18

Michael held his breath as Stella walked into his one-bedroom apartment. It wasn’t dirty—he was actually a super neat person—but it wasn’t very nice, either.

He tried looking at the space through her eyes. A small brown Ikea sofa sat against one wall of the living room across from a modest-sized flat-screen TV. At the back of the room were his workout bench and an arrangement of organized free weights. His punching bag hung near the corner in flagrant violation of his rental agreement.

The kitchen was a cramped area with laminate countertops, an electric range, and a small wooden table with four matching chairs. He kept a plant in the center of the table for color because, yeah, he liked that sort of thing. A metal filing cabinet was pushed against the back wall with bills and things on top he hadn’t gotten around to yet.

Stella removed her high heels and set them next to his other shoes. Her purse she placed absently on his couch as she inspected the DVDs lined up inside the TV console.

Leaning over for a closer look, she gave him a gratuitous view of her luscious ass. “You alphabetize them.”

He couldn’t help laughing. She never acted the way he expected. “Am I rocking your world, Stella?”

“What is this? Laughing in the Wind?” She opened the glass door and pulled out the one-inch-thick DVD case.

“Only the best wuxia television series ever.”

She glanced up from the box with her lips parted, looking like she’d found the Holy Grail, and it took effort not to grin like hell. None of his previous girlfriends had known what wuxia was, let alone shared his secret dorky obsession.

Trying to stay cool, he kicked his shoes off and placed them next to hers. “You can borrow it if you want.”

She hugged her treasure to her chest. “Okay, thanks.”

“Be careful, though. It’s really addicting, and there are eighty episodes or something.” He rubbed the smile off his mouth and ran his fingers through his hair. “Feel free to look around while I pack my stuff.”

But instead of staying behind when he went to his bedroom, she followed him and perched on the edge of the bed, smiling at him before checking out the plain space with curious sweeps of her eyes. Dressed in her expensive business clothes, she looked so out of place inside his cheap apartment that he wondered why the fuck he’d brought her here.

To torment himself, probably.

This was a no-client, no-woman zone, a place where he went to get normal in his head. How was he going to set his mind straight when things ended if he had memories of her sitting on his bed, waiting for him, smiling in the way that was just for him?

He escaped to his walk-in closet and stared at his suits and shirts, letting the sight remind him of a time when he hadn’t lived with a noose around his neck. He mentally picked out which garments to bring to Stella’s and retrieved a black sports bag from the top shelf. On his way out of the closet, he deliberated over the number of socks and boxers to pack. A week’s worth should—

Stella was curled up in his blankets, burrowing into his pillow with an expression of pure ecstasy on her face. It was strange as hell. It shouldn’t have aroused him.

But it did.

He dropped his bag to the ground and leaned over her. “Now that you’ve found my pillow and sheets, you don’t need me anymore. Is that it?” he whispered.

Her eyes popped open, and she blushed. “They smell so good.”

“Aren’t you concerned they’re dirty?”

She widened her eyes and tossed the blankets away from her chest. She looked like she might be sick, looked almost betrayed.

Before she could start hyperventilating, he lay down on the bed and gathered her against himself. “I’m the only one who sleeps here, Stella. I was kidding. And I shower at night.” He had to wash his clients away before he slept. No way would he bring them into his bed.

Well, except for this client. None of his rules had ever applied to Stella.

She pounded her fists against his chest without force. “That’s not funny, Michael.”

“I’m sorry.” He smoothed the hair away from her face and straightened her glasses for her. “I was only teasing you, and I didn’t think about . . . the others . . . until you reacted that way.”

“You really haven’t brought any of them here?”

Was she jealous? Did he want her to be jealous? Fuck yes, he did. “Never.”

She pursed her lips like she was biting the inside. “I should leave. I barged my way in here, didn’t I? Thank you for showing it to me. I like it. I should get a plant.”

She prepared to get up, and he told himself to let her go. This space was not for clients, and he didn’t need more memories of her in his bed.

Let her go.

His arms refused to listen. They pulled her close so their bodies lined up in that perfect, custom-made way.

“In my mind, I don’t group you with them, Stella.”

“You don’t?”

She looked so hopeful, Michael couldn’t stop himself from saying, “No. You’re not just another client to me.”

“In a good way, right?” she asked with a wobbly smile.

“In the best way.” He stroked her loose hair, and she shut her eyes as she leaned into his caress, trusting him in a way that humbled him.

When he slipped her glasses off and set them on the nightstand, she opened her eyes and swallowed, drawing his attention to the wildly beating pulse point beneath her jaw. Her cheeks bloomed with color. She wanted him. He’d never loved being wanted this much.

“So pretty, Stella.”

He brushed his thumb across her bottom lip, and she sighed and kissed it before she surprised him by sucking it into her mouth. She stroked her tongue over him before she bit him, sending a sudden fire burst of sensation directly to his cock.

“Where the hell did you learn that?”

She released his finger. “I just wanted to do it. But I plan to research erotic finger biting tomorrow.”

“You could ask me, you know.” He lifted her small hand to his mouth and bit the base of her palm.

Her fingers twitched, and her breath came out in a long, ragged exhalation. “I want to know all the things you love most.” She captured his hand and brought it to her mouth. White teeth nipped at his skin, and the hairs on his body stood up.

“I love kissing you,” he admitted.

She trailed her fingertips lightly over his lips. “Does that mean I can kiss you?”

“You don’t have to ask.” She was the only one who ever did. Maybe that was why he was so crazy about her.

“I have permission to kiss you whenever I want?” She watched his mouth like what he said was too good to be true.

“Yeah.”

She brought their lips together and kissed him like he was oxygen and she was short on air. He ran his hands down her back to her hips, cupped her sweet ass, pulled her into his hardness. She struggled to get closer, threaded her fingers through his hair as she poured herself into the kiss.

So soft, every part of her. But covered by clothes. Michael loved clothes, but they locked Stella away. He’d never felt the urge to tear at buttons like he did now. Breaking the kiss, he captured a hand and loosened the cuff around her elegant wrist.

“Clothes off,” he growled.

After he’d unbuttoned her cuffs, she wordlessly went to work on his, and he realized this was her first time undressing him. He’d been undressed by hundreds of different people. In that moment, he couldn’t remember a single one of their faces.

There was only Stella.

They worked together, their arms crisscrossing and intertwining as they unbuttoned each other’s shirts and his vest, tugged the tails free. She stroked pale hands over his chest and grazed the disks of his nipples, making his skin burn.

He trailed his fingers from her collarbone, down the valley between her bra-covered breasts, over her flat belly, to the waistband of her skirt. After he undid the hook fastening at the side, he eased the zipper over the sweet curve of her hip.

“Skirt off, Stella. If I can’t touch you, I’ll go crazy.” He needed his hands between her legs, needed to taste her.

She sat up on her knees and lowered her skirt. Sitting back down, she pulled the skirt all the way off and set it on the nightstand. She peeked at him from beneath her eyelashes as she curled her legs under herself and fiddled with her open cuffs. Her unbuttoned shirt exposed her skin-tone bra and panties and flawless creamy skin.

“You’re still wearing too many clothes,” he said.

She drew her shirt off with a shy shrug of her shoulders and unhooked her bra, letting it fall from her breasts. Michael almost groaned at the sight of her stiff nipples. When she ran her palms over her breasts and rubbed the tips with restless motions, he did groan. That was fucking hot, and she had no clue.

“It makes them ache when you look at them like that,” she whispered.

“Like what?” he rasped, wondering if she’d say it.

“Like you want t-to . . .”

“Lick them? Suck them?”

Her face went bright red, but she nodded.

“Come here.”

She crawled to him and pressed herself to his front, nuzzling his neck as her hands snuck behind him under his shirt and grasped his back. The hard tips of her nipples grazed his chest, and Michael couldn’t resist cupping her tits and tweaking the pebbled flesh with his fingers. Her breath was a ragged sigh against his throat before her teeth scraped at his skin.

“You’re wearing a lot more clothes than I am, Michael.”

“Then take them off for me.”

Her eyes brightened, and a smile curved on her lips. As he’d known she would, his Stella really liked the idea of undressing him. She brushed her hands over the black silk of his vest before she pushed it over his shoulders and set it on the nightstand carefully—because it was his work, and she respected that. Such a simple thing, but it made him want to wrap her up and never let her go.

His shirt came off, was draped over the nightstand as well, and when her attention returned to him, she lost her focus. She ran greedy hands over his arms, chest, and abs, traced his tattoo. She kissed the dragon’s eye, licked it.

“I love your tattoo.”

“You don’t strike me as a tattoo girl.”

“It’s yours, Michael,” she said simply.

He pulled her hips against his and arched into her so she could feel what she did to him.

Her head fell back, and her body softened. Michael was good, but he’d never been this good. It was like Stella was made for him, specially designed to respond to him. Only him. The thought filled him with fierce possessiveness.

His hands grew rough as he touched her body, molding her to him as he claimed her mouth. The kiss was a savage thing of teeth and tongues, but she didn’t protest. Instead, she matched him roughness for roughness, kissed him until she was gasping.

He was unprepared when she stroked over the fly of his pants. Pleasure coursed through him in a heated wave. His cock jumped, and a hoarse groan tore from his throat. His stomach muscles flexed as he tried to catch his breath.

“I love this part of you,” she whispered with another stroke. “Show me how to make you feel good.”

Some vague sense of self-preservation told him to deny her, warned that he shouldn’t arm her with tools that would lead to his downfall, but as always, he couldn’t refuse her. He unbuttoned and unzipped his pants and withdrew the hard length of his cock, almost losing it when her eyes went dark with naked longing.

“Like this.” He wrapped her fingers around himself with a groan and taught her the rhythm he preferred, the pressure that drove him out of his mind, things he’d never shown his clients. They’d only cared about themselves.

Stella was different. Her entire being was focused on pleasing him. Because she wanted to learn how to do this for someone else or because he mattered to her like no one ever had? He knew which one it was. He still wanted her anyway.

He eased his hands down the swan line of her spine and hooked his thumbs in the elastic of her panties, pushed the material down her thighs. They were soaked clear through, and the scent of her arousal pushed him to the edge of his control. He almost spilled into her palm. She might be pleasuring him as part of her sex ed, but she was loving it, too. You couldn’t fake this kind of evidence.

After settling her back onto the bed, he tore her panties off, balled them up, and brought them to his nose to inhale her scent. “I’m keeping these.”

“They’re not—they’re—”

He spread her thighs wide and took in the sight of her beautiful pussy. Wet, swollen folds flushed deep pink and blossomed wide open for him. His fingers rubbed over her of their own volition and pushed into her.

Fuck, the heat, the tightness. So perfect for him. His body became one enormous ache of wanting.

“Stella, do you have any idea how hot your—”

“Michael,” she whined, bending her legs restlessly. “Don’t say it.”

He paused. Her words said no, but her body . . . Her chest heaved on ragged breaths, and she was clenched tight around his fingers.

“I think you like it when I talk dirty to you,” he whispered.

She shook her head frantically. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Your pussy doesn’t think so. You’re milking my fingers, Stella.”

She clenched even harder in response and arched her hips against his hand, driving him deeper.

“It’s y-your fingers. I love when you touch me.” She shut her eyes and ran her cheek over the sheets.

With his free hand, he caught her clit between his fingers and stroked, slow and sure. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and tightened around him. But not as violently as before.

His Stella liked to be spoken to. A lot.

That was fine. Michael liked to talk.

“I think it’s the words,” he said as he continued to stroke her with both of his hands. “It’s a shame you can’t see what you look like right now. My fingers are all the way inside your pussy, and you’re drenching my palm. Does it feel good?”

She bowed her back and bunched the sheets in her hands as she called out his name.

Her nipples caught his attention, and his tongue curled in his mouth as he remembered her taste and texture. “Do those candy nipples ache?”

She nodded, bumped her hips against him, and slid her hands up her belly to her tits. A frustrated sound tore from her throat as she pinched at the tips. She dropped her hands to her sides. “It only feels good when you do it.”

Because Stella’s mind needed to be seduced as much as her body, and apparently, her genius brain really liked Michael. He was just her practice boyfriend, but she responded to him like she’d never responded to anyone else.

He put them both out of torture and sucked a decadent nipple into his mouth. “You’re made of candy, Stella. Sweet, sweet, sweet.”

She rocked against his hands with increasing speed.

“Are you going to come for me so soon? I haven’t even licked your pussy yet.”

A whimpering sound escaped her lips, and her expression went pained. She locked down so hard he thought that was it, but after a breathless moment, her muscles eased.

“Maybe I should try out other words,” he whispered as he trailed his lips down her belly.

Tiny muscles fluttered around his fingers, and he knew she was close. She sank her teeth into her bottom lip as she threw her head back, inhaling sharply.

He touched his tongue to her clit before asking, “Is it your . . . box?”

“No.”

“Your . . . Lady V?”

She smiled into the blankets. “No.”

“Beautiful vagina.”

Her smile widened, and she shook her head.

He licked her again, sucked on her with the faintest pressure, and she arched against his mouth. Still, she hovered on the brink, exactly where he wanted her.

“I know.” He kissed her inner thigh. “It’s your . . .” He accented each word with a kiss upon her damp skin. “Wet. Hot. Sweet potato.”

She burst out laughing, and the sound worked into him and around him, fanning embers of happiness into full flame. He loved the sound of her laughter. He loved her smile. He loved—

He cut off that train of thought before it could finish. Now was not the time for thinking. It was time for feeling. He licked her clit into his mouth, and her laughter turned into a long moan. She wove her fingers into his hair, undulating against his face, and he willfully lost himself in her taste, her scent, her erotic sounds, and the feel of her on his tongue. Nothing was this good.

When she gripped his shoulders and pulled insistently, he looked up in confusion.

“Michael, I want it. I need it. Now. Please,” she said between heavy pants for breath.

“It?” Fuck, was she going to talk dirty to him?

She continued trying to drag him up over her. “I’m aching for you, Michael.”

Too shy, after all, but her words hit him just as hard. He had to take a moment to focus on breathing and not spilling all over the sheets before he climbed off the bed, turned her over, and pulled her hips to the edge of the mattress. This was the way she needed it. It was too personal for her to do it with him face to face. Maybe with her next man, she’d—

He distracted himself from that shitty image by running his hands over her generous ass. Their relationship was just practice for her, but this moment, right now, was real. “I love your bed, but it’s too low to the ground. There is something mine is perfect for.”

She buried her face in his sheets. “Now, please.”

But when he patted his pocket, it was empty. He groaned in disbelief. Forget blue or indigo. Violet. His balls were violet. “I don’t have a condom.” He was an escort, for fuck’s sake, and he’d forgotten a condom. He’d been too eager to see Stella to go through his regular pre-session checklist.

“Don’t tease me like that, Michael.” She arched her hips, presenting him with a glimpse of her swollen pussy. God.

He wanted to press into her so badly he hurt.

“Not teasing. I left the box in my car.”

She stared back at him with tormented eyes.

“I’ll be right back.”

With that, he adjusted his painfully hard flesh, zipped and buttoned his pants, and ran from his apartment.