Maisy

I lead Blaze over to my bed and let her lay down while I get out of the strap-on. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d give her fifteen minutes to recover. That should be good enough for a girl like her, and then we can make use of the other things I’d pulled out: gloves and lube? Hell yeah.

While I’m cleaning up and she’s lounging like a mermaid on a warm rock, her phone makes a sound from her bag, and unlike some of the other sounds she’s ignored, she gets up only long enough to retrieve it and then collapses back on the bed, actually checking her message. Must be something really good, and I try not to let thoughts of someone really good who might be texting her get to me. There’s no way in hell Blaze has the time to see anyone else. Unless she doesn’t sleep . . . does she sleep? Ugh, of course she sleeps, self, knock it off.

To shush my insecurities, I try to figure out something to say. She didn’t seem keen on talking about her races, but I want to make her feel better about it somehow. I’m guessing even if she’s not showing it, she’s gotta be kind of torn up.

Whatever else I know about Blaze, she definitely has a sense of humor about herself, so, giving my trusty purple dildo a good wipe down before I tuck it back in the drawer, I tell her, “I think I know what was holding you back in the thousand.”

That gets her attention, and she gives me the side-eye from where she’s reclining on the bed. “Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”

“Your hair.” Yep, I toss it out, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Lucky for me, it gets her to crack a smile.

“My hair?”

“Yeah. It’s longer than you usually keep it, and clearly those extra few inches really slowed you down.”

Blaze narrows her eyes, and it makes my heart thump to have her attention focused on me so intensely. “And what do you propose I do about that?”

I have an idea, and it’s a really good one, but I don’t know what she’s going to say. Worth a shot. Besides, she owes me. I’ll make her a deal. She doesn’t seem like the kind of girl to turn down a bargain. So I shrug. “I could do it.”

“You?”

“Yep. I’m not a butcher, I promise. And then you can make good use of those gloves and that lube. I want your whole hand, Bellamy.”

It’s then I realize I should’ve put the fisting on the table first because there’s no way she’d say no by the way she’s looking at me now.

“Deal.”

Blaze is still in repose while I wipe off the edge of the desk. Don’t need poor Kristie finding some sort of mystery fluid on any of the surfaces of our suite.

“So . . .” I would have been perfectly content to let Blaze relax for the next ten minutes until she needs to get to work, but probably not talking is more work for her than it is to talk. “How did you know how long I’ve been keeping my hair, anyhow?”

Fuck. Definitely not because I follow her in the press, have a Google alert set up, buy any magazine that has an article about her. Nope. But it wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable for me to have picked up one of the latest mags about the SIGs in general. Which would be—shit, which was it? I fumble in my brain while blinking blankly, and I’d best come up with something before she realizes the embarrassing truth.

“I saw you in MaxOut.”

“Oh yeah?” Blaze gets that look on her face, the cocky, shit-eating grin. How is the woman so very infuriating? Is she like this with everyone or is this a special treat for me? “You like the titty mags?”

“MaxOut is not a—” Argh. I will not say titty, because that’s precisely what she wants, and I can feel my cheeks get warm even thinking about it. “That is not the point. The point is that you were practically naked! Why would you do that? No one reading that magazine respects your athleticism, none of them give a shit about how hard you work. All they care about is—”

“My tits?” Blaze has tipped her head at this angle that is maddening. Who knew such a small thing could dig so deep inside and drive me so absolutely crazy at the same time it makes me blush so hard I can feel the red heat of embarrassment creeping all the way to the tips of my ears.

I cross my arms and have to restrain myself from tapping my foot because I’m that twitchy. “Yes. And your ass, and your abs, and your legs.”

Blaze’s smile seems to curl around her face, making her look smug as anything. Forget tapping my foot, I want to stomp it. With my skates on. On her foot. That’s even before her eyebrow quirks up, and that thin strip of hair mocks me. “So you didn’t see the one dirty picture and slam the magazine shut? Sounds like you looked at those pages for a long time.”

She bats her eyelashes at me in faux wide-eyed innocence. Patently ridiculous is what that is. Even though I know she’s fucking with me, I can’t help my physical reaction. If I thought my flush had been bad before, it’s nothing compared to the wildfire humiliation of being caught that’s spreading up the back of my neck. Dammit. “I—”

But I’ve got nothing. Fuck yeah, I’d looked at that magazine. A hundred times at least. It’s possible there’s a significantly worn copy under my bed back at home, one that I’ve fingered with one hand so many times I’ve been tempted to get the pages laminated so they don’t disintegrate, but who the hell laminates the porn in their spank bank? Not as though that would be out of character. I may be a degenerate, but I happen to be a tidy one.

I splutter a few more starts to sentences I have no intention or ability to finish, and all the while, she’s standing there grinning. I hate her. A lot. But I also want to get in her pants. A lot more.

“Look. I am a hot piece of ass.” Don’t I know it. “I work hard for this body and I’m not afraid or ashamed to show it off. Any publicity is good publicity, and if that spread got even one more person to tune into the event, then I did my job. Also, I decided a long time I ago I was going to do whatever the hell I wanted and fuck the people who made me feel shitty for it. If that also means I’ve got a bunch of people beating off to my pictures, what the fuck do I care? Masturbating is awesome. More people should do it more often.”

She gives me a meaningful look, one of those purse-lipped, wide-eyed, tilted-head things that insinuates I might be less uptight if I got myself off more often. Newsflash: I rub one out quite frequently, thank you very much, and I’m still so uptight I may as well be laced into a corset otherwise.

Glaring at her from under my brows, I put my hands on my hips and cock my own head. I do not have to tolerate this mockery. “Do you want a haircut or not? Because I have things to do.”

“Like do a one-handed read of my spread in MaxOut? You can totes google it if you left your copy at home.”

God fucking dammit.

“No.” I turn up my nose and pitch my voice to prissy. “I believe I was promised a fisting and I intend to collect. If you don’t want me half falling asleep with scissors in my hand while I chop your hair—and hopefully not your ears—you probably want to do that after I’ve finished styling your hair. I know you like media attention, but landing on Celebrinews because I’ve done a hack job on your famous hair probably isn’t what you’re in the market for.”

Blaze perks up at that, the offending bangs bouncing low over her forehead. “You think my hair is famous?”

“Blaze. You have hair that is so vibrantly red, that shade is unknown to nature. I’m surprised people haven’t been blinded by it. Even if people can’t remember your name—which is unlikely—if someone says ‘You know, the skater with the hair,’ everyone knows who they’re talking about. Yes, your hair is famous.”

She looks pleased as punch. “Excellent. Then you better make it look good. Hair-cutting first, fingerbanging second.”

“Whoa, whoa. Fingerbanging? That’s not what I agreed to. Fingers are not going to cut it.”

“And you call me greedy? Fine, whatever, you can have my whole hand if you want.”

I do. Want her attention for as long as it’s going to take her to work inside me, want the pressure and the stretching and the fullness of that invasive and filled-to-bursting sensation. There’s nothing like it.

“Get in the bathroom, bring a chair.”

Blaze

A few minutes later, I’m leaning back in the chair I dragged in here, my head resting on the edge of the sink. I’d been ready to lean against the cool porcelain, but Maisy had tutted at me, insisted I sit up so she could put a folded towel between my skull and the hard surface. Of course it feels better this way. She’s good at that stuff.

Maisy must’ve put the stopper in the drain because the hot water creeps up to the level of my scalp, and she uses a cup to douse my head with scooped-up water. It feels really good, and the view’s not bad. She has to lean over me, which means I get an eyeful down her shirt. A blousy thing that hides her shape except for the low neckline that’s now giving me a view of her chest which is covered again by one of those lacey things. Nice.

She hums as she works, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before. She’s got a pretty voice, I can tell from the few bars. I’d like to hear her sing, but if I ask, she’ll refuse and then I’ll probably lose the humming, too—I don’t know if she realizes she’s doing it.

After she’s got my head good and soaked, she flips open the cap of a bottle, squirts what I’m guessing is shampoo into her hand, and starts working her fingers over my scalp, bringing up a luxurious lather and using the pads of her fingers to massage my scalp. It’s heavenly, and I say that as an expert on hedonism. I know about things feeling good, and I’d trade a lot of things for this simple pleasure.

I groan to let her know precisely what kind of effect she’s having on me and then have to locate something more articulate. “How’d you learn how to do this?”

There’s the slightest pause of the circular kneading motion. If I weren’t paying attention, I wouldn’t have noticed it. She continues as she answers. “My mom owns a salon. I’ve been shampooing since I could reach the sinks. I had to work a certain number of hours per week as part of my chores, but anything above that, and she’d pay me. That’s the money I used to use to buy my skates.”

“You must have washed a lot of hair.” Figure skates don’t come cheap, especially as you get more serious. At some point, you even have to buy the boots and the blades separately and have someone attach them for you.

She laughs. “I sure did.”

“It shows. You’re really good at this.”

With that, Maisy digs into my scalp with the pads of her fingers, and I moan again, letting my eyes close because I want to focus everything I have on the way she’s touching me. Yes, I have a lot of sex, and yes, I flirt a lot, and basically touch other people as much as I can because I enjoy physical contact, to feel wanted and liked. But no matter how much I touch, fool around, and fuck, this is something else. It’s simmering instead of boiling, and a really . . . pervasive feeling instead of something that flashes hot on the surface of my skin. I don’t know what to do with that. So for once, I shut my face and stay quiet while Maisy works.

It must be almost ten minutes before she’s using the cup to rinse the lather out of my hair, and I’m basically a puddle. I have freaking awesome reflexes, but I think if someone kicked the chair out from under me, I wouldn’t spring to my feet but rather fall on the floor and lie there, dazed. And then fall asleep. I don’t get this relaxed—there’s always a film of mania over everything I do. But I think Maisy’s sultry brand of calm has managed to work its way under that layer.

She lets the water out of the sink, rinses my hair again and then cracks open another bottle I’m guessing is conditioner. Pouring it into her palm, she circles the cream between her palms and then delves into my hair, her fingers working in, and repeats the same motions, though focusing on my neck, cradling it with both of her hands and easing the tight muscles there with the pads of her thumbs.

I don’t feel uncomfortable with Maisy seeing me like this, either, which is strange. I’m not . . . quiet, easy. With anyone. And I’m so rarely alone that I’m not like this by myself, either. It’s a secret layer that seems to belong only to her, and I’m okay with that. For all that I tease her about being a stick-in-the-mud, I like that about her. For lots of reasons, one being that I feel as though she can be trusted. She’s not going to forget about me or about us in a frenzied quest for pleasure, she’s not going to run roughshod over my feelings, because she believes I have them and she’ll be respectful of them. She’s not going to overreach in a frantic grab for my soul. Nope, Maisy lets me know she’s coming. Like now.

“One last rinse and then we’ll sit you up.”

I hum contentedly as she works the conditioner out of my hair, and then let her help me up, keeping the rolled towel at my neck so my soaking hair doesn’t drip down my back. She leaves it there, grabs another towel that she uses to cover my head, and uses that to sop up some of the water before scrubbing it over my head as though I’m a dog.

It makes me laugh, and if I were in fact a dog, this is the part when I’d shake off from my nose to the tip of my tail and leave her shrieking and crossing her arms in front of her face so she wouldn’t get too wet. As it is, I let myself enjoy the chafing until it’s over.

Maisy uncovers my head and takes a comb to me, running the teeth through the strands with ease. When she’s satisfied, she takes up her scissors and starts to separate my hair into sections, keeping the damp strands between her fingers and drawing them away from my scalp, using the scissors to cut the bits that stick out between her fingers.

She’s efficient but not hurried, and I let her work without saying anything. It’s companionable, this silence, and I appreciate her giving me the space to be quiet for once. That’s not what anyone else wants from me. Or expects from me. Which is fine for the most part, because I’m brash and brassy and that’s not an act. It’s how I am. But it’s nice not to have to be that way and still have a person who wants to spend time with me.

The message I got earlier was from one of the people who really is only interested in me because of my antics. I can’t blame him; I cultivated our friendship because of what he could do for me, too. Yancey started out as a flat-out paparazzi which is when I first met him, but now he works for Celebrinews, writing his own features with pics he’s snapped himself, usually.

He’d asked why I hadn’t been calling him with tips on where to get racy pics of me with whomever I was taking home that night. I’ll answer him at some point because I don’t want to blow a connection that could prove useful sometime, but also because I’ve come to genuinely like the guy. Not now, though. Now, I’ll bask in what Maisy is doing to my head.

It takes her a while until she’s satisfied, and then she uses her hand to shake out my hair. It’s almost dry after her handling, and she bends down close in front of me to make sure parts are even, and though I could—I totally could—I don’t grab her face and kiss her. I let her demonstrate her skill and get the job done. It’s possible I shouldn’t be such a shit to Maisy about her being a workhorse. I swear to god, though, it would do something for her skating to put on more of a show. To look like she’s having fun. But I’ll let her be for now. Which is a good call, because she’s breaking out a hair dryer and a round brush that looks so substantial she could probably club baby seals with it. Or maybe a mouthy speedskater.

She pulls and tugs and dries, and by the time she’s done, I feel downright glamorous. It’s usually a quick smear of mousse straight out of the shower, and letting it dry on the way to the rink because my hair’s going under a helmet anyhow. This treatment makes me feel as though I’m a princess, and I kinda like it.

Maisy’s gaze rakes over me as she inspects her handiwork, her mouth tight.

“Can I see it?”

“Yes.” Though she doesn’t seem particularly excited for me to. Did she fuck this up? I won’t give her a hard time if she did, and honestly, it’s not as if anyone would notice unless I shaved my head. Which A, wouldn’t be so bad, anyhow; and B, I know she wouldn’t do that. Probably even if I asked her to.

So I stand and turn to the mirror, not knowing exactly what to expect. When I see my face, I squeal. I look fucking amazing. She’s done this asymmetrical pixie cut kinda thing but left my bangs longish, sweeping them over to the side. Damn. I mean, damn. I would totally fuck that girl in the mirror—if she weren’t me. Because I obviously get myself off by any means necessary pretty often.

“Maisy, I look awesome. You’re really fucking good at this. Why didn’t you tell me you’re like Vidalia Sassoon?”

“Well, that makes me sound like an onion instead of a hairdresser, but also, why would you care?”

I can’t help it anymore. I turn to her, grab her around the waist, and pull her into my side, planting a big, wet, smacking kiss on her cheek. “I care, ridiculous girl. You aren’t just a pair of skates and a really good fuck, you know.”

She blinks, and I swear to god color rises in her cheeks. Before she can mutter something else about it really not being that big of a deal, I kiss her again, and then shake her by the shoulders. “I flove it, Mais. Do you hear me? I fucking love it. So thanks. And uh, aren’t we at the point in the program where I’m supposed to be wrist-deep in your pussy?”

Maisy makes the cutest squeaking noise, and her face turns red as a rose before she gets ahold of herself.

“Yes. Yes, I believe we are. So let me clean up in here and then you can get to work.”