind?" She knew what she had in mind, but wasn't ready to reveal to Evan just how many ways she'd imagined being with him. Still, it was her proposal, so she added, "I figure a couple times a week, if our schedules work."

  "Okay."

  "Yeah?"

  He was stroking her thigh again. Natalie inched closer. "Sounds good. Very beneficial."

  "That's what you get by being friends with me."

  Evan raised an eyebrow. "How many fuck buddies do you have?" But he said it low and sweet, still playful.

  "Just the one," she said. Her voice was too breathy to be playful. He stroked up her inner thigh, and she added, "Just you."

  He was over her then, shifting her so she was leaning against the sofa arm, his hand guiding her leg so it wrapped around his hip. The hard plane of his chest pressed her down, that pine forest scent surrounding her as Evan's mouth got familiar with hers, his tongue not taking a half-second of time to ask politely before invading, exploring. His hands were on her waist, sliding up her ribcage, skimming the sides of her breasts before landing in her hair, burrowing to dislodge the clips and pins that anchored it in place.

  His salt skin and coal eyes and woodcut arms and stubble cheeks. She tasted and touched, looked and lingered. Blood pounded through Natalie's veins; fire raced along her nerves. "Evan."

  "Mmm?"

  "You're sweaty."

  He tugged at her hair, a gentle pull on her scalp that lifted her mouth back to his.

  Thing was, she had her own ideas.

  "Evan."

  "Mm?" Inarticulate still, but more impatient.

  "Evan." She got her hands on his abs, pinched what flesh she could find.

  "Hey!"

  Natalie narrowed her eyes at him. "I said: you're sweaty. Listen to me."

  "Damn. No need to get mean about it."

  "Pay attention the first time and I won't have to."

  His sigh was hyperbolic. "You want me to go shower or something?"

  "No, idiot. I'm w
earing these clothes home later, and I'll be happier putting them on again in an hour if they're not wrinkled and reeking."

  "An hour?"

  She shrugged, like she wasn't blazing. "Eighty-five minutes, then."

  He hopped to his feet and hauled her to hers. "Are you timing me, Natalie East?"

  "Just thought you were primed and ready for action, so why wait?"

  Holding her hand, he led her upstairs to his bedroom. At his gentle push, mirrored doors slid aside to reveal his deep closet of suits. "You want a wood hanger or one with clips for your pants?"

  "Is there even room to hang my stuff up in there?"

  "You can use the shower curtain rod."

  She snagged a plastic suit hanger from between two linen blazers. "That's a no, then?"

  He sent the door rumbling along its track, leaving them facing each other in the mirror. His bed was no more than five feet behind them, and her eyes flicked between the reflections of it, and Evan's bare arms, and his foot wedging a half-step forward between hers. She lifted her chin and met his dark reflected gaze. Maybe it was the fire in his eyes that make his voice so full of smoke.

  "You don't have appointments later, right?"

  She shook her head.

  He let the hem of her shirt fall over his hands as they roved along her waistband. "You can stay. In case I go over my allotted time?"

  She sucked in her breath, not even to tighten her stomach as he found the button over her navel. Her voice was too wobbly for the challenging note she wanted. "Is that likely?"

  He was unzipping her, and it started out slow, but then he pressed his cock up against her ass and rocked, his hands on her pelvis a trap she was happy to fall into. His wood scent and warm breath assailed her as he leaned close and said, "Oh, yes. Very, very likely."

  Just as she moved to unbutton the tidy row of tiny pearls on her shirt, he stilled. She glanced back at him.

  No more than half his mouth curled, but combined with the glint of his brown eyes, she suddenly felt like she was dancing in a champagne fountain. Rich crystal and effervescence and the heady promise of fun. "Now, Natalie. Be sensible. We're trying to keep you from dishevelment, aren't we?"

  "Not me, just my clothes."

  "Right. Your clothes. Because we don't want any mid-afternoon walk of shame as you scurry home. In seventy-nine minutes." His light bite on her nape caused her to sway. "After we've fucked."

  She bumped her ass back into him. "Seventy-eight minutes and counting. Are you going to spend many more of them rubbing your sweat all over my shirt? My dry cleaner is good, but even he has limits."

  "Is that a challenge?"

  "Not everything's a challenge, Evan." She, for instance. She was the opposite of a challenge. She'd waltzed in, propositioned him, and there they were, almost naked. Near to nakedness. Still dressed, just as dressed as each had been when she'd knocked on his door, but their naked was just around the corner.

  "Not everything. But you and I both know there's a proper order to these things." He tucked his hands below her waistband, fingers hot on her skin and the lace of her panties, flexing his wrists so her trousers began a downward slide past her hips.

  Natalie stepped out of her shoes, let Evan grasp her right knee and draw it up until it was free of the fabric. Let him draw it higher, folding her leg, opening her knee to the side in imitation of a yoga stork. She was anything but balanced, centered. Those smoldering fingers of his skimmed her inner thigh, stopped to stroke her quivering muscles, detoured past the lace to bolster the weight of her torso with his.

  "Order?" she asked, not out of curiosity but because it was the word her mind had snagged as the rest of her was twirling in the champagne.

  "Absolutely, order. Anyone who dresses as well as you must know about order." He squeezed the back of her thigh--in his palm it felt cradled, not hefted--and she lowered her right leg to the unfamiliar nap of his Berber-carpeted floor.

  "I think I'm lost."

  He trailed kisses across her neck, her jaw, as if dropping breadcrumbs to lead her back to the right path. Or to lead her to a land of sweetness and danger. Either way, she was willing to follow. "It's just logistics. You need to hang up your clothes."

  "So sometime in the next seventy-two minutes we can fuck."

  "Right. And you've got one hanger for two wardrobe items."

  She glanced at the hanger she was holding. It seemed incongruous. But she was standing in front of his closet, so maybe she was the one out of place.

  "It's only sensible," Evan said, urging her left leg to lift, then snagging her trousers with his tennis-shoe-clad toe. "You have to hang the pants first, then put the shirt over them."

  He had about one clue what he was saying, the rest of his mind caught in a loop of Natalie's thighs, Natalie's feet, Natalie's hips, Natalie's kiss. She was nodding along to his nonsense, though, so Evan reached down for her pants and held them in front of them both. She clipped the waistband on the hanger clips, and his hands were empty again. He had any number of solutions for that, and started with her waist, a little dip above her full hips that he was learning by touch. Soon he would learn it by sight. By taste. By scent.

  He traced the inner curve of her hourglass, from waist to abdomen to the satin smooth undersides of her breasts. She dropped her head to his shoulder, all that mass of her hair grabbing hold of his overheated skin like a hundred coolly seductive Medusa snakes. He liked that, but enough with the languor. With cobra-strike speed, he pinched her nipples, soothing the bites a second later with gentle thumbs. Natalie grabbed at his wrists and the fabric of her shirt bunched over them, the hanger clopping on the floor.

  "Okay?" he asked. Murmured. She'd turned him into a murmurer.

  When she shook her head, part of her hair coiled up around the back of his neck. Like it was demanding he grind himself up against her. And he'd hate to disappoint her hair.

  "You're trying to devastate my dry cleaner. Wrinkles now, on top of the sweat?"

  "Are the wrinkles on top of the sweat, or the other way around?"

  She dragged a wrist from her breast, placing his hand so he fingered her buttons. He was reluctant to let go of the other, but he caught her expression in the mirrored door and reconsidered. Natalie was glazed, eyes glued to his hands on her. Hyperfocused as his arms wrapped her torso, breaths getting shorter and heart thumping under his palm. So, one agonizing button at a time, he trailed down her placket. When it was loose, she crouched to retrieve the hanger. Right there between his legs, her hair clinging to his shirt, and he was a fool. He'd thought his cock couldn't get harder. Wrong.

  Before she'd straightened with the hanger, he'd stripped off his offending tee, and was toeing off his shoes as she hung her shirt. He hoped to God he didn't reek as he skimmed off his shorts and yanked free his athletic socks. She was her usual wildflowers with the peppermint, and her bra and panties were a pearly color that made her skin look even tastier than it already was, and she was some kind of genius to come up with this fuck buddy plan.

  "Where do I put this?"

  "Put what?" He had something to put somewhere, and would be happy to tell her all about it.

  She shook the hanger at him. Right. Walk of shame clothes. Defeated the purpose to toss them at the same corner as his gym socks. He shoved his suits aside and added her hanger to the bar, muffling whatever her next comment was with his mouth. The tidiest strip tease in history was over, and it was time to get down and dirty.

  A small spin, and they were on his bed. Evan trapped her lower lip in his teeth, pinned her legs under his. Thrust. He was further south than he could be, the weight of his erection trapped between her thighs, his chin scraping the top of her chest. All her bucking just made him laugh, but it turned into a groan when she arched up enough to unclasp her bra and wriggled out of it.

  "Your tits are insane. I'm burning all your bras."

  "Okay, Gloria Steinem. Can you just start by sucking them, please?"

  "More of an Alice S.
Rossi guy, myself."

  This man. With his smart-ass jokes and his smart references and his incredible, intelligent hands. Damn, but this was a good idea she'd had. Natalie left off raking her fingers through his hair to trace the bunching muscles of his arms. "Speaking of, my bag's in the other room. Do you have condoms in here?"

  "Oodles of them." His eyes sparked at her again, before he went back to paying attention to her breasts. She finally freed a leg and ran her foot down the length of his. With just a little shift, she got his hipbone pressed up against her clit, and another little shift gave her the leverage she needed to start up a swashbucklingly fun tempo.

  "Evan." Breathy begging.

  He froze. "Hang on." Then he lifted his body three inches from hers and froze again.

  "Evan." This time she was commanding, maybe a little irritable.

  Damn his bell-ringing laugh. And those eye crinkles.

  "Second-wave feminism aside, I'm man enough to survive you dry-humping me to orgasm. But would it kill you to wait until you're naked? I've wanted to bite your ass for weeks now."

  "Yes. It will. It will kill me." She bared her teeth at him. "Bite your own ass."

  "Not as much fun." And way too fast, he popped off the bed--he must do burpees at that gym of his--and wriggled her panties off. He also shucked his boxers, so she didn't have to blast him for keeping her waiting to see the goodies.

  He had good goodies.

  She got in seven seconds of admiration for his body before it covered hers again, and she conceded that his manner of admiring her body was a fair trade for being deprived of the full-frontal view. She sent her hands roaming over his back and ass, her calves skating up his. He dragged his tongue straight down her midline, landing in her lap as she sat to take in the sight of him. He nipped her hip before looking at her.

  She ran her thumb across his lip. "I believe we were getting me off?"

  "I'm working on it. Patience is a virtue."

  "You be virtuous. I'm on edge here."

  "And I'm not? Third-wave feminism aside, I'm thinking I'm going to come on the first thrust. You're fucking hot, Natalie. There may not be enough square roots in my brain to let me honor the Ladies First rule."