Page 28

“Then we have from now until soon.” Rai caught her hands.

“Poppy, I would make love to you all the day and the night, but I have not yet acquired the…” What was the word?

He had searched for it a hundred times on Google, but he could not think it now; his mind was fogged with lust. “The sheaths of rubber. But may I not pleasure you until you must banish me from your home?”

“I’m not gonna banish you,” she said. “Not for good. I just need to do these jobs.” But she was already swaying toward him.

He closed the remaining distance between them, sliding his fingers into her hair. The short wisps were soft but damp from sweat. “Soon, but not now.” He brushed his lips against hers .

She sighed into his mouth. “I need to…to set an alarm.” Her hands went around his neck and she began to kiss along his jaw.

“Yes,” he growled. “Do what you must.” He turned her head back to his, exploring her warm sweet mouth again.

She giggled, sending ripples through him. “You need to stop kissing me, then.” She nipped playfully at his lips.

“No.” He kissed her harder, pressing her against the sink.

“Yes,” she sighed, then pushed him a few inches away. “You are a bad influence.”

“I am very bad.” He bent and pressed his lips to her chest, right at the V of her T-shirt. “This is why you like me.”

“You’re not wrong,” she said, combing her fingers through his hair. “How is your hair so soft?”

He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply and leaning his cheek into hers. “I do not know.” He ran his hands down her shoulders; she was trembling.

“Phone,” she whispered huskily into his ear.

“What?” He drew back enough to meet her eyes.

“I need my phone. For the alarm.” She ducked in to kiss his throat, hands gliding along his chest and his stomach. “Can you grab it for me?”

“Where is your phone?”

“In my pocket.” Her hands slid over his hips, then around to grab Rai’s backside. “These jeans are evil.”

“I thought you liked them,” Rai said.

“I do.” She looked up at him then, eyes dark and voracious, and one of her hands slipped around to the front, cupping Rai’s cock through the denim. “Get my phone.”

Rai groaned and reached around to where Poppy’s back pockets should be. “It is not here.” He clutched feverishly at the soft warmth of her flesh, dizzied by her touch. Was this what Ofelia had meant? He could not remember ever feeling so craved or craving so much in return.

“On the side,” she murmured as she kissed along his chest. “Thigh pocket.”

He managed to find it at last, a hard shape under the stretchy web of her leggings. It took him a few tries to fish it out of the clinging fabric. “I have it.”

Poppy sighed out a rueful laugh and stepped back, releasing Rai and taking the phone. “Being a responsible adult sucks,” she said breathlessly .

Rai stepped behind her and slid his arms around her waist, kissing along the curve of her neck.

“It is why I am not responsible.” He stroked his hands up under the hem of her shirt, caressing the soft skin of Poppy’s stomach and watching with mingled interest and frustration as she swiped and tapped at the screen.

“Lucky you,” she said, sinking back against him.

Her body was warm and soft and fragrant, and it was madness that she was not already naked before him, but it was also very Poppy.

“Now stop distracting me while I’m trying to do math.

” She held her breath for a long moment before giving the numbers on the screen one final swipe and tapping the save button. “There.”

He took the phone and set it on the table. “Now we may be bad?”

Poppy turned in his arms. “Like you ever stopped.”

“I waited.”

“Impatiently.” She gave him a stern look.

“I cannot be blamed for that,” he growled, and her sternness melted into a smile and then into a kiss, her mouth open and hungry on his, her body warm and soft, and then her hands were on his body again, stroking at his waist.

“I know we don’t have protection yet,” she whispered against his lips. “But…can I?” She cupped him through his jeans again and Rai arched into her touch, leaning back against the hard rim of the sink.

“Yes,” he said dizzily, “please.” And they both looked down, watching her fingers as she thumbed open the button of his jeans and then slowly dragged the zipper down.

He was panting with anticipation, and when her hand slipped inside, he let out a surprised laugh that quickly became a groan as he clutched at the sink for support. Poppy giggled.

“Why am I not surprised,” she said, “that you wear silk Bugs Bunny boxers?” She stroked his length through the fabric.

“They are blue,” Rai managed to say, though the friction of her hand was maddening. “And the rabbits…made me smile.”

“He is very rascally,” she said—or that’s what he thought she said. Either she’d pronounced the words strangely or his brain had ceased to comprehend language.

He managed a nod. “Ofelia laughed…and said I was…a rascal of a stray cat.”

Poppy’s hand paused for the briefest moment. “Old girlfriend?”

“What?” Rai hazily focused on Poppy’s face. Her expression was unreadable. “Who? ”

“Never mind.” Poppy smiled and slipped her hand inside the opening of his boxers and then her fingers were curling around his cock, skin against skin, and Rai could think of nothing else but Poppy, heat and pleasure and adoration.

Thunder resounded through his chest, and he cupped a hand around the nape of her neck, dragging her mouth to his.

She sighed and sank into the kiss, pressing close even as she stroked and pumped, drinking his gasps and growls with a fervent desperation that matched Rai’s passion, multiplied it, fed it like massing storm clouds.

He heard thunder in his heart and then his ears and dimly became aware that rain was now falling outside the glass windows, that the afternoon storms had arrived unanticipated, just in time to join them in their dance of hands and hearts and stuttering breaths.

He could feel his peak approaching, and it seemed so could Poppy—she drew slowly away from the kiss, pressing her forehead to his, looking deep into his eyes, and when his release jolted through him like lightning, she gasped as if it had struck her, too, as if she had seen the same blinding blast, and then thunder rolled again and Rai realized the flash of light had been real, coming from the storm outside.

“Wow,” she said softly. “Oh, wow.”

Rai didn’t ask her what she meant, what she had felt.

He could ask her later. Now, he was simply overflowing—with clarity, with affection, with need—and he had to share it with her.

He heaved her up in his arms, spun her about, set her on the paint-marred table beside the sink, kissing her all the while.

“Now,” he said in a voice roughened by ecstasy, “it is my turn.”

Poppy met Rai’s fierce gaze, feeling awed and powerful at the same time. Like she’d just opened a doorway to a world she’d never imagined. Like she’d stepped into something new.

Except this was not supposed to be new. This was supposed to be a grown adult woman with plenty of experience, choosing to have a short-term fling with a grown adult man also with plenty of experience, both of them swimming in experience, drowning in it, just deciding to have a good time for six weeks or so.

Just a grown adult woman giving a grown adult man a grown adult hand job.

Tale as old as time, tune as old as back-alley honky-tonk grown-adult song .

Instead, the tale and the tune were… She didn’t know what they were, but they were brand-spanking-new.

And she was terrified.

How had she let him in, into her home and her body and the fortress of her heart so damn fast?

She would have thought all of that to be impossible, but she couldn’t help but like Rai, even trust him.

And so here she was, shaking with anticipation, knowing that despite her attempt at establishing rational boundaries for their relationship, she was setting herself up for pain.

She was a fool ten times over, and her heart was already cranking that dial on up to eleven when she reached out and grabbed Rai by the lapels of his shirt, dragging him to her mouth for another mind-bending kiss.

He was trembling, his lips somehow both lazy and torrid against hers as he kissed her back and back until she was lying flat on the table, legs dangling off the edge on either side of Rai’s hips.

Her phone had ended up under her shoulder, and she shrugged it aside, irritated by both the hard lump and the reminder that their time was limited, that she was going to have to kick him out as soon as her work alarm sounded.

But they had time for this. They had to have time for this. Just this one sweet thing.

Rai gazed at her, one hand braced by her side, the other playing with her hair. “You are a goddess,” he said, voice low, then started to kiss down her throat.

“If you say so,” she sighed, stroking his hair.

“You must let me worship.” He nuzzled at her breasts.

“Yes.”

He cast a dark look up along her body. “When will it be soon ?”

What? Oh. She cast a glance at her phone, but it was face down, and she didn’t want to pick it up to check for sure. “Too soon.”