After Hours Page 19

  If anyone deserved to die for their actions, it was Rick. He’d survived her lamp attack with a concussion and a lump and now awaited trial in a jail cell. The odds of him getting off were slim. Not only did he have three people ready to testify against him, but the mini recorder Andy planted on her phone had caught the entire struggle and lead-up conversation on tape.

  On second thought, it was good Rick hadn’t died. Not only would the knowledge she’d killed him haunt her, but she’d know she was to blame for Joyce’s heartache. Tawny had seen Joyce once in the last week, long enough to know she planned to stand trial against her husband but at the same time grieved over him. Bad as Rick turned out, Joyce had given him her heart two years ago. That love couldn’t be expected to die overnight.

  “I love you. Doesn’t that matter?”

  Andy’s words seemed to mock Tawny’s thoughts and throw them back at her. She’d given Andy her heart. And she had to admit, if only to herself, that she still loved him. Maybe in time they could try again, start over without the lies between them. Or maybe that was just another foolish hope.

  “Tawny, speak to me.” He reached for her hands, pulling them into his own before she could stop him. “I don’t care if it’s just to say you hate me. I need to hear your voice. I need to know you’re okay. I’m trained to deal with the sort of situation Rick put us in last week; you’re not.”

  He was as good as his word. The concern in his voice and his expression confirmed it. Hell. Not trusting her big mouth to speak without revealing every emotion that raged through her, Tawny pulled her hands from his and shook her head. Slowly, she closed the door. Her heart stampeded the moment his face was no longer visible. He was out of sight, the way he’d been for the past week. The way he could be for the rest of her life if she chose it. She could fall back into the routine she’d lived before meeting him, the Monday night mud mask and scrapbook session, Tuesday night pedicure, Wednesday book club meeting…where she’d see Joyce…and think of Andy, and how stupid she’d been to let him go.

  He wasn’t the only one who’d lied. She’d led him to believe she was some wild woman who could teach him sex from kiss to climax, who could fill up his date book until he had to turn women away. With Andy, she’d become that woman. Before him she’d been living a dreary existence, deriving her greatest pleasure by reliving the sexual exploits of her best friend. She didn’t want that life back. All she wanted was her bad boy.

  Tawny yanked open the door. He was already getting into his vehicle—not an economic sedan, but a gas-guzzling duelie extended cab. Her body heated with the thought of the evenings they’d share in the cab of that truck, making out like teenagers. She wanted that, wanted to throw away her nonexistent social-butterfly black book and notch her bedpost with this one man alone.

  “Andy!” she shouted, stepping out onto the porch.

  He climbed back out of the truck and, closing the door, came around the front of it. Hope waged in his eyes. “Yeah?”

  She smiled, not wanting to give into him so easily, but unable to stop herself—just as she was unable to stop herself from hurrying to him and flinging herself into his arms. Brazen Tawny, it seemed, was destined to floor her neighbors with her naughty antics.

  Rising on tiptoe, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him long and hard, reveling in his minty-fresh taste. His cock hardened against her belly, and she pulled back sighing. Oh, man, how she’d missed him. “It matters. All of it matters.”

  Cupping her face, Andy looked into her eyes; sincerity and an affection that warmed her through filled his own. “It was never just about the case.”

  “It was never just about teaching you lust lessons, either.”

  He grinned and lowered his head to rub her lips. He nibbled gently, then pulled back to eye her soberly. “I love you, Tawny. Always. Forever.”

  Her head spun. Her pulse went mad. She wanted to jump up and down and giggle like a little girl with a newfound kitten. She forced her feet to stay planted on the ground and settled on squeezing him tighter. Andy winced, and she realized his wound still bothered him. Apparently she should have stuck with the jumping up and down and giggling. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m a big boy. I can handle a little pain.” He took her hand and started for the house. “Does this mean you forgive me?”

  Tawny cast her gaze along the length of him, taking in his honed body clothed in a black T-shirt and jeans, instead of some seventies geek getup. She leaned back and whistled at the way the jeans hugged his taut ass. Her fingers tingled to touch. She gave into that urge with an impish smile, first swatting his backside and then cupping it. “I’ll work at it, but I can already tell you there’s going to be some serious punishment involved. You can consider it your last lesson: Love hurts.”

  He raised a dark eyebrow. “Is that your way of saying you love me?”

  “I probably shouldn’t, considering what a bad boy you are, but, yeah, I love you.”

  She squealed as he lifted her into his arms, carried her through the front door of her house and kicked the door shut. His mouth came down hard on hers, demanding, possessive. She’d felt removed from herself in the week since Rick invaded her home, numb. With each brush of Andy’s tongue against hers, the numbness left her body until she felt whole again, complete, like letting him carry her to bed where she could jump his bones.

  She remembered his injury then and swatted at his arm. His lips lifted from hers only to drop on her cheek and work their way downward in a hot, wet path. She wriggled against him, struggling to escape. One of them had to be logical here. He held firm, catching her ear between his teeth and nibbling as he moved through the living room en route to her bedroom.

  Tawny shivered as desire rocked her to the core. She fought to remember why she wanted out of his arms. Oh, yeah. His injury. “Put me down, you idiot! You’re hurt.”

  “I thought that was part of your lesson,” Andy said, sliding his tongue into her ear. He moved through the bedroom door. Laying her on the bed, he came down over top of her.

  Tawny reared back and pushed at his chest, fighting to get away before the ache in her core overpowered her common sense. “The lesson can wait until you’re healed. You might deserve it, but I still won’t have you hurting over me, not really.”

  Andy’s mouth lifted from her ear and he sent her a pained look. “Then stop your wriggling, babe. You have me hurting something fierce and it isn’t from my injury. My cock’s been aching to feel your sweet pussy around it for days. My lips to run over your body, brush against yours. My tongue’s not going to be happy until it’s inside you, loving you, making you come undone.”

  He moved to the end of the bed, between her legs. She hadn’t changed since meeting Jilly for lunch. He took advantage of her short skirt, pushing it up and out of his way. Sliding her legs up so that her knees pointed at the ceiling, he blew on her damp panties.

  Her sex shuddered, famished for the swipe of his tongue. “I guess a little oral lesson couldn’t hurt much.”

  A wicked laugh drifted from his lips. He bent his head and nipped at her pussy through her panties. She pushed her fingers into his hair and urged his mouth to press harder, to go beneath the thin layer of cotton. As if he could read her thoughts, he pulled the panties aside and plunged his tongue deep into her sheath.

  Tawny released his hair and dug her fingers into the comforter as orgasm built fast and furious, flaming her need to fever pitch. Yeah, oral sex definitely couldn’t hurt his injury. In fact, it felt like just what the doctor ordered.

  Night Illusions

  1

  S he’d never been witness to such a massive orgasm in her life.

  Just looking at the word, decked out in bold red and standing two inches tall, was enough to have Joyce Donovan’s hands shaking and the urge to crawl under her desk almost too great to bear. Her cheeks stung as she read the book’s full title aloud, “Indulge Yourself: Achieving the Ultimate Orgasm.”

  “Can you
believe someone actually has the balls to buy that?”

  Joyce slammed the book back on her desk as Tiffany, the blue-haired college student who worked part-time at The Book Shed, came into her office at the back of the store. Tiffany propped a generous, leather-clad hip on the edge of Joyce’s desk and ran a black fingernail the length of the ten-inch penis that decorated the book’s spine.

  Her face ablaze and her inner thighs tingling, Joyce covered her discomfort by pushing her glasses up her nose. Gracious—she felt like a voyeur, watching the young woman stroke that huge thing. Did penises even get that large? If so, she hoped she never had the misfortune to experience it firsthand.

  “I mean, yeah,” Tiffany continued, “I can see getting it mail-order, but to walk into a store and pay for it where everyone can see you—like, wow, that takes some big cojones.” She ceased her stroking to eye Joyce curiously. “So, who’s it for?”

  Me.

  At least it had been for her, before the book arrived and she realized exactly what she was getting herself into.

  Two weeks ago, when she’d overheard a couple of the Wednesday night book club participants discussing the sex manual after the conversation on a far tamer book had ended, it had struck a chord. What better way to attain freedom from her naive ways than by making herself a self-indulging sex goddess? According to the women, the book accomplished that and more.

  Her chord must have been playing off-key that night. Now that the book was here, in all its explicit color and details, it couldn’t possibly be the best route to conquering her naïveté. But if not through this book, then how?

  At twenty-seven, she was too darned old to be afraid to share her opinion on general topics, much less touch herself in the name of pleasure. It wasn’t just age prompting her to change her timid ways—her gullibility was dangerous. She could blame her gullibility for falling in love with the first man to look her way with seduction in his eyes. The very same man who’d become verbally abusive days after they’d said “I do.” Eight months ago Rick had taken that abuse to the next level, hitting her and then going after her brother Andy and his girlfriend, Tawny, with murder on his mind.

  That horrible night had ended the best way possible, with her brother and his girlfriend alive, and Rick in a jail cell. Though it had turned her emotions upside down, Joyce had filed for divorce three weeks later. It had been the first step toward her new life. A life that was lonely at times, but never ruled by the desires of another. A life where she was a strong, outgoing woman who saw what she wanted and went after it. A life she’d shape to perfection via Achieving the Ultimate Orgasm.

  Reading the book and admitting she was the so-called ballsy owner were two different things. She never lied, but now it seemed the only answer. “Gosh, I’m not sure who ordered it.”

  She opened the book and turned to where she’d randomly tucked the customer invoice. Ménage was spelled out in bold, black capital letters on the left page. Beneath the word, a two male/one female trio illustrated the technique. A large nude black man pushed his penis into a kneeling woman’s bottom, while a second, equally large, nude white man sucked at a hard-tipped nipple and filled her from the front. Ecstasy drew the curvaceous brunette’s mouth into an O, her eyes to half moons, and telltale wetness glimmering on her inner thighs.

  Joyce shifted in her seat as moisture dampened her panties. Good gracious, the book had to be good if just looking at a picture heated her up more than her ex had been able to accomplish from start to finish of their lovemaking.

  Remembering she wasn’t alone, embarrassment flooded her. She had to get past this mortification over talking and thinking about sex around others. She was an adult on the verge of breaking out of her repressed shell. She had to think confidence. To live it. She ought to start today by owning up to her purchase.

  Only, tomorrow sounded like a much better day to begin.

  Joyce lifted the invoice and scanned it. “Here it is.” She held her breath as she read the buyer’s name, one that was a combination of her middle and maiden names. “Caitlyn Korben.”

  Tiffany tipped her head to the side and pursed lips rimmed with black lipstick. “Sounds familiar. She a regular?”

  In the beginning, the young woman’s appearance had been a bit frightening. Joyce’s belief that there was good in everyone prompted her to give Tiffany a try, and she’d turned out to be sweet, if not overly bold at times. Then again, compared to Joyce a turtle was assertive.

  No, compared to the old Joyce. The new Joyce was as assertive as one could be, or at least she would be once she had a chance to read and reap the benefits of her new book. Maybe beginning her transformation process today was a good idea after all.

  She glanced down at the book to find her fingers running the interior length of the spine. The same penis that covered the outer spine skimmed beneath her fingertips, growing harder, thicker, longer. She gulped and slammed the book closed.

  “I don’t think she’s ever been in the store.” The words rushed out as Joyce pushed the book to the side of her desk. She needed help beyond that attainable through a how-to manual if she believed a painted phallus was turned on by her touch. “As I recall, she called in the order and asked me to hold it for her until she could get to this part of town.”

  “I bet she’s working up the nerve to come in.”

  “Maybe.” Or maybe she should rethink the whole “in over her head” thing.

  Joyce looked down at her prim white, sleeveless blouse and navy pencil skirt. Was it even feasible that she could convert from reserved bookstore manager to self-assured sex siren by way of an orgasm manual? “It has a two-week, satisfaction-guaranteed return policy, so I’d, uh—she’d better not wait too long…to pick the book up, that is.”

  Tiffany laughed. “What a guarantee. If she doesn’t ‘come,’ the book goes. So is it okay if I take my lunch break? The place is, like, dead.”

  “Yeah. Go ahead.” Before she caught on to Joyce’s blunder. Better yet…“Take the rest of the day off. The jazz street festival has most of the downtown blocked off. I was hoping it would bring in some foot traffic, but apparently listening to music and reading don’t go together.”

  “In that case, I’ll see you tomorrow. Ciao.”

  “Have a wonderful night.”

  Joyce stuck out her tongue at the singsongy quality of her own voice. Along with conquering her repressed ways, she had to get past being so terminally nice. Andy often said it was a great quality, but one that made people take advantage of her. The way Rick had sweet-talked her with kindness and generosity, only to show his true selfish colors months later, proved her brother accurate.

  The tinkling of the bells that hung over the store’s front door announced Tiffany’s departure. Joyce pulled the book back in front of her. Rick was no longer the man in her life. Some other man was out there waiting, some temporary lover who would lavish her with orgasm-inducing attention without quashing her heart and spirit. With the aid of this book, she’d hunt him down and rope him in. Either that, or she’d discover just how far beyond help she was.

  “Confidence,” she scolded herself. “Think confidence.”

  Joyce stared at the thick, lengthy penis on the spine, urging her cheeks not to warm. Becoming a sex goddess meant being able to look at the male anatomy without risking a hot flash. She counted to thirty, chalked nonflushed penis-ogling up to one challenge met and turned to the table of contents.

  The chapters weren’t laid out by number, but by letter, from O to M, or, rather, Outliving Your Expectations to Masturbation. She’d already outlived her expectations by ordering the book, but she turned to Chapter O all the same.

  Outliving Your Expectations.

  Whether you want to bring new life to an old relationship, start a new one, or just find the confident sex goddess in you, the first step to achieving your goal is to surprise yourself. Take that one thing you’ve always wanted to do, but were too afraid, and put it into action, girlfriend. And don’t tel
l me you don’t have a secret desire hidden away in that heart of yours.

  Did she have a secret desire? She’d always sort of wanted a tattoo, one that was small and practical. The few times she’d mentioned the idea to Rick, he’d told her she was crazy and that if she got one, she’d end up dying of ink poisoning.

  “Pooh on Rick.” She was an assertive woman now, one willing to chance death by needle.

  The visual of a foot-long needle digging into her skin and spurting forth blood filled her mind and tightened her belly. Focusing on the needle was a bad idea. She’d think about the tattoo itself. A nice butterfly or kitten. Something to show her independence, yet not make her look like a biker chick with a needle fetish. Perfect.

  “You sure you want that tat, lady? You seem like more of a page–twenty-four gal to me.”

  Joyce focused on the good-looking guy who’d introduced himself as Ernie. After picking out her tattoo from a thick portfolio full of what he’d referred to as “flash designs” in the front of the store, he’d led her to a curtained-off, bathroom-sized room in the back. He stood next to her chair, pointing at a transfer of the tattoo she’d chosen.

  She squinted, trying to decide if he was really good-looking and potential new short-term-lover material. It was hard to be certain without her glasses on if his long black hair was thick and shiny or thin and greasy. She’d come to the tattoo parlor directly from work, before her courage could falter. Dressed as conservatively as she was, wearing her glasses into the place seemed a definite no-no. She’d left them on the dashboard of her car and shaken her hair out of its typical twist in the hopes she’d look like she wore the prudish clothes for the sake of the job and not by choice.

  If Ernie’s tone was to be believed, losing the glasses and letting her hair down hadn’t been enough of a change. Or maybe it had. Maybe page twenty-four was where all the wild women chose their design from.