Going Under Read online

  “This isn’t Mother May I.”

  “Do you want to play that next? An erotic version of that game might prove very interesting.”

  May I suck your cock? The thought flashed into her head and she had to banish it immediately. As if she’d ever say such a thing. She was having fun, to her surprise. Too much fun, because she found herself wanting to tell him true things. Some of these arenas—her virginity, for God’s sake—she did not have pre-made details for. She could make up the stories as she went, but that got tangled fast. Fox, she felt pretty sure, would remember a misstep.

  “Do you have any nines, Mr. Mullins?” she asked in an arch, formal tone.

  With a disgruntled frown, he handed her three and she wiggled in delight. His gaze went straight to her cleavage. Most gratifying. He had enough class to have been taking only surreptitious glances so far. Enjoying the moment, she put her elbow on her knee, pretending to study the cards while she gave him a good view. “Do you have any threes?”

  “Go fish.” His voice growled the words, making her wonder if he’d wanted to tell her to do something else. The idea excited her. From other hints he’d dropped, she’d thought he’d say something BDSM for the kinkiest stuff. Of course, he thought she’d been a twenty-one-year-old virgin who’d had lousy sex in the back seat of a car as her greatest excursion from vanilla. She’d bet that the “extra” aspect of that ménage had involved far more.

  She drew a king, to match one other in her hand and, sitting up and preparing herself, picked another note. How many vibrators do you own? The prim persona would say none, but she was an adult woman, living alone, who’d already admitted to a long, dry spell. Who would believe that? She glanced at Fox through her eyelashes. As he had through the whole game, he was studying her intently, paying attention to every reaction. He noticed far too much. A dangerous guy for her to be around. But also like a plate of fresh cookies. She couldn’t stop now that she’d tasted him. She’d eat the whole thing, tonight and tomorrow, and then be done.

  “Two,” she said and handed him the note.

  He glanced at it, gave her a sly look. “Seven.”

  “What?” What guy owned seven vibrators?

  He raised his eyebrows, daring her to open the door to more questions. When she didn’t, he smiled. “Do you have any fives?”

  She didn’t and he ended up drawing another non-sticky note. He shook his head at it. “This one is going to kill me.” He handed it to her.

  Seven minutes in heaven.

  She laughed, unable to help herself. “Why did you put it in there then?”

  He scowled. “I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. We can ditch it and draw another.”

  “No, no, no. For the full thirteen-year-old experience, I want my seven minutes in heaven. I never did that.” Which was true. Her mother would never have let her attend a party with boys present. By the time she got old enough, they were all formal dates and society parties. No closets in sight. “So, the front hall closet?”

  His brown eyes glittered. “Well, the walk-in closet in the bedroom is bigger.”

  She shook her head. “No, for verisimilitude it should be something small, cramped and full of someone else’s junk.”

  “I thought you never played before.”

  “I did have friends. Girls talk.” She stood up and held out a hand. “Come on. I have a condom in my pocket. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

  He took her hand, stood and kissed her, harder this time, with more urgency. Very promising. Then he smiled. “We won’t need it because I’m not having sex with you yet.”

  “We’ll see.” She might not be the player he was, but she knew turned on when she saw it. He had no real reason to hold back. Past a certain point, he wouldn’t want to anymore.

  The hall closet wasn’t tiny, but it felt smaller when they both crowded in, pushing the jackets—and Joe Kapsuck’s fishing gear—to the side. Fox pulled the door shut, plunging them in darkness and the smell of damp leather. He bumped into her and she giggled. An actual, girly giggle. His hands found her hips, sliding under her sweater and electrifying her skin. The giggly feeling evaporated instantly, a drop of water hissing on a hot stove, turning to steam. She gripped his forearms, suddenly unsure.

  “Now what?” She whispered, as if there were a roomful of their friends outside the closet doors, listening. His fingers flexed on her waist, digging into her flesh and pulling her against his hips. His upthrust cock pressed into her belly through their jeans and she gasped. In the dark, he seemed different, both less familiar and more so. She smelled mostly him, his spicy aftershave, soap and his own scent.

  He didn’t answer her—dumb question, after all—but his lips brushed her cheek. Turning her head, she found his mouth with hers, twining her hands up and around his neck. He started with softer nibbles, gentle pulls on her lips that grew hungrier, until he was kissing her harder, their tongues tangling together while his hands slid up her back.

  Her focus narrowed to the connection between their mouths, learning his taste and feel, losing herself in the moment. She could be anyone. Maybe that thirteen-year-old girl, going in the closet with that cute boy she saw in the elevator sometimes. She abandoned herself to the kiss, to being kissed. To his hands running over her skin, a profound human contact she realized she’d missed. Her thirst, drinking in the touch like a dried-up sponge, proved it.

  Her bra gave way, a loosening of tension, and then his hands were on her breasts. She cried out against his mouth at the intensity of it, rubbing her pelvis against his, her pussy wet and aching. He squeezed her breasts, tweaking her nipples and then massaging them. Shifting his hips, he moved so his thigh pressed between hers, so she opened her legs, straddling it, nearly exploding as the pressure pushed the seam of her jeans against her clit.

  Mewling incoherently, she rocked herself on his hard thigh, nearly mindless with need. He turned her, pressing her against the closet wall, working his thigh between hers and rolling her nipples in a matching rhythm. Releasing her mouth, he fastened on her neck, sucking the tender skin so it became one more blazing point of driving arousal.

  It hit her that she would come this way, in the dark with this man she barely knew. The thought both excited her and knocked her off balance. This wasn’t how it should be. She’d never orgasmed without the guy getting off at the same time—or before. Determined not to be alone in her extremity and maybe seeking a bit of payback, she dropped her hands down his impressively cut chest, the ridges palpable through his dress shirt, and grasped his erection through his jeans.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” he muttered and abandoned her breasts to grab her wrists in a firm grip, moving them apart and then over her head, pinning them to the wall. She resisted, reflexively, confused and aroused by the move. He kissed her, slowing his movements and rubbing sinuously against her. Her bra had ridden up and the sweater, so soft and cuddly before, chafed her taut nipples. He seemed to know it, too, deliberately pressing his chest against her, moving up his muscled thigh so she nearly rode it, the orgasm building beyond control.

  She struggled a little against his grip. Impossibly, it excited her more and she whimpered.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered in her ear, voice thick with desire. For some unknown reason, it catapulted her over the edge.

  “Oh God!” she cried out, peripherally aware of his satisfied chuckle, while her body convulsed with the climax, the power of it wrenching through her, as if she hadn’t orgasmed at all in years, instead of just with another person.

  She gripped his thigh between hers, rolling with the climax, her nipples burning, her mouth seeking and finding his, anchoring herself to his body as she rode it out, helpless to do more than that.

  At last the grip of it faded, though she still felt impossibly aroused. She wanted—no, absolutely needed—to have him inside her. Breaking the kiss, she
turned her head, gasping, the movement driving her stimulated nipples against her sweater and his body. She twisted at her wrists, but he didn’t soften his grip, so she arched her spine, pressing her pelvis against his as close as she could manage.

  “Come on, Fox,” she urged to the man in the dark. “Fuck me. You can’t say you don’t want to.”

  He laughed, more of a hoarse breath, as if the sound had trouble escaping him. Nibbling at her neck, he moved his thigh, making an appreciative sound when she squirmed against him. “I want nothing more at this moment. I want to strip you out of those tight jeans and feel how hot and wet you are. Then I’d bite your nipples and listen to you make those delightful sounds of pleasure. Once you were naked except for those gorgeous boots, I’d bend you over the back of the Kapsucks’ couch and pound your sweet pussy until you scream.”

  “Oh yes.” She wriggled, fought to free herself. “Please. Now.”

  “No.” He bit her neck, the penetrating sensation on top of the rest making her sob out a sound of pure need. “Not until tomorrow night.”

  “You are unbelievable.” She nearly screeched it, in her frustration.

  “Told you.” He sounded smug.

  “We’re not leaving this closet then.”

  “What an enticing thought.” He shifted his grip so he held both her wrists in one hand, reaching under her sweater to cup her breast and run his thumb over her sensitized nipple. It burned like fire. He drove her crazy as nothing else. “Shall I strip you and keep you in here? I’d tie your wrists to the coat rack and let you simmer, waiting for me. Every once in a while—maybe when I needed my jacket—I’d stop by and play with you for a while.”

  She knocked her head against the wall, trying to snap herself out of this erotic spell he dragged over her mind. “Oh my God,” she breathed, wriggling helplessly against him, “you’re driving me crazy.”

  “Good,” he purred. “Exactly where I want you. Me too. And, on that note—” His hand left her breast and the closet door opened, bathing them in startlingly bright light after the cozy darkness. She squinched up her eyes, blinking them, aware that he’d released her wrists and let her slide down his thigh so she stood on her own feet again. She swayed a little, dizzy, and he cupped the back of her neck with a warm hand, kissing her softly and drawing her into the foyer. “Sorry,” he added, “a bit of an abrupt landing there. Are you okay?”

  The question, the same one he’d asked that shot her straight into orgasm, went right through her. She blushed fast and furiously, her face blazing. Pressing her hands to her cheeks, she looked away from him, then at her leather jacket hanging there. Reaching behind her, she scrambled for her bra straps, tugging them down from where they’d ridden up nearly to her neck.

  “Let me help you.” Fox reached for her, but dropped his hands when she shook her head furiously. Strands of hair whipped her cheek—her ponytail had to be in total disarray. She tried to neaten it and gave up immediately, grabbing her jacket instead and shrugging it on.

  “I should go,” she said, unnecessarily, but feeling his wary silence.

  “What went wrong?” he asked in a quiet tone. “Don’t run, Emily. Talk to me.”

  “I’m just—” She risked a glance at him, full of a fury that seemed to have come from nowhere. “I can’t right now. I need to go, okay?”

  He held up his palms, demonstrating that he wouldn’t stop her, looking a bit like a man stepping back from a bomb he’d thought was a briefcase. “But I’ll see you tomorrow night still.” He didn’t pose it as a question, but as a certainty.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not.”

  “Emily—”

  “No. We’re not discussing this. I told you that from the start. If I come over tomorrow night—” she held up a hand when he opened his mouth, “—if I do, then it will be for sex. Just fucking, as you promised but have not delivered. No more games, understand?”

  Pressing his lips together, his eyes full of unsaid words, he nodded. She turned her back on him and escaped out the door.

  Chapter Ten

  The door shut behind her with a gunshot click to his heart. He stared at its blank, uninteresting surface for a moment, giving the sexual haze a chance to clear so he could think again.

  “Fuck me!” he shouted at it, beyond pissed, at himself, at her. Whatever. What the hell had gone wrong? For that matter, what the hell had possessed him to say all that stuff to her? She’d loved him restraining her and the way she’d struggled in his grip so sweetly, so obviously turned on by it, had made him lose his head. He’d lost himself in his own fantasy and possibly scared her off permanently. If that was what had happened. She’d been fine until he opened the closet door.

  “Way to go, Sparky,” he growled at himself. Not so full of sparkle tonight. He stalked into the living room to glare at the detritus of their game. Seizing her half-empty glass, he downed the rest of it, his cock so hard it hurt. He’d nearly blown right then when she’d wrapped those delicate but fiercely strong fingers around it.

  He wanted her insanely. No doubt because of the chase. He knew himself at least that well. It had taken massive restraint not to have her right there in the closet. But no—heady with power, bowled over by the way she’d come under his hands, so completely without reserve and with an almost naïve intensity—he’d had to have more. No, it wasn’t enough for him just to have sex with her, as she’d repeatedly said she wanted. As always, he had to hold out for the brass ring, the grand fucking prize. The Powerball Lottery he never let himself play in real life.

  And now maybe he’d blown it with her completely.

  One thing was certain, he wouldn’t have another clear thought until he rid himself of the painful hard-on, and this one would definitely not subside on its own. Unbuttoning his jeans to give himself some fucking room already, he headed for the bedroom and grabbed some lube and a washcloth from the nightstand.

  “Yeah, you dipshit. Look what you brought on yourself.” Too pumped to sit, he went to the sliding glass doors that led to the room’s balcony. Its low wall would screen him from anyone on the beach, if anyone was out there. He entertained the fantasy that Emily was lurking out there, watching the house, looking for him. Maybe she hadn’t gone home, but waited out there for him. Would she see him in the window?

  He pushed his jeans midway down his thighs, blowing out an explosive breath as blood flow resumed to the compressed tissues. Greasing up his hand, he propped his forearm on the cool glass, leaning his head against it and staring out into the night, imagining Emily observing as he worked his cock with savage fury.

  Within moments, his balls clenched and he came, spurting onto the glass door before he had a chance to grab the washcloth, as if he had, in fact, regressed to his thirteen-year-old self, with all the lack of finesse and control, not to mention the bumbling stupidity, that had entailed.

  He leaned there a moment longer, stroking out the last of the after-climax, trying to relax and let go. The fact that his bracing arm ached with tension, his fist tightly clenched, indicated that wasn’t happening any time soon. Jerking off might have momentarily relieved his cock, but he still boiled with frustration. Enough that he considered going down to Emily’s house and making her talk to him. Or tearing her clothes off and burying himself in her long, lean body until neither of them could walk.

  Worst idea ever.

  In the morning, he’d reevaluate. Maybe things would make more sense then. Could be that Emily was one of those messed-up types who thought they wanted sex and then freaked about it. If so, he’d get over her. Lots of fish in the sea and he’d only known her for a couple of days, for chrissakes. If he never laid eyes or hands on her again, he’d live and go on to find lovers who weren’t neurotic.

  His breathing had leveled and he no longer felt like punching something, so he cleaned up his come from the glass and the
awful powder blue plush carpet. In the morning he’d have to revisit it with some soap and cold water, to make sure he didn’t leave a stain on his landlord’s ugly rug. As much as he was coming to despise the place, it wasn’t worth blowing the security deposit on it. Geek Crunch wouldn’t pay that bill. He could cover it if he had to, but one come-stain from a disastrous date would not be worth it.

  And he didn’t care what Emily said—it had been a fucking date.

  Just without the fucking.

  At least able to laugh at himself a little now, but knowing he wouldn’t sleep anytime soon, he headed into the spare bedroom office and booted up the computer. He’d burn some energy stalking Phoenix through the forums. If he was in luck—unlikely, given his record so far that night—the gamer might be online. He would not, absolutely not, give in to the urge to study Emily’s records any further. Whatever had spooked her so badly wouldn’t be in there anyway.

  No, she had that buried in the depth of her cagey brain. She was smart—a hell of a lot smarter than she liked to let on. Possibly a pathological liar? It would explain a great deal.

  While the laptop revved and the obscenely slow internet connection considered giving up the goods, Fox stalked into the living room and grabbed the wine bottle and his own drained glass. Fuck Emily and her skittish ways. If he couldn’t run her to ground, then he’d spend the energy on Phoenix, what he’d come here for, he reminded himself. Bag the great white whale of tech journalism and go on to fame, fortune and glory.

  At least a decent payoff, a lovely zing for the portfolio and maybe a gig investigating for CNN or something. And easier lays.

  Settling into his familiar routine, he began clicking through the forums, looking for traces that his quarry had passed through recently. As he did, he mused over Phoenix’s access. If the guy lived on Lyra or one of the nearby private islands—a distinct possibility—then he’d need a better internet connection than the Kapsucks had. Something much more robust. He made a note to chase down the available options, though Phoenix wouldn’t be using the standard residential package. His NSA buddy had clammed up on the particulars. No, Phoenix would have set up something in particular, which likely would have required someone to lay a cable or install the satellite dish or what have you.